Best Practice #7 – Getting to Yes
Last month we discovered the 80%–100% rule for handling common disagreements in typical problem-solving or decision-making situations. I find that as much as 80% of the time there’s a 100% creative, mutually-agreeable, win-win alternative if we’ll just pause and ask ourselves these three questions: What are we differing about? What do we each want? What options do we have?
But what about the other 20% of the time when this 3-step process doesn’t seem to work? Truth be told, there are situations where this process is limited and may not work. Rare though these situations may be, only a few ways to handle conflict remain. Perhaps it is necessary to take a break from problem-solving to allow for a “cooling off” period. Binding arbitration is another option as is appeal to a “court of last resorts” (for example a higher church judicatory or an impartial expert). And then there will be conflict management situations where the parties chose to “agree to disagree.” As I state elsewhere:
While compromise or capitulation may not be appealing alternatives, the parties may choose to live with the consequences of such partial, or even win-lose solutions. Still, there will be situations where conflicted parties choose to walk away from each other, admit failure and defeat, and “let the chips fall where they may.” Perhaps at a later date, it will be possible to restart negotiations or to create a new way of handling the conflict.[1]
In Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In from the Harvard Negotiation Project, authors Roger Fisher and William Ury, and editor Bruce Patton recommend a similar three-question conflict management process. Their principled negotiation method focuses on the problem, basic interests, and mutually satisfying options.
They, too, acknowledge that their negotiating principles have limitations. For example, what if one party is more powerful than the other? What if one side won’t play by the rules? Or what happens if they resort to dirty tricks?
Fisher and Ury offer practical, no-nonsense, tough, and effective approaches to handle these complicating circumstances. For example, they suggest developing your best alternative to a negotiated agreement, using negotiation jujitsu (self-defense), and taming the hard bargainer.[2]
[1] See Communication in the Church: A Handbook for
Healthier Relationships (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2016), 25.
[2] For more information on these approaches, see Fisher,
Ury, and Patton, ed., Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving
In, 2nd ed. (New York: Penguin, 1991), 97–143
