On March 13, 2020, the English Premier League suspended its 2019/20 season, which remained on hold for over three months. During that time, one person in particular had a tough job. Greg Clarke, the chairman of England’s Football Association at the time, had to decide whether teams would return to play. He did have some leverage, but to what extent should he consider the interests of parties outside the football world? What would it be like to be in Clarke’s shoes?
These are the types of questions Professor Nour Kteily raises when teaching decision-making in the context of crisis and conflict at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management. He recently repeated those same questions to negotiation experts during the “Teacher the Teacher: Approaches to Negotiation Education” program organized by the Dispute Resolution Research Center at Kellogg School in Chicago.
Under the guidance of panelists who moderated role-playing exercises, case debriefs and best-practices sessions, teachers and soon-to-be negotiation instructors explored new methods and tried innovative materials. Most importantly, they learned from each other’s experiences. In teaching and negotiating.
As Gen Zers are more likely to be entrepreneurs than older generations, it is crucial to help them develop the essential skills to thrive as negotiators, Kellogg professor Richard Jolly, who attended the event, said during an interview.
By improving how they teach negotiation, those teachers want to better prepare business students for the tough moments they will certainly face. Here are four insights aspiring leaders should consider.
1. The tone of the opening argument matters
The decision-maker can anchor their position at the very beginning of a negotiation or listen to people and let things unfold first, Kteily explained in his panel. Each option has its advantages.
Anchoring one’s position early in the negotiation prevents the discussion from going off the rails, sets the tone of the conversation, makes it easier to deal with the potential competing interests of the parties involved and invites people to look at the big picture instead of their interests.
Sitting back and listening to others before disclosing one’s position, on the other hand, helps attendees feel validated, allows for clarity about the consequences of the eventual decision and encourages the decision-maker to bear responsibility for those consequences. It can also work as a negotiation strategy: if the moderator is lucky, people will lean towards the option he or she wants, helping the moderator save their political capital for another moment.
2. It is essential to map the parties involved
There is a question all leaders should ask themselves: Who am I to serve today?
According to Kteily, having clarity about the parties directly affected by one’s job before making an important decision is essential. Just like in the case of Greg Clarke when deciding when the Premier League should resume.
That doesn’t mean leaders should ignore the interests of the other stakeholders, but that these stakeholders will have less influence in the final decision than the ones the leader must serve.
Leaders’ core responsibilities should always guide them when making difficult decisions.
3. The notion of fairness varies from person to person
Aside from sports during pandemic lockdowns, another difficult negotiation challenge is climate change. In the first panel, led by Harvard professor Max Bazerman, instructors were invited to examine a case involving global carbon dioxide emissions, individually assess an emission rate they considered fair and negotiate with others what the future emissions should be.
Some participants couldn’t reach an agreement. Others shared their struggle with balancing collective and personal interests.
Whenever one is faced with a challenging societal negotiation, like climate change, the goal should be to come up with a solution that guarantees the “maximal sustainable goodness,” Bazerman said during the panel.
Negotiators should also be aware of their own biases and acknowledge that the notion of fairness will be different for everyone involved, said Bazerman, who will release a new book titled “Negotiation, the Game has Changed” next January. This awareness helps mitigate the tension and allows for a more reasonable negotiation.
Similarly, Wei Zheng, a business professor at the Stevens Institute of Technology in New Jersey who attended the event, believes diversity is crucial when building solutions. As one of the leaders of a certificate program on inclusive leadership, Zheng said her main goal is to help students use the “superpower of inclusion to lead effective organizations.”
For her, besides hiring and interacting with people from different genders, races, and backgrounds, leaders must develop an active interest in their ideas, build trust, and, ultimately, collaborate.
“For entrepreneurs, you cannot go with existing paths or boundaries,” she said. “You have to break through these boundaries; connect things that are not connected.”
Listening and validating others becomes more relevant as students from different backgrounds gather in the same classroom.
“Nothing is 100% effective,” said Cynthia Wang, who is the executive director of Kellogg’s Dispute Resolution Research Center and specializes in cross-cultural negotiations. “I think what’s really important these days with our growing global community is to make sure that all are feeling heard.”
4. Tough on the problem, soft on people
People can be fierce during a negotiation and still have a good relationship, author and professor Eli Finkel said during his panel discussion. He based this advice on the book “Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In.”
To illustrate this, Finkel shared a personal anecdote about trying to buy an RV online. Even though the owner responded to Finkel’s ambitious negotiating strategy by offering a deal that he (the owner) knew was significantly below the ultimate sale price, he and Finkel developed warm feelings toward each other.
The key, Finkel said, is to “separate the people from the problem” and “be kind.”
