How to Win Your Next Fight | Daniel Shapiro | TEDxHarvardCollegeSalon

fundamental question as you are negotiating whether it is in the political realm whether it is in the business realm at a board meeting whether it is you and their spouse trying to figure out where to go for dinner on Friday night how do you deal with this emotional dimension how do you deal with your emotions in your conflict in your negotiation and so that's what we're going to talk about in the next a short bit of time what's the problem what makes it so difficult and how do you get out of this problem and it is not an easy question you know again I think about my wife and myself trying to figure out you know what we're going to do with finances or where are we should go on vacation and even those issues can quickly become heated now what's the common advice how do people typically advise you to deal with these situations the classic advice I hear all the time around the world don't get emotional yeah as you're in the midst of that fight with your lying on your lovely romantic partner or in that genie board meeting cool but don't get emotional good luck what is the problem what's the obvious problem with that advice what's the problem oh it is not possible you cannot avoid emotions anymore than you can avoid you know it's like my oh I'm like telling you right now just for a little assignment tonight please don't dream good luck you know it's the same with emotions there is not that on/off button they are always on you cannot avoid these things cause those emotions so what you're supposed to do it and then it comes this whole other wave of advice that says oh I know how to deal with emotions as you're in your conflict your difficult negotiation deal directly with that know what you're feeling know what that other side is feeling and deal directly complicated that is true so let's make this cereal what are we negotiating you and me okay whether you want your volunteer or not maybe this article uh what are we negotiating something or high-conflict it you can make this up it's not real I don't yet know you I don't think yes okay do we drop out oh do you drop out okay and then Who am I in relation to you now I'm your best friend and I think this is the worst decision ever you got into Harvard University and you want to drop out to do what to travel get to travel about interesting good idea but get the degree first and you say no no no right and I say you're an idiot you're an idiot you're an idiot and you say no Shapiro you're the idiot right so weird the midst of a conflict now and the question is power do how can you deal directly think how complicated this is for me simply to deal directly with my own emotions first I need to think through which the evidences of emotion in my body you know as you're giving me what's your first name Aggie Maggie is giving me that glare that she's giving me right now you know even for calling on her in the first place you know my hands might start to shake my face might start to get a little right that's the and then which of these choose 300 different emotions and my feeling right now in relation to Aggie frustrated annoyed angry at my new best friend over here you know ashamed that she's even thinking of doing that and traveling the world and abandoning me a hundred different emotions and then the question is what's causing these emotions I need to think through that and that's just me then I need to think about Augie one would argue is feeling based upon the fact that your face looks like this right now now there's a smile now she's doing like this our hands like that our hands are not very uncomfortably moving the bodies moving more that's the evidence I need to study that I definitely need to think what emotions my Augie be feeling right now based upon that evidence and what's causing it this is a lot Jim and notice this is just my friend my new friends and I just trying to figure out should she drop out of school right this is covered and for most of us I would argue is overwhelming you know it's too much to think about all of these different elements as you are in the midst of an important negotiation but it puts you in a bind a real life because on the one hand you cannot avoid these things called emotions as you said it sir they are part of your human Constitution and yet at the same time these things are completely overwhelming to deal with so what do you do and my advice to all of you back to that question as you negotiate how should you deal with emotions my response don't don't focus on emotions directly instead turn your attention one step back so a handful of things that my colleague Roger Fisher and I call core concerns matters that are important every single one of us in this room matters that are important to that next business partner that you've never even met five core concerns tend to stimulate a lot of the emotions that come up in our everyday negotiations appreciation autonomy affiliation steps and role and tonight I'm going to talk about the first two of those five core concerns appreciation because it seems so easy and obvious and I don't think it is and autonomy because most people don't normally use that word in daily language but it's dad always with us affecting us so let's start with that notion of appreciation and let me hop back on the stage so appreciation so the first of these five core concerns the idea is if you deal well with these core concerns you can stimulate positive emotions and you get people who want to work with cooperating share information with you better business deals a happier marriage a happier life if you deal poorly with these five core concern I fail to appreciate I'm a proponent volunteering and so on you know you get the negative emotions and you get people who walk out the door first of these core concerns appreciation none of us like to feel unheard misunderstood devalued but it's only been recently the science that's really started to catch up with our common understanding of just how powerful appreciation is we we can out predict in science marital stability down the road five ten years guess what if one of the primary predictor is predictor says how much of it is there in the relationship teamwork the most effective teams appreciate one another they still have conflict but how they deal with conflict is very differently why it is a place like Harvard or some of these other great universities around the world or some of the great corporations why don't why do these places lose some of their superstar players just about the money my hunch is not at all these leaders say you know what it's an easy enough concept in theory putting it into practice is different you know the three things to think about in terms of putting it into practice how do you do it one I want you to understand your perspective to I want to see the merit in your perspective to try to appreciate you it's not enough to say I understand where you're coming from you know and I think you're crazy though you know I've found appreciation it's I understand where you were coming from I see the merit and I'm letting you know I'm letting you know in some culturally appropriate way let's put this into practice so part of the work I do is in is working with hostage negotiators crisis negotiators I thought we might think through an example drawn from a training a hostage negotiation training program but based on a real-life situation how many of you have been to New York City it's a lie okay and how many have you been to the subway system in New York City that's okay situation happened there and let me just preface this by saying the example of about the share involves the gentleman who's suffering from mental illness schizophrenia most people according to recent research who suffer from severe mental illness like this tend not to be violent more violent than people who are not afflicted by that mental illness the example about the share is an exception basic situation there was this gentleman about 26 years old clearly suffering from schizophrenia from delusions of grandeur he thinks again since he thinks he's better than God and he's wandering around the subway platform just sort of wandering around and as he's wandering around he sees a woman woman about 20 years old carrying a baby in her arms he sees this woman he runs up to the woman he grabs the baby out of her arms he pushes the woman into the train track runs off into the janitor's closet locks the door behind him and shortly thereafter the hostage negotiation team arrives and they hear on the other side of the door Nate oh I love you angel demon you know what I have to do and we meanwhile on the other side they all open up what's going on in there open up pounding at the door and does our approach work yes or no what do you think question and why does it not work what are we failing to do anything from the mental level what are we failing to do I can't get a big hit your couple minutes appreciate that thank you we are completely failing to appreciate this gentleman's perspective banging on the door like interrogators you tell me what I need to know and those that approach work well in interrogation not often does it work well in hostage negotiation certainly not in this situation and the situation just angel demon you know what I have to do this sounds an angel lovely demon where you can say no hostage me what are you to say if this child is an angel I would love something you don't see something next three second they're going to kill this not that this job is an angel I didn't hear you the trial just died okay what did you say what do i won I am times an angel I will love him if decide what else you gonna say what are you to say this until I'm safe say loud this angel this angel and that is precisely what we said on this other side of the door work what do you think yes or no and yes or no of course not fun works with all of a sudden this gentleman and on the other side of the door said angel angel you know we need patenella me precisely the opposite air that we had made in this room but three minutes ago and in the scenario that I was describing you know from the training program quite some time earlier what do we do okay but three minutes earlier we're banging on this door link interrogators no impersonation but three minutes later your points it's an angel in a sense now we aren't over appreciate assuming we know more about what is going on in the mind of that hostage taker he knows maybe just to break this on make it real I come home after let's say the long day of work at the Friday afternoon and their might beautiful whiteness and having taken care of our three little boys waiting at the door had for some reason forgive me Mia but at that moment she's just not quite looking as beautiful you know and she opens the door she's just tired and she said I have had the most frustrating day of my life Boyce you know now supposedly they're our boys yeah but if my response to my beautiful life but if my response to my beautiful wife at that point in time is honey I know exactly how frustrated you are I am in trouble it's the same thing though I am over appreciated I am assuming I know more about what is going on in the mind of my beautiful wife than she knows and you will have to trust me that is a dangerous place to be you know and we were stuck stuck in the situations unsure what to do we did something that I would not typically advise we took a break now the moment you take a break that am biblical chord of connection between you and the hostage-taker gets cut even if there's hate as long as you have the connection it's okay but the moment now you start floating we went back in our strategy conversation to two things what I believe to be the essence of good negotiation one listening and two asking good open-ended questions doing 9em neither and once we started to do that in the actual situation we started to learn to this gentleman from his perspective he was not crazy he was trying to see the world saving the world from the demons bringing in the angels and once we understood that it completely changed our approach to the because now we could say to this gentleman I'm at my B do you know I don't see the introducing I don't see the damages but I hear you saying you were trying to save the world and you know what it opens my way here in my VT we're trying to save the world - why don't you open up that door let's see if we can try and save this world together literally three minutes later that little door squeaks open out walks that gentleman with baby in arms but it was a challenge and it is a true challenge how do you appreciate you know it's one thing is they all appreciate your spouse on the anniversary or your best friend on their birthday but it's a very different thing when I storm it - my best friend Auggie's room radon and I say to Auggie you know what I think you are the world's biggest in a problematic person in the world I promise you I'm going to blast on Facebook unless you stay here at this university I hate you how at that moment is Auggie going to be able to appreciate and it's the hardest moment to do something but in a sense it's your most powerful tool that's appreciation go through one more of these five core concerns autonomy so autonomy is the freedom to make decisions without somebody else imposing a decision on and this is a big concern in our lives whether you know whether or not instead you know so in preparation for this TED talk I was told you know 18 minutes it's the most you're supposed to go don't go more maybe you could go up to 22 but anything I just want to tell all of you right now we are going for 45 minutes lady back there okay Tony you know their reaction to me is he kidding is he not kidding that's autonomy let me bring this to life one final story about 20 years back I was living in a small town in Massachusetts called hammers going to school there and I've been dating this woman named Mia they've been dating her for about what about six months and and I was about to head off to Eastern Europe to Prague to do a workshop for some political leaders some educators me and I were living in separate Park Apartments before I left I simply asked Mia would you mind looking after my apartment while I'm gone and she said sure he'd be happy to you know take care of the mail to water the plants that was that fly off the problem do my workshop come back about two weeks later walk in the door can I see my apartment has been almost completely remodeled you know literally all unlike the pictures on the wall different the soulful location different the table spread and the one thing that got on my nerves that I remember to this day with me great this was 20 years ago my bachelor days but I had hanging from my ceiling one of those yellow plastic construction lights that they have them in like baking areas you know I knew I had one of those in my apartment I thought like this is the cool you know anyway obviously my girlfriend at that time did not think this was a very cool thing as I walk into this very small apartment open the door there's this little wind suction my light is gone in in its place now I swear to god truth is this colorful butterfly mobile so these little butterflies wooden butterflies on little pieces of string December and I get angry at this you know I am now angry and what do you think I do what do you think I do I'm not proud of this but what do you think I do I start changing this department back to the way it was before you know look this is my apartment this is not your apartment yes we've been boyfriend/girlfriend for six months and my biggest learning from all of us true as well my girlfriend at that point in time she had a much better sense of style the night because in fact the apartment and the way she does find it look bad so why am i changing the apartment back to the way it was before maybe I'm crazy it's not about the context you can spend weeks putting together the best argument about why your marriage is meant to fail or succeed why your finances should be this way why the board should move in this direction and not that direction you could spend months thinking rationally about all that well you walk into that other party let's say in a business negotiation you say here is the best deal you can ever find I mean here's the best deal you can ever find take your newly and is that other side more likely to take it that's everything to do with the process and with autonomy in that situation my autonomy felt impinged this is my apartment don't tell me what to do you have to consult me first

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 15,100

Rating: 4.9012346 out of 5

Keywords: TEDxTalks, English, United States, Social Science, Psychology, Self improvement, Sociology

Id: EonQY1eBNLU

Length: 19min 52sec (1192 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 19 2016