Do books that offer business advice make a difference? For the most part, the answer is a resounding "No!" And books on negotiation are among the worst offenders. That's why I was surprised by Negotiating the Impossible by Deepak Malhotra (Berrett-Koehler, 2016). This book is important not just as a business book, but also as a book on how to address a variety of the toughest problems we face as a society.
Unlike most books on negotiation, this book is not on how to put one over on the other guy or gal. Rather, Malhotra makes a convincing case that in most every imaginable negotiation, there is a workable outcome. Instead of citing simplistic win-win negotiations, Malhotra tackles some of the most troubling and complex negotiations in the past and present. These include the Cuban missile crisis, the conflict between players and owners in the NFL (2011), and the Louisiana purchase. Negotiating the Impossible would be worth reading if only for the retelling and analysis of historically important negotiations.
Malhotra presents three negotiating principles along with a wealth of specific strategies and tips. The principles are named framing, process and empathy. While none of the principles is new in itself, the three principles together constitute a new approach to negotiation.
Framing is the way you structure a proposal that is part of a negotiation. By changing the framework of your proposal, you can often find a framework which is more attractive to the other party without substantially sacrificing your interests. This essentially works by enabling the other party to the negotiation to see that their interests are satisfied through your proposal.
A recurring theme of the book is that you can often achieve your interests if not your positions. Negotiators get it wrong when they attach themselves to positions instead of thinking in terms of underlying interests. Strategic negotiators don't confuse their fundamental interests with their tactical positions.
The process principle states that by focusing on the process of negotiation, you may find unanticipated areas of agreement with the other party on which you can build. If there is agreement that a certain process of negotiation should be followed, it is more likely that the outcome of that process will be acceptable to both sides.
The empathy principle is, perhaps, the most novel of the three principles, suggesting that you have an advantage in negotiating if you are able to see the points of contention in the way that the other side does, even if you totally reject their viewpoint. It is important to distinguish empathy from sympathy. You don't actually have to be in sympathy with an opposing viewpoint to understand it. The power of empathy is that it may reveal a way to allow your opponent to "win" in a negotiation while advancing your own interests.
Negotiating the Impossible is an idealistic book. It envisions virtually every situation as subject to resolution through the negotiation process. Malhotra repeats the mantra that his methods can be used to resolve negotiations "without money or muscle." I suppose this is right in the sense that if a matter is subject to negotiation, it means that neither side knows it has the money or muscle to impose its will on the other side. But it does not help us with the many situations where the problem is not to resolve a negotiation but to bring the parties to the point where negotiation is possible.
This book is different than so many other books on negotiation in that Malhotra is not just seeking resolutions to challenging situations. He is seeking principled resolution. I had an opportunity to interview Malhotra and press him on the issue of ethics and negotiation. He said, "One of the reasons I've written this book is to give people a set of tools that will help them achieve those same objectives [as might be achieved through unethical means] without sacrificing their ethics."
Malhotra's three principles, and their many supporting strategies, are likely to define the practice of negotiation for years to come. The reader might as well just learn them now.