Positions V’s Interests

People are natural problem solvers.

Give team members a problem, and they will quickly generate solutions for it. Often, they come to the meeting with solutions already in hand, or they quickly propose them.

When people have strong feelings about a topic, they often think of the meeting as a contest where their view – which they see as the correct one – should prevail. That leads them to try and convince others their solution is the right one.

But that doesn’t explain why one person’s solution is often unacceptable to others.

To understand this, we need to understand how we arrive at our preferred solutions.

 We generate a solution which meets our needs, as they are the needs we know about. When our solutions don’t take into account the stakeholders’ needs, they reject them. 

Positions are like solutions that people identify to address an issue.

Interests are the underlying needs that people use to generate their solutions or positions. 

To illustrate this, if you and I were sitting in a conference room, and I wanted the window open and you wanted it closed.

These would be our positions.

If I asked you, ‘What leads you to want the window closed?’ You might say it was due to the wind blowing your papers around and you wanted them together.  

If you asked what led me to want the window open, I might say that I was feeling too warm and I wanted to feel cooler.

These are our interests. 

My solution to open the window and your solution to shut it are simply ways for each of us to meet our interests. The problem here is that the window can’t be open and closed at the same time. But, if we focus on our interests, we can find a solution that meets both of our interests. 

The difficulty with solving problems by focusing on positions first, is people’s positions are often in conflict, even when their interests are compatible. This happens because people tend to offer positions that meet their own interests but do not take into account other people’s interests. 

In the conference room example, you would probably reject my solution and I would probably reject yours because neither met the other’s interests. 

Often managers unknowingly encourage people to focus on positions when they say to a group, ‘Don’t come with a problem unless you have a solution.’ It’s presumptuous to expect that your solution will work for others unless you know their interests. If instead we focused on interests, we could identify them and then ask the question, ‘How can we solve this problem in a way that meets both of our interests?’  

With a little thought and creativity, we might decide to open the top part of the window so that your papers were not being blown by the wind and I still got the benefit of cool air.  

Or we could switch places so that I was closer to the open window and you were away from it. When we focus on interests, we are being transparent by explaining the reasoning and intent underlying our preferences, and we are being curious by learning about others’ interests.

These are the key steps for focusing on interests.