Substance for substance, relationship for relationship.

On the recommendation of one of my colleagues Arman Masoudi, I enrolled in an INSEAD Value Negotiation course earlier this year. The professor Horacio Falcao has written some amazing books on this topic, and is an amazing presenter.

As someone who grew up in India, I didn't think I would learn a lot from the course. After all, I was watching negotiations everywhere when I was young. Every summer holiday, my uncle used say - "If you love us, stay a few more days with us during your holiday. If you go, I'll feel you dont love us enough". This used to be the most complicated negotiation for the 10-15 year old me, I do love my uncle, but I also want to go back home and play with my friends near my home. I used to get mad at my parents for laughing about it as I struggled to negotiate a common term.

What the course made me realize was that my uncle was mixing relationship with substance negotiation. Now that I have a little more knowledge - I would have approached it this way - "I do love you, and I really appreciate that you value our relationship. I am very grateful for it. I would like us to continue to have a great relationship. I have some recommendations on how we can further strengthen our relationship. Lets spend more time together by spending some time at our place, and some time at your place. Lets also discuss more options on how I can make sure you understand I love you, and its not reliant on me spending some extra days here. Would you like it if we all booked some holidays together? Or if I wrote to you - I love writing and I know you love reading "

Of course that's a silly personal example, but the concept applies everwhere. Substance for substance, relationship for relationship.

Professor Falcao lead us through a great 7 elements process to help maximize values for all parties. I realized how most interactions I have had - I focused on options and alternatives. I assumed peoples interests, and assumed that our relationship was better. I now learnt a structured approach to go through communication, process, relationship, interests AND THEN options. This process helps avoid surprises - you have established the relationship, you understand each others interests, you understand how you are proceeding - so when you get to options, chances of disagreements are minimal.

There was a great clip from the beautiful mind that summarized the win win value negotiations - Nash’s inspiration was that Adam Smith’s principle that the “best result comes from everyone in a group doing what’s best for themselves” was incomplete and needed revision: The best result comes from everyone in a group doing what’s best for themselves and the group.

If this is a topic that interest you - you can check out Horacio Falcao's book