Writing Boots

On communication, professional and otherwise.

Introducing … “kindred communication”

05.23.2012 by David Murray // Leave a Comment

There's a lot of talk these days about bipartisanship, as if horsetrading is a high human ideal.

When I'm negotiating with someone—over the price of a car, who will cover the travel expenses, or what we'll have for dinner—part of my agenda is to make sure the other fellow has gotten his. I try not to enter into any negotiation where I don't believe the other person has a good chance of getting as much out of it as I do.

But more than that: I want the end result of every conversation to end justly and right in the long run: for me, for him—and for you and you and you. It doesn't always happen, but it's always the goal. When it happens, you know. And when it doesn't, you know that too.

This, I call kindred communication, the idea that every negotiation, and I've been having a lot of them lately, takes place in a larger context of a human society that is made less cohesive when someone puts the screws to someone else, when someone gives up too much out of a moment's desperation, when a lopsided deal is made and then painfully lived with.

Bad contracts written and verbal, spoken and unspoken, give rise to rancor, resentment, fear and contempt that affects many people outside the negotiating parties. And good contracts, meanwhile, hold our world together and give us what little security and stability we have.

My chronic mistake is that I foolishly believe (and learn otherwise, and then believe again) that everyone else shares this idea, which I came to naturally, smugly assume is self-evident and keep to myself.

No more.

Them's my terms, people, take 'em or leave 'em.

Categories // Uncategorized Tags // bibpartisanship, kindred communication, negotiating skills, negotiation style

POTUS is no pussy: my theory on President Obama’s negotiating style

03.02.2011 by David Murray // 3 Comments

I'm always fielding assaults from my left—and sometimes from myself—saying President Obama is a "pussy," a "wimp," a "coward" or a "bad negotiator." On healthcare, on gays in the military, on taxes for the rich.

What am I defending? I'm starting to think it's his negotiating style more than his policies.

My old pal Tommy is a contractor, and a tough negotiator, no doubt about it. I love to listen to him chew people up on the phone. When he haggles, he starts hundreds or thousands of dollars lower than I would have dared. And he does things like, if he sees a clause in the contract he didn't agree to, just crosses the clause out, signs the thing and faxes it back. It's impressive. He's a good businessman, and he's made a lot of money.

He's seen me negotiate, too. And when it's all over, he calls me a "dumbass."

Which stings, I won't kid you. And I used to concede the point. But now I'm not so sure I do.

Here's how I go about getting what I need: I very carefully figure out what I think the job is worth—what it's worth to me, to the employer and to the market. Usually those are three different numbers, and compromising must be done. But I do most of the compromsing, in my head.

So when it comes time to tell the employer what I will and won't work for, I present the number that I really believe makes sense—not an outrageous first roundhouse that will inevitably be answered angrily by a hard left hook, and then counter-offered back and forth until both sides, like punch drunk boxers, are left to hold each other up in the center of the ring.

When I do this my way, over the long haul (and I keep clients over long hauls) the client comes to understand that my initial offer isn't very far from my bottom line. So the counteroffers, if they come, don't come in too low.

I've made a pretty good living as a freelance writer over the last dozen years, in some pretty tough general economic times and the journalism-business equivalent of the Great Depression. Though I've certainly left some money on the table, especially on short-term gigs where I might have gouged some clients (a couple of whom probably deserved it)—I think I've gotten a fair amount for my skills and the energy I've given, and I simply don't believe a better negotiating style would have significantly improved my income.

Why do I negotate in this polite and rational manner? My shrink might have another theory, but here's mine:

I don't like seeming unreasonable in negotiations with people who need me to be reasonable once they hire me.

I think that's more or less Obama's theory, too. I'm not sure it's always the right theory—there's a chance that both of us behave the way we do because we're adult children of alcoholics, or something—but I do appreciate how he goes about it.

If he's afraid of something, it's not Republicans: It's being seen by others as unfair, or insane.

Maybe I'm not defending Obama, as much as I'm defending myself.

Maybe I should stop.

(But it's in my nature.)

Categories // Uncategorized Tags // contractor, negotiation style, President Obama, wimp

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