Nolan Martin :
Hey everyone! Thanks for joining us on the NEGOTIATEx podcast. We are continuing our conversation with Susan Raines. If you haven’t already checked out part A of the show, be sure to do that first. Let’s jump into the conversation with Susan.
NM :
I’d love to get your opinion here. And first we mentioned framing here. Could you explain what framing is? The reason or where I’m going with this is we’ve had a lot of people, other negotiators, and we all understand that everyone negotiates differently. There’s times that you would do things and times that you won’t.
But we even have other professors or other influencer type people that are talking about how hard anchoring is the way to go and you’re going to get better outcomes if you do it and they’re going around telling everybody this. I want to get your opinion on this and how does that affect things?
Navigating Communication: The Power of Framing & Collaborative Problem-Solving [00:44]
Susan Raines :
Okay, so I pick up two things in what you just asked me. So the first thing is framing is the words and concepts we use to describe what we’re seeing. So if there’s a problem, the words and the concepts I use to describe it let you know how I see that, or in what my focus is, right? What’s within the frame, and what’s outside of that frame.
And so how, if I frame it to say, Gosh, Nolan, I see you’ve been coming in late to all the meetings, and you need to knock it off, and one more meeting and you’re out, right? Whatever it is, that’s a pretty big consequence. Versus saying, so that framing is that I clearly frame that problem like I’m the boss and you’re the subordinate and I have this power and you don’t or something, which of course is just not an accurate view of the situation. If someone’s not doing what you want them to do, they do have power, right?
So the other framing would be frame that as a joint problem to solve. Hey, we can’t get this meeting started on time when everybody isn’t here because then we have to back up and repeat ourselves when they get here or we’re missing that data you were going to bring. What can we do to make sure if this meeting time isn’t working? Is there another one? Let’s brainstorm. What do we need to do to fix this problem, right? How can we fix this problem together?
So that framing as a joint problem to solve versus framing it as me telling you what to do, right? So the collaborative approach instead of the competitive approach. And hard anchoring. Okay, anybody who tells you there’s one right approach to every negotiation is a novice, and I’m gonna throw that out there in our book, expert mediators, when we interviewed 206 of the world’s best negotiators, mediators, multiple interviews.
One of my favorite quotes is from somebody from Jersey, and she says, I go into that negotiation and I’ll be whoever I need to be. I’ll be a judge. I’ll be a cheerleader. I’ll be your Aunt Sally. Okay? I’ll be your mama. I’ll be like, oh, whatever you need me to be to get it done, I’m gonna get it done right.
So sometimes you might come into a mediation. and play a little dumb and be like, oh, I didn’t know that because this makes this person really feel good about themselves and like you and now they’re going to be more collaborative. So there’s just so many things that we can do differently in a negotiation depending upon what it is we’re negotiating about, how interdependent we are, how much we think we’re going to have a future relationship with that person because if I come in just loaded for bear and tell you how it’s going to be and I’m not compromising, I may end up driving you away and you’re going to go work for my competitor or something else when we could have had a much better outcome.
So I would just say like for the example of being stuck on a hard anchoring position, which is where you throw out the first number in a negotiation and you throw it high or low and then you try to stick to it to get them to come to your number, right? I think that is probably appropriate in some situations. But if you use that every time, you’re going to come off like a jerk and nobody’s going to want to work with you.
Aram Donigian :
I’d say too, you’re sometimes you’re going to solve for the wrong problem because you didn’t fully understand the problem first before you jumped into trying to solve it. That’s in your line of work in diplomacy and then stuff that Nolan and I did in the military, that can be incredibly costly in terms of time and resources and trust that just can’t get rebuilt. And it’s because of this approach that you’re talking about.
SR :
One thing that makes me think of just real quick is that every time we leave an interaction with someone, whether it’s the boss’s administrative assistant or it’s our boss or a colleague, every time we walk out of the room, we want them to be thinking, wow, I really want to work again with Nolan or Aram.
I really want to work with them again because they’re great. That’s what you want them to be thinking. Not that you want them to like you because it’s not about that. It’s that you want that relationship to continue to be mutually beneficial instead of what a pain they are.
NM :
And I think that what I tend to see as we start to talk about this relationships, everything like that, is it really just kills creativity. Aram, you alluded to, you just, you’re not solving the right problem. But then I also find okay, no creative solutions end up coming out of something that I tend to see start like this.
AD :
Susan, in your book, you discuss the ever changing workforce. We are at a more diverse workforce than at any other time in history. We might say, whether that is diversity around gender, culture, generational differences or so many other factors around who we are.
And I did, how do you, would you coach a manager trying to apply the concepts and skills you discussed and at the same time manage this very diverse workforce that they’re trying to oversee?
A Strategic Approach To Inclusion & Team Dynamics [04:53]
SR :
It’s really a competition issue, right? Because you want to get the best and the brightest and hardworking, innovative, competent people working for you. And you want them to come to work as a team and again, not withhold ideas because they’re going to be worried somebody will smack them down or they’ll be silenced or whatever.
It’s not just about equity and fairness. Yes, it is all those things, but those arguments never win the day. It’s about the bottom line. And I’ll give an example. I had an organization that brought me in because they were having a problem hiring and retaining diverse, it was a scientific organization. And they needed engineers and they needed mathematicians and physicists and all these chemists and all these kind of science people.
And I’m in a room with 200 people and they’re all different levels of the organization. But these are all college educated scientists. In the room, there’s two women. There’s me, and there’s a woman who used to be in the military. And that’s it. And I asked folks what are your concerns about diversity issues? And someone raised his hand and said, I’m worried that I can’t get promoted as a white man anymore. And I’m like, okay first of all, this is not the organization that has that problem today.
Yes. But we have to address it, right? One of his colleagues stood up. I couldn’t have paid the guy to do this. He did it so well. And he said, we hired this female engineer. We stole her from another company. She came in here, she was here three weeks and left. And he said she was in that three weeks, the person everybody went to when they had a problem they couldn’t fix on their own.
And the reason she said she left is every time she went in to lead a meeting, people said we’ll wait till your boss gets here. And they just, over and over, just, she had this. So the reason why this matters. So what I say to managers, is it’s not, I know people are, there’s a lot of politics and a lot of feelings.
People are up in their feelings about all this, alright? Okay, it helps to focus on even just the business of it. You want, I don’t care what you look like, where you come from, I want the best person at that job. And by definition, the best person at that job can’t only be from one demographic or from one or two, right?
It could be who knows, right? And then if you have people from different perspectives, you’re going to have people solve problems better. We know that innovative teams and for complex problem solving, the more diversity, and diversity, meaning different kind of upbringings, different academic fields, different whatever, right? Different age groups, different generations, all different kinds of people. You’re going to have better ability to do that.
So we really want to think about that just from the business perspective. And by the way, when we look at organizations where there is greater diversity and we ask how happy are you in your organization, even people from traditionally empowered groups are happier in diverse organizations. Why? Because they tend to be organizations that once you’re in there, they don’t care about what group you come from. They care about what you can contribute and they tend to treat each other better.
And just be nicer to each other. And so that is amazing to me, to remind folks that it’s in your own best interest, even, I’m a white woman. It’s in my own best interest to be in an organization that is open to all kinds of people. Because it’s gonna help us do the best job possible. And be kinder to each other as human beings. And get to know your employees as people. Not as members of a group.
AD :
So much of that work goes back to what you were talking about earlier, I think, around organizational culture and the daily work of our interactions.
SR :
I had a guy named Steve and he was in training with me and he said, one of my coworkers said, Steve, do you want to be called black or African American? And he said, I want to be called Steve. I don’t call you like, by your race. Like I just want to be called Steve. And that’s it. Let’s just get to know people as people. We don’t need to take it any deeper than that. It’s so simple.
AD :
As a slight followup to this question, thinking about operating in other countries where you’ve done a lot of that work, what’s your single biggest piece of advice for someone who’s preparing to negotiate in a foreign country?
Mastering Intercultural Negotiations: Strategies for Embracing Challenges and Building Relationships [08:30]
SR :
Yeah. So intercultural negotiation and everything’s a negotiation, whether you’re at the market or you’re at work or you’re driving. So my biggest piece of advice is take a deep breath and know that you’re going to be frustrated sometimes. Anticipate failure events because there’s going to be times when you misread the situation and you feel awful or you, kind of, it’s embarrassing.
So you have to come in with humility and know that you’re going to have some missteps as you’re learning. And then you have to ask the people around you, build some trusted relationship, like your host family, the people who you feel like can clue you in, especially if they are bicultural, so they know your culture and their culture, or they’ve worked with people like you before.
And you just say hey Alma, I don’t know that much about this. If I mess up, will you let me know or shoot me a look or we need a code word if I’m getting it wrong so that folks can do that. I just literally was asked, I redesigned a form at work and I was asking people to sign the form and they were signing it. Even I’d circle the X where they sign it and I would hand it to them and they would not sign where the X, the circle was. I’m like, what is going on? Like, how much clearer could I make it? And somebody’s no, if you circle it, it means we don’t want it. Oh, shoot. I wish somebody had told me that as I’m redesigning this form.
So yeah, just anticipate those failure events. Be humble, ask for help. And then there in the book, but there are certain continua. Upon which every cultures vary, right? Independent versus collective. We care more about what’s good for the group, or we care what’s more about what’s good for the individual. Or we like to communicate very directly. Or we like to imply things and communicate more indirectly. Think of Georgia versus New York City.
Bless your heart. It means, it doesn’t mean bless your heart. Learning those things a little bit about the culture you’re going into will help you fit in better and understand what’s going to be frustrating for you.
NM :
Susan, with your over 18,000 cases that you mediated, I’m sure many of those have been as a third party mediator, I’m sure many of those have been internal. What are some of the things that you can do to really make progress to two parties that may be at an impasse pass?
The Importance Of Process Focus In Effective Problem Solving [10:31]
SR :
So I really walk people through a problem solving process and people will say things like, I don’t want a mediator, I don’t want my boss’s help to facilitate this conversation because if talking was going to resolve it, we’d have had it resolved by now. I’m like, okay, but you’re focusing on the outcome. You want this or that. Instead, what you need to do is focus on the steps of a problem solving process and see where it takes you. And the secret is it mostly will be easy, right? But if you jump ahead and you try to say, this is what I demand, or this is what I want, or you just don’t know how to walk through those steps.
So those steps are very simple, right? Where folks, person is going to set the table and say, okay, we’re each going to go around the room and say what it is we need and want. What is it you want and why? I demand XYZ. Why? Tell me more about that. What’s that about? Is it about fairness? Is it about you have bills to pay? Is it about your budget restrictions? Is it about whatever, right? Is your boss on your back? What’s going on?
And then we literally list what all those needs are, and then we brainstorm together all those, the ways we can get those needs met, right? And how we can help each other meet those needs. And if we go through the steps of that process, usually we’re going to end up in a good resolution. And for some reason, even as a mediator, what I think it’s funny is if a judge or a mediator or an attorney gets divorced, they still benefit usually from going to mediation because you need someone outside the conflict sometimes to help you see things that you can’t see. Or to ask you questions you’re trying not to ask yourself, right? Or to walk you through those steps.
So that’s the key there is walking through the steps of the process and maintaining that process focus.
NM :
Now, I know that you’ve done a ton of training, so I’m sure you’ve seen what’s also detrimental that the mediator can do when he or she’s trying to mediate two parties or multiple parties. Can you talk through some of those things that may be detrimental in that case?
Building Rapport & Resolving Conflicts Through Structured Mediation Steps [12:12]
It’s like a therapist. We don’t really talk about ourselves very much, right? So we have to make sure that we’re keeping our own stuff out of it to the extent we can. I think it sometimes can be helpful for someone to understand that we’ve all had conflicts like this.
And, or if it’s, even reasonable to think that, that can be helpful, but to make sure that our own, like somebody might want something that we think is crazy. Why would you want that? And I need to understand more about why they want that instead of thinking, no, I have a better idea for what you should want or what the outcome should be and putting our own values onto other people.
I think the other thing is there’s great new research I’ve been working on. Mediators are terrible at predicting which cases will settle or not settle in like the first 30 to 60 minutes of a long case and they might think, oh, there’s no way, just like the parties, there’s no way this is going to settle.
There’s 50 things they’re disagreeing on and they hate each other and then if you just, can you chip it away, you take one little issue and you work on it, then you take the next one and you work on it, and seven hours later you’ve resolved the whole thing, or seven days later, or seven months later, depending on what it is, you’ve got it all done and you never thought you could have.
You could only eat that elephant one bite at a time, and so we need to be patient. and walk through that process and chunk it, break that big issues down into smaller chunks or a big list of issues into smaller chunks, because other way it’s so overwhelming people just can’t engage in it. And so I think the problem that mediators and parties have, and maybe bosses even, is that we skip to the end too quickly and say, oh, impasse, like this isn’t going to work out.
Or you just need to be fired or whatever, instead of walking through the steps of well, what can we do together? What can we accomplish together?
AD :
Yeah. To me, that lands like Nolan’s earlier question, which is one of the problems when you throw out, like you anchor hard and you throw out a solution early, right?
Is that you’ve skipped the process and there is goodness in the process, trust the process, walk through those steps, right? And especially, and I was going to go to the same place as you went with the elephant, right? But especially when it is, be hag of a, it’s just an ugly, something, atrocious that you’re trying to come up to, you got to have a good process in place.
Absolutely. There’s no other way about it. It is. Sometimes it feels like slow work, but the good thing is, as you’re making progress and you’re breaking down barriers and you’re building rapport and you’re making small agreements, it gets easier and easier as it goes along. It’s hard to get going. I joke that it’s having a hard negotiation or a hard mediation is just like going to the gym, where nobody wants to work out.
Before the workout, most people, unless you’re a real nut job, nobody wants to work out really hard. But then when you’re done, you think, wow, I’m so glad I did that. And that’s exactly how it is. I’ve never had somebody go through a mediation, even when it didn’t reach agreement and say that they thought it wasn’t useful, they all thought it was useful.
AD :
All right. We’ve been talking for a while. I finally got it. So I think we’ve got you to a point where we can ask you a really hard question. Finally, yeah. So given your vast experience, as you reflect on negotiations or situations of conflict, you’ve been part of, or maybe you’ve advised on, is there one that you view as a failure? And can we ask you what you learned from it?
Reflecting On Boundaries & Intentions Before Entering Negotiations [15:10]
SR :
Yeah. There’s probably more than one, I’m sure, but the one that comes to mind that haunts me is so silly. So I used to every year take my graduate students to a conflict area and we would do a study abroad. And my graduate students, they’re lawyers and they’re doctors and they’re cops and they’re teachers, all different backgrounds, and they want to manage conflict there for various realms, military.
So we’re in Jerusalem and we’re in the market in Jerusalem and I have always wanted to have a beautiful hookah pipe, right? And so we’re in the market and I see these beautiful hookah pipes and my students are with me, right? Like I got three students with me there, in groups around the bazaar. And so I just made the number one mistake. I walk up and I start negotiating with the guy and, halfway through the negotiation, it occurs to me, I have teenagers in my house and I’m basically buying, excuse me, but a bong.
And I’m going to bring it home in my luggage, which is also not easy. So it occurred to me, I actually don’t really want it. And so then I’m like, oh, I changed my mind. And I start walking away and the guy’s no, I’ll drop my price. He thinks it’s a strategy. And then I look like an absolute amateur schmuck in front of my students. And so I explained it, we all laughed. But now I just remind myself, before you go into a negotiation, if you know it’s going to be a negotiation, right?
You should think ahead of time. What is it that I’m willing to do or not willing to do knowing that can change with more information, right? Do I really want this or not? Where are my boundaries, what strategies might I try and then you get in there and it changes as it goes, right? But you at least should go in there with some of those things in your head.
What is it worth to me? What am I willing to pay for this thing? And then of course that can utterly change, but at least have some of those ideas.
AD :
Fun example. All right, let’s flip the script. Is there a negotiation that you’re most proud of and what was it that you did to negotiate it successfully?
Promoting Genuine Change In An Organization Resistant To Transparency [16:53]
SR :
Okay. I think I’ll tell you an interesting story. Maybe more than I’m proud of this, 50 plus stakeholder, eight year long watershed mediation in Georgia. That was the first statewide watershed planning across jurisdictions and water is a big deal. But the one that I did that I think was funnier and more, maybe more important in some ways, I was called into an international organization that had a history of scandal, just scandal after scandal.
And they wanted myself and a team of other people to make some recommendations about how they could not continue to have these problems. So we had to look at what are their current ethics rules and what are their current practices and that kind of thing. So they wanted to, again, show that they’re turning a page as an organization. It’s a very old organization.
They had us interviewed to do a press release. They were getting ready to put the press release out that was going to say, hey, we’ve hired these really, ethical, knowledgeable people to come in and help us. And then we said, okay this is the data we want to look at, we want to talk to people who have had complaints, we want to talk to people who have filed lawsuits against you.
We want to, whatever it is, right? We want access to all the information about the disputes you’re currently having or that you’ve had recently so that we can really dig into our work. And they’re like no, we just want to do the press release. And, we’re not sure you need to see, you don’t want to look under the rug and see all that stuff under the rug, and it occurred to myself and my colleagues that we might have been brought in to, for kind of lip service, make it look like the organization wants to change, but there certainly were people in the organization that were sincere in this effort and some that were afraid.
So the best negotiation, again, was that internal negotiation to, about how do we access what we need? How do we make this legitimate? And really, because it won’t work otherwise, and it’ll hurt our reputation, as well as yours. The thing I got my team to agree to is call them and tell them to hold the press release. Say, maybe you shouldn’t announce that we’re doing this big project. If the big project means we can’t see the data we need to do the big project, like maybe you’re going to need to hold that press release.
There was already leakage, so people knew this, there was going to be a press release, and people knew it was coming. So it would look bad if all of a sudden we’re like, hey, we’re backing out, we’re not touching this with a ten foot pole, right? That’s a little bit, it was risky.
There was already leakage, so people knew this, there was going to be a press release, and people knew it was coming. So it would look bad if all of a sudden we’re like, hey, we’re backing out, we’re not touching this with a ten foot pole, right? That’s a little bit, it was risky.
Because it meant that our project could be killed. The takeaway from that, and I hope we all think about that, is to use the power you have. We don’t have any power in that organization. We’re outsiders, we’re contractors. They can cancel that contract in a heartbeat, right? But the power we have, we gotta use it, whatever that is. Informal power, formal power.
NM :
Susan in 2023, you left academia to go to, into foreign service. May we ask about how you came to that decision, and how since then, have you been able to apply this in practice, and the concepts that you taught in theory.
How Personal Circumstances Shaped Susan’s Career In Academia & Service [19:26]
SR :
Yeah, so I was an international relations undergrad and my, even my PhD from Indiana University is international public policy. And I’ve always wanted to do this kind of work as a diplomat. Went into academics and loved it, but because I have, my oldest child was born with cerebral palsy and couldn’t be dragged around the world. My first post was, I started this process and was going into this State Department when I was in my late 20s, and I couldn’t bring a child to Central Africa without great health care and move her around all the time, so I decided to take this other career track.
And it went well. I love, you know, things happen for a reason, right? It’s been a lovely journey, and I’ve had an opportunity to still travel and see the world and do great things. When my youngest child, so that child is now married and independent and happy and healthy. And when my youngest child said, mom, I think I want to go to college in Europe.
And I said if you’re not staying, I’m not staying. I just said, I empty nested and I took God bless a pay cut. And said, I had this dream and I always wondered what that would have been like, and I’m at the point where I can afford to find out. So I decided I wanted to use my, I just trust that the skills I’ve built will be useful here.
And I wanted to serve. I had worked for FEMA in the summers a little bit. I just wanted to have that experience of serving and being of use to my country, which sounds, I know it’s probably not politically popular to say anymore.
AD :
It’s not a cliche with us for sure. So we greatly appreciate that sentiment.
And I, one of my favorite quotes is by the author, George Eliot, who wrote. You’re never too late to be what you might’ve been. I love it. And I love your path. What a cool thing.
SR :
You don’t want to be wondering what if, right? Let’s find out.
AS :
As we prepare to wrap up, Susan, what final thought would you leave with the listeners who are seeking to elevate their influence through purposeful negotiation?
Everyday Negotiations: Harnessing Daily Interactions To Build Skills & Resolve Conflicts [21:08]
SR :
My number one request or suggestion is recognize the negotiations you’re having every day because people think about the Mideast peace process or they think about big trade negotiations or even maybe negotiating a raise with their boss. But we are having negotiations every day and it gives you this laboratory that you can use to practice some of the ideas and skills you’re hearing on the podcast things you’re reading.
So use that lab and remember that conflict avoidance is going to keep you from succeeding. Lean into uncomfortable conversations and just have faith that this is going to work out better for everybody if you enter that conversation with goodwill and you communicate that goodwill. That conversation is going to elevate that relationship and get you what you need in that negotiation. So recognize your negotiations and then enter them bravely.
AD :
Beautifully said. Susan, thanks so much for joining us today. We know you’re very busy and this was not easy to set up, so thank you for making time in your schedule to be with us. We’re deeply grateful.
SR :
Thanks for having me and thanks for your flexibility.
AD :
We wish you the very best in your continued service. Thank you.
NM :
Well, that is it for us on today’s podcast. Be sure to rate, review, and subscribe to the NEGOTIATEx podcast if you haven’t already, and we’ll see you in the next episode.
