Nolan Martin :
Hey everyone, thanks for joining us on the NEGOTIATEx podcast. We are continuing our conversation with Professor Seth Freeman. 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 Seth.
Aram Donigian :
I love that, and it feels like what’s behind the example you just shared is just a level of being comfortable with what’s typically uncomfortable. So somebody lunging at you and not reacting, but being really intentional in that moment. And is that something you can train your students to say? Be purposive, be intentional as you think about how you could respond. Choose responses that are gonna move you forward versus potentially drawing you back.
Strategies For Training Resilience & Response In Crisis Situations [00:40]
Seth Freeman :
They are, but here’s where I’m gonna welcome your thoughts because gentlemen, you have dealt with the fog of war more than anyone I know and you know what a vortex, what a cauldron it can be to be in the face of even simulated gunfire. So I’m curious what your experience has been getting, officers and men in training, women in training to cope with that terrible situation.
AD :
I’ll give a couple thoughts and then Nolan, happy to kick it over to you. I would say one is, the first report’s typically wrong. We typically have an incomplete picture of what’s going on. This is why walking into a negotiation filled with a lot of assumptions about yourself, the other person, the process, the outcome, and so forth that are untested assumptions can be dangerous, right? We gotta fill in and learn.
So it’s okay to go in with 60% side picture and we know we’re gonna develop and listen and learn as we go. Going back to some things you said before, and I think it also goes back to the power of, we were talking about preparation and rehearsals, which is to handle the fog of war and the unknown when I can really trust the process and trust my training and those battle drills. And I think in negotiation we’re talking about some of those same battle drills, that also becomes pretty helpful. No one else would you add?
NM :
Mine is the tactical pause. So I learned this lesson when I was in the special operations community in the 75th Ranger regiment and the commander had said, they just got back from an objective and they were talking about what was going on from their perspective. They had landed seven kilometers away from the objective. They walked seven kilometers in the dark of night, show up to this compound. They surround it, they do what we call a tactical call out.
So they try and get people to come outside so that they can find the bad person. A couple people run out the back and immediate action that most people wanna take is, let’s go get ’em. They’re in the middle of nowhere, they’re not going anywhere. So he just calmed everyone down and said, Hey, take a tactical pause. Let’s just focus on what we’re doing here. We’ll deal with that one later. And so that story had always stayed with me about the tactical pause and the fog of war and just taking that breather to reap, compose yourself and not rush to failure.
SF :
And is that learnable? How do if somebody wakes you up at four in the morning and says you’ve been out flanked, as they said, Ely S. Grant had the ability to cope with that. William Tecums Sherman had that ability to cope with that kind of, oh my god, situation. Can you learn that? Or are you born with it?
NM :
It is. Hundred percent learnable, but it’s only learnable when you get it wrong and someone’s there to correct you or you do it in training. As a young lieutenant, again, in the special operations, we’re gonna have a training event and it’s a really, a lot of stuff’s going on. I don’t really know all where all my guys are. I’m just stuck in my map trying to get reports in, try to understand what’s going on and really I’m clogging up the radio as relatively inexperienced leader at that point in time. And I had a senior NCO kind of say, sir, come here for a second. So I come there, I’m like, what’s up, Major?
And he’s like, look, you can see out there, you can see where all your guys are. Just take a breath, see what’s going on. You don’t need to keep calling them on the radio. You can physically see where they’re at. What a tough pill to swallow. But man, from that point on it really hit home. And so definitely something that is learnable. I don’t think you’re born with that. I’m sure some people are, but thank God we have training to have those learning points.
SF :
Well, you’re inspiring me. One of the exercises that I’m actually considering adding to my course this semester is where we have one student pretend to be Godzilla and really just shout and say all the rough stuff for half a minute and then the other student in their pair just be quiet for 30 seconds really intentionally. You know, count out if necessary quietly, 30 seconds and then respond.
And this picks up on your excellent point, Nolan. And also a principle that I’ve heard that pilots teach new pilots. When you’re in an aviation crisis, what’s the first thing you should do? Wind your clock, which means take the time to get a breath and get the higher reaches of your brain working.
And I’ve heard the survival experts say the first thing you should do if you’re lost in the jungle is make a pot of tea. Assuming you can do that for the very same reason. So it sounds like in all kinds of crisis situations, that ability is learnable. But you need someone to coach you to do it.
NM :
I think so. Yep
AD :
Let’s ask a couple more of these difficult situations, Seth. Cause I really kinda like where you went with the whole, manipulation, difficult tactics. All right. How about, you talked about rapport, being important to establish up front. How about a repeat relationship? The trust has been broken. You broke it, they broke it, whatever. Maybe at some point down the road it’s so convoluted. You don’t even know where the damage to the relationship started. But man, to get, turn things around, get moving forward, you’re gonna have to do something. ’cause right now neither one of you even want to be in the same room together. How do you deal when the relationship’s broken and you’ve gotta repair it?
The Power Of Reassurance: How Trust Is Built & Maintained In Complex Societies [05:23]
SF :
I’m only interested in that question, hours and hours a day. I even wrote a book. I even researched a book on that for a number of years. This I think, is one of the most profound, and in some ways, underexplored questions there is how do you cope when there is a trust problem? Or another way to say it is a wariness problem. I need to work with you. I don’t wanna work with you. I’m afraid to work with you, and if you’ll indulge me, let me just take 90 seconds to riff on this.
Think the solutions to that question are one of the unappreciated keys to all of civilization. No kidding. Because for most of our history, for most of our pre-history, the first 250,000 years or more, human beings existed. They lived in small tribes and bands where it was basically a community and everyone knew each other and they would, archeologists tell us they tended to work pretty well together, but outside of that zone, rival bans and tribes were fair game for murder.
And the murder rates between rival tribes in all archeological sites that we found was higher than the death rate in World War I. If you Google the phrase prehistoric massacre, you’ll find a million different hits. It’s just incredible how much massacre there was. So we have this kind of baked in wariness and it really begs the question, how does New York happen? How does Amsterdam exist? How do cities, let alone countries, come into being? In fact, how is it possible that you and I are talking via these laptops? There are 400 parts to a laptop and to create any one of them to hundreds of people who never knew each other.
So going from what our ancestors did to what we naturally do today is a miracle. And it’s not just because we have warm, fuzzy feelings with each other, most of us don’t know anything about each other. So one of the keys is something I call reassurances. What reassurance? A reassurance is anything that by design helps wary people cooperate, and we don’t have to look far to find them.
For example, how does a restaurant owner know that if you walk into their restaurant with no cash, that your promise is reliable? I promise I will pay you if you’ll let me eat here. You probably would say no, but fortunately you’ve got a mutual friend and that’s American Express. And American Express is just one of countless examples of reassurances that allow strangers to work together.
And I find in my work exploring peace and war, that peace treaties and ceasefire agreements. How do they work? And I actually know because one of my colleagues at Columbia literally studied every peace treaty and ceasefire agreement ever since World War II. And she found the answers. And what do you know? There’s select reassurances.
You don’t rely on goodwill, you don’t rely on moralism, you don’t even rely on things like, just appeals to human rights or promises of election. No. You have staged withdrawal back to pre-war lines and beyond. You have monitors with guns and bullets in the guns to peacekeep. You have incentives and penalties from third party actors out and so on. And what are these?
These are reassurances and reassurances allow companies to form and managers reassure owners that workers are gonna perform their job and so on. And this vast array of answers fans out before us, and that’s just one part of the equation. But it’s one I want every one of my students to know about.
NM :
Absolutely. I wanna get your opinion here. So luckily, I don’t know, luckily, but Aram and I have consulted with Fortune 500 companies. And ironically, we’ve consulted with sole source suppliers of those Fortune 500 companies. And whenever I’m speaking to the Fortune 500 company, they’re like, oh man, that sole source supplier, they have all the power because we have to buy from them.
And then I go and speak to the sole source supplier and I say, man, that Fortune five company has all the money and all the power. How do you discuss that when it comes up? Or how should someone look at that situation if they’re in it?
Turning Conflict Into Collaboration With Strategic Preparation & Understanding [09:24]
SF :
I love that story and it’s very common and that’s why I tell my students, you may think that you have no bargaining power. You David there, Goliath, but do your homework. And don’t assume that you know. And if it really turns out that it’s the depression and they’re selling apples on the street for a nickel and you’re desperate to get a job and everyone else’s, and they’re lining up for, if you discovered that as you get ready for a job negotiation, you will know, yeah, maybe I should take what they’re giving me, maybe.
But often as you do your systematic preparation, you discover. That, no, it is not this one-sided story that you first thought it was, and that’s why again, the higher reaches of your thinking are so important. So that’s the first thing is do your homework and don’t assume that you are as powerless as you think.
There are many sources of influence. But the other thing is to, as a brief story, Federal Express and Dell were exactly in the situation that you are just describing. They hated each other even though they had a long-term contract. Each one thought the other was abusive. Dell thought that FedEx was doing the bare minimum, and FedEx thought that Dell was just micromanaging and they just spiraling down into a powder, and then they reluctantly agreed to basically have corporate marriage counseling where they went to kind of a retreat where a facilitator drew out from them to their amazement that they all wanted to get along and they all wanted this to be a helpful relationship.
And they all wanted to work for mutual good. I thought you guys were the enemies. You guys hate us. No, we thought you did. And by the end, they’d actually worked out some parameters for the relationship that had never been worked out. You think the contract spells it? No, it doesn’t.
And they worked out how we’re gonna disagree in a constructive way, how we’re gonna not micromanage, we’re gonna set goals and by the end, not that they were hugging, but everyone was much happier.
And what do you know? Millions of dollars and sued, they renewed the contract and that illustrates both your power estimation can be way off and your sense of what the other side’s mindset is can be way off too. And each of these is a treatable condition, if you know the principles and practices of negotiation.
AD :
I love that example. Another context that’s pretty challenging is when we try to influence upward, and yet we know that influencing our bosses and senior managers is not just necessary. It’s actually quite critical for organizational success. So what advice do you give to someone who, hey, says, I’m junior in an organization, but I need to negotiate with a boss or senior supervisor?
Navigating Professional Challenges With Tactical Persuasion [11:56]
SF :
There are a couple of things, and you’re right, the challenge can be severe because on the one hand, you want and rightly want to show respect.
You don’t wanna override the other and say, you’re crazy, you’re wrong. Whatcha doing? So that’s not on the menu. On the other hand, you may be right. You may be seeing something your boss is missing and, you know, terrible things might happen if you don’t, and great things could happen if you do influence. So what to do?
Well, I’ll give you one of my favorite examples, and this is actually from the military. It stars someone that most people have never heard of Teddy Roosevelt Junior, the son of the great president. And Ted Roosevelt, and I described this in the book, was a general in World War II regarded, quite courageous, but he was sidelined for political reasons on the eve of D-Day, and he was given a command of a large oak desk, and this was very frustrating because he wanted to be on the front line.
So he goes to his very intimidating commanding officer, Tubby Barton, and he says, sir, I want to be in one of the front landing craft. And Barton completely blows him off and says, no, out of the question. First, your PS non grata because of your political troubles, you’re 50 years old. You walk around with a cane, for goodness sake, I know you were injured in the war. That’s commendable, but this is gonna be no place to be walking around with a cane. This is a suicide run. And fourth, if you get killed, I’m gonna look bad because did you notice your name is Roosevelt?
The president’s name is Roosevelt Franklin. I’m gonna be in bad four or five reasons, no luck. Roosevelt tries again a few weeks later, no luck. Then he writes Barton a letter, and Barton calls Roosevelt in and says, Roosevelt, everything tells me I should say no, but I can’t say no to a letter like this, so I’m gonna say yes and make God be with you.
And it turns out that was a pretty good choice because Ted Roosevelt was so heroic during the D-Day invasion that he may have helped save his part of the invasion. And for it, he won the Congressional Medal of Honor, one of the most heroic acts that Omar Bradley ever witnessed. What was in that letter?
And the answer is of, in a sense, a phrase that we talk about in the book. It’s called If we Agree, if we Disagree. And what you do is respectfully point out this is what you care about and if we agree, you’ll get what you care about and if we don’t agree your concerns may be ill served or damaged. So what did he actually write?
He said, look, the invasion depends on how the first wave of soldiers performs. If they fall apart, the next wave will and the next wave and the whole thing could be jeopardized. But they know me. They know I’m steady under fire. They trust me. They will be heartened to know I’m with them. And if they perform well, the next wave will and the next wave and the whole invasion could be saved.
Plus, I’ll also be able to give you real-time information you’ll badly need when you arrive to command matters. And if we don’t do that. The whole thing could fall apart. That was persuasive. And what’s he doing? He’s appealing to Barton’s interests. You’re not contradicting him. You’re affirming the importance of the interest.
AD :
What a great example. I don’t know if we’re gonna toy anymore, pull any more military examples at you. I have one more context though, and I know you’ve gotta spend some time on multi-party negotiations with your students as well as with clients.
What are your thoughts about what are some of the keys to navigating just the ugliness of multi-party negotiations with all the convoluted interests and walkaways and different positions people take, and some of the histories and political interconnections and all that. When you advise around multi-party negotiation, what do you say?
Essential Strategies For Effective Negotiation: Patience, Planning & Precision [15:27]
SF :
I think the first thing I’d say is plan to spend time and be ready for ups and downs. It’s not gonna be straightforward and there are a number of small practices that over time really make a profound difference. And putting those pieces together, I think is the key. So the first thing I would recommend is stay with the basics. First, think about what the interests are of each of the players who are involved. Do some real learning. This is why governments have, intelligence gathering is to understand who the different players are and what they’re about and so forth.
And also, having soft lines of contact with different players. It’s not just about cloak and dagger. You really wanna build relationships and develop creative options, but it goes beyond that. One of the things that can really help keep your head when you’re dealing with different players is having a clear sense of what your topics, your targets and your trade offs are. And one of the tools that I equip students and trainees with that they love is something I call the topics targets and trade offs grid.
And it’s a simple grid. You can produce it in just 10 or 15 minutes under pressure and it allows you to just glance and go to know, in any given moment, what we’re discussing within my ranges that my principles have told me I can or can’t accept. Are we doing well? When it comes to my most important priorities, what creative options might I suggest, and what agenda items have we said are and aren’t up for discussion.
When you go into a meeting with that, you’re much better able to follow the play and shape it to your satisfaction. So I would definitely recommend bringing that, but I would also suggest that we invoke the wisdom of Harry Truman. Harry Truman was president of the United States, of course, and yet as he was leaving the Oval Office, he told most of what I do all day, every day is try to persuade people to do what they ought to do without my having to persuade ’em to do it.
That he said is all the power of the presidency amounts to, and his aid couldn’t believe it. I thought you could just say, do this, do that. What are you talking about? So he comes to Columbia and for four years he studies, what’s he talking about? And 1960, he publishes his book, presidential power and the conclusion the book was Truman was right, even the president going all the way back to Hoover. Can’t just say, do this, do that. He’s got to use a whole array of persuasion and negotiation and consensus building and coalition methods, and that’s why you need negotiation skills, you need the fullness of it.
You need to know how to build a coalition, how to mediate or broker consensus on how to even consider players away from the table or as one author puts it 3D negotiating where you could do great, say negotiating the verite treaty, but then come back and discover Congress votes it down. That’s a disaster. And so you’ve gotta be thinking a lot about different things and situationally adjusting.
But I’ll give you one last word of encouragement. I had a student. Just last semester, I just like my baby pictures. I love sharing the story, who used her training to negotiate at the United Nations itself on behalf of the country she was representing. She worked at the Consulate for one country and four other countries in the region who basically said, you are so good, we’re gonna let you take the lead. And she faced real challenge from different factions, but she used her training and by the end she won major diplomatic improvements in language and fellow diplomats were saying, how did you do that?
And she’s just a student. So I can attest that my students with basically using the very tools in the book can navigate, not model UN negotiations, real UN negotiations. So this very definitely is learnable
NM :
Your final set of tools, help a negotiator manage the decision to either make a commitment or walk away as you so brilliantly state anyone can get to Yes. The critical question is how to get to a wise yes or no. We love that. Aram and I often say that you don’t negotiate to reach an agreement, but rather to create a good choice for yourself.
SF :
And I love that.
NM :
So in your assessment, what is your advice and thinking when it comes to making a wise decision?
Evaluating Business Deals: Strategic Insights From Historical Mergers [19:41]
SF :
It’s so true and to the point. If you take a look at this famous photograph of Steve Case and Gerald Levin. The CEOs of AOL and Time Warner smilingly shaking hands to announce their merger. I think it was like the year 2000 or somewhere like that, 2001. They’re very happy and smiling and there’s a lot of celebration.
And a year later they had lost almost $99 billion. It was the worst merger in business history. It’s a textbook case to this day, and the question I always end with is, why are these men smiling? And the idea that you can reach a deal doesn’t require training. My 14-year-old can do that. Just sign here, dear.
The real question is, is this a wise choice? Which is why I tell my students that while I love the book, Getting the Yes, it should be renamed and I invite them to mark up the cover and change it to getting to Why Is Yes Or Why Is No. And so I recommend three measures of success to test and offer before entering it.
And the first is the collaborative test. Does this serve my interests and the others now and in the future? Does it serve the interests? And that’s really your true north. If it’s not serving your interests, why are we doing this? And second, how does it compare to your ranges, your targets? Is it really unfair?
And if the answer is it’s off the chart, unfair, why are you doing this? Especially for your most important priorities. And lastly, is it relationally wise, is this fair and is there something squeegee about this relationship? And if the answer to any of these is a red light? Then you’ve really gotta think seriously. And let me illustrate very briefly with one of my favorite examples.
There are two young women who each were singer-songwriters, a woman named Cray Sean, and a woman named Jewel Kelcher and Cray Sean and Jewel Kelcher, each received from a different record company separately, totally connected stories, a million dollar record contract. Cray Sean immediately accepted it. Thanks to her successful YouTube hit. Gucci Gucci.
And next thing she has a million dollars in her account. Great, right? Whereas incredibly Jewel Cher turned it down, even though she was 19 and living in her car, she was literally homeless and she turns down a million dollars. What are you kidding? And yet, a couple years later, tweeted.
Don’t buy my song. Gucci, Gucci, or my new album. I don’t get any money out of it, and I’m in debt to my record company for $800,000 and I’m facing bankruptcy. Jewel Kelcher avoided a similarly bad deal with a huge time bomb baked in it that Cray Sean had unwittingly accepted. She renegotiated, got that time bomb out, and her album sold 12 million copies and she became a multimillionaire.
How did Jewel Kelcher do it? If you listen to her interview, she used the three measures of success, even at the age of 19, she said, does this serve my interests? No. Is this within my ranges? No. Is this fair? She checked with an expert, no, and she walked away. An incredible story, but it illustrates the power of these tests.
AD :
I gotta find the interview. I wanna use that for class. If you’ve got it, send it to me.
SF :
I think she was on the Joe Rogan show several years ago, and she’s lovely and really tells the story in a winsome way, and meanwhile there’s another YouTube video where you see Cray Sean being interviewed. It’s called Why Your Favorite Artists Are Probably Broke, and he’s interviewing.
The interviewer is interviewing Cray Sean, and she, matter of factly, tells how she was completely taken advantage. She didn’t understand that the million dollars wasn’t something she got to keep. It was a loan, and she had all the risk that this album she was gonna produce would work. And if it worked, they’d profit. And if it failed, she’d lose money.
AD :
Well, this has been a great conversation, Seth. As we prepare to wrap up what final thought, would you leave with listeners who are seeking to become more effective negotiators in their lives.
Seth’s Final Thoughts [23:46]
SF :
The final thought I would share, Aram, is that this skill is learnable as it is valuable, it’s a skill that kindergartners can learn, UN diplomats can learn. Anyone can learn. And I speak knowing that thousands of my trainees and students have said so, they routinely tell me that after a bit of training, a few weeks or maybe a day or two of training, they feel substantially or way more confident, and it’s not just a warm, fuzzy feeling.
They go out and demonstrated over and over again. I’ve got hundreds of examples that they report to me. They don’t all go well, but their batting average gets so much better. When you have that, not just I’m gonna convince myself I’m confident feeling no, you have real reason to be confident. You’re grounded in reality and skill.
It just makes it so much easier for you to listen, to learn to bring positivity, match with wisdom. And that tends to produce more peace, prosperity, justice, and harmony. And that’s why I’m only interested in this work 10 or 12 hours a day.
AD :
Good. Leave yourself a little bit of time to sleep.
SF :
Yeah.
AD :
Seth, thanks so much. You’ve talked to us about how to win warmly, how to be both strong and kind, and we’re gonna encourage our listeners to pick up your book, 15 Tools to Turn the Tide, a step-by-step Playbook for Empowered Negotiating. Thanks for carving out some time for us today and we’re gonna wish you the very best.
SF :
My great pleasure gentlemen, and I really wanna thank you so much. You’ve conducted a beautiful interview and it’s a pleasure and a privilege and I’ve enjoyed learning from you as well and continued success.
NM :
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.
