Nolan Martin :
Hey, everyone! Thanks for joining us on the NEGOTIATEx podcast. We are continuing our conversation with Colonel Retired, Mark Graham, a leadership, negotiation and conflict resolution professor at the University of Maryland.
If you haven’t already checked out part A of the show, be sure to do that first. Let’s jump in the conversation with Mark.
Aram Donigian:
You’ve mentioned a number of different concepts as you were given those illustrations and love to turn to your course a little bit here. And just ask, you know, you’ve been teaching for quite some time. What are some of the common misconceptions about negotiation that you have to address in your courses? And then kind of complimenting that, what do you consider to be the most essential negotiation skills and strategies that you teach?
Understanding Conflict And Negotiation: Key Lessons From Mark Graham [01:24]
Mark Graham:
I think the toughest thing to teach people is to understand that conflict is normal. And we do that. We come down pretty hard at the beginning of the course that, people get too emotional about conflict and they think that, you know, their, their position, there’s another thing you need to wring out of them, an idea that, okay, Aram, you buy my thing for 10 or I’ll give you 15.
Well, that doesn’t mean anything when you sit and think about it. Why would you want 10? And why does he want 15? So you have those three problems. One, keeping emotion out of the conflict. Two, understanding that someone’s operating on a cognitive level where their needs and feelings are core to who they are.
You’re really going to have some challenges. And then this idea that you need to win, and that’s where you get this positional bargaining and sometimes it slips, you know, the guy will say, Hey, I just won. So what’d you win? You know, and so we tried to, and even I make that mistake myself. I’ll say, well, what’d you win this time?
Or what, what did you do? Did you accomplish your objectives? And so those are the hardest things to teach. Luckily, because we use the Harvard Negotiation Project, largely I use their scenarios, and they have an emotion in it, but the people arguing and discussing the case usually don’t aren’t emotional about it.
Sometimes we get some pretty good actors in the class. In my last class, we had a lady who was feeling ripped off by the city truck that hit her car. And we were doing a mediation exercise. And she actually simulated being upset and mad, so it added some flavor, but generally they could learn how to do this, this theory without emotion.
And if they can do that in their real life and they write a journal about their experiences and many of them will come back and say, yeah, once I take emotion out of conversation, we’re going to be okay. And related to that, of course, as we teach them how to reframe questions and reframe comments. Like you sure made a mess of that.
Okay. So we have a work in teams and we have work alone, excuse me, was saying things in a better fashion. So the class was designed by myself and a woman named Georgia Shaver. She’s retired from the world food program and she’s seen some stuff and she is a officially trained mediator, negotiator by the United Nations in Switzerland.
She has a master’s degree in development, and she’s been head of mission in several places, Somalia, Mozambique, you know, some real garden spots at very difficult times. And so we, I befriended her and my chairman, he jumped right on it because a fellow named Dr. Charles Field, I don’t know if you know about him.
He worked for the lobby for builders and he was coming around, bumming around with his wife, Sally Field. She was taking Maryland students around Rome to look at architecture from the fascist era. And he’d come and tag along. So he just like showed up at my chairman’s office and say, Hey, you have any use for negotiations in your class?
So I jumped on it with both feet and so did Georgia. And we solved the Syria dispute. We were too chicken to try the Middle East, but we tried some other ones in my Mediterranean class. And the students, they’re just smiling, they’re smiling and smiling. So we got a little happy about it. So we’re actually doing something.
We’re not just sitting here and I said, yeah, you’re doing something that can help you. So Charles showed me. The basic technique, the Roger Fisher over time, the interest based negotiations. So it’s, I still use the same thing. You know, we talk about theory, causes, techniques, listening, you know, all the important things you need to know to combat and deal with conflict, especially effective communication, and then the actual nug work of preparing everyone’s interests and options ahead of time.
Just don’t dive on in there. We also throw in a section on impasse and mediation, because you know, impasse has been important to me in the past, but Charles Field’s, paradigm is established when he actually did a workbook that he’s copyrighted, explaining all these different concepts because students sometimes stumble over a difference between an option and an alternative, and you really have to drill down on them on this concept of BATNA, and that’s part of the theory. What’s their best alternative to walking away.
And sometimes over debriefing, that’s the first thing I’ll say to them. Okay, what would have happened to make you quit the negotiation or walk away? And they said, what do you mean? I said, well, it’s like a prosecutor. I’m sure, you know, when you do a closing argument, you’ve already written it.
He wrote it at the beginning of the trial, not two days before. So we’ll see what they say, like, for example, in the Trump trial, I’m sure that prosecutor already knows what he wanted to say three weeks ago, right? If he prepared properly. So those are the toughest things to get them to understand emotion, quit do positioning bargaining, do interest based bargaining and understand that if you’ve got a cognitive problem, a person’s needs or feelings are at stake.
It’s going to be a rough sledding and you’re going to have to do some workarounds. When you figure what Senator Mitchell did in Northern Ireland, who could have believed it that they would have any kind of negotiation after 50, 100 years of fighting, but they got it done. So you just keep working at it, as they used to say in the Pentagon. They’re not going to do what you want. You keep working it.
NM:
So preparation is critical to successful negotiations. How do you teach your students to be better prepared for real world negotiation scenarios?
The Importance Of Preparation And Professionalism In Conflict Resolution [06:40]
MG:
Well, first of all, they got to do the work. A lot of these guys, they’ll turn in papers. My undergrads are terrible at this. They turn in papers that are three paragraphs long because they’re texting, they’re not writing. And so we hearken back to the old days where I’ve actually done this to them and they don’t like it, but I make them submit an outline before they write their paper. That way I can test their sources and their logic, how they’re laying down what they’re talking about.
And that’s really old fashioned. I’m sorry. It reminds me of my 8th grade English teacher. But I don’t know of a better way to make someone prepare. In the Army, the JAG Corps, we use what they call the trial notebook. And there’s certain components of going to a trial as a prosecutor defense attorney, and you prepare those documents before trial.
And hopefully they’re reviewed by the chief of justice or the chief general defense counsel so that you actually have in court a booklet. Sometimes loose leaf that shows what you’re going to do at each part of the trial to include your cross examination and the outline of your closing argument. So you have a useful tool.
Now you use it with new attorneys doing the court, but the older ones get mad. They get insulted if you make them do it. But, that’s how you teach it. And the college classes, I actually make them do an outline and turn in their bibliography a month before their paper is to help them prepare. And I tell them, I said, it’s a pain in the butt, but you have to do it because your clients or your people, your stakeholders.
You owe it to them to make sure you’re fully engaged in what’s happening. But it’s hard to do today. People work like crazy. I mean, I’ve seen generals, senior officers running down the hall in the Pentagon preparing as they go because they have no time. So that’s why it’s so important to make time for reflection.
And I make a big deal about that, particularly with the young people. But you know, you go, go, go, go, go, but also just sit down, go for a walk, go for a run, lift weights, you know, clear your head. So you’re just thinking about problems and issues. And that’s another way to prepare yourself to prepare, but there’s no substitute in a deployment situation.
There’s not enough minutes in a day to do everything you have to do. You just have to prioritize. And do the boss’s work first, sorry, I’m old fashioned on that. And then two, figure out what the priorities are after that. And if you don’t know your priorities, go back to your boss, because you don’t want to be preparing or working on a case or a negotiation that’s not that important.
And a lot of that’s driven by personality. And that’s one of the things we teach. So the, Bernard Mayer created a thing called the wheel of conflict and it’s a little wheel and it shows a different axes around the middle, the middle side, cognitive needs, but then you get other ones like personality, history, structure, and if you use these tools that we give them and checklists, they can’t get lost.
I said, when you’re done with my class, I’m guaranteeing if you keep this stuff, that you’ll use it again, or at least you’ll consult with it. Internalize the idea that you should be fighting for your interests of you and your stakeholders, not just a certain position. So it’s hard to teach.
Sometimes like when I was a younger attorney, we used to, our boss was kind of crude and he said, you young attorneys are like puppy dogs. You got to rub their nose in it. But sometimes that’s what has to be done when you’re at a place, a guy gets too big of himself or he wonders why his case fell apart. Well, usually it’s lack of preparation.
I mean, the U.S. attorneys in Richmond, they could do that. I watched them send murderers back to California in 10 minutes. I mean, because they were experts, they knew the questions off by heart. But you can’t do that when you’re working in a complex environment like the military.
I mean, military is complicated. It really is. And then when you’re helping individual soldiers with their own legal problems. You have to learn what their problems are. And not everybody knows what a mortgage is or how it works or how soldiers and sailors civil relief act works. You have to do your homework and take the time.
And I left Fort Raleigh. I must have had seven files, six inches thick questions. I wrote to myself and things I took to court and research I did. And I use that as a prop in my next job to show people, this is what it takes. If you want to be good, you got to do the preparation. And don’t cut corners. I mean, you’re a Colonel, you can cut corners.
Okay. But we’re not Colonels yet. And, so that’s the thing. Professionalism is the hardest thing to teach. You check their act at the door, you know, be true to your colleagues. Your peers are more important than your bosses. When you think about those kinds of things, you know, they feed into preparation and doing a good job.
So the game of leadership runs very closely with the skill in negotiation, I think. So you can’t lose by taking a negotiation class.
AD:
Well, you got to make preparation a habit. Once you make it a habit, you’re more likely to do it. And to some of your earlier points, my ability to ask good questions, to uncover interests, to share and prioritize my own. Get creative around options. All those things are going to require really good preparation.
You know, I want to talk a little bit about just your experiences since you’ve lived and worked all over the globe. How does cultural understanding play into successful negotiation? How do you teach some cultural understanding to your students and can you share an example of a negotiation scenario where cultural understanding was crucial?
Navigating Cultural Differences In Conflict Resolution [11:49]
MG:
You know curiously when you say that the hardest part of and we do teach culture in my class I should have mentioned that an identity but the hardest part when you’re dealing in foreign cultures I found were our own people. You know, like Japan, for example, I’ll give you an example, but I had Japanese employees. My secretary made one mistake in three years. Can you imagine? One mistake, and it was my fault. That’s how professional they are. But on the other hand, I had no idea that she could not stand this one lady in the office because they hid it from us.
So they were very opaque. So the Americans would fall for that. And so other nice people, they’re really kind. Why are they taking suicide training? Well, they kill themselves at rates higher than anybody else, because it’s such a tight society. And when you’re dealing with them, they have a technique that they like to use.
If you don’t know what it is, you’re going to drive yourself batty. For example, they wanted to drive their ambulances through the Marine base of Futenma down in Okinawa, the main island. So we negotiated a one page document. It took four hours to do it because everybody had to have their say. That’s how they do it down there.
And so they took it and came back to the next meeting and had it already negotiated and settled. Here’s what we’re going to do. So wait a second, aren’t you going to give us a chance to say anything? So they go build their own consensus and they come back. So you have to cut them off at the past before they go back and go through all their stuff and not give you a chance to comment on their draft.
So once you learn that they’re like that and they like to keep it in house and between themselves, you have to find ways to negotiate a process that includes your input before they take it to, you know, the headquarters down in Tokyo.
And so if you don’t know this kind of stuff, then you’re in trouble. And that’s why in my office in Japan, we had three or four people. That’s all they did was work with the Japanese and handle problems. Even from doing the gifts that they gave the general, we tell them, don’t give them a gift, please.
Don’t give the general gift. Then they’ll drop a 5,000 check at a restaurant for the general and they’ll take the bill. You didn’t even see the bill. And our public affair, our liaison guys are, you know, they’re beside themselves, you know, cause he can’t take that kind of gift [inaudible] the U.S. government.
So again, you try to head them off at the pass, explain why it’s important. We know we have to give them a gift. You know, if they come, we had a whole, whole closet of gifts for them.
You know, they were kind of cheap and worthless, but they represented Kamisama, Japan and U.S. Army, Japan. That to me was the best example is that they have to give a gift.
And they have to negotiate within themselves first before they really want to face you. So there’s not the give and take of the way we’re used to. The other thing that’s interesting is linear versus nonlinear cultures. You know, I lived in the Mediterranean. If there’s a nonlinear culture, it’s Italy, Turkey, to some extent in Greece.
I mean, and the Arab countries are the same way. They don’t think or argue. I mean, they’re thinking, they’re just thinking in a different way. It’s not a straight line, you know, with ushering effects and laying out stuff. I have Italian friends that work for Procter & Gamble and they love going to the meetings in Cincinnati because bang, bang, bang, bang, it’s done.
The boss talks, everybody throws in important stuff and they leave. In Italy, it’s a five-hour meeting. They’re all talking, drinking coffee, laughing, everybody has to have a say, you know, and the same thing for my friends that I met in Columbia, you know, it takes three hours to open a checking account in some of these cultures.
So if you don’t have the patience or time, you’re gonna have trouble communicating, especially in a conflict situation. So a simple example, a Lieutenant friend of mine, she got in a car accident in Sicily, so she gets out of the car. I’m an American. I’m going to take pictures of the car. Well, the Sicilian grabbed the camera off and smashed it on the ground.
So you don’t take pictures of my car without my permission, even though to America, that wouldn’t be a, I mean, it might be a little myth, but you’re not going to break the guy’s $300 camera. So there’s sensitivities that you have to understand. You have to let the Italians have their say before you put the hammer on them or start fighting with them, because that’s how their culture is.
Everybody has a say. And we know, particularly in Japan, when there was serious accident or killing on the road, we had a hell of a time convincing our own people that they had to go to the family’s house with a gift and say they’re sorry that just blew most Americans’ minds. So that was their culture.
And in Japan, everybody’s sorry. Doesn’t matter who’s at fault. Someone got killed, everybody’s sorry. And so in court, they would say I’m not going to tell them my name. I said sure that’s we got to make the judge mad. They don’t have the same rights as we have. And when you commit a crime off post, you’re going to be subject to Japanese law.
So I’ve seen it for real, you know, and of course I had to go down and, you know, apologize for this soldier being a wise guy. And we literally had to drive some people to the funerals. You know, our foreign affairs guys took care of it, but still it makes it for a big difference. But again, I can always remember that case in Japan with the ambulance, how they had the whole deal cut and said, Oh, I like it.
You know, I said, well, no, we want to talk about it a little bit. So, it’s pretty interesting. And again, some cultures aren’t as advanced militarily as we are also. And that shows up in their thinking. I remember when North Korea shot a missile over Japan for the first time, there was a flurry of activity on the Japanese military to learn how to fight back. And so they were going to contribute to East Timor.
They were going to go down there and take people out of East Timor. Well, they thought they would land the plane and pick them up and fly away. And then our special forces guys from down in Okinawa came up and talked to them and said, no, you’re gonna have to guard the plane, you’ll have a list.
Of course, we saw what happened in Afghanistan where people just mobbed the plane. So, yeah, they didn’t know. They simply didn’t know. And this was at the highest level of their government. They thought they’d land the plane and take them away. There’s bodies floating in the river down there, the time we were talking about.
So you just have to understand who you’re dealing with and why that’s hard. Really, really hard because you want to get the A to B, but you can’t, you got to get around the cultural aspects. You’ll get it done. We used to go to Italy and at each level there was a different party.
The communists at one level, social democrats, the fascists, you know, neo fascists. Each one would say different things about the same issue, but by the time they sort it out, you got what you wanted. You just had to be patient and not give up. So those are a couple examples of identity and culture.
NM:
I think you highlight a few things there. Patience is extremely important to at least be able to take the tactical pause to understand where you’re operating and what’s the norms there and ensure that you adapt to the norms so that you can kind of reach an understanding and hopefully at the end of the day come out with good commitments if negotiations actually achieve.
So, Yep. Thanks for all the insight there. Looking back at your career, is there a negotiation you handled that you would approach differently now with your current knowledge and experience?
Lessons From The Landmine Treaty Negotiations: Mark Graham’s Insights On Process and Preparation [18:51]
MG:
Oh, yeah. So I was on the U.S. delegation for the landmine treaty, and you may have heard how that turned out. We, the United States refused to send a delegation even to the landmine treaty conference, because the military was hard over about assigning any agreement, getting rid of our landmines.
Especially our landmines in Korea. And our self destructing mines, I guess you guys probably saw them in action while you’re in the military, at least the demonstration, they would blow them up and the engineers would walk right through it. It’s amazing, but they’re like $400 a piece where a Bouncing Betty’s $20.
And so we always thought that they were trying to address too much. They were trying to ban landmines that were not primarily due to kill people. They want to get rid of our tank mines and everything else. I mean, it’s all banned by the treaty. So I did give you that as background because we purposely stonewalled, slow dragged, General Shelley [inaudible] really told Clinton, we don’t need it.
You know, and then it turns out President Clinton got nervous at the end when he found out the other people not signing with the Russians, their co-Asians, the Chinese, India. He said he didn’t really want to be associated with those kind of people. And if you know, President Clinton, he had a reputation of he’ll sign any treaty you could possibly think of.
So this one here, Adam Albright called the joint staff and said, you guys have been overruled by the National Security Council. We’re going to Oslo. And we’re going to try to negotiate some exceptions for landmines, even though it was in cement and Jody and all those guys that won the Nobel priest prize were just ready to go proclaim victory.
They didn’t want to sit down and actually negotiate. So I was sent to a meeting and given talking points. The state department guys gave me, and they sent me there by myself. And I’m sitting there with these 10 or 20 people from other countries and a Belgium guy who was part of the hitman team. I’m not with the South Africans and the Americans that won the Nobel Peace Prize, that they weren’t going to change the treaty for nothing.
But I didn’t know that. Well, cause I didn’t check or ask. They just sent me to the meeting and says, here, say this if it comes up. So I actually read the approved President Clinton talking points on on a personal landmines and explained to him that this exception for us won’t harm anyone because our landmines will self-destruct or turn themselves off in a couple of hours.
And it was dead silence. You could hear a pin drop in the room. And then of course the guy was cordial enough. He said, well, is there any comments on that? Nobody said a thing. Well, next thing you know, I’m getting my butt kicked by the head of the U.S. delegation for insulting all those people and somehow making that chairman of that committee mad.
I meekly defended myself by saying, well, you gave me those talking points and told me to use them. They said, well, we didn’t mean to use them that way. So of course, okay. What did I learn from that? Well, first of all, don’t go into a meeting with presidential level talking points without a clear idea of why you’re there.
And again, cause the whole thing was rushed. I mean, come on, they just threw us in there and they had, you know, very experienced hands, you know, on the team, especially the guy that could write language for treaties and stuff. He was unbelievable. I just did what they told me, you know, like a true army officer, instead of thinking it out, realizing that maybe this audience wasn’t going to be receptive.
And maybe my head of delegation, I’d ask them, well, what’s the process here? Do you need to grease these kids and tell them, you know, this guy’s going to say this, but we really don’t mean it. Make sure you let everybody know, or we do mean it, but we’ll talk to you offline about it. You know, but to tell me to table that in front of 20 countries was, I thought bad guidance, but again, I’m not being a crybaby, I should have done more myself to understand the process.
And we know from multilateral negotiations that we teach it, you got to have a process. And if you’re in the process and you don’t understand it, you’re going to make mistakes and hurt your interest. I mean, it did damage the United States interest. We still didn’t sign the treaty and we didn’t get our exception.
And curiously later when I was in Japan and Bosnia, after this, we actually had issues with landmines with the Japanese and with the Bosnians. And I guess, I don’t know how they did in Afghanistan and Iraq, but technically, you’re not allowed to even move them anywhere. So we’ll see. But anyhow, you can see, you learn, you make mistakes.
And I was pretty senior back then. I should have known better that to go and ask for more guidance. Looking back now, I would never have done that. I would have found out exactly what they wanted me to do and how to do it.
AD:
Life can be a tough teacher sometimes because you got to learn through some mistakes. For our listeners, this has been a great conversation, Mark, as we get ready to wrap up, what advice would you have for someone who’s looking to improve their negotiation skills?
Essential Strategies For Effective Negotiation [23:31]
MG:
Well, I would say, number one, take a class of negotiations, especially one that’s sponsored under the Harvard project with interest based negotiation.
There’s a lot of criticism about that approach. There are other approaches that may be more robust or more interesting. But at a minimum, it’ll teach you how to analyze interests, look at options, deal with alternatives, and force you into a self process of preparing yourself because you look at the party’s interests and whatever.
But again, you can take any conflict resolution class that teaches you the techniques of negotiating and running meetings and that kind of stuff. But if you could get your hands on a class that mixes theory with actual practice, like we do in Maryland and we do for the undergrads, when we do teach it, you should do that.
Because I wish I had management training early in my career. For a while I had six guys working for me. I had no idea what I was doing. I was lucky I knew what I was doing, you know? And again, I’m not blaming the army. It’s just, it was a different paradigm back then. I worked for infantry guys and you probably know what they’re like.
You know, they told me you’re doing great until we tell you. That’s the kind of guidance I got from these guys, you know.
NM:
Sounds about right. Yeah, both Aram and I are former infantry guys. So that sounds about right.
MG:
I’ll never forget the general Wilson telling me that he said, Mark, it’s good advice. In other words, if they don’t stop you, just let them do it.
You know, do your thing. Keep doing it. Don’t get too far off the reservation. When you’re a captain or a Lieutenant, you shouldn’t be too creative. It was how to just stay within your lane, so to speak. But for training, I say a formal training class would be a great start. And then seek out opportunities to do negotiation would be my second piece of advice and a third piece of advice is what I just went through to make sure your bosses and stakeholders, if possible, know what you’re going to do.
And they may have information that you don’t have. And so it’s really crucial that before you go and negotiate the end of the, you know, the donut sale for the wives club, you better go tell the Cardinal that you’re going to go do that because the wives club usually has some powerful patrons behind them.
But that’s just a sort of silly example, but this actually happened to one of my guys. It blew up in his face cause they were going to end the donut sale and the Admiral’s wife was involved. So there’s politics too, and stakeholder interests that you may not know about. So always keep your leadership informed. And 99 times out of a hundred, if you have a clue, they’ll support you.
So those three things are good starters, I think. And then just think about it, prepare. Just don’t go into meeting and try to wing it. You know, go in there and think about what you want to accomplish. And so, and that’s something you can do today. You don’t have to wait for a class.
AD:
That’s right.
MG:
So those are my four ideas that’s brought off, you know, thinking about the past couple of days, thinking about my career and I do this now. I mean, my biggest job now is putting a six year old to school and that’s its own challenge. I’m teaching a class this summer for Maryland and the executive programs have been really nice.
So, and it’s kind of boutique. We got a class going with a national reconnaissance organization. And it’s really cool how the agencies will set these up. I don’t think you guys could go or your students, but there are programs out there, like at the University of Maryland executive programs, they can plug you in the classes.
I think, yeah, I don’t think you have to be a degree seeking student, but the NRO guys, they all sit there out where NRO is, their agency pays for the class. And that’s another place to look. That your workplace may be willing to send you to a class like that, a negotiation class. And they’re all over Washington and I’m sure in other major cities they have.
AD:
Well, Mark, thank you very much for your time and for your insights today. Really appreciate it. And those are some great takeaways there for our listeners. Thanks for being with us.
MG:
Oh, that’s great. Thanks for inviting me. It was a lot of fun.
NM:
And so that is it for us on today’s podcast. If you haven’t already, please rate, review, and subscribe to the NEGOTIATEx podcast. And we’ll see you in the next episode.
