8/23 Blog #3: Tell Me More

I used the "Tell Me More" technique with four separate people.  I used it on two females, and two males, all in my general age range.  For the sake of anonymity, I will call them F1, F2, M1, and M2. 

F1 is a fairly close friend, so the fact that we have "told each other more" before now did not seem all that unfamiliar.  As she went on explaining something that was happening to her, after she stopped, I tried the technique, and she kept kind of laughing, but then went on.  She seemed a little surprised that I was so interested, but not too much.  Nothing felt too uncomfortable.

F2 is a friend who recently came out of a 3 year relationship, and I talked to her on the phone.  My end of the line was a continued stream of tell me mores.  If I was going to impart something, I made sure it had substance, because I generally wanted to hear her thoughts on everything.  She told me it was the first time she had said some of those things because it was the first time anyone had kept asking her.  Typically, people would hear something, try to say something vaguely helpful, and that would be all.  Asking her more and more let her keep on talking.  It seemed very positive.

M1 is a close friend.  Fun fact, he was the other end of the relationship I previously mentioned.  Basically, it was a lot of the same, but I have known him longer, so it felt even more natural for him to tell me these details.

M2 is a friend, but far from a close one.  We don't know most of the details of each others' lives.  I tried the technique with him.  The first try was met with "...and that's it." Upon asking if anything was new in his life, he was very short.  Another person asked about his personal life, and about a new girl in it, and he seemed to deflect.  I persisted a little more, and he responded with a somewhat grotesque story of personal hygiene.  It seemed to be another deflection, so I gave one more serious attempt at Tell Me More.  This time, it worked.  He explained why he was short about it, and that he just didn't feel comfortable with that girl.  He felt a little shame regarding the relationship, but he told me about it.  It was more than I had ever heard him say about his personal life.  After that, it felt right to go back totalking about baseball.  I wish he would have asked me more.

8/23 Blog #2: My Negotiations Before "Negotiations"

This is a more difficult question to answer. I don’t have a great amount of human/human conflict in my life. I live alone, I have a long fuse, and I haven’t had an opportunity to really negotiate a conflict. I have lived in the same apartment for over a year. My personal and professional ties weren’t too conflicted in the last week.
The closest I came to negotiating was a job interview I had at the governor’s office. However, I was not put in a very good position. My position was not to get more money, it was to just get hired. I looked at the common interests of the parties, and that was employment for both. I worked from a soft position, flexible on hours and wage, and the employer held all the cards.
This is not nearly as exciting as negotiating my contract for my apartment, where both I and the apartment took hard approaches, yet still found a way to agree to terms. It was mostly because I was realistically flexible in the end, and just wanted things to be done. In the future, I will look more to common interests—which I rarely have done in professional negotiations settings, but I have tended to do with personal relationships.

8/23 Blog #1: Reflecting on Getting to Yes

The first three chapter of Getting to Yes give an interesting introduction to negatiations.  The two common methods of negotiation are basically hard and soft.  Soft is pretty much for family negotiation, because it gets crushed by hard.  Hard is tough because no one wants to move.  The book suggests that you change the game by looking at underlying interests and concerns--looking at what each party wants.  This happens when you:

1) Separate the people from the problem
2) Focus on interests, not positions
3) Invent options for mutual gain
4) Insist on using objective criteria

Positions are trumped by interests.  I really like these thoughts, and the mindset that we should take into negotiations, instead of focusing on taking the opponent's shirt.  While most people enter negotiations wanting certain things, and objective criteria is legitimate for each party, I think really appreciate chapter 3.  Reasonable people find a way to negotiation for mutual gain, but the biggest impediment (in my personal experience) has been one person thinking they have more power than they have, and they refuse to move from a hard stance.  The focus remains on interests, because if negotiations are happening, there are common interests to be found.

I still want to see this in practice, because I have seen some jerks in negotiations who are as hard-line as it gets, and they exist even in free fantasy sports leagues.  I am sure I will figure that out soon.

This is a Practice Post!

This is mostly a practice post, but it is still natural to feel a little excited.  Negotiation stuff is right around the corner...