I decided to teach my partner the Harvard Seven Element approach to negotiation. To make this a useful exercise I used the same methodology that I was taught in the Negotiations paper, which is to run a negotiation about something we both cared about. The idea was that I could teach her a practical negotiation framework by working on a real problem, specifically the issue of which family to spend Christmas with this year. This issue may sound quite trivial, but when you are married it’s more complicated than it appears on the surface. The nature of the lesson is to share with my partner a framework for negotiating that can work with almost any issue. I thought it would be useful to be familiar with this framework because we have had a property related issue that have arose earlier in the year and it had to be dealt with by legal specialists. I thought negotiation would be a strategic skill to have before we take the next dip into the property market, as well as being handy for all sorts of problems.
The manner of the lesson began with a negotiation, where the goal was to convince her that there was some value in this lesson. My partner is a school teacher so she thinks she is pretty good at negotiation already, but I convinced here that it was a good idea by telling her it would help me pass my MBA. She said she wanted to know what my methodology for negotiation would be for the future so she would know what I was thinking. After I had got agreement to do this lesson I pulled out my course folder, paper and pens so we could get started. To get the framework embedded in her head we did an open negotiation about a particular issue, in this case “where to go for holiday this summer”. To do this I demonstrated how I brain stormed my interested, options, alternatives, and ranked them. I then helped her to fill in her sheet with her interests, options and alternatives, explaining the purpose of each section as we went along. We then went through our respective interests to see which ones we had in common, which were different and which were in conflict. Thankfully there were not too many conflicting ones with this negotiation, however there were lots of different interests. I then showed her how the options related to the various interests we had, and that if we arranged the holiday in such as way as to take up as many of those options as possible then we would both have a better time. This I explained as the concept of adding value to the outcomes of a negotiation, or not leaving any value on the table which would make the deal less fruitful.
After that walk through we started on the Family Christmas issue and I gave her ten minutes in a different room to write up another negotiation worksheet for it. I worked on my sheet at the same time and came up with a bunch of options and alternatives. After ten minutes we got together and started negotiating but with our worksheets hidden. She was interested in helping out her mum on the farm in Hawke’s Bay; I was interested in seeing my Grandmother in Christchurch. Options that were discussed included spending Christmas in Christchurch and my Birthday (27/12) in the Bay, or taking my mother in law to Christchurch for Christmas as well. We also talked through the option of going away on holiday early to avoid the entire thing. In the end we still haven’t agreed as to what we are actually going to do, but what we have achieved is a discussion about what we both want and explored some options. This is the first step to forming an agreement so I am sure we will figure it out soon!
The first learning implication of this is that my partner now has an additional tool in her head when she is dealing with a situation at school or anywhere else and that’s a good thing. The other side of this is that she now knows how I think and process information so that should lead to better communication and a stronger relationship. The second thing I found was that if the student is willing to learn then it’s a lot easier to teach them. In previous situations where I have been mentoring people at work, I know how frustrating it is trying to figure out why a student isn’t interested in the material or changing the delivery style to suite their individual needs. I know what my partners learning style is like and it’s very hands on and kinaesthetic so the way we worked together on this mini project was the key to its success. The third implication of this is that I know I have learned something properly if I can teach it to someone else in such a way that they understand it and can taker it away and do it on their own. Lastly, I think it helps a lot if you know the person you are teaching really well. A lot of the implicit communication that goes on between couples would be difficult to understand from the outside, but to us it’s really easy to figure out what the other person means when they say something.
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