Why should the people you’re supposed to lead follow you?

If you believe that your charisma, your exalted office, or your vision is reason enough, you’re in trouble.

While these qualities may affect how others relate to you, the unvarnished truth is that other people will follow you when they judge it’s in their best interest to do so.

Whether they’re acting as individuals or team members, people almost always give first priority to their own interests. Just as wise negotiators focus not on the other side’s positions but rather on their interests, effective leaders seek to understand the interests of those they lead and to find ways of satisfying those interests in order to achieve organizational goals.

Leaders’ failure to comprehend fully the interests of those they lead can have disastrous results.

• In 1985, Joe Foran established Dallas-based Matador Petroleum Corporation to find and develop oil and gas deposits in the American southwest. Through a series of shrewd acquisitions, Foran built Matador into one of the larger privately held petroleum firms in Texas.

To raise capital, he gave investors seats on Matador’s board. With a 10% interest in Matador, Chairman and CEO Foran remained its largest single investor.

In spring 2o03, Tom Brown Inc., a publicly traded oil company based in Denver, offered to buy Matador for $388 million. Foran opposed the offer, which he felt did not account for Matador’s growth potential. At the board meeting to discus the bid, Foran was astounded when the other directors voted to approve the sale.

He realized too late that the other directors’ interests were not the same as his own. Foran had the energy and the talent to build the company that would give him security in his retirement, which was still many years away.

But most of the other directors were retired individuals, who had been hurt by the falling stock market and declining investment returns. Their interest was to take the money and run – and that’s exactly what they did.

• Had Foran understood all this earlier, he might have been able to structure an agreement that would have given the directors the cash they needed while still allowing him to keep control of his company.

Effective leaders realize that they need to know people as individuals to truly understand their interests.

Some individuals care more about long-term career development, for instance, than about compensation.

When you understand where employees’ true interests lie, you can then shape your messages  and your actions to meet those interests in ways that will achieve your leadership goals.

Related Article: Find the Right Leadership Voice

Although forecasting errors are extremely common, you can minimize their impact on your negotiations by following these three guidelines.

1 Consider the Opposite

Most negotiators recognize the value of determining their alternatives, limits, interests, and priorities and those of their opponent ahead of time. You would be wise to recognize that your predictions about your own future judgments, feelings, and behaviors are probably wrong.

One effective strategy for debiasing your judgment is to “consider the opposite” of what you think is true, as Charles Lord of Texas Christian University advises. Don’t assume you’ll maintain your poise when a negotiation gets tough.

• Instead, consider your strengths and weaknesses, and create an effective action plan.

Furthermore, think about all the motivations you are likely to experience in the negotiation.

In research conducted with Sillito and Tenbrunsel, self-predictions became more accurate when people were asked to consider key motivations in an upcoming negotiation.

When they thought about how the fear of impasse could affect their behavior, for example, they acknowledged that they might not choose to battle a competitive negotiator. Thinking about motivations helps you better evaluate potential outcomes and identify effective strategies.

Be sure to create contingencies based on your opponent’s potential moves. Peter Gollwitzer of New York University has shown that when people construct strategic intentions – such as, ‘If she refuses to concede on price, I’ll bring up the issue of delivery timing’ – they more effectively and efficiently meet their goals.

2 Remove Your Opponent’s Personality from the Equation

When preparing to negotiate, you might think it’s best to seek out as much information as you can about your counterpart. It’s true that you should consider the other side’s sources of power and walkaway alternatives, but you shouldn’t give much weight to your assessments of his personality or stereotypes.

Why not?

First, Michael Morris of Columbia Business School and his colleagues have shown that one’s best alternative to a negotiated agreement or BATNA is a stronger predictor of behavior than is one’s personality.

Having a strong BATNA leads negotiators to engage in assertive behavior (such as making extreme requests and offering few concessions) and to procure better outcomes; by contrast, personality dimensions such as agreeableness have less impact on bargaining behavior.

Second, our expectations of others are often dead wrong.

Laura Kray of the University of California at Berkeley has shown that women are typically just as effective negotiators as men, although people often fall victim to common stereotypes and expect women to be less effective.

To avoid overweighing personality stereotypes, consider the opposite during your negotiation planning.

“How should I behave if he isn’t cooperative?” Your answers could lead you to strategies that will apply to a variety of people and situations, such as identifying ways to discover your opponent’s BATNA. If you ask the right questions, your tactics will be driven by the other side’s actual behavior rather than by your faulty assumptions.

One caveat: If you have reliable information that your opponents uses a specific negotiation tactic, prepare to deal with it – but also consider the possibility that she may do the opposite when negotiating with you!

3 Align Your Behavior with Your Forecasts

In general, our egocentric self-predictions cause us to overestimate our power at the bargaining table.

But research by Gerben van Kleef of the University of Amsterdam suggests that the powerful are more immune to competitive opponents than those who wield less power; the behavior of the powerful tends to resemble their forecasts.

Thus one way to improve your forecasts is to increase your bargaining power.

This could mean generating better walkaway alternatives or highlight your status and expertise during talks.

You might also think about a time when you had power in a negotiation. Our research with Joe Magee of New York University and Deborah Gruenfeld of Stanford University shows that this simple mind exercise can make negotiators behave as if they have power.

On a related note, consider your target price, or ideal outcome. From the distance of time, this isn’t difficult. But when faced with a seemingly tough opponent, negotiators focus too much on (and sometimes inappropriately lower) their reservation price – the specific point at which they’d prefer to walk away rather than reach a deal – and abandon their target price, to their detriment.

In our research, we’ve found that simply reminding negotiators just before talks to begin to focus on their target price helps them generate better outcomes and avoid being unduly influenced by an opponent’s shenanigans.

Related Article: How Power Affects Negotiators

After recently losing an important deal in India, a business negotiator learned that her counterpart felt as if she had been rushing through the talks. The business negotiator thought she was being efficient with their time. How can she improve her cross-cultural negotiation skills?

Research shows that dealmaking across cultures tends to lead to worse outcomes as compared with negotiations conducted within the same culture. This is primarily because cultures are characterized by different behaviors, communication styles, and norms. As a result, when negotiating across cultures, we bring different perspectives to the bargaining table, which in turn may result in potential misunderstandings and a lower likelihood of exploring and discovering integrative, or value-creating, solutions.

Cultural misunderstandings tend to occur for two main reasons.

First, when confronting cultural differences, we tend to rely on stereotypes. Stereotypes are often pejorative ( for example: Italians always run late), and they can lead to distorted expectations about your counterpart’s behavior as well as potentially costly misinterpretations.

Instead of relying on stereotypes, try to focus on prototypes—cultural averages on dimensions of behavior or values. For example, it is commonly understood that Japanese negotiators tend to have more silent periods during their talks than, say, Brazilians. That said, there is still a great deal of variability within each culture—meaning that some Brazilians speak less than some Japanese do. Thus, it would be a mistake to expect a Japanese negotiator you have never met to be reserved. But if it turns out that a negotiator is especially quiet, you might better understand her behavior in light of the prototype. In addition, awareness of your own cultural prototypes can help you anticipate how your counterpart might interpret your bargaining behavior.

A second common reason for cross-cultural misunderstandings is that we tend to interpret others’ behaviors, values, and beliefs through the lens of our own culture. To overcome this tendency, we need to learn about the other party’s culture. This means not only researching the customs and behaviors of different cultures but also understanding why people folow these customs and exhibit these behaviors in the first place.

Just as important, not only do countries have unique cultures, but teams and organizations do, too. Before any negotiation, take time to study the context and the person on the other side of the bargaining table, including the various cultures to which he belongs, whether the culture of France, the culture of engineering, or his particular company’s corporate culture.

In this business negotiator’s case, she learned after the fact that her Indian counterpart would have appreciated a slower pace with more opportunities for relationship building. She seems to have run into the second issue: Using time efficiently in the course of negotiations is generally valued in the United States, but in India, there is often a greater focus on building relationships early in the process. 

As this business negotiator has observed, cultural differences can represent barriers to reaching an agreement in negotiation. But remember that differences also can be opportunities to create valuable agreements. This suggests that cross-cultural negotiations may be particularly rife with opportunities for counterparts to capitalize on different preferences, priorities, beliefs, and values.

Join fellow professionals, executives, graduate students, and community members for the Negotiation and Dispute Resolution Seminar to learn how to skillfully negotiate to create value and resolve disputes.

Led by Harvard-affiliated faculty and renowned negotiation experts, this semester-length course explores a range of negotiation scenarios – from domestic and two-party negotiations to international conflicts and complex, multiparty scenarios. You will emerge from the course with a toolkit of skills, approaches, and tactics you can use to effectively resolve conflicts and resolve disputes in any setting.

Roles will be reversed. Strategies will be tested. Knowledge will be put into practice.

Offered by the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School, this highly engaging learning experience goes far beyond theory – featuring real-world case examples, hands-on exercises, role-playing scenarios, and dynamic presentations by special guest lecturers. Don’t miss your chance to become a better negotiator – register today!

Who can attend?

This program is open to all who want to improve their ability to negotiate and resolve disputes.

Negotiation and Dispute Resolution Seminar

September 17 – December 3, 2013

Tuesday evenings, 6:00 PM – 8:45 PM

Harvard Law School Campus (Cambridge, MA)

When the poet Walt Whitman wrote, “Surely, whoever speaks to me in the right voice, him or her shall I follow,” he conveyed the notion that persuasive communication is fundamental to effective leadership. Whitman’s words also underscore the importance of shaping leadership communications to meet individual concerns, interests, and styles.

When deciding how to communicate, recognize that the medium you choose reveals something about you and your relationship with the person you are trying to lead.

Suppose that you’re a company CEO trying to persuade your board of directors to support an acquisition.

What if you sent each board member a detailed memorandum stating the terms and consequences of the deal?

Intentionally or unintentionally, a generic memo could signal that you take members’ support for granted, that you place little value on their opinions, and that you, not they, are running the show.

Instead, you might personally visit each director to explain the acquisition’s importance.

A face-to-face meeting shows the individual director that her support is important and that you respect her autonomy and judgment.

What’s more, holding such one-on-one meetings will enable you to get to know your directors’ individual interests and concerns, structure arrangements that satisfy those interests and concerns, and still allow you to make the acquisition that you feel is important for the company’s future.

Related Article: Negotiate Relationships

Relationships are as important to leadership as they are to negotiation.

A relationship is a perceived connection that can be psychological, economic, political, or personal; whatever its basis, wise leaders, like skilled negotiators, work to foster a strong connection because effective leadership depends on it.

Positive relationships are important not because they engender warm, fuzzy feelings, but because they engender trust – a vital means of securing desired actions from others.

Consider that any proposed action, whether suggested by a negotiator at the bargaining table or a leader at a strategy meeting, entails risk.

People will view a course of action as less risky, and therefore more acceptable, when its suggested by someone they trust.

In order to create durable relationships, there are four basic building blocks that can help you create effective partnerships with the people you lead:

• 1 Two-way communication
• 2 A strong commitment from the leader to the interests of those he leads
• 3 Reliability
• 4 Respect for the contributions followers make to the organization

Related Article: Win-Win Negotiation: Managing Your Counterpart’s Satisfaction

Farah Stockman, writing for the Boston Globe, says that if John Kerry has not already read Roger Fisher’s seminal work, Getting to Yes, he probably should…and soon. While the book was written over thirty years ago, its foundational principles and core message of creating value and enduring relationships between negotiators applies today more than ever to the situation between Israel and Palestine.

Fisher devoted his life to negotiation theory and practice after witnessing the violence of World War II. Fisher’s ideas are well known and rooted in what some would call common sense, but as Bruce Patton, co-author of Getting to Yes, reminds us, “…people don’t know them well, and aren’t able to execute well.”

To read more on how the principles described in Getting to Yes are applicable to the situation between Israel and Palestine, be sure to read Farah Stockman’s article on the Boston Globe website.

Executives are increasingly faced with the task of negotiating in a realm that many know little about: technology.

Whether you’re bargaining over the purchase of a companywide network, coping with the possible infringement of patented technology, or seeking better customer service from a software supplier, technology negotiations have become a fact of managerial life.

How do such negotiations differ from those that are less technologically complex?

You can anticipate four specific problems to crop up more often in the technology arena:

1 Complexity

Negotiations over new technology require sophisticated knowledge of hardware or software that’s beyond the scope of most managers. If those trained in science and technology assume the others at the table are speaking their language, serious misunderstandings can result.

2 Uncertainty

When highly complex systems are at stake, no one can be sure whether they will perform as promised when configured for a particular business environment. Different estimates of how a technology will perform can lead to negotiation battles.

3 Egos

Those who design or advocate for a new technology often become additional players when they have a vested interest in the outcomes of a negotiation. Technology advocates – and their egos – can complicate otherwise straightforward talks.

4 Organizational Change

The various organizational changes required by negotiated agreements can provoke conflict between parties during implementation. Staffers may have trouble maintaining or repairing new technology, accessing its intellectual underpinnings, or acquiring replacement parts.

Negotiators embroiled in high-tech deals must take purposeful steps to avoid these pitfalls. Through our executive training, we have identified three ways of sidestepping these difficulties:

1 Avoid communication errors and build trust

2 Manage complexity and uncertainty

3 Prepare for strategic realignment

On March 15, International Consumers’ Day in China, the nation’s largest state-run television network criticized Apple for giving iPhone customers in China a one-year warranty, less than the two years required under Chinese law, and for charging consumers about $90 to replace faulty back covers on iPhones.

Other state media outlets joined in the Apple bashing, and the public outcry grew. China’s Industry and Commerce agency called for “strengthened supervision” of Apple’s activities in China. Chinese celebrities seemed to engage in a coordinate effort to pan the American company.

The complaints against Apple coincided with pressure from the Obama administration on China to address computer hacking attacks on American companies, the Times reports. Some speculated that the complaints were a calculated campaign by the Chinese governments to boost Apple’s Chinese competitors. Apple products are immensely popular in China; the company earned $20 billion in revenues in China in the past year.

Apple initially failed to respond to the accusations against its warranty policies. Then, in an open letter released in Chinese, Cook admitted that his company’s lack of communication had led to the perception that “Apple is arrogant and doesn’t care or value consumers’ feedback.” The letter continued, “We sincerely apologize for any concern or misunderstanding this has brought to the customers.”

Speaking to the Times, Santa Clara law professor Anna Han called the public apology a “very Chinese thing to do” and predicted that Apple’s apology and promises to do better would “take the wind out of the [Chinese] government’s sails.”

In a 2009 research article, Professor Elizabeth A. Nowicki of Tulane University Law School suggested that, contrary to the conventional wisdom that your opponents in a dispute will use your apology against you, sincere, well-timed apology can actually be the key to keeping you out of court.

Nowicki found in a review of research on legal disputes that apologies can improve the odds of settlement, reduce costs, save time, and decrease the fallout from damaged reputations and relationships. We described Nowicki’s research in detail in the article “Why Your Lawyer Could Be Wrong About Apologies” in the June 2010 issue of the Negotiation newsletter.

Carefully delivered apologies appear to restore dignity and trust in a way that sheer financial compensation cannot. This may be especially true in Asian countries where apologies are a time-honored tradition.

In recent experiments, Professor William W. Maddux of INSEAD and his colleagues studied reactions to apologies in the United States and Japan. The results suggest that in a collectivist culture like Japan’s, an apology can be an especially effective means of alleviating conflict regardless of whether the apologizer is to blame.

Social psychologists have described types of power that exist in society, and these types of power emerge in negotiation as well.

Two types of power spring from objective features of the bargaining process.

First, power is often defined as a lack of dependence on others.

In negotiation, this form of power corresponds to one’s BATNA or best alternative to a negotiated agreement. When an individual has a strong BATNA going into a negotiation, she is less dependent on the opposing party to reach her needs than she would be if she had a weak alternative or no alternative at all.

Second, some positions, roles, and titles grant power simply due to the authority or control they exert over a wide range of important outcomes. This type of power, referred to as role power, is often found in organizational hierarchies.

There is a third form of power that you can bring to your negotiations: psychological power.

In fact, it’s possible for you to have a psychological sense of power even when you lack objective power.

Professor Cameron Anderson of Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley, has shown that although people differ in the degree to which they feel psychologically powerful in the world, they can create a temporary sense of power.

When your confidence is low, you can give it a boost by thinking about a time in your life when you had power.

Interestingly, being powerful and feeling powerful have essentially the same consequence for negotiations. Regardless of its source, power has consistent and predictable effects – both positive and negative – on negotiations.