The buzz of excitement that arose in February 2015 at the news that Harper Lee, author of the beloved novel To Kill a Mockingbird, would be publishing a second novel quickly turned to concern. The 88-year-old Lee, who suffered a stroke in 2007 and resided in an assisted-living facility in her hometown of Monroeville, Alabama, long ago turned her back on fame and expressed no further literary ambitions. Had she truly sanctioned the publication of the newly rediscovered novel, written more than 50 years ago, or were her publisher and others with a financial stake in the deal taking advantage their power in negotiation talks with her?

Though ultimately no evidence of elder abuse was unearthed, the unsettling situation serves as a reminder that negotiators risk sacrificing their ethical standards and reputation when entering into talks with counterparts who may lack the ability to negotiate on their own behalf. More broadly, when you are have more power in negotiation—or even just perceived as more powerful—you need to take special precautions to ensure that you treat the other side fairly.

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A surprising discovery—and an about-face

Upon its publication in 1960, To Kill a Mockingbird became one of the great American novels almost overnight; it won a Pulitzer Prize, was adapted into a popular film, and has gone on to sell more than 40 million copies worldwide. Overwhelmed by her sudden celebrity status, Lee largely retreated from public life, telling friends she had said all she needed to say in a single book and felt no need to express herself further.

Then, in February 2015, Lee’s publisher, Harper (a HarperCollins imprint), announced that it would be publishing a novel Lee had completed in the mid-1950s. Back then, Lee’s editor had rejected the novel, Go Set a Watchman, but asked her to expand some of its flashbacks, a writing assignment that grew into To Kill a Mockingbird. Lee reportedly believed that the manuscript of her first novel had been lost or destroyed. But her friend and lawyer, Tonja B. Carter, discovered Go Set a Watchman in Lee’s archives in the fall of 2014, according to the New York Times.

In a statement that Carter sent to Lee’s publisher, Lee reportedly said she at first resisted the idea of publishing the novel, unsure of its merit, but changed her mind after sharing it with a few people close to her and receiving positive feedback. The novel picks up with members of the Finch family, beloved characters from To Kill a Mockingbird, 20 years after the events of Lee’s famous work unfolded. Go Set a Watchman was released that July with an initial print run of two million copies. The deal reportedly was negotiated between Carter, Lee’s agent, and Michael Morrison, the president and publisher of HarperCollins.

Celebration and controversy

What had seemed like the publishing coup of the decade turned into a public controversy, with a raft of media reports questioning whether Harper executives had been overzealous in their pursuit of a new Harper Lee novel.

Lee’s friends and acquaintances offered conflicting assessments of her mental state; at that time, some said she was sharp and lively, while others portrayed her as confused and lacking a short-term memory. In a 2011 letter, Lee’s sister and close companion, Alice Lee, who died in the fall of 2014, wrote to a neighbor that her sister “can’t see and can’t hear and will sign anything put before her by anyone in whom she has confidence,” according to the Times.

As a result, some observers were skeptical that the statements Harper Lee reportedly made about deciding to publish Go Set a Watchman had originated with her and expressed doubt that she had been closely involved in the book negotiations. A senior vice president at Harper said the company had not spoken directly to Lee about the book but negotiated exclusively with Carter and Lee’s literary agent, typical practice in the publishing world. HarperCollins executives said they visited Lee soon after announcing the new book and had a pleasant conversation with her about their publication plans.

One doctor who knew Lee but was not her personal physician asked the State of Alabama to investigate whether the writer had been capable of consenting to the book’s publication. That investigation concluded in April, with officials saying they had found no evidence of elder abuse or neglect. One investigator said that Lee “has opinions and seems to be aware of what is going on with her book and the book deal.”

The question of whether Harper Lee’s publisher and others took advantage of her seems to be a closed case. But the author’s poor health, and the fact that the release of Go Set a Watchman is at odds with her long-held attitudes, continued to cast a pall over the book’s impending publication and raised the question of whether the negotiations should have been handled differently.

The dark side of power in negotiation

Power in negotiation is often portrayed as an unmitigated boon. Powerful negotiators have an advantage at the bargaining table relative to their weaker counterparts. The powerful tend to be more confident, make fewer concessions, and get better deals.

Yet there can be a dark side to power in negotiation. To begin with, the confidence that accompanies power can lead to overconfidence, which in turn can cause powerful negotiators to overlook the importance of preparation and research. Relatedly, the powerful tend to fall back on cognitive shortcuts that lead them to misjudge the interests of their less-powerful counterparts, professors Elizabeth Mannix of Cornell University and Margaret Neale of Stanford University have found in their research.

In addition, people who are primed to feel powerful can have difficulty taking others’ perspectives. People experiencing power, even if only temporarily, tend to focus on themselves and consequently can be less empathetic than others, Nathanael J. Fast, Deborah H. Gruenfeld, Niro Sivanathan, and Adam D. Galinsky found in one study.

It’s easy to see how the simplistic thinking, self-focus, and confidence that can accompany power could lead negotiators to distort a weak or vulnerable party’s interests to their own advantage. For example, Harper Lee’s publisher, agent, and lawyer had strong financial incentives to assume Lee would be receptive to the publication of her newly discovered novel—and to overlook the fact that she had chosen long ago, in her literary prime, not to publish it.

Power, agents, and conflicts of interest

Through a process known as ethical fading, business negotiators may come to view a decision as a “business decision” rather than an “ethical decision,” according to Notre Dame University professor Ann E. Tenbrunsel and psychologist David Messick. When we scrub the ethical dimensions of our decisions in this manner, we increase our odds of behaving unethically. Lee’s publisher may have fallen into this trap, judging by the fact that it apparently did not try to communicate directly with Lee during negotiations over her manuscript.

Complicating matters, when decision makers have a motivation (whether financial or otherwise) to interpret data in a particular way, they have difficulty approaching the situation without bias, write Harvard Business School professor Max H. Bazerman and Tenbrunsel in their book Blind Spots: Why We Fail to Do What’s Right and What to Do about It (Princeton University Press, 2011). As a result, negotiators may make decisions that violate their personal moral code—perhaps without their conscious realization.

To take one example, during the housing bubble of the 2000s, major credit-rating agencies such as Standard & Poor’s, Moody’s, and Fitch routinely gave AAA ratings (the highest-possible rating) to issuers of highly risky mortgage-backed securities—the “toxic assets” whose collapse triggered the 2008 financial crisis. The agencies’ objectivity was compromised by the fact that they were paid by the very organizations they were hired to rate—the same type of conflict of interest that has infected the U.S. auditing industry, according to Bazerman and Tenbrunsel.

Such conflicts of interest are especially common in industries where agents negotiate on behalf of their clients, such as real estate, law, banking, entertainment, and publishing. An agent’s financial interests are almost never perfectly aligned with those of her client. As a result, clients who are in a weak or compromised state are particularly vulnerable to being taken advantage of by their agents, who may have difficulty reining in their de facto power.

Due diligence for powerful negotiators

It’s not just those who deliberately prey on the powerless who risk damaging their professional reputations or being sued. All of us need to remain aware of the potential pitfalls of  having more power in negotiation, especially because people tend to hold the powerful to higher ethical and moral standards. In their research, Tenbrunsel and Messick found that participants viewed a powerful person who reneged on a contract to be more unethical than a less powerful person who did the same.

Thus, as your power increases, you can expect your actions to face greater scrutiny—including from the legal system. To protect weak parties in negotiations, the courts sometimes second-guess deal terms that appear onerous, read additional terms into the deal that favor the weaker party, and impose procedural constraints that prevent the stronger party from abusing its bargaining power, says Harvard Business School and Harvard Law School professor Guhan Subramanian.

How can you improve your odds of behaving ethically? Whether you expect to have more or less power in negotiation, it’s always wise to gather as much knowledge as you can about the issues and parties involved in advance. Here are some questions you should try to answer:

• Does the other party have vulnerabilities (whether mental, emotional, physical, financial, etc.) that could put him—and your reputation—at risk in a negotiation? If so, check whether safeguards are in place to protect him. If there aren’t, try to create such safeguards yourself.
• If a potentially vulnerable counterpart is working through an agent, will the agent allow you to communicate directly with her client? An agent may have good reasons for shielding her client—for example, if the client is a child or is incapacitated. On the other hand, an agent who insists on keeping her client walled off from you could be trying to hide unethical behavior. By researching the agent’s background and reputation, you may be able to determine whether her expressed concern for her client is legitimate.
• What particular laws, legal rules, and ethical guidelines should you be aware of as you prepare to negotiate with a weaker party? Consult with your attorney and with third parties who have no stake in the negotiation for advice.

Being the more powerful party in a negotiation doesn’t mean you have to treat your counterpart with kid gloves. But it does mean that you have a special responsibility to ensure that both you and the other party are protected from undue risk.

What if you’re the weaker party and lack power in negotiation?

The following tips can help you level the playing field when you are the weaker party in a negotiation:

• If you are incapable of negotiating on your own behalf, for whatever reason, seek out an agent with a strong reputation for ethical behavior. Or, if possible, delay the negotiation until you are capable of representing yourself.

• Given that powerful parties tend to focus on themselves, you might inspire cooperation by suggesting ways they might benefit from meeting your interests.

• Instead of accepting your one-down position, improve your power—and perhaps trump theirs—by taking steps to improve your BATNA, or best alternative to a negotiated agreement. Remember, your best source of power in a negotiation is typically your ability to walk away.

• Because there’s strength in numbers, you may be able to increase your power against a strong counterpart by forming an alliance with other weak parties.

• The powerful become better perspective-takers and more generous when they feel responsible for others, Adam Galinsky’s research shows. Consider drawing out these tendencies by asking the other side for advice or a favor.

Have you had similar situations in any of your negotiations?

Perhaps it’s no surprise that two boxers, bitter rivals, took many years to negotiate the terms of their hotly anticipated matchup. But the fact that a bout between Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Manny Pacquiao—held May 2 in Las Vegas—came together at all offers hope that even the fiercest competitors can secure a mutually beneficial agreement.

Hitting below the belt

Undefeated champion Mayweather, widely considered the best pound-for-pound boxer in the world, shocked many in June 2008 by announcing his retirement from the sport at age 31, saying boxing no longer brought him joy. As Pacquiao ascended in the rankings, however, Mayweather quickly reconsidered, coming back to defeat number two–ranked fighter Juan Manuel Márquez.

Speculation about a Pacquiao-Mayweather fight went into overdrive, according to Kevin McRae, writing in the Bleacher Report. Having commenced the traditional prefight trash talk, the boxers hashed out the details for a 2010 fight, agreeing to a date and a 50-50 split of the purse. Pacquiao reportedly balked, however, when Mayweather asked for random blood testing up to the time of weigh-in. Pacquiao’s promoter, Bob Arum, accused Mayweather of taking advantage of the fact that his client “gets freaked out” by blood tests, according to MLive.com.

The talks were further complicated by the fact that Mayweather reportedly despises Arum, his former promoter, whom he has accused of taking advantage of him. In addition, the two boxers have deals with different cable channels—Pacquiao: HBO, Mayweather: Showtime—making TV rights to the match tricky to negotiate.

The round of negotiations fizzled out when Pacquiao filed a defamation lawsuit against Mayweather and senior members of his team after Mayweather’s father (a retired boxer) suggested that “with steroids in him or not,” Pacquiao wouldn’t be able to beat his son, reports MLive.com. The lawsuit settled out of court, with Mayweather’s team issuing a statement saying they had no evidence that Pacquiao had ever engaged in doping.

Throwing in the towel

In 2010, the two camps bickered publicly about whether or not they were negotiating, and a video of Mayweather baiting the Filipino Pacquiao with racial slurs appeared online. (Mayweather quickly apologized.)
In 2012, Mayweather phoned Pacquiao directly and tried to get him to accept a flat fee of $40 million for a fight. Pacquiao refused, according to ESPN, noting that he might earn much more from a pay-per-view bout. In a 2013 interview with FightHype.com, Mayweather said that a fight with Pacquiao “at this particular time, will never happen” because “I will never do business with Bob Arum again in life.”

Pulling their punches

In 2014, rumors began to circulate that Pacquiao was on the ropes for millions in back taxes and was therefore highly motivated to agree to a fight with Mayweather. Pacquiao denied the story, but he had much to prove, having lost two fights in 2012. Mayweather, meanwhile, was dogged by rumors that he was dodging Pacquiao for fear of blemishing his perfect record.

A breakthrough came on January 27, 2015, when Mayweather and Pacquiao ran into each other at a professional basketball game—the first time they’d ever met in person. After the game, the two holed up in Pacquiao’s hotel suite to talk and then met a few days later to plan their bout, writes Bernard Fernandez in Bleacher Report. The chance meeting “cleared up a lot of doubts in both of their minds and sort of renewed their commitment to getting this fight done,” Showtime executive Stephen Espinoza told Fernandez.

Over the next month, the boxers’ representatives and HBO and Showtime hashed out a deal. Showtime’s ongoing six-bout deal with Mayweather so far had proved financially disappointing. Motivated to boost profits, Leslie “Les” Moonves, the president and CEO of CBS, Showtime’s parent company, played a leading role in the talks. Espinoza credits Moonves, “someone that all parties in this negotiation respected,” for being the “catalyst” for the deal: “He refused to take no for an answer from any side.”

HBO and Showtime reached a deal to jointly produce the bout. Ultimately, Pacquiao made the most significant concessions, agreeing to take 40% of the purse to Mayweather’s 60%, to receive second billing, and to allow his opponent to enter the ring first.

At press time, the winner of the May 2 match was unknown. With the long negotiations having carried the boxers into the twilight of their careers, some fans predicted the fight would be anticlimactic—yet it was still expected to break pay-per-view records.

Perhaps it’s no surprise that two boxers, bitter rivals, took many years to negotiate the terms of their hotly anticipated matchup. But the fact that a bout between Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Manny Pacquiao—held May 2 in Las Vegas—came together at all offers hope that even the fiercest competitors can secure a mutually beneficial agreement.

Hitting below the belt

Undefeated champion Mayweather, widely considered the best pound-for-pound boxer in the world, shocked many in June 2008 by announcing his retirement from the sport at age 31, saying boxing no longer brought him joy. As Pacquiao ascended in the rankings, however, Mayweather quickly reconsidered, coming back to defeat number two–ranked fighter Juan Manuel Márquez.

Speculation about a Pacquiao-Mayweather fight went into overdrive, according to Kevin McRae, writing in the Bleacher Report. Having commenced the traditional prefight trash talk, the boxers hashed out the details for a 2010 fight, agreeing to a date and a 50-50 split of the purse. Pacquiao reportedly balked, however, when Mayweather asked for random blood testing up to the time of weigh-in. Pacquiao’s promoter, Bob Arum, accused Mayweather of taking advantage of the fact that his client “gets freaked out” by blood tests, according to MLive.com.

The talks were further complicated by the fact that Mayweather reportedly despises Arum, his former promoter, whom he has accused of taking advantage of him. In addition, the two boxers have deals with different cable channels—Pacquiao: HBO, Mayweather: Showtime—making TV rights to the match tricky to negotiate.

The round of negotiations fizzled out when Pacquiao filed a defamation lawsuit against Mayweather and senior members of his team after Mayweather’s father (a retired boxer) suggested that “with steroids in him or not,” Pacquiao wouldn’t be able to beat his son, reports MLive.com. The lawsuit settled out of court, with Mayweather’s team issuing a statement saying they had no evidence that Pacquiao had ever engaged in doping.

Throwing in the towel

In 2010, the two camps bickered publicly about whether or not they were negotiating, and a video of Mayweather baiting the Filipino Pacquiao with racial slurs appeared online. (Mayweather quickly apologized.)
In 2012, Mayweather phoned Pacquiao directly and tried to get him to accept a flat fee of $40 million for a fight. Pacquiao refused, according to ESPN, noting that he might earn much more from a pay-per-view bout. In a 2013 interview with FightHype.com, Mayweather said that a fight with Pacquiao “at this particular time, will never happen” because “I will never do business with Bob Arum again in life.”

Pulling their punches

In 2014, rumors began to circulate that Pacquiao was on the ropes for millions in back taxes and was therefore highly motivated to agree to a fight with Mayweather. Pacquiao denied the story, but he had much to prove, having lost two fights in 2012. Mayweather, meanwhile, was dogged by rumors that he was dodging Pacquiao for fear of blemishing his perfect record.

A breakthrough came on January 27, 2015, when Mayweather and Pacquiao ran into each other at a professional basketball game—the first time they’d ever met in person. After the game, the two holed up in Pacquiao’s hotel suite to talk and then met a few days later to plan their bout, writes Bernard Fernandez in Bleacher Report. The chance meeting “cleared up a lot of doubts in both of their minds and sort of renewed their commitment to getting this fight done,” Showtime executive Stephen Espinoza told Fernandez.

Over the next month, the boxers’ representatives and HBO and Showtime hashed out a deal. Showtime’s ongoing six-bout deal with Mayweather so far had proved financially disappointing. Motivated to boost profits, Leslie “Les” Moonves, the president and CEO of CBS, Showtime’s parent company, played a leading role in the talks. Espinoza credits Moonves, “someone that all parties in this negotiation respected,” for being the “catalyst” for the deal: “He refused to take no for an answer from any side.”

HBO and Showtime reached a deal to jointly produce the bout. Ultimately, Pacquiao made the most significant concessions, agreeing to take 40% of the purse to Mayweather’s 60%, to receive second billing, and to allow his opponent to enter the ring first.

At press time, the winner of the May 2 match was unknown. With the long negotiations having carried the boxers into the twilight of their careers, some fans predicted the fight would be anticlimactic—yet it was still expected to break pay-per-view records.

From the start, the negotiations were precarious. In late 2013, Iran agreed to temporarily freeze portions of its nuclear program and to negotiate a more comprehensive nuclear dismantlement with the United States, Russia, China, France, Germany, and Great Britain in exchange for reduced economic sanctions. The negotiations proceeded in fits and starts over the next 18 months, with the United States ultimately taking on the role of lead negotiator with Iran after a year of secret bilateral talks.

For 36 years, relations between the United States and Iran have been characterized by animosity, distrust, and conflict. Yet on April 2, the two nations were able to announce that they had reached a preliminary agreement on key issues that all parties involved could accept. The failures and successes of the preliminary deal, from which negotiators aimed to build a more comprehensive deal by June 30, offer numerous lessons to negotiators.

In our last issue, we examined the influence of potential deal spoilers in negotiation, as reflected by Republican senators’ opposition to the negotiations with Iran. Congressional Republicans didn’t succeed in scaring the Iranian team away from a preliminary deal, but they did attract enough support from Democrats to be able to negotiate concessions from the White House regarding congressional approval. President Barack Obama promised to abide by a bipartisan bill that would allow Congress to vote on any agreement reached; however, Congress would be unlikely to win enough votes to scuttle a deal with Iran, according to the New York Times.

In this article, we look at other intricacies of the U.S.-Iran negotiations that business professionals can apply to their own deal making: the search for a common language and the use of deadlines.
Finding a common language

In the halls of Lausanne, Switzerland’s Beau-Rivage Palace hotel, where the final round of negotiations took place, the U.S. negotiators spoke “in a wonderfully American way, about numbers and limits,” writes David E. Sanger in the New York Times. Meanwhile, in their media briefings, the Iranian officials “waved away” questions about numbers, instead talking almost exclusively about broader issues, namely “preserving respect for their rights and Iran’s sense of sovereignty,” according to Sanger.

The negotiators’ different preoccupations reflected the concerns of their superiors and constituents. The Iranian negotiators were eager to avoid committing to specific concessions—such as how much nuclear fuel they would either give to the Russians or dilute—that they knew officials, including Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, would not accept. The U.S. negotiators, meanwhile, fought for the firm numbers they knew Congress would demand and expect. “We are all about quantifiables,” one senior American negotiator told Sanger. “They are all about symbolism, about avoiding the optics of backing down.”

If the negotiations were vastly complicated by the expectations and demands of interested parties, they were insulated by the productive working relationship that developed among the major players, including U.S. secretary of state John Kerry, U.S. energy secretary Ernest J. Moniz, and Iranian foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif. Staying on message in their sound bites to the press, the negotiators found a way to brainstorm proposals without attracting outside criticism: They scrawled them on a whiteboard that could be easily wiped clean—what one White House official called “a brilliantly low-tech solution,” according to the Times.

“We are all about quantifiables. They are all about symbolism.

Eighteen months of on-and-off negotiations and numerous all-night sessions forged some degree of familiarity, if not trust, within the room. The fact that Zarif is U.S. educated and lived in the States for many years seems to have helped. Zarif even used the language of his Western counterparts to describe the deal that emerged, calling it a “win-win outcome.”
In both political and business negotiations, the clamor of outside voices can make it difficult to truly hear the counterpart sitting next to you. You may have to speak your coworkers’ language back at the office, but you can still work to forge a shared vocabulary with your counterparts at the table.

Dealing with deadlines

In 2013, when Iran first promised to freeze much of its nuclear activity and to allow international inspectors to monitor its progress in exchange for loosened economic sanctions, negotiators set a timetable for talks aimed at ironing out the dizzying array of contentious issues at stake. They pushed back this timetable repeatedly, ultimately agreeing to March 31 as a deadline for a preliminary deal framework and June 30 as the deadline for a more detailed final agreement.

As the clock ticked down in Lausanne on March 31, Kerry kept his plane idling on the tarmac. He and Moniz reached Obama via videoconference and informed him that they could not meet the deadline. The Iranians were refusing to budge on final deal terms, Kerry told the president, likely because they sensed that the deadline meant a great deal to the White House and little to Tehran.

“They were turning our own deadline against us to see if we would give ground,” one senior U.S. official told the New York Times. In the face of strong Republican opposition to the negotiations, missed deadlines could weaken Obama’s hand.

Obama told Kerry and Moniz to ignore the deadline. At the same time, he made it clear that he was prepared to declare impasse and leave the sanctions in place, even without a clock ticking down. Having dismissed the deadline, the parties pushed through and were able to wrap up an agreement two days later.

Deadlines, even arbitrary ones, can be an effective negotiating tool, motivating parties to stay on track. Moreover, contrary to conventional wisdom, it’s wise to disclose any real deadline that you face on your side to the other party, as doing so makes the deadline a shared problem, University of California at Berkeley professor Don A. Moore finds in his research.

Be aware, though, that any deadline you set may later become a bargaining chip, for better or worse. If a particular deadline isn’t very important to you, and the other side wants an extension, you might agree—but insist on a concession in return. However, a deadline could backfire on you if the other side threatens to walk out if it isn’t met.

Two final notes on deadlines: First, intense deadline pressure can make parties tense, emotional, and prone to erratic decision making. For that reason, try to set reasonable deadlines that give you plenty of time to create rapport, build consensus, and other essential steps. Second, avoid advertising your deadline widely. If you need to blow past it, observers (such as your competitors or the media) could view this decision as an indication that talks aren’t going well.

From the start, the negotiations were precarious. In late 2013, Iran agreed to temporarily freeze portions of its nuclear program and to negotiate a more comprehensive nuclear dismantlement with the United States, Russia, China, France, Germany, and Great Britain in exchange for reduced economic sanctions. The negotiations proceeded in fits and starts over the next 18 months, with the United States ultimately taking on the role of lead negotiator with Iran after a year of secret bilateral talks.

For 36 years, relations between the United States and Iran have been characterized by animosity, distrust, and conflict. Yet on April 2, the two nations were able to announce that they had reached a preliminary agreement on key issues that all parties involved could accept. The failures and successes of the preliminary deal, from which negotiators aimed to build a more comprehensive deal by June 30, offer numerous lessons to negotiators.

In our last issue, we examined the influence of potential deal spoilers in negotiation, as reflected by Republican senators’ opposition to the negotiations with Iran. Congressional Republicans didn’t succeed in scaring the Iranian team away from a preliminary deal, but they did attract enough support from Democrats to be able to negotiate concessions from the White House regarding congressional approval. President Barack Obama promised to abide by a bipartisan bill that would allow Congress to vote on any agreement reached; however, Congress would be unlikely to win enough votes to scuttle a deal with Iran, according to the New York Times.

In this article, we look at other intricacies of the U.S.-Iran negotiations that business professionals can apply to their own deal making: the search for a common language and the use of deadlines.
Finding a common language

In the halls of Lausanne, Switzerland’s Beau-Rivage Palace hotel, where the final round of negotiations took place, the U.S. negotiators spoke “in a wonderfully American way, about numbers and limits,” writes David E. Sanger in the New York Times. Meanwhile, in their media briefings, the Iranian officials “waved away” questions about numbers, instead talking almost exclusively about broader issues, namely “preserving respect for their rights and Iran’s sense of sovereignty,” according to Sanger.

The negotiators’ different preoccupations reflected the concerns of their superiors and constituents. The Iranian negotiators were eager to avoid committing to specific concessions—such as how much nuclear fuel they would either give to the Russians or dilute—that they knew officials, including Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, would not accept. The U.S. negotiators, meanwhile, fought for the firm numbers they knew Congress would demand and expect. “We are all about quantifiables,” one senior American negotiator told Sanger. “They are all about symbolism, about avoiding the optics of backing down.”

If the negotiations were vastly complicated by the expectations and demands of interested parties, they were insulated by the productive working relationship that developed among the major players, including U.S. secretary of state John Kerry, U.S. energy secretary Ernest J. Moniz, and Iranian foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif. Staying on message in their sound bites to the press, the negotiators found a way to brainstorm proposals without attracting outside criticism: They scrawled them on a whiteboard that could be easily wiped clean—what one White House official called “a brilliantly low-tech solution,” according to the Times.

“We are all about quantifiables. They are all about symbolism.

Eighteen months of on-and-off negotiations and numerous all-night sessions forged some degree of familiarity, if not trust, within the room. The fact that Zarif is U.S. educated and lived in the States for many years seems to have helped. Zarif even used the language of his Western counterparts to describe the deal that emerged, calling it a “win-win outcome.”
In both political and business negotiations, the clamor of outside voices can make it difficult to truly hear the counterpart sitting next to you. You may have to speak your coworkers’ language back at the office, but you can still work to forge a shared vocabulary with your counterparts at the table.

Dealing with deadlines

In 2013, when Iran first promised to freeze much of its nuclear activity and to allow international inspectors to monitor its progress in exchange for loosened economic sanctions, negotiators set a timetable for talks aimed at ironing out the dizzying array of contentious issues at stake. They pushed back this timetable repeatedly, ultimately agreeing to March 31 as a deadline for a preliminary deal framework and June 30 as the deadline for a more detailed final agreement.

As the clock ticked down in Lausanne on March 31, Kerry kept his plane idling on the tarmac. He and Moniz reached Obama via videoconference and informed him that they could not meet the deadline. The Iranians were refusing to budge on final deal terms, Kerry told the president, likely because they sensed that the deadline meant a great deal to the White House and little to Tehran.

“They were turning our own deadline against us to see if we would give ground,” one senior U.S. official told the New York Times. In the face of strong Republican opposition to the negotiations, missed deadlines could weaken Obama’s hand.

Obama told Kerry and Moniz to ignore the deadline. At the same time, he made it clear that he was prepared to declare impasse and leave the sanctions in place, even without a clock ticking down. Having dismissed the deadline, the parties pushed through and were able to wrap up an agreement two days later.

Deadlines, even arbitrary ones, can be an effective negotiating tool, motivating parties to stay on track. Moreover, contrary to conventional wisdom, it’s wise to disclose any real deadline that you face on your side to the other party, as doing so makes the deadline a shared problem, University of California at Berkeley professor Don A. Moore finds in his research.

Be aware, though, that any deadline you set may later become a bargaining chip, for better or worse. If a particular deadline isn’t very important to you, and the other side wants an extension, you might agree—but insist on a concession in return. However, a deadline could backfire on you if the other side threatens to walk out if it isn’t met.

Two final notes on deadlines: First, intense deadline pressure can make parties tense, emotional, and prone to erratic decision making. For that reason, try to set reasonable deadlines that give you plenty of time to create rapport, build consensus, and other essential steps. Second, avoid advertising your deadline widely. If you need to blow past it, observers (such as your competitors or the media) could view this decision as an indication that talks aren’t going well.

The buzz of excitement that arose in February at the news that Harper Lee, author of the beloved novel To Kill a Mockingbird, would be publishing a second novel quickly turned to concern. The 88-year-old Lee, who suffered a stroke in 2007 and resides in an assisted-living facility in her hometown of Monroeville, Alabama, long ago turned her back on fame and expressed no further literary ambitions. Had she truly sanctioned the publication of the newly rediscovered novel, written more than 50 years ago, or were her publisher and others with a financial stake in the deal taking advantage of her?

Though ultimately no evidence of elder abuse was unearthed, the unsettling situation serves as a reminder that negotiators risk sacrificing their ethical standards and reputation when entering into talks with counterparts who may lack the ability to negotiate on their own behalf. More broadly, when you are the more powerful party in a negotiation—or even just perceived as more powerful—you need to take special precautions to ensure that you treat the other side fairly.

A surprising discovery—and an about-face

Upon its publication in 1960, To Kill a Mockingbird became one of the great American novels almost overnight; it won a Pulitzer Prize, was adapted into a popular film, and has gone on to sell more than 40 million copies worldwide. Overwhelmed by her sudden celebrity status, Lee largely retreated from public life, telling friends she had said all she needed to say in a single book and felt no need to express herself further.

Then, this past February, Lee’s publisher, Harper (a HarperCollins imprint), announced that it would be publishing a novel Lee had completed in the mid-1950s. Back then, Lee’s editor had rejected the novel, Go Set a Watchman, but asked her to expand some of its flashbacks, a writing assignment that grew into To Kill a Mockingbird. Lee reportedly believed that the manuscript of her first novel had been lost or destroyed. But her friend and lawyer, Tonja B. Carter, discovered Go Set a Watchman in Lee’s archives in the fall of 2014, according to the New York Times.

In a statement that Carter sent to Lee’s publisher, Lee reportedly said she at first resisted the idea of publishing the novel, unsure of its merit, but changed her mind after sharing it with a few people close to her and receiving positive feedback. The novel picks up with members of the Finch family, beloved characters from To Kill a Mockingbird, 20 years after the events of Lee’s famous work unfolded. Go Set a Watchman is due to be released on July 14 with an initial print run of two million copies. The deal reportedly was negotiated between Carter, Lee’s agent, and Michael Morrison, the president and publisher of HarperCollins.

Celebration and controversy

What had seemed like the publishing coup of the decade turned into a public controversy, with a raft of media reports questioning whether Harper executives had been overzealous in their pursuit of a new Harper Lee novel.

Lee’s friends and acquaintances have offered conflicting assessments of her mental state; some say she is sharp and lively, while others portray her as confused and lacking a short-term memory. In a 2011 letter, Lee’s sister and close companion, Alice Lee, who died last fall, wrote to a neighbor that her sister “can’t see and can’t hear and will sign anything put before her by anyone in whom she has confidence,” according to the Times.

As a result, some observers were skeptical that the statements Harper Lee reportedly made about deciding to publish Go Set a Watchman had originated with her and expressed doubt that she had been closely involved in the book negotiations. A senior vice president at Harper said the company had not spoken directly to Lee about the book but negotiated exclusively with Carter and Lee’s literary agent, typical practice in the publishing world. HarperCollins executives said they visited Lee soon after announcing the new book and had a pleasant conversation with her about their publication plans.

One doctor who knew Lee but was not her personal physician asked the State of Alabama to investigate whether the writer had been capable of consenting to the book’s publication. That investigation concluded in April, with officials saying they had found no evidence of elder abuse or neglect. One investigator said that Lee “has opinions and seems to be aware of what is going on with her book and the book deal.”

The question of whether Harper Lee’s publisher and others took advantage of her seems to be a closed case. But the author’s poor health, and the fact that the release of Go Set a Watchman is at odds with her long-held attitudes, continues to cast a pall over the book’s impending publication and raises the question of whether the negotiations should have been handled differently.

The dark side of power in negotiation

Power is often portrayed as an unmitigated boon to negotiation. Powerful negotiators have an advantage at the bargaining table relative to their weaker counterparts. The powerful tend to be more confident, make fewer concessions, and get better deals.

Yet there can be a dark side to power in negotiation. To begin with, the confidence that accompanies power can lead to overconfidence, which in turn can cause powerful negotiators to overlook the importance of preparation and research. Relatedly, the powerful tend to fall back on cognitive shortcuts that lead them to misjudge the interests of their less-powerful counterparts, professors Elizabeth Mannix of Cornell University and Margaret Neale of Stanford University have found in their research.

In addition, people who are primed to feel powerful can have difficulty taking others’ perspectives. People experiencing power, even if only temporarily, tend to focus on themselves and consequently can be less empathetic than others, Nathanael J. Fast, Deborah H. Gruenfeld, Niro Sivanathan, and Adam D. Galinsky found in one study.

It’s easy to see how the simplistic thinking, self-focus, and confidence that can accompany power could lead negotiators to distort a weak or vulnerable party’s interests to their own advantage. For example, Harper Lee’s publisher, agent, and lawyer had strong financial incentives to assume Lee would be receptive to the publication of her newly discovered novel—and to overlook the fact that she had chosen long ago, in her literary prime, not to publish it.

Power, agents, and conflicts of interest

Through a process known as ethical fading, business negotiators may come to view a decision as a “business decision” rather than an “ethical decision,” according to Notre Dame University professor Ann E. Tenbrunsel and psychologist David Messick. When we scrub the ethical dimensions of our decisions in this manner, we increase our odds of behaving unethically. Lee’s publisher may have fallen into this trap, judging by the fact that it apparently did not try to communicate directly with Lee during negotiations over her manuscript.

Complicating matters, when decision makers have a motivation (whether financial or otherwise) to interpret data in a particular way, they have difficulty approaching the situation without bias, write Harvard Business School professor Max H. Bazerman and Tenbrunsel in their book Blind Spots: Why We Fail to Do What’s Right and What to Do about It (Princeton University Press, 2011). As a result, negotiators may make decisions that violate their personal moral code—perhaps without their conscious realization.

To take one example, during the housing bubble of the 2000s, major credit-rating agencies such as Standard & Poor’s, Moody’s, and Fitch routinely gave AAA ratings (the highest-possible rating) to issuers of highly risky mortgage-backed securities—the “toxic assets” whose collapse triggered the 2008 financial crisis. The agencies’ objectivity was compromised by the fact that they were paid by the very organizations they were hired to rate—the same type of conflict of interest that has infected the U.S. auditing industry, according to Bazerman and Tenbrunsel.

Such conflicts of interest are especially common in industries where agents negotiate on behalf of their clients, such as real estate, law, banking, entertainment, and publishing. An agent’s financial interests are almost never perfectly aligned with those of her client. As a result, clients who are in a weak or compromised state are particularly vulnerable to being taken advantage of by their agents, who may have difficulty reining in their de facto power.

Due diligence for powerful negotiators

It’s not just those who deliberately prey on the powerless who risk damaging their professional reputations or being sued. All of us need to remain aware of the potential pitfalls of being the more powerful party in a negotiation, especially because people tend to hold the powerful to higher ethical and moral standards. In their research, Tenbrunsel and Messick found that participants viewed a powerful person who reneged on a contract to be more unethical than a less powerful person who did the same.

Thus, as your power increases, you can expect your actions to face greater scrutiny—including from the legal system. To protect weak parties in negotiations, the courts sometimes second-guess deal terms that appear onerous, read additional terms into the deal that favor the weaker party, and impose procedural constraints that prevent the stronger party from abusing its bargaining power, says Harvard Business School and Harvard Law School professor Guhan Subramanian.

How can you improve your odds of behaving ethically? Whether you expect to be the stronger or weaker party in a negotiation, it’s always wise to gather as much knowledge as you can about the issues and parties involved in advance. Here are some questions you should try to answer:

• Does the other party have vulnerabilities (whether mental, emotional, physical, financial, etc.) that could put him—and your reputation—at risk in a negotiation? If so, check whether safeguards are in place to protect him. If there aren’t, try to create such safeguards yourself.
• If a potentially vulnerable counterpart is working through an agent, will the agent allow you to communicate directly with her client? An agent may have good reasons for shielding her client—for example, if the client is a child or is incapacitated. On the other hand, an agent who insists on keeping her client walled off from you could be trying to hide unethical behavior. By researching the agent’s background and reputation, you may be able to determine whether her expressed concern for her client is legitimate.
• What particular laws, legal rules, and ethical guidelines should you be aware of as you prepare to negotiate with a weaker party? Consult with your attorney and with third parties who have no stake in the negotiation for advice.

Being the more powerful party in a negotiation doesn’t mean you have to treat your counterpart with kid gloves. But it does mean that you have a special responsibility to ensure that both you and the other party are protected from undue risk.