Imagine you’re about to step into a negotiation. What your counterpart doesn’t know is that the stakes feel unusually high because of pressures you’re managing behind the scenes. Perhaps your organization is struggling financially and desperately needs some relief to stay afloat. Or maybe you’re preparing to request a raise to help cover unexpected medical expenses your family is facing. These private challenges can heighten your stress and shape the way you approach the conversation long before you sit down at the table.

Should you disclose these difficulties to your counterpart? On the one hand, conventional wisdom suggests that exposing your weakness will motivate the other party to try to take advantage of you. If you reveal to a customer that you are having difficulty staying afloat financially, for example, he could use this knowledge to try to extract severe concessions from you. On the other hand, your adverse circumstances could trigger the other party’s sympathy and inspire him to help you get a better deal.

The former theory assumes that negotiators will respond strategically to an exposed weakness; the latter assumes they will respond emotionally. Which is the case? In five experiments, Aiwa Shirako and Gavin J. Kilduff of New York University, and Laura J. Kray of the University of California, Berkeley, find that emotion tends to carry the day in such situations. Revealing hidden needs and vulnerabilities can be more beneficial—often to both parties in a negotiation—than other types of justifications for requests and concessions, their studies show. Here we look at the results in detail and suggest what they could mean for your negotiations.

When dealing with difficult situations leads to success in negotiations

In one of Shirako and colleagues’ experiments, pairs of MBA students engaged in a simulated negotiation of the sale of a gas station to an oil company. The simulation was set up such that the parties would be unable to reach a mutually beneficial agreement based on price alone: The service-station owner would need more money to cover expenses than the executive for the oil company was authorized to spend. But by sharing information about dealing with difficult situations—namely, that the service-station owner would need a job soon, and the oil executive was looking for skilled managers—the parties had the potential to create value and reach a mutually beneficial agreement. Those playing the role of the service-station owner were also told that their spouse was suffering emotionally from working long hours at the station, information that those playing the oil executive did not have.

In the study, some of those playing the role of the service-station owner chose to reveal the information about their spouse to their negotiating partner. Those who did were much more likely than those who did not to reach an integrative deal—that is, one that met both the buyer’s and the seller’s interests. By contrast, when participants did not reveal this information, the parties were much more likely to reach an impasse. In addition, when the service-station owner provided rational rather than emotional appeals, such as “I have a loyal customer base,” pairs were much less likely to find common ground. Sharing information about their vulnerability appeared to trigger the other side’s sympathy and motivated them to be more willing to try to reach a deal.

In another experiment, undergraduate business students paired up for a simulated job-offer negotiation. Some in the role of job candidate were explicitly told to appeal to the recruiter’s sense of sympathy by mentioning that they were dealing with difficult situations, namely that they have lots of college loans to pay off, their mother is very ill, and the family is struggling to pay her hospital bills. Others playing the job candidate were instead told to use rational arguments to make their case and not to appeal to the recruiter’s sympathy, lest they seem manipulative.

Candidates who made appeals to sympathy claimed more value for themselves than their recruiter did, while those who issued rational appeals did worse than their recruiter. Recruiters claimed a similar amount of value across the two conditions, and after the negotiation, they liked the candidates who made emotional appeals just as well as those who made rational appeals, suggesting that referencing one’s weaknesses wasn’t viewed as manipulative.

Emotional versus fairness appeals

Rational and emotional appeals aren’t the only types of justification we can use to support our demands and requests in negotiation. We also can appeal to a counterpart’s sense of fairness. If you are dissolving a business with your partner, for example, you might make the argument that it’s only fair for you to get a greater percentage of the assets because you contributed more financially over the life of the partnership.

Which would be more effective, an appeal to fairness or an appeal to sympathy? Shirako, Kilduff, and Kray considered this question in another experiment, in which participants were asked to imagine that they were a supervisor considering an employee’s request for a raise. The participants were presented with one of the following three appeals from the hypothetical candidate and then asked to recommend a raise on a range from 0% to 6%:

• Emotional appeal: “My mother is in the hospital with a terminal illness, and I am struggling to pay the bills.”
• Rational appeal: “I have overseen the success of many of our most profitable deals over the past few months.”
• Appeal to fairness: “Employees with records similar to mine have been granted raises as recently as last month.”

Although fairness appeals were more successful than rational appeals, emotional appeals were the most successful of all, resulting in the highest raises granted.

Weakness and the powerful

It might not be difficult for a negotiator to feel sympathetic to the appeals of someone who seems relatively powerless. But should the powerful also call on a counterpart’s sympathy when facing a legitimate hardship?

Perhaps, but here it’s important to tread with caution. In a final study, conducted online, Shirako and colleagues asked participants to imagine that they were the CEO of a digital-marketing company and that a client had come back to ask for a discount on a marketing campaign that had been previously negotiated. When the client said that it was struggling financially and feeling vulnerable, participants gave similar discounts regardless of whether the client was said to be a large, powerful firm or a small, relatively powerless one. (And here, again, emotional appeals were more successful than rational ones.)

Afterward, however, participants reported liking and trusting the powerless counterparts more than the powerful counterparts. This was the case because they viewed the emotional appeals of the powerful to be more manipulative and less professional than the appeals of those with low power.

Thus, although powerful negotiators may be able to elicit concessions by appealing to the other party’s sympathy, they might harm the relationship in the long run by doing so.

Dealing with difficult situations in negotiations: Summing it up

Overall, these research findings on the role of sympathy in negotiation suggest that revelations of vulnerability and dealing with difficult situations from a counterpart who is believed to have relatively little power can trigger sympathy in negotiators, a reaction that leads them to behave more generously and collaboratively. Powerful parties, however, may gain more in the long term from appealing to their counterpart’s sense of fairness or issuing strictly data-based justifications for their requests because sympathy appeals could have a backlash effect. Thus, the degree to which you expose such vulnerabilities may depend on your level of power in the relationship. As always in negotiation, context matters.

Two final notes. First, you might use sympathy appeals alongside appeals to rationality and fairness. The results described here should be applied with caution, as past research has found both rationality and fairness appeals to be effective. They remain highly compelling strategies that should not be overlooked.

Second, don’t exaggerate or manufacture vulnerabilities in a play for a counterpart’s sympathy. Doing so would not only violate moral codes but also threaten your relationship with the other party and your reputation as an honest negotiator.

Have you appealed to a counterparts sense of sympathy in negotiations when you were dealing with difficult situations?

Vividness bias is the tendency to overweight the vivid and prestigious attributes of a decision, such as salary or an employer’s status, and underweight less impressive issues, such as location or rapport with colleagues. Let’s talk about a clear vividness bias example from 2015 in Major League Baseball.

For the New York Mets, it was hard not to get carried away in their negotiations with Ben Zobrist back in 2015. The utility player had a pivotal role in helping the Kansas City Royals defeat the Mets and win the 2015 World Series. When the 34-year-old Zobrist became a free agent, the Mets pursued him as their top target.

Mets manager Terry Collins offered Zobrist a competitive salary, reportedly about $60 million over four years, and told him point-blank, “We want you,” according to the New York Times. The Mets were confident that Zobrist would be equally enthused. But as the negotiations dragged on, the Mets grew nervous, particularly because they had failed to cultivate an appealing backup plan in the event that another team lured Zobrist away.

On December 8, the Mets’ fears were realized. At the Major League Baseball winter meetings in Nashville, Tennessee, the Chicago Cubs swooped in to sign Zobrist to a four-year, $56 million deal. Why the Cubs? Zobrist and his family had made a home in Nashville, and the commute to Chicago would be better than the one to New York. In addition, Zobrist had a strong relationship with Cubs manager Joe Maddon, forged during the years they worked for the Tampa Bay Rays. Not to mention, Zobrist could try to help the Cubs win their first World Series in more than 100 years.

“I don’t think this was about the money,” Mets assistant general manager John Ricco told the press, citing Zobrist’s history with Maddon and New York’s distance from Nashville. “I think it was about finding a place that fit.”

Unlike Ben Zobrist, when negotiating for a job, most of us tend to focus single-mindedly on the high-status aspects of our offers, such as an impressive salary or a position with a prestigious organization. Harvard Business School professor Max H. Bazerman has noted that when he overhears graduating MBA students discussing job offers at the student center, they typically talk about starting salaries and mention the names of well-known firms. Less often does he hear them discussing the types of less flashy factors that Zobrist and his wife appear to have considered when weighing his options, such as the length of a commute and rapport with a key colleague.

Why not? Because job seekers, like all negotiators, tend to fall prey to the vividness bias, or the tendency to overweight the vivid and prestigious attributes of a decision, such as salary or an employer’s status, and underweight less impressive issues, such as location or rapport with colleagues, that could have an even more profound effect on them. The vividness bias is deeply rooted in our concerns about status. When we focus on vivid data to the exclusion of issues we would value more upon greater reflection, we are privileging other people’s ideas of what brings satisfaction above our own.

More broadly, research shows that vivid information has a greater influence on negotiators and other decision-makers than less interesting data. The vividness bias can lead us to believe we deserve more of a scarce resource than others do because our needs are more salient to us than theirs are, for example.

Putting vivid data in its place and overcoming vividness bias

The following three guidelines can help you overcome the vividness bias in your next important negotiation:

1. Decide what you value upfront. The less prepared we are for a negotiation, the more distracted we will be by vivid data. To avoid this trap, spend ample time thinking about what you value most before What are your professional and personal goals for the years ahead? What path should you be on to meet them? What sacrifices might you be willing to make to attain them? For Zobrist, this likely meant engaging in family discussions about priorities and logistics. When you arrive at the bargaining table with clear goals, you will be better equipped to appropriately weight—and perhaps discount—vivid data.
2. Choose the right comparison group. It’s human nature to compare ourselves to others and feel we’re falling short. Negotiators often make unrealistic social comparisons, measuring themselves against those who have what they want rather than those who are more similar to them, according to Harvard Kennedy School professor Iris Bohnet. By keeping us focused on vivid information, such unrealistic comparisons can lead to impasse, as in the case of a home seller who aims to get as much as a friend got for her larger house. Often experts, such as appraisers, can help us view the situation with less bias.
3. Make vivid claims with care. When it is ethical to do so, you might consider making your own case more persuasive in negotiation by drawing a counterpart’s attention toward previously hidden positive attributes of your argument that would benefit him. Wise negotiators use visuals and other vivid tools to harness the intuitive impact of vividness to both sides’ advantage.

We’ve all had vividness bias at one point or another. Do you think it has helped or harmed your negotiations?

Selling a business can be an emotional, complicated process. The more you know about your organization and how it fits into the world around you, the better off you will be in the negotiation process. By taking a data-driven approach, you will remove some of the stress and emotion of a sale while signaling your preparation and value to would-be buyers. In this week’s Dear Negotiation Coach, Michael Luca, Lee J. Styslinger III Associate Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School answers a question about selling a business.

Q: I have been running a small restaurant for 10 years. The business is both my work and my passion. However, my family and I are relocating out of state, so I am looking to sell. Our financials are pretty good, and we have a great set of suppliers. But I want buyers to know how loyal our customers are, and I am having trouble finding ways to show this. Any advice for using and finding data when selling a business?

ANSWER

A: As you’ve surmised, financial statements are just one small piece of the puzzle when you want to demonstrate the quality of an asset you are trying to sell when selling a business. The last decade has witnessed a growth of data that far exceeds anything we have ever seen before. This abundance presents businesses with new challenges as well as new opportunities. When you are trying to sell, these issues are front and center.

In my research and work with businesses ranging from large tech companies seeking to better understand their customers to cities that want to take measure of the local economy, I have found that new data sources can be an extremely powerful way for organizations to understand and demonstrate the value they create.

In your situation, it makes sense to take the following three steps when selling a business:

1. Do a data audit. Your financial statements are a great place to start when selling a business. But if you look around you, you will find that you are surrounded by interesting ways to quantify your business. Begin by writing down the various data you have already accumulated internally. What percentage of your customers visits the restaurant repeatedly, and how often? What percentage book reservations online? Do you have treasured comment cards or employee-satisfaction forms that you could share with would-be buyers? In addition to demonstrating your value, this data will signal that you are prepared for and serious about the upcoming negotiations. It also helps buyers focus on what they will need to know in the event they purchase the restaurant.
2. Know and manage your online reputation. Aside from the data you carry in-house, a much broader array of data is sitting on the Internet. Do an external data audit before selling a business, focusing on ways to measure and manage your online reputation. Start by looking up your restaurant’s reviews on Yelp, TripAdvisor, and other online platforms. Go beyond your average rating and dig into the details. This will give you valuable customer opinions to share with would-be buyers and insights into exactly what is motivating customers to keep coming back.
3. Understand the competitive landscape. It’s one thing to know about your own business. When it comes time to sell, it’s equally important to know about other businesses in the area. Imagine that during your haggling, a potential buyer says, “There are plenty of other restaurants I can go after, or I could simply start my own.” You should be armed with data on your nearby competition, including how many other restaurants there are and how they are doing. You could even check in with your local government to see what records are available about businesses in your area. And as a restaurant owner, you know how hard it is to build a business from scratch. Be prepared to explain this, as well as the value you bring to the table (pun intended!) through your established business and reputation.

Michael Luca
Lee J. Styslinger III Associate Professor of Business Administration
Harvard Business School.

Fellow negotiators, what other advice would you offer to this business owner when selling a business? Leave a comment below.

QUESTION

Q: I have been running a small restaurant for 10 years. The business is both my work and my passion. However, my family and I are relocating out of state, so I am looking to sell. Our financials are pretty good, and we have a great set of suppliers. But I want buyers to know how loyal our customers are, and I am having trouble finding ways to show this. Any advice?

ANSWER

A: I have the sense that silence can sometimes be useful, but it usually just makes me feel uncomfortable. Does silence have benefits in negotiation?

I have been running a small restaurant for 10 years. The business is both my work and my passion. However, my family and I are relocating out of state, so I am looking to sell. Our financials are pretty good, and we have a great set of suppliers. But I want buyers to know how loyal our customers are, and I am having trouble finding ways to show this. Any advice?

As you’ve surmised, financial statements are just one small piece of the puzzle when you want to demonstrate the quality of an asset you are trying to sell. The last decade has witnessed a growth of data that far exceeds anything we have ever seen before. This abundance presents businesses with new challenges as well as new opportunities. When you are trying to sell, these issues are front and center.

In my research and work with businesses ranging from large tech companies seeking to better understand their customers to cities that want to take measure of the local economy, I have found that new data sources can be an extremely powerful way for organizations to understand and demonstrate the value they create.

In your situation, it makes sense to take the following three steps:

1. Do a data audit. Your financial statements are a great place to start. But if you look around you, you will find that you are surrounded by interesting ways to quantify your business. Begin by writing down the various data you have already accumulated internally. What percentage of your customers visits the restaurant repeatedly, and how often? What percentage books reservations online? Do you have treasured comment cards or employee-satisfaction forms that you could share with would-be buyers? In addition to demonstrating your value, this data will signal that you are prepared for and serious about the upcoming negotiations. It also helps buyers focus on what they will need to know in the event they purchase the restaurant.
2. Know and manage your online reputation. Aside from the data you carry in-house, a much broader array of data is sitting on the Internet. Do an external data audit, focusing on ways to measure and manage your online reputation. Start by looking up your restaurant’s reviews on Yelp, TripAdvisor, and other online platforms. Go beyond your average rating and dig into the details. This will give you valuable customer opinions to share with would-be buyers and insights into exactly what is motivating customers to keep coming back.
3. Understand the competitive landscape. It’s one thing to know about your own business. When it comes time to sell, it’s equally important to know about other businesses in the area. Imagine that during your haggling, a potential buyer says, “There are plenty of other restaurants I can go after, or I could simply start my own.” You should be armed with data on your nearby competition, including how many other restaurants there are and how they are doing. You could even check in with your local government to see what records are available about businesses in your area. And as a restaurant owner, you know how hard it is to build a business from scratch. Be prepared to explain this, as well as the value you bring to the table (pun intended!) through your established business and reputation.

In sum, selling a business can be an emotional, complicated process. The more you know about your organization and how it fits into the world around you, the better off you will be in the negotiation process. By taking a data-driven approach, you will remove some of the stress and emotion of a sale while signaling your preparation and value to would-be buyers.

Michael Luca

Assistant Professor

Harvard Business School

In September 2014, a Chinese court found the British pharmaceutical firm GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) guilty of bribing government officials, hospital officials, and doctors to sell more drugs at higher prices, according to the Wall Street Journal. The court fined the company nearly $500 million and convicted five of GSK’s managers, including its former top executive in China, all of whom received suspended prison sentences. GSK admitted to the wrongdoing and issued a public apology to the people of China for the illegal activities.

A new negotiation study by Yu Yang (ShanghaiTech University), David De Cremer (University of Cambridge), and Chao Wang (University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign) published in the Journal of Business Ethics suggests what cross-cultural negotiators can learn from such stories and how they can maintain high ethical standards.

Shifting moral codes

A culture’s values, systems, and regulations have a strong impact on the moral code that individual negotiators adopt and how ethically they behave at the bargaining table. But when negotiating in another culture, do our moral standards shift based on what we view to be appropriate in that culture?

To answer this question, Yang and his colleagues recruited about 400 American and 400 Chinese participants, the large majority of them college educated and employed, for an online study. Participants from both cultures were randomly assigned to one of two conditions: intercultural or intracultural.

American participants in the intercultural condition were asked to imagine that they represented a heavy-equipment manufacturer and were about to lead a high-stakes negotiation to sell some expensive excavators to a Chinese company located in Hunan, China. Chinese participants were told that they represented a Chinese company looking to sell excavators to an American company based in Illinois. By contrast, participants in the intracultural condition (both American and Chinese) were given the same scenario but asked to imagine that they would be trying to sell the excavators to a company based near them in their own country.

Next, all participants were asked to report their likelihood of using a variety of ethically questionable tactics in the hypothetical negotiation, including issuing extreme demands, making false promises, misrepresenting information, and paying others for privileged information.

The results? Whether participants were contemplating an intercultural or intracultural negotiation, Chinese participants reported being significantly more likely to use ethically questionable tactics than did American participants. However, American participants said they would be significantly more likely to use questionable tactics when negotiating with a Chinese company than when negotiating with an American company. In addition, Chinese participants said they were marginally less likely to use ethically questionable tactics when dealing with an American company rather than a Chinese one. That is, the gap between negotiators’ anticipated ethicality narrowed when Americans and Chinese were considering negotiating with each other.

Raising our standards

The results confirm past findings that Chinese people tend to be more accepting of ethically questionable negotiating tactics than Americans. Researchers have attributed such cultural differences in great part to public-sector corruption in China, which may signal that bribery and other forms of unethical business practices are permissible.

In societies where corruption is widespread, outsiders (such as a Western pharmaceutical firm negotiating in China) may believe they have more leeway to behave unethically than they do in their home country. Conversely, negotiators from a country such as China may feel a stronger motivation to behave ethically when negotiating in a country such as the United States, where unlawful activities are believed to be more strictly punished.

As negotiators, we need to be wary of the tendency for our perceptions of our environment to affect our moral code. We may feel tempted to relax our ethical standards based on stereotypes that don’t apply to a particular situation. In addition, negotiators from cultures with a reputation (whether deserved or not) for corruption should try to counteract such stereotypes by being positive cultural ambassadors and holding themselves to high ethical standards.

Resource: “How Ethically Would Americans and Chinese Negotiate? The Effect of Intra-cultural Versus Inter-cultural Negotiations,” by Yu Yang, David De Cremer, and Chao Wang, Journal of Business Ethics, 2015.

In September 2014, a Chinese court found the British pharmaceutical firm GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) guilty of bribing government officials, hospital officials, and doctors to sell more drugs at higher prices, according to the Wall Street Journal. The court fined the company nearly $500 million and convicted five of GSK’s managers, including its former top executive in China, all of whom received suspended prison sentences. GSK admitted to the wrongdoing and issued a public apology to the people of China for the illegal activities.

A new negotiation study by Yu Yang (ShanghaiTech University), David De Cremer (University of Cambridge), and Chao Wang (University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign) published in the Journal of Business Ethics suggests what cross-cultural negotiators can learn from such stories and how they can maintain high ethical standards.

Shifting moral codes

A culture’s values, systems, and regulations have a strong impact on the moral code that individual negotiators adopt and how ethically they behave at the bargaining table. But when negotiating in another culture, do our moral standards shift based on what we view to be appropriate in that culture?

To answer this question, Yang and his colleagues recruited about 400 American and 400 Chinese participants, the large majority of them college educated and employed, for an online study. Participants from both cultures were randomly assigned to one of two conditions: intercultural or intracultural.

American participants in the intercultural condition were asked to imagine that they represented a heavy-equipment manufacturer and were about to lead a high-stakes negotiation to sell some expensive excavators to a Chinese company located in Hunan, China. Chinese participants were told that they represented a Chinese company looking to sell excavators to an American company based in Illinois. By contrast, participants in the intracultural condition (both American and Chinese) were given the same scenario but asked to imagine that they would be trying to sell the excavators to a company based near them in their own country.

Next, all participants were asked to report their likelihood of using a variety of ethically questionable tactics in the hypothetical negotiation, including issuing extreme demands, making false promises, misrepresenting information, and paying others for privileged information.

The results? Whether participants were contemplating an intercultural or intracultural negotiation, Chinese participants reported being significantly more likely to use ethically questionable tactics than did American participants. However, American participants said they would be significantly more likely to use questionable tactics when negotiating with a Chinese company than when negotiating with an American company. In addition, Chinese participants said they were marginally less likely to use ethically questionable tactics when dealing with an American company rather than a Chinese one. That is, the gap between negotiators’ anticipated ethicality narrowed when Americans and Chinese were considering negotiating with each other.

Raising our standards

The results confirm past findings that Chinese people tend to be more accepting of ethically questionable negotiating tactics than Americans. Researchers have attributed such cultural differences in great part to public-sector corruption in China, which may signal that bribery and other forms of unethical business practices are permissible.

In societies where corruption is widespread, outsiders (such as a Western pharmaceutical firm negotiating in China) may believe they have more leeway to behave unethically than they do in their home country. Conversely, negotiators from a country such as China may feel a stronger motivation to behave ethically when negotiating in a country such as the United States, where unlawful activities are believed to be more strictly punished.

As negotiators, we need to be wary of the tendency for our perceptions of our environment to affect our moral code. We may feel tempted to relax our ethical standards based on stereotypes that don’t apply to a particular situation. In addition, negotiators from cultures with a reputation (whether deserved or not) for corruption should try to counteract such stereotypes by being positive cultural ambassadors and holding themselves to high ethical standards.

Resource: “How Ethically Would Americans and Chinese Negotiate? The Effect of Intra-cultural Versus Inter-cultural Negotiations,” by Yu Yang, David De Cremer, and Chao Wang, Journal of Business Ethics, 2015.

For the New York Mets, it was hard not to get carried away in their negotiations with Ben Zobrist this past fall. The utility player had a pivotal role in helping the Kansas City Royals defeat the Mets and win the 2015 World Series. When the 34-year-old Zobrist became a free agent, the Mets pursued him as their top target.

Mets manager Terry Collins offered Zobrist a competitive salary, reportedly about $60 million over four years, and told him point-blank, “We want you,” according to the New York Times. The Mets were confident that Zobrist would be equally enthused. But as the negotiations dragged on, the Mets grew nervous, particularly because they had failed to cultivate an appealing backup plan in the event that another team lured Zobrist away.

On December 8, the Mets’ fears were realized. At the Major League Baseball winter meetings in Nashville, Tennessee, the Chicago Cubs swooped in to sign Zobrist to a four-year, $56 million deal. Why the Cubs? Zobrist and his family had made a home in Nashville, and the commute to Chicago would be better than the one to New York. In addition, Zobrist had a strong relationship with Cubs manager Joe Maddon, forged during the years they worked for the Tampa Bay Rays. Not to mention, Zobrist could try to help the Cubs win their first World Series in more than 100 years.

“I don’t think this was about the money,” Mets assistant general manager John Ricco told the press, citing Zobrist’s history with Maddon and New York’s distance from Nashville. “I think it was about finding a place that fit.”

Unlike Ben Zobrist, when negotiating for a job, most of us tend to focus single-mindedly on the high-status aspects of our offers, such as an impressive salary or a position with a prestigious organization. Harvard Business School professor Max H. Bazerman has noted that when he overhears graduating MBA students discussing job offers at the student center, they typically talk about starting salaries and mention the names of well-known firms. Less often does he hear them discussing the types of less flashy factors that Zobrist and his wife appear to have considered when weighing his options, such as the length of a commute and rapport with a key colleague.

Why not? Because job seekers, like all negotiators, tend to fall prey to the vividness bias, or the tendency to overweight the vivid and prestigious attributes of a decision, such as salary or an employer’s status, and underweight less impressive issues, such as location or rapport with colleagues, that could have an even more profound effect on them. The vividness bias is deeply rooted in our concerns about status. When we focus on vivid data to the exclusion of issues we would value more upon greater reflection, we are privileging other people’s ideas of what brings satisfaction above our own.

More broadly, research shows that vivid information has a greater influence on negotiators and other decision makers than less interesting data. The vividness bias can lead us to believe we deserve more of a scarce resource than others do because our needs are more salient to us than theirs are, for example.

Putting vivid data in its place

The following three guidelines can help you overcome the vividness bias in your next important negotiation:

• Decide what you value up front. The less prepared we are for a negotiation, the more distracted we will be by vivid data. To avoid this trap, spend ample time thinking about what you value most before What are your professional and personal goals for the years ahead? What path should you be on to meet them? What sacrifices might you be willing to make to attain them? For Zobrist, this likely meant engaging in family discussions about priorities and logistics. When you arrive at the bargaining table with clear goals, you will be better equipped to appropriately weight—and perhaps discount—vivid data.
• Choose the right comparison group. It’s human nature to compare ourselves to others and feel we’re falling short. Negotiators often make unrealistic social comparisons, measuring themselves against those who have what they want rather than those who are more similar to them, according to Harvard Kennedy School professor Iris Bohnet. By keeping us focused on vivid information, such unrealistic comparisons can lead to impasse, as in the case of a home seller who aims to get as much as a friend got for her larger house. Often experts, such as appraisers, can help us view the situation with less bias.

Make vivid claims with care. When it is ethical to do so, you might consider making your own case more persuasive in negotiation by drawing a counterpart’s attention toward previously hidden positive attributes of your argument that would benefit him. Wise negotiators use visuals and other vivid tools to harness the intuitive impact of vividness to both sides’ advantage.

Imagine that you are about to enter into a negotiation. Unbeknown to your counterpart, the stakes are particularly high because of difficulties you are suffering behind the scenes. Maybe your organization is struggling financially and needs a break to stay in the black. Or you are planning to ask for a raise to help cover some unforeseen medical bills your family is facing.

Should you disclose these difficulties to your counterpart? On the one hand, conventional wisdom suggests that exposing your weakness will motivate the other party to try to take advantage of you. If you reveal to a customer that you are having difficulty staying afloat financially, for example, he could use this knowledge to try to extract severe concessions from you. On the other hand, your adverse circumstances could trigger the other party’s sympathy and inspire him to help you get a better deal.

The former theory assumes that negotiators will respond strategically to an exposed weakness; the latter assumes they will respond emotionally. Which is the case? In five new experiments, Aiwa Shirako and Laura J. Kray of the University of California, Berkeley, and Gavin J. Kilduff of New York University find that emotion tends to carry the day in such situations. Revealing hidden needs and vulnerabilities can be more beneficial—often to both parties in a negotiation—than other types of justifications for requests and concessions, their studies show. Here we look at the results in detail and suggest what they could mean for your negotiations.

When vulnerability leads to success

In one of Shirako and colleagues’ experiments, pairs of MBA students engaged in a simulated negotiation of the sale of a gas station to an oil company. The simulation was set up such that the parties would be unable to reach a mutually beneficial agreement based on price alone: The service-station owner would need more money to cover expenses than the executive for the oil company was authorized to spend. But by sharing information—namely, that the service-station owner would need a job soon, and the oil executive was looking for skilled managers—the parties had the potential to create value and reach a mutually beneficial agreement. Those playing the role of the service-station owner were also told that their spouse was suffering emotionally from working long hours at the station, information that those playing the oil executive did not have.

In the study, some of those playing the role of the service-station owner chose to reveal the information about their spouse to their negotiating partner. Those who did were much more likely than those who did not to reach an integrative deal—that is, one that met both the buyer’s and the seller’s interests. By contrast, when participants did not reveal this information, the parties were much more likely to reach an impasse. In addition, when the service-station owner provided rational rather than emotional appeals, such as “I have a loyal customer base,” pairs were much less likely to find common ground. Sharing information about their vulnerability appeared to trigger the other side’s sympathy and motivated them to be more willing to try to reach a deal.

In another experiment, undergraduate business students paired up for a simulated job-offer negotiation. Some in the role of job candidate were explicitly told to appeal to the recruiter’s sense of sympathy by mentioning facts about their situation, namely that they have lots of college loans to pay off, their mother is very ill, and the family is struggling to pay her hospital bills. Others playing the job candidate were instead told to use rational arguments to make their case and not to appeal to the recruiter’s sympathy, lest they seem manipulative.

Candidates who made appeals to sympathy claimed more value for themselves than their recruiter did, while those who issued rational appeals did worse than their recruiter. Recruiters claimed a similar amount of value across the two conditions, and after the negotiation, they liked the candidates who made emotional appeals just as well as those who made rational appeals, suggesting that referencing one’s weaknesses wasn’t viewed as manipulative.

Emotional versus fairness appeals

Rational and emotional appeals aren’t the only types of justification we can use to support our demands and requests in negotiation. We also can appeal to a counterpart’s sense of fairness. If you are dissolving a business with your partner, for example, you might make the argument that it’s only fair for you to get a greater percentage of the assets because you contributed more financially over the life of the partnership.

Which would be more effective, an appeal to fairness or an appeal to sympathy? Shirako, Kilduff, and Kray considered this question in another experiment, in which participants were asked to imagine that they were a supervisor considering an employee’s request for a raise. The participants were presented with one of the following three appeals from the hypothetical candidate and then asked to recommend a raise on a range from 0% to 6%:

• Emotional appeal: “My mother is in the hospital with a terminal illness, and I am struggling to pay the bills.”
• Rational appeal: “I have overseen the success of many of our most profitable deals over the past few months.”
• Appeal to fairness: “Employees with records similar to mine have been granted raises as recently as last month.”

Although fairness appeals were more successful than rational appeals, emotional appeals were the most successful of all, resulting in the highest raises granted.

Weakness and the powerful

It might not be difficult for a negotiator to feel sympathetic to the appeals of someone who seems relatively powerless. But should the powerful also call on a counterpart’s sympathy when facing a legitimate hardship?

Perhaps, but here it’s important to tread with caution. In a final study, conducted online, Shirako and colleagues asked participants to imagine that they were the CEO of a digital-marketing company and that a client had come back to ask for a discount on a marketing campaign that had been previously negotiated. When the client said that it was struggling financially and feeling vulnerable, participants gave similar discounts regardless of whether the client was said to be a large, powerful firm or a small, relatively powerless one. (And here, again, emotional appeals were more successful than rational ones.)

Afterward, however, participants reported liking and trusting the powerless counterparts more than the powerful counterparts. This was the case because they viewed the emotional appeals of the powerful to be more manipulative and less professional than the appeals of those with low power.

Thus, although powerful negotiators may be able to elicit concessions by appealing to the other party’s sympathy, they might harm the relationship in the long run by doing so.

Summing it up

Overall, these research findings on the role of sympathy in negotiation suggest that revelations of vulnerability from a counterpart who is believed to have relatively little power can trigger sympathy in negotiators, a reaction that leads them to behave more generously and collaboratively. Powerful parties, however, may gain more in the long term from appealing to their counterpart’s sense of fairness or issuing strictly data-based justifications for their requests because sympathy appeals could have a backlash effect. Thus, the degree to which you expose such vulnerabilities may depend on your level of power in the relationship. As always in negotiation, context matters.

Two final notes. First, you might use sympathy appeals alongside appeals to rationality and fairness. The results described here should be applied with caution, as past research has found both rationality and fairness appeals to be effective. They remain highly compelling strategies that should not be overlooked.

Second, don’t exaggerate or manufacture vulnerabilities in a play for a counterpart’s sympathy. Doing so would not only violate moral codes but also threaten your relationship with the other party and your reputation as an honest negotiator.

Resource: “Is There a Place for Sympathy in Negotiation? Finding Strength in Weakness,” by Aiwa Shirako, Gavin J. Kilduff, and Laura J. Kray, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 2015.

In negotiation, it’s said, preparation is key. Without careful research and logistical planning, we may be left trying to skate by on wits and charm alone—and in today’s business world, they will seldom carry us far.

Advance work is especially critical when you expect your talks to be complex, involving numerous issues, multiple parties, and plenty of disagreement. The organizers of the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference, which was held in the Paris suburb of Le Bourget from November 30 through December 11, 2015, faced these challenges and more. The ambitious goal of the conference was to negotiate enforceable commitments from all the world’s nations to lower greenhouse-gas emissions to levels that could ward off environmental disasters.

Ultimately, the negotiators did reach an agreement that met their stated goals. Scientists who have analyzed the national commitments made in the agreement do not believe that, collectively, they are sufficient to lower emissions to a level that will stave off future environmental disasters. However, the deal could jump-start a global decline in carbon emissions and motivate greater investments in alternative energy sources such as wind and solar power. The agreement also requires countries to reconvene every five years, starting in 2023, and update their commitments to addressing climate change.

In this article, we look at how the organizers and lead negotiators of the Paris conference worked hard to try to avoid the mistakes of the last major climate-change summit. That conference, held in Copenhagen in 2009, failed to lay the necessary groundwork to help negotiators overcome their deep divides. Business negotiators facing complex talks can learn from the work of the Paris organizers to create a harmonious and collaborative environment right from the start.

Attention to detail

In 2014, launching its preparations for the Paris talks, the French government appointed Laurence Tubiana, an Algerian-born political scientist who had worked at the World Bank, as the nation’s senior climate envoy and gave her virtual carte blanche to ensure a successful conference.

France was determined to avoid the fate of Denmark, which had been widely blamed for the failed Copenhagen talks. The hosts were “excoriated as rigid, secretive, and uncreative,” reports Coral Davenport in the New York Times, and a mood of “confrontational brinksmanship” at the 2009 conference was worsened by long security lines out in the cold and bad food.

In the 18 months leading up to the summit, Tubiana personally traveled the world, negotiating for behind-the-scenes support for the conference and its mission from fellow diplomats and academics. She also instructed France’s elegant embassies to hold regular dinners and salons for key players on climate policy, including business leaders, lawmakers, and journalists. Her goal: to instill both urgency and optimism in delegates so that they could negotiate a meaningful climate agreement in Paris.

Tubiana was just as detail-oriented when setting the scene for the climate conference. With typical French flair, she had each work space in the airplane hangars and tents where the talks were held softened by “a gracefully curved table lamp, casting a gentle glow,” according to Davenport. An on-site bakery was constructed to churn out warm baguettes and croissants, the Financial Times reports, and at mealtimes the delegates were further softened up with sumptuous French cuisine, including duck confit and boeuf bourguignon accompanied by local wine. When they needed a break from marathon bargaining sessions, negotiators could nap in relaxation rooms and clear their minds in meditation rooms. In a nod to the conference’s purpose, delegates also could take complimentary electric car rides to their hotels.

In negotiation, we tend to overlook the importance of our environment’s effect on our moods and behavior. Even when we’re working on a tight budget, we can make small but significant changes to promote calm and collegial bargaining, such as replacing overhead fluorescents with warmer lighting or serving food that represents your city or region. Simply offering negotiators cushioned chairs rather than hard ones can promote concession making, Joshua M. Ackerman (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), Christopher C. Nocera (Harvard University), and John A. Bargh (Yale University) have found in their research. Holding preliminary meetings or dinners with members of various negotiating teams, as Tubiana did at French embassies, is another move that can build goodwill.

Brokers, not advocates

Tubiana may have been the host of the Paris talks, but she needed to avoid giving the appearance that the French were guiding the content of the negotiations, as the Denmark hosts had been accused of doing in 2009.

The task of leading the delegates toward an agreement was the job of the conference’s cochairs, Daniel Reifsnyder, from the U.S. Department of State, and Ahmed Djoghlaf, an Algerian ambassador. Why two chairs instead of one? Disagreements between developing nations and developed nations were so deep that a single leader from one faction inevitably would be distrusted by the other. Consequently, Reifsnyder was chosen to represent the developed world and Djoghlaf, the developing world.

Reifsnyder and Djoghlaf met at the world’s earliest climate talks, about 25 years ago, and share an easy rapport honed over years of negotiating side by side, Nell Greenfieldboyce reports for National Public Radio’s Morning Edition. They also have complementary strengths: Reifsnyder is known for his encyclopedic knowledge of the issues, while Djoghlaf is the “quintessential diplomat,” according to Reifsnyder, “extremely gifted and smooth with people.”

In Copenhagen, world leaders attempted to personally negotiate a climate accord, an inherently “flawed concept,” senior European Union delegate Elina Bardram told the Financial Times. In Paris, the chief negotiators would be environmental ministers and officials well versed in climate issues, a change designed to reduce public posturing and ensure that talks would remain focused on the details. The delegates were told to deliver a national climate plan for their countries by the start of the Paris conference, another change intended to avoid the failures of Copenhagen.

Speaking to NPR, Reifsnyder compared his and his partner’s job to “taking 196 cats and trying to get them to all move in the same direction.” During this painstaking herding, he and Djoghlaf were able to “rise above” the groups they represented, Reifsnyder said: “You cease to become an advocate. You become a broker.”

When facing complex, contentious negotiations, parties often assign their lawyers or a professional mediator to lead the process. Though these can be wise choices, the Paris talks suggest another possibility: Have each side choose a representative with a proven track record for evenhandedness and collaboration, then have these representatives lead the negotiating process together. Ideally, they will model a cooperative spirit that rubs off on others at the table.

Another option is to bring in a trained meeting facilitator. Facilitators can bring tremendous value to the negotiating table, writes Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Lawrence Susskind in his book Good for You, Great for Me: Finding the Trading Zone and Winning at Win-Win Negotiation (PublicAffairs, 2014). Facilitators typically help parties set an agenda and ground rules, coordinate the flow of conversation and information, ensure that parties adhere to the agreed-upon rules, manage conflict, and assist in drafting the final outcomes.

Getting on the same page

In February 2015, nearly a year before the start of the Paris conference, Reifsnyder and Djoghlaf—the de facto facilitators—convened climate-change delegates in Geneva to create the first draft of a so-called negotiating text. The negotiating text, the focus of climate-change summits, is crafted by all participating nations. “To build trust and goodwill,” according to Greenfieldboyce, delegates “could throw in any proposed text they wanted” in Geneva.

Contributing to the negotiating text helps parties feel they are being heard and launches them on a journey toward a final draft. On the downside, early drafts of such texts are typically disorganized and full of contradictions. In climate negotiations, brackets are put around text that has not been agreed upon. Brackets littered the 90 pages of the first draft of the Paris text.

Envisioning a trim final agreement of 15 pages, Djoghlaf and Reifsnyder held another round of meetings in June, this time in Bonn, Germany, to make cuts. The process was painstaking, with negotiators debating critical language choices, such as whether a country “shall” or “may” make certain commitments. The group managed to cut only five pages, but the meetings built trust in Reifsnyder and Djoghlaf, whom the representatives entrusted to cut additional text on their own.

In October, the cochairs released a newly svelte 20-page draft that many observers praised for prioritizing key issues. Reconvening in Bonn, delegates voted that the negotiating text was “balanced” and had “full ownership by the governments of the world” as a starting point for the Paris talks. Further buoying optimism, the majority of the nations present introduced national climate plans, many of them highly comprehensive. By the time talks convened in Paris, all but 12 of the 196 participating countries had submitted their own climate plans.

Draft agreements are a commonly used tool in high-stakes government and corporate negotiations, writes Tufts University professor Jeswald Salacuse in his book Negotiating Life: Secrets for Everyday Diplomacy and Deal Making (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013). Whether you prepare your own draft to present to a counterpart as a basis for negotiation or collaborate with a counterpart on a draft, the process can help you identify all the relevant issues as well as points of contention and agreement. When negotiators work together on a draft agreement, they literally get on the same page from the start. In many instances, this collaborative process can improve their odds of finding common ground as compared with simply exchanging a series of proposals across the table.

Optimism and urgency

All this advance work—choosing the right leaders, winning support from key players, setting a hospitable environment, and negotiating a draft agreement—didn’t guarantee successful negotiations in Paris. Delegates came to France divided on significant issues, such as whether the agreement would be legally binding and how to share the financial burden of addressing climate change. In a future issue, we will take a closer look at how these conflicts were addressed.

But in the early days of the Paris talks, the highly orchestrated planning did succeed in fostering an “optimistic and collegial mood,” according to the New York Times. When the conference began on November 30, the delegates knew they were already well beyond the starting point of past climate talks. They trusted France’s deep commitment to forging a deal. They largely respected the cochairs’ abilities and hard work to date. And with Paris still reeling from the very recent terrorist attacks—events that none of the organizers could have anticipated—the delegates arrived with a deeper sense of urgency and purpose. As French foreign minister Laurent Fabius reminded them in an emotional speech at the conference, “We’re talking about life itself.”

In negotiation, it’s said, preparation is key. Without careful research and logistical planning, we may be left trying to skate by on wits and charm alone—and in today’s business world, they will seldom carry us far.

Advance work is especially critical when you expect your talks to be complex, involving numerous issues, multiple parties, and plenty of disagreement. The organizers of the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference, which was held in the Paris suburb of Le Bourget from November 30 through December 11, 2015, faced these challenges and more. The ambitious goal of the conference was to negotiate enforceable commitments from all the world’s nations to lower greenhouse-gas emissions to levels that could ward off environmental disasters.

Ultimately, the negotiators did reach an agreement that met their stated goals. Scientists who have analyzed the national commitments made in the agreement do not believe that, collectively, they are sufficient to lower emissions to a level that will stave off future environmental disasters. However, the deal could jump-start a global decline in carbon emissions and motivate greater investments in alternative energy sources such as wind and solar power. The agreement also requires countries to reconvene every five years, starting in 2023, and update their commitments to addressing climate change.

In this article, we look at how the organizers and lead negotiators of the Paris conference worked hard to try to avoid the mistakes of the last major climate-change summit. That conference, held in Copenhagen in 2009, failed to lay the necessary groundwork to help negotiators overcome their deep divides. Business negotiators facing complex talks can learn from the work of the Paris organizers to create a harmonious and collaborative environment right from the start.

Attention to detail

In 2014, launching its preparations for the Paris talks, the French government appointed Laurence Tubiana, an Algerian-born political scientist who had worked at the World Bank, as the nation’s senior climate envoy and gave her virtual carte blanche to ensure a successful conference.

France was determined to avoid the fate of Denmark, which had been widely blamed for the failed Copenhagen talks. The hosts were “excoriated as rigid, secretive, and uncreative,” reports Coral Davenport in the New York Times, and a mood of “confrontational brinksmanship” at the 2009 conference was worsened by long security lines out in the cold and bad food.

In the 18 months leading up to the summit, Tubiana personally traveled the world, negotiating for behind-the-scenes support for the conference and its mission from fellow diplomats and academics. She also instructed France’s elegant embassies to hold regular dinners and salons for key players on climate policy, including business leaders, lawmakers, and journalists. Her goal: to instill both urgency and optimism in delegates so that they could negotiate a meaningful climate agreement in Paris.

Tubiana was just as detail-oriented when setting the scene for the climate conference. With typical French flair, she had each work space in the airplane hangars and tents where the talks were held softened by “a gracefully curved table lamp, casting a gentle glow,” according to Davenport. An on-site bakery was constructed to churn out warm baguettes and croissants, the Financial Times reports, and at mealtimes the delegates were further softened up with sumptuous French cuisine, including duck confit and boeuf bourguignon accompanied by local wine. When they needed a break from marathon bargaining sessions, negotiators could nap in relaxation rooms and clear their minds in meditation rooms. In a nod to the conference’s purpose, delegates also could take complimentary electric car rides to their hotels.

In negotiation, we tend to overlook the importance of our environment’s effect on our moods and behavior. Even when we’re working on a tight budget, we can make small but significant changes to promote calm and collegial bargaining, such as replacing overhead fluorescents with warmer lighting or serving food that represents your city or region. Simply offering negotiators cushioned chairs rather than hard ones can promote concession making, Joshua M. Ackerman (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), Christopher C. Nocera (Harvard University), and John A. Bargh (Yale University) have found in their research. Holding preliminary meetings or dinners with members of various negotiating teams, as Tubiana did at French embassies, is another move that can build goodwill.

Brokers, not advocates

Tubiana may have been the host of the Paris talks, but she needed to avoid giving the appearance that the French were guiding the content of the negotiations, as the Denmark hosts had been accused of doing in 2009.

The task of leading the delegates toward an agreement was the job of the conference’s cochairs, Daniel Reifsnyder, from the U.S. Department of State, and Ahmed Djoghlaf, an Algerian ambassador. Why two chairs instead of one? Disagreements between developing nations and developed nations were so deep that a single leader from one faction inevitably would be distrusted by the other. Consequently, Reifsnyder was chosen to represent the developed world and Djoghlaf, the developing world.

Reifsnyder and Djoghlaf met at the world’s earliest climate talks, about 25 years ago, and share an easy rapport honed over years of negotiating side by side, Nell Greenfieldboyce reports for National Public Radio’s Morning Edition. They also have complementary strengths: Reifsnyder is known for his encyclopedic knowledge of the issues, while Djoghlaf is the “quintessential diplomat,” according to Reifsnyder, “extremely gifted and smooth with people.”

In Copenhagen, world leaders attempted to personally negotiate a climate accord, an inherently “flawed concept,” senior European Union delegate Elina Bardram told the Financial Times. In Paris, the chief negotiators would be environmental ministers and officials well versed in climate issues, a change designed to reduce public posturing and ensure that talks would remain focused on the details. The delegates were told to deliver a national climate plan for their countries by the start of the Paris conference, another change intended to avoid the failures of Copenhagen.

Speaking to NPR, Reifsnyder compared his and his partner’s job to “taking 196 cats and trying to get them to all move in the same direction.” During this painstaking herding, he and Djoghlaf were able to “rise above” the groups they represented, Reifsnyder said: “You cease to become an advocate. You become a broker.”

When facing complex, contentious negotiations, parties often assign their lawyers or a professional mediator to lead the process. Though these can be wise choices, the Paris talks suggest another possibility: Have each side choose a representative with a proven track record for evenhandedness and collaboration, then have these representatives lead the negotiating process together. Ideally, they will model a cooperative spirit that rubs off on others at the table.

Another option is to bring in a trained meeting facilitator. Facilitators can bring tremendous value to the negotiating table, writes Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Lawrence Susskind in his book Good for You, Great for Me: Finding the Trading Zone and Winning at Win-Win Negotiation (PublicAffairs, 2014). Facilitators typically help parties set an agenda and ground rules, coordinate the flow of conversation and information, ensure that parties adhere to the agreed-upon rules, manage conflict, and assist in drafting the final outcomes.

Getting on the same page

In February 2015, nearly a year before the start of the Paris conference, Reifsnyder and Djoghlaf—the de facto facilitators—convened climate-change delegates in Geneva to create the first draft of a so-called negotiating text. The negotiating text, the focus of climate-change summits, is crafted by all participating nations. “To build trust and goodwill,” according to Greenfieldboyce, delegates “could throw in any proposed text they wanted” in Geneva.

Contributing to the negotiating text helps parties feel they are being heard and launches them on a journey toward a final draft. On the downside, early drafts of such texts are typically disorganized and full of contradictions. In climate negotiations, brackets are put around text that has not been agreed upon. Brackets littered the 90 pages of the first draft of the Paris text.

Envisioning a trim final agreement of 15 pages, Djoghlaf and Reifsnyder held another round of meetings in June, this time in Bonn, Germany, to make cuts. The process was painstaking, with negotiators debating critical language choices, such as whether a country “shall” or “may” make certain commitments. The group managed to cut only five pages, but the meetings built trust in Reifsnyder and Djoghlaf, whom the representatives entrusted to cut additional text on their own.

In October, the cochairs released a newly svelte 20-page draft that many observers praised for prioritizing key issues. Reconvening in Bonn, delegates voted that the negotiating text was “balanced” and had “full ownership by the governments of the world” as a starting point for the Paris talks. Further buoying optimism, the majority of the nations present introduced national climate plans, many of them highly comprehensive. By the time talks convened in Paris, all but 12 of the 196 participating countries had submitted their own climate plans.

Draft agreements are a commonly used tool in high-stakes government and corporate negotiations, writes Tufts University professor Jeswald Salacuse in his book Negotiating Life: Secrets for Everyday Diplomacy and Deal Making (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013). Whether you prepare your own draft to present to a counterpart as a basis for negotiation or collaborate with a counterpart on a draft, the process can help you identify all the relevant issues as well as points of contention and agreement. When negotiators work together on a draft agreement, they literally get on the same page from the start. In many instances, this collaborative process can improve their odds of finding common ground as compared with simply exchanging a series of proposals across the table.

Optimism and urgency

All this advance work—choosing the right leaders, winning support from key players, setting a hospitable environment, and negotiating a draft agreement—didn’t guarantee successful negotiations in Paris. Delegates came to France divided on significant issues, such as whether the agreement would be legally binding and how to share the financial burden of addressing climate change. In a future issue, we will take a closer look at how these conflicts were addressed.

But in the early days of the Paris talks, the highly orchestrated planning did succeed in fostering an “optimistic and collegial mood,” according to the New York Times. When the conference began on November 30, the delegates knew they were already well beyond the starting point of past climate talks. They trusted France’s deep commitment to forging a deal. They largely respected the cochairs’ abilities and hard work to date. And with Paris still reeling from the very recent terrorist attacks—events that none of the organizers could have anticipated—the delegates arrived with a deeper sense of urgency and purpose. As French foreign minister Laurent Fabius reminded them in an emotional speech at the conference, “We’re talking about life itself.”