I Don't Agree. Michael Brown

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      Remember, we have two creatives with a beef over the brief. To ascertain if either is acting from naked self-interest, or in fact has a legitimate case for the superiority of their idea, I ask both to outline, without interruption, the other’s creative concept: the rival scheme they didn’t create.

      I then ask the original creator to confirm whether or not the other has grasped their idea. We then run the exercise in reverse. If either fail in the task, then they have clearly not been listening. That means they haven’t taken a wide perspective and seen things from the other’s point of view.

      In this exercise, the failure of both sides happens a lot!

      It helps, of course, if the mediator (me in this case) fully understands both sides’ positions. This guards against anyone subverting the process (they could cheat by saying the other has not understood their vision, when in fact it has been clearly grasped – it happens!).

      The results of a two-part study by Jacquie D. Vorauer and Stephanie-Danielle Claude, called ‘Perceived Versus Actual Transparency of Goals in Negotiation’ (1998), showed that negotiators overestimated the transparency of their own objectives. Not only that, it was found that neutral observers to a negotiation, who had been informed about the participant negotiator’s goals in advance, also overestimated the extent to which those goals would be transparent to an uninformed observer. Indeed, uninformed observers were actually more likely to find it harder to distinguish the negotiator’s goals during the negotiation. This same document also mentions other bodies of research (Brandstätter et al.) which show that negotiators typically attribute any deadlock to the other person and give more credit to themselves for reaching an agreement – the phenomenon I mentioned in the preface known as attribution bias.

      The above academics also found that combatants typically assumed that the validity of their position in the negotiation was glaringly obvious (my words) to their adversaries. Consequently, they saw their adversary’s opposition as self-interested and hostile.

      So, the knowledge that people have long entrenched habits, and may have a self-centred narrow perspective, has definitely helped me reframe my approach to having difficult conversations. If I know I’m going to say ‘I don’t agree’ to a colleague, friend or partner’s current point of view, an important step I take is to enter into a little self-reflection and examine my own motivations.

      I make a mental vow to be more transparent when communicating my goals. For me at least, the act of making a vow has an almost sacred effect. It keeps coming to the front of my mind to nudge me into compliance during any debate. On top of all that, I also assume attribution bias will influence my judgement. And given all of the above, my potential to get into a range of minor and major heated situations – well-rehearsed and practised since my formative years – could be a habit that’s difficult to dislodge. I’ve done my 10,000 hours and then some.

      For those of you thinking, surely we’re all adults now, aren’t we grown up enough to work our way through the behavioural overhangs we developed in our younger years? Well, hopefully we are, but such a feat is more difficult than you might think. It transpires that such behaviour is likely to be governed by Darwinism.

      1 Kramer defines a conflict as three sequential hostile exchanges. Lesser exchanges such as a single push or an insult increase the count still higher. Studies in other age groups also show higher ratios of conflict: Jeffrey Kluger in his book, The Sibling Effect, quotes Michal Perlman and Hildy Ross of the University of Toronto and Waterloo respectively. They found an average of 6.3 conflicts hourly between siblings in the 2–4 age group. Klugger also references Kramer extensively.

      2 Ross, Hildy; Ross, Michael; Stein, Nancy and Trabasso, Tom. (2006). ‘How Siblings Resolve Their Conflicts: The Importance of First Offers, Planning, and Limited Opposition’. Child Development. 77.