Perspectives

People often put insufficient effort into understanding the other person’s perspective.  If they did, they would usually discover that their differences were not as significant and it seemed.

Interests Based Negotiations

This is the typical way that people deal with issues.

There is a different way.

We don’t know who first came up with this analogy, but the following is the version that we like the best (with a few small changes):

There was once only one orange left in a kitchen and two prominent chefs were fighting over it.

“I need that orange!”

“Yes, but I need that orange as well!”

Time was running out and they both needed an orange to finish their particular recipes for the President’s dinner.  They decided on a compromise: they grabbed one of the large kitchen knives that was lying around, split the orange in half, and each went to his corner to finish preparing his meal.

One chef squeezed the juice from the orange and poured it into the special sauce he was making. It wasn’t quite enough, but it would have to do.  The other grated the peel and stirred the scrapings into the batter for his famous cake.  He too didn’t have as much as he would have liked, but given the situation, what else could he have done?

The better solution is probably obvious to you now; both chefs would have been better off if the one had grated the peel, the entire peel, and then given orange to the other, to squeeze the juice out of the entire orange.

Instead, each chef’s thinking was dominated by their own interests, and with the solution that they had unilaterally come up with.  If they had taken the time to genuinely consider the interests of the other, and then try to come up with a solution that best met everyone’s interests, they would have quickly and easily come up with a solution that provided them both with 100% of what they wanted, rather than 50%.

We believe that if people collectively approach issues in this way, and if they are careful to communicate in a constructive way, then even the most difficult and polarizing issues can be resolved.

(Reference for the story about the chefs: Mary Rowe, Nils Fonstad, and Robert McKersie, MIT, 1996)

Bridge

The video below illustrates how a change of approach can result in a quick resolution of an issue:

Soldier and Scout Approaches

The first part of the video below explains the very prevalent “soldier” approach, and it will be obvious to you that if people keep their “soldier” impulses in check, and develop the capacities of their “scout”, issues that “soldiers” have been stuck on will be resolved.