In an excellent post by Greg Strouse entitled “The Pleaser’s Dilemma,” Greg laments his own tendency to work too hard for the other guy when negotiating business agreements. He describes a conversation on this topic with an acquaintance as follows:

“From a business standpoint we have both been morally and financially screwed over multiple times by not being demanding enough. We both tend to error on playing on the other person’s side of the half-way line way too much and way too often.”

Greg takes a tongue-in-cheek approach, indicating that he might start a support group where people that suffer from this affliction can go for help.

It’s interesting. Before Greg checks himself in to his own support group, it might be worth examining his motives. While he humorously describes his approach as “The Pleaser’s Dilemma,” I’ll offer the armchair view that it might be something different.

What’s Your Negotiating Style?

There are at least two major perspectives on negotiation that I’ve encountered. One says quite clearly that in a negotiation you are duty-bound to secure the absolute best possible outcome for your firm. The implication of this approach is of course that a negotiation is a boxing match, with the bigger, stronger athlete not just winning, but also destroying the opponent.

The other emphasizes understanding the interests of the all parties and crafting something that meets those interests in an equitable manner. Instead of pre-occupying on stated positions: “We won’t budge an inch,” the negotiator seeks to draw out true needs and interests and then works to craft an arrangement that addresses those concerns.

I suspect that there times and places for both. I also suspect that many/most people will come down on the side of, “my goal is to win in any negotiation.”

The Dissenting View

After many years and many agreements and ample numbers of successes and failures, I’ve moved squarely in the camp of seeking to understand interests and frame approaches for all parties to share the pain and potential rewards. If there is equilibrium to be found and agreed upon, I will seek that outcome first. If not, I will walk away.

Most of our negotiations in business don’t require or even suggest that “destroying the opponent” is a good outcome. If I’m interested enough in creating a partnering or supplier agreement with a firm, it’s in my firm’s best interest that the partner/supplier be successful to continue to serve and bring value to the relationship.

The Good, The Bad and The Ugly:

As a former small software company executive, we found ourselves dealing with industry giants all of the time, and needless to say, they didn’t give a rat’s @ss about our interests, our survival or our success.

It turns out that most of those hard fought negotiations ended up with programs that created no value whatsoever. They might have supplied a small piece of technology or resulted in press release partnerships, but they did not create value for customers or for either participant. (My favorite was with an un-named software giant that literally took the position of you give us everything of yours to use forever at no cost; you do extensive development work for us at no cost, and we’ll let you tell the world that your products are inside ours. Ha!)

Alternatively, the best arrangements in terms of value creation (revenue, profitability, meeting customer needs) all were outcomes of the “seek first to understand” style where we crafted programs that fairly addressed the interests of all parties.

The Bottom-Line

In negotiating, the adage “seek first to understand and then be understood” is often appropriate, in spite of our tendency to purse the “win at all costs” competitive approach.

Personally, I would rather beat myself up just as Greg does to himself over working too hard to create outcomes where all parties benefit,l than putting another notch in my gun for destroying an opponent on paper and dooming the arrangement before it gets started.

On the other hand, success with the “interests” approach requires you and your firm to very carefully understand what you are after, what you are willing to give to get and when you should walk-away.

It’s typically when people cross-over their “walk away” point that they best consider themselves in the midst of a “Pleaser’s Dilemma.” Greg is setting up a support group for us if we find ourselves in this camp too often.