ProdPod, a Productivity Podcast

Welcome to Episode 33 of ProdPod, the podcast of productivity lessons in two minutes or less. I'm Ray Sidney-Smith, your productivity guide.

I'm rather comfortable with conflict resolution, but I see an abundance of poor conflict handling in the media today (especially coming from our politicians), I thought it might help to give an explanation of two foundational principles, Think Win-Win and Principled Negotiation, that have served me well in my business and personal life. If you've ever read Stephen Covey's The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, you probably remember Habit #4, Think Win-Win. If you're not familiar, Dr. Covey basically espouses that you should strive for three win's in any long-term solution or agreement: mine, yours and ours. Therefore, if any of those three parties should lose, it's "no deal." The reasoning is that it's a loss for everyone in an interdependent group when one person loses. It was several years later while studying Conflict Resolution and Mediation that I learned about the book, Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In, [great summary here] by Fisher, Ury and Patton (a book that was born out of the Harvard Negotiation Project). This seminal work primarily focuses on teaching us Principled Negotiation, which is to:

1. "separate people from the problems" (so that you can be compassionate with people, remove ego from the scenario as best as you can, and clearly see your other party's perspective);

1. "focus on interests, not positions" (which brings the parties to discussing what they want and not their superficial stance when conflict arises);

1. "mutual gains" (as the source of Covey's Habit #4 encouraging brainstorming and viewing the issues broadly); and

1. "insist on using objective criteria" (by using fair standards decided upon upfront).