On occassion after a long work day my wife and I will gather around the world’s largest dlp big screen TV in the world and watch a pay-per-view movie if we can find one we both agree on. Last night we happened upon M. Night Shyamalan’s Lady in the Water. My pet peeve in movies is gross commercialism. I have seen great movies that had obvious product placement – I can live with that. What I mean is a 2 hour commercial that has a story as a backdrop and a plot as an excuse to be called a movie. Last night I hit the movie lottery.

Even before the first scene of the movie opened I was elated. It was a story of how once man had been inspired by other human-like beings that lived in the sea and then man decided to own everything and his method for doing that (to this day) was war. The rest of the movie was one man’s (played by Paul Giamatti) struggle to reverse engineer a chance for that connection and inspiration to occur again. This may sound very “woo-woo” so just for a reference point – I’d rather drive around in a parking lot in circles until I run out of gas than go see a chick-flick.

At the end of the movie (this is not a spoiler) he had to develop a result that required about 20 people to co-operate based on an outcome that wasn’t clear to anyone, even himself. He faced the toughest negotiation that anyone can ever face: a mutable negotiation through time (see #11). I won’t tell you if he achieved his goal or not, though I will tell you what he did in order to attempt to achieve it. He asked resourceful questions. Just a reminder – the opposite of asking resourceful questions is assuming you know.

Yesterday I went with one of my clients to negotiate a lease. My client had a close personal tie to the property she was intending to acquire a lease on. She was very excited she had this extra card to play in the negotiation. We met the agent and began to inspect the property. The agent began her litany of information about the property. Because of the close personal tie – my client already knew most of what could be said about the property. The agent was about to reveal some information that related to the close personal tie and my client blurted out who they were and that she knew them – 2 minutes into the evaluation of the property. The agent didn’t finish her sentence and for the next 30 minutes of the walk-through she didn’t give any new information.

After the initial negotiation my client was very frustrated. She said (paraphrase) “I played that close-personal tie card and the woman was like ‘That’s nice’. I told my client that I wouldn’t have played that card unless there was a pay-off for doing so. My client’s situation for use of the property wasn’t ideal. Some agents might have dismissed her specific needs just on the surface of those needs. Tony Allesandro who is the author of The Platinum Rule breaks people down in to four categories. My client is definitely a relater. Her need to be part of something motivated her to play the close personal tie card immediately upon entering the negotiation. She assumed that she knew playing this card would be powerful, perhaps because if someone had played it with her she would have liked it. And that is the moral of The Platinum Rule - Only about 1 out of 4 people are like you (since there are 4 categories according to The Platinum Rule). If you treat people like you wanted to be treated (the golden rule) then 3/4ths of the time you’ll be missing your mark.

Have you ever played a card in any communicating situation and were disappointed it had no impact whatsoever? If you’d like to share a story or ask a question please feel free to use the comment section beneath this post or you can just email me at justask@yourownbestgood.com.

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What would happen if whenever you opened your mouth people gave you exactly what you wanted? Are you ready to Negotiate to Your Own Best Good?

Bruce Burns the Negotiator!