Real Leaders negotiate

British and American diplomats signed
 the Treaty of Ghent on December 24, 1814    

Selected excerpts from Jeswald Salacuse – Harvard Business Review – February 2008

Jeswald W. Salacuse is Henry J. Braker Professor of Law at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University, the senior graduate professional school of international affairs in the United States. He is also member of the Executive Committee of Harvard Law School Program On Negotiation (PON).

A focus on four key aspects of negotiation theory—interests, relationships, voice, and vision—will improve your leadership skills.

1. Practice interest-based leadership

Why should the people you’re supposed to lead follow you? If you believe that your charisma, your exalted office, or your vision is reason enough, you’re in trouble. While these qualities may affect how others relate to you, the unvarnished truth is that other people will follow you when they judge it’s in their best interest to do so. Whether they’re acting as individuals or team members, people almost always give first priority to their own interests. Just as wise negotiators focus not on the other side’s positions but rather on their interests, effective leaders seek to understand the interests of those they lead and to find ways of satisfying those interests in order to achieve organizational goals.

2. Negotiate relationships

Relationships are as important to leadership as they are to negotiation. A relationship is a perceived connection that can be psychological, economic, political, or personal; whatever its basis, wise leaders, like skilled negotiators, work to foster a strong connection because effective leadership depends on it. Positive relationships are important not because they engender warm, fuzzy feelings, but because they engender trust—a vital means of securing desired actions from others. Consider that any proposed action, whether suggested by a negotiator at the bargaining table or a leader at a strategy meeting, entails risk. People will view a course of action as less risky and therefore more acceptable when it’s suggested by someone they trust.

3. Find the right leadership voice

When the poet Walt Whitman wrote “Surely, whoever speaks to me in the right voice, him or her I shall follow,” he conveyed the notion that persuasive communication is fundamental to effective leadership. Whitman’s words also underscore the importance of shaping leadership communications to meet individual concerns, interests, and styles.

When deciding how to communicate, recognize that the medium you choose reveals something about you and your relationship with the person you are trying to lead.

4. Negotiate a vision for the organization

Organizations, large and small, look to their leaders to establish an organizational vision. Popular commentary on corporate leadership presupposes that a company’s vision comes from its CEO and that, without a strong CEO, the company has no vision. But that’s not the case. Members located throughout an organization have plenty of thoughts about what the organization is and should be. Thus, the challenge of setting a group’s course lies in forging a single vision out of the multiplicity of visions held by the group’s members. The process of articulating a vision is one of negotiation— in particular, multilateral negotiation, which relies on coalition building. Like a skilled diplomat, a leader, whether a corporate CEO or a department head, creates a common vision by building a coalition among its members to support that vision. Building a coalition in support of an organizational vision demands a skilled use of the negotiation principles I’ve outlined, including understanding members’ interests, creating effective working relationships, and communicating in the right voice and medium.