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One of my favorite courses I took in grad school was a weekend course called “Negotiation Skills.†I figured it would be a pretty easy class: get in groups, schmooze with your classmates, make some deals that don’t actually have any bearing on your real life, get an A, go home, and eat some pizza.
Well, most of that was true (no pizza, though, frownyface). But the class sure wasn’t easy, and if you were participating correctly, you couldn’t help caring about the deals you were making. There we were swapping squares of paper, and suddenly pride got involved somehow. We wanted what we thought we deserved. The problem with that was that we ALL wanted what we deserved in a zero-sum game. More for me = less for you.
The most interesting part of the course for me was when we learned the difference between Positional Negotiation and Principled Negotiation. I never realized there was more than one kind, so that fact in itself was informative (there are many more kinds that I won’t get into here). Positional negotiation refers to (and I’m paraphrasing my prof here) bargaining to put yourself in a better position relative to your adversary. Normally, one sees this type of negotiation when parties don’t have to repeatedly work together and have a strong cooperative relationship (think: buying a car). However, this seems to be a lot of what we’re seeing publicly in the NBA and NBPA press conferences: blame-shifting, accusations of greed, the digging-in of heels. It’s hostile, it sucks to watch, and it seems counterproductive to the longevity of the partnership between the league and its players.
We spent most of our course discussing Principled Negotiation. It sets itself apart from the previous type of negotiation by concentrating on four tenets:
- Get an objective standard and try to match the results to that.
- Make sure you don’t confuse the people and the problem.
- Think outside the box on issues that may be important but aren’t discussed.
- Most importantly: focus on the interests of each party and not their positions.
Since every pro sports league in the country seems to have a different way of doing business, Tenet 1 is difficult to follow in this situation. There are multiple objective baselines for the league to follow.
But maybe we could avoid stepping all over Tenet 2 by trying to keep the more inflammatory members (*ahem SternKesslerAllenGilbertGarnet
Tenet 4 is the most important, but it doesn’t seem like either side is being 100% forthright. Hey owners: is the structure of the league really untenable? Then why did you essentially renew CBA in 2004? If it’s really about covering the losses over the past few years, then say it. There’s no shame in that. The players also have an interest in keeping the league viable. They want to play and they want to make money, too. Why not flip the percentage distribution so that you can recoup losses over the first few years of the CBA, then flip it back in the players’ favor over the last few years once you’re afloat (and I use that word loosely, since they’re all afloat and will be for ∞ years). I’m by no means a negotiation expert. Last I checked, one of the top negotiation experts in the country thought these meetings were a lost cause. But at least it looks like I’m trying to use Tenet 3 once in a while, guys.
Maybe to league and players, they’re just swapping squares of paper back and forth. Billions and billions or squares of paper. Maybe there’s too much pride on each side to come to an amicable agreement. Maybe there’s not enough pride on each side to respect each other at the podium. Maybe percentage-wise it’s a zero-sum game. But building from the momentum of a great season promises to make the stack of paper bigger, ensuring everyone gets more anyway.
If you’d also like to become an armchair negotiation aficionado, I’d highly recommend checking out this site and reading their book.
