From the Archives: A self-deprecating look at negotiating.

Last night, I found a paper I wrote for school about three years ago. It was an assignment about my negotiating style; I answered a bunch of questions about my tendencies, and the end result was that the respondent was put into one or two different categories (N1, N2, N3, etc.) based on those tendencies. Then, to complete the assignment, you had to write a three-page paper about it.

As the below was only a first draft, I didn't end up turning this paper in. Still, it was significantly better (and less sanitized) than what I did end up turning in. Regardless, I'm sharing it with you strictly for the amusement factor, even if it does tell you all you would ever need to know about me.

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My negotiating style profile turned out as expected. As a person who abhors conflict and will do just about anything to stay out of the way of it, I had suspected before completing the profile that my scores would reflect a combination of N3 (accommodate) and N4 (withdraw) behaviors. N1 (defeat) showed up in the "very low" range, as I suspected it would, and N2 (collaborate) and N5 (compromise) behaviors were in the average-to-high range.

The N3 style revolves around accommodating the other party's needs. Promoting harmony, avoiding substantive differences, yielding to pressure to preserve the relationship, and placing interpersonal relationships above the fairness of the outcome are all traits of the N3 style, and they are also traits that I am familiar with using in interpersonal negotiations. "Keep the peace at any price necessary" is a credo I find myself living by.

The other style that I often use in negotiating is the N4 style, which involves a low degree of concern for the substance of the negotiation and the relationship with the other parties. This most often occurs in my business relationships, like when I avoid phone calls from the mortgage people or the car loan people when I get behind on my payments. I have a feeling of powerlessness and resignation that I am going to get fucked, and that I am only going to get what the other party is willing to concede. (And on that last point, I'm certainly not going to ask for it.) The gist of my behavior is to withdraw and remove myself from the situation – just get it over with.

There were several statements in the questionnaire that we were asked to score ourselves on that, if there were any responses higher than "completely characteristic," I would have marked that one instead. Number 24, which states, "I often let others take responsibility for solving the problem," was on that I would have answered as "super-duper completely characteristic of me" if that were one of the options. I would suspect that a lot of this has to do with the fact that I grew up an only child, and as such, I often heard about how spoiled I was, and how I wasn't concerned with anyone else. I was told how wrong it was to be selfish and how one should always, in any circumstance, be considerate of other people. I've since learned that this isn't always the proper course of action to take, and I've been reading a lot of Ayn Rand to try and overcome this feeling. (I would probably follow her a lot more closely if she weren't in hell now for being so godless.)

Still, habits are hard to break, and as a result, at least in my interpersonal relationships, I find myself often bending over backwards to make sure that the other party's needs are satisfied. If that involves seeing to it that they solve the problem the way they see fit while completely fucking me sideways in the process, so be it. Even in my marriage, I refuse to make any decisions, no matter how small or inconsequential they are. From deciding what to watch on TV to deciding what we should have for supper, I find that I have no opinion or preference, because "getting my way" isn't important to me. "Please, just make a decision, I don't care" are words that are often bandied about in our house. I feel that otherwise, if I stated an opinion, it would just mean that I had to have my way (as I was inexplicably often told growing up). That's not screwed up or nothing, is it?

My negotiating style is a natural extension of this aversion to "having my way." (I would also guess that another reason I "let others take responsibility for solving a problem" absolves me completely of any responsibility if the solution fails. To that end, I don't believe that I've made a decision that involves other people since roughly 1991.)

This "take it squarely up the ass early and often" philosophy can also be found in my response to statement number 4, "I often feel I lack the power to produce a successful outcome." If one of the possible selections was "Does a bear shit in the woods?", I would have marked that one. I don't feel like I have much to offer to anyone in the way of concessions, and as such, a successful outcome to most difficult decisions or negotiations hinges entirely on the other party's capability or willingness to do so, because I don't care – regardless of any actions I take, I am going to find a way to screw myself anyway.

This exercise has caused me to think a lot about why I get fucked so often. But at the end of the day, I don't know that I really want to change, because I overheard others in the class talking about "taking all that you can get" and "doing unto others before they do unto you." How repugnant. I would be a lot more of a people person if it weren't for people.