Needs-Based Negotiation: 3 Stages of Dialogue and 3 Types of Reactivity
When facing a big decision with your partner or someone close to you, you probably would like the dialogue to be collaborative. You’d like to be able to trust that you can share everything that’s important to you regarding the decision or issue, fully hear the other person, and make decisions that truly work for everyone.
But when the stakes are high, collaboration can easily get derailed. Either of you might get caught in reactivity and resort to old protective habits, like raising your voice, proving you’re right, or shutting down. You leave reactive interactions wondering why there isn’t space for you in this relationship or why everything has to be hard.
Needs-based negotiation is a form of collaborative dialogue that operates from the paradigm that when a particular quality of connection is established, a natural creative generosity of heart becomes accessible and strategies that honor everyone’s needs are then relatively easy to find. Truly collaborative dialogue requires a fundamental trust in connection. It requires staying grounded in a confidence that everyone’s needs can be met.
While there are many layers of skills and awareness we could name, let’s focus on three main stages of needs-based negotiation.
Fully hear each other's feelings and needs without attaching them to strategies. In this stage you are just connecting with the feelings and needs alive for you and the other person around the given topic or decision. The other person’s feelings and needs don’t have to make sense to you at this stage; it’s enough just to hear them with warm curiosity and reflect them back. This requires each person to share a little at a time—speaking for no more than two minutes before asking for reflection and empathy. This is not the place to make a case for why your needs are valid. Simply identify each other’s needs without the backstory.
Brainstorm and dream big. Next, hear each other fully around the ideas for meeting those needs. Don't evaluate, like or dislike, or get practical at this stage. Throw in some wild ideas and big dreams to help open the creativity door. This stage is incredibly important for helping you to see outside the box and keep your dialogue alive with fun and creativity rather than the contraction of threat.
Choose strategies to experiment with. The quality of connection in this stage of dialogue will depend on how the first two stages went. If you start to negotiate and there is immediate tension, then back up to empathy and reassure each other that all needs are equally valid. As each idea or strategy is proposed take a look at the needs that were originally named and play out the scenario showing how those needs would be met. Typically, all needs can be met by several possible strategies, not just one. Holding an attitude of experimentation can help. Rather than thinking, “We have to make the one right decision,” admit that you don’t know exactly how it will pan out. Remind yourself that you have the capacity to be present for disappointment and compassion should things not unfold as planned. You can try something else if it doesn’t work. If you get stuck and don’t see a way forward, then you have likely merged a need and the strategy to meet it. Make sure the needs you named are actually universal needs (Use the needs list!) and not just your preferred strategy to meet a need.
There are many ways your dialogue might get derailed. The following three types of reactivity are some of the most common. Which of these most often derails collaborative dialogue for you?
Urgency: A fearful, urgent mind rushes the process. With this form of reactivity, you imagine there is not enough time for each person to be heard fully. It’s as though you are pushing through the process to get to those few moments of happiness you imagine resolution will bring. Unfortunately, rushing collaborative decisions often triggers disconnect and resentment. For example, when you finally decide on going to the beach for the perfect day off a haze of grumpiness hangs over the “happy time” you had hoped to create.
Urgency is most easily prevented by initiating a dialogue long before a decision needs to be made. Big decisions especially benefit from layers of dialogue that spread out over time. At a deeper level, it is about cultivating a fundamental shift in what you trust will create a meaningful and joyful life. When you trust a particular quality of consciousness and connection as the most reliable strategy for meaning and fulfillment rather than managing the details of life, you will naturally slow down when urgency tries to take over.
Opinions or likes and dislikes: When you are truly making space to hear the other person in a collaborative dialogue, your intention is to understand what’s true for them. It’s essential to set aside your opinions and preferences in that moment and simply seek to understand with warm curiosity. When you hear everything another person says through the lens of your own likes and dislikes, the other person may experience your listening as approval or disapproval. Perceiving this triggers reactivity.
The easiest way to interrupt this habit is to simply reflect back what you’ve heard with no additions or edits on your side. If you notice that you don’t like what the other person is saying, it is a cue that you are not yet connected to their feelings and needs. Engage in strategies to interrupt your own reactivity and come back to center. Remind yourself that taking time to fully understand the other person will bring the quality of connection that enables you to find a way for everyone’s needs to be met.
Disparate views: When you realize that your view of a situation is completely different than the other person’s view, it’s easy to become discouraged. When you can’t imagine how you will come together given such disparate views, you might be tempted to try and convince the other person to see it your way. You might find yourself playing out specific scenarios in your mind and making dire predictions. If this is happening, you have lost your groundedness in trusting a quality connection over old habits of arguing.
Pause the dialogue. Take a short break. Remind yourself of your intention to understand. Make use of tools like the feelings and needs list or feelings and needs cards to detach yourself from views and strategies.
If you recognize these snags as they arise and turn your attention back to trusting that all needs can be met, you can move through the stages of true collaborative dialogue.
Needs-based negotiation doesn’t have to take more time than any other form of dialogue. It does, however, require more self-awareness and mindfulness. Mindfully reflecting on your own feelings and needs before a dialogue helps. Slowing down and engaging in each of the stages of dialogue on a different day can support you in staying grounded in a quality of consciousness and connection in which all needs are honored.
Practice
Take a moment now to identify an upcoming collaborative decision. It could be as simple as what to do together this weekend or as complex as whether or not to move to a new home. Begin to prepare for that dialogue by connecting with the needs alive for you in that decision.