When you are focused on trying to get a result that satisfies others’ needs it is very easy to forget that a balanced solution cannot be found until your needs are an equal part of the discussions.

Throughout my leadership journey and indeed my life, I usually focused on ensuring that others’ needs were satisfied before I considered my own. I believed that it was more important to make sure that others got what they wanted or needed. My view was that once that happened then I would automatically get what I was also due. Needless to say, that did not always happen.

What caused me to reflect on the one-sidedness of this value was the theme of a recent peer-to-peer leadership coaching forum. A few of the participants put forward as their challenge difficult negotiations they were involved in. Very strong emotions emerged in the room around handling other people’s demands. Because the leaders’ energies were so consumed in trying to manage the tricky negotiations, they weren’t able to see that greed and jealousy were blocking the outcome that would serve all parties.

None of the negotiations was straightforward and all of them would have a significant impact on the future progress of the organisation involved. What was remarkable was that in none of the case studies did the leader consider that his or her needs were also an integral part of the process.

Radical new thinking

Rather than using their coaching skills to help each of the forum members get better outcomes for the stakeholders in their various negotiations, the group decided that the real issue was our propensity to leave our needs out of the equation. We had a very interesting and thought-provoking session.

The following are the insights the participants came up with regarding making sure our needs are represented during negotiations:

• It can be naïve to think that if you help others, they will automatically help you, or indeed that others take your needs into account.
• Recognise that others can be in difficult emotional situations and as a result may be so caught up with their own irrational fear of loss that their subsequent greed prevents them from taking every stakeholder into account.
• When you have done everything possible to get a fair result you need to realise, for your own sanity, that it may be impossible to get a negotiated settlement, because some others are so caught up in their own emotional pain, they cannot see reason. You may have to take the ‘nuclear option’, whatever that is in your case.
• The best way to develop emotional detachment is to ensure everything is out in the open right from the beginning.
• Not bringing in your needs becomes the elephant in the room and may sabotage the negotiations.
• Be prepared to use your positional power to help bring others to their senses when they are not being reasonable; this should be neither coercive nor punitive but done with compassion (otherwise known as tough love!).
• Recognise the different speeds at which other people will (or can) work. Sometimes you need to allow more time for others to reflect and review their own positions. Make haste slowly.
• The reason the ‘universe’ chooses you to negotiate this situation may not be to get an impossibly fair result but to help others learn some tough life lessons through self-sabotaging what is reasonable for them due to greed.
• Negotiating difficult, conflicting agendas is a great way to grow as a leader.

Are you inclined to leave your own needs out of negotiations or if you’re the ‘greedy’ party, how has focusing on your needs at all costs worked out for you?