out to customers. Customers would appreciate the free travel tips and might stay longer in the store or
be more likely to return. Since the funds would come from his distribution budget rather than his
advertising budget, he was able to consider the possibility. When I gave further thought to Michael’s
interests, I realized that the booklets would be more valuable to him if he could sponsor them
exclusively, rather than featuring other companies’ ads. We agreed on a mutually beneficial deal for
exclusive sponsorship, and he ended up spending more than $140,000, topping my own previous
record for the largest ad package in company history.
Whereas advocacy and relational accounts enabled me to become more assertive in win-lose
negotiations, it was perspective taking that helped me expand the pie and succeed in win-win
negotiations. Ultimately, despite the dot-com bust, this approach led more than half of our renewal
clients to increase their ad packages. Our team brought in more than $550,000 in profits, making it
possible to increase the size of our staff and introduce new marketing initiatives. After months of
hounding delinquent clients to send their payments, I became the only manager in recent history to
bring in 100 percent of accounts receivable, leaving no bad debt. I was elected to the company’s
board of directors and earned the manager of the year award for leadership, commitment, and
business acumen. The lessons I learned at Let’s Go stuck with me, and I decided to spend the rest of
my career teaching other givers what I had discovered about overcoming the doormat effect.
For a number of years, researchers have known that successful negotiators tend to operate in an
otherish fashion. In a comprehensive analysis of twenty-eight different studies led by Dutch
psychologist Carsten De Dreu, the best negotiators weren’t takers or selfless givers. The takers
focused on claiming value: they saw negotiations as zero-sum, win-lose contests and didn’t trust their
opponents, so they bargained aggressively, overlooking opportunities to create value through
developing an understanding of their counterparts’ interests. The selfless givers made too many
concessions, benefiting their counterparts at a personal cost. The most effective negotiators were
otherish: they reported high concern for their own interests and high concern for their counterparts’
interests. By looking for opportunities to benefit others and themselves, otherish givers are able to
think in more complex ways and identify win-win solutions that both takers and selfless givers miss.
Instead of just giving away value like selfless givers, otherish givers create value first. By the time
they give slices of pie away, the entire pie is big enough that there’s plenty left to claim for
themselves: they can give more and take more.
This notion of expanding the pie captures a turning point in Lillian Bauer’s career. Although she
had learned to push back with clients and place boundaries on the time she spent mentoring and
helping takers, she wasn’t willing to let go of helping givers and matchers. When junior associates
who didn’t seem like takers needed help, she still gave in a selfless manner, sacrificing inordinate
amounts of her time regardless of her own schedule and demands.
Jason Geller adopted a more otherish approach: he found a way to expand the amount of giving
that he could accomplish without increasing the demands on his time. Geller engaged others in sharing
the workload, creating opportunities for them to become givers, while keeping himself from becoming
overloaded. As a senior manager, when junior analysts asked him for help, Geller would suggest a
lunch, and invite a couple newer managers to come along. This opened the door for the managers to
have access to him, and for them to provide mentoring to the junior analysts. “It’s a great way for
them to build the support of folks more junior to them,” he says. Instead of doing all of the giving
himself, he was able to connect junior analysts with multiple mentors, who provided a broader base
michael s
(Michael S)
#1