CHAPTER 6-1
             DEALING WITH PEOPLE, AND MANAGING THEM
          
     We all want to be admired by colleagues and neighbors, 
successful in our business relationships, loved by those we care 
for, and obeyed when we have wishes we would like others to 
execute.  Because we want these responses so much, we often are 
suckers for those who promise us panaceas for them.  And we often 
fool ourselves for a while that worthless formulas really are 
working.  The moment of disillusion is often painful. 
     A best-selling book on thinking during the first half of 
this century (Ernest Dimnet, The Art of Thinking, New York:  
Fawcett, 1928/1956) promised that people will be drawn to you, 
your words will be listened to attentively, and people will 
regard you as a fount of interesting ideas, if each day you will 
only follow this simple practice:  Read several newspapers, mark 
and clip items of special interest, group them, and think about 
them throughout the day.  Then "You may meet him again in the 
evening.  A circle of interested but silent listeners surround 
him.  He is an unaffected, lucid and forcible speaker.  Every now 
and then somebody asks him a question, one of those questions 
which causes everybody else to wish they could answer it.  He 
does so, in a clear way, bringing in facts which you remember 
catching a glimpse of in the morning paper, but which you thought 
immaterial, whereas on his lips they actually give you the key to 
developments of vast importance:  'This man thinks' you say to 
yourself" (p. 142).  
     So there you have a guaranteed all-purpose solution to your 
needs in relation to other people.  Perhaps things worked so for 
that author.  Or perhaps he just thought they did.  Perhaps he 
just dreamed they would.  But will they work that way for you?  
Fat chance.  It ain't that easy. 
     Once I went to a party where a noted academic savant -- an 
excellent economist -- half danced, half sashayed around the 
room, conversing first here and then there.  People were 
fascinated by what he had to say.  Post hoc ergo propter hoc (see 
Chapters 4-5 and 4-6 on fallacies of thought) and hence I figured 
that the way to fascinate the way he did was to dance-sashay 
around the room.  At the next party I began to do that -- for two 
minutes, until I saw people's eyes widen and their thoughts came 
very clear:  What is that fool doing?  End of experiment.  Once 
again, there are no quicky successful gimmicks for success with 
people. 
     One more story:  Benny Leonard was a boxer famous in the 
1920's for being a smart fighter.  After an epic fight with Harry 
Greb (check), also a famous fighter, Greb was asked: "How were 
you able to beat Leonard?  All the time he is in the ring he is 
thinking."  Greb replied:  "All the time he was out there he was 
thinking.  All the time he was thinking I was hitting."  So even 
being "smart" and studying the situation carefully also does not 
guarantee success interpersonally. 
     Our close personal relationships are among the most complex 
aspects of human life.  The complexity is most marked in our 
personal relationships.  Perhaps because of their back-and-forth 
multi-dimensional intimate nature, there are few general 
principles that work reliably, though there are lots of maxims 
which sound wise but turn out to be as often inappropriate as 
appropriate.  Hence I will not tackle that subject.  Academic 
studies of social psychology, may or may not help you with this 
set of problems.  Novels and biographies may teach you better.  
But many people, I fear, will only learn about the best way to 
handle personal relationships by painful and pleasurable 
experience. 
     Impersonal relationships may be distinguished into people 
you will deal with once or at most occasionally, and people whom 
you will deal with on a continuing basis.  The frequency with 
which you will deal with them affects how they will behave toward 
you, as Adam Smith noticed about ethical dealings in business. 
     [W]hen a person makes perhaps twenty contracts in a day, he      
cannot gain so much by endeavoring to impose on his      
neighbours as the very appearance of a cheat would make him      
lose.  When people seldom deal with one another, we find      
that they are somewhat disposed to cheat, because they can      
gain more by a smart trick than they can lose by the injury      
which it does their character.  (Adam Smith in his Lectures      
on Policy, Justice, Revenue and Arms 1762, p. 318). 
Therefore you must plan to deal differently with the two classes 
or relationship.  Hence the two types are considered separately 
below. 

             INFREQUENT RELATIONSHIPS:  NEGOTIATION

     The process of negotiating characterizes one-time or 
infrequent relationships.  And the narrowest aspect of 
negotiating -- the bargaining which goes on if the negotiation 
has been narrowed down to one or a few clearcut issues which are 
important to both sides -- is often thought of as an arcane art 
in which perhaps the most important ability is an iron bottom for 
outsitting the other side without getting impatient.  But 
research on labor-management bargaining finds a less exotic 
characteristic to be most important in bargaining -- doing your 
homework and knowing as much as possible about the circumstances.  
(Raiffa?)                THE ART AND SCIENCE OF NEGOTIATION 
     There do not seem to be any effective general strategies for 
bargaining.  All devices seem to have drawbacks.  For example, a 
very high initial offer, intending to come down later, may boost 
the level of the final settlement.  But it may also make the 
other party angry, or even end the negotiation entirely.  And 
studies find that the famous strategy of Lemuel (?) Boulware at 
General Electric -- making what he considered to be a "fair" 
opening offer and then not budging -- does not turn out better 
(or worse) than other strategies.  
     Here is a "theoretical" solution of the problem we are 
talking about:  Estimate the probabilities of the other side's 
acceptance of your offer under various circumstances, then 
construct a tree-diagram of the paths leading to such offers, and 
use the process of backward induction to choose the best course 
of conduct.  (See Chapter 00).  But working out a practical 
version of this model is bound to be difficult, and no one has 
yet shown successful experience with it.       So concentrate on 
doing your homework carefully on your situation and that of your 
opponent, and don't get hung up on the gaming of head-to-head 
bargaining.       Now let us turn to the more general context of 
negotiation, in which -- unlike bargaining where there is just 
one over-riding issue -- there are a variety of issues of 
differing importance to the two sides.  The ideas in this section 
come from a book summarizing an important new body of work which 
has taken this subject into a more solid and scientific direction 
than hitherto.  (Roger Fisher and William Ury, Getting to Yes 
(New York: Penguin, 1981). 
     Fisher and Ury begin with the question:  What is the best 
way for people to deal with their differences?  Of course you are 
mainly interested in doing well for your side, so the question 
comes down to:  How can you deal with the differences between you 
and the other(s) so that the outcome is best for you in the long 
run?  But often seeing the whole picture, including how it looks 
from the other side, helps you get what you want. (That may not 
always be true, however.  A salesperson may be more likely to 
close a sale if s/he avoids learning sound reasons why the 
customer should not buy.  But this raises ethical questions 
beyond the scope of this chapter.) 
     Fisher and Ury term their method "principled negotiation", 
and they use this slogan:  Hard on the issues, soft on the 
people.  And they offer a five-part strategy:  1. Separate the 
people from the problem.  2. Focus on interests, not positions.  
3. Generate a variety of possibilities.  4. Broaden the scope of 
discussion away from the the single prominent issue that you both 
focus on at the start, so as to allow the other party to find 
benefits in arriving at agreement with you.  5. Insist that the 
results be based on some objective standard. 
Separate the people from the problem.
     Some aspects of separating the people from the problem are 
these:  Do not view the negotiation as a tug of war.  Try to see 
how it looks from the other side's point of view.  Do not indulge 
yourself in the luxury of anger.  Avoid getting the opponent's 
back up.  Do not give your opponent a personal stake in making 
your position worse.  (The man who owned the house we bought was 
anxious that the person he was previously negotiating with not 
get the house, because he had built up animus against him that 
benefited us.)  Avoid blaming your opponent for the way things 
are going.  Your job is not to demolish the opponent but rather 
to have your interests served. 
Focus on interests, not positions.  
     Don't bargain over positions.  Your opposite's ego, and 
perhaps also her standing in her organization may be affected by 
the outcome of the negotiation relative to the position she has 
taken.  Hence it makes sense to detach the discussion from a 
position that the other side may feel locked into.  
     One's position tends to take on a life of its own even if it 
originally was adopted purely for bargaining purposes, simply 
because it has become yours.  It becomes the "anchor" of your 
thought in subsequent analyses -- an illustration of a fallacy 
discussed in Chapter 4-6.  (cite Twersky and Kahneman).  
     Related advice:  do not justify your position.  Arguments 
about whose position is more righteous, based upon the events of 
the past, inevitably make the negotiation tougher.  Yet the 
temptation to engage in self-justification is almost irresistible 
-- as witness any discussion of Israelis and Arabs about peace in 
the Middle East, or household discussions about almost any 
domestic dispute. 
     The appropriate alternative to struggling about positions is 
not "soft bargaining".  The evidence shows that being a "nice 
person" in hopes that the other side will reciprocate is unsound 
strategy, because it does not work. 
     Figure out what you want, and attempt to understand what 
they want.  Ascertaining your interests and theirs is an 
important part of doing your homework.  If you understand clearly 
what you want, you can often find ways to help them help you get 
what you want, often at little cost to them.       If you 
understand the other side's interests, you are in position to a) 
help them without cost to you, and b) put pressure on them.   
Even when the negotiation comes down to head-to-head bargaining 
over a key issue -- such as bargaining over the rent with a 
prospective landlord -- you may be able to find other interests 
that matter.  For example, it is likely that the landlord would 
like a quiet and helpful tenant, and you may be able to prove 
from past experience that you fill that bill.  If so, you can 
offer that as an inducement.  Try to show the opposite side how 
you can achieve and advance their interests.       While you're 
being hard on the interests, be soft on the person.  That is, try 
to be as personally respectful and sympathetic as possible, even 
while insisting that s/he attend to your interests.  This 
behavior may seem inconsistent, but it is not difficult in 
practice, and it is very useful.  Sometimes you can even get the 
representative of the other side to sympathize with your position 
-- and then perhaps find yourself sympathizing with his. 
     Fisher and Ury urge that you explore the two sides' 
interests before discussing any specific proposals.  

Generate a variety of possibilities.
     Invent arrangements which will enable both sides to do 
better than the obvious possibilities.  Find benefits you can 
give the other side with little cost to you.  Negotiators have a 
phrase: "Don't leave money on the table", which means that you 
should avoid reaching an agreement which does not realize all the 
benefits possible for both sides.  (Sometimes this happens 
because one side gets interested in hurting the other side as 
well as helping itself.) Find ways between the horns of apparent 
dilemmas -- that is, innovative ways of satisfying both sides.  
     A homely illustration by Fisher and Ury:  Two people in a 
library are arguing about whether a window should be open or 
shut.  One wanted cold air while the other wanted no draft.  The 
librarian found a way through the horns of the dilemma, to wit, 
open a window in the next room.  The moral is that the pie is 
seldom perfectly fixed; a wise negotiator finds ways to expand 
it.  Brainstorm cooperatively with the other side, as if both of 
you are on the same side of table, to find ways to make the pie 
larger.  (See Chapter 3-1 on brainstorming.)

Insist that the results be be based on some objective standard.
     When all the above steps have been completed, sometimes 
there still is head-to-head disagreement on an amount.  Fisher 
and Ury recommend trying to avoid a pushing match.  On a head-to-
head bargaining issue, seek objective standards of merit rather 
than settle the issue by a contest of wills.  They suggest 
mediation, or exploring what others in the market would pay for 
an item, or some other objective test.  This enables the other 
side to not feel pushed around or gypped.  
                               ***
     The above process has the virtue of simplicity.  Keeping it 
in mind can improve your negotiating attitude, and change you 
from a warlike state of mind to a diplomatic state of mind.  You 
should focus on giving the other side rational self-interest 
reasons for doing what you would like them to do, rather than 
trying to force them to do what you would like.  Keeping this 
process in mind as you negotiate, and not letting your emotions 
carry you away, is easier said than done, however. 

                     ON-GOING RELATIONSHIPS
Motivating and supervising others.
     Now let's consider on-going impersonal work relationships 
with subordinates, peers, bosses, partners, suppliers, 
cooperators of all sorts, in contrast to one-time or occasional 
negotiations.  Inducing associates to cooperate with you in 
working toward your goals has always been one of the great 
mysterious talents, almost an art form.1  In earlier times the art was thought to be the 
deft manipulation of carrots and sticks.  In this century the nature of the human relationship, aside from carrots and sticks, has 
been much discussed by scientists as a determinant of worker motivation and productivity.  But the results of this "human 
relations school" has been mostly inconclusive.  
     Recently there has been put forth a system for inducing cooperation whose procedure can be written in specific rules, and 
whose success is supported by a variety of scientific evidence:  Tit for Tat, as developed and described by Robert Axelrod in The 
Evolution of Cooperation (New York:  Basic Books, 1984).  The principle is simple:  If the other person does something good for 
you, you return an equivalent good.  You also return an equivalent bad for bad immediately, the very first time and every 
subsequent time you receive a bad from the other.  The word "equivalent" here is important -- not half as bad, or twice as bad, 
but equally as bad, so far as it is possible to act equally.  And you start off with a positive action to get the system moving in 
the right direction. 
     The live-and-let-live episodes in World War I trench warfare are interesting evidence in favor of the tit-for-tat principle.  
There were frequent outbreaks of local peace in trench fighting, and when the peace was temporarily broken by some officer or 
soldier who wished to get fighting going, an equal response from the other side -- no less and no more -- tended to restore the 
peace.  Price wars in industry also fit the tit-for-tat pattern, as does the reciprocity system among U. S. Senators.  And 
computer simulation studies also provide evidence in favor of the principle. 
     The tit-for-tat system also makes good logical sense.  The immediacy and the invariability of the reaction maximizes the 
likelihood that the effect of a bad or good action will be learned.  And the equality of tit for tat means that there is no 
possibility for the other person to gain by giving you a bad and getting less bad in return, and also no possibility that the bads 
will escalate in an ascending series of ever-greater bads.  Therefore it makes sense that the immediate feedback in the tit-for-
tat sequence should change behavior in the desired direction and bring about the cooperation that you seek to achieve.      
     Comparing tit-for-tat to a market exchange is illuminating:  You elicit maximum possible cooperation from a grocer by 
immediately exchanging money for food in the exact amount of the market price, just as the grocer elicits your cooperation by 
handing over food for money.  Tit-for-tat is also an exchange system that elicits cooperation, but it is not as immediate or as 
certain as a market exchange.  The closer you can approximate a market exchange, by making your response certain and immediate, 
the more cooperation you can expect to elicit.  And just as with market relationships, the more frequent are your dealings with 
another party, the more reliable is the cooperative behavior, because the parties have more to lose in the breakdown of a system 
in which they participate regularly than they have at stake in a one-time relationship.  (The next two chapters have more to say 
about the cooperative nature of the entire market exchange system which we call an economy.)  
Caring Relationships.
     I do not recommend tit-for-tat as a principle in personal relationships, however.  One's aims in loving relationships are 
different than one's aims in impersonal relationships (at least I assume that they are).  It is important that the intimate 
parties feel that the other is acting cooperatively out of regard and concern rather than out of self-interest.  Employing a tit-
for-tat principle can be antithetical to the love principle.  
     About how to act and think in love relationships, family, and friendship in order to promote love or to achieve any other 
objective I offer only three small tidbits of advice:  1) Avoid blaming, avoid asking the other person to justify his/her 
behavior, avoid any negative comments except when absolutely necessary to convey information in the hopes of changing future 
behavior.  Often you can best change others' future behavior by stark direct suggestion without judging past behavior.  For 
example, "I suggest that next time you take the car out check the gas gauge", rather than "Why didn't you check the gas before you 
ran out?"  
     2)  No matter how bad the performance overall, seek the good patch in any performance and praise it, and try to help the 
other person build on the good element.  
     3)  When someone close to you has done something that hurts you, talk about what you feel instead of about what the other 
person did.  Instead of saying "You made me wait half an hour again, without any good reason, one more proof of how mean you are", 
say "I felt very badly about waiting for half an hour for you." When you talk about your feelings, you are describing a state 
about which the other person can't very well argue, whereas the other person can and will argue about whether s/he is mean and 
frequently makes you wait.  

                            FOOTNOTE
     1[Other aspects of management will not be discussed here, in part because there is no sharp-edged tool to talk about as 
there is in this section.  Standard books on management summarize the conventional wisdom, such as ...]  
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