Life Code: The New Rules for Winning in the Real World (23 page)

Trust me, it’s okay
not
to be a sucker. In fact, it’s
more
than okay—that’s the only way to protect yourself and your interests. But let’s be clear about one thing: I’m
not
telling you to behave like a predator. I’m
not
saying you should try to take advantage of people. I’m
not
trying to teach you how to screw people over. In teaching you how to “cut a deal,” I’m
not
telling you to cut the other party’s throat.

In Strategic Step 2, we dealt with figuring out a way to give the other side as much of what they want as possible. So how do you do that? For a negotiation to be successful, you have to understand the
currency
that the other side values. You have to know what’s
really
important to them and to yourself.

There are multiple forms of currency. There’s monetary currency, of course—that’s obvious. But there’s also social currency and emotional currency. And you need to find out what the person you’re negotiating with
really
values and wants. I said that it may look like you both value and want the same thing when you really don’t. If you both want the same thing, it is harder, but not impossible, to compromise or give them what you want to keep. But if you can figure out how that isn’t necessarily the case, then you can be a leader and guide the negotiation out of an apparent impasse. Remember, think of negotiation as synonymous with compromise, not confrontation. Anybody can butt heads, but it takes a leader to lead.

For example, if your teenage son wants to stay out until 2 a.m. and you want him to come home at midnight, you’re going to reach an impasse pretty quickly when you start demanding a midnight curfew and he starts insisting that’s too early. Of course, you could always “compromise” on, say, 1 a.m. But I’ll bet that wouldn’t make either one of you happy.

Instead, I want you to step back and ask yourself what you both really want. Does it really matter what the clock says when he walks in, or are the stakes much different and much higher? With parents, what usually matters is safety, not time, although it is time that becomes the battleground. If you think about it, you’ll probably say something like this: “I don’t want him out at 1:30 in the morning; there’s nothing he can get into at 1:30 but trouble. The bars let out at 1 a.m., so there are more drunk drivers on the road at 1:30 than at any other time. I just don’t feel it’s safe for him to be out there.” So, what you
really
want is to know that he’s safe. You may not really care whether he’s home; you just want to know he’s off the roads and somewhere safe. That’s emotional currency, and it’s what’s behind your insistence on the midnight curfew. You’re not
really
arguing about the curfew. What’s important to you is a feeling of security about your child.

Now, what does your son really want? What currency is valuable to him? If you could get him to step back, he’d probably say something like this: “This is my one night out with my friends. To be home at midnight, I’d have to leave at 11:30. We can’t even go to a movie and out to eat and over to someone’s house to hang out. Just when everyone is kicking back and relaxing, I have to leave! I don’t want to spend every night at home being left out. I want to be somewhere else, and I don’t want to have you tell me where I have to be at whatever hour.” Okay, if you see it from his point of view, you’ll understand that his currency is emotional as well. It’s not the exact hour that’s the issue; it’s freedom that’s important to him and the ability to participate.

Now you can see the point. If you just pick a little bit later time, it doesn’t address the emotional currency that’s important to both of you. You want the security of knowing that he’s safe, and he wants the freedom to spend time out of the house with his friends. You can find a way for both of you to get what you want—this isn’t a difficult compromise if you lead the discussion in the direction of what you both really want, which is
not
what the clock reads. Approaching the curfew from this standpoint shows that what you thought you were fighting about isn’t really what’s at stake. Your security and his freedom can be compatible. Neither one of you has to “sacrifice” everything. You’ve narrowed the area of your dispute, so your negotiation can proceed from the starting point of what you have in common.

Now this understanding isn’t something he’s going to arrive at on his own. Remember what I said about creating your own experience around yourself and becoming a leader of events and circumstances rather than a victim of them? The point is not to issue ultimatums and take uncompromising stances but to find common ground. Here’s an opportunity for you to lead the negotiation instead of getting trapped in a cycle of two people making demands and each building resentment for the other. Suppose you both stick to what’s really important—your security and his freedom—and you say something like this to your son: “Would you agree that by 1 a.m., you don’t have to be home but you will be off the road and somewhere supervised and verifiable—at your friend’s house, for example, where you let me know you’ll be spending the night and you’ll be answering the phone? And every third or fourth weekend, you and your friends can hang out here at our house. Would those arrangements satisfy you?”

Note that the negotiation has become about specific terms and measurable outcomes. It’s not about vague terms like “coming home early” or “staying out late.” It’s about a specific time and a specific action—making a phone call. And with that, your negotiation can reach a closure, instead of a constant battle every weekend.

When I make this point to people, showing them they have to narrow the area of dispute, identify your different currencies, give both sides as much of what they want as possible, and arrive at a specific and measurable outcome, they always say, “Wow. That isn’t so hard. I don’t feel so bad negotiating like that.” And this kind of negotiation can lead to agreements that build over time, starting with smaller and shorter-term agreements at the beginning and eventually leading to bigger and longer-term agreements after a period of adjustment and the earning of trust.

Enabling both of you to get what you want is the essence of negotiating with emotional integrity. It doesn’t have to be about business or involve money or contracts. In fact, it’s usually about interactions with people in your day-to-day life. Keep in mind that all relationships are mutually defined, as I pointed out in my book
Family First
, and the definitions you reach are the product of negotiations you conduct with each other. You may think you didn’t negotiate the relationship; you just inherited it. But that’s not true, since you teach people how to treat you.

And when it comes to how you want to be treated, you shouldn’t—and shouldn’t have to—“settle” or “compromise” your standards. In fact, you should adopt an “I won’t settle” philosophy, because you’re going to enter every negotiation from the standpoint of acknowledging the other person’s currency and trying to satisfy their true needs and desires as much as your own. You don’t want to “settle too cheap” just because you wouldn’t require yourself to stand up for your rights. Making a middle-ground agreement that gets you most of what you really want is acceptable, as long as you do not trade away core elements such as your child’s safety, because some things are just non-negotiable.

Let’s talk about the non-negotiable issues. Remember, in a true negotiation, the purpose is not to hurt the other person or even to gain power. As I emphasized in
Relationship Rescue
, the number-one requirement for any successful negotiation within a relationship is safety. If either side’s safety is at issue, that’s non-negotiable. Nobody should put up with abuse, for example—physical or emotional. There’s no “negotiating” with a bully, in the sense of accommodating his need to hurt you or your child. It’s not a matter of understanding his currency, because what he wants—a feeling of dominance and a sadistic pleasure in other people’s suffering—is not something you or anyone else should be giving any legitimacy to. You should never “compromise” your integrity in dealing with someone unscrupulous who’s making abusive, manipulative, or unreasonable demands.

If you’re confronted with someone who has a history of promoting non-negotiable needs or desires, it’s okay to tell yourself that certain things are unacceptable. You will not put up with a spouse who cheats on you or a partner who abuses you or children who disrespect you. These are things you know about your own values and sensibilities. In one of my earlier books,
Relationship Rescue
, I call these “drop-dead deal-breakers.” If you’re faced with an abuser, get out. Get out
safely
(see DrPhil.com or NNEDV.org for suggestions on how to do that), and stay out until an objective professional tells you it is safe to return—and realize that time may or may not come. If your partner is addicted to narcotics, then you’re no longer living with the person you know; you’re living with an addict, and that is a deal-breaker until a professional advises differently. If you’re living with a cheater or with children who are disrespectful, things have to change.

At the point that you recognize a “drop-dead deal-breaker,” you have the choice of presenting what I call an “ultimatum with options.” You say, “I cannot and will not continue on this path, but here’s what I will do to help create change and what I will do
if things change
.”

For example, your personal values should preclude you from living with someone who is poisoning his body and brain with drugs or alcohol. But you can say you will be willing to help him get some help. You can say you will be willing to try everything reasonable, short of watching him kill himself. In cases like this, what you need to do is prepare a script in advance. From writing my monthly column in
O: The Oprah Magazine
, I’ve found that scripts are among the most popular and useful tools for readers facing difficult people and difficult situations. Here’s an example of what you might need to say to a drug addict or alcoholic:

Stephen Covey said it best when he said, “Begin with the end in mind.” If you are forced to deal with this harsh reality, have a plan before you intervene. If your spouse says they will do it, that they will get the help, you need to be spring-loaded to take them up on the offer! If they say no, you need to be spring-loaded in that direction as well. Do not bluff here; mean what you say and say what you mean.

The same is true if you’re dealing with an unfaithful spouse. One of the questions I get asked most frequently is “Can a marriage survive infidelity?” And the answer is yes, it
can
, but that doesn’t mean it
will
or even that it
should
. It all depends on how you negotiate to move forward. You need to require some things of yourself, and you need to require some things of him.

Let me give you an example of how that would go. You have to sit down with your husband and say something along the lines of: