Beyond Negocentrism: Questioning Selves, Relationships, and Contexts Open Access

In his book Negotiating Life: Secrets of Everyday Diplomacy and Deal Making, Jeswald Salacuse takes readers on a three‐dimensional negotiation odyssey, exploring the importance to successful negotiation of understanding oneself, the others in one's life, and one's contexts. The book delves deeper into these three dimensions than most other negotiating books, and, in the process, prompts a deep questioning of current negotiation theories.

Readers could not have a better companion on this journey than Salacuse, who brings to the book his personal wisdom and his experience as a scholar, trainer, adviser, and practitioner. As former Dean of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, he has put many of the ideas in the book to the test. He has cultivated a facilitative leadership style as a unique orchestrator of others’ talents, making them the center of negotiation attention. For him, empowering self means first empowering others. Salacuse has also negotiated deals around the world and become an authority on how diverse cultures, legal systems, and forms of government affect negotiation. In this book, he suggests how negotiators can reexamine how they view themselves, their negotiation counterparts, and their operating systems.

Many management books ask readers to reflect on their own practice and to question their untested assumptions, and then suggest alternative tools and behaviors to achieve success. Negotiation guides typically put the negotiator/reader at the center of the universe, with the world revolving around him or her. Negotiating Life continues in this “negocentric” tradition, but offers refreshing perspectives on the connections between negotiators themselves, their counterparts, and their contexts that significantly broaden its outlook.

I define “negocentrism” as an ongoing attempt to empower individuals for self‐promotion, to achieve their goals within their families, organizations, or nations, using negotiation techniques that apply to real‐life situations. Negotiating Life represents the ultimate consequence and achievement of negocentrism, because it asks readers not only to look at daily situations but at life itself, suggesting that we must deem life as an ongoing negotiation.

This fundamental idea arises from ancient roots. During his career as chief minister to France's King Louis XIII, Cardinal Richelieu leveraged negotiation to consolidate his power and described how he did so in his Political Testament (1995[1688]) by engaging in what he called “continual negotiations” (négociations continuelles). Similarly, Salacuse sees negotiation as intrinsic to living. As René Descartes (1991[1637]) decreed “I think, therefore I am,” Salacuse logically infers “I negotiate, therefore I am” (2). Being is negotiating.

The book's title, Negotiating Life, leaves it up to readers to decide whether the intent of negocentrism is descriptive or prescriptive. Is it an anthropological observation that describes what is essential about the ways in which humans live, as if life and negotiating are one and the same concept, have always been and always will be, with life as a succession of implicit or explicit negotiation situations? Negotiation scholar Robert Mnookin has referred to this propensity of our field to infringe on all territories as “negotiation imperialism.”

On the other hand, the book's title might convey a prescriptive intent, an invitation for the reader to incorporate negotiation more thoroughly into everyday action, to actively decide to negotiate life, to make living an ongoing negotiating adventure.¹ In so doing, Salacuse calls to mind the pioneering work of Antoine Pecquet, who in, in his Discourse on the Art of Negotiating (1737), wrote, “Everything is therefore, so to speak, commerce or negotiation in life, even among those who would be supposed to have nothing to either fear or to hope from one another.”

Negocentrism, in Negotiating Life, is not synonymous with egocentrism. Even if their negotiations begin and end with themselves, negocentric individuals who seek to get their way must learn how to influence and earn the agreement of others. Even leaders, Salacuse notes (see chapter 6), require the support of others to succeed.

So if there is a human negocentric quest, Salacuse reminds us that it can only be fulfilled via others. Relationships and transactions, although they are distinct goals, seem so intrinsically linked that getting along with others becomes a precondition for getting to yes. Connection helps the negotiator focus on others, at the table or behind the table, in external and internal interactions. Reconnection is necessary when the deal breaks down — sometimes reconnections are made possible with the support of a neutral “other,” the mediator.

It sometimes seems that the more selfless and other‐focused the negotiator becomes, the more likely she or he is to succeed. This is the paradox of negocentrism: to be successful for myself, to achieve my own goals, I must self‐efface to the other's benefit. Otherness becomes the best path to self‐fulfillment.

This paradox of negocentrism has been a feature of the self‐help negotiation literature. These books often focus on the self as a bait to lure readers, and then gently lead them to question themselves, in order to interrogate their positions and unearth their underlying interests, prompting the growth of self‐awareness and the invention of creative solutions that can accommodate their needs.

This literature typically pushes readers to look more deeply at others. Negotiators are advised to question their negative and incomplete views of others, to consider the other party's interests to make possible a shift from adversarial relationships into partnerships. In the process, they further expand their understandings of themselves, marrying assertiveness with empathy.

To illustrate this process, Negotiating Life suggests a range of persuasive tools, such as using questions, metaphors, analogies, and precedents as means of suggesting options rather than imposing positions. As Aristotle argued in his Rhetoric, tailoring one's speech to the audience is the surest way to gain agreement. To underscore this point, Salacuse quotes Walt Whitman: “Surely, whoever speaks to me in the right voice, him or her I shall follow” (58).

François de Callières, a special envoy for Louis XIV and another pioneer of negotiation empathy, insisted on the proteiform character of the negotiator who “must divest himself of his own temper to accommodate to that of the others. So to speak, he must go out of himself to put himself in the place of a Prince that he aims at pleasing; and after having known him, examine, without care for his own feelings and ideas, what this man will likely think of the things that he has to tell him and the effects that they will produce in him” (2002[1716]: 155, my translation).

In this advanced form, does negocentrism therefore become a “n‐egocentrism,” a negation of egocentrism? Not completely. Following the utilitarian tradition of Callières, which “interest‐based negotiation” also reflects, Negotiating Life depicts negotiators as self‐interested individuals who seek to understand others’ interests for the sake of realizing their own. In that economic world of selfish individuals, even a random act of kindness will be immediately reinterpreted as self‐serving and renamed “altruistic interest.” In sum, nobody is ever doing anything but for themselves.

Such a philosophy instrumentalizes the other and relationships for one's own ends, as if all empathy was strategic, as if all tactics were just about my goals, as if my concern for the other was fake, and always tainted “by interest.” But would such a view not lead to an incomplete image of self with other?

If Negotiating Life does not go as far as to question the assumption of self‐interest, it does, however, open some doors to alternative perspectives. Salacuse, for example, suggests that negotiators must pay more attention to cultures — he has been studying the impact of culture on negotiation for years. National, professional, and organizational cultures shape the way negotiators think and behave. He reminds readers that some cultures vary in how much emphasis they place on the larger relationship versus the singular transactions in negotiations.

In the same vein, Negotiating Life explicitly contrasts two Latin words: otium, which means time spent in leisure, relaxation, conversation with friends that does not include business, and negotium, which literally and originally meant the absence of leisure, but came over time to mean “business.” Some cultures, like the Roman culture, placed greater value on otium and its associated emphasis on relationship building and saw negotium as a tool that should serve otium.

This communitarian, collective orientation suggests an authentic prime concern toward the other that does not relegate the needs of the other to one's own needs, that does not subordinate those needs to negotiation outcomes, and that can generate trust and collegiality, independent of what the other party can do for the negotiator. As an illustration of how the other matters more in negotiation, Salacuse recalls the story of a diplomat who praises interlocutors who have more than the same two dull questions to ask the other side when they start a meeting. The capacity to truly care about the other side at the beginning of a conversation, to fine‐tune one's messages to him or her and not simply to fake and expedite them, does not simply set an authentic tone, but helps build stronger relationships and creates a platform for fruitful transactions.

What we call “small talk” may be “bigger” and more important than it seems because it helps us understand the connection between the problem we seek to solve and the person we must work with to solve it. This person him or herself — his or her background, motivations, interests, temperament — may be more important than the problem itself and more essential to its resolution than it first seems. Roger Fisher, William Ury, and Bruce Patton (1991) recommended that negotiators separate the people from the problem, especially when emotions rise. But perhaps this is not the best approach, because it could depersonalize the interactions to the extent it makes people nearly irrelevant.

How would negotiators behave differently if their counterparts’ concerns were more essential to the process? A first step might be to recognize that the other negotiator will remain a question that the negotiator must continue to ask, and that the answer to that question cannot be reduced to the counterpart's impact on the negotiator. We are often surprised by how our perceptions of what is fair change when we get closer to the other side. In this way, questioning others can lead to altruism.

So, little by little, Negotiating Life pushes readers toward “double questioning” and subsequent awareness. First, it encourages readers to recognize how much of their life involves continual negotiating: that negotiation is so pervasive that human being becomes synonymous with negotiator. Second, it suggests that readers become more conscious that negotiating is mostly about people discovering others above and beyond simply solving a particular problem.

Part One of the book is devoted to strategies, and Part Three to tactics. The capacity to develop strategies and tactics is what each negotiator should learn, generally, so that he or she can leverage them in the different circumstances. Between his discussions of strategies and tactics, Salacuse examines contexts (Part Two): the different worlds in which negotiations take place, whether these concern leaders’ or agents’ negotiations (chapters 6 and 8), negotiations with governments (chapter 7), or negotiations across cultures (chapter 9). In Salacuse's analysis, contexts play a crucial part and he advises that specific approaches dictated by specific circumstances may outweigh general advice.

For example, if negotiators deal with government representatives, they should remember that regulations frame what they can or cannot do, and that what I would call their “negotiation band,” or range of possible maneuver, is often narrower, allowing comparatively less maneuvering space. Government regulations may limit communication to explicit channels, and control party behavior in a variety of ways designed to ensure fairness and legitimacy and avoid such risks as bribery and nepotism (e.g., public bidding processes).

Salacuse's third fundamental concern is the larger worlds in which negotiators operate. Negotiations evolve differently according to their contexts, just as every fish evolves in a specific water environment, be it pond, river, or ocean. Salacuse explores masterfully the ways in which negotiators mingle with each other within a given context, but also how their possibilities and constraints change as the context changes. In this way, he takes a sociological view of negotiation, analyzing how contexts matter and how group membership affects negotiation behavior, removing his analysis another step further away from a focus on the egocentric individual negotiator.

Negotiating Life recognizes the immersed part of the iceberg, warning readers about the pervasiveness and diversity of negotiation contexts, as well as the need for negotiators to acknowledge how the context can frame the negotiation and both limit and enhance their options.

When negotiators are better able to grasp the complexity and specificity of context — their own, the other party's, and the specific negotiation context — and recognize which strategies or tactics are most appropriate for those given contexts, Salacuse argues, they will consequently become more adaptable and flexible negotiators. While we may believe that we control our own negotiations, context limits our freedom, and we often find ourselves operating from predetermined scripts. In some cultures, getting straight to business is expected, while in others neglecting polite small talk first would be deemed rude and curtail progress. As we know, negotiators are often unaware how much of the other party's behavior — as well as their own — may reflect cultural norms.

In unfamiliar contexts (national, professional, or organizational), the negotiator's behavior may appear odd to his or her counterpart. Negotiation behaviors that we think of as original and self‐directed may in fact arise semi‐instinctively from our own negotiation contexts, less embodiments of our “free will” than behavioral straightjackets. When these behaviors seem ordinary and predictable to one negotiator but odd and unexpected to the counterpart, the risk of misunderstanding grows. One negotiator's gesture of thanks looks like bribery to another negotiator from a different culture, while to another it seems insufficiently grateful.

Many negotiators — and even some negotiation scholars — fail to comprehend how negotiation approaches might be influenced, if not produced, by context. Often, they do not consciously and actively negotiate with an awareness of these influences, but rather “they are negotiated,” they behave (or build theory) unaware of how their context affects them. What they do and even the science they develop does not come so much from them, as it is built into them unconsciously, promoting biases they do not even question.

For example, more materialistic cultures may produce negotiators whose self‐interested orientation is seldom questioned until they negotiate in a different cultural context. Conversely, in a more faith‐oriented culture, negotiation expectations might arise from sacred texts, which neither negotiators or negotiation scholars would be likely to question. Outsiders will find it difficult to challenge underlying cultural assumptions in such situations: how does the dog convince the cat?

Negotiating Life suggests that negotiators inhabit a series of negotiation worlds that constrain their behaviors — independent of whichever theory of negotiation they choose to adopt. Classic individual‐centered negotiation theory often suggests a “wide‐open” negotiation that, it turns out, is a more narrow world in practice. By brainstorming and seeking value‐creation, authors suggested that the “Pareto frontier” (the best possible deal for every party) had few limits — it could be moved indefinitely toward the northeast (where one finds Pareto‐optimum outcomes on a graph), creating integrative agreements that benefit all parties. Such an effort should lead, in theory, to outcomes that are, as Lawrence Susskind (2014) has characterized them, “good for you, great for me.” However, in specific contexts, reality shows that reaching such optimal deals is challenging.

The book's chapters on contexts advise negotiators that they may need to operate in unfamiliar worlds that challenge their frames of negotiation reference, for example, cultures in which an increase in material wealth may not automatically equate to the pursuit of happiness.

Examining negotiation systems in their diversity is an arduous task and requires intensive travel — literal and figurative — outside of one's comfort zone and cultural norms, and managing good and bad surprises. Negotiating Life offers a more realistic view of what the negotiation options might be in a given context. What we discover by thoroughly interrogating ourselves and others might make our zone of possible agreement seem smaller than much of the classic negotiation theory would have us believe. But such explorations may also enable negotiators to forge more workable relationships and more enduring deals because they help negotiators to develop a more accurate and informed understanding of constraints and opportunities.

Another danger of pure utilitarian approaches to negotiation is their failure to address the issue of relative power and their assumption that both sides are negotiating on a “level playing field.” Another is that such approaches often fail to address issues of substantive justice. Most scholarship has focused on how negotiators impact the negotiation: could scholarship that explores how negotiators are framed by their negotiation systems address some of these insufficiencies?

In this book, Salacuse asks readers to reconsider their place, and the place of others, in the negotiation universe. He travels with readers far from home, uncovering in the process the unconscious self who has so far failed to see how pervasive negotiation is in life, but also how central the experiences and perceptions of others are to carrying out our own negotiations. The book also examines the multiple broader contexts in which all parties find themselves, which control their perspectives and reveal their limitations. Negotiators who take this book to heart will be, I think, less absolute and more relative in their approaches.

Sigmund Freud (2011[1920]) described how science changed humanity's understanding of itself:

Similarly, Salacuse contributes to an expansion of negotiation theory away from what I call “naïve negocentrism,” which positions the individual at the center of the negotiation universe. Perhaps negocentrism is just a feature of a negotiation field in infancy, an approach that is at odds with the complexity of the negotiation world, where “we” unceasingly negotiate but where the “I” is but one component among many that our analysis must consider.

Humility dictates that negotiators recognize that they often do not even fully understand the interactions in which they find themselves or know how to move forward from them, whatever their level of preparation. Such a humility invites deeper questioning, and asks us to acknowledge the shortcomings of current theories.

Playing off of Descartes's “I think, therefore I am,” Freud suggested that “It thinks through me.” Similarly, we might rethink the idea that “I negotiate, therefore I am,” acknowledging that “We negotiate, therefore we are,” but also “That negotiates through me,” because our negotiation systems are embodied in each one of us, in ways we are not even aware of in our daily actions.

Before asserting “I think, therefore I am,” Descartes expressed another idea that might be even more important in this context: “I doubt.” Negotiating Life sparks one last point. Descartes brought a questioning habit to all his investigations into the shortcomings of medieval science — a similar orientation might be this book's most important feature. It urges the negotiator to keep asking, exploring, trying, and failing, and trying again, in absolute humility.