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Morals and Ethics - False Milestones in Negotiation
By
Radu Ionescu
One of my clients, a real estate developer, consulted me about a problem concerning a ten
floor office building he was seeking to rent. He was negotiating with a potential client, A,
about renting 7 floors of the building. They almost had reached a deal but the draft of the
contract was at A’s office for approval. There had been no answer for a month.
Meanwhile, another potential client, B, approached the developer about leasing the whole
building at a higher rent than client A proposed to pay.
My client’s question was: Can I start negotiating with client B when I have almost agreed
to rent to A? Would it be ethical to do so?
My question is: Are morals and ethics direct guidelines in negotiation?
Maybe I will come to a surprising answer, but my opinion is no, they are not
determinant in negotiation. Morals and ethics are indirect results of our actions.
What drives us into a negotiation? Our interests, of course.
We all agree with that, but what if by following our interests we might hurt others? Let
us consider my client, for example. What is in the best interest of my client? Is it to
lease the whole building at a higher rent to B or to go along with client A who is
considering renting only 7 floors at a smaller rent? How can ethics solve this problem?
It can not do so.
If my client finds a way to negotiate with client B and also to secure his relationship
with client A, then everything is all right. It's all about relationships. Should we care
about them? Of course, if we want a long term business. We can not profit from every
client and then turn our back on them.
There are also situations, at limits, when we can not afford to care about relationships.
There are extreme cases of life and death, or survival of lives or business. What do we
follow in those cases, when we are desperate? Only our interests. We don't even think
about ethics or morals.
Can we be ethical or moral against our interests? Not really. One might argue that
charity, religion and other social activities are based on ethics and morality and
sometimes we act against our interests. Well, do we? It's just that in those cases our
interests are not necessary linked with material outcomes but with relationships here on
earth and our relationship with God. Still, they are our interests.
So, if in most cases we search for our best interests, how can we succeed in our goals
and still be ethical? The answer is in attitude. It doesn't matter what we do, but it does
matter how we do it. And how we do it, it depends on our behavior.
Professor Gavin Kennedy in his red and blue theory finds four types of human behaviors,
each of them with positive and negative attributes:
SOFTER BLUE
NEGATIVE
ATTRIBUTES
POSITIVE ATTRIBUTES
Interested in other
people Good listener
Constructive, helpful, cooperative Informative, open,
approachable sees the positive in
others
Patient
POSITIVE ATTRIBUTES
Too concerned with others
Lets others set the agenda
Loses sight of own interests
Soft touch, too trusting, naive
Self-deprecating, selfblaming Easy disillusioned,
gives-up
AGGRESSIVE RED
NEGATIVE
ATTRIBUTES
Determined to get the best deal for self
Takes control and has 'presence'
Decisive, audacious
Likes a challenge
Good in a crisis, has stamina, takes stress
well
POSITIVE
ATTRIBUTES
Tramples over others
Bullies, threatens, resorts to coercion
Ignores other party's interests, ideas
Impatient, impulsive, manipulative
Inflexible, intransigent, creates stress
DEVIOUS RED
Analytical
Responds to opportunity
Looks after self first (and
only)
Avoids public humiliation of the other negotiator
Educates others to be prudent
Plays well to a game plan
NEGATIVE
ATTRIBUTES
Self-seeking through 'cheating'
Likes to scheme and plot
Disregards others
Exploits the innocent, the careless
Produces cynicism and suspicion
Ethically confused
Too clever by half
ASSERTIVE BLUE
POSITIVE
ATTRIBUTES
NEGATIVE
ATTRIBUTES
Adaptable, flexible,
imaginative Good at
questioning, probing Persuasive
Wants to 'make it work'
Sees opportunities and new
options
Lacks firmness
Can give offence
Can sound phony
Compromises to make it work
Too imaginative; adopts unsound
ideas and drops them quickly;
Too pushy; too charming
Does not give up easily
Too creative too quickly, implies
Looks for the 'deal'; creates imaginative trade-offs lack of commitment and
substance Won't stand firm on an
Good at thinking 'on feet'; can switch between
issue for long without seeking to
issues to lower confrontation
link it to another issue
It is clear that nobody behaves in only one way. Although, we surely have a dominant
behavioral style, in different situations and at different times we can behave as any of
those types. Where are ethics and morals here? They are not here.
We are tempted to say: red is unethical and blue is ethical. I am not so sure about that!
We have spoken earlier about interests and I implied that in critical situations we follow
our interests by not even thinking about ethics and morals. What is happening in those
moments that make us so determined? The answer is that our feelings become so
powerful that they control us. We are so frightened, so scared, so anxious or so happy,
that nothing else matters. The thing is: our interests are powered by our feelings. The
type and the intensity of our feelings determine our behavior.
There are two basic motivations for someone to act in the red style:
1. the other party is blue and the person wants to exploit them
2. the other party is red and the person wants to protect themselves (sometimes by
counterattack)
There are also two basic motivations for someone to act in the blue style:
1. the other party is blue and the person wants to cooperate
2. the other party’s type is unknown and the person takes the risk of being blue to
create cooperation, but risking to meet a red style
Let's analyze the feelings behind those motivations.
For red:
1. exploitation means greed
2. protection means fear
For blue:
1. cooperation means trust
2. risk means courage
We can easily detect two different types of feelings. For red, negative feelings and for
blue, positive feelings. The question is: how can we be moral and ethical when we have
negative feelings? It is obvious that we can't. And as long as we are feared or greedy, we
wouldn't do so. A small example can be when greedy people call the trusties – suckers
and the feared call the courageous ones – mad. It is unethical and is a way of
undermining the superiority of the two feelings by the ones that are unable to have them.
We can not have feelings like fear and courage or trust and greed in the same time. But
we can combine them in any other way. And what I found is:
greed + courage
= aggressive red
greed + fear
= devious red
trust + fear
= softer blue
trust + courage
= assertive blue
The only real ethical type is the assertive blue. Because the softer blue is feared. Jonathan
Sims came up lately with the notion of "devious blue". And I think his theory has a lot of
links with the "fear" within the softer blue.
My theory is that in negotiation we mustn't decide if we will be ethical or not. Instead we
have to make other two decisions:
1. What are our interests and how powerful are they?
2. What are our feelings about the situation?
It is very hard to change our interests. And sometimes, apparently, they clash with
morals and ethics. The solution is in attitude. We have to control our feelings. If we are
led by negative feelings no matter how much we want to be ethical and moral, we
can't. But if we have positive feelings, there is no need to think about moral and ethics.
They will come naturally.
Ethics and morals are a set of social rules based on a system of values. Instead of
breaking these rules we have to find ways to use them in our benefit by
controlling our feelings.