The Inner Game of Negotiation

What feels like opposition is often something else entirely.

When I first encountered this passage in The Inner Game of Tennis, I had to stop and read it again.

True competition is cooperation?

That’s not how most of us think about competition. And it’s certainly not how most people think about negotiation.

We’re used to seeing negotiation as a contest. A process of claiming value, holding ground, and trying not to give too much away. A zero-sum game in which one side wins more and the other side wins less.

Gallwey’s idea, at first glance, sounds almost preposterous. But the more I sat with it, the more it began to feel familiar.

This is part of a short series exploring what Gallwey’s The Inner Game of Tennis can teach us about negotiation.

In the previous post, we looked at how a fixation on winning can distort judgment. This is where that distortion starts to show up in practice.

Negotiation is usually framed in adversarial terms. The familiar language reinforces it: positions, demands, concessions, leverage.

It’s easy to assume that the other side’s role is to defeat you or, at least, to prevent you from getting what you want.

And yet, in negotiating, something more interesting often happens.

A party may enter a negotiation convinced their case is worth a certain number.

Then the other side responds — not with agreement, but with resistance. Lower numbers. Different assumptions. A narrower view of risk.

At first, that resistance can feel like obstruction. It can seem like the other side is simply “wrong.”

But over time, the exchange begins to do something else: It forces both sides to examine their assumptions more carefully.

Positions that initially felt firm begin to shift. Not because one side has been defeated, but because both sides are gradually moving closer to a more realistic understanding of the dispute.

In that sense, the other side is not just resisting your position.

They are helping to refine it.

That’s the dynamic Gallwey points to.

In tennis, your opponent is not just trying to defeat you. They are also creating the conditions that allow you to perform at your best. A weak opponent does not improve your game. A strong one does.

The same interplay exists in negotiation.

A capable counterpart does more than push back. They test your position. They expose weaknesses. They force clarity.

And in doing so, they help you see the situation more accurately — more objectively — than you could on your own.

This requires a shift in how we interpret what’s happening across the court or the negotiating table.

If you see the other side purely as an adversary, every disagreement feels like conflict.

If you begin to see them as part of a shared process of testing assumptions, those same disagreements start to look like information.

The tension is still there. The competition is still real.

But its purpose changes.

The goal is no longer to defeat the other side. It is to work through the tension between two perspectives until something more realistic emerges.

The most effective negotiators don’t avoid competition. They engage in it fully.

But they understand that the process itself is collaborative, even when the positions are not.

Each side brings something necessary to the table — constraints, information, pressure, or simply a different perspective.

Without those inputs, there is no meaningful negotiation. And no real progress.

What feels like opposition is often something else entirely: It is the process by which reality comes into focus.

Next time: why the process itself may matter more than the outcome.

If this post resonated with you . . .

The Stoic Negotiator explores the inner game of negotiation — the mindset required to think clearly in conflict and make better decisions under pressure. Drawing on decades of mediation experience and the practical wisdom of Stoic philosophy, the newsletter examines how we can approach everyday disputes with greater discipline, objectivity, and empathy.

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