Negotiation Workshop (Episode 104): All of My Best Advice About Negotiation In One Place (Part 2 of 3)

I love a good saying.

A good saying distills a lot of wisdom into a small, memorable package. It can provide grounding and clarity in the face of complexity and confusion. It can be a tool for understanding what’s important to other people, or for reminding yourself of what’s truly important to you. A good saying captures a broader truth, which you can use to work better, or to live better, or to be better.

Perhaps that is why I find it so irritating that, if you’ve ever heard any “saying” about negotiation, it’s probably this one: “A good deal is one in which everyone feels equally unhappy at the end.”

I hate that saying.

I understand the appeal. A good saying can also be a salve for an anxious mind, and most negotiators, even professional ones — actually, especially professional ones — are driven first and foremost by anxiety. Anxiety about not asking for enough, or about giving away too much. Anxiety about not knowing the “right” way to answer a question or address an issue. Anxiety that the deal wasn’t “as good as it could have been” (or “should have been”). Anxiety that someone else might have done better.

The great irony of negotiation is that, while the essential purpose of a deal is to leave both sides better off for having made it, the process of making the deal — especially in the entertainment industry, where the pace of dealmaking is notoriously slow — often leaves both sides feeling worse, at least temporarily. So the idea that you’re supposed to feel bad at the end — that feeling bad might even be the sign of a job well done — is very comforting. Even more comforting is the idea that, as bad as you feel, the other side is probably in the same boat.

But as fleetingly reassuring as it might be, I’d argue that this saying is even more pernicious in its implications. It recasts misery as success, positions partners as adversaries, and frames the dealmaker’s role as mitigating loss rather than creating value. It assumes that negotiation is an inherently adversarial, zero-sum process — and, consequently, that if one side is happy, it can only be at the other’s expense. This saying is, at its heart, an incredibly bleak way to think about what “good” looks like.

We can do better than that.

A chapter about negotiation was, by far, the most common request I received from students and readers about what they’d want to see in a second edition. I ultimately organized that chapter around a handful of vaguely folksy-sounding one-liners — what I called my “Philosophy of Negotiation in Eight Adages.” But these adages weren’t written for the chapter; the chapter was written for them.

I developed these aphorisms over hours and years of conversations about the craft with students, colleagues, and mentees. I did so because my job in those conversations was to capture and convey, in brief and densely-packed exchanges, the lessons that I had taken years to learn. The sayings were a good way to try to distill a lot of wisdom into a small, memorable package.

But I soon noticed that I was reciting the same well-worn one-liners to myself even when no one else was in the room. They provided me with grounding and clarity in the face of complexity and confusion. They helped remind me what was important. They captured some broader truths that I care about deeply (then and now). I may have coined these aphorisms to be a tool for others, but they turned out to be just as helpful for me.

Today, in Part 2 of my three-part republication of the full text of Chapter 13 of the 2024 second edition of The Business of Television: On Negotiation, I share the first four of those sayings with you — starting with the three words that embody my most important demand of anyone who works for me:

This chapter does not provide a comprehensive framework for negotiation as a discipline, nor a list of tactical “tips and tricks” for achieving good results. There are no “dos and don’ts” to be found here. Rather, what I offer is a values-based philosophy of negotiation, embodied in a list of eight personal adages that I have found helpful in developing my style and identity as a negotiator, and in advising other young professionals as they do the same. They can sometimes be a bit redundant with one another, and to some extent repackage the academic literature on negotiation in folksier language, but these are the answers I give when asked to opine on “what makes a good negotiator” or “what makes a good negotiation.” I hope they prove as useful to you as they have been for me.

If I still had an office with a whiteboard, that whiteboard would have permanently written across its top, in big block letters, “NEGOTIATE, DON’T HAGGLE.” On its face, that might seem like a merely semantic distinction. But it is meant to capture a wide suite of mindsets and behaviors that distinguish many of the industry’s most respected and effective negotiators, such as:

• Hagglers concern themselves exclusively with what the deal terms are; negotiators are concerned with why the deal terms are what they are.

• Hagglers gain ground in a negotiation through stubbornness, force, and sometimes sheer annoyance and exhaustion; negotiators gain ground in a negotiation through persuasion.

• Hagglers ground their positions solely in their personal instincts and desires; negotiators support their positions using objective criteria.

• Hagglers abstractly know what potential outcome or deal term is better for them; negotiators understand the real-world significance to both parties of such an outcome or deal term.

• Hagglers rely on “policy”; negotiators can articulate the reasons why a policy exists and must be respected.

• Hagglers consider only their own perspectives in a negotiation; negotiators endeavor to understand and account for the perspectives of the people on the other side.

So yes, “Negotiate, Don’t Haggle” is arguably just a folksier way of saying “engage in interest-based negotiation, not positional bargaining.” And to be clear, my premise is not that “negotiating” is a better approach to dealmaking than “haggling” simply because it’s more agreeable — it’s a better approach because in my experience, both in most individual transactions and certainly across many deals over a long career, it yields better results.1

Why, then, does “haggling” remain so prevalent? The short answer is simply that “negotiating” is a lot harder than “haggling,” and usually takes a lot of practice.

Many professionals develop into “hagglers” not necessarily because they’ve judged it to be a superior way to get results, but simply because they haven’t gotten the level of training and education necessary to be capable of truly negotiating. Because the entertainment industry generally does not place a high premium on professional development, many negotiators learn their craft principally via observation rather than instruction. When presented with an unfamiliar type of deal, many early-career professionals are told to educate themselves by reviewing past deals, rather than being actively talked through them. The totally self-directed young professional may be able to identify all the major moving parts of any given deal type and to generally distinguish (from their own perspective) the “good” version of each term from the “bad” version, but without further instruction, may not understand what exactly makes the “good” version of each such term better than the “bad” one, or if and when it will actually matter in the real world.2

Negotiating at a high level requires a deep understanding of the meaning and significance of every point under discussion, the ability to identify issues that are not currently being discussed but could or should be addressed, a familiarity with industry custom and practice as it exists today and as it has evolved over time, an understanding of your client’s priorities and anxieties, and sincere curiosity about and empathy for the priorities and anxieties of the opposing side. And negotiators must be able to identify and make the arguments that will be most persuasive to the people they are actually trying to persuade, and not simply to themselves and their own clients.

That is why the more technical chapters of the book focus not only on identifying the major components of each deal type and the typical range of outcomes in their negotiation, but also on discussing the real-world implications of various deal terms, relevant historical context and business rationale, and the arguments that are frequently deployed by the negotiators on each side of the issue. The fundamental purpose of these chapters is to empower readers to develop themselves as negotiators, and not simply as hagglers, from the very beginning of their careers.

People often talk about “negotiating teams.” At a studio, that might mean one or more business affairs executives, perhaps working in partnership with one or more creative, legal, and/or production executives. On the talent side, that might mean the consortium of agent, manager, and/or lawyer representing the individual. But the best negotiators not only recognize, but actively forge, a third team: the direct negotiators from each of the other two teams, joined together on Team “Let’s Get This Done.”

One of the many shared experiences of all professional representative negotiators is the reality of engaging with material that your clients and/or colleagues likely have a less sophisticated grasp on than you do. And to be clear, it is not the job of these clients and colleagues to know the ins and outs of these deals; it is your job to know, and to communicate effectively with those individuals. Nevertheless, that shared experience can serve as the foundation of real trust and camaraderie between negotiators, which can in turn be deployed for the benefit of both of their respective clients.3 Of course, negotiators should always remember whose interests must remain paramount for them, and identifying too zealously with your counterpart can eventually blow back with angry (but sometimes justified) questions like “Whose side are you on, anyway?”

Nevertheless, negotiations that are conducted with some sense of mutual identification between the negotiators, mutual commitment to “be a dealmaker and not a dealbreaker,” and mutual willingness to also let the other side look good almost invariably yield mutually better results and happier principals.

Savvy negotiators recognize that, when they are on the phone or trading emails with their counterparts in a deal, they are engaged in one of only three negotiations that are going on: the one taking place on those phone calls and in those emails, and the ones taking place in between — between each of the official “negotiators” and the client companies or individuals that they respectively represent.

When you are negotiating with somebody, you are not simply trying to persuade them; you are trying to both inspire and arm them to go back to the folks they represent and make your case for you. And there are many ways to go about that — by convincing your counterpart that your positions are objectively reasonable and can therefore be advocated for responsibly and safely; by giving them arguments and information that you would want them to repeat to the people they are advising; by making them feel like you are in this together as negotiators;4 and by just making them like you enough to want to help you a bit (or at least enough not to take the opportunity to show off to their clients being a “tough negotiator” at your expense).

And to be clear, all of this works best if you sincerely believe it, as opposed to just performing it.

However you go about it, your most powerful ally in any negotiation is usually the person sitting across the table/email/telephone from you. Give them the will to help you, and the ammunition with which they can do so. Be open to supporting them in exactly the same way you hope they will support you. And if you can do so at little cost to yourself or your “side,” don’t be afraid to give them an opportunity to look good in front of their stakeholders — and you will often find that they are willing to return the favor.

Negotiation is inevitably a process of compromise. Effective compromise requires a good understanding of what concessions are actually meaningful to the other side. And the most effective compromise requires knowing what the other side simply cannot do without.

Specific bargaining positions may or may not be truly about the thing they purport to be about. For example, sometimes a demand for more money, credit, or perks is actually a proxy for someone looking for a sense of respect and recognition in their deal terms — and sometimes it’s really just about the money, credit, or perks that are being demanded. Great negotiators have an innate ability to interpret other people’s words and actions and instinctively understand their underlying concerns, motivations, and intent.

This adage is perhaps simply the folksy version of Getting to Yes’s prescriptions to “focus on interests” and “invent options for mutual gain.” If you know what a counterparty really cares about, you can figure out a way to deliver it to them in a way that satisfies them the most while burdening you (with financial expense or otherwise) the least. It’s the orange rind-zest/pulp-juice hypothetical all over again.

Where circumstances allow it, however, the greatest negotiators pair that sharp instinct with another tactic, one that is available to anyone, regardless of their innate talent for reading others: they ask, and tell, their counterparts what they and their clients really care and worry about.5

To throw in a sub-adage here, “Everyone’s approach to business is a product of their own traumas.” (Once again, that goes for companies as well as individuals, and for representatives as well as principals.) Ideally, explaining the impact of those traumas on each side’s bargaining positions happens organically in the course of a negotiation. For example, a commonly heard bad argument from studio business affairs executives is “I can’t do it. It’s against our policy.” A good version of that argument would be, “I can’t do it. It’s against our policy because the last time we did that, this very bad thing happened that makes it very important that I not put the company in any position to relive that very bad experience.”6 Whether volunteered or solicited, this kind of honest exchange of information about each side’s priorities and anxieties can be the key to unlocking the most difficult and/or complex deals, allowing the negotiators to devise compromises that maximize each party’s sense of gain and minimize its sense of loss.

I sure hope you like your professional advice in the form of an aphorism, because I’ve got four more coming your way next Monday (August 24), when I’ll publish the third and final installment of the complete text of Chapter 13 of the 2024 second edition of The Business of Television: “On Negotiation.”