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THE 5/5 STYLE: COMPROMISE

Compromise. It's such a chummy word. It sounds like the perfect solution to managing conflict. I give a little, you give a little, and we both come out OK.  The 5/5 style of conflict management, where we both end up "half winners," is a better way of dealing with dissidence than either the 1/9 or the 9/1 style. But it's far from ideal.  Here's why.

The principal advantage of a bargaining, negotiation style of conflict management is that it reinforces one of the chief benefits of the entire P.R.I.C.E. motivation system: the sense of exchange, communication, and Involvement that is essential to good team solutions. You really can't entirely knock a style where people are committed to open relationships, to cooperation as a way of reducing conflict, and to a fair hearing for all views, however dissident. If the nations of the world could adopt that kind of conflict-resolution mode, we'd all be a lot better off.  

But there are disadvantages, too. First, ironically, is the very fact that the 5/5 style, because it focuses so heavily on having everyone "win a little" so as not to "lose a lot," tends to reinforce agreement itself rather than agreement on the best or most creative solution. If I want to move a production schedule up by three months and you want to move it back three months, the best of all possible solutions might not be to leave it just where it is. That would be the ideal, mathematically "correct" compromise. But it might be very bad business.

Secondly, it's a commonly, observed fact in the seminars I've visited that when people know in advance that their group is committed to compromise, they tend to exaggerate their own position because they know it will be cut back during the negotiation. There's a kind of haggling over price that goes on in many teams run with a 5/5 style. I may feel that the production schedule should ideally be set ahead two months, but I'll say in the meeting, "We've got to have a three-month advance."  You may be satisfied with a one-month advance, but you won't come out and say that because you're afraid we'll have to negotiate it up to two. So, when you know that give-and-take is going to go on, nobody states his own best judgment - and as a result the best solutions can get lost.

Finally, in a compromise solution, nobody comes out feeling really satisfied, because there's an element of the conflict-as-combat model built in to all negotiating structures, and when you enter a combat hoping to win and fearing to lose, it's just as easy to see a middle solution as a defeat as it is to see it as a victory.

The basic problem with compromise is really one of attitude.  We enter negotiation scenarios - whether they are collective bargaining meetings or investment counselors' strategy sessions - with an eye toward getting rid of the conflict that we know is going to arise, rather than with an eye toward finding the best solution for the problem or problems at hand. It's a subtle distinction, but an important one. If I know I'm sitting at a table to try to beat you back from your position so that we settle on something closer to mine, then the closer we come to my original position, the better I'm going to feel - even if the solution that gets us there still leaves us with incredible problems. And if we "settle" on a solution that more closely approximates your original position, then I'm going to feel that I've lost - again, even if the final solution is better than either
of our original ones.

Getting beyond this simplistic balancing-act view of conflict management means starting to look at conflict not as an issue in itself, but as the inevitable spinoff of differences in the way we approach external problems. External problems. Not how we feel about each other or what you had for breakfast or how much I may resent the fact that you've got a "bossy" approach.  If you start with the joint understanding that we're all in this business together, and that we're searching for the best solutions, the whole idea of "compromise" takes on a different meaning.

I've already mentioned that one real block to creative solutions is the deeply ingrained idea that, when something goes wrong with a production schedule or a sales quota, you've got to find somebody to blame. There's some of this same self-destructive tendency at work every time you aim for a merely "acceptable" compromise for a problem: what you're getting at, all too often, is a mock resolution where the game is over and all that's left is the whining. That is, you get to agree on the surface, but underneath you're pissed off at the person whose idea "beat" yours out, or he's pissed off at you, or you're both pissed off at each other because you've had to settle for less-than-the-best. The conflict is temporarily shelved, but the blaming goes on.

You solve that by getting beyond blame and beyond bargaining, to reach for mutual advantage. You stop asking, "Whose fault is this problem?" or, "How can I win in this situation?" but rather "How can we all fix this problem?" Is there a solution out there somewhere - maybe some eccentric solution in which nobody has a vested interest - that can make all of our lives easier?

Compromise, as it's now understood, is locked in to the same win-lose dichotomy that makes the Avoidance style and the Control style so unproductive. To get beyond that dichotomy, you need to modify your attitude toward "bargaining" and "negotiation" so that you search for a mutual bargain, so that you negotiate for something you both want.

You do that by turning the Compromise approach - which, after all, still leaves you all "5 down" - into a true synergistic approach, where everybody comes out a winner.

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