thought exercise on Negotiation

There is a Russian parable about compromise that goes like this: A hunter raised his rifle, aiming carefully at a large bear. Just as he was about to pull the trigger, the bear spoke in a calm, soothi...

Dag Hammarskjöld, a Swedish economist and diplomat deeply committed to his Christian faith, served as the Secretary-General of the United Nations during some of the most turbulent times of the Cold Wa...

I knew a man who was the head of a set of car dealerships in the South. The way in which things were done was you could come in and negotiate, and the salesman had a pretty big window of what they cou...

Former Supreme Court Associate Justice Antonin Scalia argues how Christians ought to resolve conflict based on 1 Corinthians 6: I think this passage [1 Cor. 6:1–8] has something to say about the pro...

Leo Tolstoy, the great writer, famously renounced his inherited wealth and chose to live as an ascetic and hermit in his later years. One of his disciples, a writer named Chertkov, was a wealthy arist...

A few days ago I met with a young couple. Their toddler was injured in a car accident. When I visited them in the hospital, the child was on life support. As we stood outside the ICU and spoke, I saw,...

To illustrate how the racial oppression of previous generations has benefited European Americans, we can look at the fate of Native Americans. When Europeans arrived in North America, Indians owned al...

The key word in our definition of a disagreement (an unacceptable difference between two perspectives), isn’t “difference.” It’s “unacceptable.” Once the clash between perspectives becomes unacceptabl...

Most quarrels are due to a misunderstanding, and the misunderstanding is due to our failure to appreciate the other person’s point of view. It is more natural to us to talk than to listen, to argue th...

A productive disagreement yields fruit: the fruit of security, by removing a threat, reducing a risk, resulting in a deal, or concluding with a decision; the fruit of growth, by revealing new informat...

The Latin term for confrontation means “to turn your face toward, to look at frontally.” It merely indicates that you are turning toward the relationship and the person. You are face-to-face, so to sp...

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks tells a true story in one of his books about peacemaking in what is arguably one of the world's most difficult places to achieve it: the Middle East. One evening in the early ...

Jesus’ brand of peacemaking is extensive. It embraces the breadth of humanity. But peacemaking is also intensive. The commands to love and pursue peace challenge us not only to resolve conflict but al...

In the mid-1980s, I helped facilitate a series of conferences between top Soviet and American policy advisers on the question of how to prevent a nuclear war. The times were tense and the accusations ...

To be nice means to silence ourselves in some way, and in doing so, we compromise our authenticity and give up freedom to act and speak. On the other hand, niceness may facilitate the shedding of resp...

Ambiguity may keep people up nights, but anyone seeking exquisite simplicity in his or her career ought to look for a non-leadership position. Leaders, by definition, have followers. Followers need di...

The last time someone said to you, “I need to talk to you,” how did that strike you? Did you think, Maybe she needs to tell me how much she appreciates me. More likely you thought, I’m in trouble. Whe...

A contract is a transaction. A covenant is a relationship. Or to put it slightly differently: a contract is about interests. A covenant is about identity. It is about you and me coming together to for...

If someone has done something wrong even at a personal level, the right thing to do is not to gossip about it, not to tell everybody else, not to allow resentment to build up and fester, and certainly...

One reason we can hardly bear to remain silent is that it makes us feel so helpless. We are so accustomed to relying upon words to manage and control others. If we are silent, who will take control? G...

Resistance. Internal resistance. Resistance is the key difference between management and leadership: Good management is usually met with a grateful response from those whom we manage. Leadership is of...

The point of discourse is to learn with and from one another. I used to tell my students that at least 20 percent of what I was telling them was wrong, but I didn't know which 20 percent it was: I...

In a statement created by Christian leaders across the world, the Lausanne Willowbank Report calls for church leaders to return to the humility and servanthood that Jesus manifested in His earthly min...

To decide requires a death, a dying to a thousand options, the putting aside of a legion of possibilities in order to choose just one. De- cide . Homo- cide . Sui- cide . Patri- cide . The root word d...

As popularized in Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein’s fascinating book by the same name, nudges are small changes in the environment around us that make it easier for us to make the choices we want to ...

If you’ve ever watched a war movie, or a film that takes place in the military, you’re likely to have encountered a specific scene, in which a subordinate will have something to tell a senior officer ...

Reconciliation. Let’s be honest. Reconciliation has become a trendy topic of conversation . . . which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. People are talking about it and that’s good. There are gatherings, ...

It doesn’t matter what the specific decision is. Unmade decisions hold power. They pull, they push, they interrupt where they aren’t wanted and poke us awake at night. They can turn us into strange ve...

Two hermits lived together for many years without a quarrel. One said to the other, “Let’s have a quarrel with each other, as other men do.” The other answered, “I don’t know how a quarrel happens.” T...

How do you define what it means to “make a sacrifice?” We say we sacrifice for our family, or sacrifice for our careers. We speak of Jesus sacrificing himself so that we can experience eternal life. A...