Source: Image of Car, Public Domain, http://mrg.bz/fFaWMr
Hi, I'm Julie Tietz. And welcome to Conflict Resolution-- putting the pieces together. Today, we're going to talk about positional bargaining and moving away from that to find shared interests. So let's start off by listing off our key terms to look out for in today's tutorial. First, we have interest, position, shared or mutual joint interests, and positional or distributive bargaining.
So when we're in a conflict, typically that means that our interests are not being met. And an interest is an action belief or physical item that a party perceives as important or essential to his or her satisfaction or happiness. And when we are in a conflict, our interests are not being met. But we typically are entrenched in a position. And so a position is a particular way of getting an interest met but not necessarily the only way of getting that interest met.
Distinguishing between interests and positions can be kind of confusing especially when we are in a conflict. So I like to think of a position is what we say we want. For example, I need to have a car this afternoon.
That's a position whereas an interest are the underlying reasons why we say what we want or why we want something. So your position is I need the car this afternoon. But your interest is I need the car this afternoon so I can go to work. So that is a real reason why you want the car.
So when we are in conflict, we often find ourselves entrenched in our positions. And when we do this, we are really not fully satisfied. And when we are competing over our positions, this is known as positional or distributive bargaining. And it's a form of negotiation in which elements of each party's positions are seen as things to be traded back and forth in an effort to get needs partially met.
So again, when we are engaging in positional or distributive bargaining, we are not fully satisfied because only part of our needs are being met. So let's use a example here. So there are two of us in this scenario and only one car. And so you say, I need to have the car this afternoon. Well, I then say, no, you can't. I need to have the car this afternoon. So then we begin to have a conflict over who's going to have the car and fight specifically over our positions.
And in this instance, probably only one of us is going to be satisfied if we continue to do this, whereas if we move away from this positional bargaining, we can move towards looking at our interests. And we would do that by asking each other why we want something that we say we want, or if we are the conflict intervener in a situation, ask the parties why or other open-ended questions. And open-ended questions are really great tools to uncover interests.
And when we uncover the interest to find the real reasons why people want something, then we may also find that we have similar or shared interests. And a shared or a mutual joint interest are interests held by all parties to the conflict so the same needs and wants that we all hold within in the conflict.
So let's go back to the car example here. And we ask each other, why do you need the car? One of us says, well, I need to meet up with my friends. I haven't seen them in a long time. One of them is having a really hard time. So it's really important that I'm there and I'm a good friend, whereas the other person says, well, I need the car to go to work.
So where can we find any shared interests? Well, I want you to have friends and to be a good friend and to be social. And you want me to have my job and to keep my job so I can make money and be financially stable. So we want the same things for each other. And once we figure this out, we can get really creative in coming up with solutions that benefit both of us.
So let's say we come up with the solution that I will drop you off at work. And when you're done, I will also pick you up because I'm not going to be meeting with my friends for as long as you are going to work. So we work out an amicable solution that fits both of our needs here and our interests.
So now that we have gone over positional bargaining and finding shared and mutual interests, let's go over our key points. Bargaining over just our positions leaves us feeling really unsatisfied because only part of our needs are being met when we do this.
So when we uncover our interests, we can have really great solutions like our car example. We asked each other why we needed the car, found out our interests, and came up with a solution that worked out for both of us.
And also, again, once we uncover our interests, we may find that we have shared interests with others. And really kind of when we do that, we are working as a team rather than competing against each other. So we can come up with a solution that benefits everybody. Thank you for taking the time out to view this tutorial. I really hope that you've gained something. And I can't wait to catch you again next time.