Negotiation 101: NFL Owners, Players Mistaking Mistrust for Greed

Labor negotiations between National Football League owners and players recently ended in a player lockout and a march to court. Cancellation of at least part of the upcoming football season is a growing possibility.

At issue is how the two parties should share $9 billion in revenue. Seems like a problem we all would like to have, and not something worth killing the golden goose. So how did labor talks go so wrong? The answer is something we all can use to get better results in our personal negotiations.

Deepak Malhotra, an expert on negotiation strategy at Harvard Business School, believes that the parties are confusing mistrust for greed and irrationality. It was the same issue that created a National Hockey League shutdown in 2004-2005. "By seeing (NHL players) as greedy rather than mistrusting, the owners adopted the wrong strategy -- intransigence rather than transparency -- for too long," Malhotra writes on Forbes.com.

A key issue in the NFL donnybrook is that owners want to collect more "off the top" revenues to cover rising costs. The players counter that the owners need to prove their rising cost argument by opening up their books, something the owners are reluctant to do.

Malhotra's solution: Players need to get off their demand to see the books. Instead, he says, both parties should target the actual source of mistrust: cost projections. This solution could be a series of contingency agreements that tie player concessions to actual costs when they are incurred.

Here's Malhotra's lesson for negotiators: "Negotiations become more productive when each party acknowledges that the other may have legitimate concerns. In the NFL dispute, both the owners and the players need to bring a more nuanced perspective to the bargaining table."

Malhotra has done extensive work on how negotiators can build trust. Here are three tips he offered up in HBS Working Knowledge:

1. Make dependence a factor. Trust increase when both parties believe that they need each other to achieve their individual goals and that other options are limited. Negotiators can create this dependence by highlighting the unique benefits they can provide and by emphasizing the damage that might result from an impasse.
2. Label your concessions. Concessions only work to build trust if the other side sees them as concessions. And in the heated environment of a negotiation, that message can be lost, says Malhotra. "Parties are often motivated to discount and devalue each other's concessions and contributions, because doing so relieves them of the obligation to reciprocate. As a result, many concessions go unnoticed or unacknowledged. This may lead to confusion, resentment, or an escalation of hardball tactics and unaccommodating behavior by the slighted party."
3. Explain your demands. People tend to view themselves in the best possible light while viewing others in a much less positive light -- especially those with whom they're in conflict. For this reason, it's critical to explain the reasons behind your moves and demands. "An opening offer, if viewed by the other side as extreme, can diminish and even destroy trust. An offer that is explained and justified will probably preserve trust, and may enhance it."

Related Reading

• 6 Steps to Prepare for a Critical Negotiation
• The Golden Rule of Negotiation: Let Them Walk
• The Advantages of Negotiating Over Email