Faced with an attack on a proposal or a dug-in position, the sponsor declines to push back, asks what interest the position serves, and treats the attack as a suggestion for improving the plan.
An example
Eleven plants at a specialty chemicals company each ran their own permit-to-work system until the corporate environmental, health, and safety director proposed a single one. At the review, the manager of the largest plant attacked it: the corporate system would slow maintenance, his plant's own permits had a better record, and headquarters did not understand his operation. The director did not defend the system. She asked what in his current process he would most hate to lose. He named the walk-down his supervisors did with each contractor crew before a job, which the corporate design had dropped. She asked whether the walk-down would improve the corporate version. He said it would. She asked him to write it into the standard with his safety lead and to have his plant go first. Six weeks later he presented the revised system to his peers as partly his own, and the rollout schedule held.
Why it works
Pushing back against an attack invites more force, and the other side defends its position harder. Declining to push, and asking what concern the position protects, moves the discussion from positions to interests. The critic's objection becomes a suggestion that improves the proposal, so the proposal looks better, and because the critic helped shape it, agreeing is easier for them. For this to work, there must be a real interest behind the attacker's position and room to change the proposal. If the attack is cover for a decision to block, the questions bring that out too.
The thinking behind it
Roger Fisher For a counterpart who insists on bargaining over positions, Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In (1981) advises negotiation jujitsu: decline to push back, and redirect attention to interests and options. Asking the plant manager what he would most hate to lose did exactly that, moving the talk from his position, no corporate system, to his interest, the contractor walk-down, which the proposal could absorb.
William Ury Fisher and Ury, in Getting to Yes, distinguish a position, what a party says it wants, from an interest, the reason it wants it, and argue that agreement becomes possible once talks move below the opposed positions. Treating an attack as advice is a way of finding the interest: each criticism is a clue to what the critic needs, and building that need into the plan gives the critic a reason to back it.
When it fits
This suits proposals that will be attacked by people whose cooperation you need afterward: plant managers, regional heads, expert teams. The proposal must be able to absorb changes. You need the temperament to take criticism without answering in kind, and enough time in the meeting or after it to work the suggestions in.
How to use it well
Decide beforehand what in the proposal can change and what cannot. Then, in the room, do not argue back.
- Ask questions: what worries you most, what would you keep, what would make this work for your unit.
- Treat each criticism as advice and ask for more of it.
- Restate the interest behind the position and check that you have it right.
- Where a suggestion improves the proposal, take it and credit it in public.
When the attack is personal, redirect it to the problem. Silence after a hard question is often the strongest reply, because the other side tends to fill it with what they actually need.
What it costs and where it backfires
Absorbing attacks takes time and can make you look weak to supporters who wanted a defense. Each concession changes the proposal, and if you accept too much it stops doing what it was for. Some attackers have no interest to uncover and are simply opposed; questions reveal that, but it can take a meeting or two. The method needs honesty about what you will change. Asking for advice you have no intention of taking teaches critics to stop giving it.
When it is used on you
Answer honestly if the person whose plan you are attacking keeps asking what you need instead of defending it, since that is the cheapest way to get your concern built in. If you mean to block the plan outright, say so. The questions will reveal it anyway.