By: HBS Staff Writer

September 26, 2004, Sunday Times (South Africa)

Business Times brings you management and workplace advice from the Harvard Business School

SUPPOSE you are preparing for a potentially contentious meeting with someone with whom you've worked for years, and you expect some resistance.

There may well be a simple comment you could make that would incline your colleague to move willingly in your direction.

Recently, a team of research psychologists in Texas recruited dating couples into a study of communication patterns.

The researchers asked each pair to discuss an unresolved issue in their relationship that either partner sought to change.

The communicators used three styles to gain persuasive success.

Some tried the coercive approach, threatening their partners with consequences if they didn't yield.

This strategy was a disaster.

Other communicators tried to argue that theirs was the more reasonable view.

This style didn't fare well either.

But there was a third set of communicators who employed a simple and successful procedure that is termed the "relationship-raising" approach.

Before making a request for change from their partner, they mentioned their existing relationship.

They said, for example, "You know, we've been together for a while now."

Then they delivered their appeal: "So I'd appreciate it if you could find a way to change your stand on this one."

Some individuals simply incorporated the pronouns "we", "our" and "us" into their request.

The relationship partners exposed to this technique shifted significantly in the requested direction.

The relationship-raising approach elevates one's awareness of the personal connection in the moment before a request. The thing that is most likely to guide a person's behavioural decisions is the one that is most prominent in consciousness at the time of the decision.

Business negotiators hoping to employ the relationship-raising approach successfully will find it won't be easy.

The laws of human perception are against us. Observers are more attuned to differences than they are to commonalities.

Leigh Thompson of the Kellogg School of Management analysed 32 negotiation experiments and found that rival negotiators failed to identify shared interests or goals 50% of the time.

Additional research has shown that we are unlikely to focus on existing partnerships under anxiety-provoking circumstances.

The benefits would flow if we could overcome these biases and learn to harness the relationship-raising approach appropriately.

Consider the findings of a team of British researchers who examined the styles of 49 professional labour and contract negotiators.

After identifying the most successful bargainers of the group, the researchers searched for the factors that distinguished them.

One stood out: the superior practitioners spent 400% more time looking for areas of mutuality.

Barriers to change need not be battered down. A brief, deft reminder can be sufficient to make them fall.