COMPROMISING

About 22.6% of over 2500 international middle and senior managers in our benchmark group prefer compromise to other techniques for resolving conflict.

Compromising and haggling are popular techniques to resolve conflict.  Examples of compromise include offers to 'meet in the middle', ‘split the difference’, 'share 75:25', or to ‘go halves’.  The hallmark of a compromise is that it delivers neither side their full objective.  Haggling and compromising are often confused with negotiating.  A haggle involves conflict over a single issue (often time or money) where one side's gain is the other side's loss.

 Compromising can be useful when:

  • You need to resolve the conflict reasonably quickly

  • There is little or no danger of setting a precedent

  • You are not that concerned about the outcome

  • You want to be flexible without wishing to appear generous

  • You need to break deadlock on an issue where either side can, but does not want to move

  • You have opened with a large ambit claim and need to move quickly to the common ground.

 Upsides of compromising:

  • Can deliver a relatively quick resolution of conflict

  • Does not require a high degree of skill.

  • Allows an outcome to be presented as a co-operative, flexible, give-and-take or even a win-win outcome, even when it does not fully satisfy either side’s needs and is far from the optimal outcome available

  • Can sometimes help to break deadlock as neither side achieves their desired outcome, but secures a result they can live with.

 That said, compromising has a range of significant downsides too…

 Downsides:

  • Haggling, especially persistent haggling, can be perceived as competitive and inflexible, leading to a hardening of positions.

  • If indulged, repeated compromise can set a precedent and encourage serial hagglers to create ever larger gaps to be 'split in the middle'.

  • Treats each issue as a fixed pie, so any gain is the other side's loss.

  • Seductive for people with limited negotiation skill, as it can provide the illusion of win-win and (modest) success.

 Whilst compromise is probably not a favourite technique for the skilled negotiator, in some situations, it can be used very effectively in combination with other techniques or as part of negotiation tactics such as Either-Or, Russian Front of Tit-for-Tat proposals.

Matt Lohmeyer