“How did I end up agreeing to this?”

How did we get here?

In my trainings (I call them workshops, really, because I genuinely put people to work) I read these lines out to the room:

What do you suppose people do when they hear these lines?

Some roll their eyes, some burst out laughing, and others start explaining without meaning to, usually beginning with a “but”: “but there’s nothing to be done…” 😊 (I have very little patience for that phrase, “nothing to be done”; I will come back to it another time)

When I hear these sentences, the first thing they make me think is this: was there a well-built game at that table? And noticing it afterwards is perfectly normal, because a well-built game can only be noticed afterwards. The aim is to weaken a person’s will and so draw out the decision that was wanted, the reaction that was designed, or the silence that was preferred…

The aim of manipulation is to weaken your will, or to do away with it altogether. And it is done so well that you end up defending it yourself!

The fine line between honest persuasion and manipulation

Robert Cialdini has a study on persuasion that has become a classic. He describes six principles (Influence, 1984): the courtesy of returning a favour, the pull of what is scarce, respect for authority, social conformity, the urge to stay consistent, and the wish to agree with someone we like. These six are not bad things. They are how a person normally works.

Another study that caught my attention is Daniel Kahneman’s distinction between fast and slow thinking (2011). It says this: pushing a person into a fast, emotional, reflexive decision takes their thinking side out of the loop. Yet for a person to be at peace with the decision they made, they need a certain amount of time to think.

The line lies in whether the other person is left any room to think.

So the same sentence, the same technique, can fall into two different categories. Used ethically it is communication; misused, it becomes manipulation.

The games I see most often at the table

Don’t these games sound familiar to you as well?

Of course they do not only happen at the business table. In salary negotiations, in promotion conversations, in talks about overtime, these dances are always, always there. At home they turn up most often as the silent treatment (the Gottmans would have something to say here), as emotional debt, and as the victim role (the persecutor–victim–rescuer triangle; in Karpman’s drama triangle the first is called the persecutor). The method is the same; only the stage changes.

What is your first reaction when you see the game?

Noticing the game is never enough on its own.

Because you are given no time to think in that moment, you have to have worked on your sentence beforehand 😊

Here are a few that I have found work best:

What the three have in common is this: none of them blames the other side, and none of them lets the subject go. They keep the relationship warm while drawing the “red line” that protects the boundary.

Putting a brake on manipulation

Putting on the brake is not rudeness. You always have the right to protect your own thinking speed. When you feel the pressure at the table, here are the brakes I would suggest you try:

In my seventh piece I wrote that naming a feeling lights up a good many paths (www.mujdecetin.com/en/writing/the-fastest-compass-we-carry). The same thing happens at the table. Pressure that you name starts to lose its weight on you.

A last word

An ethical stance is not passivity. It is certainly not pleasing everyone. Nor does it mean keeping quiet. And saying “no” to an offer should never come to mean that you have rejected the relationship.

A good negotiator is not the one who takes the most, but the one who creates the most sustainable gain.

What stays with you as you get up from the table will not be how much you got. It will be whether you said that “yes” at your own thinking speed…