In the Back to the Future trilogy, Marty McFly, played by a young Michael J. Fox, experiences a momentary lapse of reason every time someone calls him "chicken." Examples of his dubious judgment include defrauding his employer, engaging in fisticuffs with larger opponents, and agreeing to a sunrise shootout with a crazed gunslinger in the Old West.
Like Marty, we can be drawn into conflict with people who have been empowered by a secret knowledge of our trigger word or phrase. For Marty, it was "chicken," for you it may be "insensitive," "unfair," or "incompetent." When uttered, these words lead to lapses in judgment and control because, like Marty, we too exist in three different dimensions simultaneously: the past, the present, and the future. We are constantly torn between our responsibility for the past, our obligation to the present, and our hope in the future.
Every decision we make is influenced by these three elements. However, much of their influence is hidden from our conscious deliberations. This tension between the past, the present, and the future is intensified during negotiations when claim representatives, in particular, are assailed by unwarranted and sometimes outright vicious accusations against their characters. How we respond to these attacks has a huge influence on the outcome of negotiations. It is not enough just to manage the external factors that influence negotiations. In order to be effective negotiators and provide excellent customer satisfaction, we must also be able to manage ourselves, which means understanding our personal identity.
Role of Identity
Our identity largely affects the way we perceive the world around us and how we choose to interact with it. In negotiations, our identity accounts for more than just our particular style (accommodator, competitor, avoider, or collaborator); it is the reason for our style. Personal identity is a combination of personal history (the past), personality (the present), and personal belief (the future). Personal history is the sum total of all our past experiences, which extends to the thoughts and feelings about those experiences. Personality is a combination of innate characteristics or traits, such as introversion and extroversion, that guide the way we react to our present circumstances. When past experiences are filtered through personality, the result is personal belief. Personal belief is comprised of all our expectations about the future, which includes our assumptions about how people will react to what we say and do.
Here's an example of how these three elements worked together to influence negotiations in my own life. I grew up in a house where money was tight. When I would ask for new toys, as all children do, my requests were frequently denied. My parents would always respond, "Don't you know how much this costs?" I am also an introvert, which means that I am self conscious about meeting new people. When my past experiences are filtered through my personality, the result is a personal belief that people will think I am asking too much of them.
This dynamic played out more than once in my negotiations. When someone would remark, "You're being unreasonable," I would immediately be transported back several decades to the checkout line at my local department store. Although normally employing the competitor style of negotiations, in these instances I would become embarrassed and sometimes even apologetic, which totally compromised my position. It wasn't until I made the connection between my past, present, and future that I was able to effectively manage my personal identity.
But this isn't easy to do while in claims because in order to survive in this job, you need to have a thick skin. Unfortunately, this thick skin, while protecting you from others, also hides part of your identity. The only way to avoid the subconscious pitfalls of personal identify is to go beneath your negotiation style and beyond your present circumstances. Only you can address these pitfalls; your supervisor will not be able to provide you with any guidance in this area because it involves more than employing different negotiating techniques.
Illuminating Your Identity
While this may seem difficult, the good news is that claim representatives, in particular, are well equipped for this type of analysis. They do it every day when they look beneath the loss details and medical treatments to reveal the reality behind the generalizations. When leveraged appropriately, our identity is our greatest strength in negotiations; it allows us to be totally ourselves. Left unchecked, however, it can quickly become an equally debilitating blind spot that makes us ignorant to our weaknesses.
Here are three suggestions for illuminating your identity and its influence on negotiations.
1. Identify. Ask yourself what is the worst name you could be called (expletives aside), such as lazy, incompetent, uncaring, or arrogant. Why does that name bother you so much?
2. Analyze. Listen to some recorded calls of claims that you negotiated poorly (if you don't have access to recorded conversations, ask your supervisor or coworkers for their impressions). Analyze your interaction with the other party to see if any of the issues you identified in the first question influenced the flow or outcome of the negotiations.
3. Resolve. Develop a strategy for managing around your trigger words. This might involve stepping away from negotiations when that button is pushed or acknowledging the other party's perception and simply restating your position. While it is advisable for you to revise your evaluation when you receive new information, it is unnecessary to do so if the other party's critiques are concerning you and not the file. Whichever strategy you use, the goal is to maintain control with professionalism.
Don't be afraid to ask the hard questions. As painful as it may be to see yourself in a new light, acknowledging your past's influence on the present will make you a more effective negotiator in the future. Now, are you up to the task or are you chicken?
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