The Big Orangun

So, who’d have thought it!
Not many, if you had listened to the panellists on the Rest is Politics live: only one in six predicted that Trump would win. Why is that? Well, I suspect desire is father of the thought, technically described as confirmation bias: “A tendency for people to process information by looking for, or interpreting, information that is consistent with existing beliefs”. Equally, we will dismiss information that doesn’t conform to our existing beliefs.

One way confirmation bias manifests itself in negotiations is that we use selective data that supports our beliefs and ignore data that doesn’t - which leads to “One eyed” arguments and, very often, to a degree of confidence in our position that isn’t warranted. To compound the issue, we dismiss their arguments as the irrational ramblings of someone only vaguely connected to the real world, because they don’t conform to our pre-existing beliefs. It’s easy to see the effects of confirmation bias on the recent elections in the USA with Republicans and Democrats becoming more and more polarised ending in a “You’re either with us or against” attitude from both parties, leaving little room for a plurality of views.

Polarisation is a well-known strategy of authoritarian, typically right-wing populist politicians because it creates binary equations us v them, good v evil etc. Hard bargainers (or power-based negotiators) also like polarisation for similar reasons, in this case the binary equation is Win/Lose, I get what I want; I don’t care about you.

So back to Mr Trump, who is both a right-wing authoritarian politician and a hard bargainer, what should we expect from him?

Well, the only predictable thing about Donald Trump is his unpredictability - so it’s a fool’s errand to try and second guess how he might behave although, I will give you a couple of pieces of advice for dealing with hard bargainers. Don’t give in - they like people to stand up to them not appease them. By all means, make concessions but always get something in return. Donald Trump once told a very young-looking lawyer that he didn’t think that someone as young as him could handle a project of this scale - he was testing him to see what response he would get. The lawyer replied, “To tell you the truth Mr Trump I’ve never had a client as young as you who could afford my bill”. He not only stood up to him but shrewdly also appealed to his ego, and got the job. Secondly, focus on what they do - not what they say. Hard Bargainers will often take bold positions early on but not stick to them. Donald Trump stated during the election that he would impose 20% tariffs on all imports to America, yet only this morning I heard a Republican colleague rowing back from this position and suggesting tariffs would be imposed where there wasn’t a level playing field, quite a different perspective, let’s see what happens.

One piece of advice for hard bargainers, don’t over-exploit a position of power - it might feel good at the time but will probably come back to haunt you. If there is not enough value in the deal people won’t implement it properly, drag you back to the bargaining table and/or take shortcuts - just think of the horse meat burger scandal from a few years ago to see how that can turn out.