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Treacherous negotiation

David Bannister
Negotiation Traitors [Converted]

I guess that many of you reading this are familiar with the TV series “The Traitors”.  In our house, it passed us by until we were snowed in after Christmas and we binge-watched the first series and are now watching the third series. For those of you unfamiliar with it, the series lasts a number of weeks and involves 22 people who are isolated in a castle and given “missions” as teams. Completion of missions wins money and the pot of money is awarded to the survivors. There are secret traitors among the 22 who can ‘murder’ others in the castle – one every night. The remaining players try to guess who the traitors are and may ‘banish’ one each night at a meeting. There is little or no data on which to make the banishment judgement and consequently, those banished frequently turn out to be not traitors: they are what are called ’faithful’.  If any unidentified traitors are left at the end, they get all of the money and the surviving faithful get none. The prize pot is potentially around £100,000.

At the evening meeting of all of the participants, there is a behaviour switch from the daytime activities where the members collaborate together to try to complete a mission and earn money for the prize pot.  In the evening, they all sit at a round table and try first to survive being the one voted by the others to be banished and also to influence who might be considered a traitor and to banish them. The switch from team collaboration to individual cut-throat competitiveness is wonderfully instructive and, if you are not a participant, often very funny. So far in two entire series of this programme, I have heard a mere three questions asked at the round table sessions – two from the same person.  He was quickly banished – the rest didn’t like his inquisitiveness.

As the game progresses and everyone gets more involved, emotions and irrationality take over. The traitors don’t want to be identified and the faithful don’t want to be banished in error. There is a free discussion period at the meeting where participants identify those they think are traitors and give their reasons. These reasons for identifying a possible traitor are fascinating: “because you are being weird”, I don’t feel quite right about you”, “It’s just your face”, are some I have heard.  Then the pile-on starts – just because someone doesn’t like someone else’s face, others follow their lead and agree or, more likely, find other, equally ridiculous reasons to identify a traitor – it’s displacement activity to focus attention on someone else. “Trust” is a word heard often, usually because people consider lack of it as being a sure reason for identification of a traitor.  However, when one participant has said to another, “I don’t trust you”,  I have never heard the accused say: “What are the reasons why you feel like this?” or “How can I change and help you to trust me?”

I realise it’s only a game but for those taking part, it becomes life for a while.  Suspicion grows, hurtful things are said, and individual defensiveness is served by distracting attention from oneself and increasing suspicion of others often by forming very short-term alliances to increase doubts.  It’s the ultimate win-lose, devil take the hindmost game of personal interest. As such, it teaches us quite a bit about unreconstructed human behaviour.  Under the pressure to survive, people seem to abandon rationality, stop seeking evidence and make hunches and assumptions, or, worse, jump on the bandwagon of others’ hunches and assumptions.  Chaos results, more faithful are banished than traitors to the frequent dismay of those who raised the suspicion in the first place.

For the negotiator this is instructive: if you don’t tell people the reason why you do something they will decide that reason for themselves, they will usually be wrong, but they will act on what they think and will not improve matters.  If you fail to be curious and ask questions, the only data you will have to inform your actions will be untested assumptions – they may be yours or, worse, they may be someone else’s. In the absence of evidence, we follow the herd simply because there is nowhere else to go other than be on our own and, guess what, that makes us vulnerable to suspicion. So, as a negotiator, be curious, ask questions, test what you assume and tell people about why you do what you do and think as you do. And, if you ever get invited to go on the programme, don’t.  Stay at home!

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