Some mediators believe that deep research and understanding of the true interests and needs of every party is the heart of the mediation process that opens the opportunity to the options that suit every party. So do I believe.
Before getting down to the topic of identifying parties’ interests and needs I would tell a few words about why this is crucial in win-win negotiations.
If we negotiate about our positions, it’s about bargaining: in the end someone will get the bigger piece of the pie, and someone the smaller. This is the zone of a conflict or compromise. Zone of the competition.
When we switch from positions to interests, the zone of collaboration appears. We still can compete about some interests, and some can be mutual. Sounds good enough to celebrate the potential mutually beneficial agrement… But let’s change the scale.
When we drill into parties’ needs, here the real zone of collaboration appears. As Roger Fisher and William Uri wrote, the most powerful interests are the basic human needs. There is a theory that people don’t compete in case of each other's needs, and I mostly agree with it.
To help us as mediators to work through a party's needs, we invented a powerful tool that we called the “Rectangle of Needs”. From a technical point of view, this is a word search puzzle in which you need to find words inscribed in a square grid.
Working with Rectangle is based on projective techniques and is quite simple and fast—when a person sees the mass of letters, his/her unconsciousness highlights the words that most resonate with the current situation.
Now I will offer you to try the “Rectangle of Needs” on yourself and this way to show you one of the ways I use it in mediation. For 30 seconds I will show you a Rectangle, and your task is to name all the words that you see and write them down. Ready, steady, go!
Now please, read out loud all the words you have written. What tree words, that express needs are resonating the most with the situation that you are in now? Highlight them.
What does the first word mean for you in the current context? The second, the third one?
This way we can help a client to work through the needs and to bypass the barriers of consciousness, if there are any.
Before the needs research it can be extremely helpful to work through the parties’ emotions first. Emotions are the indicators of our met or unmet needs. And in this case the “Rectangle of Emotions” can significantly help, and this is the topic of another video.
To read more about the Rectangles you can in the article, the link I put in the first comment.
00:00 Why identifying interests and needs is crucial in win-win negotiations
00:25 Positions, Interests, Needs
01:20 Rectangle of Needs
01:50 Practice working with the Rectangle
03:00 Importance of emotions' working through