Quintessential negotiation skills

Rating: 8/10 (21 March 2017)

12 Angry Men is a play about 12 male jurors being confined to a jury room as they seek to reach an unanimous decision on the guilt/innocence of a boy accused of murdering his father. After deliberation, their initial stance is overturned as they eventually decide on the accused being innocent. This underscores the protagonist's negotiation skills, which illustrates teachings espoused in Getting to Yes (Fisher, Patton & Ury, 1987), one of the more important ones being discerning between one's interest from position and focusing on the former when negotiating. Fisher et al. highlight how this effectively makes it possible to find a solution satisfying both parties' interests and prevents negotiation from being a zero-sum game. The danger of position-driven negotiations is exemplified by #1. Although he asks everyone to explain why they had voted 'guilty', this is done not with the aim of establishing an objective set of criteria to solve the issue but rather to "show #8 where he is mixed up". Guided by his position and aim of proving #8 wrong, he then influences the majority to engages in the discussion with a specific purpose, as opposed to actively listening hoping to satisfy the shared interests of the jury. Resultantly, this hinders the construction of an open discussion where jurors are able to understand each other's perspective and underlying interests, as they are clouded by the immediate objective of defending their position.