This is poorly written with an unclear outcome. This starts as talking about how to make 1:1s more productive. It ends with, I must presume though it is unclear, losing a lease with no backup. This is not more productive.
Compromise is about figuring out how to give everybody what they want while letting go of how it happens. Turning on half the ACs is a great compromise. Whatever happened at the end is not.
To be generous to the author though, I can see how standing up for yourself in this way would feel revolutionary to someone who has never pushed back in their life. Just know this is the first step on a much longer journey. The next step is figuring out what the compromise would have been with the authority figure on the phone.
I read it as they already had the compromise in place, since he said they agreed the AC closest to him would be off and the AC farthest from him would remain on, and the other party eventually demanded the close AC be on as well.
In this scenario, where a compromise was reached and then breached by the other party, how exactly would you arrive at a "compromise"?
The author kept acting in good faith till the other party stopped doing so, which I took as the actual resolution to this story. Maybe when you stop treating people like rational adults when they have demonstrated otherwise is where you find your real “no.” It’s a hard lesson I’ve learned many times, and it sometimes entails walking away from something to preserve your own sanity/integrity.
So at the beginning of the story you started with a rented space you and others practice yoga, and the end result is that you lost your practice room, without gaining anything else other then… slightly more confidence?
> The alternative is also not getting what they want: a cold yoga space.
The alternative was using the phone call with the manager to calmly explain the situation and try to negotiate.
The blog kept talking about using "no" as a starting point for negotiating, then when the negotiation opportunity peaked he refused to listen to the other person and gloated about it.
The second half of the book's advice (the negotiate part) flew right over his head. He was too stuck on the "No" part.
It seems to me that the person who wasn't listening was the manager who ignored the reasonable reasons for not wanting a cold room and made up some bullshit about compressors.
What it seems they wanted was hot yoga space. With 2:30 hours of rent... When every single other user of space wanted slightly cold or reasonably air conditioned space. Maybe for good reasons like temperature raising during the day and thus wanting to buffer it more.
Also this doesn’t even feel the same “no and negotiate” he’s advocating for? This is straight up “No.” Territory. He rents the dang space it’s not anyone else’s decision.
It could be someone else’s decision, it depends on what the rental agreement says. If it’s not specified, then that’s a good lesson learned for next time.
If the authority figure has the balls to say 'fine, I'll get your contract terminated' I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if that was exactly the outcome.
You should probably be a bit more surprised. There is a class of people (specially) in business, who threaten a lot habitually and don't act on it, if you call the bluff.
The reason is that a lot of people do cave. "Free" wins. If it does not work, they just pretend nothing happened.
If a professional group of people are wasting their time and attention on you then it's fruitful to imagine what resources they may have to leverage against you, I don't think that's hard to argue.
Few people cave when there are lots of eyes on them., and less people make empty threats with a bar full of spectators - that's why punches get thrown.
Regardless : 'I'm a renter' is by no means a strong argument unless you have a very specifically worded renter agreement -- it's pretty obviously a bad idea to anger the crowd of presumably better paying tenants, what would you do as a land owner, kick out the group every other tenant hates or change policy to protect the small fry?
They also threaten things that they have no real power or authority to actually do, because they are used to people just rolling over and letting them get their way.
Being in the same yacht club as the owner of the building conveys these kind of powers - it's like no one has encountered preferential treatment, good or bad, before.
Teaching, yes: one should stand for what's important and there might be costs, one should do that despite the costs. Life is not only about gaining some short-term things.
I thought this article was supposed to be about negotiating, but this person doesn't want to listen to or negotiate with anyone.
The closest they came to negotiation was when they were doing yoga alone in one room and "decided" to allow a dozen other people in a different room to turn their A/C on.
> On these days, I've told them to turn the AC off until we're done. One day, I was the only one practicing and I had to tell this to a dozen people outside the room. I will never forget the bugged looks I got back. Eventually their leader spoke up and we decided that they can turn on the AC further away from the room.
Then when the other tenants finally get sick of this, they get the owner on the phone. This is the negotiating opportunity. Instead, this person gloats about not listening:
> The man on the other end introduced himself as some authority figure and told me to turn the AC back on. He listed some vague reasons, compressor this, compressor that, costs, etc... which I didn't care to understand. But then he asked me in an accusing tone, why I turned it off despite the note saying not to. Peter Block would find this question childish. After all, two adults should be able to ask each other for what they want. They should expect a possible answer to be 'No' and be prepared to negotiate the difference.
I think they forgot to consider that the other person can also say "no". This is the climax of the negotiation opportunity, and he uses it to tell off the manager:
> After some filler words, he said he will talk to the owner terminating the contract and giving a refund. I said great and hung up.
The intense worship for Peter Block throughout the post is a strange contrast to the way they fail to implement any part of the advice other than the "No" part.
There was no negotiation here. Just a strange pyrrhic victory.
It feels to me as if the author got it backwards - in turning the AC back on, they didn’t „say no“ - the person who put up the note has „said no“ in the first place (to the practice of turning the ACs off) and the author was ignoring this clearly visible outlined boundary that other person has drawn.
Don’t get me wrong, the note itself wasn’t great either, but ignoring it wasn’t some great sign of „saying no“ - it was needlessly escalating a conflict instead of trying to resolve it.
100%, the author believes they learned the lesson, but failed to recognize what it looks like when a person on the other side initiates this process. It's amazing the dissonance here:
> They should expect a possible answer to be 'No' and be prepared to negotiate the difference. I didn't throw these wise words back at him, but that's what was going through my head. And it emboldened me further. I simply told him the room is unusable for yoga with the AC on and we've paid rent for the room.
They were emboldened to discard even mentioning negotiation and stood their ground instead. That might be fine if the lesson you're trying to illustrate is one about firm boundaries but the advice they're holding up here was very much the opposite.
I felt zero sympathy after the author decided to ignore any possible valid reasoning under the cemented position of 'well I pay rent' -- that's not maturity.
Further more, my rule: the more someone tells you how mature their position is and how child like you're being the more the odds increase that the only problem is that your opponent doesn't have a mirror or an ounce of introspection.
I agree, especially mentioning the compressor as being some ignore-worthy issue. I can imagine the owner saying something like “this is a desert and that unit’s designed to be powered on continuously, and when you flat-out turn the thing off it breaks the hardware. Stop turning it off.”
And on that note, has no one involved heard of a thermostat?
I think this is somewhere in the middle east - Dubai likely - and it is hot there. It is quite predictable that there would be mass opposition with institutional support against turning off air conditioning in a common space, despite having a couple of hours of exclusive rental. That said, it is a good reminder that we have a choice in what we are willing to accept, and can fall back on a BATNA, even if it is not the most ideal outcome.
Its never a simple thing to say no, it does comes down the personality for sure, however what matters is
1. Who are you saying NO to - Ideally what you are saying NO to should have mattered more however in real world incentives and repercussions matter a lot
2. How are you saying NO - Even if one saying a direct NO the tone matters, other times there are ways where you can add precursor conditions (which make it a automatic NO) or you put it on the backlog way too far down that it never gets a real chance to be acted upon.
Putting it on the backlog is the corporate style of saying no without saying NO. Smart people just avoid getting into backlog and just truncate it if its been in the backlog for way too long.
Saying no without attempting to negotiate first also comes off as childish, and affects the outcome of future negotiations because it demonstrates an unwillingness to compromise.
This post struck me as overly simplistic; not sure if that was intentional for illustrative purposes, or the classic "I read 50 pages of this management book last night and now will apply it to everything" approach. The answer is almost always the third way, where you both get pretty much all of the essence of what you're after, but not through oppositional simple paths. You don't negotiate WHAT you get, but HOW you get there. The post here is very one-sided and confrontational.
Sometimes "no" is a full answer. Compromise is not owed if the demands seem unreasonable. If you ask a question and can't accept no for an answer, you were not really asking.
This person learned half the framework, then refused to listen when the adult on the other side of the phone explained their reasons for having to have the A/C on, then wants ... what? for demonstrating their misunderstanding?
> He listed some vague reasons, compressor this, compressor that, costs, etc... which I didn't care to understand.
> two adults should be able to ask each other for what they want
... Which they would be able to do if you actually listened to the guy instead of dismissing him as someone you didn't understand?
Turning an AC unit off for a couple of hours has absolutely no negative consequences to the unit itself. The stuff about compressors was bullshit that the manager hoped would not be challenged.
Remember that this is an abbreviated version of real events. It appears the differences were irreconcilable, which is OK, ending this relationship creates room for new opportunities.
Saying No is a skill you have to jump in and develop to get good enough at it to be responsible for others. It’s okay to say No for yourself, but keep in mind the other party may have a lot of practice saying No themselves.
I did not really get the point. Apart that you should terminate dealings with unreasonable people. Like the other party did here. Just saying no to unreasonable people like the writer is best option. Even if you then need to negotiate for refund.
This is poorly written with an unclear outcome. This starts as talking about how to make 1:1s more productive. It ends with, I must presume though it is unclear, losing a lease with no backup. This is not more productive.
Compromise is about figuring out how to give everybody what they want while letting go of how it happens. Turning on half the ACs is a great compromise. Whatever happened at the end is not.
To be generous to the author though, I can see how standing up for yourself in this way would feel revolutionary to someone who has never pushed back in their life. Just know this is the first step on a much longer journey. The next step is figuring out what the compromise would have been with the authority figure on the phone.
I read it as they already had the compromise in place, since he said they agreed the AC closest to him would be off and the AC farthest from him would remain on, and the other party eventually demanded the close AC be on as well.
In this scenario, where a compromise was reached and then breached by the other party, how exactly would you arrive at a "compromise"?
The author kept acting in good faith till the other party stopped doing so, which I took as the actual resolution to this story. Maybe when you stop treating people like rational adults when they have demonstrated otherwise is where you find your real “no.” It’s a hard lesson I’ve learned many times, and it sometimes entails walking away from something to preserve your own sanity/integrity.
So at the beginning of the story you started with a rented space you and others practice yoga, and the end result is that you lost your practice room, without gaining anything else other then… slightly more confidence?
Is there supposed to be a teaching in here?
To not be a pushover. The alternative is also not getting what they want: a cold yoga space. So this is probably the better outcome.
> The alternative is also not getting what they want: a cold yoga space.
The alternative was using the phone call with the manager to calmly explain the situation and try to negotiate.
The blog kept talking about using "no" as a starting point for negotiating, then when the negotiation opportunity peaked he refused to listen to the other person and gloated about it.
The second half of the book's advice (the negotiate part) flew right over his head. He was too stuck on the "No" part.
It seems to me that the person who wasn't listening was the manager who ignored the reasonable reasons for not wanting a cold room and made up some bullshit about compressors.
What it seems they wanted was hot yoga space. With 2:30 hours of rent... When every single other user of space wanted slightly cold or reasonably air conditioned space. Maybe for good reasons like temperature raising during the day and thus wanting to buffer it more.
But that seems to have little to do with the quote... I'm confused.
That's how boundaries work. When you set them, you define your actions when they are crossed, and you accept the consequences of those actions.
It doesn't magically give you the upper hand in one-sided negotiations. It only ensures that your actions are in line with your principles.
Also this doesn’t even feel the same “no and negotiate” he’s advocating for? This is straight up “No.” Territory. He rents the dang space it’s not anyone else’s decision.
It could be someone else’s decision, it depends on what the rental agreement says. If it’s not specified, then that’s a good lesson learned for next time.
He doesn’t any more.
It feels like a LinkedIn post without the payoff.
I don’t think he actually lost the practice room. The person speaking was not the owner.
At the very least it's a cliff hanger.
If the authority figure has the balls to say 'fine, I'll get your contract terminated' I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if that was exactly the outcome.
You should probably be a bit more surprised. There is a class of people (specially) in business, who threaten a lot habitually and don't act on it, if you call the bluff.
The reason is that a lot of people do cave. "Free" wins. If it does not work, they just pretend nothing happened.
If a professional group of people are wasting their time and attention on you then it's fruitful to imagine what resources they may have to leverage against you, I don't think that's hard to argue.
Few people cave when there are lots of eyes on them., and less people make empty threats with a bar full of spectators - that's why punches get thrown.
Regardless : 'I'm a renter' is by no means a strong argument unless you have a very specifically worded renter agreement -- it's pretty obviously a bad idea to anger the crowd of presumably better paying tenants, what would you do as a land owner, kick out the group every other tenant hates or change policy to protect the small fry?
They also threaten things that they have no real power or authority to actually do, because they are used to people just rolling over and letting them get their way.
Well you don't actually know that from the story.
Being in the same yacht club as the owner of the building conveys these kind of powers - it's like no one has encountered preferential treatment, good or bad, before.
Agree, I was speaking more generally about the type of person who is just bossy because they usually get away with it.
Teaching, yes: one should stand for what's important and there might be costs, one should do that despite the costs. Life is not only about gaining some short-term things.
I thought this article was supposed to be about negotiating, but this person doesn't want to listen to or negotiate with anyone.
The closest they came to negotiation was when they were doing yoga alone in one room and "decided" to allow a dozen other people in a different room to turn their A/C on.
> On these days, I've told them to turn the AC off until we're done. One day, I was the only one practicing and I had to tell this to a dozen people outside the room. I will never forget the bugged looks I got back. Eventually their leader spoke up and we decided that they can turn on the AC further away from the room.
Then when the other tenants finally get sick of this, they get the owner on the phone. This is the negotiating opportunity. Instead, this person gloats about not listening:
> The man on the other end introduced himself as some authority figure and told me to turn the AC back on. He listed some vague reasons, compressor this, compressor that, costs, etc... which I didn't care to understand. But then he asked me in an accusing tone, why I turned it off despite the note saying not to. Peter Block would find this question childish. After all, two adults should be able to ask each other for what they want. They should expect a possible answer to be 'No' and be prepared to negotiate the difference.
I think they forgot to consider that the other person can also say "no". This is the climax of the negotiation opportunity, and he uses it to tell off the manager:
> After some filler words, he said he will talk to the owner terminating the contract and giving a refund. I said great and hung up.
The intense worship for Peter Block throughout the post is a strange contrast to the way they fail to implement any part of the advice other than the "No" part.
There was no negotiation here. Just a strange pyrrhic victory.
> He listed some vague reasons, compressor this, compressor that, costs, etc... which I didn't care to understand.
wouldn't part of an "adult-to-adult conversation" also be to try and listen to the other, if nothing else than to understand their arguments?
> After some filler words, he said he will talk to the owner terminating the contract and giving a refund. I said great and hung up.
If that's what OP understands as "negotiating the difference" then ok, I guess...
It feels to me as if the author got it backwards - in turning the AC back on, they didn’t „say no“ - the person who put up the note has „said no“ in the first place (to the practice of turning the ACs off) and the author was ignoring this clearly visible outlined boundary that other person has drawn.
Don’t get me wrong, the note itself wasn’t great either, but ignoring it wasn’t some great sign of „saying no“ - it was needlessly escalating a conflict instead of trying to resolve it.
100%, the author believes they learned the lesson, but failed to recognize what it looks like when a person on the other side initiates this process. It's amazing the dissonance here:
> They should expect a possible answer to be 'No' and be prepared to negotiate the difference. I didn't throw these wise words back at him, but that's what was going through my head. And it emboldened me further. I simply told him the room is unusable for yoga with the AC on and we've paid rent for the room.
They were emboldened to discard even mentioning negotiation and stood their ground instead. That might be fine if the lesson you're trying to illustrate is one about firm boundaries but the advice they're holding up here was very much the opposite.
I felt zero sympathy after the author decided to ignore any possible valid reasoning under the cemented position of 'well I pay rent' -- that's not maturity.
Further more, my rule: the more someone tells you how mature their position is and how child like you're being the more the odds increase that the only problem is that your opponent doesn't have a mirror or an ounce of introspection.
I agree, especially mentioning the compressor as being some ignore-worthy issue. I can imagine the owner saying something like “this is a desert and that unit’s designed to be powered on continuously, and when you flat-out turn the thing off it breaks the hardware. Stop turning it off.”
And on that note, has no one involved heard of a thermostat?
I think this is somewhere in the middle east - Dubai likely - and it is hot there. It is quite predictable that there would be mass opposition with institutional support against turning off air conditioning in a common space, despite having a couple of hours of exclusive rental. That said, it is a good reminder that we have a choice in what we are willing to accept, and can fall back on a BATNA, even if it is not the most ideal outcome.
Its never a simple thing to say no, it does comes down the personality for sure, however what matters is
1. Who are you saying NO to - Ideally what you are saying NO to should have mattered more however in real world incentives and repercussions matter a lot
2. How are you saying NO - Even if one saying a direct NO the tone matters, other times there are ways where you can add precursor conditions (which make it a automatic NO) or you put it on the backlog way too far down that it never gets a real chance to be acted upon.
Putting it on the backlog is the corporate style of saying no without saying NO. Smart people just avoid getting into backlog and just truncate it if its been in the backlog for way too long.
Saying no without attempting to negotiate first also comes off as childish, and affects the outcome of future negotiations because it demonstrates an unwillingness to compromise.
This post struck me as overly simplistic; not sure if that was intentional for illustrative purposes, or the classic "I read 50 pages of this management book last night and now will apply it to everything" approach. The answer is almost always the third way, where you both get pretty much all of the essence of what you're after, but not through oppositional simple paths. You don't negotiate WHAT you get, but HOW you get there. The post here is very one-sided and confrontational.
Sometimes "no" is a full answer. Compromise is not owed if the demands seem unreasonable. If you ask a question and can't accept no for an answer, you were not really asking.
No is a perfectly reasonable starting point for a negotiation.
This person learned half the framework, then refused to listen when the adult on the other side of the phone explained their reasons for having to have the A/C on, then wants ... what? for demonstrating their misunderstanding?
> He listed some vague reasons, compressor this, compressor that, costs, etc... which I didn't care to understand.
> two adults should be able to ask each other for what they want
... Which they would be able to do if you actually listened to the guy instead of dismissing him as someone you didn't understand?
Turning an AC unit off for a couple of hours has absolutely no negative consequences to the unit itself. The stuff about compressors was bullshit that the manager hoped would not be challenged.
Remember that this is an abbreviated version of real events. It appears the differences were irreconcilable, which is OK, ending this relationship creates room for new opportunities.
Well, was the contract terminated?
Saying no will sometimes have consequences, and the counterpart is sometimes unreasonable.
Saying No is a skill you have to jump in and develop to get good enough at it to be responsible for others. It’s okay to say No for yourself, but keep in mind the other party may have a lot of practice saying No themselves.
That quote reminds me a bit of the Non-violent Communication book.
I did not really get the point. Apart that you should terminate dealings with unreasonable people. Like the other party did here. Just saying no to unreasonable people like the writer is best option. Even if you then need to negotiate for refund.
Well you got told No, did it anyway and lost the room. Not sure you understood the negotiation part.
(off topic, but cool domain name)
Are you based in UAE by any chance?
I am sorry but what was the point of this story?
I have no freaking clue. It’s that person from Dubai again with weird luxury problems.
Some ACs are on-off only, with no other setting. Like some people, apparently.
All ACs are like this. The compressor is either running or it isn't.
Oh. Mixed feelings on this. Good quote, and etc. but there is something about this I can’t resonate with. The… “ask permission”ness of it all.