Month: June 2019

THE REAL ART OF THE DEAL: NEVER EMULATE TRUMP’S NEGOTIATING STYLE

If Donald Trump were a car, he could be immediately disposed of under the lemon laws of most states. Not only is he congenitally incapable of functioning as president, he sold himself to America on the blatantly fraudulent claim that he would be the best deal maker to ever occupy the White House. As it turns out, this guy couldn’t negotiate his way out of a paper bag.

Forget about The Art of the Deal, Trump’s ghostwritten ode to his delusional prowess as a master negotiator.  With this one-trick pony, it’s all about the art of the threat. His singular approach to conflict resolution is to fire off a volley of threats at his opponents, like something out of the Godfather movies.  The only difference is that most Mafia dons are adept strategists. Trump is not.  He simply huffs and puffs and indiscriminately hurls threats with all of the dexterity of an angry drunk denied bar service at last call. 

Rarely a day goes by without this president lobbing a new threat at a perceived adversary.  He’s threated both North Korea and Iran with economic sanctions and/or nuclear annihilation but is nowhere close to an agreement with either country.  He threatened immigrants with an array of Draconian retributions for entering the country illegally and they have continued to storm the borders in record-breaking numbers.  He threated Mexico with all sorts of mayhem if didn’t pay for the wall, which it steadfastly refuses to do.  After first threatening to close the Mexican border as leverage to get that country to stop the flow of immigrants, he backed away and threatened to slap tariffs on imported goods from our neighbor. Then he dropped the tariff threat in exchange for an agreement that merely codified the status quo. For all of his verbal fire and fury, he got nothing he didn’t already have.

The list, of course, goes on and on.  He threatened former FBI director James Comey with releasing tapes that didn’t exist. He threatened to:  end the NFL’s tax cuts;  impose a tax on European cars; cut off aid to countries he doesn’t like; stop health insurance payments for members of Congress until they pass an Obamacare replacement; pull NBC’s licenses because he doesn’t like their coverage of him. In some cases, he actually made good on his threats, like shutting down the government to get his border wall funding. None of these threats, executed or not, delivered the outcome Trump was looking for.  

He does, however, reap a valuable dividend: love and adoration from diehard supporters who worship their action hero president for having the alpha male fortitude to man-up and take on a political system they have grown to despise.  The more Trump threatens and bellows, the more his base loves him.  Yet, remove the smoke and mirrors from the Trumpian bargaining process and you will find nothing resembling a serious, effective negotiation. Just an agitated old man braying at the moon. 

Donald Trump is a cartoonish stereotype of what many people think of when they hear the word “negotiator”, an angry, red-faced, table-pounding blowhard barking demands and hurling insults at the other side. Nothing could be further from the truth. 

“The world’s best negotiators,” said Marty Latz, a well-respected conflict resolution trainer, “are also empathetic, as they deeply listen, understand and appreciate their counterparts’ needs and interests without necessarily agreeing with them.”  Trump, according to Latz, “has undermined (his) effectiveness for years with his lack of preparation, spontaneous gut-level moves, threats, name-calling, an adversarial win-lose approach, and an extremely aggressive and often mean-spirited tone.”

Of course Trump and his merry band of MAGA voters offer a far different narrative of the all-powerful deal maker, one that reflects illusions created by theater of the mind. Take North Korea, for example. The president would have us believe that his bellicose threats to destroy that country with the “fire and fury” of his nuclear button brought North Korean leader Kim Jong-un to his knees, begging for a negotiated peace.  With grandiose visions of the Nobel Peace Prize dancing in his head, Trump has spent the past two years in repeated photo ops with Kim.  To hear the Donald tell it, he is now “in love” with Kim and the two are endowed with a “very special relationship” that, of course, ensued directly from Trump’s threats to bomb Kim and his country into oblivion.  Just yesterday, Trump made front page news by becoming the first U.S. president to set foot in North Korea.  

Yet, we are not an inch closer to a deal ending North Korea’s nuclear capabilities than we were when Trump was threatening to blow the country up.  Kim may be a brutal, murdering dictator, but he, unlike our president, is an effective negotiator. Kim knows his opponent and he is giving him what he needs right now: political cover through the illusion of peace.  Without making a single concession, Kim has elevated his own status on the world stage. More amazingly, he has transformed his relationship with Trump from one of threatened annihilation to that of a bumbling bromance. 

A number of law school professors who specialize in conflict resolution have expressed concern that their students will be influenced by Trump’s approach to deal-making, which is pretty much the antithesis of everything they teach, namely listening, empathy, relationship building and problem solving.  Andrea Kupfer Schneider, director of the Dispute Resolution Program at Marquette University Law School, said she emphasizes to her students, that Trump’s objectives in a negotiation are aimed singularly at his political goals, not at the interests of his client, namely the American people. 

“Although the president might appear to be engaged in negotiating with a counterpart, his goal does not appear to be changing that particular counterpart’s mind,” she wrote. “Instead, his negotiation behavior is often calculated, not necessarily to result in successful negotiations, but to boost his political ratings.”

Remember those days, when America was truly great, and the president was seen as a role model for students?  They have been replaced with a new warning:  If you want to be an effective negotiator, pay no attention to Donald Trump. Alas, there is no art in his deals.

SEARCHING FOR CLUES TO HAPPINESS ON THE DEATH OF MY BROTHER

There is nothing quite like death to make us think about life.  I’ve been doing just that sort of thinking lately, in the wake of my kid brother’s sudden death.  Although the state of mourning is never a destination of choice, it provokes a welcomed, if temporary, escape from the inertia of everyday life, from dreary headlines and other constipations that our social media diet foists upon us.

The Nelson brothers, Bill in foreground. (Drawing by Nan Nelson.)

I know that I will soon return to my avocation of ruminating about matters of politics and policy. But not right now. Not yet. In this moment, my thoughts are singularly trained on the life of my brother, Bill, my only sibling, who died a couple of weeks ago.  In almost any other situation, I would probably keep such thinking private.  But Bill’s life was a bit different, and therein lies a lesson worth sharing. 

In the early 1960s, when he had to repeat Kindergarten, my brother attracted the label of “slow”. When the redux didn’t take, he was called “mentally retarded”, back before that term was sanitized into “cognitively impaired” or “intellectually challenged”.  Then came “special needs” and “learning disabled”.  

Had he been born 20 years earlier, Bill would likely have spent most of his life heavily sedated in a dreary, crowded state hospital for the “feeble minded”, the label du jour of the early and mid 20thcentury.  Fortunately, we, as a society, wised up considerably since then. As a result, Bill spent the last four decades in various group homes where he savored relationships with his staff and housemates and was fully engaged in community activities. He sang in concerts, competed in Special Olympics, worked in a sheltered workshop, went camping and fishing, played BINGO with nuns, watched movies, went out for ice cream and attended so many parties it made my introverted head spin. 

Bill Nelson, age 63. (Photo by Melissa Nelson.)

This thinking I’ve been doing about life goes way beyond the fact that we now treat those at the low end of the IQ scale better than we once did.  Instead, my focus has been on all of the ways Bill totally surpassed us so-called normal folks when it came to experiencing joy, happiness and the unadulterated bliss of human connection.  

I never met a happier person than my brother.  Never mind the fact that he eventually lost his sight and ability to walk, Bill packed his life with sustained joy.  He had a passion for people, for connecting with them, staying in the moment with them and making them laugh.  If anyone – a nurse, a social worker, a relative – excused themselves to go to the bathroom, Bill’s line was always the same: “Don’t fall in the hole!”  It didn’t matter if it was the first or fiftieth time you heard it, laughter never failed to ensue.   

He had an affinity for old TV sitcoms, particularly I Love Lucy, and had committed most of the episodes to memory.  Borrowing from that deep well of television trivia, Bill endowed almost everyone he met with a nickname from a TV show. He called his van driver Fred Mertz, a visiting nurse Roseann Barr, his physician Dr. Kildare. One poor aide with a bray-like laugh got the title of Mr. Ed.  It brightened all of their days, none more than Bill’s.

A younger Bill on the lanes.

The contagiousness of Bill’s joy was readily apparent at the funeral home.  The ritual of viewing the deceased in a casket is typically a somber, tearful experience.   To be sure, my brother’s mourners let their tears flow.  But as they stopped to view his remains, there were instant smiles and suppressed laughter.  Bill was wearing a tee-shirt with his picture on it along with his mantra: “Don’t fall in the hole!”  A large I Love Lucy throw was draped over the casket. It was vintage Bill connecting with people, even in death, in his own unique way.

Here is something else about my brother’s relationships with people:  They were all positive. One recent study showed that 20 percent of those surveyed were permanently estranged from at least one relative. Another found that 40 percent had experienced family estrangement at some point in their lives.  And who among us has not dealt with seriously fractured relationships? Well, Bill, for one.  

One of the symptoms of his “disability” was a child-like acceptance of the people in his life. His expectations were minimal.  He just wanted them to be nice to him.  Once they passed his nice threshold – and virtually everyone did – Bill immediately took them into his life and accepted them for who they were.  There was no judging, no grudges, no resentments, no jealousies.  

Academicians who study this kind of stuff, have found that people living in 1957 were happier than in almost every year since then.  In other words, despite a higher life expectancy, a growing Gross Domestic Product and a reduction in the work week, not to mention a smart phone in almost every hand, people are far less happy now than they were 62 years ago.  A Stanford University study suggests that a key reason for declining happiness is that people are focused on the future rather than on the here and now.

Bill could have told them that.  He was a here-and-now kind of guy, totally absorbed in the joy of the moment.  His only thoughts about the future were focused on anticipating the pending delight of his favorite things, like seeing friends and family,  petting a cousin’s dog, taking a trip to the Dairy Queen, or to anyplace that served hamburgers and fries.

The conundrum I’ve been wrestling with these past few days is not about how a “mentally challenged” man ended up with more sustained and persistent happiness than anyone I know.   The research, after all, bears that out. An analysis of 23 correlational studies on the link between intelligence and happiness ruled out every potential connection, except for one. It found that people with learning disabilities were happier than everyone else. 

Bill enjoying a book. (Photo by Melissa Nelson.)

This is what leaves me baffled: How can the rest of us, if we are so darn smart, achieve the level of happiness Bill had?  What is it about our intelligence level that seems to produce so much angst, and anger, and dread, and resentment?  Thanks to our brain power we, as a society, have clearly surpassed all expectations when it comes to technological advancement. Yet, we are as collectively unhappy as we have ever been.  

I’m not smart enough to figure this out.  All I know is that I want to spend the rest of my journey here traveling in my brother’s footsteps.  That means accepting people as they are, setting aside differences in order to connect through our similarities.  That means savoring the moment, living in the now. That means finding joy in everyday life, in a sunset, a child’s smile, a dog running through the park. None of that, of course, will make the very real problems and conflicts we face – in the world and in our own lives – disappear. But maybe, just maybe, if we can capture some Bill-like happiness, it might put us in a better place to work on those issues.  It’s worth a try.