You have seen it. Two or more parties are in a negotiation and each has stated their positions and driven them as stakes into the ground; a “red line” if you will. Neither side trusts the others. Each side has their own interests and cares nothing about the interests of the others.
There is hope
Fisher and Ury described a technique that has had great success. It’s called the one text method.
They described it in detail, but it predates them. In fact, the founding fathers used it to reach agreement on the Declaration of Independence back in 1776.
President Carter used it to reach the Camp David accords between Egypt and Israel.
Many United Nations conventions, where you often see up to 1,500 nations and NGO’s, each proposing their own solution, have used it.
But you don’t need a big visible negotiation to use it. I have used four times in the past month alone, sometimes in one-on-one situations.
Here’s how it works
First, someone lays a proposed final agreement document on the table and says, “I have drafted an agreement that we may be able to agree on. However, it is not perfect. I have no pride of authorship here. Let us discuss it in detail and find where it has problems. But for each problem, you must identify alternative wording, but we will not change the document until the other party(ies) agree.” The author is not committed to the document.
The someone can be anyone. It is best if they are a neutral third-party, but anyone can draw up the draft; Thomas Jefferson, Jimmy Carter, the UN Secretariat, or even you. But that person keeps the official master copy and nothing is agreed until everything is agreed.
The parties focus on criticizing the document, instead of their hard positions.
This forces the parties to consider the interests and priorities of the other parties. To do this, they must (gasp!) listen to the other parties to determine what they value. Then they each must accommodate those interests and priorities.
Over several iterations, the criticisms decline and trust builds.
There are lots of specific techniques to speed this process along, but you can use this tomorrow.