My blog from Houston, Texas. Updated most weeks, usually on Sundays.
Much of my time every week is spent with discussions and negotiations at various levels. They are sometimes time consuming, but they are always important and usually necessary.
I remember a couple of decades ago when, as a young Head of School starting off in my first headship, I was speaking with an elderly and highly experienced fellow Head at an inter-school gathering. At the time, I had an open door policy (as I still do), and I was bemoaning the difficulty of getting all my paperwork done because of the incessant interruptions by people at my door. I have never forgotten his very wise words that have become my mantra ever since the day I first heard them: “Those people are your real work. The paperwork is just what you do to fill in time between this real work”.
If ISAS was the single most time consuming discussion this week, the most interesting and unusual occurred early on Monday afternoon when I found myself in deep negotiations with Carter Hohman, one of our many very astute and articulate 1st graders.
I had heard on the grapevine that Carter and some of the other 1st graders had a few concerns that improvements were needed in the school. Specifically, they wanted Lower School students to go on Fall Trips like the Middle and Upper School students (Fall Trips are our overnight trips to various parts of Texas that took place on 13th and 14th of this month). The rumors that the 1st graders were anxious about this turned out to be true – Carter arranged for a formal meeting with me to present a proposal.
Naturally, I welcomed this opportunity to discuss the issues of concern, so I invited Carter to come to my office as this is where I usually conduct serious negotiations. He had prepared well for the meeting, and brought a poster he had made to help illustrate his points. One of our parents who often helps us with photography was also present at the time and so she was able to record the event (so thank you Dena Rafte for the photos of this momentous encounter). After Carter and I exchanged name cards (well, to be more precise, he didn’t have one to offer me but I gave him one of mine), we sat down for the formal meeting.
As with all important negotiations, we began by making each other feel at ease. I asked him if he had slept well the previous night and whether he had enjoyed his breakfast. He answered in the affirmative to both my questions and then politely asked me what I had eaten for my breakfast. There is only so much mileage one can get from discussing breakfast with a six year old, so the pleasantries were soon over and we got down to solid negotiations.
I soon discovered that Carter had not one but three proposals to put to me. First, (as expected) he said he would like to see fall trips for Lower School students. Second, he wanted to see hockey introduced to the school. Third, we wanted to have free dress for Lower School students. Clearly, these were serious issues worthy of deep consideration.
I soon learned that Carter was a ‘natural’ at conducting negotiations (so yes, I do feel sorry for his parents in anticipation of this young man becoming the highly articulate teenager that I am forecasting). He had all the steps of the negotiation process at his fingertips – first, articulate the issues, then engage his audience (me), present the value propositions, and listen for opportunities. Finally, try to close the deal with a handshake.
We moved on to a discussion about hockey. Carter assured me that we had the basis for a strong team (he mentioned himself and one of his friends specifically in that context). I said I was worried that if we had such a strong team then it would always win and the team would never learn the important skill of accepting defeat graciously. Carter immediately had an answer for that problem – agree before the start of every match that the score would be a draw. That would still leave room for excitement, because no-one would know beforehand what the precise scores to cause the draw would be, and in that way, there would be no losers and everyone would be happy. I could see a few challenges in his strategy, but I agreed it would make an interesting starting point for further consideration by our athletics faculty.
If we adopted Carter’s proposal, I suspect that on the ‘positive side’, we would easily be able to identify who was in the Middle School; according to the emerging discussion, they would be the only ones in uniform all the time. On the downside, I could see a further round of negotiations starting five years from now when Carter entered the Middle School. We discussed some of the pros and cons of uniforms vs free dress, by which time my negotiating adversary admitted he was getting hungry because his lunch time was about to start (we had been having this discussion during his pre-lunch recess).
To bring the negotiation to a close, I told Carter that during big, important negotiations such as these there always has to be some ‘give and take’, so I asked him to identify which of his three proposals was his number one priority. He thought about that for a few seconds, and then pointed to the hockey picture on his chart with a big smile.
We agreed that we would follow up according to the teachers’ votes, after which I told Carter that the timing of his visit had been very good because I was scheduled to have a meeting with Mr Way, the Head of the Lower School that afternoon. I knew he would be thrilled to consider the proposals in consultation with his faculty. And thus we finished the meeting and stood to shake hands, after which Carter happily ran downstairs to the cafeteria to have lunch.
As you can probably imagine, everything else that happened this week was fairly orthodox compared with my negotiations on Monday afternoon.
Speaking of negotiations with even more gravity than mine, King Abdullah II of Jordan once said: “Many will view the compromises that will be made during your negotiations as painful concessions. But why not view them as peace offerings, ones that will provide in return the priceless gifts of hope, security and freedom for our children and our children’s?” I trust that this was truly the spirit pervading my negotiations last Monday afternoon.
Discussions and negotiations
Sunday, 30 September 2012