9: Hal Movius
Welcome to Episode 9, where I talk to HAL MOVIUS, founder and president of Movius Consulting, about the nature of confidence, the ways in which confidence can both help us and hurt us when we’re working through a difficult negotiation. My conversation with Hal takes Circle of Willis in a bit of a different direction, since Hal isn’t currently a working scientist, per se, but is instead applying his training and expertise in behavioral science to work with some of the world’s most impactful and recognizable companies and NGOs, including Procter & Gamble, McDonald’s, Ogilvy & Mather, Johnson & Johnson, Hewlett-Packard, the United Nations Development Program, the Federal Aviation Administration, the University of Chicago, the Society for Neuroscience, and the Rockefeller Foundation! Hal advises these organizations about the science of negotiation, influence, emotion regulation, leadership, and organizational development. As he notes in our conversation, “[the science on these topics] makes you cautious. It helps you recognize BS, which is in no short supply…[there are] endless claims…endless misrepresentations of research…and I like to think that the advice that we’re giving is really grounded in evidence…” Hal is a trusted advisor to the leaders of these companies, not least because he helps them spot and avoid unsupported claims and advice. Hal is the author of two books: Resolve: Negotiating Life’s Conflicts with Greater Confidence (2017, LifeTree Media) and Built to Win: Creating A World Class Negotiating Organization (Harvard Business Press, May 2009). He has produced a bunch of films on negotiation and influence challenges, published papers on the effectiveness of negotiation training, cross-cultural business negotiations, and dealing with difficult negotiation counterparts, and he has taught at the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School and the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia. Most importantly, Hal Movius is among the closest friends I’ve ever had—ever will have. I met him 20+ years ago as a first-year graduate student at the University of Arizona, and my life has been far better as a result. In this episode, Hal talks with me not only about his specific areas of expertise, but also about how he came to work in the private sector instead of academia, when, it seemed to me, academia was his natural home. Hal has does things differently than most of us. He’s an independent thinker, and he’s passionate about his work. I’m thrilled to be able to share him with the world! Oh! Catch Dahlia Lithwick’s Slate interview with Hal here! * * * As always, remember that this podcast is brought to you by VQR and the Center for Media and Citizenship. Plus, we're a member of the TEEJ.FM podcast network. AND... The music of CIRCLE OF WILLIS was composed and performed by Tom Stauffer, Gene Ruley and their band THE NEW DRAKES. You can purchase this music at their Amazon page.
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Jim Coan
From VQR and the Center for Media and Citizenship, this is episode nine of Circle of Willis, where I chat with psychologist and entrepreneur, Hal Movius about how to understand confidence as well as the different ways confidence can strengthen or weaken our ability to handle difficult negotiations. Folks, whatever else is true, it turns out that one of the worst ways to deal with a difficult negotiation is to avoid it.
Jim Coan
Hey, everyone, it's Jim Coan, again. And as I've said before, this is my podcast Circle of Willis. For this episode, episode nine, if you're keeping count, I'm taking the podcast in a bit of a different direction. A direction I've long planned on taking it but haven't really managed yet. Which is to talk with someone who's really more of a science communicator than a working scientist per se. And I have, I have lots of reasons for that reasons, which I will detail, I think at another time. Specifically, I'm chatting here with Hal Movius, who is one of the closest friends I've got, or am ever going to have, in this lifetime. That is probably well past half over by now. Hal and I actually actually went to grad school together, starting over 20 years ago now. And at that time, he was really he was my principle intellectual as well as recreational buddy. And really, as far as my science goes, there are a vanishingly small number of people who've really influenced my thinking as much as how Movius has. I'd say that remains true today. As true, at least as it was, when we were in grad school, even though-even though our lives took us in pretty different directions. You know, I went, I went more or less straight into a postdoc, and then the, to the tenure track, to where I am today, which is at the University of Virginia, here in little old Charlottesville. But Hal more or less right after grad school decided he wanted a different kind of life. And I don't blame him. I don't blame him. But in some ways, that kind of surprised me. I'll try to explain that.
Jim Coan
First, Hal will probably object to my saying this, but I literally know no one personally, who reads more of the current social scientific literature than Hal does. I mean, I think sometimes it's a source of frustration for him because, you know, a common conversation between us goes something like this. You know, Hal's like, "Hey, Jim, did you read this?" And I'm like, "No, I didn't." And then he's like, "Well, did you read this?" And I'm like, "No, I did not." And then he's like, "Well, you know, for God's sake, did you read this?" And I'm like, "nope." And it's sort of always been that way with us. Probably always will be that way. See, Hal's a voracious consumer of behavioral science and not, or at least not only for instrumental reasons. He just wants to know it, you know? And that's as close to an academic mindset as I can really imagine. But it really, for me, it goes deeper than that. Because Hal actually comes from, from a family of academics. In fact, Hal's grandfather also Hal Movius, by the way, was a was a famous Harvard archaeologist. I think he was an archaeologist. Who was a member actually of the National Academy of Sciences and also for a time the curator of of Harvard's Peabody Museum. It's funny, there's even a lecture series there at Harvard named after him. So you know, that to suggested to me that Hal Movius was bound for the Academy. But, but Hal was not having it, he was not interested in doing that. He had another-another vision for himself. Instead, he found himself increasingly interested in applying behavioral science in ways that people might find useful. And to that end, wound up founding Movius Consulting, which is his business, it's a business specifically designed to bring behavioral science to bear in resolving conflicts and promoting strong and socially responsible negotiation practices. So you know, how this figured out how to leverage his training as a scientist, and I would say, his his very real intrinsic interest in how people work into a way that maybe helps people and you know, makes him a little money, little green, you know, a living in the process. And anyway, more recently, he started writing books about how companies and people can handle negotiations more effectively. The most recent of these is called "Resolve, Negotiating Life's Conflicts with Greater Confidence," and this book draws on decades of behavioral science to propose a pretty comprehensive approach to understanding what confidence is, as well as how confidence can both hurt us and help us when we're trying to negotiate conflict.
Jim Coan
And when I read Hal's book, I really, I couldn't help thinking about sort of the many things that motivated me to start this very podcast. Not least of which was the discourse among scientists who disagree about whether science is in crisis and, you know, in any event, what to do about that. So there's that. But it has not escaped my notice, I want you to know, that this episode of Circle of Willis is being released in early January, when a lot of my junior colleagues will be out on the job market, possibly - possibly - getting job offers. And the very few of these junior colleagues have thought about whether and how they will negotiate for things like higher salaries, more startup funds, lower teaching loads, and things like that, once the job offers, start rolling in, if they do. And I do hope they do, all of you who are out there working through that issue. Now, I know that when I was on the job market, I hardly thought of this at all. And when the offers did come in, I was far too timid to consider, you know, negotiating anything. I mean, I was just so grateful to have an offer at all. But that's, here's the thing about this conversation that you're about to hear. If you keep listening. It's- I think it's going to resonate a lot with scientists earlier in their careers. I hope it does. I could be wrong about that. But I think it really will, for at least two reasons. You know, one of these, as I've already said is it's sort of negotiation season. And our graduate programs, as a rule, do not really offer negotiation guidelines or training. And I think that's a problem. But the other thing is, you know, Hal's story offers at least a kind of a glimpse of an alternative route to success for scientists. He did things differently. And I think there's real value in considering those differences. All right? That said, I actually, did I cut a lot of our conversation out for this particular episode. What follows here is mostly Hal's perspectives on confidence, on negotiation training, you know, and his perspective on science as a tool for solving real world problems. But we also had a really interesting conversation about how Hal did his graduate school pretty differently than most of us did, and I'll be releasing that as bonus material later on. Until then, friends, here's Hal Movius.
Jim Coan
But we met in 1996.
Hal Movius
I think we met we met in 199-
Jim Coan
Or maybe 1995.
Hal Movius
When-When did you arrive?
Jim Coan
Either... I think it was fall of '96 actually.
Hal Movius
This is what I remember. I remember being in the mailroom at the Department of Psychology at the University of Arizona. And I knew who you were because I knew you were interested in meta-emotion.
Jim Coan
Right.
Hal Movius
Just read a paper on meta emotion.
Jim Coan
Yeah.
Hal Movius
And I thought this was super cool-
Jim Coan
Our joint obsession for a while there.
Hal Movius
Yeah. And I introduced myself and said, "Oh, yeah, you're working with you know, you're working with Varda and Michael and but you do meta emotion stuff, right?" And you were like, "Yeah." And I was like, "Oh, okay." I don't know you. I'd like something else to do or something. And then I kept bugging you though. I kept bugging.
Jim Coan
You invited me out. You took me to... what was it? Two Pesos?
Hal Movius
Two pesos. Yeah, that was one of those places that had the-
Jim Coan
And that was that fall. I think that was that in Tucson?
Hal Movius
Yeah.
Jim Coan
So yeah, the two pesos. What do we- what do we do at Two Pesos? You had some kind of thing you're doing?
Hal Movius
Yeah, it was called drinking beer. What would happen is you could go there and get they had happy hours. Remember the roaring '90s? This isn't like gasoline was 0.93 cents a gallon?
Jim Coan
Yeah.
Hal Movius
And you could get long necks, 0.99 cent long neck beers. Best thing is they had a free taco bar. So if you're a grad student, you would go get a 0.99 cent beer. And then help yourself to taco bar lunch and dinner. Yeah.
Jim Coan
Yeah, yeah. I remember the tacos not being particularly impressive.
Hal Movius
No, I don't even think they were tacos really.
Jim Coan
Taco food...
Hal Movius
The thing is if you if you if you spent $2.97 and got yourself three beers, then you didn't really care what it was.
Jim Coan
And that was that was the goal. In any case, especially given the elevation and the dryness in the air. You were pretty-
Hal Movius
Yeah, it's true. You're well lit by like a beer and a half. And you sat under these misters that-
Jim Coan
Right? Those were everywhere.
Hal Movius
Yeah.
Jim Coan
This is I presumably still do you sit under the misters because it it evaporates so quickly that it cools the air? Isn't that the idea?
Hal Movius
I think it's just that everybody's so hot that you want this like cool, misty water coming down on your head so you're gonna leave the bar quickly.
Jim Coan
Yeah, yeah.
Hal Movius
I don't know.
Jim Coan
I remember when I first got to Tucson, I remember that, that summer coming out of my house and this wave of heat enveloping me. That was so... it actually resulted in this joke. So I have a joke about Tucson, which was literally true at that moment where the wave of heat hit me, which was that the only thing that mitigated my suffering in Tucson was my fascination and how much I was suffering. Pretty good, huh? Yeah, it used to get better.
Hal Movius
Get going.
Jim Coan
So I remember-
Hal Movius
I remember leaning against my car and burning myself.
Jim Coan
So how do you get from there to running Movius Consulting, you know, here 20 years later? And I mean, it's sort of like, I'm thinking of this sort of like the the education of Hal Movius, right?
Hal Movius
It's a very short book.
Jim Coan
But first of all, I, I wonder if you could really clarify because I don't... I'm not even, even after all these conversations I've had with you and all this time, I'm not 100% clear on what Movius Consulting does, or what it is. Exactly, because it seems like you do a lot of things with it.
Hal Movius
Yes, that's true. I mean, it's a consulting, coaching, and training outfit that works with companies around the world and helps them to negotiate and communicate more effectively. That's my schpeel. But to your first question, I mean, how did I end up there? I remember getting a huge... triggering a huge wave of hostility. In my first year.
Jim Coan
I remember seven or eight or those at some points. And, yeah.
Hal Movius
But we had a first year prose seminar, and at some point on some sleepy afternoon, I suggested that all things being equal, if the pie were shrinking, and there were only finite research dollars, that tackling really important, real world problems should be a priority. And that you know, everybody went ballistic. You know, you're out of your mind. Basic research leads to all kinds of unexpected, and I said, "Yeah, you know, I get it. Yes, in a perfect world, we do tons of, you know, but we have these, like super pressing problems in the world at large. And maybe we should start with those. And those might lead us to some really interesting..." But anyway, I had...
Jim Coan
Lee had some really interesting thoughts about that, as well. But yeah,
Hal Movius
Yeah, and Lee was very, I mean, he was another person who was very interested in real world problems.
Jim Coan
Right. And he rejected the notion that focusing on real world problems, precluded progress in basic science.
Hal Movius
Which is how I saw it, but anyway, yeah. I think it was just my ambivalence, Jim. I don't think it was like, I was ambivalent about grad school, I saw that there was a, there were other choices, which I think a lot of kids coming right out of college just hadn't seen. And I had this great lucky thing where I found myself, while I was a graduate student, working with very senior leaders of academic institutions and foundations and professional schools in a consulting role.
Jim Coan
Sort of widening your perspective on the whole milieu.
Hal Movius
Yeah. And seeing to some extent, how arbitrary regressive and hierarchical and petty academic culture can become. And I have to say, as much as I loved- I really loved a lot. I mean, I'm so grateful for the professors. I felt, I mean, I felt like I had a great experience. I had great professors, great colleagues like you, but I started to realize that academic... I felt that the academic culture might drive me crazy. So when I got out, when I got out when I finished my internship at Cambridge Hospital, which was totally exhausting, I mean, working-
Jim Coan
Your clinical internship.
Hal Movius
Yeah, my clinical internship treating all the states, indigent, and poor and-
Jim Coan
Right, right.
Hal Movius
You know, this really challenging clinical population. I mean, this is a slight simplification, but I basically woke up one morning in a 400 square foot studio realizing-
Jim Coan
In Cambridge, right?
Hal Movius
In Cambridge realizing... broke.
Jim Coan
Yeah.
Hal Movius
Realizing-
Jim Coan
I remember that place.
Hal Movius
Yeah, you could almost stand up. I didn't want to be an academic. And I didn't want to be a clinician, and I just spent six years of my life-
Jim Coan
Doing both.
Hal Movius
-training to do-do those things.
Jim Coan
Oh, God, I love the story.
Hal Movius
Anyway, I mean, then I met Kate Bennis, who's now my wife, and which was super lucky. Lot's of luck. And you know, at the time, I just I wasn't sure what to do. And her dad, Warren Bennis, was a big, I gotta tell you this story. So Warren Bennis, the late Warren Bennis is... some people consider him the founder of leadership studies.
Jim Coan
Yeah.
Hal Movius
He wrote 37 books. He co-authored or authored-
Jim Coan
My wife is obsessed with some of his books now.
Hal Movius
Yeah. And also just an incredibly charismatic and wonderful person. I mean, the kind of person that made you feel like the most important, smartest person he'd ever talked to. And when I was first dating Kate, and she said, "my dad's coming to town, I think you should meet him." And I said, "Great." And I knew he'd been a university professor and a university president. He'd written some books, but it was early in our relationship. It's not like I'd sort of obsessed and figured out everything about her dad. Thank God because we went to dinner and we had this great conversation. And he was asking me all about five factor personality theory. And he mentioned in passing, like, he had this very deep voice. "Well, Hal I'm- there's, you know, there's a book I think you might like, no, I really do. I really think you might like this one." And so I went to the coop the harbor coop the next day. And I asked the person, the clerk, do you have any books by Warren Bennis? And usually what they do is they turn to their little monitor and they type type type type. But she just looked at me and said, "Yep."
Jim Coan
We have a Warren Bennis room.
Hal Movius
Yeah, she takes me upstairs. There's like a whole shelf. And then I started having a panic, panic attack. Then I was like, Oh, my God, what did I say last night? What an idiot I am.
Jim Coan
I have had that experience with so many people.
Hal Movius
So Warren became a really an important mentor. He launched me on a consulting and coaching path. I went to work for Linkage, which is a big organizational development services firm. I then went to work for 10 years, almost 10 years for the Consensus Building Institute.
Jim Coan
Right? Which really gets you on the trajectory, it seems like to me.
Hal Movius
Yeah so, what happened was, what happened was, I was sort of, you know, in my retooling phase after I realized that I want to be an academic or a clinician. I went into consulting, and I found it a little bit soulless. And I could see like, what success meant was travelling 30 weeks a year. And I thought, especially with a new relationship, I didn't want to do this. So I reconnected to some of my mediation and negotiation friends in Cambridge because the program on negotiation there's a big hub for interdisciplinary scholarship and practitioners. And my friend, David Fairman, said, "why don't you come work at CBI and help us build a business practice around assessment, coaching, and training?" So I did that for 10 years. And meanwhile, I got married and had kids and moved to Charlottesville.
Jim Coan
Yeah.
Hal Movius
And, and then at a certain point I got, especially after I'd moved, I felt really disconnected from the rest of the organization, which, incidentally, does incredible work all over the world, helping international agencies and NGOs to build capability and negotiation and dispute resolution.
Jim Coan
Yeah, this is your real boots on the ground, kind of work.
Hal Movius
Yeah, yeah. And it wasn't for me, and part of the part of the reason was with a wife and kids, I desperately didn't want to be on the road all the time. And I realized that corporations paid a ton more per day than anybody else. And so I just sort of said, you know, what, I at this phase in my life, I am just going to do corporate work, so I can survive.
Jim Coan
Right, right.
Hal Movius
And then, after 10 years, I felt a little I you know, I done a bunch of things. I'd written a book with Larry Susskind.
Jim Coan
Which was...
Hal Movius
"Built to Win," creating a world class negotiating organization.
Jim Coan
And I remember this book because this really got my attention. When did that come out? 2000...
Hal Movius
It came out. I have such a great sense of timing. It came out in 2009, right after the collapse of worldwide financial system collapse.
Jim Coan
God.
Hal Movius
But-
Jim Coan
Well, you know, because- because I remember just given the kind of thinking that I've been doing in my own work, that one of the things that you argue in that book - If I recall correctly - is that the organization has to be thinking along the lines of negotiation needs and capabilities, rather than just having like an i-, you know, and identified negotiator.
Hal Movius
Yeah, the big idea there is that is that negotiation is an organizational capability as well as an individual one. If you just send people to training programs, teach them new ideas, new skills, and then they go back. And especially in for profit settings, the things that get measured or the way things are done, thwarts people's attempt to do things, to be more creative or more collaborative, or to get an overall better deal because one person in the organization or legal or finance or somebody told them, "No, you can't do that. We don't do it that way."
Jim Coan
Right.
Hal Movius
So in that we- and we'd worked, Larry, and I'd worked with a bunch of organizations, and that book was really sort of documenting our attempts to help leaders and teams overcome organizational barriers to better negotiation practice.
Jim Coan
Right.
Hal Movius
And then, and so anyway-
Jim Coan
It's a big deal.
Hal Movius
Yeah, yeah, it was,
Jim Coan
I think, I think I mean, the idea's a very big idea, I think.
Hal Movius
Well, thank you. I mean, I I think so too. And it's been a basis for a lot of my practice. You know, I've worked with some organizations now for more than a decade, organizations that have over 100,000 employees. So you're really thinking strategically about capitalism, publicly, you know, what does it mean to create shareholder value at any cost? Right? What, when push comes to shove, negotiation is really like where the rubber meets the road, you can say on your website, "Oh, we love puppies and angels and making a better tomorrow, and bla bla bla bla. And by the way, you get your bonus if you cut costs by 10%."
Jim Coan
Right!
Hal Movius
You know?
Jim Coan
By any means necessary.
Hal Movius
And that is the corporate world for so many people. So that's what we're trying to help with. How do you get to 10% without being a jerk?
Jim Coan
That's what Movius-? So along the way, you leave CBI and you start Movius Consulting.
Hal Movius
Yes.
Jim Coan
This is where you start to really, it seems to me, I'm just gonna suggest this and see what you think. It seems to me, you really start sort of stirring the your sort of intellectual pot a little bit more. Where you're bringing in experience from CBI and from, you know, working, you know, in headhunting agencies and with leadership companies, and also your scholarship. Does that seem right?
Hal Movius
I think aspirationally that's right, yeah. I mean, I wanted when I left CBI, when I started my own company, I wanted to move toward Applied Psychology. I mean, I've been so focused on negotiation in a narrow sense. And negotiation is endlessly fascinating. It's an interdisciplinary field. It's incredibly productive. In terms of different lines of research, it is a real world business problem that never goes out of season. So-
Jim Coan
Yeah.
Hal Movius
If you want to make a living, it's helpful. But you know, at a certain point, I felt like, that's not what I want to do the rest of my life. And what I really loved the most was the coaching and, excuse me, coaching and consulting work that I was doing, where you have the chance to build a relationship with a leader or team as a trusted adviser. And I really like to draw I think of myself as a research practitioner. I still read avidly-
Jim Coan
Yeah.
Hal Movius
-lots of journals.
Jim Coan
I know you do.
Hal Movius
And try to bug people like you to help me understand them.
Jim Coan
Often enough, you understand them far better than I do. But I mean, you know, one of the things that I was wondering, hearing you, I mean, these are such complex problems, they have real consequences. And they're and they're tough to solve. Thinking about your identity, as not only as a practitioner out in the world, working on these tough problems, but as a as a scholar, as a person who was trained as a scientist. Does the science help you?
Hal Movius
I think it does. I mean, it makes you cautious. It helps you recognize BS, right? Which is just in no short supply.
Jim Coan
Which has gotta be, in a field like yours, it's gotta be-
Hal Movius
God. It's endless.
Jim Coan
Yeah.
Hal Movius
Endless claims endless misrepresentations of research.
Jim Coan
And you must come up against that all the time in the work that you do.
Hal Movius
Constantly. And I like to think that in trying to help leaders and teams and organizations that the advice we're giving is really grounded in evidence. As well as experience, I mean, when you do consulting for 15 years, you start to recognize certain patterns and...
Jim Coan
Right, yeah. you start to understand what organizations are, how they work, at least at the bureaucratic level.
Hal Movius
Yeah.
Jim Coan
I don't have the first clue about.
Hal Movius
Yeah, there's, it's funny, there is a set of, there's all kinds of implicit knowledge that you accrue about culture and language and the ways people deal with one another at work. But yeah, and then I, so the last so, "Built in Win" was a book about organizational barriers to negotiating and resolving disputes more effectively. But then I got curious about even in non organizational settings, why is it so hard for people to take really sensible, prescriptive advice about negotiation like, you know, focus on interests, not positions.
Jim Coan
Right.
Hal Movius
And then when you actually encounter conflict, or you're thinking about it, like, your neighbor's dog is barking and it's driving you crazy and you want to go over there and tell them to shut the dog up, but you also suddenly find yourself going "eh you know, whatever. Just a work with a louder-"
Jim Coan
I can't do it. I'd rather gnaw my own leg off then even confront the neighbor about their barking dog.
Hal Movius
See, that's what's interesting.
Jim Coan
It just feels like... it feels it feels to me like it's going to set off world war three and we're all going to die. My kids, my neighbors, everybody's gonna die if I confront them about their dog.
Hal Movius
Well, so that's what I got interested in. Because in negotiation, you know, there been all these books written great books, like how we know it isn't so predictably irrational, thinking fast and slow.
Jim Coan
Right.
Hal Movius
Endless-
Jim Coan
And Tom Gilovich and-
Hal Movius
Yeah.
Jim Coan
Dan Kahneman and all those-
Hal Movius
Dan Ariely, Max Bazerman, you know. They're just really great research, all of which converge on the prescriptive advice to be less confident.
Jim Coan
Well, I've got it nailed, then.
Hal Movius
Yeah. But that's what got me curious, as I found myself working, you know, teaching exec ed, or teaching MBAs and basically giving them exercises where they behaved sub optimally and got sub optimal results.
Jim Coan
Right.
Hal Movius
And then I would show them how sub optimal they were. And they go, Oh, wow, okay, yeah." And then I would describe why all the different biases they'd fallen prey to, and all the reasons that they hadn't done it better. But, you know, at the end of the day, when I coach teams, they're just terrified. They're like, Oh, my God, we're gonna lose this client or-
Jim Coan
Right.
Hal Movius
We don't know what to or I-
Jim Coan
That's because negotiation and conflict is terrifying.
Hal Movius
Well, that's just it. So I started. So this was the mystery. The mystery was, how could it be that in some ways people are so overcome, or needlessly overconfident, in their judgments and their reasoning, and their perceptions, but emotionally and behaviorally under confident? They, they're frightened? Like, you know, the, I call that the crucible of conflict, these three things that interact under pressure, you know, there's whatever the issue is at hand, like the barking dog, or am I gonna get a raise? There's the social capital that's at risk. Like, if we disagree, what is that going to do to our relationship? Or what happens if I don't get what I want? Maybe I'm just... maybe that's the beginning of the end for our relationship. Or maybe you're gonna say bad things about me and my reputation will suffer.
Jim Coan
Right.
Hal Movius
And then there's the extent to which people want to avoid emotion or certain kinds of emotions. That's, that's why I wrote this book. So I wrote this book called "Resolve."
Jim Coan
Ok so this is the new book, this is the new book "Resolve," and there's a subtitle right?
Hal Movius
"Negotiating Life's Conflicts with Greater Confidence."
Jim Coan
I really love this book. I mean, I really do.
Hal Movius
I mean, I loved researching it, because I ended up having to answer all these questions like: Why does conflict freak people out so much? Why are people so characteristically avoidant?
Jim Coan
Yeah.
Hal Movius
Even people who are confident in other ways, like CEOs, you know? The number one, when you ask CEOs of companies, what's the problem for which you must desperately need coaching? By far the answer is managing conflict.
Jim Coan
God, I can't do it, man, I can't do it. I'm gonna read it again.
Hal Movius
Well, you're not alone.
Jim Coan
Because I can't do it's so painful.
Hal Movius
That's the point.
Jim Coan
Dreadful, but because partly it's your you're coached and you just by observation, you're coached by how to sort of, you know, it's the never let them see you sweat kind of thing, right? You know, it's like, you know, you got to look confident. But nobody's really talking about, you got to be confident, and everybody sort of knows, at least implicitly, that being confident sets you up for a disaster, right? You know, you're going to go in there and not know what you're talking about. So you got to prepare like crazy. And, and then, but by God, you've got to not look like you're, you don't know what you're talking about.
Hal Movius
Yes.
Jim Coan
Or else you're going to die!
Hal Movius
Well, I think a central insight that I came to, in researching this is that confidence is not a unitary thing. It's not like a Goldilocks problem of you should have some you should be in the 77th percentile for confidence. Not too much. But yeah, it's not that it's three different things that- to be geeky for a minute. I went all the way back to the 80s research Steve Brettler and others did on, you know, the three components of attitudes affective, behavioral, and cognitive. And I thought about confidence as a self relevant attitude. And when you think about it that way, you know, there's an affective component, which is poise, can I keep cool? Can I-
Jim Coan
So there is that sort of that... don't let him see you sweat kind of component to it.
Hal Movius
It's may not be don't let them see you sweat. It's if I'm sweating, do I know how to manage that so that I can keep talking to somebody.
Jim Coan
That's a big difference.
Hal Movius
Yeah. So it's not about suppressing your emotion. It's about knowing, you know, it's like the - I'm trying to think of a metaphor. It's like, you can't control the wind, but you can control the sailboat. Right? You can figure out-
Jim Coan
Right.
Hal Movius
-how do, how does my... How does this boat drive or, you know, glide? And how do I work the sail in a way that over time, I've learned that if I go this way, or do these things that helps. So there's poise. There's awareness, which is the way that you stay out of these narrow heuristic leaps. You force yourself to engage in systematic thinking, system to thinking by using checklists and models and other things that remind you, "gee, I should think about, I should spend a little time thinking about how the other side sees this problem. Or I should spend time thinking about what they think will happen if we don't reach agreement." And it sounds so simple, but just in vivo, so many times I've seen really experienced smart people in their anxiety, and in all the data numbers and analysis, forget to do these things. And then there's a third component, which is mastery. Which is like know how, it's procedural knowledge. People think for weeks about what they're going to say when they go in to negotiate a raise from their boss, or to ask for an extra week of vacation or to work from home or whatever it is. Or to get more departmental funds or more- another graduate student.
Jim Coan
Yeah.
Hal Movius
And you know, and they think about it and think about it and think about it, and maybe they write down lists or other things, and they assembled data and benchmark, but almost nobody practices. And the thing is, it's... I have executives do this all the time, but you can think about what you're going to say. And then when you actually go to say it, it comes out in a completely different way.
Jim Coan
I crumble like a flimsy piece of tissue paper.
Hal Movius
Well that can happen too.
Jim Coan
Yeah.
Hal Movius
But so I mean, even for people who don't crumble, what happens is, they haven't thought about the first three sentences they want to say. Like, how do I want to frame this conversation? What's the purpose? How do I want to open? An opening is really important. I mean, if you wander into a conversation, there's a lot, many more risks than if you sort of say, "Thanks for meeting with me, the reason I wanted to talk to you is," and then you framed it, you know, I want to talk to you because I need a way to get more funds. And I know that you have a budget problem to solve. So I wanted to see if we could think of some options.
Jim Coan
Right.
Hal Movius
So that framing is really important. And creating a space to brainstorm is really important. And listening to what the other person cares about, or is constrained by is really important. But we don't do those things, we go in with a bunch of arguments to rehearse, a bunch of complaints to make if they push back, a bunch of, you know, fingers to point about other people who got something, it's, we just do it wrong. So... and you don't realize that until you practice with somebody. Even someone who knows nothing about the situation.
Jim Coan
And you can actually get people to practice?
Hal Movius
It's hard.
Jim Coan
Because I've never practiced anything.
Hal Movius
It's really hard. That's what I write about in the book. It's really hard. People don't want to do it. But think about it this way. Even if you just sat with your smartphone, and said, Alright, I think I know what to say to my boss, but I'm just gonna practice saying the first three sentences. Or I'm afraid that when I ask for this, I know exactly what they're gonna say. They're gonna say, "No, you can't have it because x." So what will I say at that moment, I'm going to practice that. Negotiation is a is a complex activity. It's like riding a bike or swimming or, you know, making a complicated dish. So if you think about competence as having these three components, and you recognize that most people don't default in conflict to thinking like a negotiator would, they just think, okay, how do I not have to deal with this? Or I'll just give in so they'll stop being mad at me? Or I'll convince them that I'm right. You know, those are the three basic things people default to, right?
Jim Coan
Right. And that's not thinking like a negotiator?
Hal Movius
No. Which is very different. It's about what is it that really is it's what does this person really care about in this situation?
Jim Coan
Right.
Hal Movius
It may not be whether I did the dishes or not, it might be whether I respect her conduct...
Jim Coan
Yeah this is the point that Sue Johnson always makes want to talk with her about it. She's like, What did this person really care about?
Hal Movius
Yeah.
Jim Coan
And it's not generally what you're talking about.
Hal Movius
Yeah. And that's true, by the way, in very high level diplomatic and corporate and governmental negotiations, where people issue public statements or make demands at the outset and completely missed the boat in terms of figuring out what each side really cares about. And it's true in little, you know, tiffs that happened between roommates and spouses and partners. Where, you know, the issue wasn't the car keys, the issue was, you interrupted me.
Jim Coan
Yeah, right.
Hal Movius
And, you know, so that's, that's, so I think about... I think about sort of three- in the book, I talked about these three different situations, that present kind of special problems for negotiators. One is what happens when the other person is behaving as if the relationship really doesn't matter. They could give a flying fudge, right? Whether-
Jim Coan
Yeah.
Hal Movius
-you come back or don't, and they don't seem to be at all bothered by pounding the table or complaining or you know, and making you feel bad. So what do you do in that situation? What do you do in situations where they're behaving as if they just have to get what they want to get and to hell with you. So that's one special, stressful situation. A second situation is what do you do when the relationship is the most important thing? The most important thing is this year, this is the most important relationship you have, or it's your brother or your...
Jim Coan
Right, right.
Hal Movius
Your father, your son, your daughter, what do you do? And that's a second set of, there's a second set of extra steps to take into account. And then the third is what happens when you represent other people. And it doesn't sound like- that sounds sort of innocuous on the surface. But what happens is, when you're representing other people, whether it's like your neighborhood or your family, if you're planning a vacation, or your team or company, the minute that people start it, well, here's what tends to happen. People will go and say, "Well, what should we try to get?" And they give you a long Christmas list of all the things that they want.
Jim Coan
Right.
Hal Movius
And then if you stop there and say, "Okay, I'll try to get as many of those as I can as possible," you're cooked.
Jim Coan
Why?
Hal Movius
Unless you're really lucky. Well, in organizations, because people are paid to care about different things. It's like what Max Bazerman would call a predictable surprise, that legal and finance and engineering and customer service and, you know, supply, manage, they all care about different things, they get bonused. And for cheap...
Jim Coan
In other words, you can't win if you-if you start promising to fulfill the Christmas list?
Hal Movius
You make a long list, it, well you can make a long list, and everybody will say great, you got my five things great. But then you have to force the organization to tell you "Okay, I got 11 things on my list here. Now I have to do some work to get the organization to say which of these are most important and which are least important." And some people are gonna say, wait a minute, my things are listed eighth, ninth, and 11th. No way Jose, you know? I can live with that. So what are we going to do? Well, we have to have an internal negotiation. It's called the inside outside process.
Jim Coan
I'm going to die already just hearing about it.
Hal Movius
But see, if you don't do it, here's what happens. You go to the table and your own people start criticizing you. And that feels terrible.
Jim Coan
Yep.
Hal Movius
Even worse than the person across the table is a pain in the neck.
Jim Coan
Yeah.
Hal Movius
Your own people are saying, Well, why didn't you do x? Or you should have said that or be tough or whatever.
Jim Coan
Right. Oh my God.
Hal Movius
But you have to make them aware of the fact that they've given you an impossible mandate and get them to be clear. Okay, what should I absolutely try hardest to get? What are some things would be great to get? And what are some things that I could kind of probably give on if I had to, right? You can't create value, you can't make trades to get more of the things that are good, that are most important and giving away things that are least important to the other side. You can't do that and make the pie bigger unless you do that exercise first. So those are three special situations and I think that's how you tackle that sort of feeling of overwhelm that you have. You say, well, what's the situation I'm facing? Okay the situation's with my wife. So in this situation, I've got social capital and emotional minefields.
Jim Coan
So the difference- thinking carefully about what kind of situation is helped you decide what's important, and what to protect? And what to pursue?
Hal Movius
Yes, exactly. And to recognize tactics... to recognize tactics that the other side is using in the case of like the really obnoxious difficult counterpart, to be able to name them and to be able to figure out how to respond to them in a way that doesn't take you in the wrong direction, to be able to manage your emotions at that moment, to not let yourself jump to certain conclusions like well, this person is just a jerk, because there may be many things about the situation from their side, they may be under impossible pressure or somebody told them to go yell at you. So we have to work hard to do, again, do more systematic thinking and be able to soothe ourselves in those moments. And one of the things, Jim, it's funny, I mean, a key moment for me in researching this book was a really something you said, like almost as a throwaway line where we were talking and you said, you said, "you know, negotiation is such an unusual situation. For human beings."
Jim Coan
It does seem like it to me, yeah.
Hal Movius
So it's like, as if in the last two or 300 years, all of a sudden, there's this new ecology where this sort of frenemy stance, you know, friend and foe- this great book by Maurice Schweitzer and Adam Galinsky "Friend and Foe," you know, that, that we can toggle back and forth, but negotiation is this, it requires holding the ambiguity of thinking, what they want is going to keep me from getting what I want, maybe. Or what they want isn't what I want, or, you know, so in that sense, we're in opposition.
Jim Coan
Yeah.
Hal Movius
And they're, and gosh, what does that mean.
Jim Coan
But I also think that the way that we sort of grew up as a species was very much about bonding and cooperating and sharing goals and sharing, you know, combining attention towards those shared goals. And when-when those conditions are not part of the situation, I think it's really uncomfortable.
Hal Movius
But I think it's just this idea that in our setting, in any negotiation, there's an element of cooperation and an element of competition. And in fact, there, what David Lax and Jim Sebenius coined the negotiators dilemma is this problem: how do- life would be better if we could be in a cooperative mode rather than a non-cooperative mode. But if I seek to induce cooperation in you by being totally transparent and forthcoming, and you aren't, I could be exploited. So the negotiators dilemma is how can I induce a cooperative relationship or mode of interaction without being exploited? And it's, it's actually profound and really interesting when you frame the problem that way, then the answer is, well, it turns out, there's a set of moves that you can make, when you're not sure whether they're going to be cooperative or not. But you still want to start by making cooperation possible.
Jim Coan
Right.
Hal Movius
And that's something I love teaching. It's a, you know, it's a really rich part of teaching negotiation.
Jim Coan
So you said earlier that-that combining your sort of scholarship and your science, with your science training, especially with your experience is an aspirational goal for Movius Consulting. I gotta say, I watched you during the period of time you were working on this book, sort of in the mines, you know? Really digging deep into the, into the literature and the book itself, it really is much more of an expression of the total how that I've come to know over the last few decades, and I'm wondering if it seems to you like just the act of putting this book together has changed your... your view of things or changed your feeling about the work that you do or, or your your prescriptive advice or any of that sort of thing. Because you really dug into the literature. You didn't know all of that going into the project?
Hal Movius
Definitely not. Definitely not. And I had, I should add, I had a really good editor Maggie Langrick at LifeTree Media who really kind of dug in and said, "These things are interesting, but not essential." Because otherwise the book would have been like 900 pages long.
Jim Coan
Volume 10!
Hal Movius
Yeah, because I'm that way, I get interested in-
Jim Coan
I know.
Hal Movius
-a bazillion little side shoots. Yeah. Am I different? I mean, I think I'm more... I think I feel resolved. Pun intended. I think I feel resolved in the sense that I now believe that it's okay to teach people to try to be more confident. To develop emotional confidence or self efficacy in moments of stress, like conflict. And to develop their behavioral repertoire and know how so that they don't have to think really hard about what am I going to do next, they have some practice. They're comfortable being in conflict, they know that when conflict gets to this place, it's time to say, timeout, or I'm going to take the ultimatum they just gave me and reframe it as one option and then suggest some other things. I have a repertoire. I think it's good to teach people those things, and that we can still teach people about the dangers of overconfidence in the cognitive realm. And that makes me feel, you know, when I started the book, the reason I wrote it was to figure out am I doing this wrong, you know? Am I teaching people to be... I'm teaching people all about overconfidence, and the perils of overconfidence, and the fallibility of human reasoning, and I'm giving them exercises that definitely drive that lesson home. Which is what a lot of business schools do, you know? And now I feel better saying, "well, that's possible, and it's also possible to recognize how genuinely and disproportionately stressful inner personnel conflict is. And I think I have a deeper appreciation for that. I think I wandered around for most of my life thinking that was just me, that I hated conflict. But I think actually most people hate conflict.
Jim Coan
Everyone I know. Well, not everyone. And the ones that don't hate it they're... they seem to be better at it. I mean, it seems like at least they blazed through I mean, I'm thinking about Richie Davidson, for example. Who I did my postdoc with, the guy can negotiate. I mean, it's almost, it's almost bloodshed when you see him negotiating with someone, I mean, he just is so good at achieving his goals. You wonder what what's going on with everyone he's negotiating with.
Hal Movius
Okay, but you have to ask the implicit in that is the idea that negotiation is like Bloodsport, see I'm saying-
Jim Coan
Right. No, I think yeah, that's right.
Hal Movius
I think another way of saying it would be some people, there are some people who are comfortable going into conflict. But they put a lot of social capital at risk, and they create a lot of bad feelings. They get what they want, more often, and maybe they're happier about it, they just shrug it off. But I'm not convinced that in the long term life gets easier for people and making deals gets easier for people. The only exception to that is people who are born into power and wealth. And if you're born as the son of a dictator in a developing country, or you inherit $250 million, as a real estate developer, it turns out, you can behave in lots of ways.
Jim Coan
Yeah.
Hal Movius
You can burn a million bridges. It doesn't matter. And, you know, research by Adam Galinsky and lots of other people has been documenting how... how differently people behave when they feel powerful, as opposed to not feeling powerful. So this book is about helping people feel more-
Jim Coan
...and and stuff like that.
Hal Movius
Yeah. But I mean, I could have titled this book, how to be more confident, without being foolish or obnoxious. You know, that's really what the book is about. Because it's not you don't have to be pushy. I mean, I love the book "Lean in." And the "Confidence Code," I thought that was really laid out in compelling a way, the costs of not negotiating for your own benefit. But and we know from this research that's coming out, you know, since then, or even before Laura Cray, and other research that women get, and people with less power, get penalized for being more assertive.
Jim Coan
Right.
Hal Movius
Even by other women and people with less power.
Hal Movius
Right.
Hal Movius
It's like this terrible double bind. So what I hope the book does is to say, yes, that's really true, you can miss out on a lot and get less over the course of your life. You don't have to remedy that by being more assertive, or domineering. It just means you have to do these other things like learn to manage your emotion, learn to practice, learn to recognize the cognitive pitfalls that you might fall into. And is there some assertiveness in there? Yes. But it's really not the whole story.
Jim Coan
There's so much... so much else going on, and all of that, and it makes me really think and this is what I wanted to say, you know, just sort of bringing us around full circle, to thinking about you starting as a graduate student, feeling a little bit out of place. Like in academia, not sure about all this, you know, wondering where you wanted to take your life. It seems to me that there are some glaring gaps in training. You know, we have statistical training, we have ethics training now, which I think is most analogous to what I'm about to suggest, but, and we learn, we spend a lot of time developing our content areas. But we don't prepare our students for things like negotiating. And, you know, these are big deals, and they dovetail I think, with things like ethics in ways that I think you could talk much more about than I could. But it really makes me wonder about whether this is one of those things that we need to make part of our professional development. I wish so badly that I had had some kind of training, maybe with role plays, maybe just read me, anything. Before I went on the job market, for example, because I literally had no idea what in the hell I was doing. I would just show up there. They-
Hal Movius
I don't think you're alone.
Jim Coan
They usher me in to the meeting with the Dean and he'd say, "Well, I've got this amount of money, what does it sound like to you?" And I'd be like, "Okay, please, can I have a job? I'll kiss your feet." And honestly, I think it hurt me in a lot of ways.
Hal Movius
There will be many more negotiations required though, and I agree with you that people are under trained and that it would be good for if more people in the world were trained in a mutual gains approach to negotiation and learn that you don't have to be naive about negotiation. It's not that by being nice, you'll get everybody to be nice too. But that you don't have to be a jerk either and leave-
Jim Coan
Right.
Hal Movius
-you know, blood on the floor to get what you want.
Jim Coan
Right, right.
Hal Movius
You just have to be smart and systematic. And there are things that we've learned from 40 years of research about the kinds of moves that help and the kinds of problems and quagmires that people tend to wander into. So.
Jim Coan
And training can help.
Hal Movius
Training can help although training is often the first step and practice and other... and other steps are necessary afterward.
Jim Coan
All right, man, well, that was awesome. Thank you for talking to me.
Hal Movius
You're very welcome. This was so much fun.
Jim Coan
Okay, that's it, everybody. Thank you, Mr. Hal Movius, my friend. I am glad I got tacos with you that day in probably October, or there abouts, in 1996. Changed my life, man. Hey, you might think that this is the end of my chat with Hal Movius, but that's actually not true. Because shortly I will be releasing some bonus material of Hal and I reminiscing about our graduate school days. And while that might not sound like a very excellent use of your time, do keep in mind that Hal's story is really interesting for illustrating the way he made a sort of unorthodox approach to graduate school into a highly successful one. I think, I'm, you know, I may, I may be naive about this but I think it's the kind of perspective that individuals thinking about graduate school... Or, I mean, the hell with it, even those in graduate school, or even even finishing up graduate school might find really useful. So, watch out for that. Folks, the music on Circle of Willis is written by Tom Stauffer and Gene Ruely, and performed by their band the New Drake's for information about how to purchase their music, check the about page at circleofwillispodcast.com. Don't forget that Circle of Willis is brought to you by VQR and the Center for Media and Citizenship at the University of Virginia. And that Circle of Willis is a member of the TEEJ.FM network. You can find out more about that at teej.fm (now wtju.net). If you liked this podcast, how about giving us a little review at iTunes and letting us know how we're doing? It is easy. I say that over and over again. I'm self conscious about that fact. But I want to say it again, it's easy, and we like it. Or send us an email by going to circleofwillispodcast.com and clicking on the Contact tab. In any case, I'll see you at episode 10 where I talk with evolutionary biologist David Sloan Wilson, about multi-level selection theory, about the nature of scientific criticism, and about the importance of science communication for both science and society. Until then, bye bye.