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Holy Week resources and reflections

Expanding the pie with faithful negotiations

Guest commentary by Chip Hardwick and Gerard Beenen

Why negotiation?
Picture this: You’re chairing a pastoral search and aren’t sure how to discuss the terms of call with the top candidate.

Or more painfully, you’re part of a presbytery team voting to dismiss a congregation and find yourself working to determine what the church should pay for its property. Or you’re part of the congregation trying to resolve this same issue.

Both of the above scenarios have one thing in common: negotiation skills are needed for an effective solution. Negotiation is a process by which two or more parties are better off through some jointly-decided actions than they might be otherwise. Competent leaders are competent negotiators. This includes church leaders, who often struggle with the potential conflicts inherent to any negotiation.

To help you negotiate more effectively and more faithfully, we’d like to introduce a new perspective — a perspective that involves viewing the negotiation as an opportunity to expand the pie, not divide it. In this way, negotiations are a step toward reconciling otherwise conflicting interests where one party can only win at the other’s expense. We’ll contrast a distributive strategy (dividing the pie) with an integrative strategy (expanding the pie) and then explain why the latter is more fruitful and faithful.

Dividing the pie: The distributive approach
slice pie free
This is how most of us approach negotiation: as a zero-sum game where we’re dividing a fixed pie. A bigger slice for me means a smaller one for you. A distributive approach distributes value between parties; every bit one receives, the other gives up. We try to get the most we can by focusing on a negotiation position instead of the underlying issues that are most important to us.

For instance, if you’re negotiating terms of call, the salary is clearly not the only issue you’re paying attention to, though to both parties it may seem the most important. The session may view every salary dollar saved as a dollar available for other ministries, while the candidate may view every dollar of salary as a resource for her family.

This distributive approach can be effective under a few circumstances that involve transactions in which you never expect to deal again with the other party, and when only one issue truly matters. Distributive negotiators care a lot about their own interests, but little about other party’s. The negotiating parties typically either reach impasse or close a deal based on unreconciled, opposing interests where one feels taken advantage of by the other.

Neither of our opening scenarios — a pastor’s terms of call or a presbytery and congregation negotiating over property — are best solved using a distributive approach. A better way forward is to understand the more important underlying issues and configure them in ways that expand the pie for both parties.

Expanding the pie: The integrative approach
pieces puzzle free
An integrative strategy involves growing, rather than dividing, the pie. Instead of thinking that a bigger slice for you means a smaller slice for me, this strategy works to create value by mutually understanding one another’s goals and issues so that everyone gets a bigger piece of what is important to them.

Imagine two siblings negotiating over one orange. Using a distributive strategy, each sibling would focus on a bargaining position: “I want the orange.” There’s only one orange, so their best joint outcome is for each to get half.

The problem is that neither sibling got what was wanted. If they had spent time discussing what they really valued, they would have learned one only needed the peel to make a cake, while the other only needed the pulp to make juice. If they had focused on discussing their compatible goals (“let’s bake a cake and drink some juice”) rather than their conflicting positions (“give me the orange”), they would have gotten more of what they needed — all of the peel and all of the pulp.

If they had shown a higher level of concern for each other’s interests by discussing their goals, the door would have opened for a negotiation where both parties’ interests were integrated to create more value. Integrative negotiators build trust by focusing on their common aims and showing real concern for one another’s goals. They exchange information to understand one another’s underlying interests. Through mutual understanding, they can formulate potential solutions that bundle together important issues in the form of package offers. The pie is expanded through the asymmetry with which each party values each issue. When one party values an issue more than the other, (such as a sibling valuing peel more than pulp and vice versa), the pie is expanded as each party benefits by trading off such asymmetries.

For instance, a pastoral candidate may seek higher terms of call because of childcare expenses. Rather than simply arguing for higher pay, however, when she explains why she needs more money, a search committee member can talk to her sister who runs an acclaimed childcare facility that is able to give a discount to the new pastor. This meets both the pastor’s and the church’s needs. It could only happen, however, because both parties discussed their goals in depth to uncover the underlying issues, rather than focusing on the zero-sum positions of higher vs. lower salary.

Reconciling competing interests: Putting an integrative strategy to work
In recent years, one of the arenas for negotiations within the PC(USA) that has caused the most grief for everyone involved is when churches vote to leave the denomination. Congregations cannot simply decide to leave and disappear from the PC(USA). Denominational polity requires a congregation to be dismissed by the presbytery, and the terms of this dismissal are often contested. Typical discussions focus on the congregation’s property, which belongs to the denomination based on the trust clause in the Book of Order.

Although this clause means the presbytery can demand the full value of the property, it’s much more common for the presbytery to request a financial commitment somewhere between zero and the property’s full value. The congregation sometimes agrees to the amount determined by the presbytery. Sometimes (and usually painfully for all parties), the presbytery and the congregation reach an impasse, and one or the other files suit.

For our purposes, however, let’s assume a congregation agrees with presbytery that a payment is needed, yet disagrees about the amount. The two parties now have the opportunity to choose between a distributive or an integrative approach.

A distributive approach focuses only on the money. Neither party earnestly attempts to understand the other’s positions. The presbytery wants the church to pay more; the congregation wants to pay the presbytery less. The negotiation is reduced to a one-time, zero-sum transaction between the parties.

In the middle of an already tense environment, frustrations on each side may rise as each party feels misunderstood by the other. Impasse often occurs. Progress is sometimes made if one party tires of the inability to come to a joint decision, or if either or both parties feel their Christian witness to the community is being undermined. Once the negotiated payout has been determined, one party usually feels like a winner and the other a loser.

What if, on the other hand, they used an integrative approach? In prayerfully discussing their positions, they might discover that the presbytery needs the money to fund a vital community ministry, to support church planting efforts for the 1001 New Worshiping Communities, or to rent office space. Perhaps church volunteers could offset the costs of the vital community ministry, provide a grant for the 1001 program, or donate office space. Meeting these needs may lead the presbytery to lower their request for payment.

Alternatively, the presbytery might discover the church needs resources to renovate their sanctuary, sustain their missions outreach to schools and orphanages, or support youth ministry. Maybe an architect from the presbytery can do pro bono renovation work, perhaps the presbytery and the church learn they support the same mission endeavours in Africa, or maybe a youth ministries grant can be offered to the church. By approaching the negotiation with an integrative strategy, the church may be able to pay more for the property than they had planned.

In the preceding scenario, value was created for both parties as they engaged in prayerful mutual discussion to understand one another’s underlying motivations and goals.

Living out faith through integrative negotiations
An integrative approach to these negotiations requires that the presbytery and departing congregation have a series of prayerful conversations. These exchanges must be honest, transparent, mutually respectful and trusting of each other and their motivations. These conditions build goodwill and result in a dismissal that is much less painful for both parties than it might otherwise be.

Moreover, mutually exploring the values, goals and interests behind their financial positions means that neither party can simply use the negotiations to punish the other by letting their anger lead them to an unrealistically low offer or high demand. A transparent and spiritually-engaged conversation about each party’s motivations will rule out “I want to get back at you for the difficulties you’ve caused in the past” as a stated value.

Instead, a prayerful conversation about values will lead both parties back to ministry. What ministries would they use the money for? Is there another way to meet that ministry’s needs? A joint emphasis on ministry reminds both the congregation and the presbytery that they both desire to serve Christ in the world, despite differing opinions about the best way to do that. The result is a more fruitful focus on what both parties have in common even if as they each choose to part ways, rather than a more divisive focus on differences as they each aim to maximize their own outcomes at the other’s expense.

Finally, an integrative negotiation approach reminds the community at large that Christians can live out our faith even when we disagree. Unlike polarized human institutions that are often paralyzed by conflicting interests, Christians follow the Prince of Peace who has already reconciled us to both God and one other.

Gerard Beenen
Gerard Beenen
Chip Hardwick
Chip Hardwick

GERARD BEENEN is a teaching elder in the PC(USA) and a management professor at California State University in Fullerton.

CHIP HARDWICK is the director of theology, formation and evangelism for the PC(USA).

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