Welcome to a scary unpredictable world…..created by you

‘ Prediction’ is another word for ‘assumption’ , ‘expectation’ or ‘guess’. If you don’t predict anything for a negotiation event, you can’t have an ‘unpredictable’ negotation, right? It takes a lot of mental discipline not to give into the ‘prediction habit’. What makes it even harder to resist is that ‘everybody’ else is doing it. Jim Camp comes along and says you should pay attention to the cause-effect nature of emotion – vision – decision because it is scientifcally proven and readily observable by all of us. He even dares to say that you lack a systematic way to discover and build vision in your adversaries, and it will get even worse for you, because assumptions are your only alternative in a negotiation. Welcome to the scary unpredictable world of negotiation, created by you because of your prediction addiction, that either drives you to early compromise or manipulative tactics. Everybody does it, so it must be ok. And there is a whole industry profiting off your fear – you are going to be vulnerable to becoming prey to the legion of expert predictors out there who throw around vague terminology that cannot be operationalized and render you dependent on the props they use to create the illusion that adopting their opinions will make you safe. Terms like relationship – emotional connection – personality – style – wise – win-win – competitive envioronment … the list goes on and on of bait terms that they use to get the hook in your mouth.

Families are not immune to this manipulation, and they are even more vulnerable because they don’t like to refer to their communication as ‘negotiation’ until they are going through a divorce. Who profits from this? Lawyers, for starters, and Dr. Phil and the rest of the relationship/self-help industry.