Finding an Agreement Frame – Jan Prince

"Have you ever felt like you wanted to go, but you felt like you wanted to stay?"  – song lyric, Jimmy Durante.

Finding an Agreement Frame, Jan Prince

We all experience conflict.  It comes in many flavors.  It may be, like Jimmy's example, within ourselves.

You've experienced it with other people, even dear friends.

Finding a starting point to agreement between two parties, or parts of yourself, makes a huge difference. When you enlist the sincere interest of the others, you may even find better solutions than you had though possible.

In this video, you'll see a very dramatic demonstration.  The demo subjects both playfully, yet honestly, take-on their roles to the fullest.  You'll experience that knowing how to establish that starting point will make a huge difference in your world.

This is a little advanced, so you may want to just watch it a couple of times.  If you'd like to share it with a friend, I've included the exercise instructions below.

Enjoy,

Tom Dotz

From "The Living Encyclopedia of NLP" Section 6 with Jan Prince:

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And here are the exercise instructions!

Finding An Agreement Frame
(Using Meta-Outcomes and the Conditional Close)
Task:  Utilizing Meta-Outcomes, get a Conditional Close that is acceptable to two people in
conflict.

Step 1: Specify a context in which you are negotiating between B and C.

Step 2: Ask for the desired outcome and backtrack for B, then for C. “What is it that you
want?” (A & D calibrate to the non-verbal behavior that accompanies congruent
agreement for B & C.)

Step 3: Identify the Meta-Outcome and backtrack for B, then for C. “What will that do for
you?” Keep going for more general Meta-Outcomes until you get something from B that
you observe C agreeing to, and vice-versa.

Step 4: Calibration:  A takes D aside and demonstrates behaviorally, to D’s satisfaction, what B
and C will look like in agreement.

Step 5: Find an agreement Frame. Find a common outcome such that when you restate it, both
B and C agree: “So what you both want is…” Or find a linked outcome that B and C can
congruently agree to:  “So if B got X, and C was satisfied that Y would occur, you
would both agree to that.” Test for previous calibration. D verifies that B and C
demonstrate non-verbal agreement.

Useful Guidelines:

o    It’s important to take charge of the interaction, and interrupt whenever it is going nowhere useful. Put your body between them, turn their chairs to face away from each other, etc.

o    Unless you are interrupting, stand so that you can observe both B and C, in order to see how they respond to each other. When B is talking, watch to see how C responds; when C is talking, watch to see how B responds.

o    Useful standard lines when people are behaving in not useful ways:  “You don’t have to show me how you don’t get what you want,” or “You already know how to do this on your own, you don’t need my help to fight. Would you like some new ways of interacting?”

o    If the participants keep arguing and/or you think there may be “hidden agendas,” you can question the larger frame:  that these two people have agreed to negotiate their differences.  “Perhaps your differences are too great. Perhaps you should see a lawyer, split the sheets, sell the house, and work out alimony, etc….”

o    Attributing positive Meta-Outcomes to behavior (discussed previously in Meaning Reframing) can greatly help the negotiation process. This example comes from Virgina Satir: “Do you yell at the mailman…”, etc. “So you only yell at people you love; your yelling is really your way of showing love.”