A key part of good negotiation, or negotiation-like discussions such as those about design of a new product, is identifying the interests of all parties.

I suspect that there’s a very common mistake made, when identifying interests. That is to assume what the other person’s interests are, instead of asking them.

But it gets worse. In my opinion, assumptions are particularly dangerous when they are assumptions about the other person’s motivations or attitudes.  E.g. “He wants all the glory for coming up with the idea”.  There’s several things wrong with assumptions of this type:

• Firstly, they distract attention from the real interests that we should be focussing the discussion on: what business benefits does the other person want to obtain?
• Secondly, they encourage us to fall back into a Unilateral Control mindset.  I find it better if I simply don’t make any assumptions of this type.  Instead of making assumptions about the other person’s motives, I focus on the actual business problem at hand, and seek to learn more about their practical interests in relation to the business problem.

As you talk (and listen) openly about the actual business problem, you’re likely to find that the other person’s motives are not too bad.  No-one comes to work to deliberately do a poor job. On some level, virtually everyone wants a good outcome for the business they work for.  Making negative assumptions about their motives is usually mistaken and almost always a distraction and waste of your time.