“You never build a relationship between your organization and a company. . . You build it between individuals.” John Browne, Chief Executive Officer British Petroleum

It was July 2000—the Camp David Summit. In the news footage, we saw President Clinton standing at the doorway, grinning broadly, his arms spread out in a welcoming gesture as he graciously invites his two esteemed guests to enter the room. But instead of entering, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian Chairman Yasir Arafat cavort humorously before the cameras. No, you go first, gestures one. No, I insist, YOU go first gestures the other. Both are smiling jovially and obviously enjoying each other’s company.
Or so it appeared.
In fact, however, that public display was a far cry from what went on in private. Away from the reporters and cameras, discourse between Barak and Arafat at the Camp David Summit was discourteous, emotionally charged, and stressful. According to Gilead Sher, one of Israel’s chief negotiators, Barak steadfastly avoided Arafat and refused to recognize him when their paths crossed.
When Barak first entered the dining hall, for example, Arafat approached him and extended his hand. But instead of shaking the hand of the Palestinian leader, Barak stood in place, his hand at his side. The two men sat on either side of Secretary of State Madeline Albright and did not speak once during the entire evening.
Barak’s cold and distant attitude dominated the fifteen grueling days of the summit, even though several members of both the Israeli and the American delegations urged him to warm up to Arafat and deal with him directly and personally. Senior Israeli negotiator, Shlomo Ben-Ami, told Barak that honor was very important to the Palestinian leader and Barak’s behavior was making Arafat feel Barak disrespected him.
Secretary of State Madeleine Albright suggested Barak spend some informal time with Arafat, but Barak told her that eating baklava together would not change things.
Barak’s behavior was a direct contrast to the negotiation rules of an earlier Israeli Prime Minister. “Don’t ridicule your opponent, especially not in public,” says Shimon Peres. “Don’t challenge him in the face of his subordinates. When he is with his subordinates, give him respect.” You should confront issues honestly, Peres says, but “in a meeting before only four eyes.”
In Israel, two weeks after the Camp David Summit, Yossi Beilin, one of the Israeli architects of the 1993 Oslo Accord, met with two Palestinian negotiators who had also been at the Summit. They told him Barak’s behavior demonstrated he placed little value on personal relationships.
Barak, a former Israeli military chief of staff and a man known for his sharp intellect and self-reliance, is the most decorated soldier in Israel’s history and a confident debater. But, as he proved at Camp David, he is an extremely inexperienced diplomatic negotiator. For as any Master Negotiator will tell you: Building a relationship with those on the other side is crucial to the success of a negotiation.

The Relationship Investment
Barak is a tragic symbol of just how important relationship-building is in negotiation. Palestinian chief negotiator Sa’eb Erakat describes him as “a character from a chapter of a Greek tragedy,” because the Israeli Prime Minister was more willing to negotiate with the Palestinians than any other Israeli head of state and more willing to make concessions for the cause of peace. As far as Barak was concerned it was the substance of the negotiation that was the key, and he had developed a sweeping grand strategy designed to bring an end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, only to be stymied by the slow pace of negotiations and what he viewed as Arafat’s inflexibility on the issues.
He could not understand that talking to Arafat and interacting with the man personally was every bit as important to success as the concessions he was willing to make.
Personal interaction is especially important when “the other side” is an Arab leader for whom socializing, respect, honor, and flattery are considered essential foreplay. Former U.S. Ambassador to Egypt, Herman Eilts says the hours he spent in informal conversation with his counterparts helped him cultivate new contacts and acquire invaluable information. This personal approach to Egyptian leaders was the hallmark of the Kissinger period of Middle East diplomacy, and was carried on by President Jimmy Carter, Secretary of State George Schultz, President George H.W. Bush, and President Bill Clinton.
In any negotiation, issues divide, but common human traits tend to unite. The relationships between the parties are the “sine qua non,” former Middle East Coordinator, Ambassador Dennis Ross says. “[Relationships are] more important than anything else. People will reveal things to you because of the relationship you have with them.” He adds that people on the other side will help you to negotiate by pointing out that certain calculations that you have made for tradeoffs are, in fact, not the right calculations.

Find Common Ground—No Matter How Insignificant
During the 1991 Madrid Conference between Israel and the Arab countries, the Arab negotiators didn’t want direct contact with their Israeli counterparts, refusing even to go into a conference room and negotiate with the Israeli delegates face-to-face.
During breaks, however, coffee was served in a common area. “One day,” former Israeli Ambassador to the United States Zalman Shoval remembers, “The coffee cart came around and I said to one of the Jordanian delegates, ‘Is this not a terrible coffee?’ And he answered, ‘I agree. It is a terrible coffee.’”
That seemingly minor breakthrough was a moment that would be hailed later as “The Coffee Diplomacy,” because once the ice was broken, Ambassador Shoval and his Jordanian counterpart began talking about other things as well, as did their colleagues, and eventually the Arabs and the Israelis did sit down together in the same conference room.
The bad coffee commiseration certainly did not restore decades of deeply rooted distrust on both sides. But the discovery of that minuscule mutual similarity—a higher coffee standard—was an important tiny step on the long march toward peace, marking the beginning of a personal relationship between an Israeli and a Jordanian. Three years later their two countries signed a peace accord.
Finding the personal characteristics you share with your negotiating counterpart and playing to them might very well help overcome even the most deeply entrenched political, financial, or ideological differences.
Former Secretary of State James Baker has seen the development of a relationship between negotiators bring even the most contentious issues to a successful resolution. He thinks that’s because friendships enable negotiators to abandon their official positions and reveal the thoughts and assumptions underlying those positions. That, in turn, is likely to lead to a resolution that can benefit both sides. Conversely, Baker says, if a relationship sours, even sides that are not that far apart may have trouble reaching an agreement.
Relationship-building is less prevalent in American culture than it is in other cultures. Experienced American negotiators, however, overcome the cultural bias. Chicago Tribune President and Publisher Scott Smith has played a central role in negotiating the company’s key acquisitions. “If I am the lead negotiator,” he says, “I want to be clear on who the real players on the other side are. Then I invest time in getting to know them and understanding their styles for the purpose of building relationships with them . . . to make the negotiations more productive.”
If you become close to the other side, will it hinder your ability to negotiate assertively? Will it make you “softer” and thus more likely to compromise your objectives by conceding on substantive matters?
Experienced negotiators answer “no.” Relationships enhance bargaining transparency by enabling you to better understand where the other side is coming from, what they really want, what they may be willing to settle for, and where there may be a comfortable middle ground, but they should not interfere with the negotiating objectives. Take the relationship between Jimmy Carter and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, for example. Carter writes in his memoirs that the two men developed a natural friendship the first time they met, sharing information about each other’s families and childhood experiences and ambitions.
Later, in the Camp David summit, the disagreements that surfaced did not affect the personal relationship that had developed between the two leaders. At the same time, however, the disagreements were not cast aside because the two men had become friends. Observers said Carter had less trouble separating business from friendship than Anwar Sadat did and that he pushed hard to secure an accord.

Motivations for Relationship-Building
Relationships between negotiators are not ends in themselves. They are primarily instruments that help facilitate the negotiation process and its outcome. Relationships also yield important long-term emotional and social benefits. Many well-known negotiators who interact often find that the personal relationships they have developed over time are a source of mutual enjoyment, provide a means of relaxing from the pressure of intense sessions, and, more often than not, drive them to find mutually beneficial solutions.
However, building a relationship is hard work. It requires good will, major investments in time and energy, and a conviction that the results will add value to the negotiation process. In deciding whether or not to invest in relationship building, skilled negotiators evaluate the potential benefits a relationship might yield, including the following possible benefits.

Enhanced Transparency and Flexibility
Former Secretary of State George Schultz and Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze built a very close relationship over the years. They visited each other’s homes, met each other’s families and spent recreational time together. Schultz even took Shevardnadze and his entourage out yachting on the Potomac River.
Shevardnadze cherished the years he spent negotiating with Schultz. He recalled that the friendship did not keep the two from holding firm to their official positions. What the relationship did, he said, was create trust and understanding so that when one of them said he could not go any further, the other took him at his word.
Negotiators who have built good relationships with each other tend to be more flexible. United Nations Security Council Resolution 242 of November 1967 compelled Israel to return occupied territories to the Arabs in exchange for peace. When the British Ambassador to the U.N., Lord Caradon drafted this resolution, the Soviet representative asked him to postpone the vote by two days. Lord Caradon refused. When the Soviet representative explained that the request was not coming from his government but rather from him personally, Lord Caradon changed his mind and granted the request immediately.
Based on the trusting relationship the two had developed, Lord Caradon was completely confident that there was a good reason for the request and that the Soviet representative’s intentions were honorable. Indeed, two days later the Soviets voted for resolution 242.

Interdependence
Negotiating tends to be an interdependent affair. What brings each side to the bargaining table is the fact that it needs something from the other side.
This is especially true in labor-management relations. Management may like or dislike its union and vise versa, but the two are interdependent. Once they recognize that fact, they tend to build relationships that enable them to work better together. Morton Bahr the President of the Communication Workers of America, says that when he and Edward Whitacre, the chairman and CEO of SBC Communications, Inc., realized it was in each of their best interests to work together rather than against each other, relationship-building became a top priority. A little bit nervous about the possible outcome, Bahr nonetheless invited Whitacre to address a union convention. Bahr was then invited to address the company shareholders.
Accepting each other’s legitimacy made the contract negotiations in 2001 “actually fun,” Bahr says. “The contract was not due to expire until April 2001, but already in November 2000, Mr. Whitacre called me and said: ‘Why don’t we just negotiate the contract early and get in and out? I already know,’ he told me, ‘what is going on in the rest of the telecommunications industry.’ So we met and by January 2001 we had it all done.”
“Even before that [negotiation],” Bahr says, “two or three years ago, Whitacre had a management meeting of 3500 managers of SBC in San Antonio, Texas. And he called me and said: ‘Come down. I want everybody to hear the same message.’ In his opening address he introduced me and told them about the partnership between SBC and the union. It was extraordinary. Many (managers) came to speak with me. If the chairman is committed to the partnership—and you can tell if it is phony or real—then others will follow his lead.”