Including the Peanut Gallery poisons negotiations

 

“If your brother sins [against you], go and tell him his fault between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have won over your brother. If he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, so that ‘every fact may be established on the testimony of two or three witnesses.’"    Matthew 18:15,16

 

I consider this high-level negotiation advice.

The video below shows fairly typical "modern" negotiation tactics

 

 Three minute run-time

 

To summarize for those who don't want to waste three minutes of their lives:

She went on a date with a man. It was an awesome date and he is a wonderful man...and she is going to dump him in six more hours if he doesn't text back and simp about how awesome she is. That is, she expects him to read her mind because she never told him that was important to her.

 

So rather than tell HIM what she needs (first line of the Scripture quoted), she goes on Tic-Tox or X or YouTube and preens about what a special-and-refined princess she is and what a clod the "wonderful man" is.

 

It is binary

You can either have a successful and profitable negotiation or stroke your ego and self-aggrandize.

 

It is fine to want both. But which is really important? If a successful and profitable conclusion is the most important thing, why would you handicap yourself by poisoning the negotiations? 

 

The budget debates illustrates this because the politicians are grandstanding for the voters back home rather than hammer out an effective budget.