The Silver Rule vs The Golden Rule

The Silver Rule of Negotiating is one of the most powerful tools we can use during a negotiation.

You might already know of The Golden Rule: “Do unto others what you would have them do unto you”

It’s an ethical principle common to most major world religions and rooted in the basic human moral of reciprocity.

You should treat other people how you would like them to treat you. In other words, go out into the world and do good. Easy.

The lesser known inversion of The Golden Rule is The Silver Rule, made popular by Nicholas Nassim Taleb.

The Silver Rule states thus: “Do not treat others the way you would not like them to treat you”.

It’s more passive than its counterpart because it only requires that you don’t do bad things to other people.

Negotiations

Since learning of The Silver Rule, I’ve wondered whether it could be applied in negotiations.

I’m often in negotiation scenarios and witness to the back-and-forth of ‘asks’ and ‘answers’ between the people on opposite sides of the table.

As one of the lawyers in the room, I’m often the one making the ‘asks’ or giving the ‘answers’.

That’s really all that a negotiation is.

It’s a conversation between 2 people asking for various things from each other until they feel they’ve gotten enough “Yes’s” out of the conversation, or not.

“Fair is foul, and foul is fair”

I recently listened to a negotiation podcast that reminded me why citing “fairness” to the person on the other side of the table to justify asking for something is a bad idea.

Fairness is actually an inherently personal concept.

Our individual ideas of fairness are so closely informed by our lived experience, backgrounds, ideals of justice and equality and politics.

This means you and I might quite reasonably disagree on what counts as fair or not, and with good reason.

But even though it’s a bad idea to talk about fairness during a negotiation, the reality is that there are 2 potentially competing senses of fairness in the room, weighing heavily on how the parties approach the negotiation.

Unless there is coercion or duress at play, a rational person would only agree to terms they think are fair. After all, you’d never agree to a deal you felt was unfair, would you?

As humans, we value fairness so greatly that we will pursue it at significant and often destructive personal cost. There’s even evidence to suggest this is hard-wired in us as primates.

That’s why when we perceive someone is treating unfairly, we instinctively become defensive and are far less likely to agree to anything else that person asks for, often for no reason other than mere principle or spite.

Like the Capuchin monkey in the video, there’s a good chance you’ll throw the proverbial cucumber back at your negotiating counterpart if they’ve offended your sense of fairness.

Fairness is the angel and the devil on your shoulder when you’re in the thick of a negotiation.

The Silver Rule of Negotiating

“Do not ask others to agree to something that you would not agree to.”

The Silver Rule of Negotiating

This begs the question: Why then, would you ever ask someone to agree to something that even you consider unfair?

If you’re a relatively conflict-averse, reasonable person, you probably wouldn’t. And I’d wager most of us are in that camp.

This is where The Silver Rule comes in.

To recap, The Silver Rule says: “Do not treat others the way you would not like them to treat you”. We might then slightly adjust The Silver Rule to fit in the context of a negotiation:

“Do not ask others to agree to something that you would not agree to.”

Reflecting on past experiences, on each occasion when I’ve been particularly aggrieved by a counterparty’s proposal, it’s because I’ve felt they have violated the Silver Rule of Negotiating.

It isn’t completely obvious at first, but The Silver Rule of Negotiating is implicit in how we subconsciously filter ‘asks’ during negotiations.

There will be other factors we take into account, but if an ask breaks The Silver Rule of Negotiating it’s highly unlikely that it will be met with that coveted ‘Yes’.

Not All That Shines, is Silver

The true value of The Silver Rule of Negotiating isn’t just in using it to keep ourselves and our asks in check.

It’s in recognising when the person we are negotiating with perceives (or might perceive) that we have broken The Silver Rule by asking for something that they consider unfair.

By anticipating when we are likely to break The Silver Rule in their eyes, we have the opportunity to re-frame our ask or adapt our approach in a way that we predict is more likely to get us to ‘Yes’.

Making these predictions correctly is more magic than science because it calls for a deeper understanding of the person you’re negotiating with.

If you happen to know the person well, or have a lot in common with them, making predictions is easier. If you don’t know the person at all, taking the time to know them better, observing behavioural cues and listening for vocal inflections are all things you can do to get a sense of their Silver Rule.

To quote the famous line by Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird: “You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view…until you climb in his skin and walk around in it.”

Appreciating the Silver Rule of Negotiating can help us prevent unnecessary conflict during negotiations even before it starts.

In other words, it can help us get to ‘Yes’ quicker.

And isn’t that what we all want?