“Very often, common ground is about help. It’s found by being vulnerable and saying what you’re having issues with. That can actually instigate quite a lot of good feeling between two parties,” says Annabel Shorter, a senior consultant at negotiation consultancy Scotwork.

But often, select parties involved in a negotiation are unwilling to take that vital step of being candid about their needs. Unsurprisingly, when one party believes its needs aren’t being met, communication deteriorates quickly from there. 

Ironically, the primary reason that a negotiating party might be afraid to share their needs is out of worry they won’t be met. Freddy Burgess, associate partner at consultancy The Gap Partnership, says that often people suffer from a “fear it will be held against them if they share too much, and fear that they’ll give away that negotiation.”

“If that’s true, then you haven’t done the work you needed to build trust, respect, and partnership before you get to the table,” Burgess says.

For Burgess, one of those initial acts of building trust comes during what he describes as defining the “guiding principles” of a negotiation—where two parties determine what their objectives for the partnership are.

If that stage is skipped, it’s easy for either side to feel as though their counterpart is trying to extract a win over them (which, in some cases, they might be), and then talks are liable to devolve into a confrontation rather than a collaboration.

“Often we might ask a [client], ‘Who is your adversary in the negotiation of the partnership?’ And, often, the answer is, ‘The person I’m negotiating with.’ But, if you’re working in a collaborative space, the real adversary is the problem that’s on the table,” Burgess says.

Of course, it can be easy for either side to lose sight of the fact that they’re in a partnership when, Shorter says, negotiations are inherently about conflict. Rather than shy away from that fact, Shorter advises clients to recognize that when their business partner raises an issue, they’re likely going to feel affronted by it. Recognizing that early helps prevent the receiving party from overreacting. On the flip side, Shorter also has advice for negotiators issuing proposals, rather than receiving them.

“A key question to ask yourself is, ‘What would I think if this landed on my desk?'” Shorter says, urging that negotiations, like all relationships, need to be handled with empathy. “If the answer is, ‘I’d be outraged,’ there’s a 99% chance that your partner is going to be thinking exactly the same.”

If you’ve managed to negotiate your way through the fraught stages of establishing a relationship and concluding a negotiation on the table, the next step to maintaining that trust is the most important, yet easily overlooked.

“It’s scary how little of a corporate negotiation might actually get implemented afterwards,” Burgess says. During negotiations, many companies simply neglect to establish who will be responsible for taking action on which tasks, how their progress will be tracked and measured, and how often their partners will be updated on progress. Without that actual work, the trust and goodwill built during the early stages of a partnership erode quickly. 

“Once you get to the point where you have agreed and you’ve walked out of the room, that’s when the work really starts,” Burgess says. 

Eamon Barrett
eamon.barrett@fortune.com

IN OTHER NEWS

Find my friends
While older generations might be wary of tech companies tracking their every move and activity, Gen Z is apparently embracing the inevitability of it and signing up for apps with the express purpose of tracking one another. Apps like Life360, which allows people to track the real-time whereabouts of others, and Snap’s map feature are some ways Gen Z is keeping tabs on friends. The twist is that they’re doing it in order to feel more secure. 

FTX 2.0
Owners of the disgraced FTX estate are attempting to relaunch the bankrupt crypto exchange as FTX 2.0, reaching out to potential bidders who might like to revive the company platform. However, reports suggest any reboot would come along with a rebrand. It’s unclear what property any successful bidder could acquire from FTX, especially while bankruptcy proceedings are ongoing. 

The private business of war
The author of a new Elon Musk biography has had to correct his telling of a significant event involving Musk and Ukraine, during which a Ukrainian drone strike on Russian forces in Crimea failed due to a lack of Starlink coverage. Walter Isaacson’s book originally claimed Musk instructed workers to switch off Starlink coverage over the area to thwart a Ukrainian strike and avoid retaliation from Russia. The correction states Starlink coverage was always absent over Crimea, but Ukrainians didn’t know this. Either way, the incident reveals the tremendous influence private companies have on the outcomes of war. 

Juventus stays
Exor, the powerful Agnelli family’s firm with major stakes in Ferrari and Stellantis, squashed rumors that it’s ready to part ways with its century-long love affair with top-tier Italian soccer club Juventus. Local media, Il Giornale, reported the Italian family would offload the cash-strapped soccer team on Monday, but Exor has denied the report, calling it "groundless."

TRUST EXERCISE

“Giving all our employees the opportunity to realize their potential by empowering them in roles that fit their talent and passion is critical to both their success and the company’s. It also benefits everyone else.” 

So said Charles G. Koch, chairman and co-CEO of Koch Industries, in his 2015 book Good Profit. The book came years before what many “anti-woke” campaigners would consider the birth of an unduly moral corporate ethos or the rise of ESG investment. But the sentiment, from the head of one of the world’s largest private conglomerates, aligns neatly with the shift towards “stakeholder capitalism,” as Fortune’s Peter Vanham explores here.