Understanding Identity Buttons

Have you ever seen your negotiation counterpart fly off the handle for no apparent reason? Do you ever find yourself getting upset or defensive during a negotiation? Knowing both your and your negotiation counterpart’s identity buttons will help you stay on track and move a negotiation forward.

You’re sitting across the negotiating table from someone, when they suddenly start overreacting—getting emotional, defensive, angry, maybe even aggressive. What happened? You may have just hit what’s known as an identity button.

So now what? Does this landmine mean the end of the negotiation? Not yet. Now is the time for some quick thinking. Can you remember what you said right before your counterpart began overreacting?

You see, all of us think of ourselves as possessing certain qualities that we admire: bravery, compassion, talent in a particular discipline, etc. If anyone challenges these, we may suffer from an identity quake. Suddenly we rush to the defense of our own identity in a way that appears to our negotiation counterpart to be nothing more than an odd overreaction. What’s worse, when we focus too much on a single quality or a narrow set of qualities, we are in danger of defining ourselves in terms of that small set of attributes. The result is that we become more quake-prone, and the identity quakes we do have are likely to be even more derailing.

So what did you say? Did you question their competence, attitude, loyalty, obedience, judgment…, even indirectly? If so, it’s time to acknowledge what has happened and apologize. If you do this immediately and sincerely, your negotiation will most likely be able to continue, either right away or after a short “cool off” period.

On our side of the table, we can avoid sensitive areas in ourselves by defining our personalities and identities more broadly so that, when someone else intentionally or unintentionally hits one of our identity buttons, our foundations will remain unshaken. What does this mean? Well, let’s say we see ourselves as being extremely professional. If, in our mind, this attribute primarily defines who we are, any challenges to our professionalism will quite likely cause us to react emotionally, aggressively, etc. However, if we see our self, in addition to being professional, as also being a combination of many attributes—such as friendliness, understanding, honesty—our reaction to this challenge will be much less severe.

In addition to conceptualizing ourselves based on a broad set of qualities, we should also ensure that each individual quality is defined realistically, with room for some human fallibility. For example, in the event of a mistake or setback, a person who defines herself as a “capable, well informed, hard-working” financial planner is far less likely to suffer from an unsettling identity quake than someone who sees himself as a “perfect, expert, visionary” financial planner. In the face of a challenging negotiation, here, financial planner #1 is more likely to come through with her personality and identity intact.

So, during a negotiation, if you find yourself suddenly being inexplicably torched or breathing fire yourself, step back a moment and immediately review to see whether an identity button might have been pushed. If so, a quick acknowledgement, apology, or personal identity check should help get your negotiation back on track.