WHY I DON’T ENCOURAGE COMPROMISING

For years I have challenged people in classes and training programs I have conducted with this example: Assume there are two sisters who are arguing over one orange. How would you resolve the conflict?

I would say 90% of people respond immediately without much thought with the answer “cut it and give each half.”

Many teachers and trainers use this example without giving due credit to its originator, which itself is part of the story.

Mary Parker Follett was born in 1868 to a Quaker family in Quincy, Massachusetts. She studied at Society for the Collegiate Instruction of Women (later known as Radcliffe) graduating summa cum laude. She applied to Harvard but was denied entrance because she was a woman. She began her career as a social worker in the Roxbury neighborhood of Boston where she began to develop her idea of noncoercive power-sharing or “power with” rather than “power over.”

Follett was the first woman ever invited to address the London School of Economics and advised President Theodore Roosevelt on managing not-for-profit voluntary organizations. With her passing in 1933, her ideas were largely ignored until a new generation of male organizational development management consultants began to echo her ideas. Warren Bennis said of her, “Just about everything written today about leadership and organizations comes from Mary Parker Follett’s writing and lectures.”

So how would Mary Parker Follett help the sisters resolve their conflict over the orange? Simple. Ask each why they want it. One sister says, “I’m baking a cake and need the rind.” The others says, “I want the pulp for the juice.” Her solution? Peel the orange, give one the peel, one the pulp. Each got 100% of what they needed. Compromise would only give each only 50% of what they needed. And equally important her dispute resolution reinforced the sisters’ relationship. Had they compromised, each might have resented the other.

So what is the take-away that we can all use? Never assume that what a person demands (the whole orange) is what they need to solve their problem (the pulp for its juice). And finding these collaborative solutions strengthens the parties’ relationship.

As I tell people in my classes and seminars, “It’s not always possible or easy, but it’s well worth the effort.” Remember the orange. And remember to give credit to Mary Parker Follett. To the best of my research and knowledge, she deserves the credit.