Going in the opposite direction
Sometimes, the simplest way of handling deadlock in negotiations - or in our relationship with others - is to do exactly the opposite of what we have been doing thus far to allow us to take advantage of the innate rhythm of the situation.
The psychiatrist, Milton Erickson, was brought up on a farm. One day, the teenage Milton was watching his father unsuccessfully trying to pull a donkey towards a barn by pulling on a rope around its neck. After observing this unrewarded exercise for a few minutes, he turned to his father and suggested that there was a more effective way of handling this particular exercise.
His father indicated that there was no point in hitting the donkey – or in trying to entice the animal with carrots. These had been unsuccessful ploys in the past.
Milton persevered – there was a better way, he insisted.
In the end his increasingly frustrated father asked him to demonstrate his new approach – expecting his son to fail to achieve the required outcome.
Milton simply pulled the tail of the donkey away from the barn. The more he tried to pull the animal away, the more the donkey insisted on going towards the barn.
Apart from the fact that, sometimes doing things in the opposite way – almost by definition - breaks up a log-jam, Milton Erickson was simply taking advantage of the stubbornness of donkeys so that his own requirements could be met (rather than coming up against that stubbornness full frontally – and becoming defeated).
