It’s one of those cliché sayings uttered by people who know little about negotiations — typically at some desperate point where they are looking for something, anything, on which both sides can be said to agree.
At best, it comes on the heals of painful, protracted discussions that have thus far yielded nothing but exhaustion and positions more entrenched than when talks began. At worst (and, in my experience, more commonly the case), it’s the lie of last resort, claimed by the lazy and/or reckless individual for whom any excuse to escape will do.
The business day is over. There’s a new episode of The Office on tonight. My spouse’ll be mad at me if I’m late coming home with dinner, which I still have to pick-up from carry-out on the way home.
From my perspective, it’s another one of those threshold phrases that tells me, when I hear it, that the person who’s said it should be relieved of all responsibility associated with the problem they were trusted to solve before blathering out such a pathetic whine.
Negotiations break down, of course. It’s also completely appropriate to take a breather from apparently stalled mediations. And it will often be the case that putting a good night’s sleep between the final furlong of a 12-hour marathon session that’s coming up on dusk will deliver faster, more satisfying results tomorrow morning than if “we just pressed on another couple of hours while we’re all here right now.”
One of the most dangerous places you’ll here this naïve thinking spread about is in lectures, er, I mean, counsel given to divorcing parents. “If you’ll just keep focused on what’s best for your children, …”
As if that’s anything proximal to obvious.
Two different parents can and will look at the child they have in common, a child in whom they are both deeply invested, both have made diligent efforts to know and understand, and be largely correct in what they see. But because their values are different, their interpretations of what they see are at odds. It’s the difference between raw data and intelligence.
An example from my own case book has to do with a mom and dad who were in the process of divorce, with a son who was rapidly approaching his 18th birthday. That son was a Boy Scout, two Merit Badges away from making his Eagle. (For those of you unfamiliar with the program, that’s incredibly close, do-able, and the end of a path he’d unquestionably worked very hard in getting there.) Two more details: Dad had earned Eagle himself when he was growing up, and Mom had been heavily involved with their son for the past several years of Dad’s travels for business.
During the parents’ separation en route to divorce, however, Dad was not encouraging of Son’s completing date-sensitive work with his Troop on days and evenings that fell during Dad’s parenting time. Mom and her lawyer and the family mediator were flabbergasted, having all-but skipped over any thought about Dad’s time vis-à-vis Scout Troop schedules, because, you know, it was “obvious” that both parents wanted the same thing.
In this case, to encourage and support their son’s path to Eagle. And yet, Dad almost seemed to be actively undermining it.
Here’s the question that room full of experts failed to ask in their mad rush to claim, sans detail, that this divorce mediation, “like all others,” was gonna go a lot easier if the parents would simply open their eyes to see that they wanted the same thing for their son:
Why had Dad become an Eagle Scout?
As my readers here know, I am both the father of a Boy Scout (currently Star rank, which is just two away from Eagle), and the senior adult volunteer leader for the local District of which his Troop is a part. That would have made me neither more nor less inclined to ask the question, nor more nor less inclined to accept Dad’s answer.
In this case, the father had come from an extremely challenging dynamic in his family of origin. Among other things, his own father was physically abusive and an alcoholic. As an adult, then, the dad we’re discussing in this divorce case recalled Scouting as not only his salvation and escape from that — his time away on Troop outings as the only bit of “normal” available to him in childhood — but a reflection on a program he saw as designed to flank parental shortcomings.
Again, as someone deeply invested in the Boy Scouts of America, I could argue that that’s far from all that the program represents or can be. On the other hand, it’s unquestionably a part of the value it can deliver to young men and families who need it. If that’s as far as it goes, I’m glad they’ve found us and given us this chance to serve.
Examples abound for instances where simply wanting the same outcome and even aiming for the same goal is far from sufficient. Even when, contrary to the case above, assumptions about the coincidence between parties are, in fact, spot-on.
There’s no such thing as “we agree to disagree” in a healthy relationship, partnership, or interdependent business deal. And if you don’t agree, say so.
The worst thing you can do is guess, or accept someone else’s guess, that some actual or hope for progress exists where there is none.
[...] Earlier this year, I wrote in another context about this almost holy grail of divorce mediation tactics too frequently imposed upon spouses. “Everyone’s gotta give a little,” goes the bromide. Sold on the unsubstantiated assumption that “we all want the same thing.” [...]