Friend & Foe: When to Cooperate, When to Compete, and How to Succeed at Both by Adam Galinsky & Maurice Schweitzer

Author:Adam Galinsky & Maurice Schweitzer
Language: eng
Format: mobi, azw3
ISBN: 9780307720214
Publisher: The Crown Publishing Group
Published: 2015-09-28T14:00:00+00:00

Yet Slobodan Milosevic should have paid closer attention as he drank with Richard Holbrooke that night in Dayton, Ohio. In his scotch-induced haze, it did not occur to Slobodan to include amnesty for himself in the agreement. Not long after the deal went into place, Slobodan was extradited to the International Criminal Tribunal at The Hague where he was charged with war crimes. His trial lasted five years, and he died in his prison cell before the court reached a verdict.

From bonding over a few drinks to revealing a weakness, we have shown that making ourselves vulnerable can help us inspire trust. It turns out that the inverse is also true—avoiding vulnerability can shatter trust and weaken relationships.

This is the classic problem of the prenuptial agreement. People fear being financially exposed and vulnerable and seek to protect themselves. But in the process they undermine trust, as we saw with Peter and Elizabeth Petrakis. For Elizabeth, Peter’s refusal to be vulnerable was a thorn that she could never get out of her side—until she ended their marriage.

Deepak Malhotra at Harvard has conducted experiments that echo Elizabeth’s experience, when he found that contracts prevent trust from developing. And he has found out why: People use contracts to facilitate transactions, but when people with a contract behave in a trustworthy way, they don’t get credit for their trustworthy actions. Observers assume that their trustworthy behavior must have been motivated by the contract, that they were merely being compliant, not trustworthy. Contracts in general, and prenuptial agreements in particular, are classic examples of how our attempts to protect ourselves can backfire and destroy the very thing we want—a trusting relationship.

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