With the Covid under control and the students back on the campus, the Director of an academic institution was taking a vote in the faculty council meeting to find out how many faculty members would like to take classes online and how many offline. Everybody raised hand to vote for offline mode except one. When the concerned faculty was asked by the Director as to why he did not want to take classes offline, the faculty member replied, “I don’t have trousers.” A huge laughter erupted in the room. Guess what happened after that. A very heavy, dry and dull environment suddenly became fresh and lively.

Jennifer Aaker and Naomi Bagdonas observed, “Research shows that leaders with any sense of humour are seen as 27% more motivating and admired than those who don’t joke around. Their employees are 15% more engaged, and their teams are more than twice as likely to solve a creativity challenge — all of which can translate into improved performance.

Humour works as a social lubricant to build and sustain harmonious relationships. It is much better way to raise sensitive issues. It is accepted as a socially appropriate means to express aggressive feelings or negative emotions. It helps in giving a very subtle message.

A professor in a college wanted to get an AC installed in his office because it was difficult to work during summers. He requested the principal for the same by arguing that it will help him write more research papers during summers. The principal quipped, “But Professor tell me one thing – how many research papers you write in winters?” Mary Hirsch said, “Humour is a rubber sword – it allows you to make a point without drawing blood.”

Humour relieves stress and diffuses tension. Humour has an important role in peoples’ lives by helping them to live better and to deal with day-to-day adversities. The literature on humour provides ample evidence that humour reduces stress. Michael Kerr, president of Humour at Work explains, “Humour offers a cognitive shift in how you view your stressors; an emotional response; and a physical response that relaxes you when you laugh.”

Humour just feels good. Many of us may relate to high-anxiety situations where a joke feels like a much-needed outlet. Consider a serious problem at the workplace being reported by a person to his friend in this way, “I always go the extra mile at work, but my boss always finds me and brings me back.”

Humour helps in building relationship. We want to be around people who make us smile, laugh, and overall raise our spirits. Studies show that employees who have three close friends at work are 96% more likely to be “extremely satisfied” with their lives. Humour allows both employees and managers to come together. Shared laughter accelerates a feeling of closeness and trust. It puts others at ease. Humour is a way to break through the hierarchy. Humour is a great icebreaker and removes the walls that exist between leaders and followers. When an employee asks his manager do you have a minute and the manager says, no, I have 60 seconds, you are likely to be more comfortable reaching out to such a manager.

Humour is not always good. Martin classified humour into four categories – affiliative, self-enhancing, aggressive, and self-defeating. Of these affiliative and self-enhancing styles are considered to be positive while aggressive and self-defeating as negative. Affiliative humour is used to enhance one’s relationships with others in a way that is relatively benign and self-accepting. Individuals who use affiliative humour tend to attract others, bring them together, and in doing so, reduce interpersonal and intra-group tension. Self-enhancing humour is used to enhance the self in a way that is tolerant and non-detrimental to others. Users of aggressive humour typically have little regard for the feelings of the targets of their humour; they are more concerned with getting a laugh and feeling superior. Self-defeating humour involves excessively disparaging humour or attempts to ingratiate oneself or gain the approval of others by doing or saying funny things at one’s own expense. One should make sure that you choose humour appropriately.

Some of the most respected corporations have created fun workplace environments. Zappos, Warby Parker, Southwest Airlines, Chevron, Google have made their mark for creating the culture of fun. These companies have used humour and a positive fun culture to help brand their business, attract and retain employees and to attract customers. In some of these companies a sense of humour is a way to judge the suitability of a candidate for a job. A candidate was asked a question during his interview, “What one thing one should never do at work?” The candidate replied, “Work.” A follow up question, “What one thing a candidate should always do at work?” The answer, “Keep exploring other options.” I am told that the candidate got the job.

Let us pay some attention to Oscar Wild who said, “It is a curious fact that people are never so trivial as when they take themselves seriously.” “People who take themselves overly seriously are often, ironically, taken less seriously by the people around them,” said Michael Karr.

The author, Kamal K Jain, is Professor – Organisational Behaviour and Human Resource Management at IIM Raipur. First published in ET HR World dated 7th October

Time 9:40 pm. Day: Wednesday. Date: August 3, 2016. Henceforth any discussion on negotiation will be incomplete without mentioning the way the BJP garnered support for getting the GST bill passed in the upper house.

A story on negotiation will remain untold unless it features the Prime Minister, Mr Narendra Modi and the Finance Minister, Mr Arun Jaitley.

Orchestrating the dance of offers and counter offers will be best understood through the lens of GST. The fundamental principles of negotiation were in full play and decoding the moves of parties during this period has its merit and needs our attention.

Perseverance

The negotiation dance often tests one’s patience and requires persistence and perseverance. The so-called “three P’s (perseverance, patience and persistence)” are critical for maintaining the dance.

All good negotiators have an abundance of perseverance.  When their great idea or viewpoint is rejected they do not harden their stand.  Their approach is simple—when your proposal is rejected, ridiculed or laughed at; shape it in another way and return it to the table.

Zhou Enlai, a famous Chinese diplomat serving under Chairman Mao, once said, “If the other side resists my offer of a pizza cut in six pieces, I offer it later cut in eight.”

The GST bill which was hanging for more than a decade, because it required support from some two dozen States, many of them ruled by opposition parties; and also from more than two dozen political parties, big and small included; could not have seen the light of day if the champion for the bill, Mr Jaitley, had shown any signs of fatigue.

The fact that he had numerous meetings with several political parties was no less than a marathon. Include in this list, meetings with your arch rivals such as Anand Sharma, P A Chidambaram, Mamata Banerjee, Nitish Kumar, Chandrababu Naidu and so on, and the kind of effort that is required to build the momentum for consensus, will become obvious.

Find out ‘why’

Harvard professor, James K. Sebenius, suggests that knowing why the other party says no to a deal is important to find a solution to it. When Mr Jaitley investigated the reason some of the States were opposing the bill inspite of the fact that the Centre proposed to fully compensate the loss of revenue to States for next five years, it was discovered that it was lack of trust and the wording in the bill ‘Centre may compensate’ left scope for doubt.

The phrase was subsequently changed to ‘Centre will compensate’ and agreement became easy.

Provide face saving

Many times parties in negotiation take a stand which they later on realise was not the right stand. They may be interested to reverse their stand but the ego comes in the way. In order to satisfy the ego the party looks for a face saving. Simply put, face saving means to maintain one’s dignity.

Conversely, to lose face would mean feeling humiliated, or losing one’s reputation. It turns out that face-saving is a big issue in every negotiation.

If we try to decode the reasons the Congress party opposed a bill that was originally mooted by them in 2009 to replace all indirect taxes; it was probably to teach a lesson to the now ruling party which had then opposed such a bill.

The intention was therefore more political in nature than being grounded in reality. Having realized that the party had been isolated, it was left with no other option but to support the bill.

The problem was on what grounds should it support the bill? Only face saving available to them was to claim that it was the Congress who first introduced the bill and that the BJP does not deserve the credit for the same.

The statement that “A big decision such as the GST cannot be taken by deliberately keeping people in the dark” by Mr Anand Sharma, deputy leader of congress in Rajya Sabha, is an indication that it wanted to get the credit for being the first party to think of such kind of reforms.

He further said:

It is the right of the people of the country to know what the history of the case is.

At that time (10 years ago) there were protests. Everyone knows that those protests were purely political… Gujarat had protested a lot.

Narendra Modi himself protested against it. At that time it was said that the GST is not in favour of India, it will weaken the country.

We always wanted the GST to be implemented. So to say we oppose it is unfair.

We’re glad you have finally come around to believe in GST.

Build momentum sequentially

Negotiators seek to build momentum by eliciting support from those parties that are easy to take on board. In multi party negotiation the party that is able to form a coalition stands to gain.

This dramatically reduces the power of other major player. Thus in order to take the other major player head on, the expert negotiator builds momentum sequentially by bringing other smaller players to their fold one by one.

Considering the resistance from the biggest party in opposition, the Congress; Mr Jaitley completely isolated the said party by building a coalition among the nation’s 29 State Governments.

Once the States gave their nod, the Congress found itself on the backfoot as it did not want to be seen as the only one opposing a key reform measure that essentially was the Congress’s own baby once.” Congress’s growing isolation proved decisive in making a compromise possible.

Parties to Negotiation

Every negotiation situation demands that we choose negotiators considering the demand of the situation. The change of minister for the parliamentary affairs may also be seen as a contributory factor in seeking support from other major political parties.

Former parliamentary affairs minister, Mr Venkaiah Naidu, was seen as bit too combative. A less combative person, Mr Anant Kumar, fitted in this role.

Win-win for all

A good outcome in negotiation is the one where all the parties involved in the dispute see a victory for them. In the final analysis, in the case of GST, each party wanted to be seen as a winner. BJP took pride in saying that the passing of the GST bill is the best example of cooperative federalism.

Mamata Banerjee wanted to build a pro-industry image at the national level, more so after the ouster of the Nano project. “We have ideological differences with the BJP but we will always support on issues that are beneficial to the people,” she said.

Bihar Chief Minister, Nitish Kumar, offered JD (U)’s support by saying “We have always supported the GST. We supported it during the UPA and support it now. This is in the interest of the country and states. Our party fully supports it.” Congress took pride in saying that it was their baby and that it forced BJP to accept some of its major demands.

This was truly the climax of negotiation and democracy at its best.

The author is Professor of Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management at Indian Institute of Management, Indore. He can be reached at kamal@iimidr.ac.in.

(First published in the Hindu Business Line on September 29, 2016. Image Courtesy: www.youtube.com))