There are a few questions that I think virtually every young lawyer, talent representative, and executive wonders about at some point early in their career, but almost never asks aloud:
What does being “good” at negotiation look like?
How do I get better at negotiating?
Am I a good negotiator?
(And how can I even know for sure?)
If you’re reading this now, there’s a good chance that — whether or not you’re a lawyer, or even think of yourself specifically as a dealmaker — negotiation is a pretty significant part of your job. But I’d guess that, even among this self-selected group, if you were asked to answer that first question, it would be hard to come up with something more specific than Justice Potter Stewart’s famous test for what constitutes constitutionally unprotected hard core pornography: “I know it when I see it.”
Even well into my own career as a professional negotiator, I probably couldn’t have done much better than that. It was only when I started managing and training more junior negotiators — having them listen in on some of my phone calls, and then debriefing with them afterward about what they had heard — that I began to think systematically about what I had always done instinctively. And as I had more and more of these post-call debriefs, I started noticing a few phrases recurring in my commentary about the negotiations my colleagues had observed.
Negotiate, don’t haggle.
Every negotiation is three negotiations.
Pay people in the currency that’s most valuable to them and least valuable to you.
When I (finally) began writing the second edition of my book in December 2023, the first section that I wrote — the topic that ended a year spent “preparing to start” or whatever other euphemism I was using for “blowing past deadline after deadline while not actually writing” — was my brand new chapter about negotiation. Two days later, I emailed what I described as the “admittedly extremely self-indulgent*** first draft” to a handful of friends who had offered to serve as draft readers, with a promise to “circle back with a future version that reflects plenty of extra effort in editing,” and the following footnote:1
*** (In my best Stefon voice) This draft has everything: (in order of appearance) a lengthy footnoted digression about Shaquille O'Neal and Kobe Bryant, a Passover seder reference, the use of the first and second persons, a slightly profane [Name of Friend/Email Recipient] quote, a discussion of academic frameworks for negotiation, an extended hypothetical about an orange, Henry Kissinger, a footnoted joke about "current working professionals who grew up enjoying Entourage a little too much," an intentional undisclosed partial plagiarism from one of my "anonymous business affairs exec" pieces (you all know), a folksy [Name of Second Friend/Email Recipient] quote, an implicit admission to having essentially scripted a negotiation on at least one occasion, an Oscar Wilde quote, an acknowledgment that readers may be rolling their eyes, an LCD Soundsystem reference, a callback to that slightly profane [First Friend/Email Recipient] quote, and a closing footnote functionally acknowledging that the boldly aspirational and idealistic tone of the whole chapter -- truly me at my most earnest as well as my most self-indulgent -- is a sincere but still strategic counternote to my decidedly unidealistic upcoming assessment about the years ahead for the business. (Free first Lexapro prescription with every copy.)
I did put plenty of effort into editing that draft before publication.2 But I guess I didn’t really end up killing any of those darlings.
I led with the chapter on negotiation because, as I wrote in that email to my early draft readers, it was “the one major addition I knew I wanted for this second edition (and which was most often requested by students and other readers I heard from)” — but it was also, I quickly realized, the thing I was most personally excited to start writing about.
By that time, I had learned to talk to my team at work about negotiation in vaguely folksy aphorisms — things I’d call “sayings” if I thought anyone else said them.3 The point was to distill my own beliefs and practices into simple, memorable, and actionable advice. But in the process, I came to realize that, over 15 years of doing this for a living, I had unintentionally developed a whole philosophy of negotiation that guided how I approached the work. That philosophy was grounded in academic scholarship about negotiation, which I had first encountered in law school, but it was also empathetic, values-driven, and aspirational — and, I had no doubt, effective. I was proud to offer it to the executives who looked to me for mentorship.
It felt like a privilege — and a real opportunity to promote the kind of business environment I wanted to operate in — to get to share it with readers of my book. And it still feels like a privilege (and an opportunity) to share it with readers of this Substack.
Over the next three posts, I’ll be republishing the full text of Chapter 13 of the 2024 second edition of The Business of Television: On Negotiation. Having re-read it while preparing these posts, I can tell you confidently: I stand by every word.
Follow along as we work our way through the full text of Chapter 13 of The Business of Television (2nd ed. 2024) — “On Negotiation”:
Monday, August 17, 2026:
A. Why Is This Chapter Different from All Other Chapters?
B. But First, an Academic Framework
C. A Philosophy of Negotiation in Eight Adages
C.i. Negotiate, Don’t Haggle
C.ii. Every Negotiation Has Three “Teams”
C.iii. Every Negotiation Is Three Negotiations
C.iv. Pay People in the Currency That Is Most Valuable to Them (and Least Valuable to You)
Monday, August 24, 2026:
C.v. Don’t Get Nasty; There Will Be Plenty of Time for That Later
C.vi. There’s No Such Thing as “Winning the Deal”
C.vii. Play the Long Game
C.viii. The Best Way to Negotiate Is as Yourself
D. Final Thoughts
13. On Negotiation
One of the essential goals of this book is to help prepare television professionals of all levels and types to be effective negotiators. And most people instinctively understand that highly effective negotiation requires a combination of both talent (or “innate” ability) and skill (or “learned” ability).
In the context of negotiation, then, “talent” may refer to one’s natural ability to persuade others, to “read” the intentions and truthfulness of others, to speak with clarity and specificity, to remain calm and comfortable in stressful or ambiguous situations, to be adaptive or “quick on one’s feet,” and/or to instinctively build trust and rapport with others, even in oppositional situations. “Skill,” on the other hand, may refer to one’s learned intellectual mastery of complex issues, knowledge of historical industry custom and practice, awareness of relevant precedents and analogs, and/or familiarity with negotiating “tactics” that can be helpful in achieving desired results.
In practice, the line between “talent” and “skill” is far fuzzier than that simple distinction between “innate” and “learned” ability would suggest. Great instincts can effectively compensate for (or even altogether mask) a lack of deep understanding, just as many so-called “innate” qualities like persuasiveness and likeability can be honed with study, introspection, and practice.4 Most people instinctively recognize that mastery in virtually any field usually involves at least some combination of discernible “talent” and “skill,” but that greatness can be achieved via a wide array of combinations of the two. As with many pursuits, perhaps not everyone can be a great negotiator, but most smart people can at least become a pretty darn good one.
Perhaps the most underappreciated missing link between talent and skill — the thing that arguably separates the good negotiators from the great, and allows for greatness to be built on virtually any given combination of talent and skill — is philosophy. That is what I try to provide here: a negotiating philosophy for the working professional, developed in the course of my work as a professional negotiator, offered principally for the benefit of those who are on the same career path.
Like the rest of the book, this philosophy reflects the perspective of not just any professional negotiator, but specifically a studio business affairs executive. I note this because, having spent part of my career as a talent representative as well, I recognize that it is a different job, with its own unique set of challenges, expectations, and responsibilities. Lawyers and agents have fiduciary duties of loyalty and zealous representation, which some could interpret as being at odds with the more collaborative philosophies espoused here.5 Moreso than business affairs executives, agents and talent lawyers may be driven toward a more adversarial style by the expectations of colleagues and clients who place a particular premium on toughness and aggressiveness as values in and of themselves. Some clients like to think of their representatives, “He’s an asshole, but he’s my asshole,” and feel more comfortable being represented with a more pugnacious approach than I advocate for here. While throughout this chapter I use the word “client” interchangeably to refer to an artist represented by an entertainment attorney/agent or a company represented by a business affairs negotiator, I recognize that the relationship between an independent representative and an individual artist is fundamentally different than that between a salaried executive and their colleagues and/or corporate employer. And, like it or not, based on my experience on “both sides of the aisle” in entertainment industry negotiations, business affairs executives are simply held to a different set of rules of engagement than their counterparts on the other side — the kind of hyperzealous advocacy that might earn a high five from a grateful client can easily result in ruffled feathers and angry calls to colleagues or bosses for a studio negotiator. Nevertheless, I believe that these principles are fundamentally sound and can be deployed ethically and effectively by negotiators on any side, under any expectations, and in any context (in the entertainment industry or beyond). Others may legitimately disagree, but they aren’t writing this book.
In addition, while business affairs executives and talent representatives often proudly embrace their identities as “the negotiators,” they don’t have a monopoly on negotiation, which is, at its heart, the art of persuasion. And persuasion is arguably at the core of virtually every interpersonal interaction — if not in all aspects of life and business, then certainly in the famously relationship-driven, unavoidably collaborative and interdependent world of the entertainment industry.
If you work in this business, in any discipline, at any substantial level, part of your job is negotiating, whether you explicitly recognize it as such or not. Each of the following adages can inform how you engage with colleagues, business partners, or anybody else you hope will do something you want them to do (and who, in turn, hopes that you will do something they want you to do). At their most ambitious, these adages don’t just represent a helpful framework for doing your job well; they offer you a career path in which meaningful human relationships built on mutual trust and respect are both a cause and an effect of your success.
A. Why Is This Chapter Different from All Other Chapters?
In general, The Business of Television strives for objectivity. Although it is, of course, grounded in the author’s idiosyncratic professional interests and experiences, it seeks to offer information, not advice, and, except in rare and clearly labeled cases, to describe the world as it is and not as it “should” be.
This chapter is unique in that it is very much about advice. Like all advice, it is subjective and personal, which is why this chapter is the only one in the book to use the words “I” or “my,” or to address the reader directly as “you.” Like all advice, it necessarily reflects my personal biases and preferences. And, as with all advice, readers will no doubt find other purveyors of wisdom who would disagree wholeheartedly with any or all of it, starting with my earlier assertion that negotiating philosophy matters at all.6
Some might also argue that this chapter describes the world as it “should” be rather than as it is. I might agree with that statement, at least in part. A close friend (and creative executive) once said to me, “Our careers should all be a paradise! We get to tell stories and do cool shit for a living. This should be a Shangri-la. But a few people just have to go and ruin it for everybody.” And to some extent, the philosophy presented here represents an aspirational worldview in which we all finally get that Shangri-la.
But when I say this chapter is about advice, I of course intend that it be good and helpful advice — and, based on my own personal experience, that’s what I think I’m offering here, for people across the negotiating landscape. I don’t pretend that the beliefs presented are (or will ever be) universally held within the industry, or that there aren’t plenty of prominent negotiators who have succeeded with a very different approach (and perhaps a very different worldview). But I would argue, conservatively, that most of the best negotiators in the business have built their success on at least some of the values embodied in this philosophy.
B. But First, an Academic Framework
The philosophy presented here is heavily influenced by contemporary academic literature about negotiation, particularly the concept of “interest-based negotiation,” a negotiating paradigm first developed and promoted by law school faculty members at the Harvard Negotiation Project.7 Scholars may use the term “interest-based negotiation” somewhat interchangeably with “principled negotiation” and/or “non-adversarial bargaining.” The founding text of interest-based negotiation is Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In, first published in 1981 by Harvard professors Roger Fisher and William Ury (with Professor Bruce Patton added as a co-author for more recent editions).8 Getting to Yes offers four guiding principles for negotiation — (1) separate the people from the problem; (2) focus on interests; (3) invent options for mutual gain; and (4) insist on using objective criteria. In so doing, it offers “interest-based negotiation” as a superior alternative to what might be considered the “traditional” negotiating paradigm, referred to as “positional bargaining” or “position-based negotiation.”
Positional bargaining conceptualizes negotiation as a fundamentally adversarial and zero-sum process. Discussion is focused narrowly on the issues presented, and every negotiation is approached as a one-off exercise in which there is a fixed “pie” of value to be divided, with each negotiator trying to secure as much of that “pie” for their side as possible, at the direct expense of the party on the other side. In positional bargaining, negotiation is a form of warfare, meaning that somebody wins and somebody loses — and that, as the old saying goes, “all is fair in love and war.”
Interest-based negotiation presumes that the desired outcome of any deal is to leave both sides better off for having made it, and that — especially where both parties work interdependently and rely on one another to achieve common goals — a good negotiation considers and protects relationships as well as outcomes. In interest-based negotiation, a great negotiator isn’t someone who claims the most value; it is someone who creates the most value. Interest-based negotiation challenges both sides to consider not just what both sides say that they want, but crucially, to consider why they want it. It therefore emphasizes fairness, credibility, trust, and creativity.
Countless academic classes on negotiation present the same “day one” hypothetical to illustrate the difference between positional bargaining and interest-based negotiation. Imagine two friends who are arguing over the use of a single orange. Positional bargaining assumes there is one orange to go around, and the “winner” is the person who gets the most of it for themselves. Party A’s starting position is that Party A gets the whole orange; Party B’s starting position is that Party B gets the whole orange. All other things being equal, the most obvious and likely result is that the parties simply cut the orange in half.
Interest-based negotiation demands that both sides seek to understand why each party wants the orange, on the belief that such understanding will yield a more efficient and mutually satisfactory outcome. If the negotiators commit to this inquiry, they might learn that Party A wants to grate the skin of the orange for its zest, while Party B wants to squeeze the orange’s pulp for its juice. If the negotiators can look past the parties’ respective positions (“I get the orange”/“No, I get the orange”), and get to their underlying interests (“I want orange zest”/“I want orange juice”), then both sides can leave the negotiation happier and better off just by peeling the orange rather than chopping it in half.
Interest-based negotiation isn’t a perfect paradigm. Obviously, few real-world negotiating problems are quite so simple, or so elegantly resolved, as splitting an orange. Critics have derided the approach as idealistically taking the world as it “should be” rather than as it “actually is.”9 Some issues — most obviously, money — really are zero sum, at least when taken in isolation. And some negotiations are true one-offs, in which there is little or no value to either side in preserving a long-term relationship rather than ruthlessly maximizing immediate gains.
Though undeniably imperfect, interest-based negotiation has grown increasingly influential as a productive and refreshingly un-bleak alternative to the Kissingerian10 worldview embodied in traditional positional bargaining, and high-level business executives and government officials routinely receive trainings from Harvard’s Program on Negotiation.
Hollywood — with its close-knit group of repeat players, both as principals and as representatives across a variety of business relationships, all mutually interdependent on one another to generate anything of substantial value — would seem to be an ideal context for interest-based negotiation to thrive. Unfortunately, this largely has not been the case.11 And admittedly, ruthless negotiators with unflinching willingness to unapologetically exercise their leverage can be particularly difficult to productively engage with this approach. Nevertheless, I stand by my earlier statement that many of the best negotiators in town (and certainly the ones that people generally enjoy dealing with) have thrived by — in their own ways and on their own terms — putting the following adages to work in their own careers.
Analogies about the best way to divide an orange are all well and good, but how do you make interest-based negotiation work for you in the real world, where the stakes are a bit higher (and the issues more complicated) than juice and zest? Over the next two posts — running this Thursday (August 20) and next Monday (August 24) — I’ll share the eight adages that guide me in every negotiation to this day, starting with the three words that I believe most separate the good dealmakers from the great.
Yes, I included three footnotes in an email to friends. I was in writing mode.
Including to slightly tone down the profanity in that quote (with its speaker’s permission).
They also, I thought, made me sound kind of like a middle-aged dad (years before I actually had a child).
This is perhaps most widely understood in the context of sports, where fans of the National Basketball Association (“NBA”)’s Los Angeles Lakers may recognize it as the “Shaq vs. Kobe” distinction. Shaquille O’Neal exemplifies mastery grounded in talent — uniquely big, strong, and fast, known both for his ability to physically overwhelm opponents on the court, and his tendency to spend the NBA offseason partying before showing up at training camp with poor conditioning and “playing himself into game shape” over the course of the season. Kobe Bryant, on the other hand, embodied mastery grounded in skill — relentlessly intense and ruthlessly demanding, known for spending his offseasons (even as a superstar) in the gym maintaining his physical form and developing new “moves” to unleash during the coming season. They were both historical greats. But fans can only wonder — much like Bryant himself once did — what heights the already-dominant Shaq could have attained had he married his prodigious physical gifts with Bryant’s unparalleled work ethic.
I don’t personally agree with this interpretation of one’s fiduciary duties, but it’s a legitimate and sincerely held point of view.
It also means that, even more than the rest of this book, this chapter is really intended as a resource for early-career professionals. So if you are an experienced working professional, I hope you find this helpful too, but please don’t think that I am trying to dictate to you how you should be doing your job. Unless you actually work directly for me, in which case, yes, I am kind of trying to dictate to you how you should be doing your job.
The Harvard Negotiation Project was founded in 1979 with a mission “to improve the theory and practice of conflict resolution and negotiation by working on real world conflict intervention, theory building, education and training, and writing and disseminating new ideas.” For this reason, interest-based negotiation is also sometimes referred to as the “Harvard model of negotiation” — a moniker that I imagine is as off-putting to some as it is appealing to others.
Other key texts on interest-based negotiation include Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton, and Sheila Heen’s Difficult Conversations: How to Discuss What Matters Most (1999) and Beyond Winning: Negotiating to Create Value in Deals and Disputes (2000) by Robert H. Mnookin (since 1994, the Chair of Harvard Law School’s Program on Negotiation) with Scott R. Peppet and Andrew S. Tulumello.
See me disclaiming this in advance earlier.
Just in case this is needed: this refers to Henry Kissinger. Look him up.
I can only speculate on the reasons why that might be — perhaps with some combination of Hollywood’s general disinterest in and disengagement from academia, longstanding norms and tropes about how the industry operates, the influence of a few beloved and/or feared old-school personalities, the reality of shark-infested professional waters, and a few current working professionals who grew up enjoying Entourage a little too much.