On working with interests when it matters most
Introduction
Almost everyone who has sat in a negotiation or conflict conversation is familiar with the idea of interests. Ask what they are, and you will hear that they sit behind positions, that they matter more, that they explain what people really care about.
That agreement rarely survives first contact with pressure. As soon as conversations become concrete or tense, interests lose their footing. What was obvious in theory becomes difficult to recognise in practice.
Whether it’s a shareholder conflict, a partnership dispute, or a negotiation about control, exit, governance, or money, the pattern is the same. When parties are asked to identify the interests at stake, the conversation slows down. Positions resurface, often in more elaborate or legalistic language. Technical arguments take over. Solutions appear prematurely. The supposed interests remain vague, implicit, or are replaced by rationalisations that sound respectable but explain very little.
This gap between conceptual understanding and practical use shows up precisely in the conversations where interests would be most helpful. This essay is an attempt to make interests usable again, as a way of understanding what actually happens when conversations become layered and complex.
Purpose of this essay
The purpose of this essay is to dissect the idea of interests and examine it more carefully in order to identify frameworks and methods that make interests easier to surface in practice.
Specifically, this essay does four things:
It clarifies what interests are beyond the textbook definition;
It distinguishes between different types of interests that behave differently in practice;
It explores how interests can be recognised when they are not stated explicitly;
And it offers concrete ways of finding and unpacking interests through observation and questioning.
The underlying assumption is that most of us do not struggle because they do not understand interests, but because they do not know how to work with them once conversations become concrete, technical, or tense.
Where interests quietly disappear
interests tend to vanish when conversations become concrete, personal and high stakes
positions take over because they feel safer and more defensible
practical cues: repeated return to legal or technical points, early solution proposals, rising tempo
how to work with this: slow the conversation deliberately, postpone solutions, name the dynamic you observe
An easy example helps to ground this: Two shareholders are in conflict about veto rights. One insists on having final say over strategic decisions. The other calls this unacceptable and invokes governance principles, market practice, and the need for agility. Lawyers are present, and clauses, precedents, and risk assessments are readily available. Everyone in the room understands the distinction between positions and interests. Yet no one asks the question that would slow the conversation down in a productive way.
For one shareholder, veto rights are about protection. They have personally guaranteed loans and fear being exposed if the company takes risks they cannot control. For the other, veto rights threaten autonomy and speed. They fear paralysis and missed opportunities in a competitive market. These are not marginal concerns: they are central to how each person experiences their role and their exposure.
Those interests are never named. Instead, the discussion escalates around control, governance, and legal structure. As the tone hardens, it becomes increasingly difficult to introduce a different type of conversation. By the time someone suggests talking about interests, the room is already too tense to do so comfortably. This is not a failure of intelligence or training, but a predictable human dynamic in high-stakes settings.
What interests are in practice
a position is what someone asks for
an interest is why that matters to them
practical cues: listen for justifications rather than explanations
how to work with this: ask what this gives, protects, or avoids for the person
At a formal level, interests are easy to define. They are what someone is trying to protect, obtain, or avoid, independent of the specific solution they propose. A position is what someone says they want. An interest explains why that matters to them.
In practice, interests rarely present themselves in such clean form. They are not announced. They are inferred. They show up as repetition, rigidity, or emotional shifts that seem disproportionate to the technical issue being discussed. They surface when a conversation circles back to the same point, even after it has been addressed on paper. Naming the interest is often what makes it workable.
Consider a management dispute where one director keeps pushing for detailed reporting structures. On the surface, this looks like a technical discussion about transparency and compliance. In reality, the interest may be trust, or the absence of it. It may relate to fear of being held responsible without sufficient information, or to earlier experiences where things went wrong and blame followed. Treating this purely as a structural issue misses what is actually driving the insistence.
Why high-pressure conversations default to positions
positions feel objective and safe
interests feel personal and risky
professional environments reward certainty, speed, and defensibility
If interests are so central, it is worth asking why they are avoided so consistently. The answer lies less in individual skill and more in habits and psychological shortcuts.
First, positions are concrete. They can be written down, negotiated, accepted, or rejected. They fit neatly into contracts, term sheets, board minutes, and legal opinions. Interests do not. They resist clean formulation and rarely translate directly into formal documents.
Second, positions feel objective. They can be justified by reference to market practice, precedent, or policy. Interests are subjective. They touch on fear, ambition, responsibility, identity, and what may be the most fundamental interests of all: recognition. Raising them requires a different kind of exposure, one that many professional environments implicitly discourage.
Third, positions create distance. A senior executive can argue forcefully for a governance clause without revealing anything about their personal tolerance for risk or loss of control. Interests reduce that distance. They invite questions about meaning and consequence, about what would happen if things went differently.
A simple scenario can illustrate this: In a board discussion about restructuring, the debate revolves around financial ratios, reporting lines, and compliance obligations. One director repeatedly pushes for tighter controls, another resists in the name of agility. The discussion escalates, even though both directors ultimately want the same thing: to avoid being blamed if the restructuring fails. That interest remains unnamed. The conversation stays technical and increasingly bitter.
As a result, high-pressure conversations gravitate towards what feels safe. Better arguments, tighter drafting, faster escalation. Interests are acknowledged in theory and bypassed in practice.
Different interests create different dynamics
shared interests exist simultaneously for multiple parties
opposing interests involve real trade offs
compatible interests can coexist or reinforce one another
practical cue: the same situation often contains all three types at once
Before looking at examples, it helps to clarify what distinguishes three categories:
Shared interests are interests that parties hold at the same time, even if they never articulate them. They create potential alignment, but because they feel obvious, they are often left implicit.
Opposing interests are interests that cannot, in principle, be fully realised simultaneously. They involve genuine tension and require choices or trade offs. Ignoring this reality leads to frustration and false consensus.
Compatible interests are different interests that can coexist or even reinforce one another once they are properly understood. They are often hidden behind incompatible positions.
To make this distinction concrete, consider two business partners who are about to take over a small coffee and lunch business together.
Both partners are excited about the opportunity, but for different reasons. For the first partner, the business represents autonomy, recognition, continuity, and trust. They want a place that feels like theirs, where decisions can be made quickly, relationships with staff and suppliers are personal, and the business is workable on a day-to-day basis. For the second partner, the same business represents security, influence, sustainability, and risk control. They care deeply about financial predictability, formal decision making, and long-term viability.
Their shared interests are easy to overlook precisely because they are shared. Both want the business to survive. Both likely want it to grow steadily rather than spectacularly. Both want a good reputation in the neighbourhood and a cooperative relationship with staff and suppliers. Naming these shared interests early can shift the tone of their conversations from negotiation to joint problem solving.
Their opposing interests are equally real. One values speed and informal decision making, the other values caution, calculation and formal approval. One is comfortable improvising, the other wants structure and safeguards. These interests cannot be fully realised at the same time, and pretending otherwise leads to frustration. Acknowledging them clarifies where genuine trade offs exist.
At the same time, some of their interests are compatible. Autonomy and sustainability can reinforce each other if roles are clearly defined. Risk control and workability can coexist if reporting is light but reliable. What looks incompatible at the level of positions often becomes workable once the underlying interests are understood.
Many deadlocks persist simply because parties never take the time to make these distinctions explicit.
Emotional entry points to interests
interests are connected to how people experience a situation
different emotional framings unlock different conversations
recognising emotional language helps identify underlying interests
In practice, interests tend to surface through three emotional orientations. Each orientation comes with its own vocabulary and its own entry points.
Instead of asking a party about what their interests are, use these emotional cues to surface what’s important to them.
Neutral orientation
Neutral orientation is expressed through needs, expectations, and requirements. This language feels professional and contained. It allows people to talk about what matters to them without feeling exposed. Needs based questions are particularly effective at the start of a conversation, when trust is still developing. In most cases, parties have not fully realized themselves what a conflict is about, so starting with more open, exploratory questions allows them to discover it gently.
Typical trigger words and concepts include needs, expectations, essentials, and requirements.
Example questions:
What are you expecting from this conversation?
What do you need in order to move forward at this stage?
What is essential for this to work for you?
Positive orientation
Positive orientation is expressed through wishes, ambitions, ideals, values, and aspirations. This language introduces direction and meaning. It helps people articulate what they are working towards rather than what they are reacting against. It invites the parties into a more positive and creative stance, because it is about forging a future direction rather than revisiting the path they have already taken.
Typical trigger words and concepts include success, hopes, goals, pride, and growth.
Example questions:
What are you hoping this will lead to in the longer term?
How would you describe a successful outcome?
What would you like to be proud of in five years?
Negative orientation
Negative orientation is expressed through fears, worries, concerns, and risks. This is often where the core of a conflict resides. Negative framing requires careful timing, since negative emotions are the ones we are most uncomfortable with and therefore tend to avoid talking about. In many professional contexts, what is labelled as risk functions as fear expressed in technical language.
Typical trigger words and concepts include risk, exposure, prevention, loss, and worst-case scenarios.
Example questions:
What concerns you the most about the situation?
What would you want to avoid at all costs?
What would be a bad outcome from your perspective?
Reframing emotions back into interests
No matter how an interest is expressed, it is usually helpful to filter out the emotion and bring it back to the underlying interest. If someone is frustrated because their colleague never delivers something in time, that person’s core interest is punctuality. Rephrasing those interests is, by design, the mediator’s job.
How interests reveal themselves
interests are inferred through patterns, not statements
observation is often more effective than interpretation
Because interests are rarely stated explicitly, they can be recognised through signals rather than declarations. These signals often appear in subtle but consistent ways.
There are four main signals: repetition, absolute language, shifts in tone and avoidance.
First repetition: When a party keeps returning to the same point, even after it has been addressed technically, it usually means that something important remains unaddressed. In a contract negotiation, this might show up as repeated insistence on a specific clause, long after its practical impact has been clarified.
Absolute language is another signal. Words such as always, never, or obviously often indicate that something personal is at stake. They tend to appear when a party feels that a core concern is not being taken seriously.
Shifts in tone, pace, or defensiveness also matter. A sudden change in energy or formality often coincides with moments where an underlying interest has been touched, even if no one names it explicitly.
Avoidance is equally telling. Topics that are consistently sidestepped, postponed, or reframed may carry more weight than those discussed at length.
When these signals appear, interpretation is rarely helpful. Observation, instead, invites clarification without accusation.
Examples of observational interventions:
I notice this point keeps returning, even after we addressed it. Is that because something important is still missing for you?
I sense some hesitation when this topic comes up. Can you help me understand what is behind that?
It sounds like there may be something here we have not yet named. Am I hearing that correctly?
Questioning as an effective method
good questions shift from evaluation to explanation
open questions invite meaning rather than defence
small linguistic changes can radically alter a conversation
Questioning is often treated as an interpersonal skill or a matter of intuition. In practice, it can be approached much more systematically.
At its core, interest focused questioning is about moving away from yes or no answers and towards explanation. Open questions do not ask whether something is right or justified. They ask what makes something matter.
One simple technique is starting the sentence with the all-to-famous how, what, when, who. The logic is simple. Closed questions invite evaluation. Open questions invite reflection. Yet coming up with these neatly phrased questions is hard, if not impossible, without meticulous preparation.
A more useful move from a practical point of view is to place neutral openers in front of a closed question. They can flip any statement or suggestion into an open question. Phrases such as “to what extent”, “what makes that” or “in what way” work really well. They allow parties to remain precise without becoming confrontational.
When a position is stated, a single follow up question is often enough: “what does this give you?”, “what does this protect for you?”, or my personal favorite: “What else is at play?”
Example questions:
"Is this important for you?", becomes: "To what extent is this important for you right now?"
"Does this need to be structured this way?", becomes: "What makes you want this structured in this way?"
"Is that a risk for you?", becomes: "In what way is that risk for you?"
Atypical yet essential interests that are often overlooked
time, identity, and relationships shape many disputes
these interests are often ignored because they feel non-technical
practical cues: urgency mismatches, role confusion, moral language
how to work with this: ask about timelines, roles, and what should be preserved
Certain categories of interests deserve special attention because they behave differently from most others. Time, identity, and relational interests are structurally present in many business conflicts and are by default at the core. Yet they are often treated as mere facts or non-negotiables, and thus left unexplored. What makes them tricky is not that they are irrational, but that they sit at the intersection of rational structure and personal experience. They are easy to dismiss as secondary, and difficult to address without unsettling the conversation.
Time is often treated as a neutral variable. Deadlines, timelines, and planning horizons look objective on paper. Yet the way people experience time is rarely neutral. Urgency creates pressure. Long horizons create uncertainty. Misaligned timelines generate stress, even when everyone agrees on the formal schedule. Talking about time can therefore depersonalise a conflict, while simultaneously revealing how exposed or constrained someone feels.
Identity and role touch even closer to the core. Questions about responsibility, authority, or mandate are rarely just technical. They speak directly to how someone understands their place in an organisation or a partnership. Because identity is tied to recognition and autonomy, these interests are highly sensitive. They are often defended indirectly, through structure or principle, rather than named explicitly.
Relational interests are equally delicate. Even in transactional settings, people care about trust, fairness, and reputation. Paradoxically, making these interests explicit can feel awkward or even insulting, as if the relationship should not need to be discussed. As a result, relational concerns are frequently left unspoken, until they resurface later as resentment or renewed conflict.
Conclusion
Most conflicts are not stuck because solutions are unavailable. They are stuck because the interests that drive behaviour have not yet been made visible. Neutralising interests does not mean resolving them. It means making them legitimate topics of conversation.
Understanding what interests are is relatively easy. Working with them is not. In practice, interest work is often messy, layered, and entangled. Surfacing interests does not solve them, but it is the first necessary step. It requires slowing conversations down when everything pushes towards speed. It requires curiosity when defensiveness would be easier. And it requires tolerating ambiguity before solutions appear.
The intention of this essay was not to introduce a new theory of interests, nor to repeat a distinction most of us already know. It was to examine why working with interests remains difficult in practice, especially in conversations that are technical, high-stakes, or emotionally loaded. By unpacking different types of interests, emotional entry points, and concrete questioning techniques, the aim was to make interests less abstract and more usable in the moments where they tend to disappear.
Throughout the essay, interests have been treated not as abstract concepts, but as practical lenses. They can be categorised in ways that clarify dynamics. They can be recognised through language, repetition, and emotion. And they can be surfaced through deliberate observation and questioning.
