What You Can't See from the Bargaining Table
The Psychology Behind Why Smart Negotiators Miss What’s Right in Front of Them
What might be going on outside of what you're discussing at the bargaining table?
The email lands in your inbox. Is it really that time again? The union is contacting you to reopen negotiations of the current collective bargaining agreement (CBA). The contract is up in just a few months.
If you've been through this before, you know two things. First, just how quickly three years can seem to pass. Second, with everything else you're juggling in your busy schedule, what a time-consuming process it can be.
Prepare to jump down that rabbit hole.
And it's just that, a seemingly endless stream of long meetings, conference calls, huddles with attorneys. On and on it goes. Time to admit it, you're officially sidetracked.
Right there. That's where the most fastidious, on-top-of-it contract negotiators make big mistakes.
Here's how.
The email politely asked for the team to be gathered, for a time to be scheduled for an initial meeting to kick things off. So, you do. Then, you meet and start discussing the contract.
Except that you get mired in the process and miss a bunch of things that might be happening outside the realm of your discussions, factors that seem unrelated but could greatly impact how things turn out. This is a perfect illustration of what psychologists call the Einstellung effect (from the German word Einstellung, meaning “setting” or “attitude”), when our brain becomes so locked into a familiar way of approaching a problem that it can’t see the larger picture.
Before we get into real-world examples, it’s worth defining what the Einstellung effect actually means.
The Einstellung effect is the tendency to fixate on a familiar solution path and overlook alternative approaches, due to prior learning or mental set. It reflects a form of cognitive rigidity where existing schemas dominate problem-solving.
In early experiments by Abraham Luchins (1942), participants solved a series of water jar problems using a specific formula. When later presented with a problem that could be solved more easily by a simpler method, most participants still applied the old formula. Their prior success actually inhibited their flexibility.
Examples of Einstellung Effect in Labor and Organizational Contexts
Treating Each Bargaining Unit in Isolation
Different CBAs at one worksite are managed as if they exist in separate worlds. Management misses the cross-pollination effect: a concession in one unit can become the rallying cry or bargaining baseline for another.
Employees in nearby or related units will be watching outcomes closely; one concession can trigger new demands or inspire organizing elsewhere.
Solution: See the big picture. Here's an example from a recent client. When one of the company’s other bargaining units threatened to strike, to be honest, leadership panicked. The thinking was simple: strike bad, must prevent. So they jumped straight into damage control and gave in quickly, hoping to keep things calm. What they didn’t take into consideration (although they knew it was the case) was that the strike was never likely to go anywhere. There was a clause in the contract stating that the striking employees would’ve had to pay back their strike benefits once they returned to work, so the odds of a long work stoppage were close to zero. Yet, in rushing to fix the immediate problem, they missed the bigger picture. That quick surrender sent a message to everyone else on site who was already thinking about organizing: pressure works. You better believe that the union took that story and ran with it, using the company’s reaction as proof that collective action gets results.
“We’ll Cross That Bridge”
Those organizational development (OD) conversations that have been idly discussed by the c-suite for months, if not years, without forward movement. Job classifications, role realignment, problem managers, that one tone-deaf email from a few years ago, outdated pay structures, unresolved issues they know you're aware of. Yesterday's unaddressed problem is today's grievance.
Solution: Don't put off pivots to better your business. At one manufacturer, automation upgrades were put off for so long that the eventual rollout became the core grievance in the next round of bargaining.
Misreading Generational Signals
Leaders assume newer employees will respond to union drives the same way past generations did, with predictable loyalty or disinterest. They don’t realize the motivations (autonomy, voice, flexibility) have shifted, so old anti-union messaging sounds tone-deaf or manipulative.
Solution: Pay close attention to the narrative. Update regularly. Pro tip: no PowerPoint decks from 2008. One HR director was proud to tell me she had used the same talking points she had relied on for fifteen years, and was stunned when Gen Z employees screenshotted them and they ended up on TikTok with laughing emojis.
Symbolic Wins Over Strategic Ones
A familiar picture. Management refuses to yield on a small issue (like dress codes) because “we can’t set that precedent.” The fixation blinds them to the goodwill they could buy by conceding something that costs nothing but means a lot to employees.
Solution: Weigh the long-term optics. See it from their point of view. Their Budweiser baseball cap is a lot less painful to accept than a seven-figure contract negotiation.
- Outside counsel & consultants: $350,000–$450,000 (Legal prep, bargaining sessions, contract review, strategy work)
- Internal management time: $200,000–$250,000 (HR, finance, and operations leaders diverted from normal duties)
- Employee release time: $80,000–$120,000 (Union committee members attending sessions and caucuses)
- Communication & training: $50,000–$75,000 (Explaining contract changes, retraining supervisors, policy updates)
- Implementation systems & payroll adjustments: $60,000–$100,000 (Software updates, recalculating benefits, administrative rollout)
- Early grievance administration & compliance audits: $40,000–$60,000
Estimated total*: $780,000 – $1.05 million
This illustration reflects a mid- to large-size private employer with several hundred represented employees. Smaller units may spend less, while multi-site or high-stakes negotiations can easily exceed this range.
Confusing Symptom for Cause
After a grievance spike, leadership assumes “the union is stirring things up” and reacts with stricter supervision. In truth, unresolved morale issues or poor communication are the root cause, but rigid mental framing keeps management stuck in reactive mode. We learned about it in school, that old causation ≠ correlation trap. I think it was something about ice cream not causing shark attacks. No wonder we all graduated more confused than when we started school.
Solution: Dig deeper. Consider creative approaches for fact confirmations, like changing a schedule of a supervisor to see if another group of workers has the same opinion of them. Double up on trainers and interviewers for a while to make sure someone isn't taking advantage of one-on-one time with vulnerable employees to send unwanted messages. Create an atmosphere where front-line leaders can approach management with issues. Use positivity and a non-judgmental atmosphere to encourage them to lift the veil of denial and face things head-on that could be dangerous, illegal, problematic, or costly to the company later.
A Mole Among Us
Your employees have been told by union organizers that they have a legal right to unionize. They're inviting their co-workers to pizza parties and setting up text threads.
Mostly, you know who they are.
Similarly, you've taken the time to train your managers. You've told them that the "company stance" is that the organization prefers to deal directly with the employees, rather than involve a third party. The reality is, some of these people are union-friendly.
You do not know who they are.
Solution: The message isn't "trust no one" of course. Just observe. I was recently at a very large company, a household name. The director of HR flew to the location to oversee us. He was executive-level professional at all times, but our team quickly realized that he didn't care which way things went. To this day, we still believe he was pro-union. Perhaps they should have sent two overseers from corporate. Putting 100% faith in this one individual turned out to be the wrong decision. He moved slowly, or didn't act, at crucial points. It was no surprise to my team when things didn't go as planned.
Blindly Following the Leader
Your legal counsel will (rightly) focus on securing the best outcome for your CBA. That’s their job. But you know your people and the culture of your company in a way they don’t. While they’re shaping proposals and reviewing clauses, you can find, and follow, trails of breadcrumbs that lead to sticking points. Some of those clues won’t look connected to bargaining at all, yet your insight will tell you otherwise. Resolve them early and you’re not just smoothing the process; you’re cutting off problems before they start. The smallest internal shifts can save tens of thousands of dollars, sometimes much more.
Solution: Rely on the experts to do what you're paying them to, but don't assume that's the entire scope. Think outside the box. Recently, at a hospital, the company’s legal team was focused on tightening contract language around attendance. During the previous round of negotiations, that topic had turned into an ugly, contentious fight. Back at the office, an HR manager dug into the data and noticed something everyone else had missed: most of the absences were coming from one specific shift that always got stuck covering mandatory overtime on Fridays. She realized it wasn’t a contract problem at all. It was a scheduling pattern. By reorganizing coverage and rotating overtime more fairly, absenteeism dropped almost overnight. Three weeks later, at the next negotiation session, the issue was forgotten. It never even came up. What could have become another drawn-out bargaining battle turned into a quick operational win that saved the company more than $50,000 a year in lost time and replacements, not to mention the legal fees for what would have been lengthy arguments on the matter. And perhaps most valuable of all, the change built goodwill and restored morale long before anyone had to bargain over it.
The Einstellung Effect Doesn’t Care How Experienced You Are
Ouch. Here's the good news: that's all you need to know.
A lot of contract negotiation strategy plays out at the bargaining table, but it's also important to notice what's happening outside the conference room.
What keeps a company strong isn’t just its ability to bargain well, it’s its ability to see the larger picture. The best negotiators I’ve ever met don’t just prepare; they observe. Rather than zeroing in on rows and rows of Times New Roman on page after page, they ask what else might be at play and who isn’t being factored in.
Awareness gives you an edge. Once you see the pattern, you can choose to step out of it.
So, when the next email lands in your inbox, don’t just think, here we go again. First, obtain legal counsel and get the right advice. Then, take a second look around. Something important might be happening just outside the room, waiting for you to notice it.
