The Negotiators Secrets

Greetings Negotiators!

I once read a book titled In Resonance by Jasmuheen. The book included a list of spiritual laws. One of those 33 laws was The Law of Adaptation. If I was to merge my knowledge base of Negotiation with her list of Universal Laws - I would probably begin by discussing this law.

One pattern I often see in challenged Negotiators is the resistance of The Law of Adaptation. I’ve often heard Negotiators say things like “If they hadn’t talked so fast..” or “They wouldn’t let me change the subject.” and so on. Basically these types of Negotiators are only effective if the Negotiating Complement “acts right” or plays the Negotiator’s game. So as a guideline - if you are are frustrated with your Negotiations in any context and it’s the Negotiating Complement’s “fault” then you are lacking an essential Negotiating Nutrient known as adaptability.

The Remedy: Practice letting anybody you deal with be who they are. The reason we resist other peoples’ games in communication is based on the fear of not getting what we want out of that communication or worse, having something drawn from ourselves out of that communication that we don’t want to give. THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THOSE WHO FAIL AND THOSE WHO SUCCEED IS ALMOST ALWAYS TRAINING. So, if you didn’t know what to do before with people who’s communicating (Negotiating) style doesn’t complement your own - now you will know - you have my permission to release your old habit and embrace the current training. So, let them be who they are, let them show you their style. Give them room to get comfortable while you access how their process works. Every process will show you the following: 1)Their Strength, 2)Their Vulnerability, 3)Their Commitment and 4)Their Vision.

(Does Lindsay drink enough to qualify for the NASA Program?)

1. Their Strength will be what they rely upon in order to Negotiate or do just about anything else that has to do with communication. Perhaps their strength is logic. They can weigh information and transform that information into different configurations like “What’s fair”, “What’s doable”, “What’s Likely”, “What’s realistic” and “What’s out of the question“. If this is their strength then you let this strength work for you as well - tap into their logic, give them contexts and let them do the information crunching for you.

2. Their Vulnerability will be directly related to their strength. Their strength is almost always a cover-up for where they are vulnerable. Whenever you see a strength ask yourself this question - “What is the opposite of (the strength)?” In this example the question would be “What is the opposite of Logic?” Of course there usually isn’t one right answer but looking in that direction will help you discover their vulnerability. Perhaps it is “the abstract” or “thinking outside the box” or some other really creative way of using one’s mind. As you will rely upon their strength - they will often be beholden to you for anything that pertains to their vulnerability.

3. Their Commitment defines how much they are a)interested and b)able to participate in the Negotiation. Sometimes their commitment is greater than yours, which means that you could walk away if be. Their Commitment also defines how solid the Negotiation really is. If they are Negotiating with 12 other parties separate from your own and they’ll just take the best deal then you could say their commitment (to you) isn’t very high. Their Commitment is also defined by “how real” they are about whatever they are proposing. When the Negotiation begins this is an element that you can actually change thus significantly influencing “their game”.

4. Their Vision is the guideline in which they use to go after that which they want. Learning what their vision is will almost always be your ace-in-the-hole. Once you can speak to them directly of their vision and how they might go about realizing that vision then you will find they are considerably more flexible and interested in playing your game than they are in having you play theirs. Often times their vision doesn’t equal their output. What this means is that helping them realize their vision might be quite “doable” for you but their presentation of that vision doesn’t seem doable at all. This is the lost-in-translation effect which is why Asking Resourceful Questions is an essential element of any Negotiator’s skillset.

So, next time you are faced with a Negotiating Complement who’s game is difficult for you to work with start figuring out the list-of-4 above through attentive listening and Asking Resourceful Questions. Appreciate their strength, understand their vulnerability, get real clear on their commitment and unearth their vision. See if this makes a difference.

If you find this information helpful or have questions about it, please feel free to leave a comment or write me directly at justask@yourownbestgood.com.  What would happen if everytime you opened your mouth you got exactly what you wanted?  Sign up for my newsletter and get The Negotiator’s Checklist absolutely free, today!

Bruce Burns the Negotiator!

Greetings Negotiators!

I have a TV card built into my PC and dual monitors so I can work and (believe it or not) watch TV. I don’t watch much TV but sometime during each day I’ll channel surf to get a glimpse of what’s going on in the world beyond my own home. This morning it was Paula Abdul going to face David Letterman on the Bravo channel.

The show focused on all the behind the scenes scrambling that this celebrity and her entourage make for such an event. Paula had one guy following her around just preparing her for all the topics that Letterman might spring on her. He not only advised her of what she might say but suggested choices of different directions she might go with different scenarios. Paula was very upset at the idea that her infamous recreational drug use might be brought up (yet again)and was drying her pre-Letterman hard-questions jitter tears off as she exited the limo. The talk-coach gave her very good advice in my Negotiating opinion: “Turn it into a joke - let everybody laugh with you, not at you.” (my paraphrase).

One of the most significant rules that I learned early on in my career about how people deal with each other is that they talk “at” each other, not “to” each other. More specifically they are performing a role which they are almost completely focused on. When you enter a room for a job interview or being interviewed by David Letterman - the interviewer has a checklist they usually go off of and though they are paying as much attention to you as they can, their attention is almost always split with things like memories of previous interviewees, thinking of what to tell the boss about you compared to the other interviewees, lunch, getting off early on Friday and “doing a good job”, not to mention personal stuff that might not even relate directly to work.

With this in mind - you the interviewee has a great advantage. You’ve been preparing for this moment for at least a week perhaps months depending upon the type of position you are hunting for. Your know your resume inside and out, you have rehearsed your pitch at least 20 times a day and probably tried it out on other companies. That makes you just like everyone else this interviewer has seen while playing The Checklist Game.

Another thing I remember from some of my own interviews is that though Human Resource people might be “trained” to do interviews - I’ve seen very few of them relish the process. In our society “interrogation” isn’t polite and we all typically resist having it done to us or doing it to someone else at least unconsciously. Therefore most interviewers are incongruent about their role and that my Negotiating Friends is always a gift to any Negotiator!

In my 20s I lived in New York City where I made a very decent living trading in a skill today that even children have - typing. Wordprocessing was still a new phenomena that law firms and financial companies paid a fortune to sustain in the mid 80s. I remember my interview for the first job I got living in the Big Apple. Let me spell out the job, then my skills and the final result for you as a reference of what is possible.

The job was for a position as a wordprocessor in a wordprocessing pool which was one room with 4 desks all “manned” by women. It had a 60 words-per-minute requirement, short-hand was required and I think they were probably looking for a woman. The best I had ever typed at that point in my life on any test was about 34 words-per-minute. My hands were quite long and though I could write a few sentences of French and Spanish - there was no short-hand in my repertoire. Last but not least - I was a man.

I knew then in a course way that I had to stand out if I wanted the job. So, I answered the questions that were put to me and I added something to the interview that is still useful today. I asked questions back. Not just the “What are the benefits” type questions but things like the space I would work in, the number of lawyers in the firm. I played dumb and asked the interviewer what it was like to work with lawyers and what helped her decide to settle into a position at a law firm as opposed to the financial district or any other well paying industry. I didn’t just take an interest (self-interest) in my potential future position, but in the interviewer herself.

When she called me in for the second interview she said “I’ve decided to give you the job. I must tell you that you are the least qualified and your co-workers were hoping I’d hire a woman. Furthermore the firm will buy you a book on shorthand so that you can learn it over the next six months. The main reason that I hired you was that you told me you would do whatever it took to get the job done. That is the kind of attitude I want in my office. Congratulations.”

As a result of that Negotiation I just about doubled my weekly take home, I now had benefits, I was a single man working in an office with 3 very attractive women and I got to learn every bad lawyer joke ever told.

I was hired because I stood out - not because of my shinning resume or typing test. Of course if you are shopping for a job as a Nuclear Engineer at a Power Plant your resume might count a little more than mine did in this example - however in most situations people are people and that really is the bottom line.

If you would like more details on how to apply Negotiating Excellence to an interview you might consider looking at my at-your-own-pace Apprenticeship. If you have any questions or comments please feel free to use the comments beneath this post or you can write directly to me at justask@yourownbestgood.com. You can receive my free Negotiator’s Checklist just by signing up for my newsletter on the right hand side of this page.

What would happen if every time you opened your mouth you got exactly what you asked for?

Bruce Burns the Negotiator!

Greetings Negotiators!

One of my earlier mentors was Anthony Robbins - author of Unlimited Power, Awaken the Giant Within and so much more. Part of my training under his tutalage was a process called “false neuro-association”. It basically means when someone links a relationship between two things when there is no such relationship. For example - if a 5 year old hears your horn honk the moment his touches the handle on the car - he might create a temporary (we can hope) false neuro-association between the horn and the door handle.

Tony’s example is much more entertaining than mine and the punchline is “It’s the Knight”. His reference for this FNA (false neuro-association) is made doubly funny because if you don’t know the story then you might hear Tony say “It’s the night” - thus another FNA.

Uncovering your FNAs can be very much like joining Alice in Wonderland down the the rabbit hole. This evening as my wife was going to bed - I had a gourmet platter of my own FNA served to me. Suzanne asked me why I had slept in a different bed last night than I usually do. I had no idea what she was talking about. She said “Yeah, I saw you in the other bed that didn’t have any sheets on it- I thought you slept there cause I was watching TV.” I told her she must have been mistaken - I woke up in my usual bed this morning feeling quite rested. She laughed at me and reassured me when she went to bed (after me) that I was snoring in the “other” bed. She wasn’t that fascinated with the topic after I got to chewing on it and she went right off to sleep.

So, my “doorway” currently has a Chineese tri-fold blind in front of it until I can get my custom made door installed there, which means that I got up in the middle of the night, while Suzanne was making noise and watching TV, sleptwalked out of my bedroom “past” the tri-fold blind (somehow), hunkered down in an unmade bed with no sheets or pillows or even a blanket then after she went to bed, sleptwalked back to my normal bed past the tri-fold blind again and tucked myself in without ever knowing I had left.

I remember reading a Dean Koontz book once where the government would take people that had seen a UFO and put them in a long coma while head-sets played constantly on a loop about what “really” happened until they were re-conditioned with the new “story” in order to protect the public from the truth. It’s so easy to dismiss things because we don’t believe it til we see it. Now that I know that I’m busy doing things while I sleep, perhaps I should leave a recording playing as I fall off with a to-do list on it.

I suspect the inspiration that is emerging from this story is a new course called Negotiate while you Sleep.

One of the most helpful habits you can ever develop for anything - especially Negotiations is to day-dream practice. Or do a mental practice. For those of you who don’t know what that means - it’s simply putting yourself in the exact place with as many details as possible via your imagination and then practicing in your head whatever skill you are trying to develop. The body doesn’t know the difference between mental practice and the real thing.

When a client tells me of a situation where they need Negotiating Help, I immediately put myself in their shoes and begin this “practicing” as a way to understand what they are faced with and what their response has been thus far. You could say that the difference between a novice Negotiator and a Pro is simply how effective either can be with conjuring up the overall Negotiation in their head then navigating their way through it with Negotiating Excellence.

I’m quite curious about sleepwalking so if you have any information you’d like to share or a story or even a question then please share it via the comment section beneath this post or just send it to justask@yourownbestgood.com.

What would happen if everytime you opened your mouth you got exactly what you wanted? If you haven’t already seen The Negotiation Checklist then sign up for my newsletter-mailings and download it today!

I’ll see you at the negotiating Table!

Bruce Burns the Negotiator!

One of the things I do that my wife makes fun of me for is that when I’m lonely and in traffic I will often call her and just talk but soon the road has my attention and talking to her leads to talking to the traffic. She thinks that I have a future in being a traffic reporter and if my heart could stand the excitement of reporting on traffic I might just go for it! So, for those of you who don’t mind listening to me talk about the traffic - perhaps you wont mind me speaking about the local weather. It may not have rained for 40 days and 40 nights yet where I live however the local lake (lake Travis) is full at 681 and just a few days ago it was at 695. I don’t live near the lake but I think at least some people besides myself might think that 14 feet of extra water in your back yard might be a reason to buy a boat or build an ark.

So I’M BACK! Please forgive the absence. Suzanne and I were so physically exhausted from the move that we both detoxed for at least a week afterwards.

A NEW AND FREE GIFT IS AVAILABLE FOR ALL OF YOU!

I’m going to be replacing the Negotiator’s Primer with The Negotiator’s Checklist. For all of you who are on my list currently - I will email you the link and for any of you new to the site or not currently signed up - please sign up for my mailing list and receive a comprehensive checklist for Negotiating as my complement to you for visiting my site.

THATS NOT ALL!

I’ve almost finished work on my first Audio product The Audio Primer which is a training audio that goes with the Free Negotiator’s Checklist. I’ll be providing snippets of the audio for all of you to sample in the next week or so (maybe sooner keep checking back!)

WAIT THERE IS MORE!

My wife, Suzanne now has her first website up and running and she is promoting some amazing jewelry that goes with Dr. Joe Vitale’s and Dr. Ihaleakala Len’s book Zero Limits: The Secret Hawaiian System for Wealth, Health, Peace, and More. So to go to Suzanne’s site and see all her fine creations just click here: Intentional Treasures. She’s also offering a free report I believe.

I’ve been gathering apprentices for some time now. I suspect I will close the door in the near future on any more free coaching or apprenticeships so if you have a genuine interest please considering clicking on the menu bar for Apprenticeship and filling out the form.

If you’ve ever built an ark or moved to a new home and have comments or questions about anything to do with anything on this site, please feel free to leave a comment or write me direct at justask@yourownbestgood.com

What would happen if you found that everytime you opened your mouth you received exactly what you wanted? Have you Negotiated today? Every Form of Communication is a Negotiation!

Bruce Burns the Negotiator!