The Negotiators Secrets

Greetings Negotiators!

I’ve been Negotiating calories but not to my own best good for a long time. I had the good fortune of being invited onto a One Hour Teleconference training call as the guest speaker twice in the past few weeks. The products and services that the company these people represent are about nutrition, health and weight loss. After the second call I spoke at length to my contact’s mentor. I listened and learned and was inspired to try their products and services for about two weeks. I’m nearing the end of week one (after some Negotiating of course!)

One of the most interesting things that I learned is that our bodies produce fat to insulate our organs from toxins that we come in contact with.  So some fat in our bodies can be caused by the level of toxicity of your environment.

I’m going to give the program and products a few months then I’ll share my results.

On a more serious note - I have a friend who’s created an amazing game.  He’s marketing it with a video that he’s included me in at the very end.  You can check out a talking gorilla here: http://yourownbestgood.com/?page_id=24.  He and his life’s love Nan have returned recently from a European Tour focused mostly on the British Isles.

Today I received a call from one of my Relationship Coaching clients.  Her dilemma was that she really wants a relationship but the counter-intention belief that was contrasting her will to find a significant other sounds like this:

I don’t need a man to be a whole person.

I understood her challenge and I broke it down like this:

1. When our needs go unmet long enough our neediness becomes Desperation
2. Desperation leads to Devastation - Whenever we act out of a desperate state we always create devastating results.
3. The first resourceful behavior to inspire in someone who is feeling or acting desperate is to help them get some needs met.  As soon as their neediness starts to decrease they can think creatively again and start accessing their own resources.
4. Yes it’s true you don’t need another person to be “whole” however we all have needs.   Companionship and attention are some of those needs.  So if you go out and find someone for companionship then you are making a proactive choice to get your needs met.
5. As you develop a relationship with yourself the relationships that you can attract and maintain with others grows  proportionally.

One rule I try to remember when an avalanche of philosophy seems to swarm over a tiny practicality in our personal lives is When Philosophy meets Reality, Reality always Wins!

If you have a Philosophy that is in conflict with your Reality and would like some help then leave a comment or email me at justask@yourownbestgood.com.  You can Recieve my FREE Negotiator’s Checklist by signing up for my newsletter at the top right hand side of my site.  If you are interested in a deeper level of information my Apprenticeship is still free: Apprentice Now!

I’ll see you at the Negotiating Table!

Bruce Burns the Negotiator!

Greetings Negotiators!

I took on a new client last night.  She’s in a work situation that is intolerable to her.  Her work-situation-pain was bad enough that a friend put her in contact with the Negotiator!

The basics of her situation are that she is the most seasoned professional in her field at her company by decades of experience to the next most experienced person.  In fact all the other people that do what she does at the company are just a few years out of college at best, some are probably still in college studying to get a degree in what she does.  The owner of her company (her boss) makes many snap decisions based on little or no information from any outside sources.  Another way of describing that process is to say that her boss hallucinates the living picture of her own company instead of calibrating what she thinks she knows against what is presently occurring in the “real world”.

So as a result of one of her bosses hallucinations, she was demoted in status from “Project Manager” to “Blank”.  She told she didn’t even know she was a “Project Manager” until she received the demotion (sounds like Enron Accounting practices).  I asked her how this demotion occurred and she told me it was a result of her boss reframing her (this means the boss was “translating” what my new client had done and continuing her “translation” of the situation by telling her that she couldn’t be a “Project Manager”).

Do you let someone talk to you like a dog?

So I asked my client what she is doing now.  She said “Exactly the same thing”.  So as I understand my client’s translation of the situation, her boss demoted my client’s title and nothing else.  Here was the homework assignment I gave my latest client:

1. Write down in the most precise way the message that you wish to deliver to your boss.  Write it like you were giving instructions to a computer like “Stop demeaning me.  Start supporting me.  Respect my expertise.” very simple messages like this.
2. Think of all the things you want to say, all the feelings and attitudes and views that you have about the current situation.  Get really clear on what all this is and don’t leave anything out.
3. For each thought from #2 find evidence to support your feeling or attitude or view.  If you “Feel disrespected” then remember the 3 times she said “Your no better than these interns, get out of my sight!”
4. For ever scrap of evidence form a resourceful question.  Example: evidence= “the 3 times she said ‘You’re no better than these interns, get out of my sight!’ question(s) = “How often do you think you can tell an adult with grown children “..get out of my sight!” before the consequences of your childish behavior fall back in your lap?” or “Which training seminar did you go to that led you to believe disrespecting your employees is an effective tool in maximizing their efficiency?” and so on.

After having spent about 30 minutes coaching my new client I asked her (calibrated) what all that meant to her.  She said “I feel fantastic, this is really helpful and I’m scared to death!”  I reassured her that taking back her power, standing up for herself, creating boundaries for people including her boss for the first time is scary.  So I asked her how many more months she’d be willing to tolerate the demeaning experience before she burst.  That was an arrow that hit the bullseye of her focus.

When someone starts to put you in a box (re-frame you) that you don’t fit in, you’ll look like you are in the box to everyone else that is mesmerized by the box-putting action, especially if it’s from an authority figure.  The appropriate response immediately when this starts happening is to challenge the information.  You must collapse any frame that doesn’t support you or help you experience your own best good. If you find that you’ve failed to do this in any relationship and suddenly you want to collapse the frame you’ve been shoved into by someone else then follow my 4 step technique above.

Collapsing a frame is called “de-framing” 

My new client at times told me some of my information seem “mean” or didn’t “feel nice”.  I asked her if she felt like the way she  had been treated made her “feel nice”.  She agreed immediately that it did not.  The perception-in-error that standing up for yourself, getting firm, declaring your boundaries and being real with others “isn’t nice” is based on our fear of how people will react when we take these bold positions.  The correction of this error is to shift the emphasis off of what other people feel long enough to take care of yourself and your own feelings first.  You cannot give something to someone else before you first give it to yourself: respect, loyalty, honesty, validation, inspiration, etc.

If this post stirs up feelings in you or reminds you of a situation you h ave questions about feel free to write me at justask@yourownbestgood.com or you can leave a comment beneath this post in the comments section.  If you are looking for more information about Negotiations then sign up for my newsletter to the right and receive your FREE Negotiator’s Checklist.  For the rare individual that really wants to take his Negotiating Skills up a notch you might want to consider joining my (currently free) Apprenticeship Program.

What would you do now if you could discover every time you open your mouth you get exactly what you want?

I’ll see you at the Negotiating Table!

Bruce Burns the Negotiator!