Have you ever watched a kid play with legos or for those of you who are as ancient as I am, Lincoln Logs? They will spend hours fascinated by what comes out of their…what? What is the operative process in what a child or adult is doing when they put two or more legos together? Connection. Where does the connection first occur? Inside the child. How does the connection occur? Asking a resourceful question. What is the result of the connection? I don’t know. That is the mystery and the magic of communication. When your communication creats a connection for yourself – often times we might refer to this as talking out loud. What do we call it when it creates a connection for someone else? Wisdom, insight, intuition?

How does it work? This might be the only real lesson you’ll ever need to achieve Mastery in Communication and Negotiation. It works just the way it did when we are kids. The child sees the different colored Legos and ponders (by Asking a Resourceful Question) what the result might look like, then confirms that result by making the connections.

I was at an after-work part recently with some friends and more significantly some friends-of-friends. The group was a mixture of genders and ages, coupled and single. They were mostly in the sub-business-culture of marketing, internet marketing and sales. The first thing I “did” to make the connections was to interview anyone that would let me. Most people actually like being interviewed, it’s a chance for them to get undivided attention and feel significant to someone else. My interview starts like a cocktail party conversation:

1. What’s your name?
2. Where are you from?
3. What do you do?
4. How are you connected to this group (or the person that sponsored the party)

Who can’t do that, you ask? People who are in bed sleeping. Everyone CAN DO THIS. Ok so what makes my cocktail questions different from any other shallow smoozer? I’m the kid who can’t put the Legos down. I immediately start making connections not only in my mind – but out of my mouth for the interviewee. Here’s a sample of some follow up questions from the above four:

1. Wow that’s an interesting name where does that come from? (asked that at the party)
2. I’ve been to (name place person is from). Do they still have “Rodeo Day” every year? (show you that I know where your from and entertain you with some local trivia)
3. That’s fascinating (what they do), I once (tell a short story or related life fact about their business)…(if you don’t have a story or fact then reveal a personal or secret interest in something that really relates to what they do) When I went to college I really wanted to go into law but..
4. If you’ve heard about them through friend then say so “Penny has mentioned you a few times – I always wanted to connect the name with a face.” If you haven’t heard of them then at least feign disappointment that you hadn’t met sooner “I’m going to tell Penny she’s been hiding you for herself!”

Still cocktail party you say? Yeah, though a good one. Imagine though if for every (of the original 4)cocktail question that gets answered, you generate 10-50 new questions. Think back to a family get together or even just babysitting a relative’s child. What does a child do before about the age of 8? Do they ask a lot of questions? “where do babies come from” ad infintum. They are making connections in their mind. They are mapping out relationships for the first time that we old, slow, stuck-in-our-ways adults take for granted.

Do you have some fear on asking 200 questions to one person at a party? I can appreciate that. It’s been my experience that about 1 in ever 50 people or so don’t like to be interviewed to that degree. So that means the next 49 people will let you ask 200 questions while that 50th person might only let you get away with 10. Lets break that down. 49 x 200 = 9800 + 10 (from #50). So do you think you can come up with something amazing with 9810 answers? That is an enormous amount of information.

The party I went to consisted of about 15 or 20 people. I talked to about half of those. I even found #50 in the group I spoke to – which I thought was funny. I don’t badger the #50s but when I come across them I still smile. After 3 hours, I had made several appointments, 2 future get-together dates with a larger group and had circulated my phone # and my website shamelessly. Oh here’s another fact – of all the people I did speak to about 90 percent of them had already heard of me. Here is the irony – the person that put the party together is also a #50. She won’t even let me ask questions of her boyfriend questions (though he and I talked anyway). The lesson there is just because a #50 mind find you annoying doesn’t mean they don’t see your value – I still get invited to parties.

So let me wrap up this construct for you with some value. The difference between a child making a lego pyrmaid and any human making the connections with other humans is that once you’ve inventoried their map (the interview) then you share your map and finally you build a new map with the two existing maps. Connections build the bridges between your map and theirs. Those bridges are a map unto themselves and allow resources and opportunities and possibilities to pass back and forth.

If you’d be interested to know more about making connections or just have questions, feel free to write me at justask@yourownbestgood.com. I’m available for private consultation and training.

I’ll see you at the cocktail party or perhaps the Negotiating table!

Bruce Burns the Negotiator!

This weekend I spent an entire day with a client. He was managing many major changes in his life and it requires him to work 18 hours a day, seven days a week. While I happened to be in ear-shot he received a call from an irate customer. I knew some of the back story to this particular customer and I suspected the call might be a defining moment in my client’s relationship with his client.

10 minutes later after some rather intense phone time with the irate customer my client was unhinged. He like many Negotiating Clients wanted to validate his “point of view” with me after having gotten off the phone. Me, like I am when it comes to Negotiating, wanted to TRAIN TRAIN TRAIN my client to appreciate the phone call like a Negotiator.

In the first few minutes of the conversation between my client and his client “blame” surfaced. The irate customer blamed my client. My client’s response to that was to defend the blame and talk about what he “didn’t do”. After the phone call had ended and some cool-down time had passed, I addressed these areas with my client.

Here’s what I said:

1. You can’t prove a negative.
2. When a client blames you for something unfairly if you can manage to keep your center and remember you are a Negotiator you can actually turn that event into a great advantage.
3. Blame or being a victim is a Negotiating Position. The position looks like “I take the position of a victim with all the victim monologue”
4. When you start “reacting” in a Negotiation you’ve lost the Negotiation. If both parties are reacting, the Negotiation is simply “done”.
5. The key to managing someone who is taking a “victim” Negotiating Position is to challenge the position through Asking Resourceful Questions. Most “victims” will change their tune when they discover there is a)absolutely no pay-off or b)a potential loss for taking such a Negotiating Position to begin with.

My client wanted sympathy and to focus on the drama of what his client had said while he and I were working through his experience. This is a very important distinction to make in each potential Negotiator’s mind. You can either get lost in the drama of a Passionate Negotiation or you can appreciate the value of a Passionate Negotiation and navigate through it to even greater rewards than a standard non-passionate Negotiation.

By challenging a “victim” Negotiating Position effecitvely, the Negotiating Complement often times will regret having been a baby and try to make up for the self-realizing humiliation by Overcompensating you in a Negotiation. Who doesn’t want $ in terms of overcompensation?

If you’ve ever been faced with Blame in business and would like to ask questions or just have a comment then feel free to comment or you can write me directly at justask@yourownbestgood.com.  To hear more about how to Negotiate, sign up for my newsletter on the right hand side of my site and receive a free copy of The Negotiator’s Checklist.  If you would like to dive deeper into the world of Negotiations then you may want to consider my (currently free) Apprenticeship Program.

I’ll see you at the Negotiating Table.

Bruce Burns, the Negotiator!

In the late summer of 2001 I had the habit of working at night and sleeping during the early hours of the morning. After having descended into the blissful oblivion of up-all-night sleep at about 6 am on September 11th, I was awakened sometime after 8am by my wife. She said the following things to my still nearly comatose brain:

“Cheryl just called and she said that the Pentagon has just been hit and the World Trade Center has been taken hostage by a Jet Airplane.”

I thought I was in a Saturday Night Live skit or something. Since the information didn’t make any sense – I had the urge to tell my wife to turn the lights off and go back to sleep. I love my wife so I asked a question to her Peter Pan/Tinkerbell story: “What?” She repeated the comment and I told her as I was coming back to consciousness “That doesn’t make sense.” She was very upset and had probably been up for hours. She replied “It’s what Cheryl said”.

So I asked a few more questions which led me to believe that something had happened to get two women spreading stories that had a Twilight Zone element to them. My wife was wanting to know if I thought “we” were safe. I explained to her how far away D.C. was from Austin and reminded her that we probably aren’t high on any target list. She likes to walk when she wants to clear her head so I asked her if she would walk our newly acquired puppy, Smooches and I would watch CNN and sort it out.

Smooches Reaction to 9/11 (and everything else)

I did sort it out and of course the “reality” was far less believable than the wake-up story my wife had told me. Like most Americans that day I watched the TV trying to grasp what I was seeing and hoping that some “explanation” would help it make sense.

In the 6 years since that day my life has been shaped by the 9/11 Events in many ways. For those of you who follow my blog closely you know that I’m a big fan of Asking Resourceful Questions. I also train my clients and apprentices how to and when to Challenge the Information. I suppose the biggest transformation that’s occurred to myself as a result of the 9/11 attacks was-is a greater and more focused sense of understanding my place in the complex country we live in, both philosophically and literally (two very different pictures of course). In short I’m 500 percent more civic-minded now than I was before that morning.

Today, children born in 2001 are now old enough to start school and learn to read and write. How many years from now will it take them to grasp all the changes that 9/11 brought into their world (our country). They will mostly like think that:

1. Terror Drills and Lock-Downs at Elementary Schools and Above are normal
2. That anyone with a police uniform should be detaining them, asking them questions, requesting they discuss what their parents do at home, if they have guns, and how many guns is normal.
3. Being stripped searched at Airports is normal.
4. Having an hour of gym a week at school and not being able to “get excited” on the play yard is normal.
5. That every 200th kid they might randomly meet has Autism is normal (there’s never been a report of Amish Autism)
6. That news about war and an existing war is just how the world works.
7. That the biometric “chip” that’s coming down the pipeline in a few years which will implanted somewhere on their body is “normal” and even “cool”.
8. That using a camera or video camera in NYC is a crime.
9. That the right to free speech can only be “allowed” in “free speech zones” is normal
10. Mandatory Civil Service is normal
11. Food scares, local terrorism and FEMA camps are normal.
12. That the word used by the media to represent any ill-defined villain is called Al-Keda
13. That the current “outcasts” of society are Muslim in faith or are of obvious middle-eastern descent but the 4-6 new Hispanic kids in each class each year that can’t speak English are normal.
14. That going to the doctor for most things is an absolute waste of time is normal.
15. Seeing a tape of Osama every year that never seems to change in appearance or content is normal.

Not all of the above is directly related to the attacks of 9/11 however they are a “normal” for these post-9/11 children. I remember what life was like for the 38 years I lived before 9/11. Do we just “get used to it” or do we choose to challenge the information? What each of us as parents and adults living in the post-9/11 society choose will determine what our children believe is “true” and “real” about the world we raise them in.

I wish to say to all those who love someone who died on or after September 11th, 2001 as a result of what happened that day on the South End of Manhattan – I am truly sorry for your loss. For those who were marred by those events directly or indirectly who still are among us – please forgive me for not contributing sooner, for not listening sooner, for not doing something to make a difference sooner – I have no excuse.

If you have been touched by 9/11 or related events and wish to comment or share a story you are welcome to leave a comment at the bottom of this article or send it to me directly at justask@yourownbestgood.com. Even if you disagree with me, your comments or emails are welcome.

I’ll see you at the Negotiating Table!

Bruce Burns, the Negotiator!

Knowledge is Power to the Negotiator on a scale like no other profession. Your words equal an increase in profit, position, opportunity, alliances, options and every other word that represents Resource. If you never learn anything else about Negotiating then please please hear this: A Negotiator’s duty is to inspire the Negotiating Complement’s information to flow and flow and flow. Get your Negotiating Complement talking by any means necessary. The metaphor that helps me remember what I’m doing in this part of a Negotiation is to think of myself as a Safe Cracker. My function is to get the Negotiating Complement to reveal his entire combination so that when I begin spinning the tumblers – the question of accessing all his resources is only a mater of how long I wish to draw the Negotiation out, nothing else.

I wish to qualify the point earlier about any means necessary. I don’t intend to arm any of you with ugly negotiating tools. The only time that I pull out my lumber-jack Negotiating tools is when the context is instantaneous and the rules of the game are already dirty and unforgiving – like catching the car thief hot-wiring your car or the guy that cuts in front of you at the movie theater. Hostile Negotiations are an essential element in the vast array of tools and resources needed by The Excellent Negotiator! that we will cover another day.

The opposite of an assumption in a Negotiation is Asking a Resourceful Question.  If you find yourself thinking in terms of an assumption or if the next thing out of your mouth is derived from an assumption – STOP!  Take a little more time and Ask a Resourceful Quesiton.

In my youth – I remember learning one thing and the excitement and the power of knowing one thing – like how to change the oil in my car was so great that it helped me halucinate the following logic: I know one thing and I learned that thing.  Therefore – I can learn anything and the knowing of all things is simply a mater of learning it.  Therefore I know all things though a few of those things are as yet unlearned.  (which gets shortened to) I know all things.

Today I am 43 years and 1 day old.  I’ve learned enough to know I hardly know anything at all.  In my Negotiations I amp up my own ignorance.  I want my Negotiating Complement to feel the great rush of vast knowledge and shine his rays upon my dull self…so I can then open up his safe and take what I wish.  By the way – each model of car requires you to learn how to change the oil all over again and oh my god that’s such a great way to spend my time.

If you have a story about someone who Negotiates through Assumption (including yourself) or have a question about how to deal with assumptions, asking resourceful quesitons or anything else I may have covered, please feel free to leave a comment or write me at justask@yourownbestgood.com.

If you are interested in hearing more about Negotiations and would like to receive my Newsletter please fill out the form under my picture to the right.  If you wish an even deeper grasp of Negotiations you might wish to sign up for my currently Free Apprenticeship Program.

What would happen if every time you opened your mouth you got exactly what you wanted?  Have you Negotiated to your Own Best Good Today?

Bruce Burns the Negotiator!

One of the challenges that arises when you are negotiating purely for yourself or your loved ones is a connection the negotiator experiences that might be akin to being the chess piece that you are about to move (if that makes any sense). My wife of course has been participating in this process fully as well with her own understanding of negotiating (that reminds me of yet another aspect of Negotiations that I’d like to speak about.)

When we play chess and we decide to sacrifice the knight in order to expose the queen – we just do it because it is how we will win the game. However, when we are the king or queen and that knight that was just sacrificed is the family dog – your emotional connection to the negotiation in this chess metaphor can be like a giant tree fallen in the road before you, blocking the fruition of your intended negotiations.

What pollutes our Negotiating Excellence? The last time you thought you might negotiate then you found yourself backpedaling – what caused the backpedaling? What feeling do you experience when you step up to Negotiate and then suddenly it seems that negotiating at all was foolish? I don’t know what your answer is (though you are encouraged to share them with me via the comments section), but mine is fear. When I was a young man one of my favorite movies (I’m dating myself here!) was Dune. There is a scene in the movie where the “smart” guy speaks the following affirmation:

I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain.

Fear is the Negotiation killer as well.  What happens to me when fear enters the equation is that I often forget what to say or do next.  How do I bring myself back?  What do I do to climb out of the dark hole of embarassment, guilt, shame and any of the other triggers of fear?  Well – if my fear hasn’t completely paralyzed me then I remind myself of Why any of us Negotiate at all, ever.  We have something to offer!  So, whatever you have to offer is truly the focus of a Negotiation for you, Negotiator!  You may ask 500 resourceful questions of the Negotiating Complement and his or her Targeted Resources, but if you cannot tie what they have to what you have then there is no Negotiation.

June is going to be the busiest month of my life in a long time.  I will do my best to post here daily.  I’m going to be working on more things to offer so as to become a greater resource for each of you.  Currently I offer a free Apprenticeship to those who want to really step-up their Negotiating Excellence!  If you are interested in receiving my Newsletter and/or joining my Free Apprenticeship Program then find the links to the right of this post and sign up today!

What have you done to Negotiate to Your Own Best Good?  What would it feel like to get whatever you wanted every time you opened your mouth?  Sign up today and find out!

Bruce Burns the Negotiator!

His situation is that he’s had several unfulfilled relationships in the last 8 or 9 years. He really wants to step-up the quality of his mate-choice process and discover someone that is willing to commit for the long haul. As we began our training for this aspect of his life – I do what I always do – ask resourceful questions. When someone asks you a resourceful question, what they are really doing is examining your life. A resourceful question is almost always a question that you ask someone else that they themselves have refused or not known to ask their own self. Thus the essence of The Art of Asking Resourceful Questions is revealed by the relative significance of any question to the person being asked.

As I began my barrage of resourceful questions I soon discovered that my client had a low frequency of flirting as a result of having a vast array of rules governing his own process of flirting. I challenged his information and instructed him to practice every chance he was offered. This was quite challenging to him and he of course showed me his resistance. His resistance was-is a form of anxiety that is defined by unresourceful questions such as “What if I’m wasting my time? What if she’s not the one? What if she states on her myspace account that she’s not looking? What if she’s wearing a ring and I’m not sure if it’s a wedding ring or not..” His list was endless.

We have all played the “what if” game. When adults play it to prevent taking action – they can become self-oppressing. When I find a client has this much resistance to new information then the new behavior I help them install must be easy and simple – something they can do all the time in any situation without alot of thought. For this client the prescription was this: 1)Ask any woman you meet thoughtful questions and 2)Make her feel good. Of course he had a million questions and “what ifs” and so on. He didn’t like the specific instructions – he wanted to “get there himself” so he asked me for a metaphor as a guide. My metaphor was “Treat flirting like golf. When a woman appears before you in any situation think of the golf rule of “playing the ball where it lands”. So if you are in a restaurant, on a subway, walking your dog, jogging, parking your car, etc. that is the right place to flirt. He had another wave of questions for this of course. Resistance is as resitance does not.

The purpose of my instruction was for him to become masterful at flirting so that if he ever did meet the one he’d be ready for it instead of getting overwhelmed by his emotions and choking. Have you ever been in a situation where you knew what you wanted in a relationship but you had no idea what to say next to get it? Feel free to share your thoughts and comments or even your questions in the comment section or you can write me directly at justask@yourownbestgood.com.

What would happen if you were able to flirt for your own best good?

Bruce Burns the Negotiator!

After presenting the idea to my Master Mind group and letting them tear it apart and show me the flaws – I felt like a million dollars – I take that back – I felt like a Trillion Dollars. My wife went off to parts unknown today as a celebration from the relief of the end of the work week AND getting taxes done before the deadline. Master Mind is so intense for me – I don’t want to party the day after – or “take a break”. Master Mind brings everything into focus and adds lots of valuable information to the participant’s game. My wife deserves her “break” AND I FEEL closer to manifesting the Visions in my Head so I’m paddling away toward the realization of those dreams.

If you have stories or experiences you’d like to share about any topics reflected here on my blog, please feel free to submit them. Ask questions, challenge the (my) information and Negotiate to Your Own Best Good!

I’ll see you at the Negotiating Table!

Bruce Burns the Negotiator

Last night I had the great fortune of speaking with a woman named Kelly for the first time who had read The Attractor Factor by Dr. Joe Vitale. She was in alot of emotional pain and after reading a part of the his book she was inspired to contact him. Her call was eventually directed to my office. We spoke for over 2 hours and the topic of our conversation was RESOURCES.

If Negotiation is my strong right arm, then Resource Coaching is my other strong right arm. The first challenge when someone needs Resource First Aid is to re-direct their attention. When people are in a resource-depraved state – so is their attention. If you ask them what they notice about what’s going on around them and their life – they will tell you all that is wrong, broken and missing. I asked Kelly if she would be open to some training from me over the phone and she agreed.

Resource Coaching is a step-by-step technique. You must train the eyes to see where the feet need to go and get everything working in concert step-by-step. I was taking the first step with Kelly when she balked. She went from listening and wanting help to a long dreadful story about her life. I thought “We’ve slid off the road and now we are back in the ditch she probably called me from. I don’t like being muddy, so I washed my brain down and refocused to get Kelly and I back to the smooth clean road of Resources.

We stumbled up the incline to the road again and I put our “car” into gear and headed on back down the road trying to complete the “first step”. We were approaching the first step when suddenly she reached over (through the phone) and steered us right back in the ditch. It was like 8 or 9 pm when this was happening and I had already had a full day. I was “trying” to be “happy” about Kelly and I being in the ditch again.

This time instead of climbing back up the incline of our experience – I just stayed muddy with her as long as I could to “get” how she kept recreating the ditch result. I asked her lots of RESOURCEFUL QUESTIONS. Guess what I learned? She hated the word “resource”. I use the word resource in about every other sentence when I’m sleeping – you can imagine how often I might use it when I’m awake. So now I have to keep from laughing at the potential Mad TV skit that is arising from this experience: A woman in a resource-depraved state contacts me so she can really hike up her resources and I start giving her the Resource Remedy but she can’t stand to literally hear the word “resources”.

Would you have quit at that point? I did briefly think of hanging up so I could go eat dinner before 10pm but I decided since I had already uesd the words “Play Full Out” with her – that I had to be a model for those words or look like a snake oil salesman.

Staying in the ditch with Kelly (nice and muddy), I began to ask her questions about things that made her happy. Her level of resource-depravity was so strong that we had to sort through about 3 stories before I finally actually found a happy one. (The mud was starting to dry) On the third story of her son eating doodle bugs as a child – I discovered the word “doodle” made her laugh so much she could hardly think of what to do next – so I substituted the word “resources” with the word “doodle”.

We spent the next 30 minutes or so doing some “Doodle Coaching”. We quickly climbed out of the mud, got back on Doodle Road and I discoverd that the Resource Coach’s Fast Car was now a Doodle Bug (pun intended). Near the end of the conversation Kelly asked me if I knew anyone that did Energy Work. I have another client who I do Resource Coaching with and lo and behold at that moment (almost 10pm) she called me on the other line. I took the synchronicity as a sign I could finally have dinner so I networked the two women together and got off the phone.

In a Negotiation sometimes you have to be willing to either a) speak someone else’s thought-language or b) invent a new language in order to Manifest your outcomes. If all forms of communication are a negotiations then communication itself is the most prized negotiation-resource there is.

Where does a negotiation start? Each starts inside of you. For example – lets assume for sample-context sake that you are hungry. Negotiations almost always begin (as does any tangible object) as a question or questions. “Am I hungry?” (Isn’t it interesting when we crave or need something we still oblige ourselves to ask such questions anyway [probably where sarcasm was born]). “What am I hungry for?” “Do I have the time, energy, inclination to get ‘that’?” “What else might I be interested in eating?” Conscious or unconscious we have such internal dialogues running through our heads most of the day. When we find ourselves at McDonalds and we ask the pathetic question “Why did I come here?” or “What am I doing here agian?” – the answer is the litany of questions that you asked up to that point THATS HOW! From the time you ask yourself “Am I hungry?” to the moment you sink your teeth into that Quadruple Meat with Mega Cheese Tripple Bypass McCholestoral burger you were in a near constant negotiation. At this point some of you might think “What the hell is he talking about?”.

I’m talking about the non-verbal communication that occurs inside your body, from your cellular (blood cells not your phone)neediness to your psychological dependency (“I could quit eating these if I really wanted to.”) there is a sea of negotiations going on that are mostly in the form of questions. This means that when you look for a model of excellence in the world of Negotiations, you need look no further than your own self – within you is a near constant hurricane of negotations occurring.

The awakening to your already natural state of negotiations is to give “voice” to all those questions and to learn how simple and complex negotiations can be. The advantage you have is that almost no one understands how to transform their “natural questions” into human-speak questions. You “FEEL” what you want and how you want to get it, or you “SEE” it but you’ve not been adequately trained to claim it verbally, say it, speak it, find your voice!

Tomorrow will be my 7th day of experiencing a Vegan lifestyle. I’m not perfect of course (I’m a true newbie that HAS to figure it all out himself), but I’m learning and NEGOTIATING to my own best Vegan good as fast as possible.

Here is a secret for you – when you begin to negotiate consciously, on purpose – you will in a very short time begin to access new resources. When you do, you will suddenly begin to consider new possibilities, understand your present experience with broader depth, see through new and more powerful (resourceful) eyes. When your mind completely absorbs that all forms of communication are a negotiation, then you will be summoning relationships, resources and experiences to you exponentially more fulfilling and true to who and what you are than you ever have before.

Negotiating to Your Own Best Good,

Bruce
The Negotiator
www.negotiate2yourownbestgood.com

…then I’d want to make sure you had the first and most important key of the whole set of keys you might choose to collect.

The most essential key to negotiating to your own best good is to Ask Resourceful Questions!

Let me begin with the second question (the first one is in the subject line):

If enhancing every Negotiation you ever had from this day foward ONLY required you to learn HOW TO ASK RESOURCEFUL QUESTIONS, when would you choose to learn this powerful yet simple technique?

When you’ve answered this question then see if the resources that are available for you now on http://yourownbestgood.com/ sound like something you would try now. Get a feeling for it.