The Negotiators Secrets

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!

Greetings Negotiators, Daters and Couples!

Within the framework of Negotiations, the most consistently passionate Negotiations that I see in my work daily is that of Negotiating in a Relationship. My wife and I have been watching an amazing new show on HBO: Tell Me You Love Me. Suzanne and I are TV-Talkers – most people can’t stand watching TV with us. We were laughing the other day that we need two remotes so that either one of us can pause a show and discuss what we are thinking, feeling and wondering. The show is very provocative, very adult-thematic and had Suzanne and I wearing out the pause button discussing what we were seeing.

(A couple on the show in therapy lying to their therapist)

Here is the jist of almost all intimate-relational negotiations: 1) Negotiator becomes tunnel visioned in their desired outcome, 2) Negotiator shapes huge passionate intent and blurts it to their Negotiating Complement (usually the love interest), 3) Negotiating Compliment doesn’t experience being involved in the blurted intent, can’t find personal connectivity to the blurt and neutralizes the Negotiation by erecting an emotional and psychological wall and in some cases a physical wall that looks like a door shutting in your face.

Most Romantic Negotiators loose hope and experience a huge drop in self-worth and self-esteem at this point and return to the lonely-I’ll-always-be-lonely frame that they tried to escape from in the first place. The Key to understanding what is happening is that Negotiating for love and companionship is almost always done out of a state of desperation. I’m not speaking for every couple or single-wanting-to-be-coupled person of course – I am speaking to all of you who experience a huge disconnect between what you want and desire and what you currently have in your life.

If I never share another post or thought with you about intimate relationships then know that my answer to this equation is my answer to everything – Ask Resourceful Questions! If you wanted to simplify and sum up what your job is in a relationship then I just told you: The most important duty in any form of relationship, especially an intimate one is to continue to ask the Negotiating Compliment (your significant other) questions. Pretend you don’t understand, ask questions that help you understand, reiterate your understanding (calibration) and evaluate creatively what you can do with your new found understanding.

The greatest gift you can ever give any intimate relationship is the gift of understanding! If you want to piss off your companion, then misunderstand them and you are there.

The question I get asked every day is How do I formulate my Resourceful Questions? This of course is a very resourceful question. Here is my answer:

Get real still. Get real focused on the subject of your Negotiation. Imagine all the dialog that is going to occur between you and the Negotiating Complement or anyone you are going to Ask Resourceful Questions of. Take every concept you wish to convey, every position you wish to demonstrate, every feeling, every insight, every doubt, everything and translate it into a question. That’s the formula, here’s an example …

[situation]:Single woman taking her car to the dealership for an undetermined repair. [thoughts of a single woman]“Last time I went to get the wiper fluid refilled, they replaced my radiator and charged me $2800.00! I think that place is a rip off! I wish I could just get them to fix what’s wrong with the car instead of turning loose steering into a major car drama. I’m going to go to another dealership if they try to rip me off again! I wish I had someone who understood cars to talk too or even go with me and ask all the questions I don’t even know to ask! ” [translation into Resourceful Questions]:1)How does a dealership stay in business when refilling the wiper fluid turns into a $2800 repair? Is it the policy of the dealership’s owner and management to find major things wrong with a car even when someone’s just coming in to get an oil change? Has this happened to other customers? Where would such an event be recorded if it had? If I called another dealership and explain my frustration to them, would they treat me better – would they want to earn my trust instead of burning it up like the initial dealership did? Next time I’m flirting with some fellow at a club (remember single woman)I wonder if I could remember to to ask him what he knows about cars? I wonder if I could even set up a first date as him riding with me to the dealership to at least listen to the “lines” the repair shop gives me? What would have to happen for me to get treated honestly at this dealership if I went back? Who would I have to speak to, what questions would I have to ask them to ensure that I wasn’t duped into paying for things I don’t need?

This is just the beginning of all the Resourceful Questions the single woman could ask not only herself but all the other players that might be involved. It takes practice to convert what you are thinking into questions. Once you develop a habit of thinking in questions instead of emotional blurts though, you suddenly can think of hundreds of questions to ask in any situation and I promise you that Asking more and more Resourceful Questions creates more and more choices and resources for you NOW!

What would you do next if you found someone who could teach you how to get exactly what you wanted just by opening your mouth and speaking? If you’ve found any of the material on today’s post interesting and would like to know more about Negotiations or any elements of Negotiating feel free to leave a comment or you can write me directly at justask@yourownbestgood.com.

You can also receive my FREE Negotiator’s Checklist just by signing up for my newsletter on the right-hand side of this page.

I’ll see you at the Negotiating Table!

Bruce Burns the Negotiator!

Greetings Negotiators!

Later this morning I’m giving a one hour Tele-Seminar to a group of business professionals who are seeking to grow and refine their business practices, especially in the arena of closing the deal. So, I decided I would get fully associated with the topic by returning to my own starting point of consciously working with my outcomes and the outcomes of others through an interventionistic model that I was trained in by Anthony Robbins.

In Tony’s first book (that I read) Unlimited Power there is a 5 step technique for asking. The one step that still sticks in my mind today is Ask Until. Tony tells a story about Colonel Sanders, the man who started up Kentucky Fried Chicken. I’ll save you the story and race to the punchline. The punchline is that Colonel Sanders asked 1009 restaurants to try his recipe in exchange for a cut of the profits they would get when the sales went up as a result of his delicious chicken.

My challenge for each of you today is to consider this: If you knew you would eventually succeed as long as you continued to re-engineer your approach and were willing to give of yourself for as long as it took to succeed – would you still find a reason to quit or would you play full out and accomplish your dream? Colonel Sanders lived in his car and traveled all across the U.S. asking different chicken restaurants if they would try his recipe in return for a share of the increased profits they would make. How many of you have stayed with a dream where you had to present your vision 1009 times? Would you like to inherit KFC? Do you think the owners of KFC are grateful that the Colonel didn’t stop at 1008?

Here is the mistake that many of us, including myself often make at some point in our life experience. We REALLY need something, perhaps we are even desperate for that something and we ask for help, or we ask for resources to turn our desperation around or we ask god to change our situation but whoever and whatever we are asking for – we ASK for it! And the magic solution doesn’t come, the resource doesn’t seem to appear. THEN we shriek in agony and often we blame THE ASKING, the process of asking itself, which leads us to a very very unresourceful belief system asking doesn’t work. Do you think on the 490th time or the 756th time or the 999th time that Colonel Sanders might have had these doubts, fears, disappointments and frustrations? I don’t for certain but I suspect he did. He proved your doubts, my doubts and his doubts wrong in a time before self-help was part of our pop culture.

So, I give this today – The Art of Asking Resourceful Questions! If you spent the next 5 years mastering this one technique and you did in fact master it – I guarantee that you would transform the quality of your life and many lives of those around you during and after that 5 year period. This doesn’t mean that you have to wait 5 years to see a powerful result, I simply mean if you gave it 5 years to master and you did indeed master it. On the Tele-seminar I’m about to dial into I’ll be talking about this.

If you are interested in receiving more information about Negotiating you can sign up for my newsletter and RECEIVE THE NEGOTIATORS CHECKLIST FOR FREE!  If you want a strong dose of my techniques you might want to consider looking at my apprenticeship program.

Bruce Burns the Negotiator!