Negotiation Skills Training Seminars
With
over twenty-five years of proven industry experience, the
Negotiations
Training Institute of America is the recognized leader in negotiations
training, consulting and performance coaching. Through public open
enrollment seminars and private on-session training sessions, we
have helped leading corporations, non-profit organizations and governmental
agencies improve their ability to
negotiate
better outcomes for their constituencies.
First-time
negotiators as well as those with the greatest
competitive
drive and amount of first-hand experience and
negotiations
wisdom can benefit from our time-tested seminars. Whether focusing
on
negotiating
a contract with a vendor or jumping in to the often-stressful
car buying process to
deal
with a dealership, our classes provide useful skills, proven techniques
and various classroom role plays to help you
become
more aware of negotiations that you must face on a daily basis.
For more information on our negotiation skills training seminars please
contact us.
Negotiation Training Seminar: The Critical Role of Lateral Thinking
Does anyone doubt that men and woman are different -- or that they view the world differently? Has anyone experienced how men and women can sometimes have different perceptions of the same event? Can anyone seriously dispute that women approach relationships quite differently to men? So, why is this? And why is this even remotely relevant in the context of negotiation?
Approximately 90% of men in the world are left-brain dominated. Left-brain people focus on logic, mathematics, rational thought, and black-and-white thinking. Approximately 90% of women in the world are right-brain dominated. Right-brain people focus on intuition, emotion and creativity. Why we need to be aware of this is that, to negotiate effectively, we need to use both sides of our brain. In other words, we must become lateral thinkers by learning to use both sides of our brain.
After spending more than 30 years negotiating agreements around the world and after researching Nelson Mandela's approach to his historic negotiations with the South African apartheid government, I identified 10 Powers of Negotiation that the best negotiators share. These 10 Powers of Negotiation reveal the critical role of lateral thinking in the negotiating process by highlighting that negotiators need both left and right-brain skills.
From the 10 Powers of Negotiation I have identified, you will notice that some require predominantly left-brain skills and others require predominantly right-brain skills. But, to pull all the Powers together, negotiators require a combination of both.
These are the 10 Powers:
The power of understanding that a negotiation is a process.
The power of preparation.
The power of positioning.
The power of common sense and logic.
The power of dignity, congeniality, humility and humor.
The power of truth and fairness.
The power of observation - of listening and seeing.
The power of morality, courage and attitude.
The power of patience.
The power to walk away.
The advantages of lateral thinking...
Because lateral thinkers are people who have the ability to use both the left and right sides of their brain, by being able to pull from both sides of the brain, they have significantly more insight into human behavior than those who are not lateral thinkers. They not only see unusual patterns of behavior that others might miss, they also have a more nuanced and layered sense of what is happening around them. Because of this, they also see more options for problem solving and have far superior problem solving skills than those who are not lateral thinkers.
And for those who really understand that the negotiating process is about identifying the problems each side is hoping to solve, both the identification of the problems and finding different options and approaches to solving those problems lie at the very core of any successful negotiation.
Lateral thinking and empathy...
Nelson Mandela's negotiating skills and experiences highlight the enormous importance of looking at every negotiation through the eyes of those with whom you are negotiating and the enormous advantages that this can present to you on many different levels. His life is a remarkable window into his lateral thinking skills. How he honed these skills during his life and how he used them in his negotiations with the South African government is quite fascinating and should be required study for anyone seriously interested in becoming a negotiator extraordinaire.
Empathy is therefore the name of the game when it comes to being able to see the world through the other side's eyes. Empathy, however, requires significant right-brain skills. While it might be tempting to argue, using left-brain skills, that a position the other side is taking is "logical" or "illogical" or "black-and-white," almost invariably the right-brain skills are far more telling and useful. Clearly, to get into someone's head we need to tap into their emotional state and understand it. We need to tap into whatever intuitive skills we can muster. In doing so, we come to realize the enormous advantages most women have over us. For those of us who are predominantly left-brain oriented, we can't hold a candle to women here.
This is why we either have to develop both left-brain and right-brain skills, or we have to assemble negotiating teams that possess these skills.
How lateral thinking exposes the risk of negotiating alone...
Over the years, I've accepted that I'm a predominantly left-brain person. I think of myself as logical and rational -- perhaps to a fault. I've also always accepted the problem that this almost inevitably creates and the opportunities that are inevitably lost as a result. I've therefore accepted the absolute need to work on my right-brain functionality. Unfortunately, what I've sometimes found is that, as I began to focus on my right-brain development, I often found myself taking my eye off my left-brain functionality. I obviously needed to find a solution to this and I did.
I decided that, whenever possible, I would never negotiate alone. I wanted the smartest right-brain negotiator I could find at my side, as well as the smartest left-brain negotiator to check up on me. I discovered the name of the game: I would have to gather around me the smartest right-brain and left-brain people I could find. And because 90% of women are right-brain dominant, that was where I'd look for the right-brain part of my team. Call me sexist, but women are generally better at right-brain stuff than men.
The result was apparent. I could see how left-brain dominant negotiators and right-brain negotiators could see the same scenario, but extract different things from that scenario. The result is that, through the collaborative process, the solutions reached by the team working together were so much more creative and innovative than the solutions that might have been reached by just a predominantly left-brain or a predominantly right-brain person.
As the 10 Powers of Negotiation highlights, negotiators have to keep their eyes on my different balls simultaneously. And as they have to observe and listen to the other side's negotiating, and particularly when those teams are quite large, is it even possible to do this alone? In my experience, the answer is an emphatic "no." To have a team of left and right-brain negotiators watching and listening and assessing what is happening is a huge advantage and will always yield a better result than handling this all alone.
So, don't be proud. Gather together a team of the most skilled lateral thinkers you can find.
Source: Michael Friedlander Link
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Skills Seminar information please
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