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This is a place where I share my thoughts, insights, and experiences on a variety of topics.
From negotiation to personal development, I write about the things that I'm passionate about and that
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The Art of Leveraging the Meeting Before the Meeting
The art of practicing positive politics in the workplace is vital for success. You should make it a regular practice and remember leadership goes beyond the management of your team. Successful and respected leaders understand that building influence regularly leads to gaining consensus when it matters the most.
Leverage has a Bad Rap
Leverage is misunderstood and commonly gets a bad rap. Leverage can be a weapon, but it can also be a tool to uncover additional values that are important to the other party or us. Leverage creates options for all parties
Practice Negotiation - For Your Mom
On Monday, my Mom had a stroke. She is doing well and recovering. It made me once again see how important feeling comfortable with negotiation is so I thought I would share a story that is a part of my world.
Susie with a Microphone
Negotiation strategies help us every day as we are constantly facing high-stakes situations. We may need to realize it because we often assume that high stakes are associated with specific conditions.
Negotiate like an Egyptian
Egypt is where negotiation is expected and normalized in every transaction for goods with the vendors. It made me uncomfortable to know that any item I would purchase would take negotiation. But when I passed the vendor outside the ancient temple selling hats, I decided to try.
3 Ways to be a Better Human
by Leveraging Silence
Practicing silence makes us better humans. That may seem a bit overstated, but it is true. I learned to stay silent during an intense negotiation by focusing in my head and repeating,
“the first one who talks loses.”
7 Power Skills that will
Catapult your Career
Based on 30 years of executive experience, I realized that in addition to competency in one’s area of expertise, there are seven skills that rising leaders need to master for career success.
Quick Prep is a Quick Tip
I learned that preparation for every meeting was essential. Preparation can create a sort of negotiating-with-yourself phenomenon. You can convince yourself that the problem you are solving has changed. The path to the solution then changes.
Your Business Card, your
Source of Confidence?
We can borrow confidence from the people and circumstances around us. But we also need to shift our internal dialog to stoke our own confidence. We seem to be great at providing this for others, but why don’t we do it for ourselves?
Don’t Listen to Feedback
Feedback and growth are directly related. But all feedback is not equal. Sometimes you should make note of it so that you can hear it at the right time when you can take from it the most impactful insights for you.
10 Networking Essentials that
will Put you in the Driver's Seat!
Networking can be remarkably frustrating but it can also open doors, create connections, increase career confidence and provide insights for future career decisions.
Finding Purpose
Finding your purpose should not be a check-the-goal box toward a purpose statement. It is noticing the way you live in doing what brings passion and energy. Your purpose encapsulates the things that bring you energy, passion, and meaning.
Wake Up! Wake Up!
It's FINALS Week!
Finals week is a marker, a point where we can look at what we have accomplished, get a gauge to tell us where we stand, and a chance to evaluate which new courses are the best for the upcoming semester.
Workplace Politics,
like Driving on a Highway
Typically, workplace politics are defined as negative because they can cause petty game playing and behaviors that you might label as passive-aggressive. But the truth is that politics can be
incredibly positive and productive.
Struggle Inspires Growth
I have plenty of stories of struggle and situations that I wish I could relive. I sometimes want to go back and change my actions to get through without the battle. But then I realized I wouldn’t be in the place I am today. I somehow feel like the other path that I could have taken still exists, but in fact, it ended when the new path began.
It is Everywhere -
Always Leverage it
There is always leverage. We may not even realize it until we are out of it. But to make those situations less common, we need to anticipate leverage - obvious, possible, and even unexpected.
The Target Strategy
I wrote about the Target strategy in my book and I get people constantly commenting about how it helped them start to understand how negotiation happens even when you don’t know it. When you accept that leverage plays in every conversation, you unlock another dimension to consider.
Opt in First,
Figure it Out Later
As I look back on my career, the only regret is not opting in more often. Who knows the countless opportunities I missed just because I was not paying attention to what was happening around me.
How a Thank You Note can
Ruin your Weekend
I lifted this story from my book, The Art of Everyday Negotiation without Manipulation because it illustrates how easy and nuanced it is when we negotiate with ourselves.
Create Standing Room Only Meetings
Negotiation is essential for any leader, any professional, for us all. Negotiation, at its core, is finding common ground between people. It is not being afraid to offer different solutions, seeing the other person's perspective to find the best way to achieve outcomes even during stressful situations.
I was in a Vegas Show!
We are constantly uncovering new angles on the pandemic's silver linings. Who knew that random connection was something to miss or even need. The way we tactically handled the pandemic was the same, but the experience was unique for all of us. Even if random connection was not identified as a missing factor during the pandemic, when we experience it brings to light the importance.
Work-Life Integration
As I think back on my experience of living my best self as a working parent, it felt messy. Sometimes incredible and other times stressful. Even the high points at those moments or working up to them didn’t feel that joyful. Instead, many times it was anxiety, fear, or trepidation. We imagine that it will be glorious, but not so much.
When you Score for the Other Team, you Never Forget
It seems like yesterday, even though it has been decades. It was the state semi-finals for our high school basketball team, and I was a senior. Since my sophomore year, I had been on Varsity, so I was one of the team's veterans. This was our first state championship so the gym was packed.
Don't be the Path of
Least Resistance
The path of least resistance is not where your opportunities lie. I learned this lesson the hard way, but it taught me a lot. If you simply take what is given to you, you are teaching the people above you and around you that they don't need to anticipate your needs or response.
I Lost the ESPN Deal because
I didn't Ask for Help
When we remain objective and have trusted advisors around us, we can anticipate all possible moves for us or the other party. This is true in our everyday life. We can get triggered by a comment or be influenced by the relationship and miss an opportunity.
Shift Happens
We plan, struggle, and progress but don't always notice. So looking back to see progress and recognize how far we have come is good. It can propel and catapult our development to the next level. Yet we don't appreciate the adjacent skills we sharpen as we go from conscious incompetence to unconscious competence.
Seriously, Thanks for the Feedback
Our blindspots are just that - blindspots. We are not able to see ourselves from another's perspective. Even if they provide abundant examples and feedback, we can only understand from our interpretation. So, it is a journey to understand, and it isn't about resolving the issue.
What-what? Get Excited about Feedback?
It is beyond the art of giving feedback. It is about knowing how to give it and how to receive it. Most importantly, is to make the commitment to give feedback with a more dimensional approach.
Suffer in Silence
In our Torino station wagon going across country, my Dad would say, “Suffer in Silence.” As a kid I knew that meant to keep my complaints to myself, we are all hot, tired and thirsty. But who knew silence was such a power strategy? Thanks Dad!
Power Frame =
Professional Success
I get really clear about the outcomes I would like to have coming out of the meeting. Then I think about what is important to the other side and what it will take to make them see the situation from my perspective. How can I get them to a yes.
Create Networking Muscle Memory
Take the time to invest and don’t focus on the immediate outcomes. Look at networking as an essential part of your professional development. The more you practice offering, reaching out, and breaking the ice, the more natural it will feel.
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