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I'm learning skills I will use for the rest of my life by doing homework...procrastinating and negotiation.
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Bill Watterson
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I think we both need to work on our communication skills. (Kiara)
I tried that once. (Nykyrian)
And? (Kiara)
Darling told me that I could never hold a job as a suicide counselor or hostage negotiator. He said my failure rate would become the stuff of legends. (Nykyrian)
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Sherrilyn Kenyon (Born of the Night (The League, #1))
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My negotiation skills are are on par with George Bush's reading ability. And just like Dubya, every time I've tried to put forth an effort, I am reminded that my only true strength lies in drinking.
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Chelsea Handler (Are You There, Vodka? It's Me, Chelsea)
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Yamamoto was considered, both in Japan and the United States, as intelligent, capable, aggressive, and dangerous. Motivated by his skill as a poker player and casino gambler, he was continually calculating odds on an endless variety of options. He played bridge and chess better than most good players. Like most powerful leaders he was articulate and persuasive, and once in a position of power he pushed his agenda relentlessly. Whether he would push his odds successfully in the Pacific remained to be seen.
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Dale A. Jenkins (Diplomats & Admirals: From Failed Negotiations and Tragic Misjudgments to Powerful Leaders and Heroic Deeds, the Untold Story of the Pacific War from Pearl Harbor to Midway)
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The ability to see the situation as the other side sees it, as difficult as it may be, is one of the most important skills a negotiator can possess.
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Roger Fisher (Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement without Giving In)
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This is listening as a martial art, balancing the subtle behaviors of emotional intelligence and the assertive skills of influence, to gain access to the mind of another person. Contrary to popular opinion, listening is not a passive activity. It is the most active thing you can do. Once
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Chris Voss (Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It)
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We’re all somebody’s prospect; we’re all somebody’s customer.
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Chris Murray (Selling with EASE: The Four Step Sales Cycle Found in Every Successful Business Transaction)
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Explain the value and justify the cost - People don’t mind paying; they just don’t like to overpay.
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Chris Murray (Selling with EASE: The Four Step Sales Cycle Found in Every Successful Business Transaction)
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Solving large, difficult problems may earn you a reputation for skillful negotiation, but Sun Tzu asserts that this supposed achievement is actually a form of failure, and having true wisdom means preventing difficult problems from arising in the first place. Ironically,
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Sun Tzu (The Art of War)
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During the cold war, the anticommunist ideological framework could transform any data about existing communist societies into hostile evidence. If the Soviets refused to negotiate a point, they were intransigent and belligerent; if they appeared willing to make concessions, this was but a skillful ploy to put us off our guard. By opposing arms limitations, they would have demonstrated their aggressive intent; but when in fact they supported most armament treaties, it was because they were mendacious and manipulative. If the churches in the USSR were empty, this demonstrated that religion was suppressed; but if the churches were full, this meant the people were rejecting the regime's atheistic ideology. If the workers went on strike (as happened on infrequent occasions), this was evidence of their alienation from the collectivist system; if they didn't go on strike, this was because they were intimidated and lacked freedom. A scarcity of consumer goods demonstrated the failure of the economic system; an improvement in consumer supplies meant only that the leaders were attempting to placate a restive population and so maintain a firmer hold over them.
If communists in the United States played an important role struggling for the rights of workers, the poor, African-Americans, women, and others, this was only their guileful way of gathering support among disfranchised groups and gaining power for themselves. How one gained power by fighting for the rights of powerless groups was never explained. What we are dealing with is a nonfalsifiable orthodoxy, so assiduously marketed by the ruling interests that it affected people across the entire political spectrum.
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Michael Parenti (Blackshirts and Reds: Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism)
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Get up in the morning on a mission to save prospective clients from the shabby, ill-fitting, overpriced and worthless alternatives that those charlatans - who are your competition - are trying to get away with flogging them.
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Chris Murray (Selling with EASE: The Four Step Sales Cycle Found in Every Successful Business Transaction)
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Being a successful student is about more than reading, writing, and 'rithmetic. It's about being a skilled negotiator, a keen observer, and a master planner.
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Stefanie Weisman (The Secrets of Top Students: Tips, Tools, and Techniques for Acing High School and College)
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We all need salespeople who help people with the same enthusiasm shown by a small child describing the best Christmas present EVER
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Chris Murray (Selling with EASE: The Four Step Sales Cycle Found in Every Successful Business Transaction)
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Don’t tell me you’re passionate about your job – show me that you’re passionate about helping people like me.
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Chris Murray (Selling with EASE: The Four Step Sales Cycle Found in Every Successful Business Transaction)
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Think about it: if someone had found a way to manipulate human choice and free will – if someone actually had that kind of power – wouldn’t it be a tad surprising if they then decided to share their secret with the masses in a book for $20? Not to mention how it would be just very slightly unethical.
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Chris Murray (Selling with EASE: The Four Step Sales Cycle Found in Every Successful Business Transaction)
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AS IT TURNED out, Rylann wasn’t quite as good as she’d thought she was.
Over the last five years she’d prosecuted cases, she’d become quite skilled at reading defendants and their lawyers at the initial court
appearance. Given Quinn’s obvious nervousness, she’d originally predicted that his lawyer would be calling her within two weeks to negotiate a
plea agreement.
Instead, it took him two weeks and three days to make that call.
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Julie James (About That Night (FBI/US Attorney, #3))
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What’s the return on investment of college? What’s the return on investment of having children, spending time with friends, listening to music, reading a book? The things that are most worth doing are worth doing for their own sake. Anyone who tells you that the sole purpose of education is the acquisition of negotiable skills is attempting to reduce you to a productive employee at work, a gullible consumer in the market, and a docile subject of the state. What’s at stake, when we ask what college is for, is nothing less than our ability to remain fully human.
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William Deresiewicz (Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of the American Elite and the Way to a Meaningful Life)
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We all need salespeople who deliver value that wasn’t there before they arrived.
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Chris Murray (Selling with EASE: The Four Step Sales Cycle Found in Every Successful Business Transaction)
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The salesperson you’d ideally like to be and the salesperson you’d like to encounter as a customer should roughly be the same, shouldn’t they?
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Chris Murray (Selling with EASE: The Four Step Sales Cycle Found in Every Successful Business Transaction)
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Solving the problem means helping the customer to understand why you’re the best person for the job
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Chris Murray (Selling with EASE: The Four Step Sales Cycle Found in Every Successful Business Transaction)
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Focusing on Earning the Right will have an incredible effect on the success of every single sales call that you will make from this day on.
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Chris Murray (Selling with EASE: The Four Step Sales Cycle Found in Every Successful Business Transaction)
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We all need salespeople with humility, honesty, integrity, empathy and an old-fashioned work ethic that ensures the job gets done.
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Chris Murray (Selling with EASE: The Four Step Sales Cycle Found in Every Successful Business Transaction)
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As noted by a Chinese proverb, even the palest ink is better than the best memory.
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George J. Siedel (Negotiating for Success: Essential Strategies and Skills)
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Grey Hair Doesn't Guarantee Grey Matter.
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Rahul Guhathakurta
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As you can see, “No” has a lot of skills. ■“No” allows the real issues to be brought forth; ■“No” protects people from making—and lets them correct—ineffective decisions; ■“No” slows things down so that people can freely embrace their decisions and the agreements they enter into; ■“No” helps people feel safe, secure, emotionally comfortable, and in control of their decisions; ■“No” moves everyone’s efforts forward.
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Chris Voss (Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It)
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Negotiation is a fundamental skill for board members. Whether it's negotiating with management over strategic direction, with investors over funding terms, or with stakeholders over environmental impact, the ability to negotiate effectively is essential for achieving the best possible outcomes for all parties involved.
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Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr. (Board Room Blitz: Mastering the Art of Corporate Governance)
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There is some virtue to be learnt from every part of the world — teamwork from Japan, precision from Germany, marketing and negotiation skills from the United States, courtesy, decency and refinement from the British, and human values from the villages of India. You
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Ravi Shankar (Management Mantras)
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The skills of selling and marketing are diffcult for most people, primarily due to their fear of rejection. The better you are at communicating, negotiating, and handling your fear of rejection, the easier life is.
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Robert T. Kiyosaki (Rich Dad, Poor Dad)
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I’d prefer not to say what my current salary is because if it’s higher than what you expect to pay for this job, I wouldn’t want that to eliminate me from being considered for this job—because I might be willing to accept less for the right position—and, if it’s lower than what this job would pay, I wouldn’t want to sell myself short either— I’m sure you can understand.
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John Z. Sonmez (Soft Skills: The Software Developer's Life Manual)
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The point is that television does not reveal who the best man is. In fact, television makes impossible the determination of who is better than whom, if we mean by 'better' such things as more capable in negotiation, more imaginative in executive skill, more knowledgeable about international affairs, more understanding of the interrelations of economic systems, and so on. The reason has, almost entirely, to do with 'image.' But not because politicians are preoccupied with presenting themselves in the best possible light. After all, who isn't? It is a rare and deeply disturbed person who does not wish to project a favorable image. But television gives image a bad name. For on television the politician does not so much offer the audience an image of himself, as offer himself as an image of the audience. And therein lies one of the most powerful influences of the television commercial on political discourse.
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Neil Postman (Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business)
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If someone is distraught, angry, or concerned, validating them is your best chance at getting them to be receptive to feedback. The great thing is, you can validate someone even if you disagree with them. Learning to do so will give you a valuable tool for navigating confrontations, negotiations, disagreements, and the like.
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Michael S. Sorensen (I Hear You: The Surprisingly Simple Skill Behind Extraordinary Relationships)
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Everybody sells something to somebody every day, whether it’s a product, a service or just a case of making sure that they get their own way.
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Chris Murray
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If you don’t earn their trust at the beginning, they sure as hell won’t trust you with their money at the end.
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Chris Murray (Selling with EASE: The Four Step Sales Cycle Found in Every Successful Business Transaction)
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When your pipeline is full – with business coming out of your ears – the notion of people asking for a discount will sound hilarious, because you’ll already be at capacity
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Chris Murray (Selling with EASE: The Four Step Sales Cycle Found in Every Successful Business Transaction)
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A good negotiator prepares, going in, to be ready for possible surprises; a great negotiator aims to use her skills to reveal the surprises she is certain to find. Don’t commit to assumptions; instead, view them as hypotheses and use the negotiation to test them rigorously. People who view negotiation as a battle of arguments become overwhelmed by the voices in their head. Negotiation is not an act of battle; it’s a process of discovery. The goal is to uncover as much information as possible. To quiet the voices in your head, make your sole and all-encompassing focus the other person and what they have to say. Slow. It. Down. Going too fast is one of the mistakes all negotiators are prone to making. If we’re too much in a hurry, people can feel as if they’re not being heard. You risk undermining the rapport and trust you’ve built. Put a smile on your face. When people are in a positive frame of mind, they think more quickly, and are more likely to collaborate and problem-solve (instead of fight and resist). Positivity creates mental agility in both you and your counterpart.
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Chris Voss (Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It)
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Salespeople who think that it’s all about price aren’t required: If it can be sold on the internet at the lowest price, you can take the huge cost of a sales team out of the equation.
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Chris Murray (Selling with EASE: The Four Step Sales Cycle Found in Every Successful Business Transaction)
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Tactical Empathy. This is listening as a martial art, balancing the subtle behaviors of emotional intelligence and the assertive skills of influence, to gain access to the mind of another person.
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Chris Voss (Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It)
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A family meeting is a procedure, and it requires no less skill than performing an operation.” One basic mistake is conceptual. To most doctors, the primary purpose of a discussion about terminal illness is to determine what people want—whether they want chemo or not, whether they want to be resuscitated or not, whether they want hospice or not. We focus on laying out the facts and the options. But that’s a mistake, Block said. “A large part of the task is helping people negotiate the overwhelming anxiety—anxiety about death, anxiety about suffering, anxiety about loved ones, anxiety about finances,” she explained. “There are many worries and real terrors.” No
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Atul Gawande (Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End)
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Indeed, while everybody in his rich-guy social circle knew about his wide-ranging ignorance—Trump, the businessman, could not even read a balance sheet, and Trump, who had campaigned on his deal-making skills, was, with his inattention to details, a terrible negotiator—they yet found him somehow instinctive. That was the word. He was a force of personality. He could make you believe.
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Michael Wolff (Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House)
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centerpiece of this book, is called Tactical Empathy. This is listening as a martial art, balancing the subtle behaviors of emotional intelligence and the assertive skills of influence, to gain access to the mind of another person. Contrary to popular opinion, listening is not a passive activity. It is the most active thing you can do.
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Chris Voss (Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It)
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Good negotiators, going in, know they have to be ready for possible surprises; great negotiators aim to use their skills to reveal the surprises they are certain exist.
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Chris Voss (Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It)
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We all need salespeople who understand the problem and can deliver a solution that works brilliantly for both sides.
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Chris Murray (Selling with EASE: The Four Step Sales Cycle Found in Every Successful Business Transaction)
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Remember: when you walk into a DIY store to buy a drill, you don’t want the drill. Your end goal is to make a hole and, in order to achieve this, you have to buy the drill.
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Chris Murray (Selling with EASE: The Four Step Sales Cycle Found in Every Successful Business Transaction)
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If what you sell doesn’t help me then why are you knocking on my door?
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Chris Murray (Selling with EASE: The Four Step Sales Cycle Found in Every Successful Business Transaction)
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Don't burn your bridges until you build better ones.
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Matshona Dhliwayo
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Clover was finally going to learn how to fold a fitted sheet. Of course, she was going to gain that skill set in the prison laundry after she killed Sawyer.
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Avery Flynn (The Negotiator (Harbor City, #1))
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People skills in leadership are not negotiable.
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Cristina Imre
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In many instances, the words “sell” and “influence” are completely interchangeable.
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Chris Murray (Selling with EASE: The Four Step Sales Cycle Found in Every Successful Business Transaction)
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Asking the appropriate questions means understanding exactly what your customer is trying to achieve
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Chris Murray (Selling with EASE: The Four Step Sales Cycle Found in Every Successful Business Transaction)
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Earn the Right - Ensure you put this chunk of Sales Tetris in place first and all the other pieces just take their own positions naturally.
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Chris Murray (Selling with EASE: The Four Step Sales Cycle Found in Every Successful Business Transaction)
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Life is negotiation!
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George J. Siedel (Negotiating for Success: Essential Strategies and Skills)
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22% of current business-to-business salespeople will be replaced by search engines within the next five years.
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Chris Murray (Selling with EASE: The Four Step Sales Cycle Found in Every Successful Business Transaction)
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85 percent of a person's financial success is due to skills in “human engineering,” or in other words, personality and ability to communicate, negotiate and lead.
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Dominic Mann (Body Language: How to Impress, Connect, and Influence by Mastering Powerful Body Language)
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This third law – to never disagree – is the critical skill that will allow you to become an effective negotiator, speaker, salesperson, business leader, writer – and partner.
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Steven Bartlett (The Diary of a CEO: The 33 Laws of Business and Life)
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Splitting the difference is wearing one black and one brown shoe, so don't compromise. Meeting halfway often leads to bad deals for both sides.
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Chris Voss (Never Split the Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It)
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No "offense" should be taken, as "none" has been given.
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Rahul Guhathakurta
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entrepreneurship requires a range of skills, from leadership and team building to negotiation, innovation, and decision-making.
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Tina Seelig (What I Wish I Knew When I Was 20: A Crash Course on Making Your Place in the World)
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A good negotiator sometimes win more out of a deal than he expected.
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Amit Kalantri (Wealth of Words)
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Negotiation means willfully entering into a professional conflict.
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Amit Kalantri (Wealth of Words)
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During the negotiation information is more valuable than eloquence.
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Amit Kalantri (Wealth of Words)
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We all desperately need brilliant sales professionals far more than ever before – to help us, guide us, keep us informed and stop us from making diabolically stupid buying decisions.
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Chris Murray (Selling with EASE: The Four Step Sales Cycle Found in Every Successful Business Transaction)
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Abraham was far from just a wandering Hebrew, as often popularly believed, but was rather a ranking Sumerian from Ur. “Coming to Egypt, Abraham and Sarah were taken to the Pharaoh’s court; in Canaan, Abraham made treaties with the local rulers,” he noted. “This is not the image of a nomad pillaging others’ settlements; it is the image of a personage of high standing skilled in negotiation and diplomacy.
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Jim Marrs (Our Occulted History: Do the Global Elite Conceal Ancient Aliens?)
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We always want to love the recipients of our charity," the doctor said, negotiating a sharp bend in the road with a surprising demonstration of steering skill, "but it is not necessary. Indeed, it is sometimes not possible.
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Alan Bradley (A Red Herring Without Mustard (Flavia de Luce #3))
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Solving large, difficult problems may earn you a reputation for skillful negotiation, but Sun Tzu asserts that this supposed achievement is actually a form of failure, and having true wisdom means preventing difficult problems from arising in the first place. Ironically, this highest form of efficacy will often go unnoticed by many people, since the leader’s work seems so effortless and subtle. This foresight may not earn you a great reputation, but Sun Tzu also believed that bravery and greatness involve shunning what other people think of you, both praise and criticism, and doing what you believe is the right thing. A brave person forgoes his or her own ego and well-being, and acts with neither fear of punishment nor expectation of reward.
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Sun Tzu (The Art of War)
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Lauren frowned at Matthias. “We’re not dating.” It figured that was the part of the conversation she’d focus on. Garrett couldn’t imagine what Matthias would do with that information later. “Are you sure?” Matthias asked. Lauren’s frown only deepened. “Wouldn’t I know?” “Given Garrett’s skill with women? Possibly not.
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HelenKay Dimon (The Negotiator (Games People Play, #2.5))
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Sure, negotiation techniques and assertiveness skills can easily be learned by taking courses or reading books. But the truth is, if you’re going to command more—whether it’s a higher fee, more flexible hours, or a corner office—you have to truly believe you’re worth it. People will always respond far more to your “vibes” than your words.
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Barbara Stanny (now Huson) (Secrets of Six-Figure Women)
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If you want to increase your neural resonance skills, take a moment right now and practice. Turn your attention to someone who’s talking near you, or watch a person being interviewed on TV. As they talk, imagine that you are that person. Visualize yourself in the position they describe and put in as much detail as you can, as if you were actually there.
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Chris Voss (Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It)
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The most important specialized skills are sales and marketing. The ability to sell—to communicate to another human being, be it a customer, employee, boss, spouse, or child—is the base skill of personal success. Communication skills such as writing, speaking, and negotiating are crucial to a life of success. These are skills I work on constantly, attending courses or buying educational resources to expand my knowledge.
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Robert T. Kiyosaki (Rich Dad Poor Dad: What The Rich Teach Their Kids About Money - That The Poor And Middle Class Do Not!)
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Yes, in the same way we are not supposed to hedge our language, but research has found that hedging can offset the likability penalty women face when they do negotiate. One script that negotiation expert Hannah Riley Bowles suggests: "I don't know how typical it is for people at my level to negotiate, but I'm hopeful that you'll see my skill at negotiating as something important that I can bring to the job." Basically, you've reframed your greedy, unfeminine need for money as a professional asset.
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Jess Bennett (Feminist Fight Club: An Office Survival Manual for a Sexist Workplace)
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Listening and oral communication Adaptability and creative responses to setbacks and obstacles Personal management, confidence, motivation to work toward goals, a sense of wanting to develop one’s career and take pride in accomplishments Group and interpersonal effectiveness, cooperativeness and teamwork, skills at negotiating disagreements Effectiveness in the organization, wanting to make a contribution, leadership potential10 Of seven desired traits, just one was academic: competence in reading, writing, and math.
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Daniel Goleman (Working With Emotional Intelligence)
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Would you like the rhythm of your heart to be calm?
Would you like the music of your soul towards harmony and fulfillment?
Deal with any conflict constructively to reduce stress, tension and other unwanted collateral effects. Sharing you strategies on how to deal with a conflict:
- take care of yourself and know well yourself
- clarify what personal needs threatened by the conflict
- identify a safe place and appropriate time for negotiation
- seek first to understand than be understood, listening skills is very important.
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Angelica Hopes (Landscapes of a Heart, Whispers of a Soul (Speranza Odyssey Trilogy, #1))
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Here’s the simple litmus test I use: if there’s communication going on—if the other person is talking to you, even if it’s aggressively or insultingly—you’re still in social aggression mode, which means you should run away, or use your social skills to negotiate your way out of the confrontation. If there’s no communication, or the other person is already in the process of taking physical action, and there’s no available exit, the situation is asocial. You’re facing imminent grievous bodily harm and your only option at that point is to fight back.
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Tim Larkin (When Violence Is the Answer: Learning How to Do What It Takes When Your Life Is at Stake)
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Competition is the spice of sports; but if you make spice the whole meal you'll be sick.
The simplest single-celled organism oscillates to a number of different frequencies, at the atomic, molecular, sub-cellular, and cellular levels. Microscopic movies of these organisms are striking for the ceaseless, rhythmic pulsation that is revealed. In an organism as complex as a human being, the frequencies of oscillation and the interactions between those frequencies are multitudinous. -George Leonard
Learning any new skill involves relatively brief spurts of progress, each of which is followed by a slight decline to a plateau somewhat higher in most cases than that which preceded it…the upward spurts vary; the plateaus have their own dips and rises along the way…To take the master’s journey, you have to practice diligently, striving to hone your skills, to attain new levels of competence. But while doing so–and this is the inexorable–fact of the journey–you also have to be willing to spend most of your time on a plateau, to keep practicing even when you seem to be getting nowhere. (Mastery, p. 14-15).
Backsliding is a universal experience. Every one of us resists significant change, no matter whether it’s for the worse or for the better. Our body, brain and behavior have a built-in tendency to stay the same within rather narrow limits, and to snap back when changed…Be aware of the way homeostasis works…Expect resistance and backlash. Realize that when the alarm bells start ringing, it doesn’t necessarily mean you’re sick or crazy or lazy or that you’ve made a bad decision in embarking on the journey of mastery. In fact, you might take these signals as an indication that your life is definitely changing–just what you’ve wanted….Be willing to negotiate with your resistance to change.
Our preoccupation with goals, results, and the quick fix has separated us from our own experiences…there are all of those chores that most of us can’t avoid: cleaning, straightening, raking leaves, shopping for groceries, driving the children to various activities, preparing food, washing dishes, washing the car, commuting, performing the routine, repetitive aspects of our jobs….Take driving, for instance. Say you need to drive ten miles to visit a friend. You might consider the trip itself as in-between-time, something to get over with. Or you could take it as an opportunity for the practice of mastery. In that case, you would approach your car in a state of full awareness…Take a moment to walk around the car and check its external condition, especially that of the tires…Open the door and get in the driver’s seat, performing the next series of actions as a ritual: fastening the seatbelt, adjusting the seat and the rearview mirror…As you begin moving, make a silent affirmation that you’ll take responsibility for the space all around your vehicle at all times…We tend to downgrade driving as a skill simply because it’s so common. Actually maneuvering a car through varying conditions of weather, traffic, and road surface calls for an extremely high level of perception, concentration, coordination, and judgement…Driving can be high art…Ultimately, nothing in this life is “commonplace,” nothing is “in between.” The threads that join your every act, your every thought, are infinite. All paths of mastery eventually merge.
[Each person has a] vantage point that offers a truth of its own.
We are the architects of creation and all things are connected through us.
The Universe is continually at its work of restructuring itself at a higher, more complex, more elegant level . . . The intention of the universe is evolution.
We exist as a locus of waves that spreads its influence to the ends of space and time.
The whole of a thing is contained in each of its parts.
We are completely, firmly, absolutely connected with all of existence.
We are indeed in relationship to all that is.
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George Leonard
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Love is a constant negotiation, a constant conversation; to love someone is to lay yourself open to rejection and abandonment; love is something you can earn but not extort. It is an arena in which you are not in control, because someone else also has rights and decisions; it is a collaborative process; making love is at its best a process in which those negotiations become joy and play. So much sexual violence is a refusal of that vulnerability; so many of the instructions about masculinity inculcate a lack of skills and willingness to negotiate in good faith.
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Rebecca Solnit (The Mother of All Questions)
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You need to get a job, but you also need to get a life. What’s the return on investment of college? What’s the return on investment of having children, spending time with friends, listening to music, reading a book? The things that are most worth doing are worth doing for their own sake. Anyone who tells you that the sole purpose of education is the acquisition of negotiable skills is attempting to reduce you to a productive employee at work, a gullible consumer in the market, and a docile subject of the state. What’s at stake, when we ask what college is for, is nothing less than our ability to remain fully human.
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William Deresiewicz (Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of the American Elite and the Way to a Meaningful Life)
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The main management skills needed for success are: 1) Management of cash flow, 2) Management of systems, and 3) Management of people. And the most important specialized skills are sales and marketing. Communication skills such as writing, speaking, and negotiating are crucial to a life of success. These are skills Robert works on constantly, attending courses or buying educational resources to expand his knowledge. The skills of selling and marketing are difficult for most people, primarily due to their fear of rejection. The better you are at communicating, negotiating, and handling your fear of rejection, the easier life is.
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Robert T. Kiyosaki (Rich Dad Poor Dad: What the Rich Teach Their Kids About Money That the Poor and Middle Class Do Not!)
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Fisher outlines the different hormones and personalities for me. Those with lots of dopamine, she says, are likely to be "Explorers," optimistic risk takers. Serotonin breeds "Builders," who tend to be calm and organized and work well in groups. Those brimming with testosterone she calls "Directors." Two thirds of them are men. They're analytical, logical, and often musical. (They sound suspiciously like Numerati to me.) In the fourth group, their brains coursing with estrogen, are the negotiators. They're verbal and intuitive, and have good people skills. You'd think they'd be built for relationships. But sometimes, Fisher says, "they're so pliable that they turn into placaters. You don't know who they are.
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Stephen Baker (The Numerati)
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I have two settings as a dad: normal and special mode. Normal mode is used with my eldest son, aged eight. It involves all the regular dad stuff, such as knowing the answers to every possible question, teaching him to ride his bike and generally being hands-on and involved. Special mode is quite different. All of the skills of normal mode apply, and then some. Special mode involves enormous powers of endurance, negotiation, problem solving, vigilance, strength, forbearance, deciphering, arbitration and above all, patience. To be honest, I’m a bit rubbish at all of those things but I strive for them nonetheless, because special mode is required for my youngest son, aged five and diagnosed as high functioning autistic. The two styles of parenting could not be more different.
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B's Dad (Life with an Autistic Son)
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homeowner, and come away with $20,000 or $30,000 cash in pocket. Success in real estate required skills that Rob believed were some of his strongest: the work ethic to locate those homes, the social skills to negotiate with people ranging from rich lenders to working-class contractors to poor renters, and the desire to make money in crafty but fundamentally honest ways. And, at least in Rob’s idealized vision, he would be making a positive mark in the world. Because a house meant shelter. It meant heat. It meant security. Above all, it meant family. Some friends who knew about Skeet’s passing felt that something equally powerful drove him: Rob had lost not only his father but also the goal of releasing his father in which he’d invested so much work since high school. He’d achieved almost every objective he’d ever laid out
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Jeff Hobbs (The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace: A Brilliant Young Man Who Left Newark for the Ivy League)
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Fair trade care webs draw on sick and disabled knowledge about care. Sick and disabled folks have many superpowers: one of them is that many of us have sophisticated, highly developed skills around negotiating and organizing care. Many sick and disabled people have experienced receiving shitty, condescending, “poor you!” charity-based care that’s worse than no care at all—whether it’s from medical staff or our friends and families. Many disabled people also face receiving abusive or coercive care, in medical facilities and nursing homes and from our families and personal care assistants. We’re also offered unsolicited medical advice, from doctors and strangers on the street (who are totally sure carrot juice will cure our MS) every day of our lives. All of those offers are “well meaning,” but they’re also intrusive, unasked for, and mostly coming from a place of discomfort with disability and wanting to “fix” us.
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Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha (Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice)
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Society has traditionally reinforced the idea that girls are inferior to boys, that girls can't take care of themselves, and that women need men to take care of them. We've all seen men portrayed in the media as stronger, more competent, and smarter than women, while women are often portrayed as highly emotional, indecisive, scatterbrained, passive, illogical, manipulative, and even malevolent. Such stereotypes further damage a young girl's ability to see herself as a strong and worthwhile person. Coupled with these views is the disparity between the accomplishments for which boys are admired and those for which girls are admired. While girls may be praised for their manners and appearance, boys are often praised for academic achievements and physical strength. Girls may also be discouraged from exploring and mastering life and encouraged instead to develop skills to manipulate others to negotiate in the world for them. What these girls are getting are lessons in helplessness.
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Susan Forward (Men Who Hate Women and the Women Who Love Them: When Loving Hurts and You Don't Know Why)
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■A good negotiator prepares, going in, to be ready for possible surprises; a great negotiator aims to use her skills to reveal the surprises she is certain to find. ■Don’t commit to assumptions; instead, view them as hypotheses and use the negotiation to test them rigorously. ■People who view negotiation as a battle of arguments become overwhelmed by the voices in their head. Negotiation is not an act of battle; it’s a process of discovery. The goal is to uncover as much information as possible. ■To quiet the voices in your head, make your sole and all-encompassing focus the other person and what they have to say. ■Slow. It. Down. Going too fast is one of the mistakes all negotiators are prone to making. If we’re too much in a hurry, people can feel as if they’re not being heard. You risk undermining the rapport and trust you’ve built. ■Put a smile on your face. When people are in a positive frame of mind, they think more quickly, and are more likely to collaborate and problem-solve (instead of fight and resist). Positivity creates mental agility in both you and your counterpart. There are three voice tones available to negotiators: 1.The late-night FM DJ voice: Use selectively to make a point. Inflect your voice downward, keeping it calm and slow. When done properly, you create an aura of authority and trustworthiness without triggering defensiveness. 2.The positive/playful voice: Should be your default voice. It’s the voice of an easygoing, good-natured person. Your attitude is light and encouraging. The key here is to relax and smile while you’re talking. 3.The direct or assertive voice: Used rarely. Will cause problems and create pushback. ■Mirrors work magic. Repeat the last three words (or the critical one to three words) of what someone has just said. We fear what’s different and are drawn to what’s similar. Mirroring is the art of insinuating similarity, which facilitates bonding. Use mirrors to encourage the other side to empathize and bond with you, keep people talking, buy your side time to regroup, and encourage your counterparts to reveal their strategy.
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Chris Voss (Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It)
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That trust takes time. But when you love each other, it shouldn't be scary to be vulnerable and it shouldn't be hard to compromise.
I'd like to share with you what we like to call SACRED HEALING. We use it every day of our marriage, and it hasn't failed us yet!
When you have something you need to communicate, those words are SACRED:
1. STOP when you register something's wrong.
2. ADMIT that you have an issue to discuss.
3. CALMLY express your feelings.
4. REFLECT on why you're feeling this way.
5. ENGAGE with your partner to actively fix the issue.
6. DEVOTE time after conflict to returning to a loving state.
And when your partner is saying something SACRED, it's your job to get the leader of the HEALING:
1. HEAR your partner's words.
2. ENGAGE with your questions for clarification and understanding.
3. ACKNOWLEDGE that what they're saying is important.
4. LOOK BACK on your own role in the conflict.
5. INITIATE discussion without anger or defense.
6. NEGOTIATE a solution with pure intentions.
7. GROW as partners and individuals by fixing the problem as a team.
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Christina Lauren (The Honey-Don't List)
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Believe me," Dr. Tamalet summed up, "if you wanted that operation in France, you could get it"
Which is, of course, the boon and the bane of France's health care system. It offers a maximum of free choice among skillful doctors and well-equipped hospitals, with little or not waiting, at bargain-basement prices [in out-of-pocket terms to the consumer]. It's a system that enables the French to live longer and healthier lives, with zero risk of financial loss due to illness. But somebody has to pay for all that high-quality, ready-when-you-need-it care--and the patients, so far, have not been willing to do so. As a result, the major health insurance funds are all operating at a deficit, and the costs of the health care system are increasing significantly faster than the economy as a whole. That's why the doctors keep striking and the sickness funds keep negotiating and the government keeps going back to the drawing board, with a new 'major health care reform' every few years. So far, the saving grace for France's system has been the high level of efficiency, as exemplified by the 'carte vitale,' that keeps administrative costs low--much lower than in the United States.
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T.R. Reid (The Healing of America: A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Health Care)
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to be open and straightforward about their needs for attention in a social setting. It is equally rare for members of a group in American culture to honestly and openly express needs that might be in conflict with that individual’s needs. This value of not just honestly but also openly fully revealing the true feelings and needs present in the group is vital for it’s members to feel emotional safe. It is also vital to keeping the group energy up and for giving the feedback that allows it’s members to know themselves, where they stand in relation to others and for spiritual/psychological growth. Usually group members will simply not object to an individual’s request to take the floor—but then act out in a passive-aggressive manner, by making noise or jokes, or looking at their watches. Sometimes they will take the even more violent and insidious action of going brain-dead while pasting a jack-o’-lantern smile on their faces. Often when someone asks to read something or play a song in a social setting, the response is a polite, lifeless “That would be nice.” In this case, N.I.C.E. means “No Integrity or Congruence Expressed” or “Not Into Communicating Emotion.” So while the sharer is exposing his or her vulnerable creation, others are talking, whispering to each other, or sitting looking like they are waiting for the dental assistant to tell them to come on back. No wonder it’s so scary to ask for people’s attention. In “nice” cultures, you are probably not going to get a straight, open answer. People let themselves be oppressed by someone’s request—and then blame that someone for not being psychic enough to know that “Yes” meant “No.” When were we ever taught to negotiate our needs in relation to a group of people? In a classroom? Never! The teacher is expected to take all the responsibility for controlling who gets heard, about what, and for how long. There is no real opportunity to learn how to nonviolently negotiate for the floor. The only way I was able to pirate away a little of the group’s attention in the school I attended was through adolescent antics like making myself fart to get a few giggles, or asking the teacher questions like, “Why do they call them hemorrhoids and not asteroids?” or “If a number two pencil is so popular, why is it still number two,” or “What is another word for thesaurus?” Some educational psychologists say that western culture schools are designed to socialize children into what is really a caste system disguised as a democracy. And in once sense it is probably good preparation for the lack of true democratic dynamics in our culture’s daily living. I can remember several bosses in my past reminding me “This is not a democracy, this is a job.” I remember many experiences in social groups, church groups, and volunteer organizations in which the person with the loudest voice, most shaming language, or outstanding skills for guilting others, controlled the direction of the group. Other times the pain and chaos of the group discussion becomes so great that people start begging for a tyrant to take charge. Many times people become so frustrated, confused and anxious that they would prefer the order that oppression brings to the struggle that goes on in groups without “democracy skills.” I have much different experiences in groups I work with in Europe and in certain intentional communities such as the Lost Valley Educational Center in Eugene, Oregon, where the majority of people have learned “democracy skills.” I can not remember one job, school, church group, volunteer organization or town meeting in mainstream America where “democracy skills” were taught or practiced.
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Kelly Bryson (Don't Be Nice, Be Real)
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The Irish and Italian immigrants who came to New York in the same period didn’t have that advantage. They didn’t have a skill specific to the urban economy. They went to work as day laborers and domestics and construction workers—jobs where you could show up for work every day for thirty years and never learn market research and manufacturing and how to navigate the popular culture and how to negotiate with the Yankees, who ran the world. Or consider the fate of the Mexicans who immigrated to California between 1900 and the end of the 1920s to work in the fields of the big fruit and vegetable growers. They simply exchanged the life of a feudal peasant in Mexico for the life of a feudal peasant in California. “The conditions in the garment industry were every bit as bad,” Soyer goes on. “But as a garment worker, you were closer to the center of the industry. If you are working in a field in California, you have no clue what’s happening to the produce when it gets on the truck. If you are working in a small garment shop, your wages are low, and your conditions are terrible, and your hours are long, but you can see exactly what the successful people are doing, and you can see how you can set up your own job.”*
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Malcolm Gladwell (Outliers: The Story of Success)
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I want you to write a narrative, a narrative from the future of your city, and you can date it, set it out one year from now, five years from now, a decade from now, a generation from now, and write it as a case study looking back, looking back at the change that you wanted in your city, looking back at the cause that you were championing, and describing the ways that that change and that cause came, in fact, to succeed. Describe the values of your fellow citizens that you activated, and the sense of moral purpose that you were able to stir. Recount all the different ways that you engaged the systems of government, of the marketplace, of social institutions, of faith organizations, of the media. Catalog all the skills you had to deploy, how to negotiate, how to advocate, how to frame issues, how to navigate diversity in conflict, all those skills that enabled you to bring folks on board and to overcome resistance. What you'll be doing when you write that narrative is you'll be discovering how to read power, and in the process, how to write power. So share what you write, do you what you write, and then share what you do.
[...] Together, we can create a great network of city that will be the most powerful collective laboratory for self-government this planet has ever seen. We have the power to do that.
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Eric Liu
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Construction finally began that winter, and by early 1974 Syncrude’s Mildred Lake site bustled with 1,500 construction workers. But the deal remained tentative as cost estimates grew beyond the initial $1.5 billion to $2 billion or more and the federal government’s new budget arrived with punitive new taxes for oil and gas exports. Then, in the first week of December, one of the Syncrude partners, Atlantic Richfield, summarily quit the consortium, leaving a 30 percent hole in its financing. A mad scramble ensued in search of a solution. Phone calls pinged back and forth between government officials in Edmonton and Ottawa. Finally, on the morning of February 3, 1975, executives from the Syn-crude partner companies and cabinet ministers from the Alberta, Ontario and federal governments met without fanfare and outside the media’s brightest spotlights at an airport hotel in Winnipeg to negotiate a deal to save the project. Lougheed and Ontario premier Bill Davis both attended, along with their energy ministers. Federal mines minister Donald Macdonald represented Pierre Trudeau’s government, accompanied by Trudeau’s ambitious Treasury Board president, Jean Chrétien. Macdonald and Davis, both Upper Canadian patricians in the classic mould, were put off by Lougheed’s blunt style. By midday, the Albertans were convinced Macdonald would not be willing to compromise enough to reach a deal. Rumours in Lougheed’s camp after the fact had it that over lunch, Chrétien persuaded the mines minister to accept the offer on the table. Two days later, Chrétien rose in the House of Commons to announce that the federal government would be taking a 15 percent equity stake in the Syn-crude project, with Alberta owning 10 percent and Ontario the remaining 5 percent. In the coming years, it would be Lougheed, with his steadfast support and multimillion-dollar investments in SAGD, who would be seen as the Patch’s great public sector champion. But it was Chrétien, “the little guy from Shawinigan,” whose backroom deal-making skills had saved Syncrude
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Chris Turner (The Patch: The People, Pipelines, and Politics of the Oil Sands)
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Fidel Castro, who always enjoyed sports, promoted programs that helped Cuba become a front-runner in Latin America. The island nation fields outstanding baseball, soccer, basketball and volleyball teams. It also excels in amateur boxing. Believing that sports should be available for everyone, not just the privileged few, the phrase “Sports for all” is a motto frequently used. When Castro took power, he abolished all professional sports. Only amateur baseball has been played in Cuba since 1961.
An unexpected consequence of this initiative was that many players discovered that they could get much better deals if they left Cuba. As an attempt to prevent this, Fidel forbade players from playing abroad and if they did leave the island, he would prevent their families from joining them.
Originally, many Cuban baseball players played for teams in the American Negro league. This ended when Jackie Robinson was allowed to play with the Brooklyn Dodgers during the late 1940’s. Afterwards, all Cuban baseball players played for the regular leagues regardless of their race. The Negro National League ceased after the 1948 season, and the last All-Star game was held in 1962. The Indianapolis Clowns were the last remaining Negro/Latin league team and played until 1966.
Cuban players with greater skill joined the Major League Baseball (MLB) teams. If they defected to the United States directly, they had to enter the MLB Draft. However, if they first defected to another country they could become free agents. Knowing this, many came to the United States via Mexico.
In all, about 84 players have defected from Cuba since the Revolution. The largest contract ever given to a defector from Cuba was to Rusney Castillo. In 2014, the outfielder negotiated a seven-year contract with the Boston Red Sox for $72.5 million.
Starting in 1999, about 21 Cuban soccer players have defected to the United States. The Cuban government considers these defectors as disloyal and treats their families with disrespect, even banning them from taking part in national sports.
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Hank Bracker
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In a typical crash, for example, the weather is poor—not terrible, necessarily, but bad enough that the pilot feels a little bit more stressed than usual. In an overwhelming number of crashes, the plane is behind schedule, so the pilots are hurrying. In 52 percent of crashes, the pilot at the time of the accident has been awake for twelve hours or more, meaning that he is tired and not thinking sharply. And 44 percent of the time, the two pilots have never flown together before, so they’re not comfortable with each other. Then the errors start—and it’s not just one error. The typical accident involves seven consecutive human errors. One of the pilots does something wrong that by itself is not a problem. Then one of them makes another error on top of that, which combined with the first error still does not amount to catastrophe. But then they make a third error on top of that, and then another and another and another and another, and it is the combination of all those errors that leads to disaster. These seven errors, furthermore, are rarely problems of knowledge or flying skill. It’s not that the pilot has to negotiate some critical technical maneuver and fails. The kinds of errors that cause plane crashes are invariably errors of teamwork and communication. One pilot knows something important and somehow doesn’t tell the other pilot. One pilot does something wrong, and the other pilot doesn’t catch the error. A tricky situation needs to be resolved through a complex series of steps—and somehow the pilots fail to coordinate and miss one of them. “The whole flight-deck design is intended to be operated by two people, and that operation works best when you have one person checking the other, or both people willing to participate,” says Earl Weener, who was for many years chief engineer for safety at Boeing. “Airplanes are very unforgiving if you don’t do things right. And for a long time it’s been clear that if you have two people operating the airplane cooperatively, you will have a safer operation than if you have a single pilot flying the plane and another person who is simply there to take over if the pilot is incapacitated.
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Malcolm Gladwell (Outliers: The Story of Success)
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These are things to have under your belt in order to make and strengthen boundaries: Educate them. To be blunt, narcissists aren’t exactly in tune with their interpersonal or communication skills. Try using incentives or other motivators to get them to pay attention to how their behavior affects others. They may not empathize or seem to get what you’re saying, but at least you can say you tried to look at it from your point of view. Understand your personal rights. In order to demand being treated fairly and with respect, it’s important to know what your rights are. You’re allowed to say no, you have a right to your feelings, you are allowed privacy—and there are no wedding or relationship vows that say you are at the beck and call of your partner. When a person has been abused for a long time, they may lack the confidence or self-esteem to take a stand on their rights. The more power they take back, though, the less the abuser has. Be assertive. This is something that depends on confidence, and will take practice, but it’s worth it. Being assertive means standing up for yourself and exuding pride in who you are. Put your strategies into play. After the information you’ve absorbed so far, you have an advantage in that you are aware of your wants, what the narcissist demands, what you are able to do and those secret tiny areas you may have power over. Tap into these areas to put together your own strategies. Re-set your boundaries. A boundary is an unseen line in the sand. It determines the point you won’t allow others to cross over or they’ll hurt you. These are non-negotiable and others must be aware of them and respect them. But you have to know what those lines are before making them clear to others. Have consequences. As an extension of the above point, if a person tries ignoring your boundaries, make sure you give a consequence. There doesn't need to be a threat, but more saying, “If you ________, we can’t hang out/date/talk/etc.” You’re just saying that crossing the boundary hurts you so if they choose to disregard it, you choose not to accept that treatment. The narcissist will not tolerate you standing up for yourself, but it’s still important. The act of advocating for yourself will increase your self-confidence, self-esteem and self-worth. Then you’ll be ready to recover and heal.
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Linda Hill (Recovery from Narcissistic Abuse, Gaslighting, Codependency and Complex PTSD (4 Books in 1): Workbook and Guide to Overcome Trauma, Toxic Relationships, ... and Recover from Unhealthy Relationships))
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There was a group of sixteen men and women waiting for him, and the talk centered on permits and expansion. Cordie was impressed with Aiden’s negotiating skills. He was fair yet got everything he wanted and then some. The women ogled him. She couldn’t be angry. The man was gorgeous.
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Anonymous
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When we radiate warmth and acceptance, conversations just seem to flow. When we enter a room with a level of comfort and enthusiasm, we attract people toward us. Smile at someone on the street, and as a reflex they’ll smile back. Understanding that reflex and putting it into practice is critical to the success of just about every negotiating skill there is to learn.
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Chris Voss (Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It)
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It’s almost laughably simple: for the FBI, a “mirror” is when you repeat the last three words (or the critical one to three words) of what someone has just said. Of the entirety of the FBI’s hostage negotiation skill set, mirroring is the closest one gets to a Jedi mind trick. Simple, and yet uncannily effective. By repeating back what people say, you trigger this mirroring instinct and your counterpart will inevitably elaborate on what was just said and sustain the process of connecting.
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Chris Voss (Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It)
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As I’ve worked with executives and students to develop these skills, I always try to reinforce the message that being right isn’t the key to a successful negotiation—having the right mindset is.
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Chris Voss (Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It)
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If there was any politician in America who reflected the Cold War and what it did to the country, it was Richard Nixon—the man and the era were made for each other. The anger and resentment that were a critical part of his temperament were not unlike the tensions running through the nation as its new anxieties grew. He himself seized on the anti-Communist issue earlier and more tenaciously than any other centrist politician in the country. In fact that was why he had been put on the ticket in the first place. His first congressional race in 1946, against a pleasant liberal incumbent named Jerry Voorhis, was marked by red-baiting so savage that it took Voorhis completely by surprise. Upon getting elected, Nixon wasted no time in asking for membership in the House Un-American Activities Committee. He was the committee member who first spotted the contradictions in Hiss’s seemingly impeccable case; in later years he was inclined to think of the case as one of his greatest victories, in which he had challenged and defeated a man who was not what he seemed, and represented the hated Eastern establishment. His career, though, was riddled with contradictions. Like many of his conservative colleagues, he had few reservations about implying that some fellow Americans, including perhaps the highest officials in the opposition party, were loyal to a hostile foreign power and willing to betray their fellow citizens. Yet by the end of his career, he became the man who opened the door to normalized relations with China (perhaps, thought some critics, he was the only politician in America who could do that without being attacked by Richard Nixon), and he was a pal of both the Soviet and Chinese Communist leadership. If he later surprised many long-standing critics with his trips to Moscow and Peking, he had shown his genuine diplomatic skills much earlier in the way he balanced the demands of the warring factions within his own party. He never asked to be well liked or popular; he asked only to be accepted. There were many Republicans who hated him, particularly in California. Earl Warren feuded with him for years. Even Bill Knowland, the state’s senior senator and an old-fashioned reactionary, despised him. At the 1952 convention, Knowland had remained loyal to Warren despite Nixon’s attempts to help Eisenhower in the California delegation. When Knowland was asked to give a nominating speech for Nixon, he was not pleased: “I have to nominate the dirty son of a bitch,” he told friends. Nixon bridged the gap because his politics were never about ideology: They were the politics of self. Never popular with either wing, he managed to negotiate a delicate position acceptable to both. He did not bring warmth or friendship to the task; when he made attempts at these, he was, more often than not, stilted and artificial. Instead, he offered a stark choice: If you don’t like me, find someone who is closer to your position and who is also likely to win. If he tilted to either side, it was because that side seemed a little stronger at the moment or seemed to present a more formidable candidate with whom he had to deal. A classic example of this came early in 1960, when he told Barry Goldwater, the conservative Republican leader, that he would advocate a right-to-work plank at the convention; a few weeks later in a secret meeting with Nelson Rockefeller, the liberal Republican leader—then a more formidable national figure than Goldwater—Nixon not only reversed himself but agreed to call for its repeal under the Taft-Hartley act. “The man,” Goldwater noted of Nixon in his personal journal at the time, “is a two-fisted four-square liar.
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David Halberstam (The Fifties)
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You need to get a job, but you also need to get a life. What's the return on investment of college? What's the return on investment of having children, spending time with friends, listening to music, reading a book? The things that are most worth doing are worth doing for their own sake. Anyone who tells you that the sole purpose of education is the acquisition of negotiable skills is attempting to reduce you to a productive employee at work, a gullible consumer in the market, and a docile subject of the state. What's at stake, when we ask what college is for, is nothing less than our ability to remain fully human.
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William Deresiewicz (Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of the American Elite and the Way to a Meaningful Life)
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Sater was confident he could arrange everything. On November 3, 2015, he wrote to Cohen: I will get Putin on this program and we will get Donald elected. We both know that no one else knows how to pull this off without stupidity or greed getting in the way. I know how to play it and we will get this done. Buddy our boy can become President of the USA and we can engineer it. I will get all of Putins team to buy in on this, I will manage this process. We don’t have Cohen’s reply. But the emails lay out Sater’s plan for glory—a ribbon-cutting ceremony in Moscow and praise from Putin of Trump’s peerless business skills. To achieve this, Sater said he could show video clips to his Russian contacts of Trump speaking glowingly of Russia: “If he [Putin] says it, we own this election. America’s most difficult adversary agreeing that Donald was a good guy to negotiate.
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Luke Harding (Collusion: Secret Meetings, Dirty Money, and How Russia Helped Donald Trump Win)
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research by my University of Michigan colleague Shirli Kopelman and others indicates that negotiators who make the first offer do better economically but are less satisfied with outcomes because they feel more anxiety. (“Resolving the First-Offer Dilemma,” Negotiation, July 2007)
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George J. Siedel (Negotiating for Success: Essential Strategies and Skills)
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Here are some of the key lessons from this chapter to remember: ■A good negotiator prepares, going in, to be ready for possible surprises; a great negotiator aims to use her skills to reveal the surprises she is certain to find. ■Don’t commit to assumptions; instead, view them as hypotheses and use the negotiation to test them rigorously. ■People who view negotiation as a battle of arguments become overwhelmed by the voices in their head. Negotiation is not an act of battle; it’s a process of discovery. The goal is to uncover as much information as possible. ■To quiet the voices in your head, make your sole and all-encompassing focus the other person and what they have to say. ■Slow. It. Down. Going too fast is one of the mistakes all negotiators are prone to making. If we’re too much in a hurry, people can feel as if they’re not being heard. You risk undermining the rapport and trust you’ve built. ■Put a smile on your face. When people are in a positive frame of mind, they think more quickly, and are more likely to collaborate and problem-solve (instead of fight and resist). Positivity creates mental agility in both you and your counterpart.
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Chris Voss (Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It)