Harrison-Chevalier Negotiation

It’s About People & Skill

No matter what specific title or business sector managers and administrators are ultimately the driving force behind accomplishment in most organizations. They bring goals and objectives into reality by hiring , guiding, nurturing and monitoring the people who actually do the tasks required to achieve defined targets.

To do that effectively most will agree they have to be masters of psychology, marriage & relationship counseling,  time management, diplomacy and more.  In other words managers and administrators have to be skilled negotiators to do their jobs effectively.

The amazing reality is that many managers and administrators while negotiators no doubt, aren’t skilled negotiators because they haven’t invested the time or energy to become skilled negotiators.  And for many who have sought out or attended negotiation seminars over the past couple of decades they’ve found that the bulk of the material included in those seminars has been focused on exercises, tactics and discussions related to buying and selling rather than to the management and administration of  projects programs or most importantly, people.

While better than nothing and while translating some of that material from sales or procurement examples into topics related to management or administration  is possible; a good deal of the value and power of the material gets lost in that translation.

Then there are the managers and administrators who’ve learned to negotiate on the job or by watching someone else negotiate everyday.  True, there is a great deal that can be learned by osmosis or through experience but on the other hand it is also true that  “Experience is the best teacher, but a fool will learn from no other.” as suggested by Benjamin Franklin, himself an excellent manager and administrator.

Just because a person does something  for a long period of time doesn’t mean they do it well, it means they do it in spite of whether they do it well or not.

The obvious question about learning on the job or through experience alone is this: “How do you know what skilled negotiating is or how it’s done if you’ve only learned by watching others or by doing whatever comes naturally?”

The answer of course is that we can’t possibly know what  good negotiating is  or who is or is not skilled if the only comparison we have is watching or by our own experience alone.

As noted in a widely published and highly regarded article entitled: Three Fundamental Reasons Negotiators Fail, skill involves the ability to do something on purpose, or on demand and at will with an ability to recognize nuance and make appropriate adjustments.

It’s difficult if not impossible to develop negotiation skill simply by watching someone else negotiate or by jumping in and doing it without some kind of baseline. Think about trying to learn calculus without knowing the multiplication tables or some algebra; maybe it’s possible for some people to do but not for many.

For managers and administrators the need for skill is quadrupled by the fact that on any given day they may find themselves facing a  simple transactional issue one moment and then swept into a multilateral complex or comprehensive negotiation a few moments later.

If the manager or administrator applies the same set of tactics or strategies to all of the different people and  issues involved the only certainty will be failure in two or three out of three different issues more often than not.

The greater tragedy will then be that the described manager lacks the knowledge and  skill to gain clear understanding about what went wrong or how to achieve different outcomes the next time around.

For the experienced, skilled well seasoned manager or administrator the need for refreshing and upgrading their skills may have less to do with what they do or don’t know than with the fact that since 2005 the entire face of the world and its circumstances has changed around them and that alone should change a lot about the way we are negotiating today versus a decade ago.

For all of these reasons and many more Harrison-Chevalier’s negotiation consulting and executive education programs and services represent the absolute cutting edge for managers and administrators of every level of experience from virtually every business sector or profession!

H-C customized consulting and executive education programs are all based on the Comprehensive Negotiating Strategies (CNS) negotiation framework the only universal negotiation framework built in and for the Emerging Integrated Global Economy (EIGE) of the 21st century!

And H-C offers a full range of consulting services and options that can be scaled up or down to meet the needs of virtually everyone in your company.

Choose separate customized components such as consulting services for individuals, teams or groups and include BootCamp^sm, Mock Negotiation, Team Member or Modified War Games^sm .

Or schedule our flagship CNS: EVOLVE LIVE 1-day or 2-day negotiation workshop which includes many of the components listed above truly the best negotiation workshop available anywhere.