Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In by Roger Fisher and William Ury

• Separate the person from the problem
• Focus on interests, not positions
• Work together to create options that will satisfy both parties
• Insist the solution is based upon objective criteria
• Know your best alternative to a negotiated agreement

Getting Past No:  Negotiating Your Way from Confrontation to Cooperation by William Ury

Obstacles that limit options:

• Premature judgment
• Searching for a single answer
• The assumption of a fixed pie
• Thinking that solving their problem is their problem

Crucial Conversations:  Tools for Talking When Stakes are High by Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillan, Al Switler

Focus on what you really want…For yourself, for others, for the relationship:

• Commit to mutual purpose
• Move from either/or to and
• Recognize silence or violence
• Recognize your own style under stress
• Restore safety with mutual purpose and mutual respect
• Move to action

The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey

• Be proactive
• Begin with the end in mind
• Put first things first
• Think win-win
• Seek first to understand, then to be understood
• Synergize
• Sharpen the saw

FYI:  For Your Improvement – A Guide for Development and Coaching by Michael M. Lombardo and Robert W. Eichinger

• Practice Aikido – absorb the energy of your opponent without harming yourself or others
• Listen, ask clarifying, open-ended questions
• “What one change could you make so we could achieve our objectives better?”
• “What could I do that would help the most?”

People Skills:  How to Assert Yourself, Listen to Others, and Resolve Conflicts by Robert Bolton, PhD

• Treat the other person with respect
• Listen until you experience the other side
• State your views, needs and feelings
• Be brief
• Avoid loaded words
• Disclose your feelings

Beyond Reason:  Using Emotions as You Negotiate by Roger Fisher and Daniel Shapiro

• Maximize your thoughts and emotions:  prepare, prepare, prepare
• Visualize success:  You’re at ease, positive, building rapport, reading cues, moving toward productive relationship
• Calm your nerves and theirs
• Express appreciation
• Build affiliation
• Respect autonomy

* * * *

Yes! You may use this article by Executive and Career Coach, Joyce Richman, in your blog, article in your blog, newsletter or website as long as you include the following bio box:

Joyce Richman (www.richmanresources.com) has been specializing in executive and career coaching since she started her own practice in 1982. She works in a variety of environments including: higher education, manufacturing, sales, marketing, media, technology, pharmaceuticals, medicine, banking and finance, service, IT, and non-profit sectors. A member of the adjunct faculty at the Center for Creative Leadership, Joyce is certified to administer a number of feedback and psychological instruments. Joyce is a weekly guest on WFMY-TV and the career columnist for The Greensboro News & Record. She is the author of Roads, Routes and Ruts: A Guidebook to Career Success and co-author of Getting Your Kid Out of the House and Into a Job. A popular speaker, Richman conducts seminars and workshops throughout the United States, Canada and Europe. Her coaching profile can be found at TheCoachingAssociation.com.

Think Twice: Harnessing the Power of Counterintuition

By Michael J. Mauboussin
Harvard Business Press, 2009, 224 pages

Economics is an imperial science, and its ambition knows no bounds. But the triumphal march of its neoclassical army through the fields of finance and management received a bloody reversal at the hands of reality in the carnage of 2008. A great deal of what we thought we knew about efficient markets, risk, and the behavior of investors and managers has been shown to be wrong. Into the gap have stepped the lightly clad warriors of behavioral economics, one of whose supporters, no doubt, would be Michael J. Mauboussin, chief investment strategist at Legg Mason Capital Management and author of Think Twice: Harnessing the Power of Counterintuition.

Mauboussin is a polymath who has written an entertaining and thought-provoking book about decision making for investors and businesspeople. His threefold objective is to help readers become mentally prepared by learning to identify the causes and consequences of mistakes, to become situationally aware by recognizing problems in their contexts, and to apply this knowledge to mitigate potential mistakes.

Rather than plod through prospect theory, psychology, or social psychology — the grist of behavioral economics — Mauboussin accomplishes his objectives by examining eight decision-making phenomena and illustrating them with intriguing examples and thought-provoking puzzles. Thus, we discover the dangers of depending on experts, and in what circumstances collectives and computers are likely to produce better decisions. Computers, for example, are great for identifying options, but experts excel at selecting among them. Another challenge is to understand the hidden hand of context in decision making. Mauboussin describes a consumer behavior study that found that when faced with a choice between French and German wines in a retail setting, shoppers were heavily influenced by whether French accordion music or German bierkeller tunes were playing in the background. Each nation’s music was capable of skewing sales significantly toward its products. Yet most of the shoppers denied that music had anything to do with their selections!

Each chapter has a handy summary of advice helpful in countering decision biases. Some of this advice includes putting yourself in the shoes of others to understand the context in which the decisions must be made; keeping a journal to collect  feedback from past decisions; creating checklists (general enough to handle changing contexts but specific enough to guide action); and conducting “premortems” by imagining that a decision you are about to make has already been proven wrong and identifying plausible reasons for the failure.

One of Mauboussin’s best ideas is to recognize the roles of skill and luck in determining a decision’s outcome by asking if you can lose on purpose — if you can’t, it’s luck. He warns that when an activity has a large component of luck to it (think blackjack and, dare one say, management), it’s best to focus on the decision-making process rather than the outcomes as a guide to behavior. Betting on outcomes has been a feature of casino capitalism — many people knew that the subprime mortgage process was deeply flawed, but few could argue with the outcomes…before the meltdown. One wonders whether Legg Mason will take its chief strategist’s advice to heart by championing executive compensation schemes based on decision-making processes in the companies in which they invest.

Originally published in Strategy + Business on February 23, 2010

Linchpin by Seth Godin

To see a cool video of Jacqueline Novogratz describing how she recognizes a linchpin, click here: http://vimeo.com/9566384.

Jacqueline is the founder and CEO of Acumen Fund (acumenfund.org) a fast-growing non-profit that is pioneering the idea of patient capital.  Acumen funds entrepreneurs that build significant for-profit companies that do business with the poorest people in the world.

Recently after he had fixed a Twitter Feed problem that had been particularly frustrating, I thought he might like to take on something a little more thought-provoking.  So, I introduced him to Peter Drucker, the renowned and revered thought-leader about all things “management.”

I was already a fan when I met Peter Drucker in the 1990s at a conference my organization was hosting. Although stooped and having trouble with his hearing, Drucker remained a powerful life force.  It was clear to me as soon as I shook his hand and he began to speak why he is so often referred to as the “father of modern management.” I worked in a leadership organization for 20 years where we sometimes struggled with how to talk about management, especially in relationship to what we considered to be larger and more elusive concepts of leadership.  Peter Drucker had no such struggle.  I appreciated how much he valued simple, straightforward and effective management practices and how clearly he thought they served as a foundation for strong, effective leadership.

So, I handed Matt a copy of The Daily Drucker and pointed out a few words from Jim Collins in the Foreword that capture my appreciation of Peter Drucker’s work: “Drucker’s genius shines best in the short paragraph or single sentence that cuts through the clutter and messiness of a complex world and exposes a truth.  Like a Zen poet, Drucker packs universal truth into just a few words; we can return to his teachings repeatedly, each time with a deeper level of understanding.”

This morning I asked Matt to pick out a few of his favorites from the 366 readings in The Daily Drucker. I think he pulled a pretty nice list:

• The most important thing in communication is to hear what isn’t being said.
• Company cultures are like country cultures. Never try to change one. Try, instead, to work with what you’ve got.
• Efficiency is doing things right; effectiveness is doing the right things.
• Most of what we call management consists of making it difficult for people to get their work done.
• People who don’t take risks generally make about two big mistakes a year. People who do take risks generally make about two big mistakes a year.
• The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits him and sells itself.
• Trying to predict the future is like trying to drive down a country road at night with no lights while looking out the back window.
• Time is the scarcest resource and unless it is managed nothing else can be managed.

So here’s to Peter Drucker, gone, but not forgotten and still teaching us all.  In the words he is said to have offered frequently, “Go out and make yourself useful.”

• development tailored to individual needs
• developmental goals that are clear, measurable, and relevant to bosses, leaders, coaches and those being coached
• impact in four to six months – that can be seen at the individual level and at the business level

Peters continues to make the case for coaching by stating that, “The number of executive competencies required for success has grown exponentially.  Talented leaders — smart, sophisticated businesspeople who are technically literate, globally astute and operationally agile — are the most important organizational resource for the next 20 years.  The ongoing development of current leaders has to be a priority.”

Executive coaching, as described by Peters, helps fill the mentoring and development gaps created by today’s working environments of accelerated promotions, downsizing, globalization, and the move to virtual organizations.  We would add that the list of competencies expected for success may also mean that the resources to develop and nurture those competencies may not all exist within your current organization.  Having a pool of experienced external coaches available to your organization can provide the just-in-time and just-what-you-need performance support that your aspiring, high-potential, or established leaders need.

We also agree wholeheartedly with the Fortune magazine quote that Peters includes in the article, “Coaching bridges the growing chasm between what managers are being asked to do and what they have been trained to do.”

So from the CLO article, we conclude that executive coaching is a relevant, measurable, efficient, and effective strategy for managing and developing your leadership talent pipeline.  Kudos to the folks at Chief Learning Officer for a well-presented case for executive coaching.