Lessons

Lesson Info

Core Principle: Bullying

I got this morning, I got up really early couldn't sleep, you know, have to negotiate with all of you made me really nervous. A little personal confession here, so I got a brilliant got a two o'clock in the morning. I'd gone to bed really early because I was exhausted from yesterday, so I, you know, I slept and they kind of, you know, half awake one thirty look at the clock and go oh, no, you know, does until finally had to, I think I might as well get up, make a cup of coffee, get to work because I really needed to finish up the presentation for today and, uh, went to my email, naturally, and, uh, and I got this facebook, uh, message to me from a photographer in los angeles and, uh, and she says, I am extremely since I'm an extremely sensitive person and have felt different for much of my life, I take things deeply and have attempted to adjust myself to be tougher at times, particularly in business, tick really in business, and it it really struck a chord with me because I thought, ho...

w many times have I tried to sort of be something I wasn't when I was facing a difficult negotiation, and then she went on to say that that she'd found that, oh, actually, her feelings were important, and she realized that she could use those feelings to advantage, and it was so it's very, very gratifying to get to get that little message in my in box at two o'clock in the morning, and it brought to mind something that charles has said to me many times on. We're going to see a little video from charles this afternoon, where he talks about some of these aggressive personalities and how to deal with them, but charles likes to remind me to be mindful that we should be mine enfold and, of course, what he's talking about is that we need to be aware of what's going on around us all the time, because that's, our best way of analyzing what to do next, and so moving from trying to be tough, which is sort of artificial to being aware, too. What am I feeling, what's making me feel this way? Why should I compete? Be concerned with what should I be concerned with? Excuse me? Why do I feel this way and realize that actually, these feelings are a signal to yourself from yourself? It's a message from your feeling side to your logic side, and you have to decide what it's telling you, obviously it's important, that would be the most, the most easiest takeaway is oh, I better pay attention here because this is important but we need to be mindful of what's going on always be mindful so that little note thank you uh to the internet now we're gonna have a okay now we're gonna have a client's point of view one of the things I want people to understand is that clients have a goal and they want you to succeed and clients work hard to actually the smart ones to make it possible for us to succeed. And so this little video with with richard bendix and richard bendix was my client years ago on in fact when devon referred to the bank richard was a vice president at the bank that devon was assigned to as one of the on the team devin was one of the strategist on the team uh anyway richard richard a quote from richard you know, he said in the early days he would say something to a creative professional like okay, I need a logo and they said then later he began to realize that that gave them nothing to work from. So he learned a lot in these early years as a marketing professional how to work with talent and so that little this little video think it's pretty short a couple of minutes goes into that and then we can chat about it for a minute tell me a little bit about how you've evolved how you think about and select creative people to help you from the side of the of the higher er of creative work, it's very important theft. We have our act together as well, because the creative organisation is not going to know your organization, they're not gonna understand your brand, your personality, your leadership what's important to you in the marketplace. All of that is the responsibility of the client to make sure they give you in a in a way where you can digest it and use it. I think what I learned fairly early on is that you need to identify whose people are who those decision makers are early on in the process, because if you're taking some work to let's, say, the ceo of a company, let's, say it has to do with the whole brand identity or ah, new look and feel you better have their input early on in the discussion, and I always like to have them at the table with the input session with the creative group so that their herd and they get to know the creative people, too. That's one of the things that I really learned over time, you can't sit down with a creative group or individual practitioner and say, okay, I need a logo on, uh you know, I really like red and black together, and if you can come back to me and we put some ideas, that would be great, I mean, that gives them absolutely nothing to work from, right? And I think they're is a really lack in the training of marketing people these days and how to work with creative organizations, creative people, not in terms of the emotions of creative people, because that it's really overplayed its mohr what didn't put that they need to give you what you want, right? And why do they need that right and understanding the entire relationship? I think it's very important to succeed right from the client side and but hiring creative people who who will give you a product that it's what you want and from the creative side and feeling that they are fulfilling your needs? Yeah, in a way where they can feel very good about it, right? Didn't you find that heartening that that the client is so worried about how his supplier creative supplier, feels? I did? And in fact, that's what I found to be the case with most of our clients was that they were genuinely interested in our well being and wanted us to make sure that we had all of the material that we needed to be successful. Sometimes they would push back on schedule sometimes they would push back on budget, but they were very cooperative in terms of making sure that we had access to the things that we needed to make the assignment be successful. So I think the most important takeaway from this is to be, um, is to be aware that that is the client's mode, so be comfortable and asking, could I have an interview with the president? Um, could I get some samples of the products so I can try it out? Um, could I be put in touch with the engineering staff so I can understand what's behind this particular assignment? Could I uh uh, I have a meeting with your senior communications people, so I can understand what kind of messaging they're using and what's the logic behind it, whatever it is, you know, access and and availability of the client's organization to you is frankly critical to your success, so if you feel you need more than you're getting, simply ask because they will cooperate, and they will don't be intimidated by the fact that they are the client, they are a corporation, they are big, you are small, those things that we sort of naturally fall into being intimidated about, so we're going to talk about bullying, but the message I always want you to to remember is used your sensitivity to heighten your awareness. I think I wrote that inspired by my morning email so a little bit about bullying fundamentally bullying works because it taps into our own insecurities somebody told you when you were small that you were not reading up to grade somebody told you that you were stupid somebody told you that you were not effective in some way you were not successful, you weren't his brightest, the other kids, you couldn't run this fast. Everyone in your family was athletic and you're not you're still and you're still dealing with it or in fact you're the only athlete in the family and everyone is a sensitive musician and your ridiculed and called a jock and it's a joke in your family or whatever it is and then we get bullied about it and when one of the things that happens is we then you actually start to believe it and it sticks with us for the rest of our lives. So it's it's a serious it's, a it's, a serious problem bullying leads us to our own self doubts it puts us on the defensive adds to our stress impairing logic and uh and so I asked charles if he would be willing to do a little short lecture on high conflict personalities and we sure saw one with the aggressive close where charles played the buyer and ben played the cellar and uh so so we put together a little short clip on hi conflict personalities and it's a lecture from charles and you know, charles has been a teacher all his life so he's a natural at the lecture at electric lecture thing so charles high conflict personalities and some strategies for dealing with them and he's going to talk about active listening and looking for the emotional information, which is what I wanted you to see in the aggressive clothes and the factual information so let's run that little clip and then we can talk about a little bit we're going to talk today a little bit about negotiation issue that I think is difficult for all of us and that's how to deal with high conflict personality we've all experience them we've all met them through some life experience many of us try and avoid contact with them. Many of us find our stress levels increasing as we're dealing with the high conflict personality and what I'd like to talk about a little is what I've learned about how you can identify who this person is that you're dealing with what they're presenting uh, relationships are with you aunt, how you could develop strategies to ah work more effectively with them so that the first kai conflict personality that I've met I think and and that frequently is present is the situational high conflict personality they've had a bad morning uh they argued with their partner uh they've got money problems mes uh they're not certain of what's going on today their soccer team lost yesterday afternoon and they're very upset about it acute or chronic life situations can make someone a high conflict personality what do you do with those folks? Well, my experience says that the main thing you can do is to is to practice what's called active listening active listening tells me that I am listening to what you are saying and I am listening to the emotional and affect ihe ve information that's coming along with that message I find that when I asked the question help me understand help me understand how you arrived at that number help me understand what you're expecting of me help me understand how this would work for both of us I'm engaging that person in what may well be a dialogue that suggest to them that I understand that this is a difficult situation for them as well as for me. And so if you think that what you're dealing with is someone who you're dealing with this someone who's a situational high conflict person listen and listen for the emotional information that you get as well as the substantive information and begin to ask questions about both some people many people some would say most people are high conflict personalities for a stay fatih jik reason it's a tactic in negotiation tactics are behaviors that people use in order to attempt to modify your aspirations in this negotiation downwards, you'll take less than you want you'll give more than you want simply because of the tactic that's being used just hi conflict personalities often used bullying, badgering, flattery, high conflict personalities are perfect in gender mixed situations for developing a kind of tension that the high conflict personality can use to their advantage. This requires a different strategy to deal with, um, these kinds of negotiation of of tactics our learned at a very early age, we learn these kinds of negotiation tactics when we are dealing with our parents and with our very young friends, we keep what works we discard what doesn't if I at as a four year old figured out that I could interact with my mother by yelling and screaming and getting that piece of candy that I want, I will continue to yell and scream to get what I want when I am fifty five, so that these tactics are deeply ingrained in most people, they don't learn them in class, they learned them from life experience, what do you do with these folks? Because this is very difficult to deal with, um, some people say, just ignore the tactic that has a great advantage if you ignore a tactic. You're not giving any emotional energy to it it doesn't distract you from what it is that you want to accomplish it doesn't affect your aspirations in the negotiation. The downside in my experience is that if you ignore the tactics of this of the strategic negotiator the negotiator will do it again and again and again you'll constantly be dealing with this another alternative which is often times very satisfying is to try and out tactic the tactical negotiator uh my first negotiation is young lawyer I walked into my opposing counsel's office he was sitting behind a window in front of a window into the window was pouring sunlight so I could really only see the outlines and the first words out of his mouth were ah so they sent you a baldy now why did he say that he said that to get me off focus I could ignore it I could say yes fat so they sent me which is very satisfying but what happens in that circumstance if I try and out tactic the tactical negotiator I'm in the game I'm we're giving and taking these kinds of tactics and insults what will happen is this strategic negotiator will escalate and I don't want that negotiator to escalate I want to calm things down if I can so that we could deal on the substance of what it is that we're here to negotiate here's another strategy first I can identify that a strategic high conflict tactic is being played on me I experienced that unconsciously it's my limbic stis of not my cognitive system that tells me that I my stomach gets queasy I feel a kind of ah cold flash the hair on my handstands on edge my respiration gets a little shallower I can feel my heart beating something happens physically that tells me that a tactic is being used secondly I've gotta label what it is I've got to know what it is ah it's the good cop bad cop tactic ah it's the insult it's flattery it's there's a whole range of things that this tactic might be I've gotta label it and figure out what it is and then I have to stop negotiating on the substance of what we're going to talk about and start negotiating over the process we're going to use in order to get there. You know, I'm not exactly sure why you said that um I don't really have a problem with being bald I'm involved since I was twenty and it's never seemed to affect my life circumstances uh I don't know what it contributes to how your client and my client can agree on something that's mutually satisfactory do you suppose we could go there now? What's happened now he knows that I know that he knows what he's doing and that can be a tremendous advantage to me so curio so in the chat room says so what we learn from this is people teach your children well uh yes, because we well of course the thing is we have a childhood everybody has it for alive we had a childhood it's a good thing but we have some baggage that comes with it and course childhood is with humans is so long you know it's so long that we get a lot of baggage and we all have it and there it is questions, thoughts I have a question has anyone ever attempted to influence you through flattery falsely influence you through flattery? Did you notice he mentioned flattery as a technique used by high conflict personalities? Have you ever been flattered in such a way that it manipulated your behavior so you acquiesced in some way? I think we've all been there. Yeah, I think it naturally I think it almost becomes like a friendship point. You kind of get down to that level very quickly try to make it down to a friendship love. Yeah, well and I think that sometimes it's we don't recognize that it's happening because it makes us feel good and then we just remember the result that we had, which was we wanted to buy a thing or we wanted to do this thing right we definitely can remember the times when people have flattered me in a very false way and I could have read that it was a come on if it wasn't and that turned me off sure immediately it was an attempt to manipulate you through flattery and you you noticed it your antenna were up your senses were up and you noticed it. Yeah, I can remember as a teenage boy flattering girls that I want to go out with falsely and seeing if it would work so photo yogi made a comment saying the lower our self esteem the more effective flattery has do you agree with that? Probably yeah sure makes sense, doesn't it yeah yeah, yeah, yeah ah and then of course bullying and the example the charles gives of his first case uh going in to meet the opposing counsel in the guy sitting in the west facing window in the late afternoon with the sun behind his head. So I've actually had that tried on a client in the last year where a purchasing agent set up a situation where she sat with her with her back to the sun sun setting no blind anything and my two young male clients coming to face this formidable lawyer with a lot you know, a double law degree uh purchasing agent and uh and I had coached them ahead of time and I said, you know, if if anything goes wrong ask for what you need to succeed so she I have put herself in the windows son behind her head just like charles described and uh and they said, you know, we can't see you could we move to a room where we could, like, have a conversation? What could she say other then? Because it's completely reasonable, but if they hadn't been coached or, you know, hadn't had the thought they might not have, they might not have done that it had been a disadvantage. Have you ever been put in a lower chair in a meeting deliberately put in a chair that puts you so that your head is chest level on the other person, so you naturally feel inferior to the other person because you're just a little bit lower? You know who did that to me? Most recently, karen moskowitz and I worked, I was intimidated and I noted about halfway through the conversation that I was sitting ah whole half ahead lower than what and she was like dominating the situation. It was kind of cool, actually, you have a recommendation for you, walk into a room and you notice there's a strong discrepancy between chair yes, what to do? Ask for another chair, ask for what you need, ask for the power cord asked for the projector, asked for a glass of water, asked for a chance to go to the restroom um, ask, uh, if they could turn the a c up a little bit um, ask if the vice president could join us because he has more information on the engineering side. Ask for some training on the cat equipment. Uh, because you'll have to you'll have to learn it to come up to speed to meet their needs. Maybe they could help you financially with that, ask for moving expenses. Ask for what you need that's a small thing that's not directly related to the salary negotiation or the fee negotiation asked for other things so it's another method, another way of stepping out of the box and asking for something that's, an adjunct to the assignment that would be helpful. That would help you be more successful for the client and that the client might consider giving you so it's always ask for what you need. The problem is remembering it when you're on the spot. So that's, why coaching are discussing with a friend or or your life partner or whatever, just having a discussion ahead of time about what you're facing with someone else who you know you feel good about and you feel that would be helpful really is a big help in encountering this situation, because if you go in cloaked cold, you're typically focused on your own needs. What you want you know the big thing you want salary the job assignment whatever it happens to be and your it's difficult to get your head out of that box yes we've got our girl who gave a kind of extreme example she said that I had someone stand on a higher stare and literally pat her on the head which that's that's a power move right there that's how did that aggressive do we know anything more than that? I don't our girl give us a little bit more detail there while she's doing that daniel architect pointed out notice how many of these tactics were all played out with siblings or playmates in kindergarten yes how much of it just draws back to that yes instinctive response yeah yeah and as charles said that's where that's where it started yeah that's where it's at that's where it started a little bit about time now while we're at it um one of the things that happens is if you have the luxury or the wit to let time go by remember that you have all the time in the world will check our watches now um is is that people change their positions so positions that seem to be hardened positions at the beginning of the discussion can change and I'll give you an example I reach recently was involved in a negotiation myself where I wanted to get some cash in advance from the other person the fairly significant amount of cash in advance and uh time went by and we had several meetings we have several skype ce and you know I got a little money from them they acquiesced a little bit but you know not enough to really make it make it work and I'm like a first time my reaction is what's going on here I'm the negotiator I mean, this is real value of I've explained the value um I think what I'm doing is the right thing actually in their best interest as well as my my best interest why isn't this working no, I'm like I'm supposed to be good at this I'm supposed to be really good at this and then I began to realize that the other party that it didn't fit their business model it didn't fit their culture you know it was not it was a miss meant what I was asking for was something that they had not encountered before and it didn't make sense to them from their perspective and I would say maybe six or eight weeks went by you know, over these meetings and skype ce that we had and I realized that actually it would be better for me to do this a different way and so I simply completely acquiesced and completely turned my what I wanted around and in fact I didn't even take the money that I had been offered in the initial in the initial conversation, so that could happen. And that's. Not uncommon. It's. Not uncommon for someone to learn during the process of the negotiation and change their perspective of what they're negotiating for. And that's. Why time is so important to keep the conversation going long enough. So you really understand what's going on.