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Category: Personal Development

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Best Practices Growth Human Resources Leadership Personal Development

Professional Workplace Environment Awareness

Are you paying attention to your workplace environment? As a busy leader, your professional attention and commitment is to ensure the workplace environment creates productivity and team effectiveness.

Look around your office right now. Is there clutter everywhere? Does it seem a little crazy or chaotic? Are important files and papers easily accessible? Is it easy for people to collaborate on an idea? Is it easy for people to find where they need to be? Consider creating an attentive workplace by looking at the environment that you create. Do people have an opportunity to move into a quiet room or space, to get things done? Are your meetings productive by considering the environment, to maybe call in others or use video technology? How are you paying attention to your environment? But think about the environment as the wider context, as well.

What can you be doing, as a leader, to pay attention to our environment, meaning a bigger environment? Do you have a recycling program at work? Just maybe even recycling bins beside the printer. Can you offer refillable water bottles or water stations for people to avoid the plastic waste? Could you consider donating unused furniture from the office to charities that could maybe really use it? Do you encourage people to maybe use public transport instead of driving everywhere? There are so many ways, as a leader, we can pay attention to, not just the office environment, but also the wider environment, as well.

When a friend of mine was doing property development, he decided to make sure his building was LEAD certified. Now, while you might not be a big fancy property developer like he is, maybe there are things you can think about when you’re designing a new process, or product, or protocol, that allows you to be more environmentally friendly.

As an Australian, I get that I’m a little crazy about protecting the environment, which means, personally, I do carry refillable water bottles. I do try and use … Well, not always use public transport, but I do try to from where I live. I definitely try to reuse the towels when I visit a hotel, instead of using housekeeping all the time. I definitely try to donate things wherever possible. If I’m not using it, I’m sure someone else can use it.

What are some little ways that you could pay attention to the environment, both at work, and at home? I want to challenge you to just look around and have a think. In our book, Attention Pays, we cover this in the chapter on Global Attention, meaning, how are you paying attention to your community, to the world at large?

Now, you may not be a Tesla driving, environmentally conscious person, but there are little tiny things I bet you could pay attention to at work that would make the environment easier for people to get work done. Or maybe be kind to the environment with the way that you get things done.

How are you, as a leader, truly paying attention to your environment? I would love to hear your comments, so feel free to share them with me directly. It is my belief that when you pay attention, attention pays.

Categories
Entrepreneurship Management Marketing Negotiations Sales Skills Women In Business

What’s the Difference Between a Lie and the Truth?

“A lie is only believable if you accept it.” -Greg Williams, The Master Negotiator & Body Language Expert

Person 1: “I could tell he was lying.” Person 2: ‘How?” Person 1: “Because his words were unbelievable!” Person 2: “I missed that.”

Do you know the difference between a lie and the truth? It’s the degree to which you believe either. Let me explain.

As you’re hearing something, you assess to what degree it may be true; in part, that’s based on what you’ve known to be true from your past experiences. You continue to assess the believability of something the more you hear of it. You wonder to what degree the truth is stretched, at the point when words become suspect. As you continue to listen, once they’re stretched past your point of believability, you then consider the words to be lies.

Intellectually you may be aware of the process stated above. But, do you raise your sense of awareness to recognize the thought process you’re engaged in when it’s occurring? It’s important that you do so. In doing so, you raise your sense of consciousness to what’s said, which means you may become alert to prior passages that you overlooked. That also means, you may have allowed lies to go unchallenged, which emboldens its purveyor to continue lying.

There’s a thin line between a lie and the truth. Sometimes, it’s thinner based on who’s telling the story and who the listener is. To protect yourself in interactions with others, note what’s said, when it’s said, and the environment in which it’s said. In doing so, you’ll gain greater insight into the motivation behind when and why words part from the truth. That will also be the point when your sense of keenness insulates you from the mental depravity that occurs when one is falsely led by lies. You’ll truly be protecting yourself from mental anguish … and everything will be right with the world.

What does this have to do with negotiations? 

Most negotiators will misrepresent the truth during negotiations. It’s a fact and if you don’t think it occurs you’re being pollyannaish. Recognize that for what it’s worth.

Consider this, if a negotiator completely disclosed his circumstances, he’d expose his vulnerability and weaken his position. Thus, to prevent that from occurring, he’ll withhold aspects of his position to enhance his outcome. He’ll stretch the truth to accomplish that means. By noting his stretch point, you gain insight into his source of motivation. That will lend insight into the importance of the point. You can hone that insight to create discomfort for him. Do so and observe how quickly he wants to move from away from that discomfort. As an aside, the more he wants to move from that point, the more angst he’ll be displaying about his uncomfortableness.

It’s said that all lies are born from truth. That means a lie is only a lie to the degree that the people involved believe it to be. In your negotiations, understand the purpose that a lie serves and you’ll have greater insight as to where the truth lies.

Remember, you’re always negotiating!

After reading this article, what are you thinking? I’d really like to know. Reach me at Greg@TheMasterNegotiator.com 

To receive Greg’s free “Negotiation Tip of the Week” and the “Sunday Negotiation Insight” click here http://www.themasternegotiator.com/greg-williams/

#Emotion #Lies #Business #SmallBusiness #Negotiation #NegotiatingWithABully #Power #Perception #EmotionalControl #relationships #liars #HowToNegotiateBetter #CSuite #TheMasterNegotiator #ControlEmotions

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Best Practices Entrepreneurship Investing Management Marketing Negotiations Sales Skills Women In Business

How to Prevent from Being Slaughtered When You Negotiate

“You set yourself up to be slaughtered in a negotiation if you don’t set yourself up right.” –Greg Williams, The Master Negotiator & Body Language Expert

“What the heck happened in there? They slaughtered us! They out-negotiated us at every turn! Why did we not see that coming?” “I guess we didn’t plan for that type of negotiation with that type of negotiator”, was the reply.

People engage in negotiations because they seek to maximize an outcome. In that quest, some people lose their focus. They use the same negotiation strategies they’ve used in the past and wonder why they get slaughtered when those strategies are no longer effective. To prevent that from happening to you, note the following.

Positioning

Environment: Know what the best environment is to conduct your negotiation in. That environment may encompass doing so in writing, or phone, versus in person. There are different dynamics that come into play when negotiating in different environments. Know the environment that will most benefit your style of negotiating compared to the negotiation style of the opposing negotiator.

Perception: Everyone has an image of who the person is that they’re negotiating with. That persona is based in part on what the perceiver knows about the other negotiator; that stems from what the perceiver has seen, heard, and thought of that person in the past.

Project the persona warranted for the negotiation. Take into consideration the negotiation style of the opposing negotiator in your calculation (i.e. hard (I’ll crush you), soft (I’ll go along to get along)). The perception you cast and how you perceive the other negotiator will determine the flow of the negotiation. To prevent being caught off guard, about your perception of the other negotiator and him of you, be adaptable as to the persona you project.

Strategy

Entity: Know who you’re really dealing with (i.e. what force and sources motivates the other negotiator). Consider how he interprets information and how best to message that information related to the messenger (i.e. your persona). Your message may be received more favorably with one persona based on how that persona is perceived.

Leverage: When assembling strategies, assess how you’ll employ the powers of leverage. Leverage is a tool that can embolden you with positional power (i.e. power you have for a specified time), which can improve your negotiation position. Be cautious of how you use leverage. If you state you’ll engage in an action and don’t follow through, not only will you lose the ability to invoke leverage further in the negotiation, you also run the risk of losing credibility.

End Game

What’s your end game and how will you know when you’ve entered it? You should develop the answers to those questions during the planning phase of your negotiation. The plan should encompass what might trigger the end game phase of the negotiation, how you might promote it to occur if it’s lagging, and what you might do to terminate the negotiation if you discern that your efforts will not get you there.

By having markers denoting possible exit points from a negotiation, you lessen the possibility of staying engaged longer than what’s necessary; staying engaged longer increases your vulnerability by making unnecessary concessions.

Once you arm yourself with the thoughts mentioned above, you’ll insulate yourself from the brutality that could otherwise occur. That insulation will also be a shield that prevents you from being slaughtered in your negotiations … and everything will be right with the world.

Remember, you’re always negotiating! 

After reading this article, what are you thinking? I’d really like to know. Reach me at Greg@TheMasterNegotiator.com

To receive Greg’s free “Negotiation Tip of the Week” and the “Sunday Negotiation Insight” click here http://www.TheMasterNegotiator.com/greg-williams/

#slaughter #Fight #Negativity #cyber, cyberbullying #Management #SmallBusiness #Money #Negotiating #combat #negotiatingwithabully #bully #bullies #bullying #Negotiations #PersonalDevelopment #HandlingObjections #Negotiator #HowToNegotiateBetter #CSuite #TheMasterNegotiator #psychology #NegotiationPsychology

 

 

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Growth Health and Wellness Leadership

Do You Have the Guts to be a Great Leader?

Leadership is changing.

Our relationship with work is changing. We want more meaning in our daily lives and that also means more meaning at work. Let’s face it, work is where we spend most of our time and at the end of our lives, work has consumed most of it. We don’t look back and say, “I wish I had worked harder,” but we might look back and say, “I wish I had made a bigger impact.”

Now I am not trying to encourage regret here. My dad, when he was dying, did not realize how many people he had made a difference for. He received letters and emails thanking him for the impact he had made in someone’s life, simply by listing to them, having conversations with them about their hopes and dreams, and encouraging them to see the best in themselves and dare to show it. You know that thing, we think we have to hide. Our vulnerable self, which then turns out to be our golden nugget and what makes us not just a great human being, but also a great leader. Not a weakness, but a strength. Especially as leaders, we tend to think we have to hide our humanity at work.

Let me add here – we knew he was dying for about 6 months, so we spent the time talking about what mattered to him in his life. He reflected and learned about himself even till the end. And I learned so much about making conscious choices by listening to him. I learned to dare live my true convictions and passions and to stand for what is important to me. Even if I would stand alone for awhile. He did, and then people joined him. He was a leader in the 70′, 80′ and 90′ and he passed away in 2001, so you can imagine he was ahead of his time, bringing his humanity with him to work.

Will you stand for something?

Now this is not a tribute to my dad, it is a tribute to leadership with guts. And it is going to take a slightly different turn that you expect I think. I am not going to talk about daring and believing and standing alone and going for it in spite of fear. I am going to talk about, how we take care of ourselves as leaders every day AT work so that we can pay attention, be present and emotionally and mentally available to the people around us.

Stop stressing.

The other side of that could be slow down. But it is not. At least not quite. I do encourage pausing, because that is how we can observe, reflect and then act according to our higher purpose and intentions. Or focus on what matters rather than what is just urgent.

The first step in becoming a conscious leader, a caring leader, a mindful leader, a leader with impact and a culture around her or him that is engaged, committed and healthy… is a healthy leader. We have to come out of survival-mode and work on performance-mode instead.

Most cultures are not practicing healthy habits at work and most are working on survival-mode, waiting for relief around the corner. It is not sustainable to work in that way.

What is important?

What is important for me, is that we can take charge of our health AT work. I had to leave my career to take care of myself. It is simply not fair to ourselves, that we have to choose between our health and our work and that we leave self-care behind, instead of bringing it with us to work.

Will you be the leader who practices good work-habits and leadership self-care AT work? Do you have the guts to take better care of yourself AT work, so that your people can do so too? Do you have the guts to pay attention and listen, so that your people feel that they matter? Do you have the guts to pause and ask, “how are you or what do you think?”

It takes guts to stand for something, to change a culture that is used to pushing forward without taking care of ourselves and include our humanity at work.

To stop the burn-out epidemic we need self-care AT work. Please also read the article “Leaders who lunch are better leaders” too.

Let me give you a few steps to start practicing:

1. Drink water – and drink even more water. Quit the sugary drinks, the coffee with milk and all the stuff you use to keep you “pumped up”. It is not working long-term, it depletes your energy and your health, -and it takes your attention away from what is important because of how the caffein and sugar affects your brain.

2. Get your sleep – 7-8 hours. No discussion. Otherwise you end up looking for sugar and caffein to keep you going. Research now compares lack of sleep with being drunk.

3. Get your 3 meals a day. Make it a time away from the work-mindset. Not only does your body need the fuel (nutrients and calories) to keep going all day, your mind needs the pause to stay focused and engaged all day.

Stay tuned for the next article about how to have a healthy gut and why it matters, not just for leaders, but for anyone who wants to achieve peak performance at work, at home and on the go.

To learn more about leadership self-care and how it can change your culture visit jeanettebronee.com, where you can also learn more about executive health coaching, speaking engagements and company workshops.

Categories
Marketing Personal Development Sales

Building Your Brand Entails Counterintuitive Decisions

We’ve seen it a million times—physical product brands spread themselves too thin before they’re established. Some brands offer too many choices, and their principal message gets lost in the marketplace. And others expand too quickly into territories that they can’t handle, and they lose their dependable status. Why is this?

When a brand can’t achieve its true target market quickly enough, they second-guess their mission, trying to be all things to all types of people. They think they’ll do better quicker by speaking to a wider audience. But instead of being the leader in a close race, they become lost in the bigger battle.

Their sales team may cry, “If only we had (this or that type of) product…” As the pressure to make sales is on, brand builders can easily give in to this persistent plea.

Establishing yourself in the marketplace is hard enough without blurring your core message. We tell brand builders to stick to their guns—the fewer, the better! You have to distinguish your brand when you’re a new player. Sure, it’ll take a long time to draw and keep customers who appreciate your unique approach. But this is when patience and perseverance really pay off.

When we started Barefoot Wine, we entered with a large-size format that wasn’t as common as the standard smaller size of most wine. But this set us apart! It made us a newcomer in the big bottle category. And the choice was simple for the customer—only two types of wine, a varietal white and a varietal red. That’s it! It was easy for both the buyer and customer. People don’t like having too many choices.

We thought, “Could we sell more with a pink?” So, we tried it. It worked! Then we thought, “How about other varietals? And why not expand the line with the smaller, more popular size bottles?” Retailers responded quickly— “Which ones would you like to trade out for the new ones?” We were killing our own brand! Total sales hit a plateau for two years!

Looking back, we should have waited until we were more established in the market before adding more choices. Now, we advise our clients to avoid exceeding their “brand width”!

Another mistake some brand builders make is thinking that their product will sell well in other territories just because it sells well in their territory. The big risk is expanding prematurely, before they know enough or have the money to service what they sell in new territories.

It’s easy to forget about the importance of your own time when selling in your own backyard. Because you are doing all the merchandising, policing, and maybe even delivery, you might not have a handle on the cost of sales in a new territory, where you need to hire people to do this work. And without any new hires, you quickly learn what you’re up against—poor representation, out-of-stocks, and the competition taking advantage of your absence.

We made this exact mistake. We misunderstood the cost of sales in 2 new territories, and we expanded too quickly. And we actually had to withdraw from those markets for many years before we could afford to hire our own representatives there. We tarnished our brand in the process. It took us years to bounce back.

At first glance, it might seem counterintuitive to restrict your territory and your offerings when you’re just starting out, but you’ll be thankful that you built your brand on a solid and simple foundation.

For more, read on: http://c-suitenetworkadvisors.com/advisor/michael-houlihan-and-bonnie-harvey/

Categories
Growth Management Personal Development

To Be an Outstanding Leader, Act Like a Coach

As a leadership expert, coaches fascinate me because if they are a really great leader, they can get players to perform in ways that even the players themselves didn’t know they could do. While watching my kids play sports when they were growing up and supporting the team, I always enjoyed observing the coaches.

While watching my kids in sports, I was reminded of some outstanding leaders that I’ve known throughout my career and how they acted, in many ways, like a coach. Think about an influential boss or leader who had a tremendous impact on you. I’ll bet they, too, served as a coach.

Business, like sports, is a team effort, and to succeed, we need each player/team member to give their best. Outstanding coaches don’t just have a technical knowledge of the game/business, they have a gift for inspiring others.

Here are six things that outstanding coaches know and practice …

  • Each “player” has unique talents and gifts and we should encourage them to play to those strengths. What a waste not to capitalize on each player’s natural abilities and assets!
  • A word of praise goes so much farther than criticism. You may have to look hard to find something to praise, but it will be well worth your effort. Can you remember a mentor complimenting you? Suddenly your posture got straighter and you wanted to live up to those positive words. The same happens with your team members.
  • It’s not important to “put in” what was “left out” of your players; It’s important to draw out what was left in. Find ways to tap into your team members’ inner greatness. Draw out the best that they have to give.
  • Sharing the credit for team success builds everyone’s self-confidence, pride, and trust.
  • They are being watched! Successful leaders know that they must first model the way for their players.
  • Losing one game or making one mistake does not make the player a loser. Successful coaches use those temporary setbacks as teaching moments.

Do you measure up as a leader, a boss, or an executive? I’m sure we can all use some practice in this area. Be prepared, though, because serving as a great coach is a job where you will receive as much in return as you give.

For more resources on leadership and employee engagement, be sure to sign up for our monthly Ezine and you will receive our report: “7 of Your Biggest People Problems…Solved.”

Recent articles:

Managing for Maximum Performance

Leaders: Do You Have Employees or Team Members?

Leadership, Employee Engagement, and Sending Men to the Moon

Jennifer Ledet, CSP, is a leadership consultant and professional speaker (with a hint of Cajun flavor) who equips leaders from the boardroom to the mailroom to improve employee engagement, teamwork, and communication.  In her customized programs, leadership retreats, keynote presentations, and breakout sessions, she cuts through the BS and talks through the tough stuff to solve your people problems.

Photo by Musiena • on Reshot

Categories
Best Practices Growth Management Personal Development

Summer Strategies to Focus Attention on Business Growth

Does your business slowdown in the summer? If so, summer strategies can create ways to pay attention to your team and your business during slower months. The summer is a wonderful time to take business outside, to meet clients outside when possible. This is a great way to mix up otherwise mundane workdays and create an exciting change of pace for everyone.

The first thing I would suggest is to take advantage of the weather. If there are opportunities to meet your clients outdoors, make the most of it. If you have a patio or a facility for team members to take their lunch outside, make the most of it.

Next, consider using this time to review where you’re at in the business. The six-month mark is a great time to review your business plan, to review your marketing plan and do a quick health check of the team you have in place. The results you’re getting, the productivity you’re enjoying, the sales you’re making, this is a really good time to dedicate time to actually do a review at the six-month mark.

Another idea would include doing a summer clean. For me and my team, this is a really good time for us to update policies, procedures, operations manuals, logistics, it’s a great time to just take a breath and have a look at how do we want to complete the next six months.

Also consider, this is a brilliant time of year to focus on your personal development. There might be conferences you can attend, put on by your industry, where you can develop your skills or maybe send some of your team. It’s a really great time to catch up on your summer reading. Hint, hint, if you haven’t read Attention Pays, great summer reading. There are so many books I recommend. You can find additional details on my blog.

But it’s also a brilliant time to invest in your team. Is there an activity you can all do together? Is there something fun you could plan, maybe you leave early on a Friday and you do something together. Maybe there’s a volunteering opportunity for a charity that you want to support.

The summer is a great time to review where you’re at as a six-month strategy. It’s a great time to do a summer clean and focus on your personal development and do something for the team. What would you add? I’d love to hear your ideas.

Categories
Culture Growth Leadership Personal Development

5 Do’s and Don’ts of a Leader-Facilitator

The purpose of any leadership development program must be to improve outcomes.  Two ideal outcomes are employee engagement and customer experience.  If these two outcomes improve we can predict profitability will improve.  Costs are higher to attract and train new employees and/or new customers.  Keeping those we already have is less costly.

What is a leader-facilitator?

“The quality of the interactions between parts is more important than the quality of the parts.”

Facilitators are leaders but not all leaders are facilitators.  A leader-facilitator understands and utilizes the most useful theory of improvement and makes learning easier for teams.  A leader-facilitator priority is to create a safe (trusting) learning context.  This trusting context allows team members to manage the quality of interactions.  Quality interactions enables teams to make efficient, effective, and high-quality decisions.  Leader-facilitators rely on trust and influence instead of authority or control.  Creating a safe and trusting learning environment attracts employees who attract customers and keeps everyone loyal.

“What makes companies profitable? Based on their research – and my own experience – the core driver of long-term profitability is customer retention. While new sales are critical for growth, it requires far fewer resources to put mechanisms in place to retain current business than hunt down new customers.” (James L. HeskettThomas O. JonesGary W. LovemanW. Earl Sasser, 1997)

Organizations with effective leader-facilitators provide the best chance to achieve trust and self-organization. This new environment requires certain skills and behaviors. Here are five do’s and five 5 don’ts.

5 Don’ts and Do’s

Don’t motivate, do create a motivating environment

Stop trying to motivate people because it can often seem as manipulation and/or control. People want freedom to act.  Do clarify the mission (the purpose of the team).  Do clarify and communicate the vision (what you want to see).  Do clarify the strategy (how you want to get there).  Do clarify the values (how you want everyone to behave).  Then, turn people loose and watch them excel.

Don’t control, do promote trust

Don’t control behavior with ineffective performance management policies.  Do create an environment that naturally appreciates integrity, respect, and accomplishment of shared goals.

Don’t blame, do ask system questions.

Don’t blame individuals when mistakes are made.  Do ask system questions to use the mistakes to learn what works and what doesn’t.

Don’t micro-manage, do create autonomy

Don’t tell people what to do.  Do use coaching questions to help them decide for themselves new options for achieving goals.  Do provide system improvement tools to help them uncover those options on their own.

Don’t take credit, do give appreciation

Don’t take credit for improvements.  Do give credit to others.  Show appreciation for their efforts.  If you create the trusting and motivating environment, they have done it anyway.  It’s not you.  They could not have done it without you and you could not have done it without them.  It is a complex system of numerous interactions.  Say thank you!

Leader-facilitators are experts in creating a trusting and learning culture enabling everyone to contribute to improving employee engagement and customer experience. Leader-facilitators help teams make faster and higher quality decisions by deploying a set of useful do’s and don’ts.

Check out the interview on C-Suite Best Seller TV to learn more about how to stop leadership malpractice and replace the typical performance review: https://www.c-suitetv.com/video/best-seller-tv-wally-hauck-stop-the-leadership-malpractice/

Wally Hauck, PhD has a cure for the “deadly disease” known as the typical performance appraisal.  Wally holds a doctorate in organizational leadership from Warren National University, a Master of Business Administration in finance from Iona College, and a bachelor’s degree in philosophy from the University of Pennsylvania.   Wally is a Certified Speaking Professional or CSP.  Wally has a passion for helping leaders let go of the old and embrace new thinking to improve leadership skills, employee engagement, and performance.

James L. Heskett, Thomas O. Jones, Gary W. Loveman, W. Earl Sasser, J. A. (1997). The Service Profit Chain. New York, NY: The Free Press a Division of Simon and Schuster, Inc.

For more, read on: https://c-suitenetwork.com/advisors/advisor/wally-hauck/

Categories
Leadership Marketing Personal Development

How Do You Find Market Fit For Your Product?

I’ve worked with several high-tech startups in the marketing space–some of whom have had more success than others. The ones who have succeeded the most have an obsessive focus on market fit–that elusive quality that makes clients want your product. I’ve learned a way of doing this that applies to startups and to large, established companies alike.

There are many ways to find market fit, but I find too few startups focused on fit. Instead, they take the “Field of Dreams” approach–“If you build it, they will come.” These companies tend to be founder-led rather than market-led. They pursue a dream, and the smart ones succeed in selling that dream to the market. Maybe it takes a pivot or two. Some run out of money before they run out of pivots.

I’ll admit that a lot of folks don’t think there is any alternative.

I have long counseled another approach that is almost diametrically opposite the Field of Dreams approach. I somewhat cheekily refer to it as the “Dream of Fields” approach–“If you come, we will build it.” I have been doing this for many years, and it fits squarely into the Lean Startup methodology that is all the rage now. But even Lean Startups usually start with an idea–with an expected solution to a presumed problem.

I am suggesting something different. Most companies start with an expertise in solving several problems. They, in fact, can make a living providing consulting solutions for those problems, not because that is the business that they want to be in, but because they can make money solving problems and start to find the products within the consulting. There is a danger of going too far in this direction and just providing one-off consulting for all customers, but a little discipline can help with that.

By taking this approach, you force your software to at least solve the problem of the first few customers, and you likely learn a lot about generalizing the solution along the way. You also learn a lot from customers who don’t buy your product, because maybe you have something missing that would speak to an even larger set of customers.

To me, this can be a simpler path to market fit because you start out at least fitting one or two clients. The pivots might still be required, but they are less dramatic and less forced. They feel more like responses to newly-discovered opportunities than retreats from previous failures.

And it’s even easier for large companies to do this than small ones, because their trusted relationships help them find the right early customers more easily.

See if it works better for you.

Categories
Best Practices Entrepreneurship Health and Wellness Human Resources Management Marketing Negotiations Sales Skills Women In Business

What Emotional Currency Do You Accept?

“Emotional currency is the exchange we engage in when seeking self-satisfaction.” -Greg Williams, The Master Negotiator & Body Language Expert

“I was just promoted and received the title of ‘Junior Assistant’ in the PR department. I don’t care if others in the department with my skill set are making $13k more than me. I’m a ‘Junior Assistant’!”

Those were the words of a very jubilant individual that was more satisfied with a title than money. His fulfillment came from the emotional currency he’d received that made him feel complete.

What emotional currency do you accept when seeking to placate your needs and wants? The more you’re aware of how and when emotional currency moves you, the greater the chance you’ll have to control the degree of your acceptance of it.

Emotional currency can come in many forms. It can be in the form of a raise; you have more money and thus, you feel better about yourself due to your new financial status. It can stem from acceptance of you by a group or others; you feel wanted. It’s also born from the elevation of your mental wellbeing as the result of how you see yourself. It can also be a manipulator used against you.

So, why should you be aware of the emotional currency you accept and when you accept it? The answer lies in what you’ll do to obtain it based on the circumstances you’re in. A moment ago, I stated that emotional currency can be a tool of manipulation. That means, when you’re emotionally depressed, you’re more likely to leap at the opportunity to enhance your emotional state of mind; a high state of emotional satisfaction is something that everyone seeks. All of us should know our limits so that we don’t merge into a limitless desire to obtain what we need. Plus, the more attuned you are to your emotional needs, the better you’ll be at making decisions that are beneficial to your long-term wellbeing.

You’ve more than likely heard the statement, ‘get a grip’. That means you should control your desires. Once you raise your awareness about the emotional currency you deal in, and the sources from which it’s refilled, you’ll be more mindful of determining the sources you’ll allow to replenish your needs … and everything will be right with the world.

What does this have to do with negotiations? 

In a negotiation, value is perceptional. That perception is based on where you are in the moment of the negotiation. If someone attempts to assuage your feelings by telling you how great a negotiator you are, depending on your emotional state of mind, that compliment may be all it takes to take you for all you have.

Be keenly alert when someone begins to heap praise upon you during a negotiation, especially if it seems to appear out of nowhere. More than likely it’s a ploy to enhance your emotional currency. The real thought may belie the exact opposite of the compliment that’s used to mollify you. To keep from being ‘played like a chump’, accept compliments given to you, but don’t let them deter you from your goals of achieving what you want. Be steadfast in your quest and see what becomes of the compliments. Therein will lie the uncovering of their real intent.

Remember, you’re always negotiating! 

After reading this article, what are you thinking? I’d really like to know. Reach me at Greg@TheMasterNegotiator.com

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