“Winning With Integrity: Getting What You’re Worth Without Selling Your Soul”

November 04, 1998

Leigh Steinberg, author of “Winning With Integrity: Getting What You’re Worth Without Selling Your Soul,” chats about his book and how to get what you want in any type of negotiations.

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NetCafeLive: Borders.com(tm), in association with TalkCity(tm) welcomes you! Tonight please welcome our special guest Leigh Steinberg. I would like welcome you to Talk City Mr. Steinberg. It is very nice to have you here to share your knowledge with us.

Leigh Steinberg: Hi Everyone! Thank You, I frequent Borders Books often! It's fun to be doing this chat!

CCCoach: When talking about negotiation do you find that many people get angry when they do not get what they want? Can you offer any insight as to why this anger develops and how to avoid it in the process of negotiation?

Leigh Steinberg: The process of negotiating tends to intimidate people. They react in two extremes. On the one hand, they may be unduly meek and passive, and won't assert themselves and walk away disappointed. An alternative response is to become over aggressive and truculent and that invariably leads to an impasse. When the subject matter is "YOU" in the workplace, and the topic of discussion is your own level of talent and value, people can become quite sensitive and angry. It's important to depersonalize the interaction instead of wearing your feelings on your sleeve. A philosophy that views negotiation as an act of war with all the metaphors of war-like language can put someone into a zone which recaptures a basic evolutionary instinct. Faced with danger, people will flee or fight. And that fight reflex involves tremendous anger and tremendous levels of aggression. There is a misnomer that destroying another persons position is an effective and practical way to negotiate. In reality, even if the destroying another persons position and winning is possible, that scorched earth philosophy will lead to a broken relationship so that in one, negotiation may be successful, but that likely will be the last time you can have an effective negotiation with that person.

CCCoach: I understand about the avoidance to discomfort when faced with conflict. Can you explain the exhilarating feeling on the side of the journey through conflict, or even how one may feel after they get what they want?

Leigh Steinberg: Negotiation is just another term for the process of communication that we are all involved with in our daily lives. It can involve a husband and a wife discussing where they plan to live, or something more mundane as like what kind of food they plan to take out that night. It can involve a boyfriend and girlfriend discussing the nature of their relationship and what the ground rules will be. It can be a father setting curfew for his teenage son or daughter, or any of us trying to achieve a better package of compensation in our workplace, or the purchase of an automobile or a home. We all negotiate every day in our lives. The first critical factor is to have as much introspective clarity as to what your life goals are, and what truly makes you happy and the ability to prioritize these in a way which separates the inconsequential from the critical. The first level of the negotiation level journey is through self-awareness. The next step is to put yourself into the heart and brain of the person that you're attempting to do conflict resolution with. See the world as that person sees it. Understand the pressures and influences and ultimate goals of that other person. Craft a win-win scenario. The tremendous satisfaction and self fulfillment comes from a negotiation well done. Every negotiation for yourself is like a passage in life and a golden opportunity for self assessment. The results that come from this process may lead to incredible enhancement of a relationship or a work situation.

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