But what if negotiating was a “neutral” emotional event?  What if we could go into a negotiating session, whether it was with a client, direct report, boss, etc…, and create a win/win situation?

Here are three things to ponder before your next negotiating session:

1.) Negotiations are opportunities to create win-win outcomes and not win-lose scenarios.  Often one if not both parties enter a negotiating session from the perspective of a scarcity mentality.  If I don’t get what I want/need first, the other person will stick it to me. 

But what if the real challenge is that our expectations need to be adjusted.  What would change if we were looking out for the welfare of all instead of creating a winner and a loser?  What if we created a safe space for open and honest dialogue?

b.) Do some scenario planning in advance.  What do you need as a satisfying outcome?  What does the other party need in order to feel valued and appreciated?  Oftentimes we do not think through where are the “lines in the sand” prior to getting into a negotiating conversation.  Thus negotiations have the tendency to get personal (and painful) in a quick hurry.

c.) Role play some of the options in advance to the negotiation (at least in your mind).  If you think through the “what if’s” and play them out in your mind, you will not be caught off guard when you are in the actual negotiating situation.  In addition, some new possibilities may emerge that you’d not previously thought of because you’ve spent time in advanced planning.

When we create the opportunity for a ‘win-win’ situation in negotiating, people feel valued and appreciated.  This goes a long way in building healthy long-term relationships and it enhances the relational collatoral of the parties involved that may be needed to be called upon at a later date down the road.

If I change the negotiating conversation from a ‘win-lose’ event to more of a ‘win-win event, I may not get everything I desire, but chances are I am going to get a lot more than if I created a ‘winner take all type of event’.

In my earlier career as an organizational leader, I was socially unaware that others were not ‘hard-wired’ like me.  I just assumed that everyone saw the world in a similar fashion to how I saw it.  It took my brother-in-law to alert me that everyone does not have the same internal drivers as I do.

My second self-discovery (about a decade later) came from a conversation with my wife.  She alerted me that not everyone has the same amount of energy, passion, or drive for their work.  I remember her quote quite vividly.  She said, “Dale, third gear for you is like fifth gear for everyone else.  The only problem with that is most people only have three gears!”

So here I am, years later and I observe in my coaching practice that many people struggle in the area of Leadership Self-awareness.  We are oftentimes socially unaware of how we impact other people (this includes both staff and clients).  The impact is that we can have disengaged employees, lose good people, not connect with key clients, and not have an effective organization.  The bottom line is that the lack of Leadership Self-awareness is costing us money and productivity.

So how do we become more self-aware?  Here are three quick thoughts:

1.) Recognize that Leadership Self-awareness is critical today and take intentional steps to become more in touch with who you are as a leader.

2.) Utilize assessments to become familiar with your strengths, your ‘shadow side’, your values, what drives you, and the impact these areas have on those you lead.

3.) Know when to ask for help and then go get it from the appropriate resource people.

This is a very common occurrence regarding the change process.  We know change is squishy, difficult and oftentimes uncomfortable, but we get surprised with how it impacts us personally as the organization’s leader.

Adding to this mixture of squishiness is the accompanying chaos that drifts throughout the organization.  While I advocate that managers need to carefully ‘respond’ from a position as Change Agent vs. a knee-jerk ‘reaction’ to chaos, many managers become unglued in the midst of the chaos.

Chaos in our organization feels wrong.  Depending upon how insecure we are, it often translates into a feeling that “we are doing something wrong”.  And then the ‘IF ONLY’ tapes begin playing:

• IF ONLY you were a better manager the staff would be more on board…
• IF ONLY you were more competent the business would not be experiencing this level of chaos…
• IF ONLY you had acted sooner…
• IF ONLY…… IF ONLY… IF ONLY…

So what can we do?

The greatest step we can take is to realize that chaos is part of the change process.  If we are going to be a strong and vibrant organization, we must adapt to our current economic reality while we have an opportunity to innovate.

With change there will be a season of awkwardness, uncomfortableness, squishiness, etc.  Acknowledge that these feelings are a part of the change process and not the result of something we are doing wrong.  Give ourselves and our staff permission to feel the discomfort, but not get stuck there.

Responding to the chaos we feel and trying to ‘fix it’ is the fastest way we can sabotage any successful and sustainable change work within our organization.   Managers are continually blind-sided by how strong the emotions accompanying change can be from our staff and department heads.

Correctly identifying the chaos surrounding change is a healthy step in making sure that we are focusing on the right stuff in a season of change within our company.  Communication becomes king.  The more clearly and frequently we can communicate the positive future we are building, the quicker staff will navigate through the chaos of change successfully.

Shorter business life cycles are a part of the norm in doing business today.  It requires leaders to provide more adaptive leadership than ever before.  Somehow in our business model we need to build in the flexibility to adapt to ever-changing criteria while attempting to remain profitable.

So what can we do?  Here are three starting points:

1. Create a Business Dashboard.  When many businesses were launched, they thought of accounting and bookkeeping only as a means to keep track of transactions and keep the IRS at arms length.  Many companies today only utilize their record-keeping in an historic fashion (i.e. how did we do last month, year-to-date, compared to last year…)  The challenge today is to go deeper and think through what are the critical items that we need to measure on a daily or weekly basis and create a Dashboard that can at a quick glance tell us how we are doing at any given point during the week or month.

2. Become more aware of our industry niche and what changes are happening around us.  The world continues to be more connected than ever before.  For some of us, that opens up huge windows of opportunity to sell well beyond our geographic boundaries of the past.  For others, there have been changes in the delivery of the goods and services that we provide and perhaps the economy in our industry niche will not rebound exactly as it was before and we need to change some of our business deliverables to meet the needs of our potential clients.  Let’s not assume that business will return to “the good old days” but that we have an opportunity to enhance some of our deliverables and become more profitable.

3. Get the right people on your bus.  As the economy recovers, employees will be looking for new opportunities.  It is currently being estimated that over 30% of our current workforce will be changing jobs as the economy recovers.  With that in mind, begin evaluating your current and future staffing needs.  Do you have the right people on your team?  Are the employees in the right spots providing the right deliverables for your organization?  Utilizing assessments can help correctly match employees to positions to get the best possible return on your investment.

Lets not waste a good recession.  Utilize this season to strategically get your company positioned for growth in whatever areas you desire.

Ever wonder why in this land of great opportunity we have so many poor people?  I am not talking just about those who have had a series of tough events in life that have knocked them for a serious financial loop, or even those on Medical Assistance (or some other government assistance program) who can’t seem to quite get ahead financially.

I’m thinking about those people who live below their full potential… who have a lot of promise, but never reach the top of the hill.   Why is it that some people never have the breakthrough they desire and only believe that in order to change their fate in life that they will have to win the lottery?

Psychologists call this “Learned Helplessness” and it works like this: When we attempt to change something and fail in our attempts on more than one occasion, our brain creates the mental grove that ‘success is beyond our control’.  Once we believe that, we quit trying.  What then manifests in our life is the fulfillment of that quirky belief system… we learn to become helpless.

So what can we do?  First, we take on a belief system that we will ‘fail forward’.  The only real failure in life is to quit trying.  We can attempt any type of new endeavor and have the results turn out to be ugly.  We can either internalize this and say we are failures and will never do anything right (i.e. ‘Learned Helplessness’), or we can acknowledge things did not go according to plan and dissect what went wrong while pondering what can we do differently next time.

Secondly, we can celebrate life and what opportunities are currently in front of us.  I know that control is an illusion, that there is very little in life that I can indeed control.  But, I can choose to have a continual attitude of gratitude and appreciation for life on a daily basis.  I can celebrate the good things of every day life.  I find that when I have an appreciation for today and celebrate the good things that are happening in my midst, more good things happen (or is it that I just recognize more of them?).  I can literally feel positive energy and momentum is moving me forward.

Next time you are feeling a little blue, make a quick mental check to see if you are falling into the mental default of Learned Helplessness and know that you do not have to go there unless you really want to!

Over the past year, I’ve watched the season of economic uncertainty cause clients and business managers to have a number of “Crucial Conversations” with their staff and key customers.  Periodically over the next several months, I’ll address some of the more frequent conversations that I’ve observed and offer my insight (and hopefully hear yours)…

Today’s crucial conversation is around this topic:  “The customer demands more and commits to less, for less dollars”.

1.  So how do we as the business-owner/manager not fixate on price?

Price is a part of the sales process, but not the only key deliverable of the transaction.  (The other key deliverables being value of the product, and timeliness.)  I think as leaders we tend to fixate primarily on price when we are nervous about a potential client going somewhere else.  I believe the answer is to share with the  client where we provide product value and timeliness in addition to price.  Remember, we can only specialize in a maximum of two of these  areas at any given time.

2. What are the key critical questions to ask a strategic client if you are sensing they are shopping around for a new supplier?

First, I would want to talk to a key decision-maker and find out: a.) how they are doing in this economic season,  b.) what can we do to help them be more successful, and c.) what type of new client are they currently looking for (and see if I can provide some fresh leads).

Hopefully you are doing this on a regular basis and not just when you are hearing rumors that you may be let go as a preferred vendor.  Strategic relationships go both ways.  When I can convey to my clients that I am genuinely concerned in their business success and our business-to-business-relationship more than I am in my next sale to them, I will continue solidifying our relationship.

3. The fear of losing a key client during a season of economic uncertainty.

First, we should always be looking at ways to keep diversifying our business to be as recession-proof as possible.  Secondly, honesty is still the best policy.  If I am being hit with price increases from my suppliers and I need to raise my prices, totally transparency is still the best form of communication.  People understand the need to make a profit in order to stay in business.  At the same time, they are challenged with doing the same thing for their organizations.  So be forward, upfront, and totally honest in a timely fashion and few clients will falter and leave you.

I was reading last week about Blockbuster Video (and thinking about one of our local video chain locations that is closing their doors) and had an ‘ah-ha’  Economics Lesson.

Not too long ago, Blockbuster was the ‘hot’ video company.  They had a healthy market share, people were comfortable investing in them (their stocked peaked at $19 per share vs. 30 cents today), and they were in virtually every mid-sized community.

They focused on beating competitors on price and on perfecting their delivery of service… good practices, but not the only guarantee of success.

And then along came Netflix… they offered a service that was “outside the box”.  DVD’s by mail; no late fees; keep the videos as long as you liked and customers did not have to drive anywhere.

Blockbuster eventually copied Netflix, but as is often the case, it was too little too late.  So while Blockbuster today is facing bankruptcy, Netflix is trading their shares at $70 per share.

But this is not the end of the story… with Video-on-Demand; on-going upgrades in technology; and who knows what else on the horizon, the question becomes will Netflix continue to adapt to a changing landscape or will they fossilize within their current successful business model and become the next Blockbuster within the next decade?

Innovation is very disruptive.  It is squishy, difficult and sometimes fragile work.  The economic lesson for us is this: as the economy recovers, I find many business owners and managers thinking that there will be a return to “business as normal”… that we will be returning to how things were three + years ago.

The reality though is something different… while the economy is recovering and opportunities are forth-coming, the successful companies of this decade will be those who adjust and adapt to the new and emergent needs of their potential customer base.

The challenge is not only currently offering goods and services at a reasonable price, but also providing new and innovative services that people want which may be packaged differently than they have been in previous years.

That is the great economic lesson for all us business owners.  To continue to adapt and change, regardless of how successful we currently are so that we may continue to be a viable business provider for this next decade.

I just got back from my first week long vacation where I was “connected” with my world throughout my travels.  I thought I did a pretty good job staying connected, but not compulsively so… my wife felt sorry for me and felt that I was ‘over-connected’ and not relaxed enough.  Somewhere in between is most likely the “balance”.  Hopefully I will figure out what that looks like for me before my next vacation this summer!

As a result of being out of the office for a week, I’ve been pondering the question, “Is it possible to over-communicate in today’s society”?  I know that there is lots of “noise” out there… the shift in print advertising; e-mail becoming more passe; social networking becoming the new “in” thing.

But as I ponder effective communication today, I keep coming back to three things-

1. There is a big difference between ‘communicating something’ and ‘effective communication’.  We can say all kinds of stuff, but is anyone really listening to us?  Just because we use a multiple number of communication vehicles, it does not guarantee us that we are effectively communicating.

2. Today’s “hot” social modes of communication will most likely be less effective five years from now.  I struggled to say ‘yes’ to getting onto Facebook.  There are people in my past who I’ve lost contact with; I’ve moved on from; etc. and really do not have a “need” to reconnect with them.  But, at the same time, I am concerned that I am fossilizing and becoming too rigid with what modes of communication I am most comfortable with.

3. We have the potential to be “connected” with our world on a 24/7 basis and yet over-communicating is very hard to do.  There is a fundamental shift going on in how we communicate.  (Newspaper and magazines continue their decline.  Doing a regular blog was nowhere on my radar five years ago… Fifteen years ago in our office of 30+ people, we only had one person with internet connectivity, our CPA!)

So that brings me back to my question… is it possible to over-communicate in today’s over-stimulated world?  Personally I think it is very difficult to over-communicate.  I want to strive for effective communication every day and not be deceived into thinking that just by utilizing the multiple modalities of social communication at my disposal that I am automatically communicating in an effective and sufficient manner.

I came across some additional communication statistics earlier this month that are a little bit mind-bending regarding Social Media.  It continues to show that Social Media is not just a passing fad, but rather a new style of communication.

As Small Business Owners/Managers this growing phenomena will continue to have impact on how business is done in the years ahead.  It also will impact how we do business with the growing purchasing sector of the Millennial Generation (which will be similar in size to the Baby Boomers).

So out of a list of 37 statistics here are a few that caught my attention:

1.  By the end of 2010, it is predicted that 96% of the Millennials will have joined at least one social network.

2.  Social Media has overtaken porn as the #1 activity on the web.

3.  It took TV 13 years to reach 50 million users… Facebook added 100 million users in less than 9 months.

4.  80% of companies currently use LinkedIn as a primary tool to find employees.

5.  78% of consumers trust peer recommendations that they read online.

The impact and importance of Social Media is not going away.  For us as business leaders, we need to discover, test, and engage in activities that create positive vibes and name recognition via Social Media.  It appears that the shift of being content providers through these innovative mediums is going to be more successful than traditional advertising.

I know it feels somewhat awkward and foreign to many of us business leaders, but the sooner we embrace this new paradigm, the quicker we can figure out how to leverage this new technology for the greater good of our organizations and community.

While watching the football playoffs during the past few weeks, I could not help myself from turning inward and wondering how difficult it must have been for the Green Bay Packers management team to make the decision to trade Brett Favre.

It was obvious in observing Favre that there was still “tread on those tires”. Yet at the same time, Aaron Rodgers had a very nice year at quarterback as well. I do not pretend to know what would have been the ‘best’ decision for the organization to make. And I am sure the handling of Brett Favre will continue being a conversation topic for many years to come.

But where I ‘camped for a while’ watching the Saints-Vikings game was on the ability of the Packers’ organization to make a difficult decision and continue to move on.  There was the need for drafting new players, holding the various mini-camps, bringing in new coaches and the preparing to play a new season of football.

The part I admired most in observing this all play out over the past two years was that once the decisions were made, the key leaders and players continued moving forward and were not immobilized by the external pressures and feedback of their peers or consumers.

Oftentimes in working with business owners, I see them ‘emotionally stuck’ when facing difficult decisions. This is especially true when it comes to employee decisions.

One of my favorite mantras is this: what we tolerate we have an inability to change.

How this plays out oftentimes in business is that we avoid making a difficult personnel decision because we are concerned about the employee or customer backlash that may occur with what appears to be an unpopular decision.

Let’s take a page out of the Packers’ playbook. Difficult decisions are a part of being a good manager and business owner. Sometimes we have more than one good option available to us. We have to make the choice about what is our best option given all the data surrounding us, make the decision, and then move forward boldly. We won’t know what awaits us until we move forward with our decision.