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The Negotiation Book

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The Negotiation Book

Your definitive guide to successful negotiating

Wiley,

15 min read
10 take-aways
Audio & text

What's inside?

In negotiation, should you work with your opponents or crush them? Yes.

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Editorial Rating

8

Qualities

  • Applicable

Recommendation

Steve Gates, a negotiation consultant, takes a balanced approach – exemplified in his conceptual tool, “the negotiation clock face” – that makes this manual valuable for negotiators with a wide range of skills and approaches. Gates is refreshingly honest. He incorporates the lessons of a half-dozen other books on the topic, and renders most other texts on the subject obsolete. Though the book is not necessarily the right stand-alone tool for raw beginners, getAbstract recommends its tough lessons to moderately and extensively experienced negotiators as well as to anyone looking to become more realistic about business.

Summary

Life Is Negotiation

Negotiation plays a crucial role in everything you do. Although it may not be a formal part of your job, negotiation determines your salary, the power balance in your relationships and your position in your company. You can benefit from becoming better at negotiation, more aware when you’re negotiating, and more self-aware about the tendencies and preconceptions that govern your behavior when you negotiate.

Negotiating offers no objective scale to measure your success or failure. Assess your performance in relative terms. The multiple variables involved, such as time, price and logistics, complicate this appraisal. Keep your ego in check and your vision clear enough to see what the people on the other side think, observe what they do and analyze how these factors affect possible outcomes.

“The Negotiation Clock Face”

One book on negotiation insists that you collaborate. Another calls negotiation war and says you must fight for every inch. Both are correct. No one can tell you a right or wrong way to negotiate. Instead, apply certain tools in different situations. Some tools are cooperative and some are more combative. To help you understand...

About the Author

Steve Gates is founder and CEO of The Gap Partnership.

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