Exactly eight years ago yesterday, a colleague and I were finishing a Negotiation Skills training programme in London with 12 participants from a major bank. We had completed two days and had a ½ day left to go. We arrived early at the venue; the day was like any other, but with one exception: Donald Trump had just won the US election.
When the participants arrived, they asked if they could have ‘a word’ with us. They told us that a Trump victory had not been priced in, that ‘the financial markets were in chaos’, and that they needed to leave immediately to address these critical market issues. As negotiation skills trainers, our objective was to deliver an excellent programme. The irony was that we were now the ones who were at the centre of a potential conflict…
There are always options available to resolve new conflicts that confront us – persuasion, problem-solving, negotiating, etc. Before we choose which path to follow, it’s important to stop, go back and examine, with a critical eye, how this new event(s) may impact our existing plans.
Our recent LinkedIn polls highlight that many people feel that poor planning is one of the two biggest mistakes people make in resolving commercial conflict (the other is poor listening skills). I completely agree, but there is a caveat to this. If we try to plan for every possible eventuality – the amount of planning that we do can become counter-intuitive as we may feel that, emotionally, we’ve covered all the bases so anything else can seem ‘unrealistic’. There are plenty of examples of this in the training world – “you must use our venue”, “a scenario must last 30 minutes”, “a replay must last one hour” etc.
I’m talking about the strategy we employ to achieve our objectives. Good negotiators remain tough on the realistic objectives they want to achieve (the deal content). At the same time, they’re highly flexible with their strategic approach (how they’re going to get there) - often there’s a plan B and even a plan C.
Returning to the training course I was running for the bank; we asked the participants if they could find another ½ day within the following two weeks (Plan B), and they agreed.
It may be the case that in his second term, Donald Trump wants to shake things up and challenge conventional wisdom and norms as he did before. If this is so, those who need or want to negotiate with him will do well to maintain a highly flexible strategy in their pursuit of an agreement!
I could tell you about the time Donald Trump lost me a client - commandeering the area around London Heathrow Airport for a presidential visit (not that I’m bitter), but I’ll leave that for another blog…
Sam Macbeth, 07th November 2024
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