An important reminder: no one does this negotiation stuff perfectly all the time.  No one.

The point of this blog is not that you do everything perfectly every time and completely free yourself from the realities of the world.   It is, instead, to give you something else to consider.

I operate off of the belief that knowing something is better than hacking away on your own.  And, that once you have an idea, you can look at it, squint, turn it on its head and figure out just how it’s going to work for you.

I spent a very long time in my early professional career fighting against my personal style of negotiation, that is, what came naturally when I was in a conflict.

I do not scream or yell and I tend to not be good at the hard and fast line in the sand without any context.  So I didn’t think I looked like what negotiators looked like in popular culture.

I am not, as the kids say, a hard ass.

But I’m firm in my convictions, unwilling to be bullied and unimpressed by puffery.

So I started studying negotiation as A Thing.  And I slowly came to the understanding that my style was just fine; I needed to be aware of certain things more than others, but they didn’t get things that came naturally to me, so: Even Steven.

This blog is my attempt to convince you that your style is just fine and that there are things you should be aware of.

I screw up in one way or another every day.  I write all of those screw ups down in a notebook and try not to make them again.  Sometimes I do, though.  Sometimes a lesson takes a couple of experiences to settle in.  That’s life.

So, make mistakes.  Make lots of them.

Please.

I’d much rather you try than you hold back from fear of screwing up.