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Over my career, as lawyer, I found it both fun and accurate to use that quote and state that "I’m only responsible for what I say not what you understand". From my perspective, as business lawyer, nothing could have been more true than this statement. Then, time passing over my carrer I slowly found out that, as negotiator, what does matter is to make sure you not only properly listen your counterpart and not only make your statement...

  What is the greatest challenge negotiator faces when about to enter into negotiation? Common answers are that negotiator has either to deal with difficult counter part or with unrealistic goals or with time pressure. No negotiator will tell you his biggest challenge is to deal with Ego especially with his Ego. However, experience shows that dealing with negotiator Ego is usually the biggest challenge negotiator...

On the No side, You probably noticed that for many people in many cultures it’s hard or impossible to say No. From there come many misunderstandings and causes of no deal. This topic being quite popular I won’t further elaborate on it but would simply advice deal makers when negotiating with people from different culture, to make sure the Yes expressed by counterpart is a true one and not a not expressed No. Under some other auspices,...

Dear Santa Claus, Thanks for being such a negotiation mentor. Thanks to you (and to some other good fellows) I have learnt that: I need to have my Christmas list prepared; We will need to know each other more and we will both have to deal with cultural differences because you’re Santa Claus from the North Pole and I am French; We will have to focus on interests rather than positions (my position being I want everything on my...

Tout le monde est saturé d’informations. Tout le monde zappe et tout le monde se demande, voire vérifie, si il n’a pas reçu un message sur son portable pendant que vous parlez. Nombres d’études indiquent que la durée d’attention moyenne d’un humain serait désormais de 8 secondes consécutives (inférieure à celle d’un poisson rouge, 9 secondes) et de 2 minutes par heure en cumulé pour une personne ayant un QI dans la...