Category: Authentic Conversations About Difference

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Authentic Conversations About Difference Authentic Negotiating

Becoming a Great Negotiator: own your value

During-Brainstorming-34
Business team during a brainstorming in a meeting

Two crucial aspect of negotiations are doing necessary external research and doing the deep internal work. If your information is lacking and you aren’t basing your strategy off of a complete picture and, certainly, if you have not done your internal work, no amount of preparation otherwise can salvage your deal.

While the idea of fully fleshed out data informing your strategy and doing the internal work to own it are obviously important for any negotiation prep, they can have the most quantifiable impact when we’re in contract or price negotiations. If you’re talking price—whether you’re negotiating salary or rates for services provided—having a clearly defined price is essential for a successful negotiation.

Have you taken the time to identify and fully own your own value?

If not, doing so before your next price negotiation is imperative. Letting your price get established mid-negotiation is the fast-track to failure. You’re sacrificing your own authority, devaluing your own skills and services, and letting your counterpart establish terms that force you to be reactionary in the moment. Whatever strategy you thought you had will quickly go out the window as your ideal price point continues to dwindle and you lose control.

Take an inventory of the services you provide your clients. Understand the cost of your time and effort. Itemize the results you produce to create as strong of a picture of your value as possible. Then find a number that feels fair and that you can live with and own fully.

At my firm, we don’t negotiate fees. This isn’t because we are looking to be tough. It is because we have done the external research and internal work necessary when we set our fees for the upcoming year to be clear they are appropriate and we fully own them. If the scope of services changes our overall fees may change but not the rate we charge. Although, we won’t offer our clients fewer services than they need and we won’t make less effort than necessary under any circumstances—and we will always provide value that at least equal or exceeds our fees.. We are aware of and stay connected to our history of achieving our clients’ objectives and getting optimum results. Our rates are going to reflect that, we comfortably hold to them and we have no problem if clients who are looking for lower rates chose to go elsewhere – in fact, we encourage it.

That’s what it means to own your value. It has to work both ways, though. You can’t just set a number that feels right or sounds good. Your price needs to be an accurate representation of your value, you need to be able to effectively present that value and then you need to deliver on that promised value. If you can’t back it up you’ll never own that price and it won’t take your counterpart long to dismantle it. It will come off as a cheap tactic and your position will be completely compromised. Your credibility for the remainder of negotiation is lost.

If you find yourself needing to negotiate your rates, you know, in moments of honesty, that you haven’t set them right. If you set an inaccurate number that overstates your value (or the value you can own at that time), the inauthentic negotiator is going to get offended or cave due to feelings of fear or scarcity when the other party asks for a discount. This is when the table banging starts and you get defensive, so that your inaccurate pricing isn’t found out. You’ve positioned yourself in such a way that your entire strategy is built upon inaccurate, half-formed information. Once that load-bearing price beam starts to crack, all of your other prep work becomes irrelevant. You have no choice but to become over-invested in the outcome or to concede and lose credibility and trust.

If you’ve done a fair audit of your own value and you know you’re able to own it, you’ll achieve the same clarity that I have at my firm. You know that what you’re asking for is right and fair. If the other party feels that your asking price is too high, that is their problem. With a fully-informed price point, you can remain detached from the outcome and be confident enough to let that prospect walk away. There will be others, because you’ve identified and fully owned your value.

Becoming an authentic negotiator is a constant process. Even when you feel like you’ve mastered my principles, there’s always more work to be done and new ways to apply the authentic negotiating approach. If you’re open to learning and continually evolving as a negotiator, it might be time to understand your strengths and weaknesses. Take my Authentic Negotiating Success Quiz: http://www.coreykupfer.com/authentic-negotiating-success-quiz/

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Corey Kupfer is an expert strategist, negotiator and dealmaker. He has more than 35 years of professional deal-making and negotiating experience. Corey is a successful entrepreneur, attorney, consultant, author and professional speaker who is passionate about deal-driven growth. He is also the creator and host of the DealQuest Podcast.

If you want to find out how deal-ready you are, take the Deal- Ready Assessment today!

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Authentic Business Relationships Authentic Conversations About Difference Authentic Negotiating

Negotiating Differences Between Men and Women Pt. 2

During-Brainstorming-35
Business team during a brainstorming in a meeting

Last week’s blog discussed some general differences in how men and women negotiate. I went more in-depth about what many women I’ve worked with have struggled to do most, and that’s own their value. I think there’s a lot to learn in that idea, and the work we can do to own our value is important for both men and women.

In case you missed it, the wonderful Sylvie di Giusto, of Executive Image Consulting chatted about this recently. Check us out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i31n2wK9cuQ.

So, how can we move past limited perceptions of our self-worth and own our value?

Audit your work

Analyze the work you’ve done, and itemize the difference you made with each task. What lives were impacted by the work you’ve done? How much have your coworkers benefited from working with you? Has the company profited from your work? If you take some time for a deep dive into the value of your work and lay it out in front of you, it becomes easier to own your value.

Do the internal work

Find your truth. Once you discover and own that, you can be honest about what you value, what you really want and what kind of person you want to be. If you’re committed to those truths, and your work is pointed in their direction you can feel confident in your value from a deeper perspective than the dollar signs. When we feel like what we’re doing and who we are on a fundamental level is valuable, then it becomes natural to accept that our quantifiable value is commensurate with our work and how we feel about ourselves.

Define your goals

What are your objectives? To this point, we’ve been thinking both granular level of value-adds that your work brings and high-level spiritual and emotional work that can clarify how you value yourself personally. When we define our goals, these things come together. We can set objectives that both add value to our work but also align with our values and the person we want to be.

Backburner your external reward system

There can be a barrage of external factors that stick with us and make it difficult to perceive our value at all, let alone accurately assess it and own it. Between constant adverts that remind both men and women that we’re just not enough, missing this thing or that thing or bosses that make it difficult to parse our value, our external reward systems can be easily broken. The baseline expectation is perfection or outstanding work, so when we succeed and add value, it might seem unremarkable. In the rare instances when we fail or fall just short, it’s magnified and feels like it unravels all the other amazing work we’ve done. When we contract out our reward system, we concede that we have no say in our value, making it impossible for us to own it in any impactful way. If we seek rewards internally and live up to our own self-ascribed standards and find peace in living up to those ideals, we own every aspect of our life, work and value.

Regardless of gender, the Authentic Negotiator finds the same level in any negotiation. Their value isn’t in question, and the goals are clear. Still, it takes work, regardless of your starting point. Authentic Negotiators aren’t born that way. They’ve done the work. What work do you have left to do? My Authentic Negotiating Success Quiz will show you.

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Corey Kupfer is an expert strategist, negotiator and dealmaker. He has more than 35 years of professional deal-making and negotiating experience. Corey is a successful entrepreneur, attorney, consultant, author and professional speaker who is passionate about deal-driven growth. He is also the creator and host of the DealQuest Podcast.

If you want to find out how deal-ready you are, take the Deal- Ready Assessment today!

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Authentic Conversations About Difference Authentic Negotiating

Negotiating Differences Between Men and Women

During-Brainstorming-44
Business team during a brainstorming in a meeting

Men and women are different. That’s a simple fact that we can’t deny. It would make sense then that men and women negotiate differently. Understanding these differences when doing your preparation work is vital for your success.

I had a great conversation with the wonderful Sylvie di Giusto, of Executive Image Consulting about this topic. Watch it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i31n2wK9cuQ.

Before I elaborate any further, I’d like to clear up a few things. First, and most obvious, it’s misguided to ascribe specific traits to an entire gender and take it as an absolute, but my ideas are informed by over thirty years of negotiating with men and women. Second, I also acknowledge that that for some, gender is non-binary. I speak in these binary terms because the far majority of my experience is with clients who identify as male or female.

At the negotiating table, men who are not skilled negotiators often make the mistake of being the blustery over-confident-types, quick to anger and full of ego. These traits can be temporarily effective on smaller matters with unsophisticated negotiators on the other side, but they also make becoming an authentic negotiator a challenge, fail to build relationship and significantly increase the chance of a deal not working out over time.

Women on the other hand, while still susceptible to bluster and over-confidence, are much more frequently measured and less governed by ego. Women who struggle with negotiating very often have issues with owning their value. Due to ingrained societal paradigms and many related factors, women often severely undervalue themselves, under-sell themselves and are less likely to advocate for themselves much more frequently than men do. Conversely, men are often quick to anger if they feel their value is being challenged or slighted. While the reaction seems opposite to women’s, the male response is rooted in the same issue—the inability to own their value. If they are overvaluing themselves or their product/service, an extreme defense response is to be expected, because they know they can’t own their own valuation. It is important for both men and women to be realistic and honest about their value

Let’s consider an example of undervaluing ones self. If the market value of your work is $300/hour and you perceive that your value is only $150/hour, there is almost no chance that you can successfully negotiate that $300/hour.

Just because we feel like we’re being honest with ourselves doesn’t make something true. If your work on the market is going for $300/hour, that is your value, and that is the truth. Own it.

That’s easier said than done, right? Making a 100 percent jump like that ($150.00 to $300.00) if we haven’t done the prep work to get comfortable with that valuation can take you out of your comfort zone, make your fee quote seem flimsy or disingenuous and cause it be much less likely you will close the business. If you can’t get yourself all the way up to your market value, establish a rate slightly higher than your baseline, one that you still feel you can own, and negotiate for that. It might not mean you are fully owning your value, but it’s a start and it’s changing your mind-set, which is a huge step. The next time you negotiate, you’ll be coming from an even stronger value proposition, and eventually you will own your value. You will close business at exponentially higher rates if you only quote/negotiate for what you can own at that time and then the next step is to do the work to be able to own higher rates over time.

I’ll explore some work you can do to get there in part two.

Regardless of gender, the Authentic Negotiator maintains a quiet confidence and owns their value. Their worth isn’t in question and the goals are clear. Still, it takes work, regardless of your starting point. Authentic Negotiators aren’t born that way. What work do you have left to do? My Authentic Negotiating Success Quiz will show you.

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Corey Kupfer is an expert strategist, negotiator and dealmaker. He has more than 35 years of professional deal-making and negotiating experience. Corey is a successful entrepreneur, attorney, consultant, author and professional speaker who is passionate about deal-driven growth. He is also the creator and host of the DealQuest Podcast.

If you want to find out how deal-ready you are, take the Deal- Ready Assessment today!

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Authentic Conversations About Difference Authentic Negotiating

Becoming a Great Negotiator: Step One, Pt. Two

During-Brainstorming-37
Business team during a brainstorming in a meeting

We’ve been over how to cut through our default context and know the inner work required to reframe and create an empowering context that we own. The next step is examining how great negotiators create contexts that lead to success.

Let’s continue for now with the Google software purchase example. You’ve created software that Google wants to purchase and have set a meeting to discuss terms. The number you have in mind feels out of reach, but you’ve never dealt with a company as massive as Google before.

Your default context for this exercise becomes desperation. You’re thinking, “I need to sell this software.” How many successful outcomes can that context yield? One. You sell the software and you’ve had a successful negotiation. But have you? How badly did your desperate context force you to compromise what was probably a fair ask on your part? Did you make concessions you otherwise wouldn’t have if you had approached the negotiation with a different, more powerful context? See, success, even at a conceptual level, becomes uncertain when we haven’t taken the time to properly craft our context.

The only thing worse than no deal is a bad deal. Your “I need to sell this” imperative didn’t let you walk away. It made you completely unable to detach from the outcome because you had inextricably entangled your definition of success with the outcome. Your negotiation was DOA. And what might have been an otherwise constructive meeting despite no sale being made – should that end up being the case – has now been reduced to failure, cut and dry.

What would have been a more empowering context in this situation? What if you went into this negotiation with “learning” as your context? “I want to learn as much as possible from this meeting so that, deal or not, I have experience to call upon for the next time I’m in this position.” That’s an empowered context, rooted in authenticity. It’s realistic and honest and creates a situation that is perfect for CDE. You’re clear about what you want at the base level, you’re able to detach from the outcomes because if you’re engaged with the negotiation and attentive to what you’re learning, success is guaranteed, and you’ve grounded yourself in a way that preserves your equilibrium.

Once losing is off the table and we change how we define success, we can remain clear in our objectives and avoid making bad deals.

When we dig deep enough, we can uncover any number of powerful, constructive contexts to hold. You could have approached this meeting with Google with no expectation of making the sale then and there. Your context could have been mutual respect and dignity. Google is a huge company and you’re an upstart; finding a place where the two organizations can relate at the same level and reconvening on more even ground is a win. You could have chosen a context that said, “I want to establish a relationship.” You know these deals rarely get ironed out the first time around. Developing a collaborative relationship with the people at Google is much more productive than a desperate do-or-die context that puts undue pressure on all parties and sets you up to fail. Holding contexts that come from a positive, constructive place will always produce better results.

Being a great negotiator starts with honest and rigorous self-evaluation. The hardest part can be getting started. Take my Authentic Negotiating Success Quiz to see how close you are to becoming a great negotiator.

—

Corey Kupfer is an expert strategist, negotiator and dealmaker. He has more than 35 years of professional deal-making and negotiating experience. Corey is a successful entrepreneur, attorney, consultant, author and professional speaker who is passionate about deal-driven growth. He is also the creator and host of the DealQuest Podcast.

If you want to find out how deal-ready you are, take the Deal- Ready Assessment today!

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Authentic Conversations About Difference Authentic Negotiating

Becoming a Great Negotiator: Step One, Pt.

During-Brainstorming-38
Business team during a brainstorming in a meeting

Once you’ve found the state of being that makes a habit of CDE, invites authenticity and fosters success, you can start to refine your strength as a negotiator. But how?

Create and Connect to a Powerful Context

Our context is the place that we’re coming from, internally. There’s always something within that’s motivating our decisions and behaviors. Most of us are acting upon our default context – whatever it is. It’s ever-present, whether we admit it or not. The great negotiator knows the power of their context. What we want to do is find a fundamental context that can anchor our being and keep us grounded, no matter what—a cause we can always return to.

What we must avoid is the default context. When we’re letting our subconscious, unnamed context drive us, we’re ceding a degree of control that we might not even know we have. First, we have to identify our default existing context. Then we have to do the inner work to reframe it and develop an empowering context that we own. Our context – especially at the negotiating table – is our north star, our Polaris.

For something that seems so simple, I get a lot of questions about this. Why does context matter? Isn’t reframing your context as needed just an exercise in self-manipulation? Isn’t part of authenticity being honest with ourselves and accepting our feelings? If we change those feelings and behaviors for the sake of winning a negotiation, what’s the difference between context and any other tactic?

All fair questions. Fundamentally, context isn’t about manipulating our psyche or denying our feelings –because we aren’t defined or ruled by our feelings. In actual fact, when we blindly accept our feelings, act upon them and refuse to do any critical thinking about where those feelings are coming from or what is causing them, we’re being dishonest and inauthentic with ourselves. When we refuse to confront the truth of our reality and choose to be reactionary in the moment, we’re agreeing to be directed by the superficial and setting ourselves up for failure.

Think about it like this: Google wants to buy your software. The deal is such that it could change your life – seed your next business venture well into the future or set you up for an early retirement. Your emotions run the gamut from excited to nervous to joyful to scared. Like any good businessperson, you’ve done your due diligence on similar deals Google has made in the past, you mostly know what to expect from the other side. The hard work should be done and you should feel optimistic, even confident. You don’t. Uneasiness is steering the ship.

A negotiator who doesn’t identify this as an opportunity to reframe their context and allows the default to persist is going to have a rough negotiation upcoming. How should you respond to your feelings? Will you accept your uneasiness as natural jitters and then constantly wonder why the feeling won’t leave? Or will you identify the uneasiness you’re feeling as something much deeper and ask yourself what context you’re holding that’s creating this feeling? You might be desperate, or maybe there’s something else amiss about how smoothly this all went. Being fearful of what success on this level might mean for you or feeling undeserving is natural, but you need to be able to recognize these feelings and use that understanding to change your context. That will keep you grounded in negotiations.

Being a great negotiator starts with honest and rigorous self-evaluation. The hardest part can be getting started. Take my Authentic Negotiating Success Quiz to see how close you are to becoming a great negotiator.

—

Corey Kupfer is an expert strategist, negotiator and dealmaker. He has more than 35 years of professional deal-making and negotiating experience. Corey is a successful entrepreneur, attorney, consultant, author and professional speaker who is passionate about deal-driven growth. He is also the creator and host of the DealQuest Podcast.

If you want to find out how deal-ready you are, take the Deal- Ready Assessment today!

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Authentic Conversations About Difference Authentic Negotiating

Becoming a Great Negotiator: Step One, Pt. 1

During-Brainstorming-39
Business team during a brainstorming in a meeting

Once you’ve found the state of being that makes a habit of CDE, invites authenticity and fosters success, you can start to refine your strength as a negotiator. But how?

Create and Connect to a Powerful Context

Our context is the place that we’re coming from, internally. There’s always something within that’s motivating our decisions and behaviors. Most of us are acting upon our default context – whatever it is. It’s ever-present, whether we admit it or not. The great negotiator knows the power of their context. What we want to do is find a fundamental context that can anchor our being and keep us grounded, no matter what—a cause we can always return to.

What we must avoid is the default context. When we’re letting our subconscious, unnamed context drive us, we’re ceding a degree of control that we might not even know we have. First, we have to identify our default existing context. Then we have to do the inner work to reframe it and develop an empowering context that we own. Our context – especially at the negotiating table – is our north star, our Polaris.

For something that seems so simple, I get a lot of questions about this. Why does context matter? Isn’t reframing your context as needed just an exercise in self-manipulation? Isn’t part of authenticity being honest with ourselves and accepting our feelings? If we change those feelings and behaviors for the sake of winning a negotiation, what’s the difference between context and any other tactic?

All fair questions. Fundamentally, context isn’t about manipulating our psyche or denying our feelings –because we aren’t defined or ruled by our feelings. In actual fact, when we blindly accept our feelings, act upon them and refuse to do any critical thinking about where those feelings are coming from or what is causing them, we’re being dishonest and inauthentic with ourselves. When we refuse to confront the truth of our reality and choose to be reactionary in the moment, we’re agreeing to be directed by the superficial and setting ourselves up for failure.

Think about it like this: Google wants to buy your software. The deal is such that it could change your life – seed your next business venture well into the future or set you up for an early retirement. Your emotions run the gamut from excited to nervous to joyful to scared. Like any good businessperson, you’ve done your due diligence on similar deals Google has made in the past, you mostly know what to expect from the other side. The hard work should be done and you should feel optimistic, even confident. You don’t. Uneasiness is steering the ship.

A negotiator who doesn’t identify this as an opportunity to reframe their context and allows the default to persist is going to have a rough negotiation upcoming. How should you respond to your feelings? Will you accept your uneasiness as natural jitters and then constantly wonder why the feeling won’t leave? Or will you identify the uneasiness you’re feeling as something much deeper and ask yourself what context you’re holding that’s creating this feeling? You might be desperate, or maybe there’s something else amiss about how smoothly this all went. Being fearful of what success on this level might mean for you or feeling undeserving is natural, but you need to be able to recognize these feelings and use that understanding to change your context. That will keep you grounded in negotiations.

Being a great negotiator starts with honest and rigorous self-evaluation. The hardest part can be getting started. Take my Authentic Negotiating Success Quiz to see how close you are to becoming a great negotiator.

—

Corey Kupfer is an expert strategist, negotiator and dealmaker. He has more than 35 years of professional deal-making and negotiating experience. Corey is a successful entrepreneur, attorney, consultant, author and professional speaker who is passionate about deal-driven growth. He is also the creator and host of the DealQuest Podcast.

If you want to find out how deal-ready you are, take the Deal- Ready Assessment today!

Categories
Authentic Conversations About Difference Authentic Negotiating

Authentic Conversations about Race

During-Brainstorming-42
Business team during a brainstorming in a meeting

While race is a social construct, the impact of that construct is real. We hear people (mainly people who identify as white) say things like “I don’t see race,” “I’m not prejudiced,” or “we live or should live in a post-racial society.” Aside from being surface-level and uninformed assessments, these positions are how many of us continually avoid having authentic conversations about race. Many of us convince ourselves that it’s a nonissue because we rightly intuit that it shouldn’t be an issue; we truly want to believe in a world that is equitable and rooted in understanding and compassion. But we also have a tendency to avoid doing the harder work to seek and gain that understanding.

The sensitivity around race keeps well-intentioned people from talking about it in productive and transformative ways. For most of us, race is a subject that we haven’t even approached with some of our closest friends. I know that personally, I had spoken with dozens of friends and colleagues about some of life’s most intimate subjects, but race was always something we left on the periphery, despite its omnipresence.

Most of us don’t have the confidence in ourselves and our knowledge to discuss the subject without causing harm to our relationships. We have doubts. Is this question appropriate to ask? Can I express this opinion without giving offense? How can I seek clarity about this assumption? Is something I’m saying or a behavior I’m displaying ignorant or prejudiced?

We can only get these answers—correct our assumptions, right our behaviors, and learn that our experiences as humans do more to unite us than divide us—if we’re willing to have authentic conversations about race.

I made the decision in 2000 to start having these conversations, and they transformed my life and deepened my relationships with the people who joined me. Our conversations were held without judgments and devoid of defensiveness and anger. Any negative feelings that arose or corrections that needed to be made were entirely constructive. The exchanges came from a place of generosity. We were both able to be vulnerable and share our experiences because there was nothing adversarial about the environment we had created. It was collaborative and enriching.

After each of these conversations I’ve had, my partners and I shared a more profound level of understanding, friendship, respect, and love for one another. This can be true for anyone who chooses to engage in an authentic conversation about race. You will be pushed out of your comfort zone, but it will be worth it, for you personally and for society at large.

While we’ve made good progress as individuals on improving how we approach race, more work needs done – work that can’t begin until we start having these kinds of conversations on the subject. Reliance on institutions to correct the problems surrounding race has proven to be increasingly challenging, discouraging and alienating. We need to heed the advice of Indian spiritual leader, Osho, who says, “There can be no political revolution, no social revolution, no economic revolution. The only revolution is that of the spirit; it is individual. And if millions of individuals change, then society will change as a consequence, not vice versa. You cannot change the society first and hope that individuals will change later on.”

When we choose to have authentic conversations about race, we are choosing to engage with race and address our problems on an individual level with open and honest communication. We are creating a space that can spark real change.

If you’re interested in joining the spiritual revolution and having authentic conversations about race that enrich your life and deepen your relationships, check out the Resources available on my website and download your free “Authentic Conversations about Race” toolkit.

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Corey Kupfer is an expert strategist, negotiator and dealmaker. He has more than 35 years of professional deal-making and negotiating experience. Corey is a successful entrepreneur, attorney, consultant, author and professional speaker who is passionate about deal-driven growth. He is also the creator and host of the DealQuest Podcast.

If you want to find out how deal-ready you are, take the Deal- Ready Assessment today!

Categories
Authentic Conversations About Difference Authentic Negotiating

Negotiating Our Differences

During-Brainstorming-43
Business team during a brainstorming in a meeting

Why do we tend to keep most people at arm’s length? Why are we so hesitant to find common ground? It’s because of our differences.

It’s a shame, but it’s the unfortunate truth. The idealist in us wants to say that none of us are different, that we’re all human after all and that ultimately unites us. There’s truth to that, but speaking so generally and using that ideal as an excuse to call oneself open-minded is inauthentic. Believing that we’re all the same and that no differences matter at once absolves us from doing the hard work to gain true understanding and dismisses the life and experiences of those who are, in fact, different from ourselves.

The plain truth is that there are myriad differences among people that make building relationships challenging—culture, race, religion, gender identity, personal experience, age, profession. To me, these differences are what make the world a rich, complicated and fascinating place, but too often, instead of embracing these differences, celebrating them and seeking mutual understanding, we avoid engagement with them altogether and retreat deeper into our comfort zone, content to keep those relationships surface level and inauthentic.

Cutting through inauthenticity is difficult enough without allowing our differences to add another layer. At this point, the amateur negotiator would just throw their hands up in defeat, hoping for a decent compromise. Yet, as society and the business world becomes increasingly diverse and cultures become more intermingled, refusing to engage with difference is a non-starter if you want to succeed. So, how can we negotiate our differences? Authentic conversations.

Start with Respect

Abandon the idea that you’ve reached acceptance and understanding of differences because you don’t see or think about them. Start seeking understanding from a place of respect that your conversation partner has a different set of experiences and values, possesses a different worldview that’s informed by their culture, ethnicity and where they’ve grown up. Recognize that the same is true for you and that they value these things about themselves in the same ways you value them about yourself.

Listen

Give your conversation partner your undivided attention. Don’t interrupt them. Allow them full expression and appreciate what they are saying. We’ve all nodded along until we can blurt out whatever thought we’ve been holding back. Try to avoid this and focus on what is being communicated. Then formulate your response or question. This should be reciprocated so you will have your turn. You will be amazed at what you can learn just by listening.

Avoid Being Reactive

Inevitably, if your conversation is going well, sensitive subjects will be broached. And sometimes, someone’s honest experience might not line up with how you perceive things. Don’t get defensive or accusatory. Instead, take a moment to consider their perspective and then either offer clarification or seek it. Getting worked up or upset because your conversation partner is expressing their honest opinion and experience is unproductive.

Be Supportive and Collaborative

Remember that you’re both sitting down to talk for the same reason – you want to have an authentic conversation about your differences and enrich the life of your conversation partner by providing an authentic perspective of your own experience. You should be willing to facilitate sharing from your conversation partner and recognize that you’re both working to create an environment that fosters learning and growth.

Conversations like this can provide valuable lessons for life that we can import into our negotiation approach and businesses. They are essential. When we stop avoiding our differences and embrace them as sources of inspiration and growth, we invite authenticity into our lives. If you’re able to have conversations like this, you might be capable of becoming an Authentic Negotiator. Take my Authentic Negotiating Success Quiz to find out if you’re close.

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Corey Kupfer is an expert strategist, negotiator and dealmaker. He has more than 35 years of professional deal-making and negotiating experience. Corey is a successful entrepreneur, attorney, consultant, author and professional speaker who is passionate about deal-driven growth. He is also the creator and host of the DealQuest Podcast.

If you want to find out how deal-ready you are, take the Deal- Ready Assessment today!