What We’re Reading: Negotiate This

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I am re-reading one of my favorite books.  It’s called “Negotiate This,” written by Herb Cohen back in 2003.

This is a great book for anyone in higher education and in fact, for anyone who wants to improve their negotiating skills.  And if you don’t think you negotiate in what you do every day – this book will be an eye opener on how much you really do negotiate.  As he likes to frame it, “Negotiation is the game of life.”

It’s a combination of some really great concepts and lots of personal stories, including his involvement as a player in the Iran hostage crisis negotiations (he predicted the exact date the hostages would be released).  His humor, most of it self-deprecating, makes this the kind of book that’s difficult not to laugh out loud while you’re reading it (at least for me).

As Herb consistently says in the book, one of the most important things to learn in any negotiation is to detach yourself emotionally.  As he likes to phrase it, learning how to care, but not t-h-a-t much.  He also provides great ideas on “magic words” for the toughest negotiations, how to never take no for a final answer, how to play not to the power you’ve got, but to the power the other side thinks you’ve got, and how to laugh off even the most dire threats.

So you see, I have been negotiating by writing this blog to get you to read this book.  So how have I done?