Christopher Barrat

Three ways that will always win a negotiation

2012-05-16T08:00:00Z

Negotiation is all around us – getting your children to tidy up, buying a car, asking for a pay rise as well as being a core part of every business transaction. Nobody likes to lose in a negotiation – and the good news is you don’t ever have to.

If you follow three basic rules of negotiation, then every time you will find you - and interestingly the other party – can win. Firstly, before you even start, find out what your best alternative is. This is sometimes known as your ‘BATNA’ – the Best Alternative To Negotiated Agreement. In other words your walk away position – if the other side won’t agree to at least this – then you are better off not making a deal at all.

Once you have established your BATNA, you need to look hard at outcomes rather than taking positions. This means looking more at what you want, rather than how it will be achieved. So you might decide you want to have more factory output (your outcome) – and so be negotiating a shorter lunch break (your position). If the workforce comes up with a different idea that increases output – then don’t stay focussed on wanting a shorter break, drop your position in favour of looking at the final outcome.

Lastly, always remember to trade. If someone asks for something, then don’t just negotiate by saying ‘no’. The best way to negotiate is to say ‘yes – provided you could …’. There is always something that you could have in return that would make it worthwhile. If you know what your alternatives are, you focus on your outcomes, and you trade to get them, you will always be a winner.

Making your department sexy

2012-03-29T18:14:00Z

Every functional department needs to find its rightful place in the business hierarchy. So what can you do to help it achieve the sexy status it deserves? And before you even think of saying ‘we are doing a really good job – that is what people will notice!’ – forget it. Of course you are doing a good job, and these days that is not enough, you have to show it too.

The first thing you need to do is strut your stuff, show your wares and make them want your services, in business speak – find out what you are good at, and market yourself. Rule number one – if you have a mission statement, then throw it away – it has already filled its purpose by getting you to think about what you do. It is useless to market yourselves. In fact it’s worse than useless because it often has a bad effect on others.

Put it this way – just how thrilled would you be if you got sent a copy of the Accounts Department mission statement? Would it lighten your burden? Would you think: ‘Ah! Now I at last can see their purpose in life, I will for evermore integrate with them seamlessly’?

You need to work out what you’re good at – how you impact the wider community, what are the practical things you do for them, and why do you make their life better? Next, you need an influence plan, and that should have named individuals on it representing no more than ten percent of the company. If you think a plan means putting a display board up in the canteen so everyone can see us – think again. It’s limp, unfocused and unprofessional. Your message is too important to let it dribble out to people who are grazing rather than go-getting.

If you need some help in formatting this idea, then why not ask your own marketing department? Perhaps you buy some marketing and creative services in – you may even get it for free if you sell it as part of the process of ‘getting to know you better’. Take your ten percent target, and use your carefully crafted marketing material with laser like accuracy to get up close and personal. If you make it important, then so will your target audience. This is line fishing for powerful marlin, not drift netting for common herrings.

So you‘ve got yourself a good story – but do you have the people to back it up? Is your group bursting with talent that is the envy of the rest of the organisation? If not, then you need to do something about it. The simplest tool of all is often overlooked – go find the best people and ask them to join you. Top talent is always interested in self-development. They often have the ability to persuade their own management to let them do things. Best of all, they are usually a bit vain and easily flattered.

This doesn’t have to get tangled up in job specs and grade issues, perhaps they could have some relevant work experience for a short while – or work on a joint project with you. If you can get some fresh blood into the camp, it can have a rejuvenating effect on the whole team. Start looking at the way your team does things. What impact do your people have? Not just from the point of view of their skills.

This sort of profile-raising is not going to be without its side effects which are worth heading off early if possible. Firstly when you tell people what you can do for them, you can expect the initial response to be a lengthy list of all the things you haven’t done well. This is great feedback – it may not feel like it at the time, but its gold dust. Remember, before you stimulated them into complaining, the problem was even worse because you didn’t know about it.

So where does the future lie for making your department the sexiest around?

The truth is that the skill and attractiveness of your players will make the difference. Does this mean you need only Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie look-alikes in your group? Absolutely not. Lasting attractiveness has always been more to do with passion, knowledge and focus than surface looks. And the good news is these are things that can be taught, so everyone can be sexy if they want.

10 top tips to becoming a great influencer

2012-02-20T08:00:00Z

Having the ability to influence people effectively is a critical skill in the modern business world for two reasons. Firstly if you influence the right people, then you can have strong allies when the reorganisation comes – and in modern business that is inevitable. Secondly we are in a far more matrixed society than ever before – most of the people you need to get to do something, rarely report to you, and you need to use influencing rather than power and authority skills to be effective. Here are ten top tips on how to become a powerful influencer.

Speak their language

This means use the types of words, phrases and approach that fits the person you are talking to, which may well not be your natural way of communicating. If they are data freaks lead with the numbers, if they are creative types then talk images and concepts.

Use stories and analogies

We remember stories far more than facts, you want your influence to last, so if you can tell them a story or use analogies, these are more likely to stick in their minds.

Remember every moment is a chance to influence people

The best influencers do not rely on a single moment of brilliance, they are using every point of contact to nudge people towards their way of thinking.

Get the right attitude in your head

We all know that most of what we communicate comes from non-verbal signals. These are hard to consciously control, so rather than try and do that – start with the right mindset, and the non-verbals will then come out in the right way. If you are frustrated with the person you are trying to influence, then you have to get a different head on by the time you talk to them.

Match and mirror

This is now scientifically proven to work – the more you sit/stand/gesture and intonate your voice to match the style of the person you are talking to, the more they will like you and believe you.

Use your network

Indirect support can be very effective. Find out who your target might be talking to, and influence them towards supporting your line of thinking

Make a virtue of necessity

If there is a touchy topic, then be the first to get it out on the table, this shows you have thought about their potential concerns, and it disarms them.

Understanding is not acceptance

If your target has objections or concerns, show you understand them – it is perfectly OK to let them know you can see things from their point of view without agreeing with them.

Tune into Radio W.I.I.F.M

Everyone broadcasts this – ‘what's in it for me?’. Make sure you have shaped your request in a way that shows there is something in it for them – it does not have to be much, and it can be very effective.

Find common goals you have, and establish points you can agree with early on.

More often than not people can agree on many things, but disagree over the way of achieving them. Find some level of common ground and lead with this, so the first thing they are doing in the conversation is agreeing with you – which is a great starting point for an influencing strategy.

The skill of influencing is just that – a skill, and it can be learned and practiced. It is also far superior to the use of power. As we know from those in power and politics, pure power can dissolve in an instant if the mood of the nation or your fans changes. Influencing skills however can last forever, and is one of the most translatable skills from business into personal life.

Can we expect company loyalty to motivate people these days?

2012-01-27T14:16:00Z

There are many different ideas on how to motivate staff, but the one thing that everyone can agree on is that if you are able to motivate them, then the results can be amazing. If you look at any high performing company in any sector, then you will find they have a very motivated workforce. Is this a chicken and egg problem – which came first – the motivated staff to drive results or the results successes giving motivation back to the people?

Having worked with many companies in many sectors I know this ‘good motivational spiral’ to be true, and indeed the ‘downwards motivational spiral’ can be true too. The other thing I have noticed is that ‘loyalty’ – the desire for people to put in extra effort through a sense of pride and belonging can be a factor – but only if the unit is small enough.

Over the last 10 years, there has been the on-going trend towards ‘global’ companies and towards ‘matrix’ organisations. This has had an interesting effect on loyalty – it has broadly destroyed it. The bigger the company, the more they re-organise and constantly restructure, the less people appear to identify with it. The concept of creating shareholder value as a key goal is still talked about in big companies, but almost nobody (apart from very few at the top who hold massive share options) actually care – why should they put in extra work just so that some anonymous pension fund can make more money in 10 years time? What is interesting is how loyalty can still be a real motivator if you can make your ‘unit’ feel that it has an identity of its own, and that the people in it can see how their extra effort can have a direct result on helping others who they work with or interact with directly. The motivational psychologist Victor Vroom (what a great name for someone studying motivation – VROOM!) had four ‘gateways’ of motivation that you had to pass before anyone would be motivated. In simple terms its ‘Could. Would. Would. Desire’. Could I do it? Would it make a difference that I can see? Would anyone notice? Do I desire the outcome? The middle two gateways are focused on this area of belonging – if I can see my actions make a difference and people notice, then that can be a great motivator. If I have to go through some massive IT change that is only of benefit to people in head office who I never meet, then I am not going to be motivated to do anything more than the minimum required.

This then prompts the question of how big a unit needs to be before you lose this sense of belonging? My experience is that firstly they can be very small – a group if 6 people in a depot or office unit can get a great sense of loyalty. At the other end of the scale, I think 100 people starts to get to the limit. I worked with an incredibly successful Belgium food company – even though their world wide network of sellers came from 40 different countries, the total group was only about 90 people, and the sense of loyalty, even in this highly dispersed and nationally diverse situation, was amazing. Likewise, you can go to massive head offices of 1000 people all in one building and nobody feels any connection at all.

There is a dark side to this – get too strong a sense of loyalty to a small unit, and you run the risk of many small silo mentalities causing the matrix to malfunction. This is always a risk in modern business –but my challenge would be that we are better off creating really strong identities in smaller groups. Do not try and get a corporate sense of belonging, you will waste your time. Nobody really cares about your corporate behavioural values – too many people can see how they are not being lived out in big corporations, so they just destroy the sense of belonging, not enhance it. Instead think small – how can we bring back that sense of common purpose. Perhaps we should take a lesson from history – go back to roman times and start organising our companies in units of 100 and no more. Wouldn’t you just love to have on your business card the job title ‘Centurion’ – that really would be motivating!