Essential Managers: Negotiating Skills by Tim Hindle

by Tim Hindle

It's true that negotiating skills are learned over a lifetime, but this itty-bitty handbook aims to distill a lifetime's worth of deal-making lessons into 72 snazzily laid-out pages... and often even succeeds. Neatly divided into the three phases of a negotiation--preparation, conducting, and closing--it covers all aspects of the bargaining process, including identifying your own objectives and assessing the opposition's, choosing a strategy and creating the right atmosphere, making and/or responding to a proposal, strengthening your position while weakening the other party's (nicely, of course), and moving to a close, handling a breakdown in progress, and even using a mediator or going to arbitration if you have to. On every page, boxed tips, checklists, flow charts, and mini case studies walk you through the entire process. Granted, if you're looking for very specific or in-depth guidance, you may find this book too cursory and general in its approach. But if you're looking for a thumbnail guide to the basics, it'll do you just fine.It's worth mentioning that the book is also part of reference publisher Dorling Kindersley's Essential Managers series--20 itty-bitty li'l books on business and career topics ranging from communication, leadership, and decision making to the management of time, budgets, change, meetings, people, projects, and teams. Combining the For Dummies book series's talent for breaking down a lot of information into bite-size bits and sidebars with Dorling Kindersley's signature design style of crisp, classy graphics on a gleaming white backdrop, they don't represent the cutting edge of business thinking, and they don't necessarily reflect any unique individual perspective. Instead, it's as though someone collated the best general thinking on these 20 topics and rolled them out into 72 brightly designed and easy-to-read pages, studded along the way with boxed tips, color shots of a multiracial cast of "coworkers" animatedly hashing through the workplace issues of the day, and a self-test of one's skills in the topic at hand on the last few pages of each volume. Again, they're not for anyone looking for more in-depth or focused help on any of the subjects they cover, but they're perfect as a quickie general-interest reference... and let's face it, they're so cute and look so smart in a neat little stack or row that you'll probably want to buy a whole bunch to give to your entire staff or department. --Timothy Murphy

Genres: Business

Paperback

First published April 26, 1999

Reviews

[Sean · Rating 2 out of 5]

There are some books you read which do little for you. Part of this is down to the book itself but the main part is down to where the reader's interest lies. So, the author does a commendable job in his sections on preparing for / conducting and closing negotiation. But this is not an areas I have had little involvement in or likely involvement in the future. You might say negotiating salary and benefits may have been carried out because of my skills in negotiating but I think came down more to desire than strategy. Nevertheless, what the author shares is useful knowledge and may come handy in the future.

[Steven Peterson · Rating 4 out of 5]

DK is a wonderful publisher, from their children's series on. This is another entry, in an "Essential Managers" series. The focus here? Negotiating skills. The book has scarcely 69 pages of text, so this cannot provide detailed consideration to negotiating.

But it does a nice job as a thumbnail sketch on the subject. It is also a small enough volume that one can take this anywhere (a truly portable book!). The book defines its aim thus (Page 5): "Negotiation involved parties who each have something that the other wants, reaching an agreement to exchange through a process of bargaining. 'Negotiating Skills' explains this principle of exchange and gives you the confidence and skill to conduct negotiations and achieve a mutually acceptable outcome." The book is organized around three stages of a negotiating process--Preparing for a negotiation, Conducting a negotiation, and Closing a negotiation.

Preparing for a negotiation? Sections address the concept of exchange, identifying one's objectives, assessing the person with whom you are negotiating, choosing a strategy (One lesson: Keep strategy simple and flexible), developing an agenda (sounds simple enough, but an agenda has real value in any decision making process), and even seating plans. Actually conducting negotiation? How do you make a proposal? How to you respond to the other party's proposal? How can reading body language help? How can you strengthen your position and weaken your "adversary's"? Finally--closing the deal. Subjects addressed include handling breakdowns, using a mediator or going to arbitration.

Again, very brief. If you want a detailed discussion, this volume won't work for you. However, if you want a brief "common sense" introduction, this would be useful.