Welcome back to the NEGOTIATEx podcast (and happy Veterans Day)! Nolan is sharing how Negotiations training changed him, both personally and professionally. It’s a rare glimpse behind the curtain, so to speak.

Very Raw Talent

Nolan Martin wasn’t a walking disaster before studying Negotiations. However, he might have been described as a diamond in the rough.

In his own words, he relied heavily on an it-will-buff-out approach. When he had a school quiz, meeting, or interview, he would wing it. Preparation was almost a four-letter word.

There’s much more to successful negotiations than getting ready beforehand. Nevertheless, this was one of multiple areas he would be forced to reconsider.

He’d enjoyed his training, whenever it involved running around outside, but he’d never taken the academic side of things as seriously.

Interacting with teachers and professors had largely boiled down to a battle of wills (and unfavorable outcomes)… until he took Aram Donigian’s class on Negotiations for leaders.

That’s when Nolan’s trustiest tactics hit a brick wall.

If you haven’t guessed already, his whole paradigm was about to flip.

The Sea Change Starts: Negotiations Training

As an experienced negotiator, Aram had pretty much seen it all. Nothing his new student could try, apart from a commitment to his studies, worked.

This, in itself, may have been Nolan’s first Negotiations lesson: You can’t achieve much by insisting on everything 100% your way.

Consequently, a whole new chapter in his academic life began. Its first subheading was “Preparation.”

Cadet Nolan Martin was familiar with the military’s Operations Order process. Regardless, as he hit the books, he found himself gaining a new understanding of the key decision-makers involved.

Stakeholder mapping—and how other people may impact the outcome—is extremely important to identify early. That’s why NEGOTIATEx has a downloadable Prep Tool that walks you through the process.

Discovering Creative Analysis

The next step, Nolan discovered, is understanding the problem. This has to be done, beforehand in order to approach it creatively.

In Negotiations, creative problem-solving requires addressing both parties’ concerns. There’s no way around this.

Consequently, Nolan’s old push-until-you-get-your-way approach was retired. He began learning from Aram to “be tough on the problem, not on the person.”

It turns out that the path to point C is not always through A and B. In fact, sometimes there is a D and an E that no one’s thought of. Negotiations training helps open this cognitive door.

So, instead of working against your counterpart, it pays to figure out how to collaborate with them. Creating value for them, in turn, creates value (often in the form of positive results) for yourself.

Last but not least, Nolan learned to train subordinates’ conceptual skills. Before his own Negotiations training and study, this would have been unthinkable.

However, armed with his new insights, he could follow the Framework. Almost any task can be broken into preparation, execution, and evaluation.

Simply by being deliberate through each of these steps, creatively training subordinates became—not just doable but—easier than ever before.

As a matter of fact, Negotiations training for subordinate leaders is a win-win. It means equipping them to be better prepared, tougher on problems (rather than people), and better leaders in general.

Key Takeaways

• Invest time in training your team to become better negotiators. This saves time in the long run because they can think about the impacts of problem-solving for you.

• Leave us a review wherever you listen to this podcast (please). We are growing with every episode, but your input can help us do more. If you’re receiving value, we’d appreciate it.

Nolan has more on how Negotiations training changed his outlook, life, and professional tactics in today’s NEGOTIATEx podcast. Questions and episode suggestions to team@negotiatex.com are always welcome.

Your time’s important to us. Thanks for listening!