Listening in negotiations is a critical technique that allows for many benefits, such as learning about the other party and avoiding stalled negotiations. I have always tried to be a good listener in all types’ of conversations, but especially in business meetings.  Acknowledging you are listening provides active signals that keep the conversation moving in a substantive direction.

Through listening, I gain an appreciation for the other party’s motives. Also, by asking good questions will allow you to listen and gain knowledge on their motives. The parties position themselves to listen and gain as much information as possible before laying out the ground work for a deal. I learned to ask manageable questions that provide openness and planning to the conversation. As you move through the process, ask slightly tougher questions, yet still keeping them constructive.

Listening is an important technique to a successful negotiation. If you are a good listener, one that can absorb what the other party is saying and acknowledge them with good follow up questions or statements, you keep the conversation going in a positive and constructive fashion. I believe this is one of the most important lessons you could learn because you can always improve on your listening skills and try to develop it as a technique to draw information and even build bridges to the other party through acknowledging their statements.

Through active listening, you can build relationships through understanding the other party, and trying to build a deal that would make sense for all parties involved. Use this technique in future negotiations.

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To create an innovative company you need to create an entrepreneurial culture, one that embraces new technology into its company’s activities as well as products and services. In essence the company not only has to be able to adapt quickly to change, but most importantly be willing to withstand a certain amount of product setbacks on its way to being a success. The trick is to manage small, incremental innovations within the existing product line.

The team members in your organization that will fulfill the essential entrepreneurial roles are people who are going to be product champions. These are people who think of the new ideas and then advocate for the change. You will also need sponsors who will take on ownership of the product and understand its potential value to the organization. Lastly, you will need someone who will orchestrate the funding for the project. This is typically someone in upper management, a stakeholder, or you the owner and main stakeholder of your small business that believes in the innovation.

An approach of creating innovation within organizations is to have smaller multifunctional teams with significant autonomy dedicated to these projects. What is important in having smaller teams, is keeping them in the know of all communications. Everyone needs to be a part of this process, and to believe they are all part of the innovation. Once the new product is ready for deployment, everyone will be energized about its launch, because you have an innovative entrepreneurial culture.

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Client management in its fundamental nature is an art and science, as the approach for managing a client should be proactive as well as structured. For clients to be serviced with the utmost attention, a sales service person needs to be able to apply a structured service model designed specifically to their client’s needs. This model could include monthly meetings, weekly reviews with metrics, or semi-monthly check in calls. The purpose of having structure in serving clients is having the proactive ability of eliminating any confusion of the service being provided as well as any related issues. It ensures you are all on the same page.

I wrote a piece on “creating core principles” which details values that include ownership and being proactive in your day to day activities. In client management, you need to own the service delivery cycle from end to end from an oversight perspective to ensure success. I am not saying that you have to micromanage the process; rather you need to take full ownership of the service that you are providing to your clients.  By designing your service model to your clients, you are also providing the ability to measure your performance against your client’s approval of service. If your clients are please with your service, than that gives you the leverage you need to be successful in taking on more responsibilities, more business, or provide more valued added services to your existing client base. In the end, designing and establishing a model for serving clients is essential for a successful client relationship.

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Creating core principles to keep your day to day activities in focus is easy and a great way to define your business identity. Your core principles are specific basis of conduct or actions that you are expected to adhere to in your business life. Having these principles not only helps define your identity but also keeps you on track to being a successful entrepreneur and business person.  In business it is important to be consistent, and to do great work each day. And through time by consistently staying focused to your core principles; your personal brand will be known for quality work.

Here are some examples of principles that I have adhere to through the years,

• Proactive
• Ownership
• Reliability

My focus each day is to be proactive in my approach, to stay ahead of my clients’ needs, and to fully understand the topic before they do. It is also critical that you own the task. If you are given a task to complete, you need to own that process from end to end.  With that, I am careful and selective in what I want to work on and take ownership of in my business.  And lastly, to be reliable is to do the right thing for you, your business, and your clients. Creating your core principles with a focused approach will improve your business brand and the quality of your work.

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We make decisions through a sequence of deliberate processes. These processes are described as:

1. Orientation

2. Conflict

3. Emergence

4. Reinforcement

In orientation, your team tries to understand the issue of a decision they have to make. They then continue the sequence into the "conflict" phase in which they (in my mind) go through a necessary battle of words to get down to the essential item in the decision making process. At the very end of this process, as if a switch in the room was to be turned on, a click happens amongst everyone. They emerge from the conflict stage into the emergence phase. Basically your team comes to an agreement, and lastly from that agreement the team reinforces their decision.  

Within these four phases, I would say the most intriguing is the "conflict" phase where everyone in the team gets down to the heart of the matter. Conflict, in most circles is viewed in a negative light, however during the decision making process it is the most critical, and the most rewarding. The reason behind calling conflict a reward is because in that room with those individuals, you are creating a bond and sharing in a moment that everyone has an interest in. People remember you most during these moments. Your input, feedback, and overall professionalism are being monitored by the team, so it is important to be at your best during conflict. 

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"When you're playing it as a business ... your livelihood depends on winning and losing and so sometimes sportsmanship is lost, as in the process of billion dollar companies." - Danny Ainge

You learn a lot about leadership in playing team sports. Sports can shape you as a person. You learn to build effective teams; it also teaches you how to participate fairly with other groups. When I was a kid I had a coach that instilled in me a phrase before each game, he would say, “win, lose, or draw” if you give it your all you should be proud of the way you played the game. I remember that phrase even in my everyday business life. And when you do win, you know how to respect the players of the losing team. It is your attitude, your approach, and discipline to the game that sportsmanship translates to your career and work life. I learned more about myself when I lost a game than winning one.

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Thinking of leadership as an art is to create a desired result through influence. Most people want to have a level of influence in their life, however do not want to take the ranks as a leader to actually influence. I believe the reason for this contradiction is most people feel they are not empowered to make those changes.

In the workplace, you deal with employees, managers, upper management, and even executive management through corporate initiatives. You believe you could never be empowered to make the transition to the next level. That is not true. You can make the transition right now, through proper planning and strategically putting yourself in a position to influence. Influencing is the capacity or power to create an effect through actions. As a leader, you desire your business, your community, your life to strive for a level of success and excellence. That is the result of influencing people.

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Entrepreneurs have a great sense of creativity, innovation, and they are above all exceptional risk takers. They are able to envision where their venture will take them, thus being in tune with the overall strategic direction of their startup.

The following four characteristics exemplify successful entrepreneurs:

1. The ability to identify potential venture opportunities better than most people. Focus on the opportunities not the problems, and of course try to learn from your failed approaches.

2. The sense of urgency to make it happen. The need for achievement is your motivator.

3. The knowledge to succeed in the industry as well as the physical stamina to make their work their main focus. According to the National Federation of Independent Business, a study shows at least half of all entrepreneurs work 60 hours or more a week on their startup venture.

4. Entrepreneurs maintain resources of outside help to supplement their skills, knowledge, and abilities which are required to get the job done. At the end of the day, it is all about your network of relationships and leveraging their abilities.

In summary, successful entrepreneurs know how to make it happen.

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As a leader you need to inspire, challenge, enable, as well as encourage others to work towards a common goal. A goal should be a shared vision of everyone involved and emphasized by the leader. As a leader, I strive to lead through examples using the following aspects to being an effective leader:

• · Personal Traits
• · Ability
• · Skills
• · Behavior
• · Relationships

From these aspects of leadership, I found that I place a majority of importance in my skills and personal traits. I work on my leadership skills every day.  This is a constant development of understanding what I need to know to become a better leader. Also, your personal traits play a major role in your leadership ability. Everyone has a natural ability to become a great leader, your personal traits is the foundation.

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Leaders have to share their vision with the team. I have learned that if you want to accomplish a goal, make sure the goal is understood by everyone. The goal can not be vague in its description. You have to share the goal with each team member, and make it about them as well. We all share in the success and failure of this journey, we should all understand it.

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As a leader you have to focus on communicating specific standards. You also need to extend the offer for feedback from your subordinates. This will encourage an overall understanding of a shared goal.

I have found that sharing personal stories can also bring in your direct reports in further understanding your thought process as well as the overall task (or goal) at hand. It is a great way to build business relationships and create the very important trust factor in any direct report-to-manager relationship.

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