Get Unstuck & On Target

Episode 109: How to Tap Into the Power of Strong Negotiation Skills

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In today’s episode, Mike talks with Susan Borke – the Principal of BorkeWorks is passionate about helping people develop as effective negotiators. She believes no one is born a master negotiator. Great negotiation skills come from a combination of knowledge, training, and practice.

Susan Borke’s Biography

“If you don’t ask, you don’t get.” Susan Borke first used this simple principle as a financially-strapped college student who needed to find a way to get course credit for an unpaid internship, without paying tuition. It was one of her first successful negotiations and helped to spark her passion for teaching this strategy, and other effective negotiating techniques, to business people of every level.

Susan Borke, the Principal of BorkeWorks is passionate about helping people develop as effective negotiators. She believes no one is born a master negotiator. Great negotiation skills come from a combination of knowledge, training, and practice.

Susan has over 35 years of negotiating and negotiation training experience with domestic and international commercial companies, educational institutions, and nonprofits as a media executive at CBS and in-house counsel at the National Geographic Society. In addition to her private corporate and nonprofit clients, Susan is an adjunct professor at Georgetown University School of Continuing Studies teaching their negotiation course.

Questions in This Episode
  • Now negotiation, when people think of negotiation, they might automatically assume formal negotiation. Negotiation kind of surfaces in so many different ways. Does it not?
  • Can you just kinda walk us through with when someone enrolls in a negotiation course at Georgetown, what is it that they’re learning? What is it you’re helping them get a better grasp for?
  • When I think of negotiations, I think of two dug-in parties coming to the table and they’re trying to get out of the other party something that they want. That’s not really an accurate representation of what negotiation is, is it?
  • How do you help negotiators better understand the other position?
  • Now, is there a word for that? An ability to understand another perspective?
  • So cognitive empathy, and that is one’s ability to understand another’s perspective, you may not agree is a starting point. Continue walking us through that, if that’s the starting point. What else goes into this?
  • You used the word excavating a moment ago, and I thought that was a very descriptive word, particularly when I was envisioning National Geographic. But the, the way you have to kind of go down in layers I don’t wanna get too far afield, but I’ve always had a natural curiosity about this and that is the, the mindset that people have going into negotiation does sometimes do those positions get determined at an early point in one’s life in terms of how, how conflict might be in that dealt with in, in a family. And, and does that factor to any of your training for negotiation at all?
  • I’m listening to you say that assumptions versus hypothesis, hypothesis sounds a little more scientific, a little more detached, whereas assumptions feel, at least seem to me be a more, more personal. Is that right?
  • Susan. We just got back. My wife and I got back from being in New York and I, I think of, the United Nations and I think of negotiations that are protracted over days, weeks, years.
    • And that’s a different type of negotiation from everyday negotiation. Why don’t we come back to everyday negotiation? I know you’re working primarily with people who might be in Business school or the like. But can you give maybe some other examples where negotiation kind of is inherent in everyday life?
  • As people know, these are not scripted conversations, but you came up with a, a perfect illustration of how just everyday negotiation is something that we need to be attuned to and at a, it happens much more than we might would realize. Susan, as you think about situations where perhaps you or a client might have gotten stuck, can you reflect on that and maybe share with us what did it take for them to get unstuck.
  • You shed quite a bit of light on just the dimensions of negotiating. If you were to kind of reflect on what you’ve shared with us, what do you want the takeaways to be?
    • Links & Resources Mentioned…
    • Website – www.borkeworks.com
  • LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/susanborke/
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    Get Unstuck & On TargetBy Mike O'Neill
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