My 1st Harvard Negotiation Class and my top learning
I just finished the Negotiation & Leadership: The Art of Saying No from by the most profound negotiation expert William Ury from Harvard Law School.
This is my first negotiation class I took , it was happening from 1 am -9 am my local time (AEDT). I attend it after over 8 hours work during the day, surprising, not only not feeling as tired as I thought, and I feel extremely empowered and inspired.
Therefore, I want to jot down my top inspiration during the class. Hopefully it will be a useful reminder to my future self and a spark of interests to networks to learn more about the arts and science of negotiation.
As someone who has been raised up in an Asian culture — culture of maintaining harmony and relationship within community is so essential.
Saying Yes has considered a much effective and direct approach to achieve the harmony. And, NO is word that barely use and has been associated with a stigma in our culture. I personally find it extremely difficult to say no (straight away at least) in almost any conversation.
However, in this course, William has taught me (and the fellow 80 students) that NO is actually a word of empowerment — It creates, it protects and it transforms what truly matter to us in life(Our YES).
And most times, a clear NO (compare to an ambiguous maybe) is gift of clarity to others (even others may not aware of that) .
This learning is so liberating. I feel like my perspective to the world has just been expanded — No is not a stigma to me any more, instead . It means opportunity and a New Start.
On a similar note — Chris Voss , in his book “ Never Split The Difference, Negotiating As if your life depended on it” (the book that introduce me to this magical negotiation world) also mention
“No is not an end, but the start of negotiation .”
There are definitely more epiphany moments for me during this class, such as:
- Negotiation is about listening not speaking.
- If you want to go fast, go slow.
- Provide respect and dignity to you and your counterpart during the negotiation. That is the least you can do.
and much more…My mind is still blowing!
I will organise my class notes through week and hopefully I can share more around my learning here.
Now, it’s time to make up some sleep…
P.S: Hey, dear readers.
Thanks for reading my blog, this blog is a mechanism to motivate me to form a habit of writing and reflection.
All opinions are my personal views. They are not suitable for commercial or academic reference.
Please be supportive and gentle to me, as I am team humanity and love — like you!
Thank you
Charlotte :)
