Dissent, disagreement, compromise and consensus 131 – arbitration processes and their outcomes 2

This is my 131st installment to a series on negotiating in a professional context, starting with a focus on the employee-to-employee and employee-to-business side of that as found in more individual jobs and careers contexts. See Guide to Effective Job Search and Career Development – 3 and its Page 4 continuation, postings 484 and following for Parts 1-51 for that side to this overall narrative. In that context, I have also been discussing the business side of negotiating here. See that same directory Page 4, and its postings 535 and following for Parts 52-129. And that has led me to the issues of third party mediated arbitrations, which I began addressing here in Part 130.

I discussed arbitration per se in Part 130, and why it is resorted to. And my goal for this posting is to focus on the negotiating side to arbitration and on better presenting cases to arbitrators. And to set the stage for that discussion, I note three basic assumptions that I would make here:

• Involved parties on both sides are willing to negotiate in an arbitrated context and even if they are not legally, contractually required to, and both sides will adhere to the resolution that comes from this (whether fully of their own free will or not.)
• The arbitrator in this can and will act as an honest broker.
• And both sides are given full opportunity to present their cases and to come to agreement on any points under contention where that is possible, limiting the scope of what would have to be imposed upon them through arbitrated decision.

With this noted as the context that I would discuss arbitrated negotiations in terms of, I begin with the obvious. If you are trying to reach a resolution that you would find favorable for yourself and for those who you represent, you have to negotiate with two fundamentally distinct parties: the people on the other side of the table who you are in contention with and the arbitrator who will ultimately make the determinative decisions there. What would be a best practices approach for navigating that dichotomy?

• Take the lead in negotiating with the people who you are contesting with in this, in making a genuine effort to find at least some common ground with them. This can both increase your chances of achieving a measure of what you want out of this process, and position you and your side in this as being reasonable and as being willing to come to a fair agreement. It positions you and the people who you represent as being the good guys there.
• And at the same time that you are negotiating with those who you seek an agreement resolution with, you are negotiating with the arbitrator too. I have just touched on that side of this overall process in the first of these bullet points, but to continue addressing this side of this process here, you increase your chances of getting more of what you want if you are seen as being willing to find a common ground compromise, even if the other side digs in and makes any more-directly negotiated agreement for at least some issues, impossible.

The best arbitrated resolutions are ones that both sides can come to see as being fair. Arbitrators being people, appreciate parties in disputes who seek fair and equitable resolutions. And they tend to be put off by parties in such disputes who take a going-for-blood, zero-sum approach there. That is just human nature and particularly where arbitrators seek to arrive at resolutions that are fair as well as binding.

I have offered this in general and even abstract terms, but in real world arbitrations, as is the case in real world negotiations in general, the devil is in the details. I am going to pose and address two scenarios that would take this at least somewhat out of the abstract, starting in the next installment to this series:

• A terms of service dispute where the level of details involved might leave room for compromise agreement on at least some of the issues involved, and
• A fees due dispute that might offer less wiggle room and opportunity for compromise.

Meanwhile, you can find this and related material at Page 4 to my Guide to Effective Job Search and Career Development, and also see its Page 1, Page 2 and Page 3. You can also find this and related postings at Social Networking and Business 3 and its Page 4 continuation. And also see that directory’s Page 1 and Page 2.

Dissent, disagreement, compromise and consensus 130 – arbitration processes and their outcomes 1

This is my 130th installment to a series on negotiating in a professional context, starting with a focus on the employee-to-employee and employee-to-business side of that as found in more individual jobs and careers contexts. See Guide to Effective Job Search and Career Development – 3 and its Page 4 continuation, postings 484 and following for Parts 1-51 for that side to this overall narrative. In that context, I have also been discussing the business side of negotiating here. See that same directory Page 4, and its postings 535 and following for Parts 52-129. And that has led me to the issues of third party mediated arbitrations, which I begin addressing here.

More specifically, I concluded Part 129 by stating that I would turn here:

• To and address arbitration as a third party refereed negotiating process, noting that this will mean my adding to this series’ ongoing discussion of negotiating too, and certainly as I would discuss the give and take processes that would lead to third party provided arbitrated decisions.

I begin here by acknowledging what arbitration is, as a matter of more general use and application. It is a negotiating process in which opposing sides present their evidence, their explanations as to what that evidence means, and a case for achieving their desired outcome that they argue as being supported and justified by that, to a presumably disinterested and uninvolved third party adjudicator who then weighs what has been presented to them by both sides – and who then decides how their dispute is to be resolved.

Binding arbitration leads to resolutions that involved parties in dispute are legally bound to honor and to live up too. Failure to comply with such resolutions can lead to legal actions and the only generally applicable defense for failure to so comply, and certainly where such failure is systematic and intentional is if one of the parties there can prove that the arbitration process that they has agreed to and entered into was fundamentally flawed. As an example of the possibilities there, consider a situation where one of the parties in such an agreement finds irrefutable evidence that the other party to this process has bribed the supposedly uninvolved arbitrator there so as to secure a more favorable ruling for themselves.

Setting aside such irregularities, arbitration can represent a resolution path of last resort as competing parties fail and fail and fail to make any negotiated headway with each other on their own, and both are facing what to-them are unacceptable harm because of this. So they hold their breaths at least figuratively speaking, and seek out an impartial resolution to their dilemma that hopefully at least, both sides can live with – and with this ending their accruing of further loss that would add to what they already face from having struggled to resolve their issues on their own.

Arbitration can also be a path of first resort and particularly when a business or other organization imposes as an a priori requirement, that they will only enter into transactional agreements if those they would deal with there, agree up-front and in writing that they would accept binding arbitrated resolutions if any points of conflict or disagreement were to arise from this, and certainly where court of law action might be an alternative possibility. This can mean adding such binding agreements into new hire employment contracts, or into contracts signed with third party business-to-business providers. Sometimes these agreements are built into contracts and other documentation that would have to be signed off upon by clients or customers too. There are, of course, other contextual circumstances where arbitration might be so specified as the only conflict resolution approach possible there. But the goal in every such circumstance is simple: to keep any disagreements or challenges that do arise out of the courts and both to limit costs and to limit what might be contentious and reputationally damaging public exposure. Confidentiality clauses can be built into such agreements too.

All of these possibilities that I have explicitly noted or even just alluded to here in this posting, have at least two crucially important points of detail in common:

• They all involve the resolution of contentious issues that cannot simply be addressed and resolved by more normal negotiated means as I have discussed them up to here in this series.
• And those are issues that cannot and will not simply be walked away from and by either involved party.

And with that, I return to the issues of fairness, and I add of expertise and even of certification in arbitration and in who carries this out. As a matter of essential risk management effort, it is essential that arbitrators only be resorted to who are certified as being professionally trained and experienced in this, and who are demonstrably going to serve as neutral and uninvolved parties to the arbitrations that they oversee and manage. And as a due diligence matter, the best way to find such professionals is to bring one in from a reputable and well established organization that specializes in providing this service such as the American Arbitration Association.

I add here that this is only one such organization of many that can be reliably turned to here. There are arbitration organizations located in nations all over the world that offer quality professional help in such matters. And many offer specialized expertise in managing specific types of arbitration challenge that call for specific industry and other areas of specialized focus. That, obviously, can be crucially important where complex, specialized issues have to be resolved that call for expert understanding on the part of an arbitrator is they are to arrive at informed and meaningful decisions.

I will have more to say concerning arbitration per se in what follows. But that said, I am going to focus on the negotiating side to arbitration and on better presenting cases to arbitrators, beginning in the next installment to this series.

Meanwhile, you can find this and related material at Page 4 to my Guide to Effective Job Search and Career Development, and also see its Page 1, Page 2 and Page 3. You can also find this and related postings at Social Networking and Business 3 and its Page 4 continuation. And also see that directory’s Page 1 and Page 2.

Dissent, disagreement, compromise and consensus 129 – the business context 78

This is my 129th installment to a series on negotiating in a professional context, starting with a focus on the employee-to-employee and employee-to-business side of that as found in more individual jobs and careers contexts. See Guide to Effective Job Search and Career Development – 3 and its Page 4 continuation, postings 484 and following for Parts 1-51 for that side to this overall narrative. And in that context, I have also been discussing the business side of negotiating here. See that same directory Page 4, and its postings 535 and following for Parts 52-128.

I began explicitly focusing on communications and negotiating in a business in general terms in Part 93 after, and in follow-up to my offering a succession of discussions of more granular case in point scenario based examples of how they can and do take place. And that has meant my successively discussing each of a set of aspects to the issues and challenges raised by the first of these two subtopics points:

1. Working widely in and across a business, and networking up and down and across its table of organization in order to succeed there.
2. And the networking and communications and negotiating best practices that would be used there, as they can be fine tuned and used in the particular contexts of specific businesses.

To bring this initial orienting note up to date here, I have finished offering a response to the first of those topic points and I began transitioning from that to discuss Point 2 and its issues in Part 126, Part 127 and Part 128. I used those installments to offer a more general framework for how to more accurately identify and understand the specific contexts that negotiations might take place in. And I concluded Part 128 by stating that I would turn here to:

• More specifically address the precise wording of the above Point 2 where it refers to “networking and communications and negotiating best practices that would be used there” as tools for enabling such productively directed, agreed to change.
• And I added that I am going to begin discussing them here, building from the above cited three part foundation that I have shared here.

I begin addressing all of that by noting that negotiations are simply goals-directed conversations that take place in contexts where agreement has to be reached in order to achieve desired goals. Effective negotiations are contextualized communications, and of a type that are by their very nature interactive and us-oriented, rather than one-directional and me-oriented.

• Effective negotiations of necessity mean deciphering what that means in actionable terms in the specific contexts faced.

To repeat myself here, I began this succession of postings to this series from the perspective of negotiating for a business, by at least tacitly assuming that it is always going to be clear what type of negotiating context is being faced. Then and in the most recent three installments to this series in particular, I have been expanding upon that with my offering thoughts about how to identify and navigate the uncertainty in that, that real negotiations always face at least measures of.

• Real negotiations always bring measures of uncertainty and the unexpected with them. If matters were entirely clear and in a manner that could be collectively agreed to, and if both sides were willing to compromise as needed and in good faith there, then actual give-and-take negotiations would probably not even be needed. Or at most, they could be more limited for what they had to resolve.

In this regard, and to reframe a term that I have repeatedly used here, all real negotiations have Plan B elements to them. The only question in that is one of how smoothly they can be developed, agreed to and implemented. Plan B options as overt possibilities, as that term is more commonly used, means failure in achieving the ideals of the above bullet point and with a need to enter into more fundamental, disruptive reimagining and change as a result. But as I have sought to illustrate and throughout this series, such change accommodating goals can often be realized. And they more usually are and even if negotiating success can seem hard won coming out of such efforts.

• What of the negotiating best practices that I cited in the above to-address bullet Point 2 as repeated at the start of this posting? I have in fact been offering a succession of them and in contexts where they would apply and throughout this series.
• My more explicit goal here in this posting, has been to put that into perspective and particularly at a more general-principles level.

I am going to turn to and address arbitration as a third party refereed negotiating process, starting in the next installment to this series. This will, of course, mean my adding to this ongoing discussion of negotiating too, and certainly as I would discuss the give and take processes that would lead to third party provided arbitrated decisions.

Meanwhile, you can find this and related material at Page 4 to my Guide to Effective Job Search and Career Development, and also see its Page 1, Page 2 and Page 3. You can also find this and related postings at Social Networking and Business 3 and its Page 4 continuation. And also see that directory’s Page 1 and Page 2.

Dissent, disagreement, compromise and consensus 128 – the business context 77

This is my 128th installment to a series on negotiating in a professional context, starting with a focus on the employee-to-employee and employee-to-business side of that as found in more individual jobs and careers contexts. See Guide to Effective Job Search and Career Development – 3 and its Page 4 continuation, postings 484 and following for Parts 1-51 for that side to this overall narrative. And in that context, I have also been discussing the business side of negotiating here. See that same directory Page 4, and its postings 535 and following for Parts 52-127.

I began explicitly focusing on communications and negotiating in a business in general terms in Part 93 after, and in follow-up to my offering a succession of discussions of more granular case in point scenario based examples of how they can and do take place. And that has meant my successively discussing each of a set of aspects to the issues and challenges raised by the first of these two subtopics points:

1. Working widely in and across a business, and networking up and down and across its table of organization in order to succeed there.
2. And the networking and communications and negotiating best practices that would be used there, as they can be fine tuned and used in the particular contexts of specific businesses.

To bring this initial orienting note up to date here, I have finished offering a response to the first of those topic points and I began transitioning from that to discuss Point 2 and is issues in Part 126 and Part 127. And my goal for this posting is to at-least begin to address the change compelling issues and contexts that I raised in Part 127, in terms of the due diligence issues that I listed in Part 126. And I begin doing so here by noting the dual nature of the ten point list that I offered in Part 126. It is simultaneously a broadly stated checklist of the basic elements and steps of a negotiating process and a list of benchmark points where the expected and planned for of that can give way to the unexpected and the emergently problematical. And when such changes there are not seen and understood for what they are and when their significance is overlooked, they become challenge points and sources of disruption that will have to be corrected for.

I wrote in Part 127 of how goals and priorities can change during a negotiations process, and about how negotiations can facilitate and even compel change and on both sides of the table for what their actual goals and priorities are. This is in fact central to reaching a negotiated agreement and certainly for issues that both sides see as being important, but where middle ground, or even entirely novel resolutions would be needed if any agreement can be reached for them.

• Negotiations, and certainly successful ones, are in this sense processes of change accepting convergence in finding and agreeing to resolutions that neither side might have started from but that both sides can comfortably enough conclude with. That is what compromise is, when it is said that negotiations are the art of that.

And with this I have offered three postings that seek to address the above Point 2. And it brings me to the more precise wording of Point 2 and to the “networking and communications and negotiating best practices that would be used there” as tools for enabling such productively directed, agreed to change. I am going to address that in the next installment to this series, building from that foundation.

Meanwhile, you can find this and related material at Page 4 to my Guide to Effective Job Search and Career Development, and also see its Page 1, Page 2 and Page 3. You can also find this and related postings at Social Networking and Business 3 and its Page 4 continuation. And also see that directory’s Page 1 and Page 2.

Hands-off management, micromanagement and in-between – some thoughts on what they mean in practice 23

This is my 23rd posting to an occasional series on better management practices to address the issues of how and when to actively step in, and how and when to step back as a manager and supervisor. And for earlier installments to this, see Guide to Effective Job Search and Career Development – 4, with this series included in its Addendum Section.

• As a manager, how can I enable and encourage, and reward the people who report to me who seek to both excel in their here-and-now and who seek to advance themselves professionally in what they can do, bringing out the best in them, but without even just appearing to show favoritism?

I concluded Part 22 with this here rephrased question, offered from a first person perspective as if I were mentoring a supervising manager earlier on in their career. And it does raise real concerns. If you as a manager come across as selectively mentoring and otherwise enabling some of the people on your team while bypassing others for this, they might very well see this as discriminatory. And even if that is not your intention, they might in fact be right there, and certainly if such unequally distributed attention and value sharing determines who is going to be promoted in workplace title and position, in compensation received, or both.

Mentoring as that can be selectively offered comes to mind here as an obvious example. But the same applies to how decisions are made for both allowing and even actively supporting members of the team that reports to you for they’re gaining specialized training, and even third party validated certification in new skill sets. Anyone brought into such added opportunity is going to gain advantage over their colleagues who are left out, and certainly when some are consistently brought into this and others are consistently left out and as a pattern. Even discrepancies in the amount of one to one face time offered to team members can be enormously impactful here and certainly where some have your ear and your attention and on a regular ongoing basis but others find themselves left out of that – and even when they have specific issues that they see need to address with you.

Personality clashes can lead to that last possibility here happening. Some people are easier and more comfortable to work with and some can be grating in how they interact with others and real challenges, and without they’re intending to come across as such. And their idea as to what needs your immediate attention might not be the same as your idea of that. This happens. When managers take a to-them easiest and most comfortable approach to dealing with this type of challenge and as their default, they can create what is in fact the very type of discriminatory bias that I warn of here – even if unintentionally.

What I am doing here is to lay out a map of a potential mine field that even experienced managers can find themselves caught up in, and particularly when they have direct supervisory responsibility over large teams and their own direct hands-on responsibilities are seemingly fully time consuming. How can a manager advance the careers of those who report to them who show real promise and who display the drive to succeed that is needed to fulfill that, while also being supportive of the members of their team who have essentially plateaued out in what they can do and in what they seek to do, when all of this would effectively be paid for out of a limited budget? And how can they best address the issues of opportunity that I raise here for better managing employees who show real promise and potential but who simply do their jobs and who do not stick out, one way or the other as demanding direct attention? Here, and considering all of the categorical possibilities that I raise here, addressing team members needs and capabilities here means juggling limited directly monetizable resources such as outside or even in-house training funds that have been allocated in support of your team, that you have to budget and distribute. But this also includes your time and effort and its value to your business, and to you as your seek to carry out your own work and on time, meeting your own assigned performance goals.

I am going to at least start to discuss approaches for avoiding that mine field where possible, and getting out of it intact where necessary, in the next installment to this series. Meanwhile, you can find this and related postings and series at Page 4 to my Guide to Effective Job Search and Career Development, with this put into its addendum section (and also see its Page 1, Page 2 and Page 3.) And you can also find this at Social Networking and Business 3 and its Page 4 continuation (and also see its Page 1 and Page 2), and at HR and Personnel – 2 (and see its Page 1.)

Dissent, disagreement, compromise and consensus 127 – the business context 76

This is my 127th installment to a series on negotiating in a professional context, starting with a focus on the employee-to-employee and employee-to-business side of that as found in more individual jobs and careers contexts. See Guide to Effective Job Search and Career Development – 3 and its Page 4 continuation, postings 484 and following for Parts 1-51 for that side to this overall narrative. And in that context, I have also been discussing the business side of negotiating here. See that same directory Page 4, and its postings 535 and following for Parts 52-126.

I began explicitly focusing on communications and negotiating in a business in general terms in Part 93 after, and in follow-up to my offering a succession of discussions of more granular case in point scenario based examples of how they can and do take place. And that has meant my successively discussing each of a set of aspects to the issues and challenges raised by the first of these two subtopics points:

1. Working widely in and across a business, and networking up and down and across its table of organization in order to succeed there.
2. And the networking and communications and negotiating best practices that would be used there, as they can be fine tuned and used in the particular contexts of specific businesses.

And to bring this initial orienting note up to date here, I discussed a set of issues and tools of importance when business negotiating in Parts 93 through 125, as a first draft response to the above Point 1. Then I began discussing Point 2 and its issues in Part 126. My goal moving forward in building from that start is to offer an approach for knowing and understanding precisely what you face going into a negotiations effort, and seeing how such initial understandings can best be updated there as events unfold.

I began my business side of negotiating discussions here, assuming that you would know and essentially automatically so, precisely what you face and what you have to achieve there. That is often the case in real world negotiations and certainly for knowing what you face in general terms. But even then, change can happen and so can a need to reconsider, reframe and re-plan what has to be negotiated and how. It is this complex of issues that I would address in this next progression of installments here, as begun in Part 126 with its starter due diligence checklist.

And I add, initial assumptions and expectations of the type that I assumed to be stable in the first half of this business-side narrative, can fall into uncertainty and even fall apart entirely, even as attempted negotiations begin. And such disruption can come from your own side of a negotiations table, as easily and as quickly as it can from the other side.

I return as I write that, to a point that I raised and discussed when addressing Point 1 here, where the people who you would have to work with in this might not be in agreement among themselves, and with this disruptive force a possibility on either side of the table or from both sides of it at the same time. And I will go farther there in noting that:

• Negotiations, and even the most effective and productive of them can take the form of engagement across a table between opposing views, while the people holding them are still coming to agreement within their own ranks as to what they see as most important to them there.
• Negotiations in this sense are at least as much about arriving at priorities and at mutually agreed to priorities as they are about winning agreement on some set of outcome goals that they would begin from.
• All of the more generally stated communications and negotiations issues that I have discussed in this and certainly from Part 93 on here, address opportunities and challenges that can arise that would impact upon how efforts here would, or even could proceed.
• And ultimately the negotiation scenarios that have to be navigated, take form and identity out of all of this, and certainly as they come into focus for what is actually there that has to be worked through.

I am going to continue this line of discussion in the next installment to this series, returning to the due diligence issues list that I offered in Part 126 as a starting point there. Meanwhile, you can find this and related material at Page 4 to my Guide to Effective Job Search and Career Development, and also see its Page 1, Page 2 and Page 3. You can also find this and related postings at Social Networking and Business 3 and its Page 4 continuation. And also see that directory’s Page 1 and Page 2.

Dissent, disagreement, compromise and consensus 126 – the business context 75

This is my 126th installment to a series on negotiating in a professional context, starting with a focus on the employee-to-employee and employee-to-business side of that as found in more individual jobs and careers contexts. See Guide to Effective Job Search and Career Development – 3 and its Page 4 continuation, postings 484 and following for Parts 1-51 for that side to this overall narrative. And in that context, I have also been discussing the business side of negotiating here. See that same directory Page 4, and its postings 535 and following for Parts 52-125.

I began explicitly focusing on communications and negotiating in a business in general terms in Part 93 after, and in follow-up to my offering a succession of discussions of more granular case in point scenario based examples of how they can and do take place. And that has meant my successively discussing each of a set of aspects to the issues and challenges raised by the first of these two subtopics points:

1. Working widely in and across a business, and networking up and down and across its table of organization in order to succeed there.
2. And the networking and communications and negotiating best practices that would be used there, as they can be fine tuned and used in the particular contexts of specific businesses.

And to bring this initial orienting note up to date here, I completed an at-least first draft take of a response to the first of those topics points in Part 125. And my goal here is to begin to discuss Point 2 of that set as well. And I begin doing so by noting that I am not simply going to reiterate – or expand upon the succession of specific case in point examples that I offered in Postings 52-92. My goal moving forward here is to in effect, take my Point 1 discussions out of the abstract by reframing the more generally stated communications and networking tools that I offered there in more specific relevant contexts. And as a starting point there, my goal for this posting is to:

• Raise and discuss issues of knowing the actual circumstances that you find yourself having to negotiate in, knowing what specific type of scenario among other details that you actually face there.

I begin addressing that complex of issues by offering a starter level due diligence list of issues and considerations that for their details, would answer a significant number of the basic, core questions implicit in that bullet point:

i. What type of group, organization or other constituency do you face a need to negotiate with?
ii. What type of group, organization or other constituency would you help to negotiate with them?
iii. Which side there is more actively seeking a negotiated resolution?
iv. And what do they see as calling for such resolution, at least to the level of their general, overall-goals? This question, of necessity has to be addressed in counterpart from the perspective of both sides of any possible negotiating table.
v. Where do the two sides in this agree, and where do they disagree going into possible negotiations?
vi. Where do the points of at least initial disagreement there differ for those on opposing sides to a negotiating table here, to a degree that would make active efforts at reaching negotiated agreement necessary? This is a question of both relative priorities and of overall importance, as each side sees them.
vii. What other stakeholders have to be taken into account there, who might or might not be at the table, but that have shadows over it that cannot be denied and that must be accommodated?
viii. And looking back at postings 52-92 here for contextual constraints – and opportunities that might raise here, do all parties that would enter into this come across as being willing and able to negotiate in good faith as discussed in recent installments to this series?
ix. And if not, then how and under what circumstances would they deviate from that, and with what likely impact?
x. I add as a comment on this, that the earlier you start preparing for Plan B alternatives here, best alternatives to achieving any mutually acceptable negotiated agreement included, the better off you and your side in this will be if such options becomes necessary. Last minute here, of necessity means fewer and more constricted alternative options, where advance, longer term Plan B preparations can lead to prepared-for flexibility and adaptability.

Preparedness and the understanding that goes into that are essential if you and the people who you would help in negotiations are to have the best chance for achieving the best outcomes for themselves – and for you.

I offer that as a once (actually more than once) burnt, twice and more learnt lesson from having to negotiate with one hand effectively tied behind my back because some of the people who I was trying to represent, had secret agendas and for what they actually wanted and as their highest priorities, and for how they were burdened with problematical issues that would have to be negotiated around to achieve those goals but that they did not want to acknowledge.

My above starter due diligence list is more than just a partial road map for moving forward. It is a cautionary warning list and a risk management tool, and particularly where issues that its points should clarify remain opaque and even from the people at a negotiating table on your own side of it.

I am going to continue this line of discussion in the next installment to this series. Meanwhile, you can find this and related material at Page 4 to my Guide to Effective Job Search and Career Development, and also see its Page 1, Page 2 and Page 3. You can also find this and related postings at Social Networking and Business 3 and its Page 4 continuation. And also see that directory’s Page 1 and Page 2.

Dissent, disagreement, compromise and consensus 125 – the business context 74

This is my 125th installment to a series on negotiating in a professional context, starting with a focus on the employee-to-employee and employee-to-business side of that as found in more individual jobs and careers contexts. See Guide to Effective Job Search and Career Development – 3 and its Page 4 continuation, postings 484 and following for Parts 1-51 for that side to this overall narrative. And in that context, I have also been discussing the business side of negotiating here. See that same directory Page 4, and its postings 535 and following for Parts 52-124.

I have discussed the role of emotion in negotiations and in their shaping contexts, throughout this series. I have in that regard, addressed it as a source of potential challenge – the more usual approach taken when discussing this set of issues. And I have also touched upon how an awareness of and understanding of the emotional context of negotiations can be used as a source of value creating insight.

I began explicitly focusing on communications and negotiating in a business in general terms in Part 93 after, and in follow-up to my offering a succession of discussions of more granular case in point scenario based examples of how they can and do take place. And that has meant my successively discussing each of a set of faces to the issues and challenges raised by the first of these two subtopics points:

1. Working widely in and across a business, and networking up and down and across its table of organization in order to succeed there.
2. And the networking and communications and negotiating best practices that would be used there, as they can be fine tuned and used in the particular contexts of specific businesses.

My goal for this posting is to complete this subtopic Point 1 discussion by returning to the issues of emotion in negotiations. And I do so with a goal of reconsidering emotional detachment and the issues of how emotionally grounded pressures can set and prioritize specific outcomes goals, shaping what is sought after, as well as shaping how efforts might be carried to reach those goals. Such constraining forces can lead to the types of challenges that I have delved into throughout this series, and for all concerned. And I begin readdressing all of this here by offering a metaphorical example: the all too often perceived challenge of stray thoughts in all of their seeming clutter when meditating.

• In a meditation context, the all but automatically presumed assumption is that you cannot successfully meditate unless and until you completely clear your mind of all such distractions. But if meditation is grounded in being present in the moment, then that stray thought clutter is simply part of the moment that you are in that you seek to be fully engaged in. So meditation becomes an ongoing awareness of and engagement in the fact of this taking place too, as well as your breathing, your having to shift position if you are becoming uncomfortable as you are now and so on.
• In a negotiating context, your emotions and those that you see at play around you are counterpart to those stray thoughts. If you spend too much time and effort simply seeking to stamp them out, you may find yourself leaving way too little of you time and effort left, to actually negotiate.
• Awareness and accommodation of emotion and learning from it, without falling into it and letting it take over, is negotiation’s counterpart to observing stray thoughts and letting them simply pass by – rather than getting caught up in them.

What I am writing about in both of these contexts is awareness, acceptance and a willingness to simply set aside the seeming distractions faced. And turning back to reconsider how awareness of the emotions in the room can help inform negotiations for those who really look, an awareness of the nature of those stray thoughts and of what is distracting you and in actual fact, can be enlightening too.

I began this business negotiations side to this series with a succession of case in point scenarios. And I in fact pursued essentially that same approach in the first half of this series too, with its more individually focused negotiations issues. Then I began offering a set of more general principles oriented discussions that I admit now apply to both the business and individual negotiations sides to this series. And I conclude this overall progression of discussion up to here, with this thought piece note on how to approach any negotiations in general, from a stable place that can help you to realize value in what is accomplished there. In a fundamental sense, all of this up to here in this series has led to this posting.

And with that, I am going to turn back to the specifics again as briefly pointed to in the second of two subtopic points that I repeated at the start of this posting. More specifically, I am going to begin addressing its issues in the next installment to this series, where I will raise and discuss the issues of knowing the actual circumstances that you find yourself having to negotiate in: knowing what type of specific scenario among other details that you actually face.

Meanwhile, you can find this and related material at Page 4 to my Guide to Effective Job Search and Career Development, and also see its Page 1, Page 2 and Page 3. You can also find this and related postings at Social Networking and Business 3 and its Page 4 continuation. And also see that directory’s Page 1 and Page 2.

Hands-off management, micromanagement and in-between – some thoughts on what they mean in practice 22

This is my 22nd posting to an occasional series on better management practices to address the issues of how and when to actively step in, and how and when to step back as a manager and supervisor. And for earlier installments to this, see Guide to Effective Job Search and Career Development – 4, with this series included in its Addendum Section.

I have been discussing the consequences that can and do arise from two distinctive approaches to management, that we all come to see in the course of our work lives:

• Positive and supportive, and with the supervisors involved actively seeking to provide the support and resources needed to get required work done, and
• What can best be considered adversarial supervisors who simply make demands and apply pressure to perform, taking a sink or swim approach to the people who would do that work.

And to bring this initial orienting note up to date here, my goal for this posting is to at-least begin to discuss mid-spectrum managers who fit in their interpersonal and management approaches between those extremes. These are managers who offer support to those who report to them where they see emergent need for that, and certainly for new hires who are still going through their essential learning curves there. And they also offer specific, focused support when members of their teams face unusual challenges that call for such higher level organized help – for example in securing access to essential bottleneck resources, information that should be available to them but is not and the like. But they also expect and demand performance excellence. They also step back and allow the people who report to them to do their jobs, and they require real quality in that. This means they give the people who report to them the opportunity that they need in order to learn and to grow professionally, and on an ongoing basis. The best such managers actively promote and encourage that, and even where this calls for at least selective mentoring on their part.

Both of the ends of the management style and approach spectrum that I write of here, if pushed to their illogical extremes, can and do become sources of problems and of lost opportunity and for all who report to them. The overly supportive there can and do effectively eliminate learning opportunities, minimizing the potential of those who report to them to learn and do more on their own. So even that in its extreme form can become problematical, and just as much so as its opposite extreme can be – even if fully and even overly supportive here does lead to a comfortable workplace in the here-and-now.

What I am doing here is to argue a case for holding that middle-ground management styles are the best to pursue and as a general rule of thumb, and in most business contexts. And this leads me to some specific open due diligence questions that would hold relevance to a manager who seeks to develop and follow such a management approach. And I will phrase them from a first person perspective as if coming from such a manager and I will comment upon them in the second person as if mentoring such an individual.

• What do the people who report to me do, individually and together through coordinated action and effort?

Any answer to this type of question should begin as an exercise in mapping out what that team of employees as a whole are supposed to do in order to meet their overall collective assigned goals and priorities, and with this further partitioned according to who of this group is going to be held specifically responsible for what of that. But a more complete answer would also included performance expectations that enter into keeping this team and its efforts running smoothly and even when their team manager – you, are not there and immediately so to manage things.

• What should these people be able to do and what should they be able to professionally grow in being able to do, in order to keep my team effective as its overall work requirements change and new task types have to be added with old ones falling away?

That focuses on these issues from the perspective of business needs and just that. Now let’s consider this from the more individually personal side. People in general, and certainly the ones who you would most want to have working with you on the team that you manage, are happiest when they have opportunities to learn and to grow. If you want to keep your best people on your team, pay and compensation in general are important considerations. But giving them opportunity to go beyond what can become a standard routine, where they can learn and do more and new, can be more important and certainly in helping to keep them happy and actively engaged. This might not apply and certainly in full to everyone on your team or to everyone at your place of work who you have to be able to depend upon for doing their jobs, and well. But it fully applies to the best of these, your colleagues there.

• So how can I enable and encourage, and reward this, bringing out the best in those who report to me and without seeming to show favoritism?

I am going to continue this line of discussion in the next installment to this series. And I will start there by addressing that question. Meanwhile, you can find this and related postings and series at Page 4 to my Guide to Effective Job Search and Career Development, with this put into its addendum section (and also see its Page 1, Page 2 and Page 3.) And you can also find this at Social Networking and Business 3 and its Page 4 continuation (and also see its Page 1 and Page 2), and at HR and Personnel – 2 (and see its Page 1.)

Dissent, disagreement, compromise and consensus 124 – the business context 73

This is my 124th installment to a series on negotiating in a professional context, starting with a focus on the employee-to-employee and employee-to-business side of that as found in more individual jobs and careers contexts. See Guide to Effective Job Search and Career Development – 3 and its Page 4 continuation, postings 484 and following for Parts 1-51 for that side to this overall narrative. And in that context, I have also been discussing the business side of negotiating here. See that same directory Page 4, and its postings 535 and following for Parts 52-123.

I began explicitly focusing on communications and negotiating in a business in general in Part 93 after, and in follow-up to my offering a succession of discussions of more granular case in point scenario based examples. And as part of that, I have turned to and have been discussing this pair of more fundamental issues:

1. Working widely in and across a business, and networking up and down and across its table of organization in order to succeed there.
2. And the networking and communications and negotiating best practices that would be used there, as they can be fine tuned and used in the particular contexts of specific businesses.

To bring this initial orienting note up to date, I am still focusing on the first of those points and I have recently been discussing negotiating challenges here in its context, and from the perspective of the first of these two more generally stated scenario-framing possibilities, which I have been presenting in due diligence question form as:

• Does negotiating in good faith mean negotiating with consistency, so that others can know what they have to negotiate about as to goals and priorities?
• Or does negotiating in good faith mean negotiating without being coercively manipulative and deceptive? Does its alternative of negotiating in bad faith mean not actually negotiating at all, and with effort by whatever means needed, taken to simply impose a one-sided resolution on all involved?

My goal for this posting is to turn to and begin addressing the second of these possibilities, and the issues and challenges of identifying bad actors for what they are doing and early on. But at least as importantly:

• This means thinking through and better preparing to effectively dealing with these people,
• Or alternatively to that, finding a best Plan B option for working around them instead where that would mean determining and following through on a best alternative to negotiated agreement.

How do you know when you are facing bad actor negotiations and people who actively pursue such a course as their preferred choice? I have in effect answered that question from how I posed it. People like that leave a track record of negotiation and follow-through wreckage behind them. Yes, it is always possible at least in principle that you might find yourself trying to deal with such a business and such a business owner when they have decided to switch to this approach for a first time. But most of the time, they have already been actively pursuing this and even as a long-term business strategy.

Why would you even consider attempting to work with anyone like that? My one word answer to that is necessity, or at least near-necessity. If you have to at least try to deal with a business with such a reputation, as for example when seeking to set up a smaller aspect of a larger and more complex initiative and in order to achieve larger and overall-more important goals there with others who do actually negotiate, then you might have to at least make the effort. This is certainly true if you have to be able to check off a “we have tried” box on a list that you can make use of when actually negotiating with those others, on the larger and more important parts of such an overall deal.

Following through on this briefly sketched out example, a need for that type of effort can arise when the more toxic business that enters into it has an effective patent protected monopoly on a technology advance that is needed in order to most cost-effectively meet larger supply chain needs, or a seemingly exclusive hold on some key potential local market.

Of course, this can also happen when it is just your business seeking to come to a negotiated agreement with a single, second business that just happens to be problematical for that and for how they follow through on their agreements. Consider once again in that case, a scenario in which the bad actor business in question is the only possible source of a resource that you need, at least now and according to your current situation.

What should you do and always, when making such a negotiated effort, and under whatever circumstances that need for this might arise in? Insist on the mutual signing of a nonpartisan binding contractual agreement that would compel a problematical partner business to uphold its side of any agreement arrived at, and for what would be done and by whom, how this would be done and on what timeline, at what costs, and with what overall final compensation payable due agreed to, and with necessary details as to how and when this would all be carried out and completed too. And this contract, spelling out precisely what has been agreed to, in writing, has to have teeth: penalty clauses that for example would go into effect for nonpayment, or other specific transgressions as explicitly spelled out in it.

• If the people who you have come to negotiated agreement with there, refuse to put the terms of this in mutually binding legal form, then walk away and do not look back. If they pressure you to sign their papers covering this, and just theirs – and they have a bad track record in fact and as a matter of record for abrogating their agreements, walk away faster.

And as I have already noted, always be prepared with at least one possible best alternative to negotiated agreement ready for if/when these types of talks fail. And make sure that those on the other side of that table know it. Sometimes people and businesses with reputations for negotiating in bad faith need you more than you need them. They might have fewer options or alternatives than they like to let on about, from the bridges they have burned.

This brings me back to the issues of emotional detachment, and of how emotionally grounded pressures to set and prioritize specific outcomes goals and how to reach them, can lead to all of the potential challenges that I have touched upon here, and for all concerned. I began discussing this complex of issues in Part 115, and I am going to further develop and expand upon that line of discussion in the next installment to this series, in light of subsequent discussion here. In anticipation of that discussion to come, I will further discuss assumptions made and held and their role in shaping both the emotional contexts of negotiations and those negotiations as a whole. And yes, I will build from earlier discussions of these issues there too.

Then, looking further ahead, I am going to turn to the second numbered topics point that I repeated at the start of this posting, with its focus on specific contexts and circumstances. And I will address that in large part in terms of knowing where and how to adjust the types of approaches that I have been discussing here in a Point 1 context, to best meet the needs and opportunities of the case in point specific.

Meanwhile, you can find this and related material at Page 4 to my Guide to Effective Job Search and Career Development, and also see its Page 1, Page 2 and Page 3. You can also find this and related postings at Social Networking and Business 3 and its Page 4 continuation. And also see that directory’s Page 1 and Page 2.