20/7/2021 Trump the Decider in Chief - Part 1Donald Trump has a long history of negotiating. What’s his style? What can you learn from him? And how do you counter someone like Trump? Whilst Joe Biden has been described as Negotiator in Chief, Donald Trump has been given the accolade of Decider in Chief: in his own business he could do what he wanted, he could make the decisions but as President he found that he needed to work with people and that was just not his DNA. So if you’re pitting your wits against someone like Trump, don’t expect any collaborative discussion - he’ll use negotiations as a personal battle ground.
What I have done is go through lots of interviews with Trump, read widely, and I’ve come up with a list from Trump’s Playbook, what you can learn from each of them and how you can counter them. 1. ‘D-’ for The Donald. Martin Latz has analysed over 100 Trump deals. He found in the late 70s and early 80s that Trump did his preparation, used his leverage appropriately, and was by many standards a great negotiator. But as he went into the 80s, when money became freely available, Latz says he started just relying on his gut instinct, at which point he started to overpay for assets, deals that would come back to bite him in the ‘90s. Lesson - Don’t buy your own hype. Trump continually told the world what a great negotiator he was, not least in his book the Art of the Deal. He stopped preparing for negotiations, and did some lousy deals. Research shows that after a deal, negotiators on average felt they walked away with over 60% of the available value. Simple maths tells us that it can't be true for every negotiator and therefore, no matter how many times you’ve done a deal, keep doing your homework! 2. Trump has a relaxed relationship with the truth - for instance, Trump has admitted when he was negotiating with Trudo over the NAFTA trade deal he made up trade figures. It’s been said that the first casualty in negotiation is the truth, but that sort of behaviour gives him no credibility, and stops the creation of longer term relationships. Lesson - Make sure you have facts to hand to counter any creative embellishment by the other side. And make sure you build trust in the marketplace by avoiding any statements that would have Pinocchio wincing. Comments are closed.
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AuthorRichard Marshall is an Accredited Civil and Commercial Mediator with over 25 years experience as a Litigation Solicitor, as well as being a qualified Solicitor-Advocate. He is the founder of Striving to Settle, through which he works as a mediator and provides negotiation training. www.strivingtosettle.co.uk Archives
August 2022
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