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Negotiation Strategies – Bracketize the Offers

During March Madness sports fans affectionately refer to the NCAA Basketball tournament as “bracketology”. It’s a 65 team playoff, over 18 days, single elimination (winner keeps going, loser goes home)…one ultimate winner. I think it’s the best event in sports.
In negotiation, we sometimes pride ourselves on “thinking on our feet” or “winging it.” Don’t fool yourself. There is a better way. It’s called “bracketizing.”

The best chance for Negotiation success comes from what we call “Aggressive Preparation”. In the Humble Confidence Negotiation Workshop we dive into the 6 Stages of Negotiation Preparation. Stage 5 is what we call “bracketizing” our offers. We prepare and bracket 4 offers:

1) The Best (better than expected)
2) The Realistic (what it should be)
3) The Fallback (acceptable range of backup)
4) The Alamo (don’t go there…call a timeout!)

Bracketizing means we project ahead and determine a range of offers. We gain the discipline of staying within the plan, or “bracket”. We never “wing it” or freelance deals at the table. Never.

Now that’s not to mean we’re rigid or “un-creative”. Not at all. But it does mean we control our emotions and don’t get caught up in the euphoria of deal-completion. Sometimes we just want to be done…be careful not to let your desire to finish drive a sub-par outcome.

Bracketizing is just one stage. There are 5 more in “Aggressive Preparation”. We call it “Aggressive” because you have to drive your team and yourself to embrace the process. And remember, 90% of a successful negotiation happens in this stage, before you even get in the room!

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Can Past Life Regression Help Your Present?

Do you have an inexplicable fear of heights or insects or something you can’t quite understand? Are you prone to bounce from job to job or relationship to relationship, enduring similar cycles of disappointment and frustration? Even though you realize what needs to be done to improve your life, do you find it difficult to escape old habits that discourage you? Some may seek counseling to better comprehend their behavior, to varying degrees of success. However, one might wish to consider the possibility that problems occurring in life now could be residual of events that happened in past lives.

Reincarnation – What is it?

Simply put, reincarnation is the belief that the soul residing in one’s body lives throughout time in different incarnations, or people. A higher part of the being – the spirit/soul – survives physical death to reside in another dimension (often called the afterlife or other side) before returning to Earth in a new form. Different religious beliefs, including the Buddhist and Hindi faiths, acknowledge the concept of reincarnation under different tenets, and while Western thought is divided – some fundamentalist Christian believers dismiss reincarnation, while more liberal spiritualists may embrace the concept – references to past lives have appeared in our culture. Films such as What Dreams May Come and Dead Again rely on reincarnation as plot devices.

Understanding Past Lives to Help the Present

If you are of an open mind and wish to explore the possibility of past lives, psychic counselors are available to assist people through hypnosis or other procedures. Past life regression as therapy is used often to pinpoint a reason behind destructive behaviors – it is theorized that actions and decisions made in a previous life could have impact on the next. As the soul travels through incarnations, it may have difficulty breaking patterns necessary for growth. Somebody living today with a deathly fear of heights, for example, may be revealed to have died or endured injury from a fall in a previous life. Consequently, a vigorous anti-smoker today may have lived in a time previously where he or she smoked heavily and paid the consequences. The memory of that life could have carried over into the present, hence the adverse reaction.

One thing to note about past life regression therapy is that it might not be for everybody. Carefully consider all possibilities and caveats before seeking the assistance of a psychic counselor. For many professionals, hypnosis is not considered a parlor trick for entertainment, and if you are interested in regression it is helpful to approach the therapy with an open mind.

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Top 6 Reasons Why You Need a Remote for PowerPoint Presentations

A top complaint from audience members is that many presenters put too much emphasis on PowerPoint and technology while neglecting the message and interaction with participants. One way to deliver more effective presentations that improve your connection to your audience is to add a remote control to your presentation tools.

Why would one more piece of technology actually switch your focus from PowerPoint to your audience? Have you been distracted (or bored) as a presenter stopped the flow of their talk to pace back to the laptop to change to another slide or as they waited for a partner to move to the next slide? This is one of the 6 reasons why you need a remote for your PowerPoint presentations:

  • Break Down the AV Wall. Without a remote, you are limited to the area by your laptop which builds a wall between you and your audience;
  • Get Control. You never want someone else to control the computer while you have to keep saying, “next please” or flash hand signals. This approach breaks the flow of the speech, annoys your audience, and risks that your helper moves to the wrong slide;
  • Fewer Distractions. Use a remote to stop distracting others who watch you walking back to your computer to move to the next slide. Plus, a remote helps you maintain eye contact with the audience instead of looking at your laptop;
  • Smoother Animations. The impact and flow of most animations is lost when you run animations manually from your laptop;
  • More Professional. Presenting without a remote takes away from the professionalism of a presenter and directs the focus to the technology (or to the lack of tech-savvy if anything goes wrong);
  • Cool Factor. Okay, maybe not a key justification, but a remote is a nifty and useful addition to your technology tools.

With a presentation remote control, you can more effectively and smoothly deliver an electronic presentation and communicate your message. That said, even though I am a huge fan of remotes, you always want to know multiple ways to navigate with the keyboard while delivering a PowerPoint presentation. Keyboard commands may sometimes be faster or at least give you a backup plan.

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