Unpacking Negotiation: The Art of Human Interaction with Derrick Chevalier

We unpack why every human interaction is a negotiation and how preparation, not slogans, drives outcomes. Derrick Chevalier shares evolved negotiation tactics that help leaders surface hidden information, avoid self‑negotiation traps, and create value beyond the script.

• negotiation as universal human interaction
• mentor‑driven mastery and apprenticeship
• preparation as strategic advantage
• changes from technology and global dynamics
• myths of win‑win and BATNA overuse
• power negotiation and deadline dynamics
• why chess is a weak life metaphor
• leadership conversations as negotiations
• stealth negotiation and real‑time coaching
• when and how to split the difference
• reframing risk to unlock decisions
• failure as event, focus as discipline

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Disclaimer:

The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the speakers and guests and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any organization or entity. The information provided in this podcast is intended for educational and informational purposes only and should not be considered as professional advice. Listeners should consult with their own professional advisors before implementing any suggestions or recommendations made in this podcast. The speakers and guests are not responsible for any actions taken by listeners based on the information presented in this podcast. The podcast is not intended to be a substitute for professional advice or services. The speakers and guests make no representations or warranties of any kind, express or implied, about the completeness, accuracy, reliability, suitability or availability with respect to the information, products, services, or related graphics contained in this ...

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome And Mission Of The Show
• 1:27 Meet Derek Chevalier And His Framework
• 2:45 Negotiation Is Every Human Interaction
• 5:16 How The Landscape Of Negotiation Changed
• 8:40 The Power Of Mentorship And Apprenticeship
• 12:00 Preparation As The Ultimate Advantage
• 17:15 Going Off Script To Serve The Room
• 21:20 From Sun Tzu To Evolved Negotiation
• 26:00 Experience Versus Mastery And Win‑Win Myths
• 31:20 Power Negotiators And Geopolitics
• 38:10 Why Chess Fails As A Life Metaphor
• 41:20 Leadership As Daily Negotiation
• 45:30 Stealth Negotiation And Real‑Time Coaching

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

Welcome to Unpack Podcast with your host, Leadership Consultant, Ron Harvey of Global Core Strategies and Consulting. Ron believes that leadership is the fundamental driver towards making a difference. So now, to find out more of what it means to unpack leadership, here's your host, Ron Harvey.

SPEAKER_01: 0:28

Good morning, everybody. This is Ron Harvey, the Vice President, Chief Operating Officer for Global Course Strategies and Consulting. Our firm is based out of Columbia, South Carolina. And we spend all of our time, honestly, to keep it really, really direct for you, is we spend all of our time helping leaders be better connected to their teams so they can ensure that they're successful. And I know that leadership does make a huge difference. So everything we do is around people, leadership, conversations, trust. You know, how do you take care of people that are counted on you to help you be successful, you need them, and they need you as well. That's what we do every day. But I pause and I always do unpack with Ron Harvey, and I get guests from around the country with all different backgrounds. And so I'm super excited. Today we have another phenomenal guest. We're in the green room, and I'll let him share who he is, but I want to bring Derek to the to the to the microphone and invite him. Welcome to the show, Derek. I'll let you know invite you to introduce yourself however you wish to.

SPEAKER_02: 1:22

Well, thank you so much. I'm really privileged to be on the show and Derek Chevalier. Uh, I am executive vice president of Harrison Chevalier. We are a negotiation consulting and training company, and we've been in business for about 30 years. Uh, the last 15 years of that has been focused on the development of a brand new universal framework of negotiation that we called SNUF or Evolved Negotiation.

SPEAKER_01: 1:54

Wow, wow, yes, yes. I I'm sure they're gonna be because everything is a negotiation. So I mean, if people don't think they're negotiating, everything is a negotiation. So, what so so for you, as you think about it, you've been in it for a while. Um let me dive into you know, unpacking, which is always we don't know where we're gonna go, but we go we go there. Is negotiation involved in everything that people do?

SPEAKER_02: 2:15

I mean, I'm making some yes, Ron, that's such a great point. From our perspective, every human interaction involves some type of negotiation. The difference is that when people are unaware of that, they don't even realize that they've been negotiated. Because the mark of an excellent negotiator is it is one where a person is not necessarily even aware that you are employing a specific strategy or using a specific tactic. We like to say that if somebody feels like or recognizes that they're being negotiated, then the negotiator is not very good. Now that's separate from sitting down at a negotiation table. But the reality there is that once you're sitting down at the table, the negotiations in many ways over. It's already been negotiated before you get there, right?

SPEAKER_01: 3:18

Yeah, I love it. So with everything changing, you've been in the industry for a while. Um you've been around, you've had a lot of success. So, you know, if you want to, if you're listening and you want to check him out, you know, he's giving you his information, we'll share his contact as well. You can go research, you know, all of the success he's had over time. Has it changed for you over the years?

SPEAKER_02: 3:39

Oh my God, has it changed? Yeah, for one thing, when I get on an airplane when I started, everybody was in a suit. And today, today you got sandals and bare feet on the back of your seat. So that's one little change, but that's a miraculous and wonderful thing. So, my background, as you know, Ron, I started, uh I was on my way to law school, and along the way, I was introduced to an opportunity to become a facilitator for the Keris negotiation uh negotiation workshop. And Dr. Karis, therefore, was my mentor for about 15 years. I was involved with he, his son, and also uh Frank, uh, who was a central part. And they to this day are in 30 countries. So Dr. Karis's background is very much involved in transactional negotiation. So we're buying and selling of goods and services. Now, when he started, you did not have AI. We were not on in a green studio, we were not doing that, right? They were using a mimeograph, right? And not talking about a cell phone, you're not talking about any of that. So if you just look at it from a technological standpoint, we are moving at the speed of light. That doesn't even count AI and all of the other dynamics that have changed uh from a global standpoint. We call the current economy an emerging integrated global economy. So you have small businesses impacted by tariffs in China, right? When we grew up, uh most small businesses were making their products locally, right, or themselves. Today, a small business person is importing from all over the world and is impacted by political events that they would not necessarily have been so impacted by in the past. So, from my perspective, the landscape has changed as well. You when I started out doing seminars, there would be 90% uh men uh in the seminars over a 15-year period, uh it was about 50% women. Uh, then you have a complete conglomeration, sometimes where you have men, you have women, you have every background and across all the uh industries and professional sectors. So, yes, everything has changed in that way. Wow.

SPEAKER_01: 6:20

I mean, you I want to unpack a lot. I mean, you shared a lot in explaining it. Thank you for let me let me go back a little bit. You mentioned that you've had a mentor. How important has it been to you and for people that are listening to have a mentor? And for 15 years you've had a mentor to help you how important was it for you to have a mentor to even reach the level of success you've reached?

SPEAKER_02: 6:40

Well, for me, it was fundamental to my to my life because it gave me a foundation. And I would say to millennials and a lot of young people today, that is one of the key things that they're missing. So a mentor today, in in in past lives, that might have been an apprenticeship, right? So that you're learning your craft from someone that is a master of that particular craft. So for me, that's exactly I had a background in pre-law, political science. I was very well uh prepared to go to law school. But in preparation for law school, I also had a degree in theater arts and speech communication, uh, competitive debate and all. So that was the stage. So by the time I showed up to audition uh for the Keris opportunity, I was in pretty well prepared. As a matter of fact, we competed with hundreds of people to get three spots. And I went to this audition, there are a couple hundred people there, and Frank Mobis, who was the senior vice president at the time, was doing the presentation. He goes, Well, we have three spots. And I raised my hand and I said, Well, actually, you have two spots. Which tells you who I am right away. So that actually made it much more difficult for me because everybody we'll see if that's true. Well, okay. So uh that was just my my habit. It's like, wait a second, I know I'm supposed to be doing this. Now, at the time, also, uh, we didn't have uh preparation. We would be given a cassette tape of somebody doing a section of his book or of the seminar uh for a company or a public presentation, and we were told, like, you need to go learn this. So at the end of the day, it's a 17-hour program. So what I did theater, speech, lawback, pre-law background, I took 17 hours and I put it into a script in large uh bold type, and I memorized that script the way I would have memorized a play. So that I could well I could do that seminar today. So when you talk about preparation, uh a facilitator is there to guide you, but they can only be as effective as you are willing to do the work and then to move beyond uh the parameters of that uh uh of that mentor's background and whatnot. Wow, wow.

SPEAKER_01: 9:27

So Dick, I got I I gotta you made this look real easy, and I always apologize to our audience. Sometimes we make it look easier than what it really is, but you put a lot of work in. I mean, two key things. You had a mentor, you raised your hand, and you had confidence in yourself that hey, I'm gonna put pressure on me, but I'm also gonna put pressure on you if I'm competing with you. And you write it right the work, the preparation. So, so how important is for people that are listening, there are no shortcuts to success. How important is the preparation piece?

SPEAKER_02: 9:56

I think the preparation is everything. Um, I I forget the golfer who said, the more I practice, the the the better I get, right? Yeah, so I think that the preparation for learning, and that's really this is a key thing. The people think about college degrees today and say, Oh, well, you can't get a job because you have a liberal arts degree and there's no job. The college degree was not initially designed to get you a job, it was designed to prepare you to acquire skills and mastery that would become your preparation. That was to introduce you to language, into food, into dance, to expand your cultural horizon so that you could communicate from people from different backgrounds, so that when I walk into a room and I'm working with an engineer, I'm gonna change my perspective in terms of how I present the information because I know that engineer is thinking in a very specific way. That would be different for a lawyer or somebody working in public policy or in politics. Well, you have to have some familiarity with that playground in order to know the rules and have some guidelines so that you can even get an education. So you learn to ask specific questions and you learn to uh listen to people for not just what they're saying, but to listen for what's not being said, right? Yes, yes, preparation is everything, yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 11:44

So let me go back. So you're in this conference and you're going and you're you're doing the audition, uh, which you put yourself in, you put your name in the hat, and you went back and you spent 17 hours preparing for how long was the actual presentation. You spent 17 hours for how long of a presentation.

SPEAKER_02: 12:00

No, so the 17 hours we did facilitated a two-day, eight-hour um workshop or seminar. So that content was 17 hours of content. So over the course of two days, we were presenting essentially the content from his book. We were also facilitating uh exercises, interactive exercises, QA. So, what what I'm saying is that I spent 17 hours memorizing 17 hours worth of content so that I could then now the the value of that was, for instance, at one point, you know, I was always in a love-hate relationship with Chet. He loved me, but I was always pushing the boundary. So there'd be a few times when he kind of set me up, right? So uh at one point there was an opportunity to do a seminar for about 500 people, and I said, Great, you know, I'm the yeah, and he goes, You can you can't handle 500 people. I said, I'm pretty sure I can't, because of course we were paid on parsley in that. And he said, No, I don't, I I think we better split it up because I would also go off script, depending who was on the room, right? And they wanted me to stay to that script. So uh he said, Well, no, you I'm gonna have two people doing this seminar, 250 in one room, 250 in another room. You guys need to start and stop at the same time and make sure that you do it by the book. So I was scared to death because I knew I always went off script, but we know I was being watched. I'm thinking about this, but I still went off script to serve the people that were in the room, that the makeup of that particular group. So I actually got done a little bit before lunch, and I walked over and I watched the other presenter. Well, just before lunch, somebody from the company raised their hand. They said, Yeah, it looks like, you know, I understand you have a program to do and that you're providing us with specific information. But what we're interested in is how would you address this particular issue in our particular industry? And the facilitator who was quite good, said, Well, Dr. Karis is an expert in his field, and we'll get to that. But the person said, Well, yeah, could you just give me an idea of how the content matches with this particular challenge that we're facing in the company that's important for us? And she said, Well, I want to say again, Dr. Karis knows what he's doing, and it's in the book, and we'll be getting to that. So they went to lunch, all 500 people, and that's where they're talking. Well, after lunch, there are four, there were like 350 people in my seminar. And so I continue to go off script. So at one point, I find that I that was that background that would allow me to start and stop and be able to pick up the content, but also to tailor it to a specific industry or profession because I also, beyond that, went off and then became a student of negotiation. So I went all the way back to Sun Tzu, and and that's how evolved negotiation was born. I went back to Sun Tzu after 15 years with Dr. Kieris. I studied and I asked this question: what is the same in negotiation today as it was uh in Sun Tzu's time and all the way going all the way back to the Holy Bible? And now, what is different because of technology, because of politics, geography? And I wanted to create a negotiation framework that could be universally applied. Now, I would argue that if you go all the way back to that first audition, when I said, Yeah, you you got two, that was a little arrogant, but and but it also uh uh put attention because now everybody was looking for me to fail, right? Yes, uh, including, you know, they're like, oh, we'll make sure this guy doesn't get. But then they look back and they're saying, like, okay, well, here's the preparation, here's the background. Now 15 years. So today, when I began developing evolved negotiation, I could have worked in all the states of the United States, Mexico, all the provinces of Canada, Africa, and many other spots around the world. So there are very few places that I can go into where I don't know how to do the homework and do the preparation. And there are many things that are the same across all industries. Two plus two is four in any environment. So by utilizing universal principles, which was going all the way back to the Sun Tzu, I was looking at how negotiation impacts divorce, impacts marriage, impacts any type of a widget, politics, history, uh, geography, politics, and negotiation is a tantamount to all of that. And in a specific way, many of us just think of negotiation as being transactional. And that's one of the missions I'm on to tell people that negotiation is really a form of human interaction. The issue is just what tools are you using to come to it, right? So if you're only using your background and experience, you have a lot of people that mistake experience for knowledge and skill, right? So, experience, and I'll have people come to me and say, Well, I've been doing this for 25 years, Derek. And so, well, what's the foundation that you built that on? Well, you know, did you take a course? Have you extended your say? Well, no, I've been doing it for 25 years. And my question to them is if you didn't have, and don't because everybody will say, Well, I read that book, and I'm my first question is, well, what are the top three tenets you learned from that book? Uh uh uh so, in other words, you didn't read the book. What you did is turn the pages, right? So let's get past that. Now you have 25 years of experience. So, how does your experience inform your knowledge? Well, your knowledge is based upon your experience, and your experience is not based on any type of foundation. So you don't know if you've been doing something wrong for 25 years, but you didn't know it. So people will say, Well, I'm very successful. And I would say, yes, but half of the success you might have had, you left on the table and don't even know it because you had no wall upon which to bounce that ball to say, How did I determine how well I did? Right. And then you get people into win-win negotiation, which we think is a misnomer. Uh, I say, yeah, win-win people. And we asked last year almost a million people, professionals across all kinds of areas, how do you determine if an outcome was win-win? Well, the vast majority of people say, well, I feel good about the outcome. Or uh, I not neither of us got everything we wanted. But the biggest thing, I feel good about it. And my response to that is, yeah, people often feel good and at the end of a win-win negotiation, generally because somebody got screwed. But can you say that? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, just in case. I've uh man, yes, you know, so yeah, so you have a misnomer like that, right?

SPEAKER_01: 20:30

How do you how do you dare? I mean, phenomenal, a lot of great information, but you're exactly right in the art of negotiation, preparation, do your homework, and everybody has the power to do that, right? When you get to a place and everything's being negotiated, how do you help? Because the world is changing fast, careers, jobs, small businesses, politics, churches, schools, budget, everything's on negotiation. How do you who blinks first? That used to be it like who blinks first, usually, or who's who what's the biggest mistake you think we make when we are negotiating?

SPEAKER_02: 21:06

Well, you brought up two things, and that is a a principle. He or she who blinks first loses. Let's just put that in a political context, uh, because that is a fundamental fundamental point. We also are witnessing right now from a political geopolitical perspective, we are having an opportunity to watch what we would describe as a power negotiator uh in full-blown color. So a power negotiator from the uh evolved perspective is one who does very well when they have more resources, more time, and less to lose than their counterpart. Well, and so if they're negotiating with people in courtrooms and threatening to keep them in court for seven years because they have the money to do it, and they're negotiating with someone that does not, let's take contractors who are not paid on large motel uh hotels and resorts. Well, did they ever get paid? No, because they didn't have the resources to stay in court for seven years. So you would call that a successful negotiation. Well, it was a power outcome. So a power negotiator threatens uh and raises the stakes, let's just say, to 145%. Now, people can go to my website and see that I wrote an article and I said in 2016, I described our president as a power negotiator who does well when he's negotiating against people where he has more power, more skill, and less to lose. I also predicted that in a political realm he would not do well, especially not against people that look at millennia. You're talking about China and Russia that look at millennia. And in negotiations, sometimes we used to used to say, well, Americans show up and they book a three-day, because we're negotiating three days. The Chinese show up, they got the whole hotel booked out for the next six months. And then when they walk in, you walk in to check in, you say, Yeah, I'm checking in. They know you're checking in. How long you stay in four days, they know you stay in four days. The negotiation is not starting till three days and three and a half days into the exchange. You're not even negotiating because they're gonna slam you against that consequences of uh a deadline. So they're not negotiating until the end. I think we just saw that happen. So so you just saw that somebody who's a power negotiator raise a stake, and then when it starts seeing the consequences in the stock market and from a political realm, suddenly we're gonna have a 90-day. And now what you have are people running around saying uh that we have a win-win outcome because the Chinese came to the negotiating table. Well, factually speaking, where we are right now, we were at a two and a half percent uh at the in January from the from the uh tariff standpoint. We're now at 27. So just how win-win was it, and who was it win-win for? You know, so it the politics of that. Now, the good thing uh for the administration is that most people don't know any of this, they're not thinking about it. It looks like a victory. We got a 90-day pause. Okay, we got a 90-day pause because people start talking about you can have$10 instead of$20 or whatever that was. And then people start saying, Well, we might not have any dolls, because it takes four or five months for those dolls to get across the oh shit. So when you start really saying, uh-oh, what is it gonna look like when there's no Christmas and and businesses are going out? So why did they blink? Because the deadline was looming, because the consequences for you could have predicted, I did, not only in 2016, but in a recent article. It's not magic, you're just looking at the tea leaves and moving the pieces. Uh, I'll I'll say this too. A lot of people use chess uh as a metaphor for negotiation. Now, we I used to use chess, and there are some elements of chess that make make it a good metaphor, but through the evolved negotiation framework, we would suggest to you that wait a second. So, in chess, some things are always the same. Right now, there's only been two changes in chess in 400 years, but every board is eight down and eight across. Now, why is chess good? Because in chess, there's the same pieces, they're shaped different, cult that's to represent cultures and all of that. It may be made out of something different, but it's eight down, eight across. Now, where does chess differ from life or negotiation in life? In chess, when we sit down, we both know what the rules are. We also know the limitations of every player on that board. We know that a rook cannot go diagonally all the way across the board. We know that a pawn cannot go all the way across the board. We know those are the limitations. Now, that's the end of the comparison of chess in business and in life. Because in business and in life, we don't know who we're negotiating with, and the pawn may actually be the queen or the king. And at any time, those roles can change. So if you're still thinking chess, and we have that happening right now, we have people that are trained playing chess against people who are going to move the ball and move the negotiators left and right at any given time, which completely undoes the the intent that I have that oh, I was planning for you to move your pawn and you change the pawn out for a queen. Uh-oh, I lose. That's it. And then we say, well, it's yeah, let's say it was win-win, so I look good. Okay.

SPEAKER_01: 27:54

Wow. How much as you think about negotiations and you think about, you know, thank you for sharing what you've shared so far. How does it play into a leadership? We spend a lot of time helping leaders be adaptable, flexible, communicating effectively. How much does negotiation play a part in being an effective leader?

SPEAKER_02: 28:14

Absolutely everything. And that's what a lot of the professional CEOs, CFOs, and whatnot that I work with, that's what they discovered. That they don't necessarily see their interactions with their board, for instance, as a negotiation. Now, from I find that difficult to believe, but but that's because of my background. Uh, they don't necessarily see the relationship with their employees as a negotiation, and yet it is. So, one of the things we do something called uh stealth negotiation. So I will have a team negotiating, let's say, in procurement in China, and that's coming up soon. They'll be sitting in China at a table in a room. Now, what's gonna happen is somebody's gonna walk in and say, you know what, Ron couldn't make it on site, so we're gonna call in, and somebody's gonna dial up the phone and call in. Now, the person on the phone is me. So while I'm listening to that negotiation, I am texting insight. I'm saying this uh identifying a specific tactic, I'm suggesting where they should be sitting, I'm suggesting when they should be taking the break and leaving it, walking in, walking out, and then reminding people of the content from our previous discussion. So, right at a point when one person might be thinking, gee, they're ready to do a deal. We might take a caucus and walk out of the room. Then when we come back in, we lose everything that we learned in that session to recalibrate our. Strategy. And I'll say this too. The two big things that are important. Number one, every form of negotiation right now, the Keras form, uh, getting to yes, which I call the Harvard form, and certainly the knockoff never split the difference. On all of those, they focus on negotiating with yourself. And people don't realize it. Here's how take the best alternative to a negotiated agreement. Who is creating the best alternative? Who's deciding what they need to get before they go into the room? Who's saying to themselves, well, if we can't get X and all else fails, we can always uh fall back on our best alternative to negotiating. Now, if you take it from a quantitative standpoint, who are you actually negotiating with? I set my BATNA, you set your Batna, we walk into a room and then try to figure out whether or not what you're offering me is better than my best alternative. Entire negotiation takes place, and neither of them realizes they have done an excellent job of negotiating with themselves. Wow. That's the focus of negotiating. Now, in a an evolved negotiator isn't interested in their own opinion, background, or what they want. Why? I know what I want. I know what my limitations are, I know who was on my team. I was on the calls as we prepped for that negotiation. What I'm interested in is what is Ron not telling me. I'm not even interested in what you told me. Because I know you that that's only half of what I don't even know if the people in the room are the people who came up with the information that you provided me. So my entire focus is in finding out how do I get Ron to share with me what he has been unwilling to share with me. So the entire first preliminary parts of the negotiation are only calibrating how much is Ron is willing to share today that he had not shared previously, about who was in the room, about the data, where the data came from, what is actually risk are. Now, if Ron says, Well, Derek, I can't share with you, that's proprietary. I say, Well, I'll tell you, Ron, um, let me share some proprietary information with you. So I might give you some piece of proprietary information that I had not previously shared with you. Why am I doing that? Because now I want to see, does Ron take that proprietary information and use it to bury me? Or does Ron say, well, if you're willing to give me that, I'm willing to give you this. Now we begin to see how large we can make that circle of shared information. So at the point that Ron says, Look, there, I cannot tell you any, it's a statutory thing. I can't tell you anything else. That's when the negotiation begins. Because now we have all the shared information that we're willing to give up on the table. Now I can measure what I thought I wanted against what's in that circle, but I'll tell you 99.99.9 times, based on what you shared with me that I didn't know before I walked in the room, the Batna that I walked in there with is no longer valid. So my entire perspective is this if the outcome of a negotiation matches what you thought you wanted it to be before you walked in the room, you definitely got screwed. Or you aimed too low, right? And and by contrast, of a Keris rule, for instance, is uh one of the Keris rules is aim high. And you see that in 145%. But somebody didn't read the other part of that rule, which was don't be ridiculous. So I would share with you, for instance, you take uh uh the most popular book right now on negotiation, Chris Voss's never split the difference. Two things. Um, never split the difference was borrowed from Dr. Karis's book, The Negotiating Game, because his rule three is don't split the difference. So you got 40 years later, somebody goes, I know, let's improve that. Never split the difference. Now I spent 15 years teaching that rule, but over the period of 15 years, I ran into situations where I thought this doesn't make any sense. And that is became part of the evolved framework. Now, why does it not make any sense to teach someone don't split the difference or never split the difference? Simple. If I teach you never to do something, I have inadvertently taught you to fail in any situation where what I told you never to do is exactly the thing that would create an outcome versus perhaps nuclear war. Like, are we willing to split the difference? Uh it's like it's nuclear war or split the difference. Are you still stuck on never split the difference? So we don't teach people that we teach people when to split the difference, how to split the difference, whether and uh uh they should should actually recalibrate what that difference is. But we're not gonna peach people because one of our rules is you've got to know when to be a cook, where you can you know trade out ingredients and temperatures and that, when to be a baker. Now, if you you mess up on a baking recipe, go too far astray, you got a lemon pound cake that looks like a brick, right? And then right, so you got to know when to be a cook and when to be a baker and when to throw the rules out all together. But our objective is to create an outcome that we did not see as possible when we walked into the room because we didn't understand that board, we didn't understand the players, we didn't understand all of those things that we spent our time discovering. Now, let's say that Ron says, I'm not giving you any more information, I can't, it's proprietary. And absolutely, though I try and try, or though I work to get it done, you say what's on the table, take it or leave it. That was Dr. Karis's seven second book. Take it or leave it. Okay, let's take it or leave it. So now, what you've now done then is declare war because your position is what dictated the actual mode of negotiation. If it's take it or leave it, then we are at war. And we are in the most competitive element right then. So now I'm not worried about the survivors. And my intent at that point is not to be benevolent. My intent at that point is to make you pay for the unwillingness. You put them in a position of take it or leave it. I'm in the same, I might as well give it up and fall on my own sword, because the alternative is that you're gonna beat me up. So now I'm defending my life or my country's life. So, from a political standpoint, whether it's in a corporation or a mom and pop shop, uh, that's a different thing. And those are very different, of course. I recently working with a small business person who was inheriting a business from his father. And when he called, he said, I don't know if you can help me, but I I gotta go work at McDonald's. I cannot work for my father anymore. And I we had a discussion, and he said, Listen, my dad built this business, and he's both I'm supposed to be president, but my dad is in there every five minutes and doesn't respect my decisions. And he said, Well, there's nothing you can do in negotiation about that. And I said, Well, the answer is I don't know if I can do something or not, but let's have a conversation. And I will tell you this today, six weeks later, his father handed him the keys not to one, but to two of the businesses, and it had nothing to do with the business, it had to do with the his father's perception of the risk involved in giving those keys up. But when we recalibrated the idea to say that you can keep the keys and keep your fingers in the business and lose your son, which is going to be a problem for you and your wife, because your wife is on our team, right? Now, I didn't know his mom directly, but through our conversations, I said, Is your mom on his team or your team? He said, She's definitely on his team. I said, You don't know your mother. No, your mother knows your father, you're her son. I guarantee you, she's on your team. And ultimately, who do you think was like, Listen, would you like to remain married? Uh, because you you you can choose otherwise and not give him the keys, or you give up the keys and we go on vacation because you've been had to call him in it. So you now he started thinking, well, we can never do that. Well, yeah, but you can never do it because you didn't have the skill to do it. Yes, and then ultimately you had to have the courage to pull that trigger when the time came, but ultimately that is the skill that's involved, and that's why a mentor is important, that's why having a background is important, and that's why also uh not being afraid to fail is a very important. And I'll tell one quick anecdote. You know, Zig Ziglar was a hero of mine. Um, I said to Zig one time, I I said, you know, I'm failing in my career. And he said, wait a minute. I he said, why? I said, Well, I don't think I have enough time to get this done. I'm doing all these things, I'm failing. And the first thing he said to me, he said, Well, I'll tell you, God didn't make no flops. So secondly, he said, now what's this about? You don't have enough time. And I said, Well, I don't have enough time to do everything I need to do. He said, Well, I got something to tell you. I said, What? He said, You're not that important. I said, What do you mean I'm not that important? He said, God didn't give you 23 hours a day and give everybody else 24. Everybody gets 24 hours in a day. So it's not that you don't have enough time, you don't have enough focus in terms of how you're making the decisions about what you do with your time. So you didn't flop and you're having failure. And then he said the last thing, he said, Derek, by the way, I say he's on that failure thing. He said, failure is an event, it's not a person, failure is an event. So what I understood, failure is an event in my life, it is not my person. So I separate the failure, which increases my capacity and interest in willingness to take a risk. And believe me, I have had to take a few risks in my life.

SPEAKER_01: 42:23

Wow. Phenomenal information. And I'm sure people are listening, and and we can have this conversation for for much longer. But you're you're running a program, and I want to figure out you know, people that are that are negotiations isn't everything, it's in leadership, it's communications, their relationships, dealing with your kids, you know, dealing with your community, buying a house, buying a car. Negotiations are all over. How do people reach you? Um, and what's the best way for them to make contact with you too? You know, you got a program that you're running, but also you share a lot of great information. So as we begin to write down, reach you.

SPEAKER_02: 42:52

Yeah, no, no, no. As we do, I appreciate that so much. Well, first of all, you pretty much go on the internet and stick my name, and you're gonna find articles in that. But I would definitely ask people to take a look at the LinkedIn profile. We also have a Facebook page as well as uh um uh Instagram, so you can find us there or our website, which is just h-c.com. But I would really encourage people who are interested in the topic. We've got a number one bestselling book uh called Evolve or Be Slaughtered Negotiation for the 21st Century. That's a number one bestseller on Amazon, and it's looking like it may end up on New York bestseller uh in the near future here, too. Um, but I also have uh something else like to offer your audience. We offer a no BS 30-minute uh no-cost consultation, have a conversation. So you can go on our website and it just says set up a no-cost introductory call, and that's 30 minutes. I'm not gonna sell you anything, we're gonna have a conversation. Maybe you have a question about a specific thing that you're dealing with. If we can, we're gonna provide some action steps. I'm probably gonna say be a good idea to buy the book. I might say that. But other than that, the opportunity for that is just to have a conversation that educates me uh and and helps me continue to learn how to adapt and use specific principles. But also the greatest referral in the world that I can get is that I have a conversation with someone who says, What about this or what about that? Can provide some action steps. And they call me back up and they'll say, Well, thank you for that. You know, I didn't get exactly what I wanted, which is what you said, but I did move the needle and things changed. And then the next thing it might be six months later, somebody will call and say, Hey, I talked to you know, John or Mary five or six years ago, and we'd like to do some consulting with you. So rather than selling people, I'd rather interact with people, and be educated by and work with people, and let's find out what we can do. Because at the end of the day, I'm old, and I want to give away as much as I can give away in the time that I have to give it away and talk to as many people as I can. And so I invite people to do that.

SPEAKER_01: 45:34

Wow. Thanks. Derek, you've been phenomenal. I mean, shared a lot of information and wisdom, gave all your contact information, has 30 minutes. So please take advantage of that. Those 30 minutes, um, you know, negotiation is in everything. There's nothing, I tell people, there's nothing that happens without a negotiation happening. Now, whether you know you're in it or not, it's a different thing, but nothing happens without negotiating. And for all you that are listening, you know, uh follow unpack, you know, with Ron Harvey. We release an episode every single Monday. Um, we're we're happy to help, we're happy to answer questions, and we're happy to put you in contact with anybody that comes on our show. You know, so for now, Derek and I want to tell you thank you. We appreciate you know, all of you following, we appreciate you being on Derek. But until next time, Derek and I will sign off and tell you have a great day, and we hope that you got something that's gonna make a difference in your life. Any last minute you want to share anything before we drop off, uh, Derek?

SPEAKER_02: 46:21

I want to say thank you so much for the privilege of having me on the show, and I'll be continuing to listen, and I'm gonna try to negotiate you into having me back in the future. Did you see that? Thank you so much. A great privilege, Ron.

SPEAKER_01: 46:38

Thank you. So you don't have to move in, you don't have to move in, you don't have to put a queen on the table. You're good. I enjoy it. So uh I would definitely love to have you back. So we'll be negotiating what that date looks like for both of us. I really appreciate it. And for everyone else, hey, reach out to us. We're both business owners. We hope we share something for you as a business owner, entrepreneur, or in corporate America that makes you better.

SPEAKER_00: 47:02

Well, we hope you enjoy this edition of Unpack Podcast with leadership consultant Ron Harvey. Remember to join us every Monday as Ron Unpacks Sound Advice, providing real answers for real leadership challenges. Until next time, remember to add value and make a difference where you are or the people you serve. Because people always matter.