This immensely useful book will have wide appeal and leave many readers anxious to put their new skills to work.
A former Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter for the New York Times, Diamond (Law/Univ. of Pennsylvania) debuts with a superb how-to based on his immensely popular course on negotiation.
The author prepares for any negotiation by asking himself, “What are my goals? Who are ‘they’? What will it take to persuade them?” Depending on the answers, he then draws selectively on bargaining tools and strategies described in this anecdote-rich book. Others in his field assume that most people in a negotiation are rational. Not so, says Diamond. People in the real world—whether friends, store clerks or CEOs—tend to be emotional and irrational in their interactions. Since the people involved make up 90 percent of a negotiation (substance accounts for only 10 percent), you must negotiate based on your understanding of “the pictures in the head of the other party”—a phrase Diamond frequently uses to underscore that psychology trumps the issues at the bargaining table. Successful negotiators must prepare, learn what makes others tick (through research and small talk), take small steps, communicate clearly, turn problems into opportunities, avoid deceit and embrace differences. Above all, writes the author, they must stay focused on specific goals and connect with the other party. Many of Diamond’s suggestions are counterintuitive: Help the other person do better (you might even give them a copy of the negotiation model in this book, he says); learn their personal likes and dislikes; offer them something you know they want, such as hard-to-get event tickets. While good vibes and communication can help clinch a deal, writes the author, getting emotional can kill one: “People who are emotional stop listening. They often become unpredictable and rarely are able to focus on their goals.” Diamond provides hundreds of fascinating examples of what people in his classes have achieved using his approach—from talking a reluctant retailer into giving a discount to closing multimillion-dollar deals. He devotes separate chapters to negotiating at work, in the marketplace, in relationships and while traveling.
This immensely useful book will have wide appeal and leave many readers anxious to put their new skills to work.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-307-71689-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown Business
Review Posted Online: Oct. 5, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2010
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should...
Greene (The 33 Strategies of War, 2007, etc.) believes that genius can be learned if we pay attention and reject social conformity.
The author suggests that our emergence as a species with stereoscopic, frontal vision and sophisticated hand-eye coordination gave us an advantage over earlier humans and primates because it allowed us to contemplate a situation and ponder alternatives for action. This, along with the advantages conferred by mirror neurons, which allow us to intuit what others may be thinking, contributed to our ability to learn, pass on inventions to future generations and improve our problem-solving ability. Throughout most of human history, we were hunter-gatherers, and our brains are engineered accordingly. The author has a jaundiced view of our modern technological society, which, he writes, encourages quick, rash judgments. We fail to spend the time needed to develop thorough mastery of a subject. Greene writes that every human is “born unique,” with specific potential that we can develop if we listen to our inner voice. He offers many interesting but tendentious examples to illustrate his theory, including Einstein, Darwin, Mozart and Temple Grandin. In the case of Darwin, Greene ignores the formative intellectual influences that shaped his thought, including the discovery of geological evolution with which he was familiar before his famous voyage. The author uses Grandin's struggle to overcome autistic social handicaps as a model for the necessity for everyone to create a deceptive social mask.
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should beware of the author's quirky, sometimes misleading brush-stroke characterizations.Pub Date: Nov. 13, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-670-02496-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The Stoics did much better with the much shorter Enchiridion.
A follow-on to the author’s garbled but popular 48 Laws of Power, promising that readers will learn how to win friends and influence people, to say nothing of outfoxing all those “toxic types” out in the world.
Greene (Mastery, 2012, etc.) begins with a big sell, averring that his book “is designed to immerse you in all aspects of human behavior and illuminate its root causes.” To gauge by this fat compendium, human behavior is mostly rotten, a presumption that fits with the author’s neo-Machiavellian program of self-validation and eventual strategic supremacy. The author works to formula: First, state a “law,” such as “confront your dark side” or “know your limits,” the latter of which seems pale compared to the Delphic oracle’s “nothing in excess.” Next, elaborate on that law with what might seem to be as plain as day: “Losing contact with reality, we make irrational decisions. That is why our success often does not last.” One imagines there might be other reasons for the evanescence of glory, but there you go. Finally, spin out a long tutelary yarn, seemingly the longer the better, to shore up the truism—in this case, the cometary rise and fall of one-time Disney CEO Michael Eisner, with the warning, “his fate could easily be yours, albeit most likely on a smaller scale,” which ranks right up there with the fortuneteller’s “I sense that someone you know has died" in orders of probability. It’s enough to inspire a new law: Beware of those who spend too much time telling you what you already know, even when it’s dressed up in fresh-sounding terms. “Continually mix the visceral with the analytic” is the language of a consultant’s report, more important-sounding than “go with your gut but use your head, too.”
The Stoics did much better with the much shorter Enchiridion.Pub Date: Oct. 23, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-525-42814-5
Page Count: 580
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: July 30, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
