Practice Notes

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Relationships, networking and negotiating when it really matters

If you want to see the overwhelming importance of building and managing relationships, networking and negotiating with tough people, read An Ordinary Man by Paul Rusesabagina. It’s the true story behind the Hotel Rwanda. Paul, a hotel manager, kept 1,268 people alive in his hotel, while genocide was happening all around him in the early 1990s. To achieve this, he used every contact, relationship and negotiating technique he knew for 76 days.

Some of his negotiating tactics with hardened killers are straight out of the Harvard Negotiation Project’s methods to manage opponents’ emotions. The author never mentions this, as it’s clear his skills came naturally to him. He knew how to appreciate, build affiliation, offer options, acknowledge status and recognise the role his opponents were playing. And he did it successfully.

Performance management made useful

Check out Sonar6 www.sonar6.com It’s a homegrown, easy-to-use and comprehensive performance/talent management system, provided as a Software as a Service.

If you’re a small organisation, you can use the system’s competencies and all other features. If you’re larger, you can add your own competencies and bells and whistles. Try it out with their 30 day free trial.

At the end of the day, any system is only as good as the performance/talent development conversations managers hold with their staff. But this gives you a good framework for those conversations.