Until I attended Negotiation Skills training sometime in the early 2000’s, I had not realised how fascinating an art it is, and the simple yet profound principles that can guide one in becoming a successful win-win negotiator. I attended two rounds of training (Basic & Advanced) conducted by Mark Gordon of Vantage Partners (many thanks to Mark) and benefited immensely, and this is borne out by the umpteen win-win deals I negotiated for Disney with our business partners in media and consumer products, and some deals on the home front too – with my wife and two teenage daughters!

When I set up Ecsel Consulting earlier this year and decided, to be a business skills trainer and leadership coach, I was determined to share with others what I had learnt and applied with great success, specially in Win-Win Negotiation Skills.

In the last 6 months, I’ve trained leaders and senior managers of Malaysian Corporate and GMBA students of Essec Business School in the Art of Negotiation. 

It gives me immense pleasure to share with workshop participants and illustrate to them the key aspects of win-win and principled negotiations. Even as we seek to practise principled negotiating & dig deep beyond the position expressed to find out underlying interests, we must also be savvy and equipped enough to (a) recognise and overcome hardball tactics of counterparts & (b) prepare thoroughly before starting negotiations so as to avoid the many traps in negotiation e.g. winners’ curse, Hubris, Agreement bias.

I love to share my own war-stories from across the Asia-Pacific as well as wonderful examples from great experts like William Ury, Deepak Malhotra, Chris Voss etc. I unabashedly share both the mistakes I made (and the key lessons learnt therefrom) and the many successes I had and then most importantly, the very many good relationships built on the foundation of those negotiations.

The positive feedback I have received from various attendees heartens me and provides me ample encouragement to continue to be of service and train more people in honing their Negotiation Skills and I also conduct training workshops in other topics such as Becoming a Strategic CFO, Career Resilience, Leadership Agility & Accountability, Business Model Innovation, and Corporate Political Savvy. I’ve been CXO faculty sharing my experiences and doing role plays for Client Relationship Mastery training workshops.

Today is Vijayadashami (also known as Dussehra), a major Hindu festival. ‘Triumph of good over evil’ is one symbolism of this festival, as is ‘triumph of knowledge over ignorance’. It is a day for initiation into any new learning or training.

Over the past several months, I have taken big strides towards a career in the Learning & Development area. I take this opportunity to re-dedicate myself to learning continuously and to sharing my learnings.

(With my enthusiastic Essec GMBA students after the Art of Negotiation class)