Thoughts and Insights by Michael Gregory

This is how to negotiate and motivate millennials

This article focuses on some basic elements that have proven successful and are forcing businesses to change how they hire, train and retain top talent. Millennials are driven to succeed when they are treated with respect, with an employer that is focused on its workers, with management is transparent and most importantly when there is a collaborative environment. It’s not that complex, but it takes effort to make these things happen. It doesn’t just happen.

When should you not be transparent when developing trust?

Trust is critical in a negotiation, mediation or collaboration. Trust can be defined as being straightforward, open, accepting and responsible, but when are times when you should not be open? That is the focus of this commentary.

This is how you build trust at the bargaining table in business

Here are some very specific ideas to help you in any negotiation. You begin your investigation into the parties and process as a first step. Your goal is to build a good and as solid a relationship as possible. 

This is when you should walk away from a negotiation

When is it time to walk away from a negotiation? In short, when a trusted third-party advisor counsels you that is time to let it go. When mediation is not an option. When you are focused on sunk costs to recover rather than pertinent information now. When your focus is on fairness rather than objective criteria. There are many reasons why negotiations fail and why collaboration may not work. After all collaboration is hard. If the other party does not want to collaborate that pretty well ends the reason for trying to go forward.

This is How to Shift Your Thinking for Better Collaboration

In general, when someone comes with a question the typical response is to respond with an answer or what we believe to be a solution. This sets up a supply process for answers, but is this what is really needed? If we want collaboration, because that increases team work, reduces resources, reduces toil, reduces stress and increases productivity and therefore profit, there are three things to consider.

This is How Collaboration Can Help Grow Your Business

Over the last four weeks I have focused on why collaboration is important in the workplace, why collaboration is hard, why collaboration doesn’t always work, why collaboration is better than competition, and now I am tying things together with how collaboration can help grow your business.

Why Is Collaboration So Hard?

From the time we started school we were taught to work hard, study hard, do our best and we will get ahead. Then when the best technician becomes a manager all of that has to be turned on its head. Why?

Why is Collaboration Important in the Workplace?

We are all oriented to either minimizing pain or maximizing reward. This is what plays out related to conflict resolution versus collaboration. This article addresses the benefits of collaboration in the workplace and how you can create a more collaborative environment. Pioneering companies get it.