The art of negotiation comes easily to a select fewfor the rest of us, it's an uncomfortable and intimidating exchange. So how did Deborah Kolb become such an expert on negotiation?
"Early on in my career I did my Ph.D. dissertation on labor mediation," she explains. The dissertation was then published as the book The Mediators, in 1983, when the field was growing; the publication of Roger Fisher and William Ury's Getting to Yes two years earlier, in 1981, had made people consider negotiation from a new angle, and the fact that Kolb is a woman made people assume she was an expert on gender issues.
When it comes to hang-ups about negotiating, she sees women as the canaries in the coal mines. "You learn about the challenges that women have'I get in my own way; I have trouble getting people to negotiate with me'well, a lot of people [have those same challenges]," she says. Women have highlighted the problems that nearly everyone faces, and while her work is not limited to strategies for women, it is tailored to their needs, strengths, and weaknesses.
Kolb now specializes in teaching people, especially women, how to negotiate for "what you need to succeed in your organizationfor yourself and your people," she says, "not contracts or how to negotiate for a car."
Over the years, Kolb has seen certain elements of the negotiation game shift. In the past, she saw women often negotiating for an opportunity they really wanted but simply were not on the radar for, whereas now women are in the position of negotiating to make an opportunity they are presented with fit for them. "Women negotiate very well as an agent for someone else, but less so on behalf of themselves," she adds.
A current professor for Women and Leadership and faculty affiliate at the Center for Gender in Organizations at the Simmons School of Management in Boston, former executive director of the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School, co-author of Everyday Negotiation: Navigating the Hidden Agendas of Bargaining and Her Place at the Table: A Women's Guide to Negotiating the Five Challenges of Leadership Success, and author of multiple studies and articles, Kolb's expertise is undeniable and certainly extends well beyond her gender classification.
Kolb's strategies are applicable in a variety of meeting formats, and she speaks at executive conferences on general negotiation, at client events where women are looking to expand their client base, at women's conferences run by companies looking to help women move ahead, or at events run by professional organizations. Past audiences have included Credit Suisse First Boston, the Ford Foundation, IBM, the Society for Human Resource Management, the Mayo Clinic, and Verizon.
Getting to Yes
Fee: $7,500
Contact: (617) 521-3871
Originally published May 01, 2008
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