2007.05.15: May 15, 2007: Headlines: COS - Morocco: Country Directors - Morocco: Negotiation: Diplomacy: Esquire: Richard Holbrooke writes: I spent two years in Morocco as a Peace Corps director, and we used to bargain for rugs in the souk
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2007.05.15: May 15, 2007: Headlines: COS - Morocco: Country Directors - Morocco: Negotiation: Diplomacy: Esquire: Richard Holbrooke writes: I spent two years in Morocco as a Peace Corps director, and we used to bargain for rugs in the souk
Richard Holbrooke writes: I spent two years in Morocco as a Peace Corps director, and we used to bargain for rugs in the souk
Anyone who goes into a negotiation without knowing who's on the other side is going in blindfolded. It doesn't make any sense. You should study the person on the other side of the table. I spent two years in Morocco as a Peace Corps director, and we used to bargain for rugs in the souk. At a certain point you had to decide whether the merchant had reached his rock-bottom price. You had to decide how much you wanted it and how much it was worth to you. A lot of this is human nature.
Richard Holbrooke writes: I spent two years in Morocco as a Peace Corps director, and we used to bargain for rugs in the souk
What I've Learned: How to Negotiate
Richard Holbrooke, Former Ambassador to the UN, Negotiator of the 1995 Dayton Agreement
By Richard Holbrooke
5/15/2007, 12:05 AM
You have to know what the other side needs.
I learned a lot from the twelve years I spent on Wall Street before Dayton. Like the "pay or play" principle. You can play that card only once. You can't keep bluffing or you become Chicken Little.
I don't try to go fast. I try to match the method to the moment.It's a negotiation. No side can get 100 percent.
Anyone who goes into a negotiation without knowing who's on the other side is going in blindfolded. It doesn't make any sense. You should study the person on the other side of the table.
The CIA does these psychological profiles. They prepared one for me on Milošević, but it wasn't very useful because the people who wrote it had never met him. So what I did was, during the negotiations I spent some of the time talking to him about things other than the issue at hand, to understand what motivated him.
If you announce that this is your bottom line, there's no room to move. If, on the other hand, you talk about flexibility, your opening position is eroded.
I spent two years in Morocco as a Peace Corps director, and we used to bargain for rugs in the souk. At a certain point you had to decide whether the merchant had reached his rock-bottom price. You had to decide how much you wanted it and how much it was worth to you. A lot of this is human nature.
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Headlines: May, 2007; Peace Corps Morocco; Directory of Morocco RPCVs; Messages and Announcements for Morocco RPCVs; Country Directors - Morocco; Diplomacy
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Story Source: Esquire
This story has been posted in the following forums: : Headlines; COS - Morocco; Country Directors - Morocco; Negotiation; Diplomacy
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