Lifting your head from the sand.
Business conversations work better when business leaders actively acknowledge unpleasant information rather than run from it. Today an article from McKinsey & Company which describes a technique for ensuring all parties in a negotiation are on the same page when a meeting ends. I am sure we have all experienced the situation described in article, where the formal response from the other party did not match our expectations following the meeting. Ms Rinaudo’s article provides one technique to avoid such a problem. I would like to add some more ideas based on my experience. Most people prefer to avoid difficult conversations so they gloss over contentious issues during face to face meetings intending to clarify their real position in the follow up documentation. This wastes a lot of time in subsequent meetings, calls, exchanges of contracts etc before agreement is reached. In my experience raising and clarifying contentious issues is usually much easier than expected. And let’s face it contentious issues have to resolved at some point, so do it during the meeting. Starting the …