© Elliot Essman 2005. All rights reserved.

These pages contain the complete 2005 revised text of Building Yourself, public speaking trainer Elliot Essman's guide to living the successful life.

Elliot Essman Public Speaking Training
Building Yourself Table of Contents
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• Let us never negotiate out of fear, but let us never fear to negotiate. John Fitzgerald Kennedy (1917–1963)

Good negotiating involves a whole set of interpersonal skills, plus personal qualities such as patience, the ability to think rationally, the ability to conceive and prioritize goals, and, foremost, a high level of self esteem.

We negotiate with our career partners, our superiors and subordinates, with professionals who work for us, with our love partners, with our friends, our parents and our children. Getting paid top dollar requires negotiation; choosing a restaurant to dine in requires negotiation; nearly everything we do with other people requires some form of negotiation.

Negotiating is much more than striking a bargain. In the most effective negotiations, the parties weigh their relative wants and needs and try to come to a solution from which everyone leaves with something desirable. Wealth itself is created through the marketplace, which is nothing more than a forum for millions of interconnected negotiations. In the marketplace, wants and needs are constantly being satisfied, and simultaneously created, through a negotiating process.

It's necessary to treat here the difficult subject of how to work with professionals, particularly lawyers and accountants, whose task is to negotiate or act as advocate for you. If there is one hard and fast rule, it's that you'll be doing yourself a major disservice if you leave everything to the professional. Even if the professional is highly competent and an expert negotiator, your own input is necessary. You trust both lawyers and accountants with sensitive details about your personal and financial life. It's always a temptation to say to yourself that you're paying a specialist for a service so that you don't have to be concerned about it. This may be true for interior decorators and automobile mechanics, but it's not true for lawyers and accountants. While it would be a waste of your valuable time to try to learn everything they already know, you must acquire at least a general knowledge of the legal and accounting matters that affect you.

Being involved in litigation, for example, can be a major drain on your wealth and your sanity. While lawyers can help you avoid litigation, your own knowledge of basic legal matters is a better tool. You probably already know enough about the human body to keep yourself healthy and keep trips to the doctor to a minimum. You need the same level of awareness—that of a well‑informed layman—with legal and accounting matters. If you have that knowledge, and you let the professional know it, you'll get much better service for your dollar.