The Only Negotiating Guide You'll Ever Need by Petter B. Stark and Jane Flaherty

The title of this book would have been accurate based on the contents if it was read in the 60’s, 70’s or 80’s.  The basic face to face negotiation worked well in these decades but the book fails to keep up with how corporate America or the advances in technology that have occurred in the last twenty years.  Face to face negotiations have been replaced a long time ago with emails, texts, conference calls or video conferences.  If you break down the core of when a person does most of their critical negations in their life it will be at work.  The skills used at work does not always transfer well to how you negotiate at home, buying a car or purchasing a house for example.  Each negotiation required different skill sets.  My focus is on where we spend the core of our negotiation skills, at work.  I have worked in corporate America for over thirty years and have seen the transition from face to face negotiations to what we have today.  In the last twenty years, I have worked in domestic and global corporation structures, rarely do you get a face to face meeting to negotiate.  What I have found more important, which the authors only dedicated barely six pages in the book, is the key to nonverbal negations using email, text, phone and video conference.  Even with video conferences you cannot rely on the picture because the picture might be unclear, only point to one person at a time or physical signals are hidden from view.  While the core of the book is great for going to flea markets, garage sales and craft fairs this is not where you will use the skill set the most or at the highest exposure.  That will be at work.  Which brings up another chapter, in over thirty years in corporate America if you plan on using Chapter 12 “Asking for a Raise” you better have a plan B being a backup job.  While the points the authors bring up are accurate, what they miss is your job can be replaced by 100’s of other people.  Sorry but we all are replaceable.  The authors missed a major key part of asking for a raise, the politics involved to get in the position to even consider asking for one.  The contents of the book are out of date and only speak of a small portion of how the average person can use the skills of negotiation. 

I received this book from Blogging for Books for this review.  

The Dream Centered Life by Luke Barnett

 

While I do agree with what the author has written and found the examples insightful, it ends there.  What the author writes is true and it has been proven many times before.  What I struggle with is the originality of the leading stories and the method provided.  I have read in the last 10 years literary dozens of books written by large/mega church pastors.  They all tell similar stories and when they break down how they did it, it plays out the same way almost every time.  What is normally missing is how the average person can apply this to their everyday lives, real life examples other than the pastors or useful techniques that we can all leverage.  As an insightful religious reference book, I can see this as being helpful.  But as a true self-help book, I can tell you and I have read most of them, there are other books with a much better approach that will aid the average person far better than this book.

I received this book from Blogging for Books for this review.