I am going to take a holiday from my usual business theme to address the most important topic this month: Vacation. My husband reminded me that some of his toughest negotiations were with me while we were on vacation. Mind you he is a trial lawyer, like I was. He is a tough cookie.

Here is the problem in a nutshell. We love our family—most of the time. That feeling can really get in the way of being able to negotiate. It is personal. All that talk about going to the balcony in Getting Past No is just worthless when you are negotiating with your 14 year-old or your spouse. Love can get tied up with:

Expectations

Needs

Wants

Feelings of worthiness

Feelings of abandonment

and the list goes on. It is the mixing of all of those emotions that produces negotiations that can be more stressful than those we face at work.

Here is my simple advice: Hold in your heart the same love, respect and happiness for them as you would grant yourself. If you hold that thought as you start talking about who is going to drive the next 4 hours of the 16 hour marathon trip home, it will go a whole lot better.

I hope that you are able to enjoy the lazy days of summer.

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 13th, 2009 at 1:29 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.