Читать книгу The Real Trump Deal - Martin E. Latz - Страница 8
Оглавление“Donald Trump is the greatest dealmaker our country’s ever seen.” 1
— Corey Lewandowski
Trump for President Campaign Manager
What motivates U.S. President Donald J. Trump, the most powerful man in the world? Millions of Americans and billions throughout the world are still trying to figure this out. We have heard his speeches, debates, interviews, tweets, promises, and press conferences. And we’ve watched him demolish his Republican opponents, beat Hillary Clinton, spar with the “enemy of the people” media, careen his way through his first year in office, appear “presidential” in his first State of the Union address, and upend almost all political conventions and expectations.
Many have been shocked and surprised. But we shouldn’t be. Why not? Because for almost 50 years Donald Trump has consistently focused on one activity to the exclusion of almost anything else: negotiating and making deals. It’s a core element of his identity—and it largely explains his behavior. How has he negotiated? By:
– Interacting with his prep school classmates on the playground;
– Learning the residential real estate business at the feet of his dad;
– Building his commercial and residential New York-based real estate empire;
– Partnering with major financial institutions to fund his business activities;
– Buying a pro football team;
– Running casinos and dealing with New Jersey gaming regulators;
– Obtaining relief from mountains of debt owed to huge financial institutions;
– Filing, defending, litigating, settling, and trying thousands of lawsuits with partners, customers, and subcontractors;
– Creating and licensing a worldwide luxury brand with foreign investors and partners;
– Judging and firing celebrities and wannabe business titans on NBC’s hit reality TV series The Apprentice;
– Hiring and managing thousands of employees; and
– Publicly and privately interacting with three wives and five kids.
Of course, everyone negotiates. Whether you’re buying a car, selling a house, working with a business partner, or trying to convince your seven-year-old to go to bed, you’re negotiating. Whenever two or more individuals are communicating, and each has interests to satisfy, they’re negotiating.
Some do it brilliantly from birth. Others spend years studying it, learning from successes and failures, and improving based on the experts’ proven research. Most largely wing it and negotiate instinctively and intuitively.
What does Donald Trump do? He believes “dealmaking is an ability you’re born with. It’s in the genes.” 2 Are his negotiation genes good? Have they worked? And how have they worked in presidential negotiations? That’s our goal—to find out.
Here’s the deal. Donald Trump has a well-documented track record of hundreds of negotiations. Let’s analyze them—and this self-professed great negotiator—through the lens of negotiation research.
We will then:
better understand how well he will negotiate as President, and
learn from his successes and failures and be empowered to more effectively negotiate ourselves.
But first we need to be clear on the parameters of this effort.
Science Matters—Not Politics
Some will undoubtedly discount the analysis and conclusions here based on their political persuasion. Others will feel validated. The goal here is neither to offend nor affirm. Instead, it is to inform and to educate about the negotiation strengths and weaknesses of the most powerful man in the world.
The 1981 publication of Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In by my Harvard Law School Professor Roger Fisher and William Ury3 inspired thousands to flood into the new field of negotiation. Today almost every college, business school, and law school offer negotiation courses. And thousands of professors now teach and study this fundamental life skill.
The result? We now basically know what fundamental strategies work. And these building blocks are supported by solid science. These tenets will serve as the framework for our analysis.
Of course, some negotiation professors will undoubtedly disagree on the extent of this consensus. That is the nature of academics. As a result, I asked two of the world’s leading negotiation professors to review and comment on the fundamental nature of the negotiation science underlying this analysis. Importantly, I did not ask them to agree with my analysis or conclusions, just the science. Each of the following confirmed our basic building blocks.
– Professor Roy Lewicki, Irving Abramowitz Memorial Professor Emeritus and Professor of Management and Human Resources Emeritus at the Max M. Fisher College of Business, The Ohio State University, and the author or editor of 39 negotiation-related books, including the bestselling negotiation textbook in business schools around the world.
– Professor Andrea Schneider, Professor of Law, Marquette University Law School, and the author or co-author of numerous dispute resolution books, including Dispute Resolution: Examples and Explanations with Michael Moffitt and, with Roger Fisher, Beyond Machiavelli: Tools for Coping with Conflict and Coping with International Conflict.
Science matters—and this book is based upon research confirmed by the best and brightest in the negotiation field.
Trump’s Actions Speak Louder than His Words
Donald Trump expounds on his negotiation strategies in many of his books. He also has an extensive and well-documented record of interviews and statements relating to his deals. His words matter.
But to accurately capture the essence and full breadth of Trump’s negotiation approach, we will also analyze how his negotiation colleagues, partners, and counterparts describe his strategies and tactics. The negotiation process always involves more than one party. And the strategies one uses are often viewed differently depending on where one sits.
Plus, in many negotiations it’s more important to consider what someone does versus what they say. We’ve all heard that “actions speak louder than words.” It’s especially crucial here as bluffing and puffery—strategies that put a negotiator’s credibility on the chopping block—are common moves. Therefore, one must sometimes discount the impact of parties’ negotiation-related statements given this dynamic. And when you add the nature of politics to this equation, parties’ words can become even less credible.
Objective Facts Matter
Since we are at risk of living in a “post-truth” world, with anonymous individuals trolling the internet spawning lies and false narratives, it’s paramount to scrupulously document every source, element and method utilized in this book. Credibility is essential to accurate analysis. Support here is identified in Endnotes.
Regarding the facts, this book is an analysis of Trump’s negotiation behavior based on facts derived from:
Trump’s books, interviews, speeches, debates, etc., over his almost 50 years of negotiating;
Books, articles and comments by Trump’s colleagues and supporters—and counterparts—from his personal, business, and political lives;
Articles and reports on Trump by a wide variety of media; and
Extensively researched independent biographies of Trump, several of which were published by award-winning journalists prior to his becoming a polarizing political figure.
Collectively, the factual basis for the analysis in this book is thus based on:
Hundreds of hours of interviews of Trump—who has been uniquely accessible to journalists for almost 50 years;
An incalculable number of hours of interviews and documents and legal transcripts of those who negotiated with and against Trump; and
Thousands of pages of books and other documents, some original, relating to Trump and his negotiations.
This book is not based on any personal interviews of Trump and his counterparts. This proved unnecessary due to: 1) the extensive public record on Trump by such a wide variety of sources, and 2) the consistent nature of the independent research and reporting on Trump’s negotiation strategies.
Negotiation Success Is Not Just About the Money
“Hold on,” you might say. “Donald Trump has made billions, owns his own Boeing 757, has his name atop towers around the world, was elected President of the United States, and has been negotiating almost since birth. And you agree negotiation has been a fundamental part of every element of his career. Doesn’t that prove he’s a great negotiator?”
No. Just getting a deal done—and even profiting greatly from it—doesn’t mean you negotiated a great deal. Nor does it mean you’re a great negotiator. Even if you have substantially overpaid for some commercial real estate, paying well over market value, you can still profit greatly from a strong real-estate market going forward.
Monetary success is only one measure of negotiation ability.
The Harvard Program on Negotiation—the premier negotiation research-based organization that houses some of the most brilliant academics in the world—presents an annual award recognizing an outstanding negotiator in the field. Past recipients of the “Great Negotiator Award” include George Mitchell (who helped negotiate the Good Friday Accords in Northern Ireland), Richard Holbrooke (who helped negotiate the Dayton Peace Accords), and Stuart Eizenstat (who facilitated the award of $8 billion in reparations from multiple European governments, banks, and companies to victims of World War II).
None of these highly effective negotiators recognized by independent experts are worth billions. Monetary success, while a measure of negotiation effectiveness in business, is not the sole criterion underlying negotiation skills and abilities.
The Experience and Expertise Supporting this Analysis
I have devoted the last 24 years to studying, teaching, writing, and consulting in negotiation in the U.S. and around the world. I also am the founder and CEO of a negotiation e-learning software company, which I started 10 years ago. My two kids and wife also test my negotiation skills daily!
Prior to entering this field fulltime, I practiced law and worked for the White House on the White House Advance Teams. Politically, I have supported Democrats and Republicans at the state and federal levels. I also watched and enjoyed Donald Trump in all The Apprentice shows.
Though some will certainly be tempted to ascertain if I have a bias for or against Donald Trump, I strongly encourage readers to keep an open mind. Everyone should use critical thinking and analytical skills to evaluate this effort. Though we can’t yet determine how history will judge President Trump as a politician, his negotiation skills have been on open display for almost half a century. We should learn from them—not only to understand the present, but to prepare for the Trump years ahead.
One final note: Predicting Trump has been notoriously difficult. Few have been prescient. I am confident, however, that history provides the best clues and evidence regarding the future. Applying this logic, a science-based analysis of Trump’s past negotiation strategies and behavior will provide great insight into what he will do in the future.
In fact, nothing may have a more direct impact on the safety, security and prosperity of the world than Donald Trump’s negotiation skills.
With these parameters in mind, the rest of the book is organized into three parts.
Part 1—Donald Trump’s Top 10 Business Negotiation Strategies
Part 2—Trump’s Personal Skills and Ethics
Part 3—The Trump Transition: Business to Presidential Negotiations
Donald Trump’s Top 10 Business Negotiation Strategies
President Donald Trump could be the poster boy for the classic extremely competitive negotiator schooled on the streets of New York City’s rough and tumble real-estate world. What does this mean strategy-wise?
In this part, we will analyze how Trump has consistently implemented our science-based strategic framework—my Five Golden Rules of Negotiation—in his almost 50 years of negotiating business deals.
We will do it by identifying and evaluating Trump’s Top Ten Business Negotiation Strategies in Chapters 1 through 10.
The Five Golden Rules of Negotiation
1 Information Is Power—So Get It!
2 Maximize Your Leverage
3 Employ “Fair” Objective Criteria
4 Design an Offer-Concession Strategy
5 Control the Agenda
Trump’s Personal Skills and Ethics
What you do in a negotiation—the moves you make—differ from how you do it—the way you implement them. Negotiation strategies (part one) differ from skills (part two). Of course, these interrelate. You cannot draw a bright line between them. But they do represent distinct elements of a person’s negotiation approach. We thus address them separately.
Style-wise, the research points to certain identifiable skills that characterize effective negotiators, including assertiveness, empathy, flexibility, ethicality, and social intuition.
How does Trump stack up?
What about Trump’s ethics? Few issues engender more passion than Trump’s truthfulness and credibility. Trump lovers point to his blunt, unvarnished, non-PC talk.
Trump haters point to his effort to delegitimize President Barack Obama with the birther conspiracy and his false and unsupported campaign and presidential statements reported by publications like The Washington Post and The New York Times.
How will we evaluate Trump’s credibility? By identifying his credibility-related tactics and assessing his reputation developed over almost 50 years of deal-making.
The Trump Transition—Business to Presidential Negotiations
Will Donald Trump’s business negotiation skills stand him in good stead in presidential negotiations? Business and presidential negotiations require different skills and strategies and present almost diametrically opposed challenges. What’s different? Will Trump be able to pivot and stretch his negotiation skills into a foreign negotiation environment? After all, he did not pivot in the campaign, and he won. And if he doesn’t pivot, how might his political paradigm shift, business negotiation style and strategies impact his foreign and domestic negotiations?
To truly judge Donald Trump’s negotiation skills, we must objectively analyze his major negotiations in business and as President. We do this here by evaluating his Mexico border wall funding negotiation and his congressional health care reform negotiations.
One final note. We shouldn’t set up an impossible standard and then judge Trump based on it. That would be unfair to him, unwise analytically, and counterproductive. While the best negotiators implement most of these strategies, no one adheres to all of them all the time. Even the best of the best make mistakes. However, the most effective negotiators learn and improve as they gain experience and expertise. We will evaluate this in Trump as well.
Donald J. Trump styles himself as the dealmaker president. Let’s evaluate his skills and his deals based on the experts’ proven research.
