Articles

For those of you just starting to work with Common Outlook Consulting and for those we’ve worked with many times, you’ll be familiar with the men and women who are the public face of Common Outlook. People like: Peter Hiddema, our founder, David Eaves, Gary McDougall, Amy Elizabeth Fox. Our consultants are among the best […]

Sarah Palin's selection as Republican John McCain's running mate has stirred up a lot of debate about the role of working mothers. Lots of statistics are being thrown around about percentages of working mothers in the workforce, percentages of women running Fortune 500 companies and the like. Not everyone aspires to reach the most senior […]

More and more corporations are hiring coaches to work with their employees to develop their careers, particularly for those people who are seen as high-value employees. There is a new term for these people: "HiPo's", or High Potential Employees. Coaching has become an Executive Perk included as a tool to hire and retain these HiPo's. […]

Did you hear about Nicole Lilliman? She's the single mother of 4 who was recently fired and then re-hired by Tim Hortons for giving a Timbit to a toddler. I can't help but think of all the negotiating going on behind the scenes and of the many difficult conversations that were taking place as the […]

By Horacio Falcão
There are key steps to creating value in a negotiation. Knowing them and how to prepare for them is the path to a “win-win” outcome. Start here.  Negotiation where both sides win  
Value creation is only consistent in a negotiation when you try to create more value for all parties involved or at least […]

Closing a deal can be ‘extremely hard’, says INSEAD Affiliate Professor of Decision Sciences Horacio Falcao, because it’s the conclusion of the whole negotiating process. If something’s gone wrong and hasn’t been picked up by that point, the person you’re negotiating with will “probably err on the side of ‘no’ rather than ‘yes’.”  Falcao says many […]

By Alistair Dobbie 
In the world of finance we can all too easily skip over the very real costs of conflict. Emotional intelligence as a concept has done a lot to address the image of phone-throwing Wall Street traders left over from the days of Liar's Poker, but do we really know how to manage people […]

Many of the tools we teach in our workshop, Managing Confrontation and Conflict can help you improve your communication skills. The tools are discussed in detail in the book Difficult Conversations: How To Discuss What Matters Most by Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton and Sheila Heen.
Some tips from the book are:
Listen

Listening well is one of […]