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Using current negotiation models, people feel they are giving up more than they want in exchange for receiving less than they deserve. As part of standard practice, negotiation partners going into a negotiation calculate their bottom line – what they are willing to give up, and what they are willing to accept – and then fight, argue, cajole, or threaten when their parameters aren’t met. People have been killed for this. But there is another way.

In 1997, Bill Ury and I had to read each other’s books in preparation for working together for KPMG. A week before our introductory lunch meeting in Santa Fe, I read his book Getting To Yes (where BATNA – Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement – originated), marked the areas I disagreed with in red, and sent the marked book back to Bill. There was a lot of red: his book teaches how to get what you want (potentially win-lose) rather than how everyone can walk away satisfied (win-win). After comparing our models and a very interesting discussion about the different outcomes between a win-win and a win-lose negotiation, he agreed with me and we worked with KPMG using a win-win model.

BELIEFS

Win-lose is an incongruity. Using benchmarks for ethics and integrity, if one person loses, everyone loses – hence there is only win-win or lose-lose. Yet in the typical negotiation process it’s hard to find a win when the ‘things’ being bartered are not ‘things’ at all but representations of unconscious, subjective beliefs and personal values (termed Criterial Equivalents in NLP) without either negotiation partner fully understanding the underlying values these items represent to the other: a house in the country might represent a lifetime goal to one person, and just a place to live to another; a $1,000,000 settlement might illustrate payback for a lost, hard-won reputation to one person, and extortion to another. When much younger, I spent a fortune on a 14K gold waist chain, believing that this decadent indulgence defined me as ‘making it.’ Seriously.

It’s possible to take the negotiation beyond the ‘things’ being bartered, away from the personal and chunk up to find mutually shared values agreeable to both – and then find ‘things’ that represent them. So it might be initially hard to agree who should get ‘the house’, but it might be possible to agree that it’s important everyone needs a safe place to live.

FOCUS ON SHARED VALUES FIRST

Try this:

1. enter the negotiation with a list of somewhat generic high-level values that are of foundational importance, such as Being Safe; Fair Compensation;
2. share lists and see where there is agreement. Where there is no agreement, continue chunking up higher until a set of mutually comfortable criteria are found. A chunk up from Fair Compensation might be ‘Compensation that Values Employees’
3. list several possible equivalents that match each agreeable criterion. So once Compensation that Values Employees is agreed upon during a salary negotiation, each partner should offer several different ways it could be achieved, such as a higher salary, or extra holidays, or increased paid training days, or a highly sought-after office, or higher royalties;
4. continue working backward – from agreement with high-level, foundational criteria, down to the details and choices that might fulfill that goal, with all parties in agreement.

Discussions over high level values are often more generic, and far less likely to set off tempers than arguments over ‘things’: if nothing else, it’s easier for negotiation partners to listen to each other without getting defensive. And once values are attended to and people feel heard they become more flexible in the ‘things’ they are willing to barter: once Compensation that Values Employees is agreed to, it’s possible to creatively design several choices for an employee to feel fairly valued without an employer stretching a tight budget.

Think about negotiations as a way to enhance relationships rather than a compromise situation or a way for someone to win. There is nothing to be won when someone loses.

Recently, I attended a presentation by a smart, experienced professional whose goal was to provide an informative overview of his area of expertise to his colleagues. Unfortunately, he did not succeed in communicating his message effectively to the audience. How he prepared and delivered his PowerPoint slides interfered with his ability to share information with the audience.

What did he do wrong? First of all, the slides were crowded and hard to read. Also, instead of making eye contact with the audience, he spoke to the slides on the screen or buried his eyes in his notes, which he read from almost verbatim. Finally, he stood in front of the projector light so we could see his silhouette against the screen instead of the words on his slides.

This was not the first presentation he had ever delivered. His mistakes had been made permanent by years of practice, which shows that practice doesn’t make perfect, it makes permanent – so you have to practice the right things in the right way in order to be effective.

Here are 7 tips for incorporating a PowerPoint presentation smoothly into your speech (and they also apply if you’re using Apple’s Keynote presentation):

1. Speak to the audience, not to the screen; turn your body so you face the audience.

2. If you need to look at your slides to help you stay on track, position your laptop as a “confidence monitor” so you can see the slides on your laptop screen while still facing the audience.

3. Stand to the side of the screen so you don’t block it. And use a remote control so you can advance your slides without having to be tied to the laptop.

4. Make sure your slides are legible from the back of the room. Avoid crowding your slides with too many words or images and make sure the font size is large enough. Also be sure that there is enough contrast so that the font color can be easily seen against the slide background. If you find yourself saying to the audience, “I know you can’t read this,” you’re in trouble. And have each slide focused on a message, rather than just a data dump of everything you know about the topic.

5. Be mindful about where your eyes are looking and be sure to make eye contact with all sections of the audience.

6. Don’t write out your entire presentation and read it word for word; you will bore the audience. If you try to memorize every word, you will be stuck in your head, worried about forgetting a word, instead of focused on the audience. And if you do forget a word, it will be difficult to find it amid the pages of your memorized script.

7. To use notes effectively, create a one-page outline of key phrases in large font so you can quickly glance at it and find your place. Tape or staple it to heavy cardstock paper so you can easily hold it with one hand or keep it on the lectern. The heavy paper will not flap around as you handle it and you will be less likely to fold and crumple it if you’re nervous. And if you place it on a lectern, it’s less likely to blow away.

The next time you have to incorporate a PowerPoint presentation into your speech, refer to these 7 tips. Effective slide creation and delivery can support your message and help you successfully communicate to the audience.