A short coaching talk by Blair Singer on handling toxic clients and maintaining healthy relationships through negotiation techniques. Key advice includes finding common ground, calling timeouts to manage emotions, examining internal triggers (old premises), and seeking coaching when recurring upsets occur. References recommended negotiation books.
So how do you deal with a toxic client? Or how do you maintain a great relationship with your clients, your family, for anybody for that matter? Ultimately, in a negotiation, when things are upset, try to find a common ground. If you're taught common ground, if you're talking to a client, if you're talking to a spouse, if you're talking to a relative and you're in an argument, it's starting to get heated. Stop for a minute and look for common ground. Something like, look, I know that we both want to get a good deal here. You want a good deal, you want to save money, I want to make a profit. Is that true? And what are they going to say? Yes. Okay, good. So find some common ground to go back to and start negotiating from there again. Okay. By the way, I'm going to recommend a great book on negotiating. This one here. I quote it quite often in my daily readings. This one is called Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss. Amazing, amazing book. Robert Cialdini. Robert Cialdini wrote Influence and Persuasion. Great tips in there, but hopefully these are helping you. So find common ground. And if all else fails, call a timeout. Call a timeout. That's right. Call a timeout. If you're flustered and you're being pressed for an answer and you and your emotions running, just say, look, I appreciate what you're saying. I get you're upset. I need a few minutes. I need a day. I need a couple hours to collect my thoughts about this. To collect my thoughts. I want to do this in a rational way. I want the best situation for the both of us. I just need a timeout. I don't even need a timeout for it. I'm just telling you I need a timeout. And if somebody won't let you do it, then you don't want to be talking to them anyway. Say, look, I'm taking some time if you want to talk about this. I'm committed to resolving this. But right now, I just need. I need a few moments. Is that okay? Sure. Okay. And typically, my wife and I have a rule, and I have this rule with just about everybody I deal with because I'm big into personal development, and that's this. If an upset goes on for longer than about. Than about 10 minutes, and it's a recurring one, one that I've had before in a similar situation. I call a timeout right then and there, and I get on the phone and I call one of my little voice coaches. I call somebody that's schooled in helping me Unpeel what? What's going on in here? Because I'm going to tell you that the upset, any upset, never has anything to do with the other person. As a matter of fact, if they triggered it, you should thank them for showing that, for revealing a crack inside of you that you now have an opportunity to heal. It could be an old experience from a long time ago that you totally forgot about. Could be an old premise, some old idea that. Something that's way outdated, that doesn't apply today anymore. You know, that's like, you know, you may be very frustrated. Like, what's an old idea? Oh, here's an old idea. If you're the best at what you do. If you're the best at what you do. Say it again. If you're the best at what you do and you work your butt off, you'll be successful. But you're not being successful. Why? Because unfortunately, those two thoughts are. It takes a little bit more than that to be very successful. You need to have strategy. You need to understand finances. If it's in business, there are some. You need to know how to negotiate a little bit. You need to communicate with people. So if you're operating off of an old premise and every time you get frustrated, frustrated, frustrated because it's not working, take a breath, talk to somebody that can coach you through it. May be an old principle in your head that's still driving you up against the wall. It has nothing to do with the other person. One of my friends once said, he said that every jerk that comes your way comes into your world to make you better. Hopefully these are some tips that will help you in terms of dealing, having a healthy relationship with the people around you. Your clients, your co workers, all that. If you'd like this list, I kind of scribbled this out based upon years and years and years and hundreds of thousands of people. But if you'd like this, tell me. Just say the word script. Script. Actually write healthy script. Healthy script. So it's healthy relationship script. And we'll get it out to you, okay? Because these days I need. You need. We need all the tools we can get to be. To be. To nurture great relationships, take responsibility for our own emotions, and understand that the other side of a bad situation is not that far away, particularly if you share common ground. Okay? So be awesome.
