Madeleine Albright Quotes

Negotiation is empathy. It's almost trite to say that if you can't put yourself in the seat of the other person you're speaking with, you're not going to do well. It's not about being a bully, not about making offers people can't refuse.

You have to walk in the other guy's moccasins. You have to think what they think. If you want to bring somebody onto your side, you have to figure out what motivates them. What do they need?

The capability of negotiating... is something that means you not only have to understand fully what you believe and what your national interests are but in order to be a really good negotiator, you have to try to figure out what the other person on the other side of the table has in mind.

I feel like I've always been a great mediator.

So much of life is a negotiation - so even if you're not in business, you have opportunities to practice all around you.

It's learning how to negotiate to keep both sides happy - whether it's for a multi-million dollar contract or just which show to watch on TV, that determines the quality and enjoyment of our lives.

It’s important for me to hear others position and understand them.

A huge amount of negotiations and diplomacy has nothing to do with bartering or arguing but is just trying to get everyone [doing the negotiating] on the same page. It takes yours, days, even weeks sometimes.

Diplomacy is listening to what the other guy needs. Preserving your own position, but listening to the other guy. You have to develop relationships with other people so when the tough times come, you can work together.

I'd like to add that negotiating is not something to be avoided or feared - it's an everyday part of life.

My career was always about working with people, and understanding issues and problems and helping them to solve those issues and problems. How you deal with people - that's what diplomacy is all about. So while I'm not a career diplomat, many of the skills I had seemed to directly translate into the diplomatic arena.

We're all negotiators.

I learned firsthand that there would simply be no wars if people engaged in real conversation.

The best way to resolve any problem in the human world is for all sides to sit down and talk.

The ability to take another perspective has become one of the keys to both sales and non-sales selling. And the social science research on perspective-taking yields some important lessons for all of us.

It's better for me to go up against someone's passion with my passion and then clarifying something that he wrote. Then I know how to work around certain things.

I don't have the ability to find a middle ground with my audiences, and I know this too well.

I think growing up in a big family taught me a lot of problem solving and how to share and compromise, and that's been helpful in my marriage.

If there is any one secret of success, it lies in the ability to get the other person's point of view and see things from that person's angle as well as from your own.

You cannot just dictate at negotiations. You must also listen.

Hot heads and cold hearts never solved anything.

There's always a way to talk.

Negotiators run the risk of achieving agreement and then having to take yes for an answer when they are emotionally accustomed to confrontation.

You have to negotiate with people who don’t trust you and vica versa. You have to be very careful but you can’t be paralyzed.

The more people talk directly to each other, the better. Dialogue is the way of solving issues.