Hal Movius - Resolve: Negotiating Lifes Conflicts with Greater Confidence

praise for RESOLVE

Highly recommended reading for anyone who wants to bring their boldest, best self to conflict or negotiations.

AMY CUDDY, bestselling author of Presence

Resolve has great stories, deep insights, and wise advice about how to solve conflicts with confidence. This book will change your life.

TIMOTHY D. WILSON, author of Redirect

A useful guide for negotiating lifes more difficult conflicts.

JOHN GOTTMAN, PH.D., bestselling author of
The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work

So empowering, and not just for businesspeople. This is a book for you and me.

DAR WILLIAMS, musician, writer

Who among us would not benefit from approaching conflict and negotiations with greater confidence? Thats what makes Resolve such an insightful and thought-provoking read. Hal Movius has helped countless individuals and many of the worlds largest multinationals to be smarter and more effective in dealing with differences. Here are the tools and techniques that show us how.

ALEXANDER GREEN, New York Times bestselling
author of The Gone Fishin Portfolio

In Resolve, Hal Movius gives us lively hands-on guidance for navigating our most stressful interpersonal encounters. His empowering voice should guide our countrys and the worlds statesmen and stateswomen as they tackle, rather than avoid, our pressing challenges.

THE HONORABLE SARAH BLOOM RASKIN,
Deputy Secretary of the U.S. Department of the Treasury

Hal Movius has done a brilliant job of pulling together what psychology can teach us about how to raise our confidence level as a negotiator. Even the most reluctant and timid negotiators will benefit from his advice and coaching.

LAWRENCE SUSSKIND, vice-chair, Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School

When is the last time a business book was a page-turner? Resolve is just that: advice on how to become an all-around better negotiator, sprinkled with relevant real-life vignettes that bring it all home.

SUSAN SILBERMANN, senior life sciences executive

Resolve dives headlong into the role of confidence in negotiations and leaves you with a very fresh perspective of the process. Movius explores common behavioral traps, mental minefields, and tricky situations that can trip up even the most seasoned negotiator. An entertaining and incredibly informative read for anyone in the field.

FRANCESCA GINO, Professor, Harvard Business School

Having worked with Hal Movius on projects around the globe, I have witnessed firsthand how the practical insights in Resolve can help senior managers negotiate deals and disputes more effectively.

GUHAN SUBRAMANIAN, Professor, Harvard Law and Business Schools

Resolve is an insightful and essential resource for anyone negotiating conflicts across differences of race, gender, and culture in the global marketplace.

MARTIN N. DAVIDSON, Professor, Darden Graduate School of Business, author of The End of Diversity as We Know It

In his wise and empowering new book, Resolve, Hal Movius shows how genuine assurance arises from a rich fusion of mastery, awareness, and poise all of which can be nurtured through honest reflection and diligent practice. Simply put, for us to perform at our best, we have to be at our best. With warm and sympathetic coaching, Movius shows us how to achieve that state.

MICHAEL WHEELER, Harvard Business School, author of The Art of Negotiation

Copyright 2017 by Hal Movius

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written consent of the author and/or publisher or a license from The Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency (Access Copyright). For a copyright license, visit www.accesscopyright.ca or call toll free to 1-800-893-5777.

Published by

LifeTree Media Ltd.

www.lifetreemedia.com

Distributed by

Greystone Books Ltd.

www.greystonebooks.com

Cataloguing data available from Library and Archives Canada

isbn 978-1-928055-23-5 (hardcover)

isbn 978-1-928055-24-2 (epub)

isbn 978-1-928055-25-9 (pdf)

Editing by Maggie Langrick

Copyediting by Audrey McClellan

Proofreading by Shirarose Wilensky

Jacket design by Peter Cocking

Interior design by Naomi MacDougall

For my mother, Katherine

Acknowledgments

SIX YEARS ago, Roy Lewicki, Max Bazerman, Jared Curhan, and Mike Wheeler offered me brief but important feedback and direction on the topic of confidence in negotiations. Josh Weiss was an early thought partner; Marshall Hanbury, Saba Chinian, and Nik Sandev contributed their time during the research stage. Joanna Chango, Dan Wilson, Dar Williams, Bob Hower, Kira Hower, Geoffrey Movius, and David Finn shared ideas and support in long conversations. I thank all of them.

Im deeply indebted to Jim Coan not only for his knowledge and insights, but also for his sense of humor and vulnerability. I thank Jacob Slichter, wise man and writing coach extraordinaire, for timely encouragement and feedback. My deep appreciation to Jerry Clore and Tim Wilson for their generous help and feedback at different stages.

Thank you to my gifted colleagues and partners at Movius Consulting, particularly to Larry Susskind, Guhan Subramanian, and David Fairman, from whom I have learned so much over the years. Thank you, Ellen Wingard, Rob Berkley, and Ondine Norman, for your support. Thanks also to the Consensus Building Institute; to CorpU; to my colleagues in Asia, Latin America, and Europe; and to long-term clients. You are great teachers, all.

Heartfelt thanks to Maggie Langrick at LifeTree Media for her passion and acumen in guiding this book into existence. Maggies vision, encouragement, tireless editing, and incisive criticism shaped it from start to finish. Audrey McClellan improved the manuscript with her careful copyedit. Paris Spence-Lang and Marijean Oldham have kept the books audience in mind at all times. Thank you.

Thank you, close friends. You know who you are.

Finally, thank you, Kate, Luke, and Anya, for your love and patience. I love you more than there are stars.

Introduction

DO YOU love a good mystery?

My wife and I have watched so many episodes of crime dramas that Im afraid to list them. We seem to specialize in British serials, which are grittier and more realistic. But Australian, American, Canadian, Swedish were not choosy. As long as there are good plots, good acting, and not too much violence, were in.

That may sound like a strange place to start the introduction to a book about feeling more confident in how you resolve conflict. But the truth is, the genesis of this book was my desire to tackle a mystery, a series of nagging contradictions and clues that I couldnt get out of my head. Like the detective in a good mystery, I wanted answers, and I suspected that those answers might provide a great deal of comfort and benefit to other people.