Shaping the Game

Michael H. Watkins' best-selling book The First 90 Days has become the business bible for accelerating leadership transitions. Now, Watkins zeroes in on the most critical skill leaders must master to secure new roles and accelerate their transitions: negotiation. In Shaping the Game: The New Leader's Guide to Effective Negotiating, Watkins draws from extensive research and practical consulting work to reveal four fundamental objectives that should guide new leaders' actions in every negotiation they undertake: create the most possible value, capture that value for yourself and your company, carefully tend to key relationships, and preserve your reputation. Watkins lays out hands-on strategies for becoming a world-class negotiator, including how to match your negotiation strategy to the situation, influence the perspectives of key counterparts, shape negotiation outcomes in your favor, and create the learning discipline necessary to become a world-class negotiator. Navigating the myriad complex, high-stakes negotiating challenges that confront new leaders, this book provides all the tools readers need to make the right moves up the career ladder--and succeed in those roles once they get there.Michael Watkins expands on the leadership transition framework in his bestselling First 90 Days to reveal how to master the critical role of negotiation in new leadership roles.Authoritative: Watkins has established his reputation as the premier authority on leadership transitions, and this book draws from his extensive research and practical consulting work to reveal negotiation as the critical skill every new leader must master.Practical, Applicable Framework: Broadens the proven framework in F9D to include hands-on negotiation tools and techniques such as changing your negotiation style to fit a specific situation, shaping outcomes in your favor, and diffusing conflicts.Quick, absorbing read: Concise, to the point, and filled with illustrative examples to help busy executives put the techniques into practice immediately.