How to Win-Win With Your Hardest Choices

I had a great conversation with Kevin Kruse recently, for his LEADx podcast. As we spoke, I remembered how painful it can be when people get trapped in a 'win-lose' argument with themselves. As I put it with Kevin:

People are familiar with the idea of having a conflict, or a dispute, or an opportunity with someone else and they want to reach an agreement, a so-called ‘get to yes.’ My research and extensive experience working with professionals is people don't know how to ‘get to yes’ with themselves, so people have conflicts. "I want to finish this project before I got to sleep, but I promised my family I'd be home for dinner. I want to take a big risk and pursue my dream, but it's not practical. I'm doing the numbers, can I afford it?" We have conflicts inside ourselves all the time and that's in essence negotiating with different parts of yourself to get aligned, to get agreement on your next course of action.

When you frame an issue for yourself this way, some part of you will lose with whatever decision you make. But if you learn how to negotiate with yourself, you can create the same kind of 'win-win' outcomes that skilled negotiators produce in their dealings with others.

My complete conversation with Kevin goes into this in much more detail. You can listen to it here: https://leadership-podcast.com/046-fox/

Or you can read the transcript in Kevin's column on Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/kevinkruse/2017/05/08/how-to-win-the-conflict-within/