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July 9, 2004/Tamuz 20 5764, Vol. 56, No.42
Local author, lawyer lauds power of negotiation
MICHAEL MIKLOFSKY
Staff Writer
Martin Latz has already negotiated some of the biggest deals of his life: his cum laude graduation from Harvard Law School, the founding of his own Scottsdale-based negotiation company, a marriage just a year and a half ago, and now, the publication of his first book.
In his new book, "Gain the Edge! Negotiating to Get What You Want," (St. Martin's Press, $25.95 hardcover) Latz details his five golden rules that should be followed when entering any type of negotiation.
But before you can understand those rules, he says, people need to understand that "we really do it every day and we probably do it multiple times a day."
All of us have been negotiating since we were young children, he says.
"We were working our parents off against each other. ... We were negotiating with our siblings."
But negotiation is, he says, "not difficult to understand so much as it is sometimes difficult to apply."
Latz first became interested in what he calls "the art, the science of negotiation" when he was a law student at Harvard Law School and took a course on negotiation. He and his classmates had the opportunity to run simulations and then find out how well they did in a post-negotiation meeting.
"In most contexts, if you negotiate with someone, if you get a deal, you think, 'Oh yeah, that was success,' but you really don't know how successful you were," he says. "You rarely have the opportunity to sit down with whoever was on the other side of the table and actually find out what they were willing and able to do in that context."
During school, Latz began to study negotiation more aggressively and learned that there was a right way and a wrong way to negotiate in any context.
"Most people negotiate instinctively or intuitively and really the most effective way to do it is to take an overall strategic view of the process," he says.
Early on in his career, Latz made mistakes that he sees others making every day.
"I viewed the negotiation process more as an effort to convince and persuade of the rightness of where we were coming from," he says. "Negotiation power goes with the power of listening, not those who argue and persuade.
"Our culture sometimes, especially now, is more impatient. Patience is a ... quality trait in negotiating. From a personality standpoint, the more patient you are about a negotiation and the more patience you can project, the more effective you are going to be in any context."
Latz had the opportunity after graduating to put his knowledge to work when he became a part of a White House Advance team under the Clinton administration. On and off from 1993-1995, Latz worked with his other team members to coordinate and negotiate all the specifics of a presidential visit, including housing, meals and details of speaking engagements.
On one trip, Latz and his fellow team members went to set up a speaking engagement for President Bill Clinton at Alameda Naval Air Station outside San Francisco, which was about to be closed.
At the time of this trip, there were raw feelings among men and women in the military because of Clinton's handling of gays in the military, a key issue during his first term in office. Latz's team was able to mend fences by soliciting advice from the military personnel, rather than telling them what to do. Latz says the technique "created a far better relationship among everyone (who was) needed to work together to achieve our goal in that negotiation context."
In his position, working under the commander-in-chief of the armed forces to put together an event held at a military facility, Latz and his team had unmistakable leverage, but Latz did not use it to demand the outcome that he desired.
"Whatever you want done, you can say it and it would be done," he says, but, "even if you have the power to impose a solution, how you negotiate, how you exercise that power, can have a significant impact on your real ability to achieve success."
Latz believes that the majority of people who participate in negotiations for cars, homes, salary or other goods or services sometimes do not see the big picture.
"I believe that well over 90 percent of the people who negotiate tend to negotiate instinctively and it's not going to, in the long term, allow you to achieve you goals," he says. "You may very well still achieve your goals, but you may be able to achieve even greater goals by taking a more strategic view of the process."
Latz is co-founder and principal of the Latz Negotiation Institute, which holds seminars throughout the country and does consulting projects for major American companies, and a Greater Phoenix Chamber of Commerce Board member. He is also an adjunct professor at The College of Law at Arizona State University.
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