Hi, my name is Lewis Howes and welcome to the Daily Motivation Show.

You couldn't be very assertive without being aggressive.

You don't have to give up that much assertion.

You just don't want to be that mean.

You don't want to be that hard.

For example, what do you mean?

There's a great guy here in town. His name is Tom Girardi.

Voted top trial attorney in California, several years in a row by the Bar Association. He gets a voter top trial attorney so many times that when they put it on the front page, they say, again. So he comes in and he's a guest in my class at USC. and he stepped in I know he's a top trial attorney but I don't know his style I figure

he's going to be an attack dog because I spent so much time with New York you know he used to attack dog

attorneys and Tom walks into the class and he says you know the key to negotiations is being nice and

gentle and what Tom does by being nice is get you to drop your guard and Tom is is an immovable, unrelenting opponent. And that's

why he's so successful and he's ridiculously nice about it. Like he smiles and he chats with people.

And he always talks about how we'll collaborate with each other in the future. You get into an

argument with him and immediately he'll bend it where he's talking with you about how we'll collaborate with each other in the future. You get into an argument with him, and immediately he'll bend it.

Where he's talking with you about how you and I are going to be successful together 10 years from now.

So you don't have to be aggressive.

Secret to gaining the upper hand in negotiations given the other side the illusion of control.

Now, I'm coming at you as a very control-oriented negotiation.

As soon as you don't struggle with me over control, you actually begin to gain an advantage. Because then you feel like you're in control, you don't have to try to gain it anymore. Right, right. I'm more than likely going to start dropping my... If I'm a control-free guy, if I want to talk all the time, I'm a control-free guy. freak guy. Control freak. The negotiators who want to talk all the time, they feel out of control when they're not talking.

So you want to talk all the time,

they feel out of control when they're not talking. You want to get them to the point where they

don't talk, but they don't talk because they're relaxed, not because they're trying to seize control.

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