PON Live! Negotiation Lessons from Machiavelli the Diplomat with Alain Lempereur

Machiavelli, before becoming the renowned writer of The Prince, was a young diplomat for his beloved, although unarmed, Republic of Florence. For 15 years, he negotiated with the bullies of his time: the king of France, the German emperor, and the son of the Borgia pope, to name a few. In a dispatch, he once described himself as “Mr. Nothing,” without any cards to play. He learned the hard way how bullies tend to negotiate, how they can be intimidating, charming, positional, and transactional. As a “dwarf attacking giants,” he also learned how to negotiate with bullies: he prepared himself, structured timely mandates, evaluated and faced his counterparts with shrewdness and courage.

This webinar will combine the negotiation lessons of Machiavelli the diplomat and Machiavelli the writer, demonstrating how negotiation theory and practice can support each other as powerful tools for turbulent times. Despite the bad hand given to him by fortune, we will discover how a young, talented Florentine excelled at unbalanced negotiation games and cleverly played his weak cards. Machiavelli is an inexhaustible source of insight on how agents can lead negotiations across the table with powerful counterparts, and engage principals at their back table.