Jaime Oliver

One of the most difficult tasks for Latin culture people is to say NO. To set boundaries. First, define your top productivity time. Then, let your colleagues know about it and be clear informing them interrupting won’t be allowed and even if they try answers will be handled after that time. Finally, stick with it! The first time you allow interruptions, you have lost your goal and everybody will feel free to interrupt you. So stick with it no matter what!!

First you must believe in what you are doing, selling or explaining. If you are a “smoking seller” no body will trust on you. So, the first step is believe in your product, service or proposal. Only when you trust on it you will be trusted. Then be passionate in what you are doing. Passion comes from trust. When you show your passion in your project, product or service people will trust on you. Be honest with yourself. If you don’t believe in the project or service or product won’t get involved with it.

This is one of the most difficult things to do, put yourself in the other person’s shoes. People usually see things by the own way discharging others points of view. Sometimes, your insecurities don’t give you the chance to see other ways, just yours. The first step must be calm down yourself, hear your counterpart, try to understand his/hers position, ask for what he/she thinks are the causes and possible consequences. Then you start to empathise with your counterpart and, only then, you will be able to look for solutions good enough for both parties.

Clear communication is the key. But most of the time you are working with people with different backgrounds and from different cultures. So another key is cultural awareness. Sometimes they articulate but messages are wrong received because of meaning differences depending on culture. It’s pretty common in Spanish speaking countries, sometimes one word might have 3 or 4 different meanings depending on the country. Sometimes one common word in one country is a bad word in another. And it’s called disturbances in the channel of communication. As far as you are aware of those differences you will be able to establish a clear communication.

When something goes wrong you must stop, take distance, see the whole picture. Identify causes, look forward for possible consequences. Just when you got it all, you are able to make adjustments. But it is vital to see the whole picture, because sometimes there no need for adjustments. There are times when you need to cut out and start all over again. Other times, consequences are not bad at all they are meaningless, so you just need to go on without adjustments. Remember, take distance and see the whole picture.

A successful negotiation is the one whenever all parties involved win. You must be creative, have a clear understanding of your goals and prepare in advance what would be your counterpart’s goals. Keeping them on mind you will be able to construct creative alternatives when you match all objectives, yours and the one from the other participants. It will be the only case when you reach a win-win negotiation. If a win-win negotiation is your moto you will succeed in all cases.