PART 5
5TH ESSENTIAL SKILL

PROBLEM SOLVING AND NEGOTIATING

Congratulations! You’ve worked your way through the first four skills and are now ready to learn the fifth skill that is essential to building collaborative relationships. This fifth skill differs from the earlier skills that you have already learned. The first four skills required some soul-searching, since they have to do with you and your interior landscape. You learned the importance of collaborative intention, truthfulness, self-accountability, self-awareness, and your awareness of others. However, even the most self-aware, accountable, truth-telling, nondefensive people will have a difficult time maintaining successful relationships if they aren’t skilled at negotiating their way through conflict.

A big part of success at collaborative relationships is knowing how to resolve conflicts. If people aren’t skilled at managing conflicts, it can tear relationships apart. This fifth skill is the ability to solve problems and negotiate your way through conflict in a way that supports collaboration. The next part of the book, chapters 10 to 17, moves from the interpersonal readiness covered earlier to what we call Skillful Problem-Solving Methods.

Chapter 10 offers specific strategies to encourage collaboration. Chapters 11 to 17 teach readers Interest-Based Problem Solving. It is a specific step-by-step approach to negotiating your way through conflict.