Karen Dillon | Why bullying your way through negotiations isn't always the best way or the smart way to get what you want.

I spent the first decade of my career in New York City, which was quite a cultural education for a girl from suburban Boston. By the time I left, I felt I had earned the title of New Yorker, with the requisite mix of self-confidence and swagger. It wasn’t until years later, when I took my preteen daughters to the city, that I realized how different that person was from normal me. They started calling me “New York mom”—and not in a good way.

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In the years since, I’ve wondered if it’s a good thing that we can manifest different versions of ourselves for different purposes, whether consciously or not. At work, must a person who takes pride in being fair to employees find a pugnacious alter ego for tough negotiations? Or is it possible to be a single, authentic version of ourselves all the time?

I trecently sat down with longtime Harvard Law School professor and current senior fellow Bob Bordone to get to the bottom of the matter. Bordone, who co-authored the new book Conflict Resilience: Negotiating Disagreement Without Giving Up or Giving In, has been teaching and writing about conflict resolution and negotiation for nearly 30 years. What many people get wrong, he says, is believing that you must be a ruthless version of yourself to succeed. “One of the most common misconceptions about successful negotiators is that they’re aggressive,” he says. Instead, he suggests the following playbook.

1 | Prepare, prepare, prepare.