Real Leaders Negotiate!

This book examines the central role of negotiation in gaining, exercising, and retaining leadership within organizations, large and small, public and private. Its aim is to instruct readers on the way to use negotiation to lead effectively.

For far too long conventional wisdom has proposed that strong leaders refuse to negotiate, viewing negotiation as a sign of weakness.  Leading people requires charisma, vision, and a commanding presence, not the tricks for making deals. For many executives, negotiation is a tool to use outside the organization to deal with customers, suppliers, and creditors. Inside the organization, it’s strictly “my way or the highway.”

Salacuse explains that leaders can increase their effectiveness by using negotiation in each of the three phases of the leadership lifecycle: 1) leadership attainment, 2) leadership action; and 3) leadership preservation and loss. Drawing on experience in wide variety of settings, including the author’s own

leadership positions, the book will examine high profile leadership cases such as the rise and fall of Carly Fiorina at Hewlett-Packard, the skillful negotiations by Warren Buffet to save Salomon Brothers from extinction, and the successful efforts by the partners at Goldman Sachs to negotiate a new vision and direction for that financial giant.

Leaders and managers should pick up this book to learn how effective negotiation is essential to both gaining and exercising leadership and to overcoming threats to a leader’s position.

“Jeswald Salacuse has contributed enormously to our understanding of the integral role that negotiation plays in effective leadership and vice versa. He has analyzed the role of negotiation at every rung on the leadership ladder, from becoming a leader to acting as a leader to preserving leadership and knowing when and how to leave that leadership role most effectively. Those who read this book will see much more clearly how negotiators lead and also find it impossible to imagine effective leadership without negotiation.” (Joshua N. Weiss, Negotiation Journal, April, 2018)

“Finally, the issues of leadership and negotiation have been joined!  Reflecting on his own fascinating, personal experience and looking closely at many well-known business and political figures, Salacuse teaches us what leaders need to know about negotiation, and what negotiators need to know about leadership. Along the way, he explains what it takes to acquire leadership, exercise it effectively, fend off those who aspire to displace you, and step down on your own terms. A masterful and eminently readable examination of what it takes to build and maintain trust, while getting followers to do what you want.” (Dr. Lawrence Susskind, Ford Professor of Urban and Environmental Planning at MIT and Vice-Chair and Co-Founder of the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School)

“Real Leaders Negotiate! is a genuine breakthrough in explaining clearly and cogently how to use negotiation to lead people and organizations, a s

ubject much neglected by other leadership books. A distinguished negotiation scholar and an experienced savvy leader, Salacuse has drawn on his in-depth research and practical experience to write a book that is packed with wise advice and great examples to make all of us more effective leaders.” (Admiral James Stavridis USN, Dean, The Fletcher School, Tufts University, and Supreme Allied Commander at NATO (2009 to 2013))

“In his continuing search for the ‘modern alchemy of organizational management,’ Dean Salacuse adroitly and successfully pursues the seemingly elusive questions of what leadership is and what a person must actually do to lead other people. In his book, Real Leaders Negotiate!, Dean Salacuse provides leaders, including judicial leaders, with a roadmap for navigating the very complex highway of relationships, communication, trust, power and influence that leads to organizational results. By sharing his unique experiences as both a leader and as a negotiator, Salacuse convinces us that Real Leaders do Negotiate.” (MaryC. McQueen, President, National Center for State Courts)

Jeswald W. Salacuse is Distinguished Professor and Braker Professor of Law at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University. His numerous leadership positions have included Dean of the Fletcher School for nine years, Dean of the Southern Methodist University Law School, Chairman of the Board of Directors of the India and Asia Tigers Funds, Lead Independent Director of the Legg Mason Closed End Funds, founding president of the Association of Professional Schools of International Affairs, chairman of the Council for International Exchange of Scholars, and president and a member of the international arbitration tribunals.

During his wide-ranging career, Salacuse has also been a Visiting Professor at Harvard Law School, a lecturer and professor in Nigeria, Congo, Sudan, the United Kingdom, France and Spain, and the Fulbright Distinguished Chair in Comparative Law in Italy.

He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the American Law Institute and the executive committee and faculty of the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School. Salacuse is the author of fifteen books, including The Global Negotiator and Negotiating Life: Secrets for Everyday Diplomacy and Deal Making.