Winning from Within: A Breakthrough Method for Leading, Living, and Lasting Change

Whether you run a Fortune 500 company or serve as CEO of your household, negotiating effectively is crucial to leading wisely and living well.

Leading and living are a series of constant negotiations. Consider what goes on during your typical week: Can you influence your client to accept your proposal? Will you persuade colleagues to give you the resources you need to finish your project? How will you ask your neighbor to switch carpool days so that you will finally have time to get to the gym?

According to conventional wisdom, a "win-win" outcome is the hallmark of success. However, until now, advice on getting there has overlooked one crucial element. It turns out that the most important negotiations you have, the ones that drive the impact of your leadership and the quality of your life, are the ones you have with yourself.

What does negotiating with yourself mean? It's what happens when you want to stay at the office, but also want to keep your promise to the family to get home in time for dinner. Or when one side of you votes to roll the dice and go for your dream job, while another worries about paying the mortgage. It's what you do when one part of you wants to give your relationship every chance to work, while another knows that this time it's really over.

When you're of more than one mind about what to do, negotiating with yourself is an essential skill. Should you say yes or no, or should you stall for time? Offer an olive branch or lay down the law? Speak your mind or hold your peace? When you know how to win the tug-of-wars inside of you, then you can "get to yes" in lasting and transformational ways.

With honesty, humor, and fresh ideas, Winning from Within gives you a clear road map for knowing your inner world and a method for sorting yourself out.

Whether you're struggling with a difficult customer or arguing with your spouse, by understanding what leadership and negotiation expert Erica Ariel Fox calls your "inner negotiators," you'll learn to turn breakdowns into breakthroughs. With the insight and tools to get out of your own way, you'll find new avenues to realizing your dreams.

"Harvard Law lecturer Fox's system addresses the performance gap — the disparity between what we know we should do in our interactions with others and what we actually do — by explaining the internal landscape of the mind as a set of negotiators, each with its own strengths and perspectives. Her language is geared toward a corporate mindset, imagining the principal aspects of self that govern interaction with others as an executive team: the 'Dreamer'/CEO, the 'Thinker'/CFO, the 'Lover'/v-p of HR, and the 'Warrior'/COO. Her 'Board of Directors,' or higher-level functions, is comprised of the 'Lookout,' who notices and reports on each voice's urges before taking action; the 'Captain,' who takes stock of all inner and outer concerns and chooses the best path at each moment; and the 'Voyager,' who guides your life path overall. Lessons of 'outer advancement through inner development' emphasize balance: making sure the 'Big Four' all participate — and do so equally — and finding your center to act in alignment with values and presence. It's all good shorthand for practical introspection and guidance toward making lasting improvements, not by focusing on behavior or personality type, but by integrating all the parts that make us who we are. Agent: Linda Loewenthal, David Black Agency." Publishers Weekly Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Winning from Within by leadership and negotiation expert Erica Ariel Fox presents a contemporary approach for getting more of what you want, improving relationships, and enjoying lifes deeper rewards.
 
With principles developed while teaching negotiation at Harvard Law School and coaching executives around the world, Fox provides a map for understanding your inner world and a method for sorting yourself out.
 
Fox uses insights from Western psychology and Eastern philosophy to resolve the gap between what people know they should say and what they actually do. She explains how to master your “inner negotiators,” whether working with a difficult client, struggling with a stubborn spouse, or developing your highest leadership potential.
 
With a Foreword by William Ury, coauthor of the classic bestseller Getting to Yes, Winning from Within: A Breakthrough Method for Leading, Living, and Lasting Change is your guide to greatness.

Life is a series of negotiations, whether or not you think of yourself as a negotiator . From seemingly insignificant daily decisions to major life choices, you negotiate every time you aim to persuade, argue over a decision, or resolve a conflict. But as negotiations and leadership expert Erica Ariel Fox reveals, the most important negotiations—the ones that determine the impact of our actions and the quality of our lives—are those we have with ourselves.

Most of us recognize the difference between our knowledge—what we know we should do and say—and our knowhow—what we actually do and say in real life when it counts.  Fox calls this the “Performance Gap,” and she shows you how to close it, turning breakdowns into breakthroughs, whether struggling with a difficult client, arguing with a combative teenager, or organizing for community action.

Winning from Within combines insights from Western psychology and Eastern philosophy with practical applications from real business situations and everyday life. Fox shows that the ability to achieve mastery over how we interact with each other comes from within, from the “center” where desires, thoughts, feelings, and impulses to take action live side-by-side.  Winning from Within offers a profound and highly practical seven-step method for making changes that last—at work and at home. 

Erica Ariel Fox teaches negotiation at Harvard Law School, and is the co-founder of the global consulting firm Mobius Executive Leadership.  A highly sought-after consultant to some of the worlds most renowned companies, she travels the globe to help people turn troubling situations around. She received her undergraduate degree from Princeton University and her law degree from Harvard Law School. She lives in Boston and Amsterdam.