Using ‘Power Plays’ to get what you want
Attorney’s new book gives secrets, advice for aspiring
lawyers
By Kristin Brainerd
Daily Bruin Contributor
Do you get what you bargain for?
If not, Robert Mayer may have just the advice you need. A Los
Angeles-based transactional attorney and former UCLA Extension
teacher, Mayer’s job is making deals.
His first book, "Power Plays," shares the negotiating wisdom and
experience Mayer has learned in over 30 years of practice.
"I see young lawyers work, and they act like little negotiating
machines," Mayer says, "and that’s actually a turn-off."
Mayer’s own son just became a lawyer, and Mayer wrote the book
partly as a way of passing on his secrets of success.
We all see people who, though not necessarily smarter or more
creative than others, somehow succeed more easily. Mayer attributes
the phenomenon to people’s interpersonal skills.
"These people have a way about them," Mayer argues. "They know
how to relate to other people. And if you’re going to persuade me
or influence me, it’s going to be because of how you relate to
me."
To prove his point, Mayer recounts a story from his Extension
classes. "I would ask, ‘How many of you know where your dentist
went to school?’ About three people out of 100 would raise their
hands. I would then ask if they knew if their dentist graduated in
the top or bottom half of his class, and all the hands would go
down. ‘This is the person putting a high-speed drill in your mouth.
Why are you letting him doing this?’" The answer: They liked
him.
Mayer’s method focuses on this aspect of negotiating. "The first
thing to learn is that you can’t control other people until you can
control yourself. You have to be able to read the other person to
determine their needs and how you are going to bond with them,"
Mayer explains.
"It’s the same as baseball," he continues. "How I pitch the ball
is going to determine how the ball comes off the bat. You will
react to the way I act."
That, Mayer explains, is the secret. The harder part is
determining just how to act.
In his book, Mayer answers just this question. The acronym,
LANCER, contains the six aspects of negotiating that one must
consider in order to persuade and influence others: Linkage,
Alignment, Needs, Control, Evaluation and Reading.
Mayer explains the use and significance of each of these skills,
then includes sections on trouble-shooting and hard-bargaining. In
addition, Mayer includes a special section called "The Deal-Maker’s
Playbook," which offers negotiating advice for 36 specific
situations, varying from job interviews and salary increases to
buying a car and dealing with an Internal Revenue Service
agent.
Equally important to the quality of this information is the
light, easy-reading style Mayer adopted for communicating his
ideas. "When I began reading negotiating books, they were simply
horrid," Mayer says. He recounts how most were either filled with
elaborate behavioral data that was difficult to understand and even
harder to apply, or too flip and light to actually be useful.
Because of this, Mayer illustrates his points with humorous
anecdotes explaining why an insurance adjuster did not require
documentation for Vinente Minnelli’s personal injury claim, (being
Liza’s father, Judy Garland’s husband and an Oscar-winning director
had nothing to do with it), and how a friend of his returned from
Spain with a velvet puce and persimmon painting of Barcelona which,
not surprisingly, she never even wanted.
Mayer never runs short of stories. Not only does he have 30
years of experience with thousands of clients, including the famous
and infamous, but his research for the book included interviews
with everyone from negotiating experts and con men to psychologists
and the street and bazaar merchants of Cairo, Shanghai and
Bombay.
Still, when asked which deals are the toughest to make, Mayer
says that they are the negotiations that go on at home with his
wife and two children. "Negotiating is not a 9 to 5 thing," he
explains. "The principles that give you the edge in business are
the same principles that help you get along better with your
family. You have to show that you care about what the other person
is doing. It’s Life 101 … A and B."
BOOK: "Power Plays: How to Negotiate, Persuade and Finesse Your
Way to Success in Any Situation." Times Books, $25.
Robert Mayer, attorney and author of "Power Plays," his first
book.
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