Negotiation, starting with 17 camels...

As I sit here, this Sunday afternoon, I reflect on the past few days of anxiously checking my email in case my potential interviewee had written back responses to my questions, as a last minute resort if we couldn't meet up for the actual interview. I feel I have learned probably one of the biggest lessons when it comes to Event Planning and that would be, if something doesn't go according to plan then you better have a back up.


I had contacted someone the first week of class and they were eager to help, however over the past couple of weeks we just couldn't get things set in stone. So I decided to do some research on negotiating and wanted to reflect it with the world of Special Events Planning business.

In my search for information, I came across William Ury's talk on TED.com. I loved the story he used to start his talk, which consisted of 3 brothers' attempt to divide 17 camels amongst themselves. The moral of the story was that the 3 brothers were more focused on getting their "fair share" from the death of their father rather than how to actually go about it. As Ury broke down the father's idea of dividing the camels, it showed how "inside of the box" the brothers were thinking. The brothers were not separating the people from the problem, and were letting emotions cause a barrier from thinking clearly.

Special events planning can run into problems from the lack of separating the people from the problem for several reasons. If you think about the types of special events, some of the first ones that come to mind could be personal landmarks, in a sense, such as weddings or extravagant birthdays. Events of that nature call for emotions. When planning events such as these, it can be expected for a clients emotions to not only be involved but to be heightened. It can also be expected, for some, that there would be such things as a budget, or certain requirements they just have to have over others.

The importance of a planner is to help make those things happen, yet taking into consideration the budget.  John Patrick Dolan, Esq. stated "thinking about something can lead to confusion, but thinking through something leads to clarity." This is one way that you can separate the person from the problem and make things happen. And without even knowing it, this is how I had come towards the direction of my blog. I thought through something, instead of about it. The truth is, we practice these things every day without realizing what we're doing. Once we gain some education on our practices, we can focus them when we truly need them. I separated the people from the problem, becoming a negotiator more and more every day.