How To Gain and Use Leverage in Every Negotiation

Gaining leverage in a negotiation is one aspect that leads to winning a negotiation. The questions some negotiators ask are, how do I gain leverage in a negotiation, what’s the value of it, and how do I use it once I have it?

The following are ways to gain and use leverage in a negotiation.

  • Gaining leverage is the advantage you acquire in a negotiation as the result of an act you commit and/or position the other negotiator is in as the result of such action.
  • Understand what you did to obtain leverage (e.g. caught the opposing negotiator in an untruthful statement, which caused other positions of his to be called into question), when you have it, what you’ll do with it (e.g. as a strategy, cause him to defend a position that doesn’t serve him), and what you’ll do to regain it once you lose it (i.e. in a negotiation, leverage ebbs and flows based on the positional power of the negotiators).
  • Consider the person with whom you’re negotiating and what stimuli will influence him (e.g. will he move from pain to pleasure, or fight you harder if you back him into a corner).
  • Consider how you can impress and/or intimidate the other negotiator (i.e. in some cases opposing negotiators can share a common interest, which may serve one more than the other. The one to which more of a gain occurs is the one with more leverage).
  • To gain leverage, feed the ego when such is sought and/or required (i.e. feeding vanity can be a great source of motivation for the other negotiator to grant concessions at times. The reason being, she may want to appear to be magnanimous).
  • Be long term in thoughts and outcome
  • Shift the perspective to fit your reality and don’t worry if others don’t buy into it. If you’re strong and persistent enough, over time you’ll benefit from not backing down because even a lie can become the truth if it’s told enough and enough people begin to believe it (i.e. when seeking leverage, a statement said with assuredness can be more believable even if it’s false than a truthful sentiment stated with doubt).
  • Learn to be a good ‘spin master’ (i.e. cast your position/perspective from a point that best serves your purposes).
  • Go after things you engage in with the expectation that you’re doing whatever it will take to win (i.e. when positioning your perspective to gain leverage, remember to synchronize your body language (nonverbal gestures, etc.) with your verbiage.
  • Summarize people in negotiations with one word and/or in ways that position them in the way you wish them to be viewed by others (i.e. the light in which you display people to others can be the way they’re viewed. In a negotiation, to gain leverage, attempt to position the opposing negotiator in a light that’s less flattering per his position).
  • Control (anger, environment, other negotiator & yourself)
  • Think about where you come into a situation. That will determine your perspective of it. (In a negotiation, your perspective determines the actions you engage in. When seeking to gain leverage, consider how both you and the opposing negotiator views the perspective of why you’re negotiating and what you seek from it).

One of the most efficient ways to win more negotiations is to discover ways to gain and use leverage. Adopt the insights above and your negotiate win rate will increase… and everything will be right with the world.

Remember, you’re always negotiating!

Prison Food – Past and Present

The Best of British – prison food

A short article on past and present prison cuisine

I have always had an interest in food and cooking and it came as a particular delight when in my last five years of service, I became head of an Investigation and Audit team in one of London’s biggest prisons. Part of the team’s task was to inspect and report on conditions in prison kitchens.To enable me to undertake the work, I had to do a great deal of research and knowledge gathering to enable me to carry out this function. Food handling and hygiene being just one of the basic areas to cover. Food preparation techniques, balanced diets, specialist medical diets are all part of the daily life of a prison, or indeed any other type of institutional kitchen.

Every prison in Britain is inspected by an independent body, HM Prison Inspectorate, on an irregular basis. Therefore, it is essential that every prison kitchen is organized, maintained and managed at the very highest standard at all times. In the late 1980′s, HM Prison Service lost the safety of, “Crown Immunity”. This prevented any form of prosecution through the courts for any infringements of the law. The ‘Crown’ could never prosecute itself – The Crown verses Crown. In effect, it meant that a prison could now receive severe sanctions for poor performance in any area, particularly Health & Safety and catering. It could also mean that the prison kitchen could even be closed down if found to be in a poor state of management, maintenance or hygiene. This was highlighted very clearly in September of 2009 when 370 prisoners at London’s largest prison, HMP Wandsworth were struck down with salmonella poisoning. If a prison kitchen were suddenly ordered to close down, you can imagine the chaos this would cause. HMP Wandsworth is the largest prison in Western Europe and holds over 1,600 prisoners. How do you provide over 4,800 meals a day at very short notice? The only hope of keeping the roof on the jail is to ensure that the Emergency Contingency Planners have done their homework and an alternative system can be brought on line with immediate effect.

How it used to be

Wandsworth Prison was built in 1851. It was one of the earliest London prisons and was originally called the Surrey House of Corrections. Mayhew & Binney, in their 1868 edition of, “Criminal Prisons of London”, describe vividly the life inside the London prisons in the 1800′s. Food did not seem very high on the agenda of the prison system at this time. Containment seemed to be the priority. The Surrey House of Correction was indeed built to help to reduce overcrowding at the Houses of Correction at Brixton, Guildford and Kingston, where “jail fever” was rampant and prisoners were dying. When inspecting the Surrey House of Corrections in 1862, Mayhew and Binney noted the menu and diets of the various classes of prisoners held at the prison. Convicted prisoners employed at ‘hard labour’ for terms exceeding 21 days were allowed the following meals:

Breakfast 1 pint of oatmeal gruel and 6 oz of bread Dinner Sunday & Thursday 1 pint of soup and 8 oz of bread Dinner Tuesday & Saturday 3 oz of cooked meat without bone 8 oz bread ½ lb potatoes Dinner Monday, Wednesday & Friday 8 oz bread and 1 lb of potatoes Supper Same as breakfast

As you may well imagine, the low calorific and nutritional values of such a diet would lead to serious health problems – jail fever.

When I worked at High Down High Security prison in Surrey, we presented the Lord Lieutenant of the County with a framed copy of the recipe for Gruel. The Governor of the prison at the time, Stephen Prior, took the Lord Lieutenant and his wife home for dinner, and guess what was first on the menu – prison gruel. He actually loved it! So much so that he instructed his own chef to add it to his dinner party menus to impress his guests (I bet it did!).

This is the original recipe from the Surrey House of Corrections kitchen circa. 1862: Ingredients for Soup and Gruel: The soup to contain, per pint, 3 ounces of cooked meat, without bone, 3 ounces of potatoes, 1 ounce of barley, rice, or oatmeal, and 1 ounce of onions or leeks, with pepper and salt. The gruel to contain 2 ounces of oatmeal per pint. The gruel on alternate days to be sweetened with three quarter ounces of molasses or sugar and seasoned with salt.

In seasons when the potato crop has failed, 4 ounces of split peas made into a pudding may be occasionally substituted; but the change must not be made more than twice in each week. Boys under 14 years of age to be placed on the same diet as females.

The female diet was the same as the male prisoner diet with the exception that where the male received 8 oz of bread the female would receive 6 ounces.

For those prisoners serving less than seven days, the menu was very basic: Breakfast 1 pint of gruel Dinner 1 lb of bread Supper 1 pint of gruel

These prison diets lasted well into the 1900′s and bear no comparison to today’s prison food. Modern prisoners wouldn’t stand for it and the authorities could never allow it. Even the punishment diet of bread and water was removed from the Prison Rules in the 1960′s. The term, “Doing Porridge” still remains an avid description of someone who is in prison, referring of course, to the old diet of oatmeal gruel.

How it is now

Modern man requires around 2,500 calories each day to maintain body weight, women require slightly less. In the prisons of the 1800′s, a prisoner was lucky to obtain 500 calories per day without any opportunity to increase his intake. Overcrowding – three to a cell built for one and hard labour, soon consumed what little energy the prisoner had. Poor health, body lice and unsanitary conditions all led to the onset of jail fever – epidemic typhus.

Today, as well as obtaining a balanced and healthy prison diet, a prisoner can supplement his diet from the prison shop. Many prisoners are housed in single cells or dormitories and the overcrowding problems of the 1800′s no longer exist in our modern prisons. Modern health care programmes, physical fitness programmes and modern sanitatary conditions have all been introduced in recent years.

In the UK, a prison catering manager has about £1.87 ($4) to provide food for each inmate every day. Young offender institutions are allowed double this amount at £3.81 ($8) per day. The modern prison service of day has placed an emphasis on rehabilitation, although how successful this has been is debatable. Part of the rehabilitation process is to teach prisoners how to eat healthily and look after themselves on release. For the prison service’s part, new dietary regulations have been introduced in recent years which avoid the onset of health problems which ultimately reflect in the prisons health care budget. Long term prisoners are particularly at risk by poor diet and poor health care regimes. Diabetes, stroke and obesity-related illnesses are of particular concern.

Special diets are catered for now and include Muslim, kosher, Caribbean, diabetic and other medical diets are also provided. Catering managers are now specially trained to prepare these special diets. In many of the establishments I worked in, we even had Muslim and Jewish prisoners working in the kitchen to ensure that the food was cooked and prepared in the appropriate way. For the feast of Eid, the local mosques would deliver specially prepared food as a gift for Muslim prisoners. Likewise, the rabbi would arrange for kosher food to be delivered whenever Jewish feast days were celebrated. This would never have happened fifty years ago. It is also curios to note, the number of prisoners who convert to Islam when Ramadan is approaching.

So how have the diets and menus changed over the years. Health and nutrition remain a high priority in today’s prison kitchen. There has been a vast reduction in fried foods over recent years. Chips with everything no longer applies. An increase in fresh fruit and vegetables, wholegrain products and an increase in fish products, including oily fish have been introduced into prisons not only in Britain but in European and American prison establishments as well.

One of the best fed prisons in the world is in Italy, where prisoners work to produce organic fruit and vegetables, including olive oil. The prison has its own state of the art food production areas for manufacturing wine and orchard management. The whole operation is supervised by a professional management team. The prisoners benefit by eating all their own home grown food and are even allowed a small wine allowance to help reduce cholesterol levels and may even increase the ability to prevent some forms of cancer. Now, is that progress or what?

There seems to be some confusion as to what exactly prison food entails. As far as the general public is concerned, some of them still believe that gruel, bread and water is still the main prison diet. There are still many more who say that it should be.

They could not be further from the fact. As we have already stated, vast improvements have already been made to the prison diet. In most prisons in England and Wales, the supply of catering facilities has been privatised. Prisoners now have a choice which they can preselect on a weekly basis, usually with a choice of three or more main courses. The Christmas menus have improved immensely over the years and now provide prisoners with a much better Christmas dinner than they ever would eat outside prison. In many of the lower security prisons, local pensioners are invited into the prison to eat Christmas dinner with the inmates. After all, prisoners are still human beings and many take great pains to ensure that ‘granny’ and ‘granddad’ have a nice Christmas dinner.

So how might a modern prison menu look? First, the breakfast menu. In all English prisons each prisoner receives a breakfast pack which is issued the evening before for use the next morning. This will include a breakfast cereal, milk, tea bags, coffee whitener, sugar, brown or white bread, jam and margarine or butter type spread. They will also receive a weekly allowance of teabags and sugar to make themselves a cup of tea whenever they want to. Each cell will have its own kettle. The daily issue will also include special packs for vegans, vegetarians and various religious groups

For the midday and evening meals, nearly every prison now uses a pre-select system where a list of different meals are displayed for each day and every prisoner can order whatever meal he prefers. There are usually five or six alternatives to choose from. Fresh vegetables and fruit are served separately when each meal is collected. The following is just a sample obtained from the London prisons where the pre-select system has successfully been in operation for nearly ten years: Day one Midday meal Evening meal Vegetarian Pasta Bake Vegetable supreme Chicken & Mushroom pie Chicken Supreme Halal Jamaican Beef Patti Halal Chicken Curry Corned beef & Pickle Roll Grilled Gammon Jacket Potato & Coleslaw Pork pie salad

Day Two Vegetable Pancake roll Bean & Vegetable curry Breaded fish Chicken Chasseur Cheese & Beano Grill Halal Beef Casserole Cheese & Tomato Roll Fish in Parsley Sauce Jacket Potato & Tuna Vegetable Quiche Salad

Day Three Vegetarian Sausage & Egg Soya Lasagne Bacon, Sausage & Egg Minced Beef Lasagne Halal Sausage & Egg Halal Beef Italienne Turkey Salad Roll Rice & Bean Stuffed Pepper Salad Jacket Potato and Curried Beans Cheese Salad The pre-select system has progressed a long way since its introduction. Prisoners now have the opportunity to select from a range of choices. In the early days if you were not a registered vegetarian, you could not have a vegetarian meal. If you were not a Muslim, you couldn’t select a halal dish. Now, things have changed Prisoners can select whatever dish they prefer. They may eat vegetarian one day, halal the next. Its their choice. In general, all prisons have now attempted to embrace the Balance of Good Health model (Food Standards Agency 2001) and are providing a nutritionally balanced, and healthy diet. We have progressed a long way from the days of bread and water and a cup of gruel. Prisoners are not dying of typhus and malnutrition any more and prisons are much more comfortable and healthy paces to work in – both for prisoners and staff.

What will be the next phase? Will we see the introduction of self catering for prisoners? Each prison having its own supermarket. All prisons have there own version of the ‘corner shop’ where they can purchase food supplements and little luxuries to make life more bearable. It is not too much of a step to provide a supermarket and the means for prisoners to prepare their own food. Most of the catering facilities and prison shops are already privatised. I am sure that ASDA or Sainsbury’s or Walmart would jump at the chance of having an in-prison store with a captive clientele of nearly 2000 every day.

Srila Prabhupada’s Presentation of Sastras

Srila Prabhupada did not present Shastra as a dry academic subject to be theorized and armchair-philosophized about. Instead of giving abstruse explanations, he spoke and more importantly lived the essence of shastra. He repeatedly emphasized the point of all sastra: “You are not this body. Surrender to Krsna.”

Srila Prabhupada repeatedly said that by reading his books we get in touch with the previous acaryas. Indeed, his purports to the sastra draw on the realization of the previous acaryas whose commentaries Prabhupada consulted before composing his own. A special feature of Srila Prabhupada’s purports, however, is that he was the first to show how the Srimad Bhagvatam’s principles can be applied in practical circumstances in the human society. Also for the first time ever, he comprehensively presented Gaudiya Vaishnava philosophy, replete with all subtleties and complexities, in a non-Indian language.

Prabhupada’s explanation of Vedic philosophy is simple, clear, and uncomplicated English is an unprecedented achievement in literary history. English is a mleccha-bhasa (language of meat eaters), but Srila Prabhupada purified it. Quoting Srila Prabhupada’s purports is as authorized as quoting from the Original Sanskrit shastras. Infact, the words of the acharya are even more potent because without the acharya’s explanations, ordinary people would not be able to understand the meaning of shastra.

Srila prabhupada’s lectures were simple, straightforward bhagavad philosophy. Prabhupada’s songs are preferable to any of the dozens of styles of melodius kirtans because there is a different level of potency altogether. Srila prabhupada’s presentations whether it is the songs he sung or the purports he wrote, everything was always Krishna centric and at no point were for material sensual pleasure. His intense purity and compassion for the fallen conditions souls manifest in all his work. Being a pure devotee of the lord, his words are infallible, totally correct and spoken for upliftment of all concerned.

His words enter the heart of a living entity and purify it. The potency in his works is so strong that even though he has written for everyone, it seems to the reader that he is speaking personally to the individual reader and whatever he has written makes complete sense to the honest inquisitive.

Srila Prabhupada’s works reflected his inadvertent strong-mind and principles. There were no contradictions or interpretations. He presented the message as it is. Srila Prabhupada make Krsna and the Hare Krsna mahamantra famous all over the world even though non-devotees don’t know much about him. This is due to his presentation of Shastra as a messenger. He never took credit for this great benediction that he was giving and continues to give to fallen conditioned souls through his books.

The philosophy he preached through his books was sound in theory and practically applicable under all circumstances. Srila Prabhupada saw nothing as different from Krsna. He saw Krsna everywhere and in everything, and everything in Krsna. Whatever he wrote is a living example or rather an extension of this premise that he lived by. He wanted to engage everything and everybody in Krsna’s service. His works and method of presentation of shastras are still inspiring thousands of people to take up the sublime method of Krsna consciousness practically in their lives. His objective of developing a Krsna conscious movement, which is not limited to study of literature, however is built on how he presented the message of Krsna and Lord Chaitanya throughout the world.