Yes is the answer to that question if you only read the headline of the recent Harvard Business Review article Being Nice in a Negotiation Can Backfire.  Negotiation is my field. I have…

The premise of Malcolm Gladwell’s best-selling Outliers was that spectacular success isn’t driven by genius. Instead it’s the product of privilege, opportunity, and—perhaps most important in Gladwell’s eyes—subject matter mastery that comes from hard…

Robert Cialdini is the go-to guru for great advice about persuasion. His classic book Influence explains how subtle tweaks in phrasing a question or making an offer can transform a “no” into a “yes.”…

Say it’s time you’ve got to pump people up. Maybe you head a sales team that hasn’t met its quarterly quota. Or it could be Saturday morning and you’re about to send…

Test yourself as you read this quick story. Many people celebrate it. A vocal minority loath it. What provokes their anger? Earlier this month New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof reported on his visit to the…

We usually think of stereotyping as when somebody pigeonholes and diminishes another person based on the latter’s gender, race, accent, or appearance. According to my Harvard Business School colleague Katherine Coffman, it…