I have found that one of the key areas that is underrepresented in the workplace is having keen negotiation skills. Negotiation skills infiltrate all aspects of life, from one’s most personal relationships to being able to effectively communicate with colleagues in the more formal workplace environment. A few years ago, I took an online course on the NovoEd platform by Stanford Lecturer-in-Law David Johnson called Introduction to Negotiation. This was effectively one of the best courses I have taken because the information I took away was extremely valuable in the way I utilize these skills every day, from the mundane to the professional level.

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David Johnson is an attorney working in Silicon Valley. He is also a Lecturer at Stanford Law School, as well as at Stanford’s d.school (formally, The Hasso Plattner School of Design). David has tried cases in state and federal court; represented Apple, Cisco, Electronic Arts, Sankyo Pharmaceuticals and other tech companies; and has been a general counsel for private, public and non-profit companies.

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“The unfortunate reality is this: there is great risk of personal and professional harm in speaking hard truth to the very power that can cause that harm.” – David Johnson, Stanford Law School

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“It is well-understood that women often have to work better and harder than the men they are competing with, and develop superior ways to communicate their added value as a venture partner or as when holding a seat on a portfolio board.” -David Johnson, Stanford Law School.

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“The truth is that we have to take ownership, and control our stress in the workplace. Much of the stress that we feel can be managed by our own attitude and behavior. One way to overcome these stresses, when working or communicating with difficult people, is to develop our tools for managing our reaction to what are called stressor events.” – David Johnson, Stanford Law School.

“With difficult or angry people, I’ve trained myself to develop and deploy several layers of emotional engagement or, more accurately, disengagement, so that certain externalities can be kept at bay, to minimize their impact on me…For people who simply don’t communicate well, or live up to their word,” David added, “I tend to document things, usually in email. This way, someone who is a poor communicator, or has selective amnesia, or even a cognitive bias, can be made to look back on the evidence of a conversation, so that there is no question what was expected of them and vice versa.”