Sir Fred Goodwin - The Negotiator, win/lose negotiating

Sir Fred Goodwin gets the Derek Arden award for Salary Negotiating in this decade. Having destroyed the RBS / NatWest brand / shareholder value and any other Business School measure; his I Win / You Lose Negotiating style has bought the biggest pile of non performing toxic assets (ABN/AMRO) for the largest inflated price ever paid for a bank.

This is without any kind of due diligence of the toxic assets and saddled the UK taxpayer with £300 billion of toxic debt. At the same time he Negotiates himself a payout and a pension of £650,000 a year from the UK taxpayer which at age 50 is probably worth more than £20m.

Knighted by a subdued Prime Minister for services to banking in 2004 - 100,000 RBS staff have seen their shares / given in lieu of pay reduced to zero. Most of which are nice genuine people working hard under enormous pressure.

I was asked to run training for a 6 branch bank that Barclays bought in 1984 and learnt at that time it was not possible to audit a loan book in less than 3 months. Hello wake up FSA.

Sir Fred, you have shredded, the RBS / NatWest brand and lined your own pockets. Now I know what they really meant when they said Fred the Shred. "Derek Arden The Negotiation Advisor"

Soft pound deals - haggle for extras

Unless you are in a very powerful haggling position - this might not be the best time to negotiate your salary or fees.

Now is the time to do barter or swap transactions. Do things that you are an expert at, in return for something that is valuable to you from the other side.

If you are in salaried employment this could be having extra study leave, your company paying for extra training which will benefit both of you. More flexi-time etc etc

When you are doing this do not forget the usual rules of haggling / negotiation. Build rapport first, ask gentle teaser questions, come out with your proposition, back off if its no and re-ask later coming from another angle once you have found out where the company is coming from.

If you don't ask you don't get

Derek Arden - the negotiation mentor