Mission Statement
Business Leadership & Strategic Performance Training/Enhancement
"Our objective is to assist individuals, companies and organizations reach optimal performance using innate skills and strengths within the larger framework of circumstance, workplace and community. Relevant and stimulating programs are customized to client requirement".
-Rodger Harding
Founder

Harding International and Associates Inc.
E-Mail
Telephone: +1 (416) 962 6700
9836 Keele Street
Vaughan, L6A 3Y4
Ontario, Canada
Client Comment
Selected Comments
"This seminar far exceeded expectation - Rodger is poised, articulate, respectful- He was dead on with his presentation and I would recommend him without hesitation." - S.M. Canadian Women in Communications (CWC)
"Your participation in our International/Asia Pacific FS Conference helped make it one of the best and more relaxed conferences we've ever had. Very effective facilitation! Thank you." - Paul Masse, Manager, Bombardier Aerospace
" I want to congratulate you on a job well done. A room full of lawyers is not the easiest audience to appear before, yet you ruled the room. You have that unique ability (gift?) to teach ideas without it being hard work. I found your personal style very relaxing yet challenging". - David Clarke, Chair, YLD Division, The Canadian Bar Association of Ontario
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Corporate Intelligence

CIA Harding International and Associates Inc.

Publication:
"In this compelling book by a former diplomat, you will learn the secrets (step by step) to developing an intelligence strategy by effective information gathering and analyzing, and then to delivering credible intelligence to senior management."|more...

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Leadership Training
The Essence of Business Leadership Training -
Be the leader you are meant to be!

Toronto based Rodger Harding, applying leadership savvy learned from military, legal, diplomatic & business consulting experience has a proven record of enabling full leadership potential in scores of business folk. His clients range from start-ups to Fortune 500 companies, national not-for-profit organizations & learning institutions.

The Harding Leadership training program raises awareness, validates and empowers the true essence of leadership. We enhance your ability to identify, strengthen and take full advantage of core leadership competencies, instilling legitimate confidence rather than reinforcing a preoccupation with outward presence. | more...
Training/Coaching
Training Program Design and Development
All Harding International and Associates Inc. programs are designed to:
  • Access existing innate and learned competencies/experience.
  • Enhance individual/team ability to meet current organizational requirement.
  • Accommodate changing environment and circumstance.
Our customized programs are built from scratch and will accurately reflect the unique context of corporate operations and identity. Training products that utilize the Harding Model are limited to one company per industry. This commitment ensures that training initiatives will result in strategic and competitive advantage - We encourage clients to safeguard our techniques and methodology as part of their intellectual property.| more...

LATEST NEWS/COMMENT

It's your Career: Don't Hesitate...Negotiate!

by Administrator 22.Sep.2014 15:23:00

“In business, you don't get what you deserve, you get what you negotiate.”  - Chester L. Karrass

Children are born negotiators – They focus on their goals with dogged persistence until every avenue is exhausted before they give up. They also unfailingly and enthusiastically set new goals as circumstances change.

What erodes this innate ability? I am always puzzled by the general reluctance of business folk to negotiate a better deal, especially when it concerns a promotion, a raise or a more a favourable contract. Instead, people choose to remain silent, walk away or quit a perfectly good job. Why is this?

In a perfect world, that people should be rewarded for good work is a no-brainer. Yet it is an equally human desire to secure the best deal at the lowest possible price. Few would point out to a vendor, for example, that prices are too low, or that a service fee really needs to be raised. So too in the workplace, many managers or employers, accountable to bottom line profit margins, are happy to secure input for the best price. It takes a forward thinking supervisor initiate a raise or promotion for someone just because they deserve it.

Best business practice theories remind us that workplace retention goes hand in hand with incentive and reward. These are perhaps part of the problem. Written policies outlining succession and salary structures create the expectation that individual salary and promotion issues will automatically be taken care of according to set procedure. At the same time many managers/supervisors/owners complacently think to promote/raise salaries only when really necessary. 

Added to the mix, the massive hiring/lay-off cycles witnessed in past decades, as well as the constant post buy-out/sell-off reorganizations, have created a lingering malaise - The average worker is permanently alert to the potential jeopardy of his/her position. There is perhaps a pervasive anxiety that asking for more or seeming entitled will result being placed on the expendable list?       

People are naturally fearful when the outcome of an interaction is uncertain. Just as with interview situations, the possibility of rejection and perceived humiliation of a failed negotiation is daunting for most. It is easier to avoid confrontation, hoping the desired outcome will just appear. The resultant problem is that buried frustration festers and grows into deep-seated discontent, eventually flaring into misdirected conflict over unrelated issues. A more common consequence would be a passive-aggressive quit and stay attitude that eventually poisons the office environment.  

How much better to confront career advancement issues rationally when they arise! To do this the individual employee should be prepared to negotiate in a rational manner, with a built-in preparedness for success or failure. The outcome of negotiation will then dictate a course of action based on actual, not perceived realities.

Potentially Useful Guidelines

Consider the following as a suggested awareness check-list to prepare for an effective career advancement negotiation:  

• Appreciate the current net market worth of your individual experience, competencies, personality and aspirations in a specific work environment
• Understand the financial and operational realities/limitations of your organization and industry
• Set firm, articulate objectives/goals  that will be the focus of any negotiation
• Be aware of the negotiation playing field (who will be your negotiation opponent/party; what are the personality/historical factors that need to be taken into account)
• Maintain preparedness to compromise (unwillingness to compromise changes the prospective interaction from negotiation to aggression)

Confrontation VS Conflict

Directly asking for what is deserved is not conflict. It is the inherent right of any employee to seek advancement. Assertive behavior, however, is the balancing of individual needs with those of the employer. Negotiating while in a desperate financial or emotional state drastically increases the risk of confrontation escalating into conflict.
 
Unfortunately our personal requirements are not always uppermost in the minds of busy managers/executives. As many assume that silence equals contentment, we would do well to remember that we are responsible for keeping our requirements on the corporate radar screen…In good time!  

When training individuals to negotiate, I rely heavily on Benoit Mandelbrot and his Fractal Geometry of Nature (see the Mandelbrot Set) Theory that illustrates how chaotic enormity contains smaller versions of the same phenomenon… “Fractal property of self-similarity applies to the entire set, and not just to its parts.” Mandelbrot asserts for example that if the pattern of the smallest leaf is understood, so too is every leaf on the tree. Think of the process a child would follow if negotiating for an ice cream or a go-kart ride… The principles are exactly the same when the ante is upped! 

Leadership: Understanding Change, Crisis Management (Self-Similarity, Fractal Geometry & The Butterfly Effect)

by Administrator 28.Mar.2012 11:08:00

Convincing clients that understanding and providing answers to complex organizational challenges lies in exactly the same approach to simplistic issues has always been difficult.

Over the years I have relied more on more on mathematical proof (ironic as I am a complete math idiot) as a persuasive tool that chaos, change and evolution are an integral part of life and should be accepted & managed rather than avoided… Quests for certainty are futile!

In particular the work of Benoit Mandelbrot and his Fractal Geometry of Nature (see the Mandelbrot Set) theories that illustrate chaotic enormity contains smaller version of the same phenomenon… “Fractal property of self-similarity applies to the entire set, and not just to its parts.”

The Morphogenesis work of Alan Turing, one of my most inspirational role-models, identifies a simple math equation that illustrates how chaos has its origins in order. Boris Belousov similarly explored and identified the co-existence of chaos in uniformity.
The Belousov-Zhabotinky reaction demonstrates that “under the influence of stimuli, patterns develop in what would otherwise be a perfectly quiescent medium.” Working in the 1950’s, both men’s findings were at the time rejected by conservative scientific mainstream as out to lunch!

Edward Lorenz’s Butterfly Effect, describes how an initial random event, in normal conditions, can result in chaotic results. Chaos in turn will return to initial conditions!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gEw8xpb1aRA



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