Tom Venning

Tom Venning (556x800)

Tom Venning is a business trainer, facilitator and coach specializing in business to business sales and communication skills in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. This special experience stems from over twenty years of working throughout the region with international groups and teams. His major clients have included IBM, BASF, Henkel, Astellas, Kraft Foods, Kapsch and the United Nations.

Tom’s international experience and interest in different cultures started from birth and developed as he moved around the world, living in eight different countries, working in Europe, the Middle East and Africa and enjoying various wild adventures on five continents.

Outside of business Tom is a passionate artist with a successful international art career, a dedicated family man, active in sport, a sailor (he is building his own yacht) and always ready for travel and adventure.
Getting to ‘Yes’ or saying ‘No’ - An introduction to conflict management

Dealing with differences and conflict is a fact of life. There are formal situations in business, at home working through personal problems with a partner, even trying to make a decision alone is negotiating with yourself!

Standard conflict management approaches leave people dissatisfied and worn out. People find themselves in a dilemma between …

  • Avoiding conflict by making concessions and trying to keep everyone happy, at their own expense.
  • Fighting at other people’s expense which produces an equally hard response and ends in an increasing spiral of more conflict and failure.

There is a third way to deal with differences. The method is based on material “principled negotiantion” developed at the Harvard Negotiation Project and described in the books “Getting to Yes” and “The power of a positive No” by Roger Fisher and William Ury. The method is based on…

  • Mutual gain whenever possible.
  • Decisions based on fair, relevant standards that are independent to the will and ego of both sides.
  • Being hard on problems, facts and actions, but soft on the people and their feelings.
  • Understanding people’s needs that drive their decisions.