{"id":12855,"date":"2023-01-20T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-01-20T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.scotwork.com\/nz\/blog-nz\/please-open-the-gate\/"},"modified":"2023-01-20T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2023-01-20T00:00:00","slug":"please-open-the-gate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.scotwork.com\/nz\/blog-nz\/2023\/please-open-the-gate\/","title":{"rendered":"Please open the gate"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Alumni of our courses may sense something familiar about the photo accompanying this blog \u2013 a group of sheep, standing forlornly at a shut gate, unable to progress along their chosen path (let\u2019s for a moment ignore the sheep on the right who appears to be considering their options). It\u2019s an example of how obstacles can become impassable \u2013 even when they\u2019re not. Negotiators need to be keenly aware of such obstacles, recognising them first before assessing alternative choices.<\/p>\n

I was sent the photo by a former colleague (a fellow alumnus) who knew it would tickle me, given what I now do. Indeed it did, and so much so that I thought it would be an entirely appropriate platform on which to base a blog for the new year. Blogging is one of the pleasures of the job, particularly when the muse is in, and with such a perfect photo what could go wrong? And so I set about my writing with all the gusto you might expect with a fresh new year\u2019s breeze in my resolute sails. So many examples to choose from! Decades of experience in media gave me a veritable Aladdin\u2019s cave of gates from which to choose; my own experiences of selling, managing teams, purchasing and internal negotiations also produced a bumper harvest of gates; a plethora of participants in the last year alone had share stories of their own organisational gates. And could I capture any of this in the way I wanted to? Bah! No, I could not.<\/p>\n

I had composed around a dozen or so different blogs, all of which I\u2019d rejected or was otherwise unhappy with. By now, the deadline was starting to loom and a pleasurable and insightful experience of writing a blog was starting to take on something altogether different and less enjoyable. It took me so many attempts that it was only after I worked on a course last week \u2013 and hence had an enforced break from the cursed photo \u2013 that I realised. In writing about sheep at a gate and stretching every metaphor beyond breaking point, I\u2019d constructed, walked to and stubbornly bashed my head against a self-made gate. My objective was to write a blog. The inspiration for that blog was simply one method by which to facilitate my objective \u2013 but instead, it had become an obstacle. And once I recognised that, it wasn\u2019t too hard to walk around the gate.<\/p>\n

Happy new year, and do your best to avoid gates!<\/p>\n<\/article>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Alumni of our courses may sense something familiar about the photo accompanying this blog \u2013 a group of sheep, standing forlornly at a shut gate, unable to progress along their chosen path (let\u2019s for a moment ignore the sheep on the right who appears to be considering their options). It\u2019s an example of how obstacles…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":76,"featured_media":12856,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"_legacy_url":"blog-nz\/2023\/please-open-the-gate\/","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12855","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nPlease open the gate | Scotwork NZ Negotiation Blog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"World leaders in business negotiation training and consultancy with experts across 120 countries, with negotiation courses taught in 29 languages.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.scotwork.com\/nz\/blog-nz\/2023\/please-open-the-gate\/\" \/>\n<meta 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