Episode #005: Negotiation Leadership (Ted Phillips)

 🎙️ Negotiation Warriors – Episode #005: Negotiation Leadership with Ted Phillips

What does it take to lead one of the most iconic franchises in professional sports for over four decades? 

In this episode of Negotiation Warriors, I sit down with my former boss, mentor, and friend—Ted Phillips, longtime President & CEO of the Chicago Bears. Ted shares invaluable lessons from 40 years inside the NFL, including his time as the team’s lead contract negotiator and one of the most respected executives in the league. 

We dive into: 

•  The evolution of NFL contract negotiations and salary cap strategy 
•  Real stories negotiating with iconic players and agents 
•  The importance of preparation, patience, and discipline 
•  How to build trust and long-term relationships in high-stakes negotiations 
•  The art of concessions, timing, and knowing when to close a deal 
•  Lessons in leadership, crisis management, and internal alignment 

Ted offers a rare behind-the-scenes look at how deals actually get done—and what separates good negotiators from great ones.
 
If you want to understand negotiation at the highest level of professional sports, this is a must-watch.
 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Steve McMichael, God rest his soul, when he was a player, he was as tough as they come and he was he was raw with his language and it wasn't going well at all. And at one point in time, Steve looked at me and he was literally Cliff about a foot away from my face, and his biceps were bigger than my head. And he looked at me with that Texas drawl and he said, Do you know what I'd like to do to you when this negotiation is over? And I'm a young kid. I just looked at him very quietly and I said no. And he said, I'd like to punch you right in the face.

SPEAKER_01 0:42

Welcome to Negotiation Warriors. I am Cliff Stein, and I am on a never-ending quest to learn what it takes to be a great negotiator. In every episode, I will sit down with some of the greatest negotiators in professional sports who will share insights, knowledge, and draw upon their real-life negotiation experiences. Negotiation Warriors is sponsored by Front Office 360, premium cap management software. To find out how we are helping college athletic programs, go to frontoffice360.com to schedule a demo. Welcome back to Negotiation Warriors, the podcast where we have conversations with some of the greatest negotiators in professional sports. Today's guest is one of the most influential executives in the history of the National Football League. Ted Phillips was the president and CEO of the Chicago Bears for years, overseeing every aspect of one of the league's most iconic franchises. From football operations and business strategy to stadium development, sponsorships, ownership relations, and he was with the Bears forty years. During his tenure with the Bears, Ted played a role in the salary cap, player contracts, coach contracts, NFL labor negotiations, league-wide governance, and the complex intersection between football, business, and leadership at one of the highest levels of professional sports. He is known throughout the league as a steady hand, trusted voice, advisor, mentor, disciplined decision maker. He brings a unique perspective on negotiations, not just at the table, but in building long-term relationships, managing crises, and leading through change. I'm very excited to welcome my good friend, my mentor, my former boss, Ted Phillips. Ted, welcome.

SPEAKER_00 3:00

Thank you, Cliff. What an introduction. That was outstanding. And I really appreciate that. I'm not sure I'm deserving of all of that praise, but uh but thank you. And it's it's great to be with you and to talk about uh my career a little bit, I guess, and negotiations with players or politicians, whatever, however, you want to take this discussion.

SPEAKER_01 3:24

Well, I'm excited to have you because number one, the podcast gave me a good reason to catch up with one of my good friends. And when you have 40 years of experience, there's so much there to delve into Ted. And that's why I want to talk to you about. Like your career spanned 40 years with one organization, which is very rare. Even even you have to be look back and be surprised on that, or just how does that make you feel that you were with one organization for for that long?

SPEAKER_00 3:57

Yeah, so I think about that a lot, and I'm very grateful. And I think what what I was able to do in terms of staying with one team for that many years is my job changed so often throughout those 40 years. But to be able to build that kind of loyalty and trust has made me so grateful and appreciative. And being in the NFL in particular, um it's a real blessing.

SPEAKER_01 4:26

You've had a lot of time. You you retired um was it 2023, spring of 2023?

SPEAKER_00 4:33

Yeah, about two and a half years ago, two years ago.

SPEAKER_01 4:35

Two and a half years ago. So you had a lot of time to reflect on that. What are some of your greatest memories?

SPEAKER_00 4:42

Oh, there's so many. Um you know, just being able to rise through the ranks, become CEO, um, you know, from rebuilding Soldier Field and dealing with Chicago and Illinois politicians was was really quite a experience. I think it made me tougher. I've had so many relationships throughout the years with player agents and players themselves, because in the years when I negotiated contracts for the Bears, the money wasn't as big. The the staff itself was smaller, and so you had more personal relationships. And uh I've had the uh good fortune of of being able to negotiate with some of the most iconic agents uh in the history of sports.

SPEAKER_01 5:35

Yeah. I'm gonna ask you about that too. And and that's the one thing, like, you know, you one of your greatest attributes as a leader was your humility. And a lot of people don't realize that, you know, they know you were a negotiator dealing with the city of Chicago, uh Arlington Heights, business leaders, whether it was for radio rights or sponsorships. But a lot of people don't realize that before you became president, you were the player contract negotiator. How did that happen? How did you change you you said that you changed roles a lot? What was your position when you started with the Bears and how did you become the contract negotiator?

SPEAKER_00 6:17

All right, I'll give you a little bit of historical background. So I started out of college working as a CPA for a big eight accounting firm, Ernst and Winnie, previously Ernst and Ernst, currently Ernst and Young, one of the big four remaining firms. And I get I go back that far because that ended up being my path to the NFL. I started off as an auditor for two years. I became frustrated in that role because a lot of companies didn't value the auditors coming in and looking at their past financial history. So I switched to the tax department. I was a young 26-year-old tax professional, thinking I'm gonna have a long career in a CPA firm as a tax accountant, and you know, working with, you know, doing smart tax planning, finding companies finding ways to save money for companies. And one of my clients just happened to be the Chicago Bears Football Club. I wasn't from Chicago. I didn't know a lot about the Bears. I was a huge sports fan. But during those couple years as a tax accountant for the Bears, the Bears at the time had an office in downtown Chicago. So I spent time in those offices. I got to know their treasurer and their in-house attorney at the time, Jerry Vanisi. Now, this is going way back. And although the Bears were a big name company then, their staff was small. It was a very close-knit family environment. And Jerry Venisi got promoted to general manager when the Bears' previous general manager, Jim Finks, who's an iconic figure in the NFL, he resigned to run the Chicago Cubs, if you can believe that, for a year. So that was 1983. Jerry contacted a partner at my accounting firm, and he asked if either I, or there was another young accountant who had done some work for the Bears, if we were interested in working for the Bears. He needed to hire a controller, financial controller. I never thought that I would be in professional sports. I was hesitant to interview, but I decided to give it a shot. And he gave me 24 hours to make up my mind as to whether we wanted the job. And so I was hired as controller of the Bears. And then after being hired by them, about four years later, or actually about two years later, I started to work on my MBA. What's funny about that is I've told recently, I've told George McCaskey, who's the Bears chairman, uh, he's a part owner, and he was my boss for many years, that I did that because I was going to leave the Bears. I didn't know if I uh wanted to hand have that as my career, so I wanted some more um experience in marketing and finance, not just accounting. Um but what happened is that after the 1986 season, which was two seasons after the Super Bowl champion Bears, Jerry Venisi was fired. And Mike McCaskey, who was the president and owner of the team, needed someone to handle contract negotiations. And I give that that was my first kind of foray into the football side of the Bears. And Bill McGrain, who was a uh administrator at the Bears for many years, had actually worked with Jim Finks at the Minnesota Vikings before he came to the Bears. He was kind of a mentor of mine. And he and I would sit and he would say to me, You can do this, Ted. You can negotiate contracts. Um I had I had some at the time, I had some familiarity with player contracts just because of the financial aspects of dealing with incentive bonuses and looking at uh whether or not an annuity would work for a particular player. So I knew the financial aspects and how contracts were structured, but he gave me the impetus to walk into Mike McCaskey's office and to sell myself as the person who could be a contract negotiator for the Bears. Um I wasn't sure if he was going to accept that. He did, and for the next 15 years, I was the Bears player contract negotiator. I I started getting more responsibilities with football operations, and as you mentioned at the outset, marketing sponsorships, every aspect of the Bears business kind of started to fall under me. And it was a wonderful time. The Bears were very popular. They were a good team on the field, and it was at the early stages of free agency at the time, had just begun. So it was a very exciting time. And because I had some relationships with ownership and and Coach Ditka and the football operations folks, I felt like I had that inner structure that was solid and that would be supportive of me. And so at that point in time I dove into that new world of professional football player contracts and negotiations.

SPEAKER_01 11:46

Wow. At the time you were doing it, Ted, I can't imagine I know you've we're gonna talk about some of the negotiators you've dealt with and agents, but I know it was a different time. Like the agents weren't as prevalent at that time. Were you also dealing directly with players on their contracts?

SPEAKER_00 12:08

So a couple times, yes. In particular, probably two of the most prominent players at the time who I actually negotiated with one-on-one would be Mike Singletary and Steve McMichael.

SPEAKER_01 12:22

What was that like? I mean, these are these are Hall of Fame players.

SPEAKER_00 12:26

Yes, and and the Bears were playing very well. They've still, even though they were two years off of the Super Bowl team, they were still a very good team on the field. And so with Mike Singletary, he was in the middle of a I think it was about a seven-year contract that he had done previous to me being the goat negotiator, and that was a very long contract, and it wasn't player-friendly at all. So what's interesting about his situation is he never went to the press. And at that time, he was NFL player, defensive player of the year. I think at least once he was the the heart and soul of our defense. And he literally would come into my office unannounced, and he would want to talk about his contract. And I wouldn't, I wouldn't take years off the deal, but he just wanted some incentive bonuses. And we would go back and forth for hours, and he would pace in my office, and he had the he had those steely eyes that are so iconic and classic. And I got to just deal with him, you know, one-on-one. He was very intense, just as he was as a player. And I would, he probably came in three or four times in two years just to get the ability to possibly make more money. And it would take hours because, you know, I was I was always a stickler for every single I always treated the Bears' money like it was my own. So I didn't just hand it out because he was Mike Singletary. I made him fight for it. And he did. It was it was really actually one of the most fun and interesting times in terms of contract negotiations. And over the years I would bring that up to him when I would see him, and he we would just laugh about how we would just do that, and the media never knew because it was a different time. The media wasn't involved. There was no social media at the time. So that was one. Steve McMichael, God rest his soul, when he was a player, he was as tough as they come, and he was he was raw with his language, and he didn't like his agent, so he fired his agent during one negotiation, and he and I sat and talked on a sofa about his contract, and it wasn't going well at all. And at one point in time, Steve looked at me and he was literally Cliff about a foot away from my face, and his biceps were bigger than my head. And he looked at me with that Texas drawl and he said, Do you know what I'd like to do to you when this negotiation is over? And I'm a young kid. I just looked at him very quietly and I said, No. And he said, I'd like to punch you right in the face. So got the deal done, fast forward, and I told him years later, I said, you know, I really appreciated you the way you handled that, because I was never fearful or consorted, and I developed really thick skin after that negotiation because it was it was um it was unique to say the least.

SPEAKER_01 15:47

Yeah, so these were star players on the team. Yeah. Yeah. Negotiating themselves. You must have felt tremendous pressure. Would you would you have preferred that they had an agent?

SPEAKER_00 16:00

Yeah, I would I would say yes, because I knew I had to get these deals done. And they were emotional. They were both very emotional about it. And and I tried to stay very level-headed and and not show emotion. Um, and at the same time, I was still a fairly new negotiator. You know, I knew, you know, we had we had some big personalities like Mike Ditka is the head coach, and he wasn't going to listen to me telling him I can't get a contract done for Mike Singletary and Steve McMichael. So yet the negotiations were not only with the players, but also with Coach Ditka and the ownership of the Bears.

SPEAKER_01 16:39

All right, so I'm taking you back to this same time period where you you mentioned you've dealt with some of the greatest negotiators in professional sports. One of them I want I want to mention, um, I know was Lee Steinberg, correct? Yes. And Lee Steinberg, I have a book with me. He wrote this book um called Winning with Integrity. Funny story about this book was I actually read it before I started working for the Bears. And because he wrote um about you, it actually helped me prepare for my interview with you. I don't know if I ever even told you that. Yeah. But I wanna I want to point out a couple things he says about you in this book. Okay. Uh Ted Phillips is incredibly well organized to the point he sits down for a discussion with a flip chart of index cards, each spelling out the details, ramifications, and relative value of every possible clause that might come up in the discussion, from incentives to bonuses. When a particular clause is mentioned, he flips to that card and immediately breaks that point down into six sub-points, each of which he has a position on. Do you recall this? Is this true? Is this your process?

SPEAKER_00 18:04

He has a better memory than I do. What's what's interesting? So I've dealt several times with Lee, but the first time was the first year I negotiated contracts. And his so Lee Steinberg at the time was considered the quarterback guru. He had all the top quarterbacks, not all, but several in the league. And we had just drafted Jim Harbaugh in the first round in 1987. So that's the contract that he's, I think, referencing. And so I'm in a position where it's my first first-round contract negotiation. I'm dealing with perhaps the most iconic agent at the time for quarterbacks. And so I prepared for hours. And one of the things I can I can share with you about that negotiation is Lee Steinberg was in California. We were in Plattville, Wisconsin. So he had a three-hour time advantage on me, and he used it constantly. He would call me when it was nighttime in Wisconsin, and he knew he could keep me up till 12, midnight, one o'clock in the morning. Um, and and we just would go back and forth on every single incentive clause. Now, that was at a time when there weren't a lot of guarantees in contracts. So you really what the battles were were length of contract, signing bonus, and what kind of incentive clauses that was the team willing to give. So, yeah, so I would I would work hard at trying to understand other quarterback contracts in the league, how they were structured with incentives or not incentives. And we had some great epic battles. In fact, during that negotiation, Lee Steinberg at one point came in with his partner, Jeff Morad, and they came into my little uh dorm room in Wisconsin, and they had squirt guns. And it was a great tactic because I was stressed out, Jim Harbaugh was holding out, pressure was on me to get a deal done, and they came in with squirt guns squirting me, and it just was a great tension reliever and was kind of the impetus for ultimately getting the deal done.

SPEAKER_01 20:31

Yeah, that's great. And that's where it's it's great to hear things like that where people kind of think outside the box. There seems like a recognition that, A, the relationship's important, but he's also thinking about the stress and pressures that you're under when they do things like that or bring humor into it. Is that how you felt?

SPEAKER_00 20:54

Yeah, a hundred percent. And I think one of the one of the lessons I learned from that is you have to try to put yourself in the agent or the player's shoes and understand what it is that they're trying to get out of this deal and how not to, you know, you don't want to put your foot on their neck because you have leverage. At the same time, you don't want them doing it to you. So it was about it's about trying to understand relationships and you try to build a relationship. It's not just a business transaction. You have to make it more personal, and at the same time, you have to realize that you can't win every point. Even if you have the leverage, it's important that for both sides you want a player and his agent to feel good about certain aspects of the deal and that it wasn't a one sided negotiation. Because the reality is you will probably be dealing with With that agent again, either with the same player or with a different player on your team. So you want to stay as positive and as professional as you possibly can and be respectful to the other side. Um for me, one of the biggest lessons I've learned, and it it started way back in the 1980s, is try to understand the agent's perspective and how they go about doing deals and when to get a deal done. There's not a textbook that can teach you that, but you have to have a sense as to when it's time to stop the back and forth, stop the posturing, and get a deal done. For me, now Lee was always good at that, but the of all the agents I've dealt with when I think about that aspect of a negotiation, who comes to mind is Tom Condon, who always knew when to get it done. He could spend hours with you going back and forth, but there was always a time and place where he said, okay, it's time. And sometimes he didn't have to say it. You just knew it by how he was approaching different aspects of the deal. It's uh it's a fine art of negotiation and a very important point, in my opinion.

SPEAKER_01 23:25

Yeah, well, that's great. Um I love I love that. One of the greatest things I thought that you taught me, and um, you know, I started teaching in my class as well, but that also going back to Lee Steinberg, one of the most iconic agents, he sort of identified it too. He called, he's you mastered the art of concessions. And what I got from you early on in my career was the tactic that I teach now, embellishment. And I think we're saying the same thing. I'll say what he said in the book. Again, I'm gonna go back to this to Lee Steinberg's book, Winning with Integrity, when he said about you that he will grudgingly concede each point you are able to win. The substance of each point may be relatively insignificant, but Ted makes you fight for every nickel and dime. The feeling because of the struggle is that you've won a major victory, a huge concession, when in fact he has given up what might not be that much at all. And I remember you early in my career pulling me aside and talk about the word embellishment. That was something that was very particular, I felt, to you, but something I found extremely, extremely useful in my career, in my consulting now, in my teaching. Can you talk about that a little bit?

SPEAKER_00 24:57

Yeah, I love I love that. I love that you took that from some of our dealings together. Yeah, I think I think by embellishing certain points, or really embellishing what you gave up in terms of letting the other side, in effect, gain an advantage. If you can kind of talk through that and say and make them feel as if it was a huge win, even though it probably wasn't from your standpoint, that is that is so important, not just during the negotiation, but afterwards, so that the agent and the player feel like, wow, we got these points. And can you believe how important that was to the bears and to Ted? And it wasn't one-sided, and he gave in on those points, and it makes them feel good. It makes a player feel like his agent is also doing a great job for him, and that it's not just about the bear leaning in and trying to take advantage of a player. It's it's again, it's another one of those fine points of negotiating that when you can make someone feel really good about what they got and you don't feel like you gave up that much, but they do, that's called the best kind of negotiation you can have. That's the old the old win-win concept.

SPEAKER_01 26:27

So related to that is to be a good negotiator, you gotta be patient, right? Yes. And I think there's look, you had general managers reporting to you, cap people, contract negotiation people, executives that do other kinds of deals as well. And in order to maximize that tactic, whether it's embellishment and or making the other side feel that they're getting wins, they have to be patient. Did you find that when you were coaching your the people underneath you that were getting deals done, did you find that to be a challenge, like that too many people just want to get right to the bottom line and skip the whole process?

SPEAKER_00 27:13

A hundred percent. Think the idea that you have to be cognizant of the timing of a deal, but it's equally as important, if not more important, to not panic, not be afraid to even walk away, maybe not from the deal entirely, but for that moment, if emotions are rising. And I think that's one of the common mistakes is giving in too soon. And why do people do that? Because it's easy. Because it's not their money, but the best negotiators treat the team's money as if it was their own. And you you have to you have to not let negotiations get emotional and personal, and it's not always possible to do that. And that's when you have to step away. And it's not easy to do, but you have to do that. You have to, those are some of the common mistakes that people just give in to soon. And which isn't appreciated all the time is they have to keep the key people on their side internally, whether it's the coach, the GM, the owner, all of them informed and in the loop throughout the negotiation. And when you don't do that, that's when problems develop, emotions rise. And one of the things that is positive that can come out of keeping your own side internally informed is you get other options, sometimes there's other options in deals, whether it's making a deal a shorter contract negotiation, or maybe there's another player that at some point, if the negotiations, if the money's rising to such a level that you don't feel it's worth it, as long as the other people internally feel the same way, then you can move on to a second option. Again, not easy to do, but sometimes you can't be afraid to walk away.

SPEAKER_01 29:20

Can't be afraid to walk away. Absolutely. Any other, we have you, you know, we consider you, I consider you a master negotiator. Did it so many years. Any other tactics that you found to be successful?

SPEAKER_00 29:36

Well, I think probably everyone says it. You have to have meticulous, detailed preparations. You have to do that, especially nowadays when the cap rules and the collective bargaining agreement and there's guarantees and deals and con different kinds of contract structures from voidable years to escalators and bonuses. Um you have to deeply understand how different deals are structured. Back when I was doing a lot of the deals, you could quickly look at someone else's contract and understand how it was valued and how the money that you might want to spend would stack up. Nowadays you have to dig deep, and you know this because you are an expert at it. You would dig deep into other teams' contracts, let's say it was for a quarterback, to understand really what the value is. It wasn't quite as obvious on the face of the deal as it used to be. So you have to do that. You have to you have to know agents, you have to know how they've handled other deals. You have to know what they like and dislike in terms of contract structures. You know, are they do they have a penchant for holdouts? Is that how they like to get deals done? Are they are they uh more effective dealing with certain player positions? Sometimes agents are better at s handling negotiations for certain positions than others. You can't panic. You have to take time, and you also have to be able to handle criticism. Whether it's from the media, from your own internal uh people that you report to, because that's its its own negotiation, or from an agent who's using the media to paint the wrong picture of the negotiation publicly. Those that can be sometimes one of the most difficult type of negotiations to deal with.

SPEAKER_01 31:45

Speaking of difficult, how about dealing with uh tough or difficult negotiators? Anything you can remember or relate back to of things that you did in those situations?

SPEAKER_00 32:02

Yeah, so one of the ones that uh and he was a very good agent in his time, uh a guy named Jack Mills. I remember he used to represent Keith Van Horn at the Bears, who was offensive tackle. And I would prepare meticulous notes, details, and he just wouldn't budge from his position. And in his mind, he knew when you talk about having a second option, the Bears didn't have another option. So sooner or later, we were going to give in closer to his number than we wanted to, and he would just let time pass. And it was very, very hard and frustrating because you'd put in all the efforts to try to make a deal uh that made sense to both parties, and he had the ability um to just wait you out until you couldn't wait any longer. Those kinds of deals are really hard because you're not getting the fair give and take that you want to have in a in a d in a negotiation.

SPEAKER_01 33:07

So as a front office executive negotiating contracts, when agents do that, and you talked about earlier about the internal negotiation, having options, willingness to walk away. But in that situation, you got offensive tackle.

SPEAKER_00 33:26

He was good, he was solid, and he was a leader.

SPEAKER_01 33:29

So he's a starter on your team.

SPEAKER_00 33:31

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 33:32

And what's going on behind the scenes, right? So this guy's not getting back to you. You know you got to get it done. He knows you got to get it done, and you have all this pressure, right? I'm assuming from a coach, owner, something, right? There's got to be pressure on you.

SPEAKER_00 33:50

So so and that pressure, that's where you have to continually talk. I'll use Mike Ditka as an example. You have to talk to them and keep them in the loop as to the pros and cons, what's going on, how you're progressing or not. I'll give you a quick side side story. Kevin Butler was our kicker. Well, he was a great kicker for the Bears. He was a he was the super on the Super Bowl team. And during a negotiation I had with him, with Kevin and his agent, it wasn't going well. And Kevin went to Mike Ditka and complained about me. Ditka called me into his office with Kevin sitting there, kind of read me the riot act. I had to take a deep breath, ask Kevin to leave the room, and I had to tell Mike Ditka, which wasn't easy, but he appreciated it because you have to be candid. And I said to him, Coach, you can never do that again. We'll never get a deal done if the player thinks you're on his side. I want the player in the building as much as you do. You have to trust me. And if you have an issue, come see me. Don't deal with the player directly. And he appreciated that and never did it again. Never did it again. And we ended up getting the deal done.

SPEAKER_01 35:13

Well, that's um it's great advice, especially I don't know how much you follow this now, but especially with how negotiations are taking place at the college level, you know, where you don't have necessarily the same front office structure you have in an NFL team. So the head coach is really the CEO and general manager and has to deal directly with players. So that kind of advice I think is so important. Anything else like that, like in those situations, do you follow that at all?

SPEAKER_00 35:50

Well, it's kind of a, you know, with the all the money that's going to college players now and the transfer portal, as you're well aware, it's a new, new kind of nuance of trying to understand how to get deals done. And I think the colleges are lacking in that expertise. So they they need people like you who can understand that and understand, you know, there's a certain amount of money. I don't know it in detail. I know there's a certain part of money that colleges now can use to attract the right kind of talent. What what is that right kind of talent? They have to understand that you have to not only find the right type of players who want to be part of your program and aren't just out for the dollar because what happens then is they end up getting disenchanted with the college they're at and they transfer and they've taken money. So I think it it's a matter of understanding the player, how committed he is to the university he's at, making sure that he's going to be part of that team, not just for the current year, but for the future. And that's one of the things you always did well in managing the cap is you looked ahead and looked for three or four years out, and how was the contracts were coming up at certain times, and what positions were going to be needed, and be able to try to parcel out the salary cap dollars not just for the current year but for the future too, and not so the team wouldn't be hamstrung. Colleges have to do that too, and it's hard.

SPEAKER_01 37:33

Can we pull you out of retirement to come work with some of the colleges?

SPEAKER_00 37:38

I don't think so. I think you you became quite a quite an expert negotiator, and I think um you're more in tune with the what is needed on the college level now than I am.

SPEAKER_01 37:51

Thank you. I did not um tell Ted to say that, by the way. Um I have just one I have one last question because we asked this question to everyone, and you may have already answered part of this, and I apologize if you did. But what are the key traits of being a great negotiator?

SPEAKER_00 38:12

Yeah, I well, I think um I think we've talked about a lot of them throughout this discussion. Well, but some other points I would say are you have to learn to listen and be a good communicator. Jim Finks used to tell me that. It was when he when he left the Bears and became the GM of the New Orleans Saints at the time, he always told me, you have two ears and one mouth for a reason. Use them in proportion. When the bullets start flying, keep your head down, stay consistent, and do a good job and listen to what's going on around you. So, you know, and then from that, you've you need to have the ability to explain why your your approach on certain aspects of a contract makes sense. You have to be able to articulate a winning vision for the player and how he fits on the team. And that comes from having a good relationship with your general manager and understand how his skill sets fit in with the team. You can't panic. We've said that before, I said it before. You can't be afraid to walk away from a deal. You have to be patient, but you have to be tough. And just giving in because it's the easy thing to do, because you want to move on to another negotiation. No. That you you can't do that. You have to understand each individual agent and how they work. You know, you need to talk. One of the things you I think you you need to do as a negotiator is talk to other negotiators. There's only 32 of them. And you need to get relationships with them, the ones that you think do a good job, and learn how they go about handling contract negotiations. It's about communication. One of the, and and he's he's long since passed away, but when I was a young negotiator, I looked at George Young, who was the GM of the New York Giants. And one of the reasons I looked towards him is because he had been a school teacher. So he understood what an educator, how an educator would approach approach young people. Um so he not only had the football mind, but he had a teaching mind too. And I that was just so invaluable to me to understand, you know, how the other side, young people, young players, look at their situation on the team.

SPEAKER_01 40:50

So impactful. Um, I feel like we never left the Bears. I feel like I'm sitting in your office and uh it's like nothing has ever changed because um I could listen to you for for hours, really. Um so helpful. So helpful for people who want to learn about negotiation, so helpful for the students. Um you you've always been um how we define negotiation warrior, and you summed up a lot of those things in everything you said. So uh so excited to have you in the in in the words of Jim Sphinx. You mentioned him a couple of times. It's been a pleasure. It's been a pleasure.

SPEAKER_00 41:28

That's great, Cliff. I love it. It's been uh a lot of fun, and um, hopefully some of the lessons, um, tactics that I've talked about can help your students in in their business, whether it's sports or business negotiations.

SPEAKER_01 41:43

Absolutely. I will appreciate it. And I value you as a friend and a professional. So thank you for it. And you as well. Great having you.

SPEAKER_00 41:52

Thank you, Cliff.

SPEAKER_02 41:54

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