The recent Bear Stearns debacle can teach us many lessons but the one I’d like to address here is Jamie Dimon’s negotiating style.  In Her Place at the Table: A Woman’s Guide to Negotiating Five Key Challenges to Leadership Success, we cited a Fortune article that described his approach:

“What do I think of our competitors?” Dimon shouts by way of intro. A slim, handsome 6-footer with iron-gray hair, Dimon yanks off his turquoise tie and chops the air like a karate master. Then, in what seems to be a masterful tonal switch, he turns from pep-rally arrogance to locker-room inspiration. “Winning isn’t about patents or your IQ or where you went to school,” he says, punching out the clauses in his staccato Queens accent. “It’s about one thing—how much you want it!” The crowd is his. As the lead-in to the article suggests, “He’s tough. He’s loud. He’s irrepressible.” He is also irrepressibly male—and characterized by familiar code words.

We were writing about the trap that can befall a woman when, in a leadership role, she is reluctant to ask for help because she is concerned that doing so will be perceived as a sign of weakness.  She is not imagining things - traditionally, powerful leaders are supposed to have all the answers.  They don’t have to “work well with others” because they have the power to force the results they want.

But we all know that the new competencies of leadership require a different approach.  As Luci Knight of Working Mother Media told me at the National Association for Female Executive Luncheon today to honor the Top 30 Companies for Executive Women, “The CEO title no longer means ‘Chief Enforcement Officer’.”

It doesn’t seem that Dimon has changed his approach to leadership - or to negotiation- much since then.  According to the New York Times, he was still pounding the table last week, defending the $2 a share price JP Morgan Chase had offered for Bear Stearns. 

As you may know, the price was so low that it caused a hue and cry from employees and shareholders alike.  So Dimon had to go back to the bargaining table - this time, he offered a price of $10 a share.  Only time will tell whether that will stick; lawsuits are being filed as I write this.

But what we do know even now is that hardball tactics don’t work very well when you are trying to make a deal.  Even when you have the power to force an outcome that you want (talk about power - how many of us have the support of the federal government behind us when we sit at the bargaining table?), it’s better to consider the interests of the involved parties. 

Just consider how the employees who remain with Bear Stearns may feel about their new boss (please note that Dimon had to make telephone calls to other investment houses to ask them not to hire those interviewing for jobs!).  If the deal sticks, I wonder if Dimon will be anxious to commission an employee satisfaction survey?

TAGS: bear-stearns, hardball tactics, Jamie Dimon, power