Collaborative Hardball: Using the Power of a New Negotiation as Women to Change the World

by Susan Coleman

325 pages, Kindle Edition

Published March 3, 2026

Reviews

[HELEN LORENZ · Rating 5 out of 5]

Collaborative Hardball: Using the Power of a New Negotiation as Women to Change the World presents a compelling and timely perspective on leadership, negotiation, and influence. Susan Coleman challenges conventional assumptions about negotiation while offering an empowering framework that highlights the unique strengths women bring to decision-making, collaboration, and transformational leadership.

One of the book’s greatest strengths is its ability to redefine negotiation beyond traditional win-lose models. Rather than framing negotiation as a purely competitive exercise, Coleman explores how collaboration, strategic thinking, relationship-building, and mutual value creation can become powerful tools for achieving meaningful outcomes. This approach feels especially relevant in today's increasingly interconnected and complex world.

Another standout aspect is the book’s focus on women's leadership and influence. By recognizing the strengths many women naturally bring to negotiation—such as empathy, communication, emotional intelligence, and consensus-building—the book provides a refreshing perspective that challenges outdated stereotypes while offering practical strategies for real-world application.

The book also succeeds in connecting individual negotiation skills to broader social and organizational impact. Coleman demonstrates how effective negotiation can influence not only careers and businesses but also communities, institutions, and larger systems. This broader vision elevates the conversation and gives the work significant relevance beyond traditional leadership literature.

For professionals, executives, entrepreneurs, emerging leaders, and anyone interested in negotiation, influence, leadership development, and women's empowerment, Collaborative Hardball offers valuable insights into creating stronger outcomes through collaboration, confidence, and strategic engagement.

[Laura Flavin · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Collaborative Hardball: Using the Power of a New Negotiation as Women to Change the World is an intelligent, empowering, and highly relevant exploration of negotiation, leadership, influence, and systemic change through a distinctly collaborative lens. Susan Coleman challenges outdated models of negotiation built on domination and adversarial power structures, offering instead a framework that values emotional intelligence, strategic clarity, relationship-building, and long-term transformation. The book feels both practical and visionary, grounded in real-world application while also reimagining what leadership and negotiation can become in modern society.”

“What stood out most was the book’s ability to redefine strength without sacrificing ambition or effectiveness. Rather than framing collaboration as weakness, Coleman presents it as a sophisticated and highly strategic form of influence capable of producing stronger, more sustainable outcomes across business, politics, and personal leadership. The discussions surrounding gender dynamics, workplace culture, communication, and power are especially compelling because they move beyond surface-level empowerment language and instead offer actionable insight into how women can navigate, reshape, and lead within systems that were not originally designed for them. The balance between practical negotiation tools and broader social reflection gives the book both immediate value and lasting intellectual relevance. Thought-provoking, motivating, and deeply timely, Collaborative Hardball offers a refreshing and necessary perspective on leadership, influence, and meaningful change.”

[Peggy Holman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Collaborative Hardball brings a critical message for our increasingly divided times: Negotiation is an everyday activity at work, at home, with friends and foes alike. HOW we approach it makes all the difference. By being clear about what matters AND respecting relationships, we are far more likely to find resolutions that work. Coleman offers principles, practices and stories – personal and professional – that can make a life changing difference in navigating conflicts large and small.

[Susanna Kearney · Rating 5 out of 5]

A Book for Everyone: Even Those Outside Its World

I don't work in the spaces Susan Coleman describes, the corporate boardrooms, negotiations, organizational leadership arenas where she's built her practice. So I didn't expect "Hardball" to shake me as it did.

But it did, and here's why: Coleman doesn't just teach negotiation tactics. She traces how patriarchy gets inside women's consciousness, how it shapes what we believe we're allowed to claim, demand, and create. As a woman born in the '60s and raised by 1950s parents steeped in that culture, I saw myself everywhere in these pages. Coleman is my peer, raised in the same patriarchal air I breathed, and watching her name it, break it down, and show the path forward felt like finally having language for decades of half-conscious constraint.

[Danny · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent book. Suitable for diverse groups of readers no matter what their background. Susan's many years of experience come shining through the pages. Nothing like hearing actual negotiation experience rather than just theory. Would reccommend for anyone approaching an important negotiation or simply looking for a good read on this topic.

[Lara Rosenthal · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is incredibly timely and relevant for the world we live in now. Insightful, well written, with practical ways to become better negotiators and humans! This book gets my highest recommendation. A must read.