Success Quote by Leigh Steinberg

Negotiation gets sold as a chess match: steely-eyed rivals, high stakes, one wrong move and you’re “taken.” Leigh Steinberg’s line punctures that myth by naming the real obstacle before any numbers hit the table: intimidation. For a businessman best known for dealmaking, it’s a quietly radical admission that the hard part isn’t strategy; it’s psychology.

The intent is practical. Steinberg is signaling that negotiation isn’t a rare talent reserved for sharks, it’s a skill ordinary people avoid because the situation feels socially risky. The subtext is about power and self-worth: many people read negotiating as conflict, as asking for “too much,” as inviting rejection, or as revealing ignorance. Those anxieties get misrecognized as a lack of competence, when they’re often just fear of being judged. In that sense, intimidation is less about the other party and more about the internal story: I don’t belong at this table.

Context matters. Steinberg comes out of industries where deals are public, reputations are currency, and outcomes can look like winner-take-all. Yet his phrasing widens the lens to everyday life: salaries, rent, medical bills, even relationships. In a culture that rewards assertiveness but punishes it unevenly (especially across gender, class, and race), “intimidating” is doing a lot of work. It points to structural asymmetries without turning the sentence into a manifesto.

The line works because it shifts negotiation from bravado to accessibility. If intimidation is the common denominator, then the first win isn’t outmaneuvering someone else; it’s reducing the fear enough to ask, clearly, for what you need.