Welcome to the 88th edition, wow! Of the Freedom Friday's podcast with a returning guest this week. Please welcome a colleague, a friend and a brand new author, Glin Bailey, welcome to the podcast.
Thank you very much. Pete, very excited to be here. I love that at the 88th episode, and we're recording this in the month of August, which is also an eight. Yeah. Love it.
Okay, I do believe that eight is a lucky number in is it in Chinese?
I think so. Yeah.
Yeah. So I don't know what this is telling us.
I don't know, but I'm excited. So thank you for having me cool.
Oh, it's a pleasure. Um, just for the for those listening, Glin and I are kind of colleagues for the same sort of work, but in a different with a different topic, and we probably connected three or four years ago.
Yeah, I think four now probably, yeah, and I've pretty much done the same thing, whereas, Glin, you have extended, expanded, taken off into a different universe, and you're now the proud author of a book which we'll come to. But just to give people a little bit of context for contrast, you've now written a book about negotiation.
Yes.
How did you get there?
How did I get to write a book about negotiation? Great question. Well, it started with negotiating with myself. Mostly interesting. I think I've always as we both are, I think, very deep, reflective thinkers, big questions about life, where are we heading? What are we doing? My business, when we last spoke, was in the space of executive coaching and self leadership development, and that is a core part self leadership, of negotiation, because emotional regulation, understanding others, recognising your own trigger points around what gets you out of your logic brain into your emotional limbic brain, all aligns with negotiation and negotiation psychology. So I ended up, during covid working for a negotiation consulting firm. Wonderful experience, great opportunity to train negotiation skills to large enterprises. I work for the same company that I was trained with back in 2006 so I've been formally trained in negotiation skills that I use for a long time in my career. But what was interesting was going back into a role in a consulting firm after being in my own business, executive coaching made me realize that negotiation was more than just about business, and it actually had much more alignment with the work that I was already doing in self leadership. Because for me, what I've learned is negotiation isn't just about what you do in a process. It actually is a huge part of defining and determining who you can become through the process and in spending time, lots of reflection time thinking about where the overlap between my previous work and the work that I was doing with corporates, what I saw was that there was a real gap in how people were communicating about negotiation and what it was as a tool and a skill set. And I'd never really heard anyone else talk about negotiation becoming a catalyst for, I guess, stepping into your truest expression of yourself and becoming more of who you want to be. And so in pondering that, I ended up leaving the corporate consulting role that I was in, started my own business called The Value Negotiator, and then that led me to question, how was I going to leave a mark that was different to everything I'd read about negotiation from a skills perspective, and bring some different thinking to it. So I wrote a book, not knowing at the time the publisher was going to change the book name to be called The Negotiation Playbook, which is a great name and I love but it had started with a much deeper sort of self identity piece. And the original name I was pondering and playing with was the question almost being posed, which was, Why Not You? You know, so because we always have this self negotiation with ourselves when we're, you know, embarking on a new life choice or a career choice or a dream that we want to fulfill. And lots of the mental dialog I've certainly had over the years is that that pesky and internal voice that gets in the way and starts having, you know, a conversation with you about all the reasons why you can't and so I wanted to have that question posed. Well, why not? You to go from a question, why not you to a statement of like, why not you? And the journey that we go through in negotiation to get to that outcome of like, of course, why not me? Why can't I have what it is that I'm wanting and who would I need to become to be able to access that? And what I believe is negotiation as a tool, as a skill set gives you the capacity to dive deeper into more practical ways to not only negotiate with yourself more effectively, because you can start to see what is your ego voice and your sort of emotional, scared part of your brain and the logic and the rational side of you, and it helps you create the space Between a stimulus and a response, and in that space is often the answer, and it also then gives you the skills to put into practice influencing and persuasion, which is part of taking other people on the journey towards getting what you want. So long answer, but yeah, I think you know the too long didn't listen. Summary is, I spent a lot of time thinking about what motivated and drove me, and then connected the dots between a core business skill and human EQ development and thought, right, There's some clear alignment here where you can use it for a practical business skill and a life skill, but I want it to be a tool for actually developing you as your best version of yourself and an identity evolution skill.
Interesting. Well, you can probably guess I'm definitely going to dive into the negotiate self concept. But first you've got a copy. Show us a copy of it. Show us a copy of the There
we go, playbook, playbook. Wow,
oh. I feel a little bit jealous that you've got neat your name on a book. Yeah. Name on a book at some point. So for those that are listening, who you know, probably a bit like me, who might have heard of the Harvard Negotiation Project, they might have heard of a concept called Win/Win. How is this different to how we typically go about or understand negotiation,
It advocates for collaborative negotiation over competitive negotiation. It advocates for creation of value rather than destruction of value. Which Win/Win would absolutely stand for. I think the key distinction is where I'm aiming to drive the conversation is that it's not about just win win, that it's actually win together. You know, because the top right quadrant, you know, often. Ends up being Win/Win, and I want it to be win together, but together can only really. It forces us to think about who we're being in the process. Because you can't you can create a win/win for people, and still to some degree be transactional in the process. Yeah, sure, yeah. And what I'm wanting to shift the dialog is, rather than just being transactional, if we were relational with each other, then actually we could win together. But the opportunity to create value is significantly more because it's a different it becomes a different conversation when we're saying we're in something together to drive an outcome, versus what do you want? What do I want? And making a transactional exchange. The other part of that is the the identity piece, which is the core distinction, is it, I'm anchoring on the perspective, I want you to question, who are you being through the process of negotiation? Now negotiation has been associated with um methods that could be perceived as being quite manipulative. And some people have the word manipulation negative connotation, and some would say manipulation is in a positive connotation, depending on what, what angle you're looking at it from, and what I'm wanting to sort of, I guess, flush up the conversation around is, is ethical negotiation doesn't happen because someone is told there's rules they have to follow to be ethical. It comes from your association with the identity of who you are. Do I see myself as someone who is morally driven? Do I see myself as someone who would promote ethics? Because that's the identity that I would associate myself with. So i.e me anchoring into the identity of the person I want to become or am being, and then working back from that to my negotiation approach. It's going to influence my negotiation approach, because if I'm only anchored on the result independent of who am I being in pursuit of the result. I could get the result many different ways, but there's only one way that's going to keep me feeling integris with myself, and that's understanding my value system, understanding who I want to become through the process and what I stand for. And so I think when I look at negotiation like, you know, yes, Harvard exists, and it's amazing, you know, yes, there's various different schools of negotiation. We talk about collaboration and we talk about competition, and each, each has its place. But I think if we're truly to change the way the world creates value in the agreements that we make, we have to work from an identity basis, and I just don't see enough people developing the EQ required to even understand what what that even means for who they need to be and how they show up.
Okay, I'm going to present a bit of a skeptical case here, if that's okay,
Please, yeah, go ahead
and it's partly personal, but I'm not going to make it personal. I reckon many of us would think of negotiation in terms of buying and selling, right, the transaction of goods and services, etc, etc, and if we accept the two biggest purchases we probably make in our lifetime, a house or a car. Yep, I get real practical for a second, and I've experienced both this year. I get where who I'm being has an impact on the buyer or the seller because of the influencing part. But you know, what, if I can get a grand off the price of that car, I don't care how I'm being. How would you, how would you respond, and I know it's a thin slice. It's a really thin slice of a much broader context around negotiation, which we'll get to. But how would you answer someone that says, All right, I'll just get into a good state. That state will influence the seller. And in fact, a grand off. I don't care who I'm becoming. I've just saved the grand. Yeah. How would you respond to that skepticism?
So I think there's, there's, there's two distinctions there. You can separate the who you're being, thought for a moment and go, what's the context? Right? So the context is, say, I'm I'm buying a house, who I'm being is still going to act with integrity and ethics if I'm choosing that identity right, but my objective is still to get the best deal available to me, right. So the way I'm looking at that is to discern based on the context in that specific situation alone, because there's so many different contexts in which negotiation is but let's say house buying or car buying, for the two that you've mentioned, house buying, we often think so. If I was to give an example around auction, we think the people we're negotiating with are the other people in the auction, because they can influence the sale price based on what they're bidding, right? And so they're key players in that negotiation. However, the real negotiation is happening with the auctioneer and the the vendors, real estate agents, because they ultimately are standing to gain, personally and professionally, from the deal that's done, right? So in that environment, you are in a competitive negotiation context, right? So whilst I say win together, win together is the approach I take in the way I communicate with them. So I can be assertive and I can be direct and I can be uncompromising, but that doesn't need to mean that I'm being rude, aggressive and disrespectful, right? So I can still focus on the outcome that I want, which is to be really mindful of the fact that I'm going to have whispers in my ear from the sales agents putting undue pressure on me at the time perceive me to be losing out against the peer group that might be in in the room, yeah, and I've got to go in there with clarity around so what am I aware of around this context, who stands to gain? Who am I actually negotiating with? What are my parameters, and what am I willing to do in terms of protecting myself from being exploited, right? And that does mean, hey, well, I'm not going to reveal the full amount of my budget because it would be inappropriate for me to do so. It does mean having a clear plan of how, how I'm going to bid and in what increments, so that I can make sure that my plan is made when I'm in a logical, rational, considered state. So when I'm in the emotional height of the auction, I'm not led astray from the plan that I've created. And so I think, and that's the thing people often think of negotiation just based on context of buying and selling, but if I shift the context to you're negotiating with your partner around who's making dinner, or you're negotiating with the kids around what chores they've committed to do, or we're negotiating with our friends around which location to meet for a Coffee, depending on where we both live and what's convenient, like we're negotiating all the time. So depending on where you are in the context, the context is going to change. The strategy that needs to be applied needs to change as appropriate, but who you're being and the identity that you're choosing to step into still needs to be rooted in the awareness of the values you're going to bring to the table. And I think that's the the anchor that I'm trying to land with. This is that unless you have clarity around the values that are needed for successful negotiation, then it's easy to become unanchored, so to speak, and behave in ways that are actually counter to who you actually want to be in the pursuit of an outcome that you can still achieve by being a better human in the process.
Oh, maybe five years ago, I think I saw on the sell side, yeah, I sold one of our family cars, yeah, to a young kid, mid 20s, late 20s, and we agreed the price, the price is irrelevant. I'm just as he was about to say sign, I said, and you can take 500 bucks off that on the condition that you pay it forward to someone else at some point in the future. I've never done that before. I've never done it since. But I watched the change in state that he had. I watched the change in state that I had. I've watched the change in state for everyone that I've told that story to, and so this look, it cost me 500 bucks, but what I gained was priceless, yeah, and then I'm not, I'm not telling the story to kind of go, Hey, look at me. How good am I. But just to serve as an example, I think, from you around how you, who you are, being, stepping into idea and identity, the impact that can have can go way, way beyond the the transaction.
Absolutely and it speaks to what was more valuable to you in that exchange. Like you valued more, or the opportunity for him to have a head start in getting what may or may not have been his first car, an excited, big purchase for someone of a young age, and the opportunity to learn that actually there is good people in The world and there is humanness in the process of of buying and selling, and we can pay that gift forward like it doesn't have to be just trying to exploit each other like it really doesn't. But unless we know what's what we truly value, we we won't question whether the exchanges we're making are appropriate. And like, there's certain things that I will choose to negotiate and there's certain things that I won't because my time, my resources, my energy, is more valuable than, you know, bartering over a $20 reduction in a shop, you know. So I'm like, Ah, you know, I'm okay with paying full price for for things that I don't deem to be, you know, as valuable for my time and energy to put into having a dialog around getting a price reduction. Because it's not about price being the value in that particular context.
Yeah, that's that's a much more extensive and greater realm of what negotiation is. And I totally agree we're negotiating everything all day with everyone. We wouldn't see it as a trade, necessarily, but you know those examples that you've talked about, where did we go for coffee, getting the close to kids, to clean their bedroom, you know, yada yada. All of those things are attempts at trading one thing from another.
Yeah. And again, I think the key distinction I make for that is the intention with which we approach that communication is what makes it a negotiation versus just a regular conversation, like, if I'm being intentional about understanding what's important to the other person, if I'm being intentional about understanding what's important to me, then I can get curious, I can get creative. I can focus on the connection I'm building, and I can exchange the value that I can exchange, being mindful of what the exchange means to the other party too.
There are a couple of things spring to mind there again. We can put it into a context to make maybe, maybe easier, whether it's buying a car or buying a house. Three things come to mind. Do you think? Do you have a sense that people really know what's important to them? Do you have a sense of, if they do know, are they willing to reveal it? And if they do reveal it, then do they trust fully trust the other party. Given we're humans, and humans are great at being humans, or predictable. Do you think they trust the other human not to use it to their advantage?
Short answer is no to the first one. What was the second? I remember the last question.
People really know what's most important, no, no, yeah. Do you think if they knew, they'd be willing to reveal it? No, no, and do you think they trusted. No!
as I thought,
Yeah, but if we are skilled in negotiation, then we do get intentional about spending the time we need to to understand what's truly valuable to us. With that intention and with those skills developed, we are more readily able to discern when is the most appropriate time to reveal. Deal information and in what context, with that discernment and context in place, then it allows us to make an assessment of the risk and the appropriate strategy that needs to be applied to determine whether that person can be trusted. But if, if I know enough about negotiation before I even engage in the conversation, I've already in my planning stages, made those assessments intentionally and with clarity around what is the situation where? What relationship do I have with the other party? What do I know about them already that could give me data points that point to whether or not this person is trustworthy or not, and I might test that with bits of information that I give that could be perceived as high value to the other party, but actually are low risk bits of information to share. But I think when people don't have the skills, the default becomes I'm going to put my guard up, I'm going to feel like everyone's out to get me, and therefore I'm going to play my cards close to my chest, and we're in this argy bargy of of negotiating without actually giving information. And the only thing that we can do in that context is distribute value between one person to the other person, and we very rarely get to the opportunity to create value. Creating value requires trust, it requires openness, it requires information, giving and receiving. But you'll never get to that unless you can understand that that's even available as a possibility?
Yeah, I sense that at least on one side of the exchange, there needs to be a an intention that one plus one equals more than two, something neither of us have thought about yet.
Exactly right. Yeah.
Um, what's the Do you have a best unlock question to get a little bit closer to what someone thinks is most important for them, apart from what's most important for you?
Yeah, I think the best way often to get information, and this, again, requires an assessment of the risk, and it's obviously contextual, right? So it's hard to me for me to be super generic, but contextually, what I would say is the best way to get information is often to share information first, because if you've given something, you invoke the law of reciprocity, and People therefore want to give you something in return, albeit subconsciously, they may not consciously know that that's what they're doing, but that's what happens. So if I was to share with you, you know, here's my situation, one of the things that is is of importance to me in in this deal is the location of of the property that I choose to buy, being close to the schools that my children are going to go to, right? Yeah, so in that context, I might give that information which doesn't harm me to say, because it's true and it is going to determine the catchment area, but might be valuable for the other party to receive, to go, Okay, well, the vendor's only available to bad example in house, because often it's the agent. But if you, if you to, then have the dialog with the agent around, well, what's important to the vendor in determining who he sells or who she sells to? And again, you've got, if there's a third party in the middle, you have to discern how much you can trust that other party, but often, again, with the intention people want to help people they like. So another law is around the liking principle. And if you become a likable character and person, which you know, I would say most of us, when we're being the best version of ourselves are, then you've got that reciprocity piece and the likability factor. And they're both influencing principles that drive the other party to give you more. And when you're aware of what those influencing principles are, there's if you keep stacking and layering those, yeah, you get further clarity around how to effectively persuade and influence without undermining your position.
Last question about going down the kind of house and car route, because that's probably too binary for the one. But I mean, have you any experience where someone on the sell side has taken a lower number based on likability and reciprocity?
What I have people have taken a lower number based on understanding when you've understood their context. So for example, I would say, and I'll give you a personal example. So when I moved to the Sunshine Coast, before purchasing where we live now, we rented and we because we didn't know where we wanted to be or or what location was best. And we were looking for properties online from Sydney through through the websites, and we found one, we booked an online viewing with, with the agent, where she was just walking around the property with on FaceTime, essentially. And through that, we were able to gather some information around, you know, obviously the condition of the property, where it was, what, why the owners, well, the current tenants were leaving, and therefore what the desires of the owners were briefly around finding the right tenants in that what the advertised price was significantly higher than what we actually ended up getting it for. And at the time the market was, if you were to believe everything that the news was communicating, was that the vacancy rates were less than point 1% in this particular area, it was highly desirable. Everything that would have conditioned us to otherwise go it's if it's our perfect house to rent for now, let's not bother negotiating, because there's there's too many factors that would work against us. But one of the things that we did was to ask the question, how many people have already submitted an application? And the answer we received was four. And I said, Okay, well, let's, let's, that's really promising. And often agents will use that as a scarcity mechanism to go, oh gosh, there's four. So, you know, you're, you know, if you want to get in, get in now. But what I thought was, well, if they've had four applications. Something's not quite right in that, in that they haven't automatically taken this off the market, and they're still taking applications. So it told me price wasn't important, because I couldn't imagine a situation where four people had put in applications at less than the value of of the rental. I didn't know what the actual reason was, but I could make an educated guess to go there's no way four people, in the context of the current situation, are going to offer less so something else is more important to them. And my assumption was because of the size of the house the location, they wanted a discerning couple family to maintain the quality of the property right. And we were, you know, a couple with no kids, and it was a ridiculously sized, five bedroom house that we would not even need, but it would mean that we weren't going to be drawing with crayons on the walls whilst we've got young ones running around. So I made an educated guess. I wasn't certain, but I'm like, this is about quality, not price. And so we positioned ourselves, got references. Even got references for my toy cavoodle about his behavior and his training and photos to highlight how beautiful he was. And we offered $200 a week, less than what it was being put on the market for, and so not an insignificant sum. And you got we got it. We got it. Interesting. That's a great but it's the intention of, Am I asking enough questions around it, and am I joining the dots and testing a hypothesis, like with negotiation, as with anything in life, we don't always have the exact information we need, but we have to be willing to test our hypothesis and learn from that, and it becomes a lot easier to do when you've got a structured framework to follow in a process that allows you. Get the data you need and go, Okay, this is where my process needs to be amended. But when you're just blankly, shooting from the hip and making it up as you go, then you know having a hypothesis is great, but you don't know why it worked. You don't know you know what you need to change to make that formula work for you again next time, all of that kind of information. So, yeah, yeah.
That's a really good example, a really good example of where your intention, your thoughtfulness, the incomplete data was giving you something Yeah, that you could play in to. No, I get that. I'm assuming, in your world, you've come across this? (Pete holds up Never Split The Difference By Chris Voss).
I have, yeah, it's a book I highly recommend.
Yeah, it's fantastic. I was, I've been blown away by some of it. Yeah, and, you know, in the most extreme of negotiation circumstances,
crisis, hostage negotiations, absolutely
extreme. It's thoroughly recommended. But what for me is the great thing about it is partly the processes, but just even the questions. Just the questions help, even if you ask them as a question or make a statement, it reveals something about you that if you're paying attention, not just to the answer, but how the answer, it can help you with some incomplete data. Again, exactly
right, exactly right. And we think we ask questions effectively, and then we realize that there's just next level opportunities to improve our questioning. But and it brings a key point we often are so in our heads, we're thinking about what we need to say more than we spend time thinking about how we need to listen and for what information we need to listen out for or look out for or feel out for, depending on which of your senses is, is absorbing that context. Because, you know, sometimes our spidey sense is, you know, an internal gut, gut response that we have to feel for. It's not something we see or hear, so we have to understand all of that. And you know, unless we're taking time to pause, to create silence in the dialog, we're not going to hear a lot of what we need to hear or see what we need to see. Yeah,
um, right at the start, Glenn, you mentioned around negotiating with yourself, and I think most of us would assume that in a negotiation, there are at least two parties. Otherwise it's not a negotiation. It's an error, whatever. It's a monolog. So if we're negotiating with ourself, that means there's two parties involved. Please explain. Can there be two me's, how can there be two Glins? What are you talking about?
Well, I'm talking about our emotional ego. So we have our what I call the Joker, which is the wild card that comes out to play. Sometimes that wild card ego serves us and is in our favor. Other times, that wild card works against us and it depends on what what context we're in to determine whether it's a positive card or a negative card.
literally means someone joking around.
No. No means the Joker in the context of you don't know what you're going to get. Right? Yeah. So is it is it positive? Is it negative? And so I refer to, sort of the alternative way to see it. And it's another book I would highly recommend, is by Professor Steve Peters, and it's called The Chimp Paradox. So he refers to a monkey mind as the chimp, right? So I call it the wild card, the Joker in us. He calls it the chimp. I love both. You know, the chimps more probably commonly understood on the on the opposite side. And I guess the reason why I called it the Joker and called it the wild card is what I call is the ace. And the ACE is your authentic conscious expression. Your ace is the witness, the observer in you, and the way I discern between the two. And if you think about to you being age three and then age 10 or age 18. Age 29 or whatever age as as we progress through through our years, when we reflect back, there's a part of us that hasn't aged. There's a part of us where there's this inner sense of ourselves, a voice, perhaps, or the observer that's been watching us at that age, at each age that stayed exactly the same, even though we were three, even though we were 10, even though we were, you know, 18. And so the authentic conscious expression is the witness that observes what our personality, our ego can do, and it's it's the one that's keeping us grounded to Okay, the ego can serve us or harm us, but it's the witness, it's the observer, it's the as you call them, the whispers. It's not a loud voice, but it's a steady, calm, peaceful voice, perhaps that you might hear, or it's a sense of knowing that you might have that allows you to step back from the situation and zoom out and see you in action and determine Whether your behavior is appropriate or not, and we can't do that when we're in our ego. We can't do that when we're in the chimp part of our brain. We can't or the Joker. It's we're too much in the situation, rather than above the situation, to be able to look at it. And so when I think about the two parts of us that are negotiating, when I observe delegates in workshops participating in a negotiation training exercise where they've got a case study that they're working on, and they're in negotiation, and then we come back and We do a debrief, and I asked them, so who are you negotiating with? And often I hear back, oh, it felt like I was negotiating with myself, because they've got another party in the room, which is your point, right? We're negotiating with another party for a negotiation to happen. There's two people, but for many of them, there was three people. In what they were aware of. It was like me and myself and then the other party. And by default, if you've got you and yourself, then they must have them and their selves. So actually, in every negotiation where there's two physical bodies, there's actually four negotiators at the table, and it's either your your truest, calmest expression when you're in your logic and all rational mind, or your ego, when your Chimp is out to play. And, you know, the joke has come out the deck, and it's been thrown down, and you're like, Oh, was that a good move to play the Joker card or not, you know? But, yeah, we want to keep the Joker in the deck. We want to keep the chimp in the cage, you know, whichever metaphor is best, sort of used for it. The ultimate objective is to allow the witness to be the one that's reading the situation, because you're not in your emotional brain at that time, you can look at it logically for what the situation is.
Glenn, I'm assuming, are you familiar with the principles of non violent communication,
not as directly as that? No,
because that. I mean, Marshall Rosenberg, who was the author, passed away a few years ago. I mean, you know, as a and that's a really sensitive thing to say, given world events way back. And I think, Oh, I'm going to guess the 80s. I think maybe before then, or after then, he managed to set up a Palestinian and Israeli parents group. The entry ticket was that the other side had killed your children, so that born out of can there be any more sensitive, any more incredibly emotional scenario for two groups to come together in one plus one equals more than two? And he talks about, I can't remember the other animal that he uses, but one of the animals that you use in terms of those four people, yeah, is, is a giraffe. It's partly giraffes have the biggest hearts of any of any mammal love that did not know what's interesting about he actually uses giraffe. And I've forgotten the other animal puppets, yeah, to find out which one is talking, yeah. Well, having this community. Education around a conversation, and it's essentially negotiation, yeah, for sure, essentially negotiation. And I'm, you know, even thinking about this conversation, I reckon there's so many more situations that we're negotiating in than people would ever fully understand, accept, and even recognize
absolutely and if, and that is absolutely a prime example of a really sensitive situation. But when you look at what's happening in the world right now, all evidence points to a lack of negotiation capability right in our most influential, most powerful political leaders, because we're at war with each other, and war is essentially a competitive negotiation where the only thing that's going to happen is one party is going to lose and the other party might get a perceived win, but there's going to be potentially significant destruction in the process of getting that outcome. It's focused on transaction in the way we interact with each other, rather than relationship, there's no relationship being considered at all, and it's any you can see how and love someone. And I'm sure there is probably one of the the crisis or mediation negotiators that are in in those, you know, un negotiation. Yeah, for sure, there will be having to, having to deal with people's chimps or their potential drafts and coordinate the zoo, so to speak, right? And make people really aware of from what context are they talking because if they're in their ego, ego is about self, right? Our authentic conscious expression as humans is about us as part of a community together, like there is no them and us. It's just us, you know? It's we. And I don't think there is enough application of negotiation skills, because I think if we were taught negotiation skills in schools, collaborative negotiation skills and capabilities in schools, we would in one generation alone, transform what adults are doing at adult to adult communication level, because negotiation creates more compassion, because we have to have empathy in in the way we're listening and seeking to understand each other, and a desire to then turn that empathy into action to make change, we've got to be curious. We've got to be creative to find solutions that aren't currently visible to us and require a level of trust to allow us to explore where those options could be. We've got to connect, truly connect with each other, you know? So there's so many principles that negotiation as a skill set contributes to the bettering of the world, which is why I think it ultimately comes down to who we're being. Because if we are being in our egos, we aren't going to develop the emotional intelligence skills that are required to separate our truest self, the giraffe I love that, you know, authentic conscious expression.
I think it was chimp. I think it was a chimpanzee. Yeah, yeah,
your monkey mind and your giraffe or the Joker and the wild card and the Joker card or the ace. You know, whichever metaphor works and resonates. You know, it's important to find different language that resonates for people. So, you know, I'm really not precious about just anchoring to language I've created. But what resonates with people so it it makes it meaningful, you know, and I and I think if you can make sense of it, then that awareness creates a change in your thoughts and your thoughts and change your actions, right? And I think that's what we want to try shift through this. And that's certainly my hope. When I think about some of the stuff that I've covered in the negotiation playbook, I talk to the use of compassionate power. And people go, Well, what do you mean compassionate power? But I was like, power is always in the traditional negotiation contexts. So. Mean, as a as power over someone to get a a better outcome through potentially a use of force, because, you know, my size of my organization versus your size means that I've got more power, and therefore I've got more leverage, and therefore I could wield, you know, a greater sort of weapon over you, if I needed to, we can weaponize power. And what I advocate for is, well, you know, if I take the retail and supplier examples, often in commercial negotiations over the years, being in fast moving consumer goods, I have seen multiple examples of suppliers threatening to withdraw supply and take stock off the shelves, or retailers threatening to withdraw space and remove distribution from suppliers. All of that is a lack of negotiation skills, because you're using power over each other to force an outcome that we want, rather than compassionate power, which is, how can we ethically influence and persuade someone without resorting to force, to get them to do something that creates value for us and them. Yeah, and it's because they're not looking to create value for each other. It's they're in their egos. They're in their chimp minds, me, me, me, me, me, what do I get? And you're not doing what I want you to do, so I'm going to punish you, and we cannot be in the world of punishing others because they don't do what we want them to do. We've got to be in the world of understanding others, because if you're in the world of understanding others, you'll understand how complex people are, because we ourselves are really complex human beings, and we can create more empathy for the myriad of emotions and internal dialogs that we have before we even get into the exchange that we have outside of ourselves. Yeah, what
came first the negotiation playbook, and then negotiating with yourself, or did you negotiate with yourself? And that led to the negotiation playbook,
the chicken and the egg question, isn't it? Honestly, I don't know. I feel like I was, I was guided by a need to write another book.
I didn't know what that book needed to be, but all I knew at the time was there was something that I needed to express and through support from family, friends and then, you know, a mentor on a book retreat that I booked into, I was able to flush out the ideas and have that external party help me navigate the sort of the internal negotiation that was was going on with me.
So probably be any helix they're all kind of working together.
Absolutely. I love that visual. Yeah.
What do you think is misunderstood about negotiation?
I think what's most misunderstood is people think it's a specialist skill for specialist contacts, and it's not it's a life skill for everyday contexts, like for better relationships at home with your loved ones, better relationships with your friends and your family, a better relationship with yourself, because you can be more compassionate with the mental dialog that you're having, if you can start to witness it and separate your your thoughts, because you're creating the discipline to pause, which we need to.
I'm going to be a little bit unfair on you. Oh, feel free go ahead, because I think many people listening would would find it really useful, even just an off the cuff answer, which I know there's more to it than this when you see the question, but I'll guarantee there will be. For example, how do I negotiate a better salary? Yeah,
you want to organize their how, yeah.
I mean, have you got top three tips to negotiate a better salary?
Yeah, I'll give you a method, which I talked through in the book. So first thing is identify your value. And if you focus on value, you you've got to recognize that it's not your intrinsic. Uh, value or your personal worth that's on the table for negotiation. It's extrinsic value. So your intrinsic value never changes, but your extrinsic value absolutely will, because it's determined
the value it brings the organization, the customers, etc, etc, yeah,
market value. So extrinsic value is determined by the benefit or usefulness of what you offer to the other party, but we often conflate our intrinsic value of my skill set, my my value me, yeah, and we don't recognize that me and my personal worth is never on the table for negotiation ever. It's only extrinsic value, usefulness and benefit to the other party. So step one, identify your value. Step two, analyze the data. And there's only two forms of data you need to analyze. It's people data, because people give you information and understanding the context of who you're negotiating with and what they perceive about the situation, what their needs are, is important, and their interests. And then there's published information and data, so more objective information about what you can go for or what you can't go for, which contextualizes what is credible, whilst also understanding the context with which, with which you're in with the person. So analyze the data to sources, people and published and for that, the reason being is data not only gives you information which gives you power. Data gives you information, which also, more importantly, gives you confidence, because when you've got confidence, you're more likely then to take the next step. The next step is understanding, in the methodologies understand your leverage. Part of that's understanding, once you've got the data, is, well, what have you got that the other party wants and is valuable to them? So what are the key levers that you can exchange in the negotiation that enables you to determine whether or not you are in a position of power more or less than the other party that you're negotiating with. Right fourth step is embrace feeling uncomfortable, because your opportunity to maximize the value you exchange sits outside of your comfort zone. Because if it's comfortable, you're not maximizing what's potentially available. You're only stopping yourself based on what you feel you can justify, or your logic brain's kicking in and going or I only have this bit of information, but I don't know what they think, and, you know, not testing my hypothesis, so I'll just ask for a small amount, and I won't, I won't seek to see where there might be value. So back to your earlier question around you know, there may be situations where your employer is willing to give you a lot more than the market rate, because it's contextual, but if you don't understand that data, you're never going to ask for more than what's comfortable, because what's comfortable is market rate, and it's easy to have the conversation that I'm being underpaid versus my market rate, and here's my my data, but asking for More feels uncomfortable. We need to embrace that. The other reason why we need to embrace feeling uncomfortable is we're going to get data from other people when they are uncomfortable in the negotiation, and we're also going to be giving data through our discomfort. Often, what happens is we are loose with our language, so we use language like I'm looking for I probably need about round about here would be great. And we're not precise and concise with our language, so our discomfort leaks value, right? Our loose language leaks value, so we need to embrace that feeling of discomfort more regularly, so that we're not exposed through our body's natural response to discomfort. And then the final step in the methodology is execute the plan, but it presupposes there is a plan, and most people want to wing it. And I would say you cannot maximize value in a deal, in a negotiation, whether it's for your salary or whether it's for a business deal or whether it's for a house purchase, unless you have a plan, and the plan or. Ultimately involves thinking about, what do you need to do before the negotiation that sets the scene so that you are best placed, and priming the context the other party the positioning of where your value is. So have you increased the perception of your value long before you get to the negotiating table with your boss. You know, are you clear on how you're going to do the actual exchange of information in the in the conversation with them? And do you know what needs to happen after you've had the exchange? Because there's lots of value that's lost when people don't implement what they thought was agreed, and it's because people don't get things in writing. People don't agree when the pay rise is going to come through, and then then waiting another 10 months before the actual salary review date and when everyone else is getting paid for the money to come through, right? So there's lots of stages in the negotiation, before, during and after that you need to be aware of and plan, and you can't even give that time or energy unless you consider that there's a need for a plan. Yeah, well, in the first place,
Glenn, that's possibly the most comprehensive answer I've ever had to an unfair question.
Yay. As I said,
here's another one. Here's another one, right? Because that sounds, I mean, that's extremely comprehensive. And before we finish, I'm going to make sure people know how to get the book, How To Get hold of you, because that sounds like, you know, salary is one thing, but there must be huge benefit in you working with people to do huge commercial contracts that you know, one loose lip could probably save 1000s of dollars. But here's a more unfair question then go on, how do I negotiate with my teenage kids to either clean the bedroom, do the dishes or get off the screen, or even
the same methodology Have you not only identify so for you to go identify your value. So your value is, you know, a clean, tidy house, present children, you know, conversation around the dinner table, or whatever it might be, but you've also then got to do the the what do they value? Right? Because unless you understand what they value, you've got no insight into what the exchange will need to look like. So that's one thing in the executing the plan piece. If I jump to that part, you've got to make the exchange conditional, and this is where people don't make the exchange conditional. So you might offer a valuable exchange, but you offer it without a commitment to what you need them to do. So it's, um, I had it. I we call it. If you then we eat. You know, if you do this, then I will do this. Another framing that I've heard, which I really like, it's if cabbage then ice cream, you know, eat your greens and then you get your dessert. So you've always got to frame what you want them to do first, what's the what's the payment that's needed, what's the activity that's needed before the reward? Because if you don't put what you need done, say, for example, screens off and then make the then I can do this for you, they won't be able to contextualize the value of what they're doing. So if I use an example, if they were younger kids, we might say to them, I'll read you a story if you go to bed and brush your teeth and put your pajamas on, but because you've put story first, your child just hears story, story, story, story. Whereas if you say, if you put your pajamas on and brush your teeth, then I will read your story, which frames the cost involved to get the story. So you have to frame it that way. And what I would say is, in the pre priming stage, that you know, they execute the plan phase, but really early on is think about how you can prime and position the perception of the value you're exchanging with them long before you're at the point you're actually going to negotiate with them. Yeah,
very helpful, I'm sure, to many parents of any age children to be honest. Yeah, Glen, I'm conscious of our time. And thank you so much. One last question, and then let's talk about how people get in touch with you. Um. Do you negotiate on everything? No, as I said, to go shopping with right?
I negotiate a lot, but not everything. I made that assessment early as to where there's value for me, right? So you know, time energy planning, time commitment. So, you know, for low value things, I if it's an easy one, I'll give it a good shot at getting what I want right. If it feels like the time, energy and the resource required to do it is not enough for the trade off I won't, you know. And simple examples like, you know what? Deciding on a movie, you know, with your partner can be a negotiation, and sometimes it's okay to be the Accommodator and go, You know what? Like, I'm not going to negotiate what movie I want to watch, even if it's not what I want to watch, I'll watch what you want to watch, because the trade off for our relationship is worth more to me than Yeah, that's spending two hours watching what I want to watch just so that I can be happy.
I read recently, which I thought was a nice way to sum it up, there are no perfect solutions that are imperfect trade offs. Yeah, I like that lovely way to see it. So, Glenn, thank you for some real, practical, helpful tips, tools, processes. If someone's interested in working with you, how do they get
hold of you? LinkedIn is a great way to reach me. So, Glenn Bailey, on LinkedIn and then on my website, devalue negotiator.com.
Great. So the LinkedIn that's g, l, I, N, B, A, y, L, E, y, Lynn Bailey and the valuenegotiator.com. Correct. All lowercase. All lowercase. Great, fantastic. We'll put this in the show notes so people are interested. And I'm sure anyone who's negotiating a salary or dealing with teenage kids. Wants to pause at that point and kind of go right, just rewind that. Tell me what those steps are. Again,
I've got a salary negotiation course as well. So well, there you go. Perfect. Someone can do do that on self service, and in two hours learn exactly what they
need. It would probably pay for the salary increase. Oh, without
a doubt, it's priced so that it becomes a no brainer, like my intention is to create more value. So, you know, I think at a very minimum, you could easily get five times what you've paid for the course itself. Perfect. Glenn,
thank you so much for what you've revealed and your insight and expertise, appreciate it
most welcome. Thank you very much. Bye.
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