Nolan Martin :
Hello and welcome to the NEGOTIATEx podcast. I am your co-host and co- founder, Nolan Martin. And with me as always, my good friend, co-host, co-founder, Aram Donigian. Aram, do you want to introduce our guest for today?
Aram Donigian:
Yeah, I sure will, Nolan. And today once again, we traveled to the land down under. Glin Bayley, also known as The Value Negotiator, is not just a negotiation specialist, she’s also a non-exec, board director, self leadership coach, author, writer, and speaker on a mission to help the world create more valuable agreements. Her 17 years as a commercial finance executive in leading blue chip companies internationally have shaped her into a formidable force in the business world.
Glin has spent the last three years enhancing the negotiation skills of senior executives from top companies like Woolworths, Lendlease, Unilever, and others. Glin’s unique approach to negotiation is set around a powerful belief, “It’s not what you do, but who you become in the process that truly unlocks success.” This philosophy shaped by her own journey through high level finance roles and embarking on her own entrepreneurial journey drives her passion for leading others on similar paths of growth and value creation.
Glin’s approach centers on self leadership as a crucial element for creating value, emphasizing that often our greatest barriers aren’t external, but lie within our own narratives and beliefs, which can limit our personal and business potential. Glin blends practical skills with her academic background to offer a holistic approach to leadership and business success. As a speaker, Glin combines her professional expertise with personal anecdotes, making her talks not just informative, but engaging and most motivational.
Glin also enjoys beach walks with her dog Cavoodle Noah, who we just had a glimpse of. I don’t know if Noah will make another appearance, and is passionate about developing and launching Glin & Tonic, an empowering stationery brand, reflecting her creative side and desire to inspire beyond her corporate engagements. Glin, thanks so much for taking the time to meet with us today.
Glin Bayley:
Thank you so much, Aram and Nolan. It’s really good to be here.
NM:
Absolutely. Glin, I was hoping you could share a brief overview of your journey to becoming The Value Negotiator. Was this always your plan?
From Finance Expert To Negotiation Leader: Glin’s Journey Of Self-Discovery & Empowerment [3:10]
GB:
Definitely not. It happened by accident. I think as much as life leads us down various different paths, my career started in finance. So as a management accountant by background, spent two decades working with large global food and beverage businesses. So multinational businesses, commercial finance roles, predominantly working with sales procurement teams, both on the supply side and on the retail side, UK retailers initially, and then Australian retailers.
So I’ve had hands-on negotiation experience through my career, was formally trained, early part of my career, way back in when I was in my mid twenties, I think. And then transitioned when I moved to Australia after a significant relationship had ended a self period of self searching identifying who I was, exploration, and that led to self leadership and starting my first business in executive coaching and self leadership training.
So realizing that. Whilst finance was all about. Performance results, numbers. The part that ultimately drives them is the humans and their behavior and the way they lead themselves. From that, I worked a lot with senior executive women, noting that a lot of areas that they were holding themselves back was periods and questions around their self doubt, self confidence.
They’re not negotiating for their worth or asking for what they wanted. And so that was a fascinating insight into the world beyond my own head and what was actually going on in other people’s heads. And that led me to an opportunity to work for a global negotiation consulting firm, blending my commercial experience in industry roles with my executive coaching and facilitation experience into training negotiation skills for large corporate.
And then during that period, I found myself recognizing that I was actually in a role that blended both my head and my heart for the first time. I think finance was definitely head, except coaching was definitely heart and negotiation became the blend of the two. And during that period, whilst I was working for the organization, I had this realization that through my spiritual practices, my self leadership practices, that negotiation actually married a lot of those philosophies together, but wasn’t of the spiritual or philosophical world, but actually the principles of negotiation at their core related to how are we showing up to be humans that create value by working with each other rather than against each other, and how can we begin to understand each other more powerfully, hear each other more clearly.
And as a result, recognizing for myself that negotiation wasn’t just a, in my world, a commercial skill to help business to business negotiations succeed. But actually became an instrument and a tool to help people better understand themselves and become a better version of themselves through the process of learning how to negotiate effectively.
And so that led me to start The Value Negotiator because I wanted to blend not only commercial thinking and skills around the technical aspects of negotiation, but also the more philosophical aspects around who are you becoming through the process of developing your negotiation skills and acumen.
NM:
Thank you.
AD:
What a beautiful way to lay that out. I would love to hear more about the philosophy that you’ve developed, maybe it’s a framework for the way you think about what is effective negotiation and how does that drive the work you do with your clients?
The Value Negotiator: A Human-Centered Approach To Strategic Negotiation [07:36]
GB:
Yeah, for me, The Value Negotiator became an identity. So it came from the premise that if I call my business, The Value Negotiator, the core premise has to be that I have to step into that identity of creating value. So if I get caught into the trap of distributing value or getting caught into just navigating down a competitive, combative way of communicating, then that’s not going to honor the identity that I’ve chosen for my business.
Second to that, we as humans all have a deep, intrinsic need to feel valued, a sense of self and significance comes from this need to be recognized for our value, both at an intrinsic level, but also at an extrinsic level. So recognizing value was fundamental to a human need. And therefore, if we as humans are wanting to be valued, then the recognition that in each interaction we’re having with a fellow counterpart in negotiation, whether that’s in a crisis situation or a business situation or a personal situation at home, the individual on the other side is also seeking to be valued and to have that value acknowledged.
So value became the core principles of what are we trying to achieve? What do we as humans need? And out of that, for me, I’m big on trying to simplify things that are complex, and so I’ve created an acronym around the word value that just breaks down in simple terms, what the process of getting to value looks like.
So starting with the first five step framework, it’s identify the value. And that means both for yourself and the other party, but being aware that you don’t want to confuse your intrinsic worth with your extrinsic value. So really recognizing and making that distinction. And I think sometimes people get that egos get attached to the, oh, what’s my intrinsic worth here. And we confuse the two.
The second step is analyze the data. The third step is understand your leverage, because power and leverage play a significant role in how we are ultimately driving value. The fourth step even is embrace feeling uncomfortable because negotiation by its nature, if you’re going to stretch for value is going to require you to be uncomfortable and get comfortable with the feelings of discomfort.
And then the final step is all around executing the plan and recognizing that if you’re going through all of the prior steps of identifying the value, analyzing the data and the data being either people data or published data, understanding where leverage exists and what your leverage is versus what the other party’s leverage is, and also within that, how we use power versus force, and then the feelings of discomfort, where they might manifest through the way you speak, through the way you behave in your nonverbal communication, and then finally around executing the plan, recognizing that there has to be a plan to execute.
So really putting the pre-negotiation at the forefront in terms of setting the stage, identifying and designing the deal. And then during the negotiation, how you interact with the other party, and then in closing post-negotiation, what are you doing to ensure that the value is actually delivered, integrated, and It’s manifested through the agreements that are being made in the dialogue that you’re having.
AD:
What a great framework. Two follow-up questions. First of all, you obviously advise very mature companies. And you are an entrepreneur yourself. Does this value framework hold for kind of both sorts of business models?
The Negotiation Mindset: Bringing Intentionality To Every Interaction [12:15]
GB:
It really does. I work, well, the majority of my work is aligned to large enterprise businesses. Through my entrepreneurial period, I’ve also built deep relationships with small, medium size business owners. And the value model translates across all, it translates at an individual level from a, what am I doing in terms of negotiating my salary? Identifying where the value lies, analyzing the data, understanding what my leverage is. Can I get comfortable with being uncomfortable? And then what plan am I going to execute to a small business that’s ultimately trying to determine whether they’ve got value to offer a larger business, or could they understand what data they have access to versus a large corporate might have.
So, it absolutely does translate. And as I said, negotiation for me can be seen as some really mysterious skill that is exclusive to the experts. But it’s something that we do every day. If I was to give my definition of negotiation, it’s simply a conversation to reach an agreement. And we have conversations to reach agreements every single day, whether it be our partners at home around the chores, whether it be children at bedtime and storybooks or colleagues around our work allocation and distribution or big commercial deals. So there’s lots of avenues where we’re having conversations to reach agreement. And the key distinction that I see between a regular conversation and what I term to be a negotiation is one word and it’s intention. We often don’t put intention into those conversations, which is what makes it a regular conversation versus a negotiation, because a negotiation is very intentional.
AD:
We’re going to ask you a question about, like traps or mistakes in just a minute and we’ll see if lack intentionality, if that shows up at all in those list of mistakes. The other follow up though, I wanted to ask you was, I believe you have a book coming out very soon and I’m just curious, give us a preview. Are we going to see some of the value framework in that and how’s that gone? And yeah.
The Negotiation Playbook: A Practical Guide For Real-World Success [14:49]
GB:
Absolutely. So The Negotiation Playbook is a book that’s going to be coming out shortly, and it’s intended to be a playbook that anyone on any stage of their journey can access negotiation insights. So the first part of the book has been set up to give the foundations, which is all around the what, why, who, where, when, and which type of negotiator are you?
So it really lays foundations and not because I’m trying to assume that anyone who’s experiencing negotiation doesn’t get the basics, but I think if we’re going to develop any level of skill or mastery, we have to first lay solid foundations. So going through those W-questions have been core to the premise of the book. It’s also being written with a view around individuals at home and at work. So it’s not written for enterprise organizations, albeit the examples do relate to both. So I’ve got a mix of examples from enterprise organizations and personal negotiations.
And then the second half of the book is all around, the value framework, which I’ve just shared and what to do. It’s the how section of the book. So it takes you through all of the different areas of how do you identify value, how do you analyze the data and moving through the framework that way. And then it finally closes with six core values that I believe are essential if you want to be a Value Negotiator.
So value is the theme all the way through. And it speaks a lot to our Personal need for value and what prevents us from negotiating because often it’s the fear of diminishing our value that prevents us from making the ask in some way, whether that’s a diminishment through other people perceiving us as less or judgment or not being skilled enough or not having the right acumen to ask around negotiation. So I think that fear of devaluation holds us back.
So the book really addresses human behavioral psychology and philosophical angles, but also the practical, technical aspects, and I’ve tried to make it as accessible as possible. So my partner’s not got a commercial background at all. He’s been 20 years in the military. So I got him to read every single chapter to see if it made sense to someone who had never been in the commercial world. And he assures me he got it. So, I feel confident that it will speak to people in whatever industry that they’re working in.
NM:
That’s great.
AD:
What branch of service was he in?
GB:
The Air Force. The Australian Air Force.
AD:
:
Yeah. Get a military person to be able to make sense of it, then it should work out just fine.
GB:
That’s right.
NM:
Yeah. Congratulations first on this big accomplishment, excited for your release. And I know Aram and I are excited to get our hands on it, so we’ll definitely have to check it out. And Aram, we have to write a book someday just so you’re tracking. But I will leave that because the next thing that we both did, as we took your online negotiator type assessment, which is really cool. So everyone needs to go to, is it thevaluenegotiator.com?
GB:
That’s right. Yes.
NM:
thevaluenegotiator.com, take the assessment. Super easy. It takes about five minutes and it gives you what kind of negotiator you are. And why is this a set assessment, a helpful data point when working with the client and then. I think I’ve got some scores for both myself and Aram and you can help diagnose our kind of negotiation skills based off these scores.
The Five Negotiator Profiles: Balancing Relationships & Outcomes For Strategic Success [19:05]
GB:
Sure. No problem. It was based on the Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument, for starters. So the thinking around that was all based on the importance of someone focusing on the outcome and their level of assertiveness associated with getting the right outcome and then their level of cooperation, their cooperativeness, where we’ve looked at it is now focusing on what’s the importance of the relationship to put it in lay terms versus the outcome. So there are five different negotiator profiles based on that.
And they’re determined by whether or not you over prioritize the relationship versus over prioritize the outcome. And they’re contextual. So it’s the recognition that you’re not solely one behavior type and that you can’t change. However you do have a default style and under pressure, your default style might also change to be something else that you might not realize. So it’s recognizing that there are a number of five different profiles around that.
But what do you naturally default to? What might be your profile and distress? And once you’re aware of whether or not you prioritize relationships versus outcomes, where might you appropriately adjust your behavioral strategy so that you can maximize the value in that? So it’s helpful for individuals to understand whether they are either an accommodator, which, very much the relationship focused side, an avoider, which is the, oh, I don’t necessarily prioritize the relationship or the outcome, but I’m not sure I want to lean into the conversation.
You’ve got the General who is very much dominant in the outcome side. You’ve got in the middle, the dealer who’s yeah, a bit on the relationship, a bit on the outcomes, we’ll try to find a happy medium between the two. And then you’ve got the diplomat who’s very much focused on how do I maximize the outcome and maintain value in the relationship. So I don’t damage the relationship in the pursuit of the outcome. And I think those are the key areas and the diplomat is one of the hardest to get to because I’ve seen, firsthand with delegates, participants in my workshops where the perception is, yeah I’m all about the relationship, want to maintain the relationship. But often maximizing the outcome requires putting some stretch and discomfort into the questions, the challenges, and the conversations you have in those relationships.
And people will either dive by default to, okay, I’m going to be more accommodating just to maintain the relationship, or I’m actually going to potentially damage the relationship because I’ve actually gone too far and started dismissing the human in the conversation and being more, in general, focused around let me get the outcome. So it’s a lot more nuanced in practice, and I know most people would aspire to be the diplomat. But the reality is it is one of the hardest profiles to actually emulate in practice.
NM:
Hopefully that’s good news. So the scores are, and I feel like it’s always a competition, but Aram and I. Aram scored 75% diplomat. So kudos to you. I got 67% diplomat and the diplomat’s default is to create value and is a skilled negotiator who prioritizes building relationships and finding mutually beneficial solutions.
GB:
That’s right.
AD:
Remember Nolan, remember what Glin said though, that it has to be tested under pressure. So would we hold, I don’t know, we’re going to have Glin put us under some pressure here and see if we actually, do we actually hold? That’s the test.
GB:
It’s tough.
NM:
I don’t know if Glin’s ready to do that on the spot, we’ll see.
AD:
And obviously we’re not just one thing, right? We’re this combination, Glin. That’s what you were saying too, right?
GB:
Exactly, right. So you’re not this one thing. Also recognizing the type of environment you’re in might determine what you choose. So for example, in my early career, I would definitely say I did not have the emotional maturity to be the Diplomat and my default style was the General. So it was all finance brain, protectionist. Want to ensure the maximum value for the organization. And it was superb because it got outcomes, but boy, did I burn a lot of relationships in the pursuit of those outcomes.
And that was naivety and youth and not necessarily being aware of myself. And the impact that I had on others at the time, but if I look at now, I definitely still say I’m a work-in-progress around the diplomat. And at home, I might choose in certain instances to be the accommodator. If I’m watching a movie that isn’t necessarily my preferred choice, but it’s my partner’s preferred choice, but it keeps peace in the household for a couple of hours, rather than having frustrations around who got to watch what, when, I’m okay with that.
So it’s recognizing when you understand, and as with anything, awareness allows you to make conscious choices. And I think the key challenge is most people aren’t aware and therefore they can’t consciously choose what’s appropriate for the context.
NM:
Yeah. I love that. Awareness makes you.
GB:
Conscious.
AD:
Allows you to make conscious choices.
NM:
Yeah.
GB:
That’s right.
AD:
That is beautiful, isn’t it? Nolan?
NM:
Yeah. It is forever logged in the book.
AD:
Glin, what do you see as some of the common mistakes that negotiators make and what training do you provide to help them build the skills needed to overcome those errors?
Strategic Preparation: Key To Unlocking Value In Negotiation [25:53]
GB:
The most common and the most obvious mistake that I’ve seen, and you’ll have observed this, I’m sure through your careers, is the lack of time space and energy given to the preparation of a negotiation and by not giving ourselves time, energy and space to focus on the negotiation, we inadvertently find ourselves being reactive.
So we can’t effectively put ourselves in the shoes of the other party and effectively consider what might be their challenges. What might be the obstacles that we’re going to face in the conversation? What hot buttons might we press if we push too far on a certain. angle, because we haven’t given consideration to the other party in their context, often we’re focusing too much about what we want, what we need, and our own vision of the perfect outcome in our eyes.
And that sole focus on, okay, this objective in negotiation is for me to get what I want. We fail to consider there’s actually another party in the dialogue. So we’re coming at the conversation, each of us with our own interests and needs in mind, not framing the conversation in the context of the other party’s needs.
And that’s what I said earlier on, we all have a deep need to feel valued. And if you turn up to the conversation without considering the other person’s needs and interests and their need to feel valued, we’re going to start off on a foot that’s going to take us down a very combative, competitive path, a lot quicker than if we were to acknowledge their needs as well. And so that recognition of time, space and energy is needed, not only because it creates a more conducive environment for agreement, but there’s more opportunity for value to be created when people feel safe to have the conversations, to openly share.
And that trust requirement to start exploring where they may be opportunities for value that have yet to be discovered. And I just don’t think you get anywhere close to optimizing the deal if you don’t come to table with a deep understanding of the other party and what their needs are and what might be a proposal that can actually demonstrate thoughtfulness and consideration when you come to the table.
AD:
And what you just described requires some of that intentionality that you were referencing earlier to it. It really, I assume that shows up in preparation.
GB:
It really does. The majority of the values created before you get to the table. If you think about influencing someone’s perception of value, whether that’s a business owner wanting to demonstrate value to future clients, whether that’s a middle manager wanting to demonstrate their leadership and acumen to their colleagues and their peer network and their senior leaders within the organization, that perception of value is influenced before you go for the promotion, before you get the customer enrolled.
And if you’re waiting till you have applied for the job or the conversation to sell the customer something and negotiating your value at that time, it’s so much harder than if you’ve spent the time considering how your perception of value is being seen prior to that point. And I think, any middle manager listening to this would need to consider how is my value perceived in the organization? Is my perception of value accurate to what other people are perceiving? What would I need to do to influence my perception of value in advance so that when that conversation needs to happen around remuneration, additional responsibilities or promotional aspects or even opportunities to work in different functions or take on high stakes projects, that perception of value has to have already been framed and positioned long before those conversations happen.
AD:
You mentioned earlier too, that you spent some time advising and working closely with senior executive women. As we look at differences in gender. Approaches to negotiation. What are the strengths that you see that women bring to the value negotiation table?
Navigating Gender Differences In Negotiations [31:00]
GB:
Yeah. And I’m going to caveat, these are generalized stereotypes. So I understand that there’ll be people and experiences that fall within the gaps of these, but from what I’ve observed and the experiences that I’ve had, both personally and with individuals that I’ve worked with, I’ve observed that women are naturally other-oriented. So we are stronger, being advocates for value where it benefits the collective, whereas I’ve seen our male counterparts often be more confident and more capable in the self orientation and the self interest. And this is the challenge because there’s pros and cons to both.
So those that are other-oriented often can advocate for others much stronger than themselves, but as a consequence may fall into the default accommodator behavior approach, which is I’ll give you everything you want and need so that everyone else’s interests are looked after, but perhaps not my own. And then the opposite is the General, which is, hey, I’ll take, make sure I get the outcome that I want, but may not consider everyone else’s needs in the process.
So there’s definitely distinctions that I see in terms of orientation around focus, self versus other. The other thing that I think is specifically distinct is men typically have not had to worry about their assertiveness impacting their level of likability. Whereas women consciously have to consider the likability factor when they are being assertive. Because if they assert themselves too confidently and suddenly occur to someone less likable. Their likability factor actually impacts them adversely if it’s diminished.
So I think it’s another layer of consideration and it’s a long way to go. We’ve got unconscious biases around the role women have played in society for many years. So I think there’s a lot of undoing of that, but I think that’s probably the key distinction I would say impacts women more is that there’s that extra layer that we’ve got to consider. It’s not just about the context or the outcome, but it’s actually how does someone perceive me through the way I carry myself a lot more overtly than they might perceive a male counterpart doing the same.
AD:
Thanks, Glin.
NM:
Hey everyone, Nolan here. I have to jump in and end today’s podcast for part A of the show. Be sure to rate, review, and subscribe to the NEGOTIATEx podcast if you haven’t already, and also join us next week for part B of this awesome interview.
