Unlocking Confidence: Transform Your Negotiation Skills with Angelique Hathaway

Hello, my friend, and welcome to another exciting episode of Negotiate Anything. Thanks for joining us today. With over 10 million downloads and listeners from more than 180 different countries, it's dedicated listeners just like you who have made Negotiate Anything the number one negotiation podcast in the world. I'm your host, Kwame Christian. I'm a business lawyer, mediator, author, and the proud CEO of of the American Negotiation Institute. Now, before we get into today's insightful conversation, I have a golden opportunity for those of you who recognize the power of negotiation in your professional lives. Have you ever found yourself wishing that you could navigate those high stakes conversations with more confidence? Or perhaps you're looking to empower your team with the art of persuasion and conflict resolution? At the American Negotiation Institute, we've crafted special specialized keynotes and workshops tailored for those very needs. We've transformed the negotiation skills of professionals worldwide and we're eager to do the same for you. We believe the best things in life are on the other side of difficult conversations. And our goal is to help you improve your lives and the lives of those around you, one difficult conversation at a time. Don't let another challenging conversation leave you second guessing.

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Discover how we can help you find confidence in conflict, negotiate better deals, and have stronger relationships. Because in the world of business, every conversation counts. And now, without further ado, let's jump into the interview.

Angelique, thanks for joining us today.

Hi. Thank you very much. I'm very honored. I hear so much about you and I'm very lucky that you've asked me to talk to you today. You can see what I was doing. I'm doing the praising, the celebrating of Kwame.

Thank you. No, this is great. And I've heard so many good things about you, too. And that's because we have our incredible friend Mark between us, just floating compliments both ways. So shout out to Mark Davis for this connection.

Indeed.

Love you. Mark. How would you start off? By telling us a little bit about yourself and what you do.

Well, so I work in the negotiation field and I've done so for the last 15 years previous to that. I won't bore everyone. I was in consultancy and recruitment. No, I'm not the devil. I truly did believe in helping people get jobs that they wanted and helping clients find the right people. I started New Beginnings, our business, three and a half years ago, right in the start of the pandemic. As you can well imagine, that was quite a scary time for everybody. But I was thinking, why? Why have I done this and why now what we do is we deliver negotiation training and leadership training in sales. But we focus very much around the collaboration part of negotiation, much around out with the old and in with collaboration. Now. No more thumping chests, egos in the room and deals being lost because people come to deadlocks. There's a bit about me living in the uk, you know, typical actually. Typical English person. Dog, cat, horse and typical. Right. I actually typical English person, when I say it out loud, I realize I am that. And yeah, a 17 year old son. I still don't mind him living in the house and I haven't decided that he needs to go to university yet.

I love it. This is great. I'm super excited about this episode. And listeners, if you've listened to the show before, you know that I love to ask this question. So I give guests the option, hey, we could either go with what you prepared or we can go with surprise door number two. Angelique went with surprise door number two. So we'll just start off with the same question. What is it about human interaction in general that's giving you the most energy right now?

So what I love is seeing and I know this sounds cheesy and twee, but what gives me the energy that makes me bounce around the room is actually seeing people learn and change their behaviors and have confidence, not just talk at them and hope that by osmosis they learn something through our negotiation. But actually seeing them grow and develop themselves personally for me is what gets me, gets me out of bed. And I did say to you earlier on the first one really is my son. I have to say it is. I'm going to be the mum that does do that. He is. But. But second is I love seeing change in people. It's just a great feeling when you see someone coming scared, worried, upset, annoyed, angry, bewildered, don't know how to do many things in their workplace. And then you see the massive change two or three days or when I do the one to one coaching. What better feeling can you have than that? And it makes it worth all those. The sales calls that you have where say someone's saying no, we're not interested or pushing the business forward when we do have the work that we get is just amazing feeling. So yeah, got a serious face there, Kwame.

I was just thinking, I was like, it sounds so familiar because I talk about this all the time. And listeners who are listening in the audio version of this just note talking about being stereotypically British. I believe Angeli just sipped on some tea.

So I actually did just want to.

Point that one out for you. But it's so important and I think again, sometimes we can get lost in the weeds, especially if we're negotiation experts who teach this all the time. And we can teach people negotiation skills, we can talk at them and all that stuff and they might leave and understand it. But if we are not able to give them that core element of confidence and belief, they won't put the tools into action.

Absolutely, 100%. And they all look at negotiation in particular, as you well know, they just think it's a process, that there's a magic to the end of it. If I follow this process, if I follow it, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, I'm going to get my end result. They take out the human side of it, the building relationships, the building trust, understanding how important is to collaborate. Even if it is just a transactional negotiation, it's a small world. And if you're rude and arrogant with that one person because it's just a one off transaction, you never know, you might meet them one day later on when you're pitching to somebody and they go, oh, I remember you, Kwame, I remember how rude you are. You were rude. No matter what, I'm not giving you my business and I'm certainly not going to negotiate and if I do, I'm going to make it really hard for you. So. So it's about interaction there as well, not just giving a full process.

Definitely. In your experience, when you see those people who are afraid of difficult conversations, who are shying away from those interactions, what is it that shakes their confidence and hurts their belief?

Majority of the time it's the shake the confidence. It comes twofold. Is the line manager or the person behind saying, why didn't you get me the deal? And then they're worrying about a their job and a the KPIs. Didn't they hit them? Did they get the margin that they need to do it? So the confidence is not there. That's definitely one that we come across all the time. And the other one is that they've come across somebody who possibly is being really bullish and has left them feeling pretty bad about themselves because it came personal, not just a communication in a business environment. So they're the two I see the most of. Mark will say the same. We bring the lovely Mr. Mark and he says the same. We do see that. The whole team see that a lot. But it comes to play someone being rude and arrogant and they've lost that deal because they've been off so much by the rudeness of the interaction and then obviously the line manager understanding what's happened and how they got to that and that's key is like the support from the line manager. And so the confidence is not completely which they need to then rebuild up to realize that they've got to work for somebody who's going to support them and understand that something may have gone wrong or timing was not right or there could have been a new variable that was brought in that wasn't discussed with the leadership team or etc. Etc. So it's a bigger picture than just the negotiation. We talk about having the right leaders supporting decisions and then having people to support through when they're actually negotiating.

What I loved about this response is that we've pointed out the importance of the managers and the leaders in this process of developing the negotiators. So it's not just the skill set but also the mindset. And that can have an impact on both. The way that the manager leads can have an impact on both.

Absolutely.

If they're not supported, they don't feel supported, then they're not going to feel confident at the negotiation table. And if you don't take the time to empathize and understand the pressures they're going through, then you can't even coach them effectively through the negotiation either.

Absolutely. You've got a manager who's not looking after you. They realize that you're going into negotiation or sales pitch and they're not supporting you. And all it is about the KPI or for instance you must come across this where some clients will just do a tick box exercise and put through people through the programs. Everyone feels like they've got this amazing gift and they go running back into their workplace all excited to use this new experience and gift that they've got. Then they get SAT to say yeah, yeah, yeah, that's fine, but can you just go back to what you were doing eight weeks ago, please? Because that's what we really wanted. We just ticked it off there for. For L and D HR purposes. And when we work with our clients, we always talk to the line managers and directors to say this is not just for you to then for them to come back and say well, we'd like to change, we'd like to do something different, we'd like to use our new skills for them to turn around and say actually no, just carry on doing what you were doing for the last six months. But hey, I trained. So that's where we closely with the Clients very much so. That doesn't happen. You know, there's nothing worse. It's there open up a gift that you can't play with it. And you certainly go, now what do I do with it? I'm not allowed to play with it. I can't do it anyway. So it's like having this, like, great thing in front of you, but you can't do anything with it.

Yeah, that's powerful because it even goes beyond, too, because even if the leader is saying, yeah, we'll do training, that's not even the end game for them. I think that's one of the things that people struggle with in leadership is just the inescapable difficulty of leading. Like, there's no way to get away from the fact that some of these things that you need to do as a leader just takes time. So you can't just throw your people into a training. It's great. It's your responsibility to encourage them to actually use what they've learned and actually start to develop these new habits. Otherwise you're just wasting money and time.

Absolutely. And it's false hope as well, isn't it? Because then the employer coming in full of, like, excitement and looking for empathy and a great leader, and you know what it's like. I could talk about this for hours regarding leadership, around then building a. An environment where it's toxic, getting the best out of somebody. But that's another conversation for another day.

Yes. Yes. One of the other things that you said that I thought was really interesting is that people have interactions with people who are rude, disrespectful, maybe bullying or aggressive, and then that turns them off from negotiation. It's difficult to deal with that in the moment at the actual negotiation table. But for a lot of people, it could create a little bit of small T trauma where they're saying, you know what? I remember that jerk two years ago. I don't want this. I don't want to do this. I'm afraid I might get hurt in that same type of way. So can you address that fear first? And then let's continue to explore how to deal with these tough negotiators, too.

So addressing that fear is when we're coaching, what we do is we just simply talk to them about the fact that they might have had the worst day ever. Okay, Think of it that way. Someone's been really, really rude. You've got to think about if they're rude all the time. That's just their nature. There's nothing you can do about that, there's. You can't. If they're consistently rude, they're arrogant. That's just their way. You can't change that. But what you can do is not change your way and just think, well, sorry, that's just unfortunate for you that you behave in that way. Because nobody wants to be arrogant and rude by burst, do they? You know, wake up, go, you know what? Hey, when I'm five, I'm just gonna be going an arrogant git. So you know what? Actually they went, oh, we love to say git. Anyway, so allow them to do that. So something's happened to that person along the way that's made them that way. We get our people to start, the people that we work with to start thinking, do you know what? That's their problem. You don't have to behave that way yourself as well. You don't have to mirror how they're behaving. Just understand something's gone wrong with them somewhere for them to start behaving that way and they've behaved that way. Something along that line. Whether it be they could have worked for a toxic manager or they had a bad experience, but they haven't had anyone that's helped them through to actually go back to who they really are. We're all born good. At the end of the day, it's the circumstance that changes us. We're herd animals. It's just different things that happen in our lives that change the way that we behave. But we're all born good and so good.

I want to highlight two points here. You said if somebody is rude, disrespectful, mean, at that moment, they might be having a bad day. If they're always like that, it's their nature. And neither of those things is necessarily about you. And I think sometimes we take that behavior and we take it personally.

Absolutely.

Why are you doing this to me?

Absolutely.

If you can take a step back and recognize that their behavior is their problem and your job is to just do the best you can.

Yeah.

It really makes it easier for you to perform under that pressure.

Absolutely. 100%. They could have woken up, had the most steaming row with their partner, and they've gone into the workplace, they've had a row with them, and they were line manager saying, yeah, I want you to cut that margin as well. At the same time, I don't care. You're just going to do it. And of course, they pick up the phone to somebody or they're in the zoom teams, whatever. And then of course, they're just like, that's going to be, gosh, what's this happen? They're like, oh, my God. And instead of just taking a deep breath and going, right, oh, hi. So, Kwame, you're not feeling right today. Are you okay? Is everything all right? Fuse the situation by asking, are you okay? Because actually, that does work. If somebody does that suddenly and they switch. If you've got a good, trusted, collaborative relationship with supplier, buyer, and you know them well enough and you've worked with them long enough, you know, if they're in a bad mood and something bad's happened, then you know something's afoot. They have to just take. It's not about you, it's about what's happening to them at the time. But if they're consistently angry, then obviously that's just something's happened to them in their past that makes them that way. But you can't change that.

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Yes.

Find a way around it.

This is really good. Okay, so let's actually explore this with specificity because I don't want people to miss it because I think it can be a really powerful tactic. So you're saying if somebody's coming into the meeting and they are atypically upset, so you understand, you have a good relationship with them, you have an understanding of their baseline, and you say this behavior deviates from the baseline. Let's say somebody just yelled at you, they exploded. What do you say to them? Let's just do the play by play a bit.

All right, so you just yelled at me. Just said, right. For crying out loud. You didn't have the right ear. Oh, my God. I'm sorry. I thought I bought the right headset. So sorry. What you do is you take a deep breath. You'd have to sense yourself because there's nothing worse than having someone yelling at you, because it really does. It's upsetting when people shout and yell at you or you have anger towards you. You feel the Heat of it, right? You center yourself, deep breaths, take time, and then just say, call me. Are you okay today? Is there anything going on? Do you want to talk about it? Because we can just start this conversation now. We can come back to this meeting another time and have another conversation around. That's are you sure you're okay? And then turn it and do you know what happens? Everyone has always said, ones I've said that to, and people that behave, they said, oh my God, they've just turned around. Gone. Yeah. Do you know what? I've had a really hit day today. It's been awful. Do you know what? It's a good idea. I'm not. My mind's not in the right place. Let's do it another day. Don't force it. If you've got time, do not force it. And if that's that situation where someone's come barking at you, unless you've taken 16 planes and a boat ride and everything else, well, then you're kind of like, do you know what? Do you know what? Let's go to a bar. I know it's only 10 in the morning. Would you like a stiff whiskey? And then let's come back to this two hours later and then let's have that conversation then. But always to disarm it, if you respond by like for like, all that happens is it creates even worse atmosphere. Your negotiation yourselves can forget it. It won't be a brilliant relationship and it won't be a good outcome in your negotiation.

This is so good. I think in addition to the clarity and practicality of the approach, everybody knows exactly what to do, which is great. It also illuminates a really important strategy in negotiation that often isn't utilized, which is pausing and taking a break.

Exactly.

Think about toddlers. You have a 17 year old son, I have a 7 year old and a 2 year old. 2.

You're in the thick of it.

Unbelievable. The boy cries and screams at me. When he does, he's getting what he want. Want. I'm giving you what you want and you're still yelling anyways. This is not me venting. I'm a podcast host. Back together.

What does he want? Sweet. It doesn't matter. It's 4 in the morning.

It doesn't matter. Goodness. But when you're in that situation, you can just take a break. If I'm trying to talk to Dominic, my 2 year old, when he is having a tantrum, we have to understand that psychologically speaking, he cannot process what I'm saying. He's not cognitively capable. And a lot of times we struggle in these difficult conversations because we're trying to accomplish psychological impossibility. This person is having such a bad day right now that they are just looking for reasons to attack everything. You can't be successful right now, nor could anyone just because of the barrier. So if you could inject a little bit of time, just like you said, just two hours or maybe two days, even better. If you have that luxury of time, take it. Because that could be the difference between getting a deal and not getting it 100%.

And also what it will do. It gives the person who had the person barking at them angrily, gives them actually confidence that they've controlled the negotiation, they've controlled the climate and they've reset. And so it's just resetting, isn't it?

Yeah, reset, exactly. Just resetting. And again, it's almost too simple. And that's.

I know, simple is always good, right? I think simple. So it's good. People try over complicate things. They. Everyone talks about negotiation as this like magical, oh, negotiation. You know, only certain people can negotiate. It's not. It's a conversation. It's a conversation for you to come to an end that you both agree to. If you take it literally to that basic, then people feel more confident about it. I remember. Yeah.

And what I'm thinking too, this actually is a great segue to one of the programs you and Mark are putting together. Because I think one of the many reasons why people in general struggle in negotiations and difficult conversations is because they have never been properly trained in negotiations or difficult conversations. I would assume I'm a poor pilot because I've never done. Done it or receive training. And I would assume that somebody who's never received training in negotiation would also struggle. So can you tell us about that program you're creating?

Yeah, absolutely. Thank you. So actually it was born because I gave my son and his friend an exercise. We were doing a fun exercise in negotiation. I just wanted to see how it works. And it was a simple one. It was called Spit and Steel. Basically, at the end of it, I looked at both of them and I thought, oh my gosh, you're going out into the outside world and you have no idea what's out there. And you're both going to go and get jobs. You're both going to go and buy your first student digs. You're going to be having to negotiate your first salary. You've got no idea. And then I looked at it and then we Built it and we tested it, we ran it through some schools. So it's for ages from 16 to 23, although I still think actually 23 up still people haven't had that. I think it's not limited to that, but where it started at the moment is that. So what it does is it allows people to understand how to build their LinkedIn, their profile, their social media and understand that what happens if you do something stupid in your social media that your boss will google you, then there's wandering around on your head, frat party, drinking. I'm a sensible person. I would like to be a doctor. And then going into. I'd like to have this job and then moving into how to interview. So giving those skills of interaction skills because it all moves into finally the negotiation because once you've got an interview, you're going to negotiate your salary. And as we well know, that's one of the most important negotiations of your life, apart from, you know, when you get married or partnership or anything else. The second one is a negotiation of salary. So we've introduced a interactive, just like Fortnite, where people can go on and make mistakes and wonderfully they can. So if they make a mistake, something's on fire behind them or the person moves up and walks away. But what it does, it allows them to keep replaying and do different levels until they get to that level where they're confident and they understand obviously there's more to it than just that, it's engaging because nobody wants. They're in the middle of A levels, GCSEs university and they've already had enough of looking at books. Right. And listening to lectures. They're already fast asleep in the background. So this actually makes them do something so they can feel it and use it in that way. So. And I think if we've got our future being taught in this way, it means that when they go into the their corporate lives, that means that they're prepared, ready, but also it's going to help the corporate world itself by having well developed trained people not just being able to use a calculator where it's got like sign or tan on or, or linear regression and they go, I'm never going to use that again unless they're doing economics. But definitely it will help the future, without a doubt.

I love this, this is great. And I love that it's interactive as well and gamifying. That is smart because attention spans are shorter than ever.

Yeah.

The quality of this is so great because you're teaching them how to build your presence online interviewing skills, how to negotiate salary. It's very clear for the students that are going through that that they could say, all right, I can see how this has practical benefit for me immediately. So kudos.

Absolutely. And they get qualification at the end of it because with cpd, so it means that they actually have got an actual certificate to say, hey, I can negotiate. Makes their CV look good as well.

Very nice.

Oh, well, thanks very much.

This has been fantastic. As advertised. Of course, before you go, remind the listeners again about New Beginnings and how they can get in touch with you.

Of course. So it's New Beginnings consultation, because when we started with the name New Beginnings, that was cost like a million pounds to have that as our. Just to get the word New Beginnings. So we had to add something and we were consulting. So newbeginningsconsultation.com or you can just Angelique at New Beginnings or Mark at New Beginnings, but follow us on our website and you can look on our LinkedIn as well.

Love it. Again, thank you so much for joining us. Really appreciate it.

Absolutely. My pleasure. It's been great fun.

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The best things in life lie on the other side of difficult conversations. Keep learning, keep practicing and keep getting better. Your relationships will improve, your career will soar, and you'll have the confidence you need to get the most out of these crucial conversations. Again, thank you for joining the team. We're excited to have you and I will will see you in the next episode.

I'll catch you later.