Transcript

Aram Donigian : So Julie, when I teach, I use some work coming out of Harvard from like Hannah Riley, Bowles and others who have done some research around gender. So, what seems to have come up is that women tend to negotiate better on behalf of others than their male counterparts. And then they negotiate far worse on behalf of themselves. So I don't know if another framing to what you just said in addition is how, if you were negotiating for a person that looks like, sounds like, thinks like you, right. But you're negotiating on their behalf rather than your own behalf, how would that change the way in which you approach that? I don't know if that framing may work too.

How Women Leaders Negotiate Vs Their Male Counterparts [1:50]

Julie Segalnik : I think that's so powerful. I mean, I do that a lot with women leaders when I prepare them for any kind of difficult conversation, I often ask them to step outside of themselves. So I might ask them to say, you know, “who's the person in your life who thinks you are an absolute rock star. And if they had to go in and sort of be your agent in this conversation, what would they say?” Good. Write it down, practice it. Right. Sometimes, sometimes just getting the building, the neural pathways, right? Getting those words out of your own mouth and not having the sky fall down is a really powerful experience. I mean, my first job, I did not get paid for six weeks, because we had not fully and it's not because the company couldn't pay me at all. We were negotiating salary ranges and something.

I just, you know, I didn't know how to raise it. I am not a great, comfortable negotiator by nature at all, or at least by experience. The very next salary negotiation I had to have; I negotiated a 50% increase because I had learned to have the conversation. And once I'd had the conversation had success with the conversation, some of that storyline started to fade into the background. So getting to people to shift out of their perspective to your idea is a wonderful way to do it. Getting them to embody somebody else who do you know that would it be really, really excited to have this conversation who would just, you know, knock it outta the park? Okay, great. You're that person now, now go advocate for yourself. What would you say? And people usually have the language. It's just, again, it's the story about what we should and shouldn't do. So the other storylines do come from some social patterns around, you know, women who push too hard or perceived in certain ways. Little boys don't get told that they're bossy little girls do, right. I've actually made a point to tell my son he's bossy on a fairly regular basis.

But you know, those things, those things get baked into our subconscious so early on that we have stories upon stories about who we should be and who we shouldn't be. And so that's the other pattern that comes out with women a lot: is the “should”. “I should, I should not.” And by the way, women do not have the market cornered on this. I work with plenty of male leaders who have these stories. Yeah. I work with a lot of immigrant leaders who carry these stories for sure. Right. This sort of sense of responsibility in how you're expected to show up and other people need to believe about you and we get ourselves really tangled up. But the flip side is, you know, it also depends a little bit on how you, you are socialized. So I worked many years ago at a women in leadership conference as a cohort lead.

So we would take groups of women and have them work separately to process what they were learning, do some other activities. And they were leaders from across industries and they didn't know one another at all. And we started our first conversation by talking about leaders that they had worked with and for over the course of their career, who really inspired them. And every single one of them taught talks stories about men. And I thought that's interesting. Some of them were in male dominated industries, so okay, fine. You know, just the odds. Right. But not all of them by any stretch, every single one of them. And at some point I said, “what about the women leaders? So if you were looking to build yourself as a leader in your organization, who do you wanna emulate?” And there was a lot of sort of looking at the floor and uncomfortable silences. And I said, is that, and one of the women I'll never forget this. It was such a great turn of phrase. She said, “in my organization, the women out men, the men.”

AD : Hmm.

JS : And what she meant by that, what I take from that anyway is if you grow up in an organization that has very, very implicit, but very visible norms around, what does it take to be promoted? What does it take to be successful? Right. Who rises? Yeah. And what do they do? That stuff is visible. And if who rises in what they do is about throwing your weight around, you will learn to throw your weight around. And so those are the women who put on, you know, the, the suits with the padded shoulders and they are. And so as we got into the conversation, what I heard from each one of these leaders, oh, I worked for a woman who was just, she was completely unwilling to understand when my kid's school got closed. She just wasn't willing to engage the conversation. Never gave me a break, pushed me harder than the men on my team. Right. You can envision all the reasons why that would be true. But what they weren't feeling was the support and mentorship because the women above them had basically had to transform themselves into the version of what they thought success looked like in their organizations.

AD : Right. Yeah. I appreciate that you've taken this kind of beyond the, “how do I show up”, which is so important piece that you, that you, I think the conversation started and the story I'm telling myself and, and those things to some of this organization, these organizational dynamics that exist. And a number of our listeners are, are leaders within these organizations and there's things that we can be doing that are in some cases more difficult, um, in slower moving, maybe to change. You mentioned Julie, your own story kind of starting in DC, um, as a woman and, and your, you know, what was your role or what was expected or asked to moving to Boston, join a consulting firm where all of a sudden, you, you were given a place at the table. And not just as a, not just taking notes, but “Hey, you, we expect you to be a contributor to be part of problem solving and to be engaging with, with these people.” It seems like that's a pretty critical consideration for organizations.

JS : It is well, and it also says something about how we develop leaders and how we mentor others, right? Giving people a seat at the table and assuming that they have a role to play in that seat. That just makes the metaphor completely, um, that matters, right. Because I look, I didn't believe I had any business to be there, but I was not only invited to, I was expected to have something to say. We, Aram and I work with a colleague who was probably the first partner I worked with at this firm. And we worked on very long term project. It was pretty complex. The industry was pretty complex, it required a lot of legal knowledge. He had had some legal training and actually practiced law at some point I was 24 and did not. And so we devised a bunch of, a bunch of tools and a bunch of training for a couple hundred people who were gonna do a series of trainings. You know, when we designed all these things and then it, and it included some just straight up negotiate preparation tools. And some of them were around, how do you negotiate legal disputes? Like there were some legal terminology. And there, there were things that were nowhere near my range of not even expertise, like, even understanding, right. I could barely edit the documents. So we get all this drafted, we start planning the, the delivery of this. And he looks at me and says, “can you and your colleague go deliver the training? Do I need to go?” And I looked at him and said, “of course you do, what are you talking about?”

That's insane. And he said, yeah. I said, well, well, who's gonna handle the legal piece. I said, yeah. Okay. “Probably, but why don't we have you take on the other pieces?” And I thought, geez. Right. But the, the fact that I was constantly putting these situations where someone believed I could possibly do it, even though I didn't made me think, well, maybe I could possibly do some of it. And then I would try and I had the coaching and the support of others. So that even if I fumbled that, you know, I had a little help along the way, too. So that is really meaningful as we think about developing people, as we think about developing leaders, as we think about developing negotiators. Not just, you know, making someone sit silent and take notes until they're ready and gray enough, but really inviting them into the conversation.

Roger Fisher, who, you know, who is, uh, for many of us, the, the starting point of thinking about negotiation is a way of, of joint problem solving, not just you winning against the other. I was lucky enough to meet him a couple times before he passed. And I remember him coming in to the office to, I don't even remember the nature of the conversation. I think it was something around the Israeli Palestinian negotiations. And he was coming in to talk to a couple of his colleagues about some work they were doing. And I was invited, and I don't remember why I was involved in that conversation, but, you know, I was, I was just excited to listen. It didn't really matter why. I'm there, but that's it.

And at some point, in the middle of the conversation, he took turns to me, looks me dead in the eye and says, “what do you think?” And I just froze. Yeah. But he had this way of doing it. And I've heard this story from other people over the years, he had this way of doing things maybe because he worked with law students a lot. So he was used to, you know, getting the best thinking out of young people, but he had this way of assuming that good ideas could come from absolutely anywhere and that we should look everywhere for them. Right. And when he turned and asked that question, he was really genuinely asking the question and looking for a response.

AD : Yeah.

JS : What an opportunity.

Creative Solutions And Cross Cultural Negotiations [10:00]

AD : So similar to a story that I've told about, my favorite boss, uh, generally term McMaster working for in Afghanistan, um, in the way that he would approach myself, but others too. And just this idea of what, what you just said, which is the belief that ideas, creative ideas, solutions can come from anyone and to, we should be searching. We should be looking for him. We should be looking and, and engaging. And then that's, you know, that's certainly part of the power of having diversity at the negotiation to table or at any problem solving table when we can bring in people from different backgrounds and perspectives and lenses and see, you know, see the problems in the world differently.

JS : Well, right. And then we can value those. Right. And I've been, I've been, I've been learning and reading. And as much as I can, um, from colleagues who are doing diversity equity and inclusion work, and many of them talk about diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging, and that belonging piece really registers for me because not only is that critical in terms of just being able to show up and be your full integrated itself. Right. Imagine this, imagine the added stress and pressure that people have to carry around simply by having to bifurcate themselves between who they are and who they are at work.

AD : Yeah.

JS : And it's exhausting, it's mentally exhausting. It's psychically exhausting. We could talk about what's right and wrong, but it is just exhausting and makes it impossible for people to function and perform. But that belonging piece also ties back to what you were just saying, which is great. Ideas come from lots of different is. And in fact, those of us who have been in the consulting world know that sometimes the best ideas come from the people who have no idea what's going on because you're coming in with fresh ask.

AD : Right.

JS : I have clients who often say to me, you just said that really well, can you come to the negotiation with me? And I tell them, you don't want me there.

I don't know anything about what you're doing or what you're talking about. And it's easy for me to come up with a way to frame it because there's literally nothing riding on this for me. I have no income at stake. I have no position at stake. I have no authority at stake. I have no relationship at stake. There's nothing. And also I've watched lots of people in your shoes have these conversations. And so I'm just picking up and stitching up what I've heard them say that works well. So that's easy. Right. If we could really create teams and cultures and organizations that allowed for true belonging, imagine what kinds of ideas we could surface that we have not previously had access to. Yeah. Because consciously or unconsciously, we're sending messages that people have to be and look, and talk a certain way.

AD : Right. Yeah. I I'm, would you, can you say, maybe go a little further on this thought maybe, perhaps, and maybe I’ll invite you to talk a little bit about some of your cross-cultural work, um, both as a personal experience, as you share, right? The sense of, you know, belonging and, and, you know, Russian belonging, American belonging, how others saw you, how you saw yourself, kind of really grew up being able to see differences, but you've done quite a bit of work around influence and negotiation in a cross-cultural context. Can you say a little bit more of about the kind of just things you see and things that help people be more effective?

JS : Yeah. Um, God, what a great multi-layered set of questions.

AD : Sorry.

JS : Uh, well, I'll pick up some threads and, and let's

AD : Go for it, right?

JS : So, there's a couple things: in part, because of my background in part, because I love to travel, um, I have always had an interest in, in cross-cultural work. Um, and cross-cultural anything. I started out studying history and international relations. Exactly because of that, I was interested in, um, how people were different and in the ways in which they were different, what we could learn from one another. So what I've done with that is gone a little bit deeper into cultural differences and cultural patterns. And what I've noticed is, you know, there are, there are patterns and there's a lot of resource that's been done in terms of differences between cultures and culture types. And I always wanna be careful, right. When I teach about cross-cultural differences, I always push people to get really cool about the difference between a prototype and a stereotype, right?

So we could say that for example, there are differences in terms of context, there are countries and regions, parts of the world that are higher context, and there are others that are lower context. So higher context means there's much more that is between the lines and between words, right? Lower context means everything is very explicit and direct. Um, and you can, you know, you can map some weather patterns that even track it, right? So if you look at countries like the Nordic and the, the Northern European countries, they tend to be lower context and much more direct. Russia too, to a certain extent. Um, if you look at countries that are south of the equator, many of them tend to be much higher context, right. And so people have done some research on that. I just think that's interesting.

But so even understanding that different cultures have different levels of context, this is my life at home now. I am Russian or American, depending on how you slice it. And my husband is Brazilian, much more recently so, Brazil is much higher context than, the US or Russia and definitely than me. Right. And so we're constantly having these conversations where I say, can you just explain that to me? And he says, I just did. And I say, but I don't understand it. He says, but I just told you. Right. And we have learned to pull back and say, wait, wait, this is one of those things, okay, hang on. We, we just need to, like, it's not what you said, it's what I received. So that's, you know, that I have my own little learning lab at home is kind of fun.

But those differences make a really significant other says they tend to come up in the cultural scales or things like hierarchy. So some cultures are, and I'm talking about national cultures. Now, some cultures are much more hierarchy based than others. Um, and that tends to come from countries that were either ruled by empires or kingdoms or things like that, where that was already sent in place in society. Um, right. There are big differences between time horizon. So if you look at a country like the United States, we have a much shorter time horizon on average, than a country like Japan. Countries that tend to focus on, um, elders and ancestors tend to have much longer time horizons. And so when Americans show up to negotiate in Japan, what they often talk about is, oh, you know, you need to spend time relationship building.

Well, yeah, because relationships matter, but also because the time horizon is long. And the, the general perspective is much more about the, the duration of the relationship rather than the thing itself. So, understanding and learning about those differences and just getting familiar with those really, really matters. But then the question becomes, how do you engage with another person? And this is where that stereotype and prototype gets really, really tight. I can read a bunch of indices about what it looks like to negotiate in Japan and with the Japanese. But the moment that I engage a negotiator from Japan and believe that I know who they are and what they're thinking, I'm in trouble, because how do I know what this person takes from their culture? We all carry different elements of culture. Right? Right. So culture is gender. Culture is age. Culture is, whether you grew up in urban or rural environments, culture is education level. Culture is socioeconomic status. Culture is, you know, what do you do? So I, I always give this example, what do you do with a person who shows up at a Japanese at a counterpart, in a Japanese organization who went to college, went to university in the UK, then went to business school in the United States, spent some time working across,  parts of Europe and Latin America. And just three years ago returned to Japan.

Are they gonna carry the profile of the Japanese negotiator? Probably not. And if they do, there might be elements to, so you still have to understand that you're negotiating with individuals, right? That's, we're not negotiating with a type and the moment that we create sort of a category of someone, or we otherize them, we get in trouble. Right. We get in any profound trouble. So that matters a lot. But then also just understanding, right. So here, I can tell you stories, the, the context piece usually tends to be where people get most tripped up when we talk about influence, because we don't understand it. Right. So I worked years ago within a oil and gas company, um, working in, in many parts of the world. This was in Southeast Asia and they were working on a variety of things. And there was a, a very large pool of locally employed staff.

And we got there and they said, you know, we've gotta figure out how to make this work. We've gotta upskill some people, we've gotta get the communication to work more effectively. Okay, great. I said, okay, so what's the problem. I said, well, they're just, you know, some of the, some of the people on my team just, they're not there. I'm afraid they're not there. They’re not really good communicators. I don't think we can put them in, in negotiation roles. They just, they can't get a point across, they dance around the issue. They don't raise things that that need to be raised. I feel like I'm always finding out about something at the last minute. And when you look at the patterns of course, right. And Indonesia, it's a much more sort of much more high context. The importance of saving and maintaining face is huge.

So one reason you wouldn't raise a difficult issue is because you don't have the skills set. Another reason is because you don't wanna embarrass somebody. It is very, very much based in terms of oral tradition. There's so many different languages across Indonesia. I mean, you know, the amalgamation of Bahasa happened I think what in the fifties, but, or hundreds of languages spoken across Indonesia, it's very much an oral street culture. So people don't communicate in bold points. People communicate in stories. That's how information was passed. And, and it's not to say that everyone in Indonesia does it this way, but it is a pattern of communication that is culturally appropriate and normal, It's not a sign of strength or weakness. It's not a sign of good or bad. And until we can really understand that there are different communication patterns and different communication needs served by culture, history, expectations, training, experience, whatever it is. We're just gonna tell stories about the other side. And those stories are never really all that flatter. Right. So it's a, you're too aggressive and you take too long to get to the point and we miss each other.

So the real opportunity becomes, how do we understand someone and meet them where they are. If we understand that saving face is important, don't try to have a difficult conversation in a group of people. Right. For example, right. We can meet people where they are. We can at least walk toward them in a way to create the opportunity for connection and for good problem solving.

AD : Yeah. That, that is that's so well said. And, and I think that, you know, if we'd listen back to some of the things you said earlier on so much of being able to meet someone else where they are, starts with an awareness of where I am and where I'm coming from. Right. And then, and then creating, you talked about as, as a coach, creating space as negotiators creating space for, um, the, for that to occur, to actually meet someone, um, where, where they are and where they're thinking and understanding context, versus just driving something and just trying to push a deal arrangement.

Legitimacy, Interests, And Being Able To Advocate Effectively [19:53]

JS : Yeah. I also wanted to make sure, I just realized that there might have been something in your question that I can say this a little bit more tangible. And it goes back to where we started talking about women, but also as I think about just anyone who perceives as other to the organization. For one reason or another there's a resistance to stepping out, right. To, to asking, um, to looking too aggressive, to looking too greedy. Right. We sort of tell ourselves these stories about why we shouldn't or why we, we couldn't, again, I work with a lot of immigrants and expats. They tell some of those stories. I hear these stories a lot. I even hear from some white men. And so there are things about negotiation that can actually equip us. I think one of the reasons I got very attached to negotiation was I didn't like to have those difficult conversations.

Right. I can hold my own. I don't like it. I mean, I really don't like it. I find it uncomfortable. Um, but the power of legitimacy, this notion that nothing is agreed until I agree. And the decisions don't get made based on who's loud or who's strong or who's in charge, but decisions gets get decisions get made based on what makes sense. So while I can't control what the final outcome is, if I lack, leverage in any negotiation, I can absolutely still register the, I can see why that makes sense to you, and I can see why you would want it that way. And in your shoes, I'd probably say the same thing. And from my perspective, I can't see a way to square that with whatever it's. Yeah. Or I can't see a way to justify that internally. And if I can't do that, I'm not sure how I can agree.

AD : Right.

JS : Leaning back on legitimacy is one really great way that I found for me personally, and for a lot of my clients to get past some of those stories about “I shouldn't push, I shouldn't ask, I shouldn't be too aggressive.” It's not about being aggressive. It's about insist on what's, right. Or what's fair, or what's reasonable, or what's defensible. And that most people can get behind a little bit more readily than, you know, “I wanna claw value for myself” for a lot of people that's uncomfortable.

AD : Right. So, what you're describing, at least to me, Julian, you correct me here, but it's, it, it improves my ability to advocate effectively, which is something that we often talk about the need to inquire more and acknowledge more because those skills don't tend to show up in difficult conversations. We certainly want to do those things. And as we've done those, we also need to be able to advocate effectively legitimacy becomes a key point or ability to allow us to advocate for ourselves, for our perspectives, for those things that are really important to us.

JS : That is really well said. Yeah. And it also ties back to interest. Right. So you have to understand what your interests really are and grapple with the ones that might be uncomfortable or conflicting before you get into that conversation.

NM : Hey Julie, so I've noticed that a few times, we've kind of already discussed this and I'd like to kind of circle back to it. And that's really the intersection between leadership and negotiation. It's one of the focuses here at NEGOTIATEx. So I was hoping to kind of get your perspective on where you think that is and you know, the importance of it for leaders who are also negotiators.

The Intersection Between Leadership and Negotiation Expertise [22:55]

JS : Yeah. Ah, that's such a good question, you know, and honestly, it's another one of those, we've talked about this question before. It's not like this is surprising and I hear you ask it and I think, huh. Um, because it's really, it's, it's so multifaceted. It's so FA it's. So to me, um, so part of how I got into the leadership space was, again, you know, it's not like I worked on individual negotiations. I worked on the organizational negotiations with my clients. And so the leadership piece always factored in. So, you know, could you get a team well prepared to go off and have a negotiation with a difficult counterpart? Let's say a customer who had, um, who was a significant portion of your revenue or a supplier who was dominant in the market, or maybe even single or so sourced absolutely could. Absolutely. You could.

And if that difficult counterpart also had relationships with executives or with your senior management or someone up or around you where they could simply make a phone call and eventually get some kind of, um, some kind of reward for making that phone call, what's the value of the effective negotiation and the effective preparation. What you've done is undermine the role of the team negotiating. Um, and what you've done is train the counterpart to continue to push you for more and harder. And I've worked with a couple of clients where we were actually able to, because we were working on some very high stakes negotiations, we were able to map back in time, five years of what was the ask for the, the annual negotiation and what did they end up with? And before we got to the last two years, I was able to like almost to the dot predict what the ask would be because the pattern builds itself.

Right? So that for me is a big element of leadership. It's, you know, Simon se has a really great way of thinking about this and I I've started to adopt it. He talks about leadership as, um, putting the needs of others ahead of our own. And I've come to think about it a little bit as creating the conditions for trust and for cooperation in a way that allows people to be their best selves or to drive the best results. It depends on how you wanna think about it, right? I, I tend to think about being as really important, but if you wanna get really bras tax about it, fine drive the best results. It's the same thing. People don't drive excellent results if they're not able to thrive. Right. Um, so choose your language. But that's that to me is the connection. You can't have great negotiators and you can't have great negotiated outcomes.

If the leadership of the organization or the negotiators as leaders, don't also then equip others to perform at their best, to create an environment of trust where they can explore and get creative and figure out the, the unsolvable, right. Really, really get creative around deadlocks and things like that. Um, and you can't make good choices because at some point everybody starts to make the choice that they think is going to land. And we've seen this all the time, right? And you say to people, what would it take to ring a good, the, uh, the ceiling on the price? And someone says, oh my God, I have to go in and have a conversation with the community, right? It's not to say that you don't need to have those conversations. I, I, I wanna be clear about that. It's not to say, you know, give every, every negotiator free reign.

It's not that at all right. Organizations are designed to have, uh, functions and individuals with competing so that ideally those interests get negotiated out and we come up with the best solutions, but that's tedious and that can be time consuming. And we're not all at our best in those conversations. So that that's the piece about leadership. And of course, when I think about negotiation is about as, about, um, connecting way that allows you to solve problems and create possibilities, right? Leadership to me is about creating the conditions for that. And so that that's the, the deepest piece of overlap. And it is also interesting that inside organizations, most people who are, uh, formal negotiators, right, we're all negotiating. It doesn't matter what role you're in, but those who are negotiating agreements, um, with external parties tend to also be in leadership positions. And so how you think about how you negotiate and how you think about how you lead, it's a huge intersection, right? When we talk to people about the importance of others' interests, those who say, yeah, we spend a lot of time thinking about that, tend to engage differently with their counterparts and tend to lead their teams differently than those that say, well, why do we care about their interests?

And I'm guessing you all have seen some of that in the military. Right? I mean, it's the same kind of thing right?

AD : Yeah. It really, no, it really, it really is. Um, I, I do think that, uh, if you become a more effective negotiator, it inevitably affects other aspects of your life. Right? You, you shared your personal life at home and the way you have conversations, Noland, I've done talked about that. And that previous episodes, I think it engage, it changes how you engage, uh, with people. So even the leadership too.

JS : Yeah. Although, you know, I, I always feel like we need to make, make the, uh, the, the caveat or the warning. The personal relationships are sometimes the most fraught. So if you're going to try to experiment with a new way to negotiate, don't try this at home.

NM : There's

JS : Some consequences, right? I used to have a colleague who, uh, who had a very positive relationship with her partner, but she used to talk about the fact that whenever they would get into arguments, she knew that there were seven words she was not allowed to use, which are the seven elements of negotiation, because right when you're in the middle of a heated argument, you don't wanna hear reason. What you don't wanna hear is somebody say, well, I work with a framework that, but, you know, um, so it was kind of like, just avoid that language. It was just better to avoid that language in the middle of an argument, Because the pat, you know, our patterns and our relationships are really, really deeply sewn and the feelings are more significant and the consequences of them going badly are also pretty significant. So maybe not the best place to experiment. Yeah. It's a great source of learning

NM : As we kind of wind down here. Julie, is there anything else that you wanna share or, um, we'll get into key takeaways here in a second, but anything else you want to kind of add or, or share?

JS : Yeah. Um, you know, this is all personal observations, right. And part of what's cool about having these conversations is everybody has a different perspective. And so I get to learn from them. So I'm grateful for this. Um, and just from hearing, even the questions, make me think about how I think about it differently. Um, and, and I guess the thing that I would say, and the thing that I often say to my clients who come to me for coaching and say, teach me how to negotiate is they're related, but they're different things. And so, as you think about building your negotiation effectiveness, it is app absolutely about the preparation and the learning and the framing and the strategy and all of those things. And if you don't do the work to look inside yourself too, you may very well be missing an opportunity because if we can't get ourselves aligned with ourselves, it's going to be really hard, come across in the ways where we can be most effective.

So if you're looking to be effective, do all the preparation, all the training, all the strategy, all the learning you possibly can. Absolutely. And quite honestly, I find it fascinating. So, um, no harm done, but don't miss the opportunity to really look inside, right. As you're thinking about your interests, I think it's so critical to really get clear about, I think really my interests or are these the interests I think I should have, do I actually care about whether or not this happens or am I just fighting for it because I'm supposed to be, or because I did the last time or because other people do right. Does it really matter? What's the, what's the hierarchy of importance here for me. And if I were to meet the other person or the other team, or the other group, or the other organization on their side, and look at this from the perspective of how can we come up with a really good solution here, not just solve a problem, but maybe come up with a great solution or build a, a prospect for something in the future. The value of what I contribute, the value of what I deliver is going to be so much greater than just closing the deal and moving on to the next thing. And so that, that for me, that intersection between what we do on the outside and what we do on the inside just continues to be so critical.

AD : Nolan don't even come back to me for takeaway, that was a mic drop. In my opinion, I got nothing to add.

So I'm just gonna say, Julie, thanks. You, you know how much, I just always appreciate working with you and having you, having you on the program and cheering all your insights so invaluable. Definitely hit the mark above and beyond. So thanks. We'll have to have you on again. And I, and I really do, I'm gonna pass this back to Nolan, but I, I hope folks, we're gonna make sure we push out a Adance's global consulting and your website and contact information for you. Thanks for all that you're doing for so many. So Nolan, Nolan bless you.

NM : Yep, absolutely. Thank you. Thank you so much. No, thank, thank you for, for coming on today's podcast. I know that all the listeners are gonna get a ton of value, and it's probably one of those episodes that you're gonna go back and listen to a couple more times to really pull out everything that you said here. So for our listeners, we do have a webinar coming up on February 22nd. You can sign up for that negotiate x.com/webinar. Um, and we are going to hopefully have a pretty good discussion about leadership negotiations and, um, and kind of also unveil another aspect to our website. So stay tuned, join us there for that webinar. Appreciate it. Thank you, Julie. Again, Aram, always great to see you my friend, we'll see you in the next episode.