Life is a series of negotiations. Whether you are an employee or an employer, a professional or a freelancer, regardless of your identity and social status, there is always a bunch of work that demands for your negotiation skills. It happens at work and does not stop at home. It can also involve physical and mental strengths. Indeed, negotiating is how we work things out. Upon client management, negotiation is even more crucial as it decides the quality that a particular business possessed and the impact they made along the way. Poor negotiation in the workplace not only results in loss of finance but also human resources, including both staffs and customers. Balancing between two factors, dealing with difficulties and making the best out of them is also a way of negotiation.
Huyen Chau at World Economic Forum 2014 (provided by the interviewee)
Nguyen Huyen Chau, in fact, was not the first person that immediately popped up on my mind to be the interviewee for this assignment. I met her for a cozy coffee talk upon her participation as a guest speaker for “Global Leadership Activation Day 2014” conducted by AIESEC. At first, I predicted that the conversation should last for around half an hour only, as the main purpose was just to briefly introduce to her the content of our event. However, it turned out that we had been chatting non-stop for nearly four straight hours. I was so inspired by her stories that I am finally sitting here, rewriting the whole thing while the clock is ticking towards the deadline.
Huyen Chau (second from the left) at RMIT Alumni Year-End party 2013 (provided by the interviewee)
Having graduated from RMIT University (Hanoi campus) in 2008, Huyen Chau is currently the “Curator” – the coordinator-in-charge of Global Shaper Hanoi Hub. To be more specific, Global Shaper is a sub-community of World Economic Forum (WEF) and expanded to 277 cities in the world, consisting of approximately 3200 “shapers”. She was chosen by WEF as a representative for Vietnamese leaders to take part in an annual summit in Davos, Switzerland this year for pursuing and developing brand new business model, which is social business.
Huyen Chau at Vietnam National Alumni Conference 2013 (provided by the interviewee)
Huyen Chau started the interview by explaining how she coped with the working environment of domestic and international companies as well as differentiating the cultures of both. This took me aback, as although I understood the concept of negotiating and compromising to reach a mutual agreement in the workplace, but I could not imagine that it took her contrasting amount of time to deal with these companies.
At CB Richard Ellis – a well-known international real estate agent ranked 50 among biggest and most wanted organizations in the world, only a week after she got the job offer, she was able to handle most of the tasks given. On the other hand, during the first whole year, she had been struggling to adapt to complex working procedures at State Capital Investment Corporation, which is a Vietnam sovereign fund. Regardless of her education background at RMIT as a multi-cultural learning environment, she figured out that Vietnamese companies tend to emphasise on self-achievement, while international companies pay more attention to self-expression. Her objective was to negotiate within herself and among other co-workers to make the best of both worlds.
Understand yourself
“”Why” is my all-time favorite question since I was a kid. Sometimes it gets quite annoying but it really helps you develop your critical thinking skill and develop better understanding of what you really want and can even open up better deals for you”, Huyen Chau said. Facing different directions and do not know which way to choose is very common among individuals. For instance, while attending conferences and summits on an international scale, she was asked many questions about the national issues that you would like to improve the most. There were certainly a variety of ongoing issues here in Vietnam, however, fixing everything at once is not considered realistic. While other attendees had different ideas which represented their cultural backgrounds, from implementing solar energy system to conserving mosquitoes in order to retain the eco-balance, she took a deep look, reflected in her mind and found out what she concerns most is education. Specifically, she would like to build more schools in ethnic regions for children and concentrate more on history of Vietnam.
Understand people
Having the opportunities to experience both domestic and international learning and working environment, Huyen Chau stated before dealing with anyone, you should have basic understanding of their culture first. For example, few people knew that China and Tibet are not exactly like what media had portrayed them. In fact, China had copied and built a whole new city that was identically the same as Sangrila of Tibet. According to her, getting to know their nature and being able to somehow predict how people would react to certain events helps you a lot in negotiation. Her advice was to talk to as many foreigners as you may encounter just to ask for their opinions on different aspect of life. That was the cheapest and fastest way to learn. Also, she herself tried this particular method of learning and it worked well for her. Throughout the conversations, I could see the enrichment in her knowledge of culture and society, not only of people and countries but also companies and organizations.
Huyen Chau at Phieng Thanh, Moc Chau during her own charity activity of building school for children (provided by the interviewee)
Get involved
There are lots of undeniable benefits of enjoying participation. Huyen Chau did mentioned the fact if you took part in company activities, not only you could gain needed skills and experiences but also be a part of the team and have the respect of others. She also said that her greatest advantage compared to other candidates was having attended many networking events. For the first few times, she planned to reach as many people as possible but not sure of how to stay in contact and maintain the relationship with them. After a while, Huyen Chau realized that her network should be qualitative instead of quantitative and she could not manage it all. She focused more on the individuals that shared the mutual interest and vision.
To conclude the conversations, Huyen Chau one more time emphasized on the importance of blending these above factors in every negotiation, in addition to personal knowledge and experiences. She would love to see the development of Vietnamese youth in the near future, not only regarding negotiation skill but also other survival skills in order to be fully work-ready after university graduation.
Proof of life
References:
Fox, E. A. 2013, “The Most Important Negotiation in Your Life”, http://blogs.hbr.org/2013/09/the-most-important-negotiation/, Harvard Business Review Blog Network, viewed August 27th, 2014
Art of Client Service 