About the author
Hazel Crowe
Hazel Crowe spent 20 years on the buying side of commercial negotiation, for mid-size organisations, across software, services, facilities and logistics. She sat on the receiving end of the pitch somewhere over 1,500 times.
For 12 of those years she was also her workplace's representative, sitting beside colleagues in disciplinaries and grievances, because somebody had to and nobody else put their hand up. Then she crossed over and ran employee relations for 11 years, in organisations of 300 to 4,000 people.
Between the two chairs, that came to around 1,200 difficult conversations, and along the way a great many interview panels, from the most junior seat to the chair. She is retired from all of it.
“I was 24, sitting beside a colleague in my first disciplinary. I'd read the policy twice on the way in. The manager looked up from a folder squared neatly on the table, and I knew from his face how it would end.”
Where she started
She took a procurement job because it was the one going. Within a year she had worked out that every meeting she sat in had been prepared for by somebody whose whole job was preparing for it, and that she was improvising. So she started preparing.
Why she put her hand up
She became her workplace's representative because somebody had to and nobody else volunteered. At her first disciplinary she was 24, and she had read the policy twice on the way in.
What she remembers is the manager's face before anyone had said anything, and knowing from that face exactly how the meeting would end.
Why she crossed the table
Moving to the company side of employee relations is a thing representatives are not supposed to do, and she took some stick for it. She did it because she had noticed she was doing the same thing she resented in the managers: walking in with the person already decided.
Those 12 years on one side and 11 on the other cured her of the idea that either side is generally right.
Why she writes the way she does
Two decades of negotiation notes that had to be read fast by a colleague about to walk into a meeting, then years of notes that might be read out at a tribunal. Both took the flourish out for good.
She writes down what was said and what followed, and leaves the inside of other people's heads alone. She also says so when the hard outcome was the right one. Some of those conversations should have ended in dismissal, and some pitches deserved to lose.
Who the books can't help
Anybody in crisis or in need of treatment should go to their GP first, and anybody looking for a script for a conversation they should be taking to a qualified adviser should go to the adviser. Anybody who stammers or has a speech or voice condition should see a speech and language therapist. The books are written from the receiving end, so anybody who wants to get better at persuading people will find little here for that.
Books by Hazel Crowe
- Nobody's FoolThe room where somebody is trying to win. Written from 20 years of being the person the techniques were used on.
- Five Ways of Looking at a PersonThe room where both of you still have to work together on Monday. Written from around 1,200 difficult conversations, on both sides of the table.
- ArticulateThe room where you have to be understood the first time. 30 days of 9-minute drills, written from the other side of the table, as the person being spoken to.
- Culture Is What Management ToleratesThe room where the real rules get made, usually by saying nothing. Written from 11 years running employee relations, in the rooms where the culture came due.
Every person and conversation in the books is a composite of several real ones, so that nobody can be recognised. Where a point rests on a study, the books name it and say how well it has held up. Hazel Crowe writes under a pen name.