Today I have a deep dive conversation with the magnetic Kwame Christian, Director of the American Negotiation Institute and a respected voice in the field of negotiation and conflict resolution. Kwame also hosts one of the world’s most popular negotiation podcasts, Negotiate Anything. Kwame and I dig into how to be confident in the face of conflict: Confident during a difficult conversation, and confident in yourself, before you step into the conversation. As he points out, it doesn't make sense to give recipes to people who are afraid to get in the kitchen! So confidence is critical.
This is one of the most fundamental points that many people miss about negotiating - they see it as a series of tips, tricks and tactics, but it’s really about a way of thinking. Before you start any negotiation with another person, you have one with yourself. You convince yourself that you deserve more than you are currently getting, you resolve to speak up. In Negotiation-speak, this is sometimes called the aspiration value - what you aspire to get. But often there’s another part of ourselves that tells us exactly the opposite - we don’t deserve what we want or we shouldn’t bother asking, or that we’ll never get it, no matter how hard we negotiate. These parts need to have a conversation and negotiate an approach that feels right to ourselves.
Kwame’s book, Finding Confidence in Conflict: How to Negotiate Anything and Live Your Best Life spends a great deal of time on this inner negotiation and the tools to help you step up, including mindfulness and self-compassion.
What I love about Kwame’s approach to negotiation is that the patterns to shift a negotiation with another person are the same tools he suggests to shift a negotiation with yourself: Compassionate Curiosity.
Force and coercion are not effective long-term negotiation or conversation strategies with another person...and they don’t work very well when we apply them to ourselves, either. Forcing yourself to do something you don’t want to do...it usually backfires, right?
Kwame suggests applying a 3-step process to be compassionately curious with difficult conversations - a way through challenging disagreements with others or ourselves.
Acknowledge emotions
Get Curious with compassion
Joint problem solving
About halfway through our conversation, Kwame talks about how it’s hard to force yourself to not worry and what to do instead: It’s better to admit that we DO feel worried and seek to understand why. Like in any negotiation, get curious about what data there is on the other side of the table...in this case, what there is to worry about…and then start problem-solving. How likely are those scenarios? What can we do about each? It’s much easier to negotiate a time-boxed worrying session with yourself than it is to push it off. Leaning into difficult conversations is always more rewarding than avoiding them - this is doubly true with yourself.
Enjoy the conversation as much as I did, and make sure to check out Kwame’s resources on ways to transform negotiation, resources for learning negotiation, and useful meditation techniques: check out Kwame’s TEDx talk, the negotiate anything podcast and The American negotiation Institute.
LINKS, KEY QUOTES, NOTES AND RESOURCES
The American Negotiation Institute
Kwame Christian’s TEDx talk, "Finding Confidence in Conflict"
Finding Confidence in Conflict: How to Negotiate Anything and Live Your Best Life by Kwame Christian
Second 27
If you look at any part of your life, like the most impactful moments, most likely, there was a difficult conversation somewhere in the vicinity of that moment, of that decision. Especially when you think about the most impactful relationships we have, it's not always sunshine and rainbows all the time. There are going to be some of these difficult conversations. And then the success or failure that we have in those relationships is going to be contingent upon to a large extent, how well we have those conversations. Same with our career, same with how we operate in business. It's all the same. So, I genuinely believe that if we're better at having these difficult conversations, we're putting ourselves in the best position possible to live the best version of our life.
Minute 6
it comes down to this, it doesn't make sense to give recipes to people who are afraid to get in the kitchen. I can give you all the tools and tactics that I want. You can know exactly what to do. It doesn't mean you'll do it. It doesn't mean that if you do it, you'll do it confidently, right? So, it's important to have that psychological and emotional foundation in place. So, you can be effective once you get that understanding of the tools.
Minute 12
For me, thinking about my fear of difficult conversations that I had in the past and my fear of public speaking, that a lot of people are shocked to hear when they see my TED talk and recognize that the foundation of my business is public speaking at this point. They're surprised to hear that I had that struggle. They're even more surprised to hear that I still have it, right? That's the thing. Daniel, the feelings are still there, but we go through a process called cognitive reappraisal. So, what we're doing is that even though we're feeling something, we change the appraisal of the phenomenon inside of us. So, I'm changing the way that I think about it. So, when my heart rate elevates, I perspire a little bit. My breathing gets a little bit shallow. Instead of saying, "I'm afraid," I say, "I'm excited." That means I'm having a conversation that means something.
Minute 13
So, now as a mediator, I'm constantly leaning into difficult conversation as a negotiator on behalf of my clients, because I still want to keep myself sharp. I still practice mainly to collect stories that I can use to teach people at a higher level, but I still do this and I get nervous. I feel that, but I've changed my perspective. So, whenever a mediation would come to me or a negotiation would come to me and it was really dirty, just highly emotional. People are using underhanded tricks. I get excited. I'm like, "Oh, this is going to be good. This is going to be good."
Minute 15
If you're going up to bat, you might have an opportunity to hit the ball, right? But sometimes you strike out. Sometimes you can strike out by swinging. Sometimes you can strike out by looking. People who go down looking feel much worse than the people who go down swinging. So, the way that I think about it is that listen, there's a chance that I miss, but I'm going to miss by trying to be proactive and taking control of the situation rather than being passive and hoping that things go my way.
Minute 22
One of the things you have to recognize is that effective negotiation usually is boring, right? I'm not exciting to look at when I negotiate. I might throw in some jokes well timed and everything, but that's about it. Because I remember when I was learning to drive, my dad taught me a very important lesson. He said, "You're going to make more mistakes by driving too fast than driving too slowly."
Minute 26
I think it's almost like a negotiation with myself. I don't say, "Nope, you cannot worry." No, that's not how my brain works. All right, how much are you going to worry. How are you going to do it? How can you actually make it productive? I think that's worked well for me.
Minute 29
So, with neuroplasticity, that's just the recognition that your brain changes with experience. Neurons that fire together wire together. So, the thing is if you train your brain to be resentful, that's how you will be. You will start seeing negativity everywhere and went through some tough times. I started to recognize, "Oh, hey, normal, happy Kwame isn't there anymore. He's starting to get really negative and the pattern was not good." So, I said, "No, I need to retrain my brain." So, what my new habit is, is in the morning, I go through my gratitude journal, write three things that I'm grateful for. Then I put it down and then I do a five-breath meditation, just long breath in, long breath out.
Minute 38
Understanding the way that the brain works, these fundamental psychological concepts, helps you to make better decisions in the moment. Again, not a really difficult negotiation technique to understand, but it has a significant impact on your negotiations and difficult conversations. Waiting, simply having the mental discipline to inject a little bit of time between the stimulus and response. It plays a significant dividend during the negotiation.
Minute 41
What is the saying, what's the point of gaining the world if you lose yourself in the process? If you're okay with yourself, then you can lose the world, then you can still be okay with the outcome. I think that's really, really, really powerful, really powerful. The more time you spend with yourself appreciating yourself and taking the time through gratitude to appreciate the things that you already have, then you're going to be in a much better position. One of my favorite definitions of happiness and success is when you want what you already have.
Full Transcript
Daniel Stillman:
Kwame Christian, I'm going to officially welcome you to the Conversation Factory. Thanks for being here. I really appreciate your time.
Kwame Christian:
My pleasure. Thanks for having me.
Daniel Stillman:
So, there's a quote I have from you that it seems to appear in a lot of different places that "The best things in life often lie on the other side of a difficult conversation." I'm wondering if you can just say more about why you believe that to be so true.
Kwame Christian:
Yeah. If you look at any part of your life, like the most impactful moments, most likely, there was a difficult conversation somewhere in the vicinity of that moment, of that decision. Especially when you think about the most impactful relationships we have, it's not always sunshine and rainbows all the time. There are going to be some of these difficult conversations. And then the success or failure that we have in those relationships is going to be contingent upon to a large extent, how well we have those conversations. Same with our career, same with how we operate in business. It's all the same. So, I genuinely believe that if we're better at having these difficult conversations, we're putting ourselves in the best position possible to live the best version of our life.
Daniel Stillman:
Yeah. So, I think what I found so interesting about your approach is I think often people think about negotiation as a way to design a conversation between me and another person that there's all these tactics that I should know and there's all these mental models I should be bringing to bear on the conversation. But the idea that I should be using compassionate curiosity, not just for my "opponent" or my somebody on the other side of the table, but that I should also be using it for myself, I think is a really unique perspective that you have on negotiation.
Kwame Christian:
Thank you. Yeah. I wanted to make sure with my book, Finding Confidence in Conflict, I had a unique contribution, because there are tons of books out there that do a great job of addressing negotiation, conflict resolution. I wanted to take a different approach. So, the compassionate curiosity framework is a three-part framework that you can use in any difficult conversation you have, whether it's at work or at home. Like you said, you can turn that into an introspective process and look at yourself. The steps are the same.
Kwame Christian:
So, the first step is acknowledge and validate emotions. The second step is get curious with compassion. And then the third step is joint problem solving. We do this externally in our difficult conversations, but beforehand, it's good to do it internally as a tool of introspection to get a better understanding of the challenges that you face. So, you can have more clarity during the conversation.
Daniel Stillman:
So, what I love about this in my own work in conversation design, I love the idea of durable patterns that apply everywhere, right? This idea that that design for that arc of that conversation of start with acknowledging emotions, open there, explore through compassion and then joint problem solving as a way to close, it's a durable pattern that you can apply for a group negotiation or a one-on-one negotiation or an internal conflict that you, yourself are having.
Daniel Stillman:
I guess my question is, "What was your journey inward?" Because I feel like most people go outward. There's an old scripture about this, "The senses all go outwards." So, we go outwards or we look outwards. We smell outwards and we speak outwards. But going inwards, I think, takes more work. So, where did you get that drive to go inward?
Kwame Christian:
I've always been fascinated by the human mind. So, my undergrad degree is in psychology. I think when I tell people that and the fact that I wanted to be a counselor or a therapist or get into psychiatry, one of those options, I think it makes a lot more sense with my approach, because people often say, "Oh, you don't sound like a lawyer." I was like, "Well, my degree's in psych." Oh, that makes sense. I get it now. So, I think that's really where it came from. There's this joke in psychology that people often study the thing that they struggle with the most.
Daniel Stillman:
Yeah.
Kwame Christian:
So, for me, it was confidence, especially in difficult conversations. So, I wanted to become a therapist to help people overcome their personal fears, whatever it happened to be. So, for me, I'm a recovering people pleaser. So, I wasn't very confident in difficult conversations. So, I just used myself essentially as my own client. Put myself through cognitive behavioral therapy just for myself, treated it like a phobia. All right, I'm afraid of these conversations. What can I do to get over it? So, by working on it and thinking through it and looking deeply within myself, I was able to find the answer.
Kwame Christian:
So, for me, one I'm doing now with the American Negotiation Institute and my negotiation and conflict resolution trainings, I really think of it more as putting myself in a position to help people overcome those psychological and emotional barriers. Then once they have that confidence, then give them the skills and strategies in order to be successful.
Daniel Stillman:
Do people resist that path? I feel like the outward strain is people want the tools and they want the tips. They want the tricks that they can apply. So, that they don't have to think or feel.
Kwame Christian:
Yes. I wouldn't say there's a resistance once they get in it, but there's a resistance in the way you market it, right? Because if I say, "Hey, I'm going to talk about your feelings," then people say, "No, no, no, let's talk about money," right? That's easy. That's why with my approach, you see with the book, people are usually surprised that 50, 60, 70% of the book is about psychology and introspection and overcoming those personal challenges. But then as they go through it, it makes sense. Everybody comes to the conclusion, "Yeah, it makes sense."
Kwame Christian:
Really, it comes down to this, it doesn't make sense to give recipes to people who are afraid to get in the kitchen. I can give you all the tools and tactics that I want. You can know exactly what to do. It doesn't mean you'll do it. It doesn't mean that if you do it, you'll do it confidently, right? So, it's important to have that psychological and emotional foundation in place. So, you can be effective once you get that understanding of the tools.
Daniel Stillman:
So, this is the thing that's potentially interesting. Let me see how I can phrase this, because I was actually just coaching somebody about this. There's the idea of the ZOPA, where the zone of possible agreement. I have my range of prices that I want to get, and you have your range. Maybe there's something in the middle. There's this idea of the aspiration value, what I'm willing to ask for. I hope I don't go into dangerous waters here. There's some studies that actually attribute the salary differences between men and women to the fact that men ask more often for more.
Daniel Stillman:
So, my friend, Claire Wasserman, who I had on the podcast, a couple years ago, she is writing a book called Ladies Get Paid. She has an international women's group that's about teaching women how to get paid and to ask for what they're worth. It's about starting with the individual. I think there's some challenges with saying, the individual has to ask more and the individual needs to learn how to do all this work when there's all these structural things that are around it. I don't know what my question is, but there's the internal negotiation and then there's all these external factors that go into it.
Kwame Christian:
Absolutely, yeah. We also have a podcast called Ask With Confidence that's all about women in negotiation. Our Chief Operating Officer, Katherine Knapke is the person who is the host of that show. I'm always afraid of mansplaining on this show.
Daniel Stillman:
How it should be, yes.
Kwame Christian:
But the thing is, this is a question that I get asked all the time, Daniel. You're right. The studies, if you look at the really great book, Women Don't Ask by Linda Babcock and Sara Laschever, they talk about that study. Those are studies that they did in their time in... I cannot remember the name of that Ohio University. It's going to bug me for a while.
Daniel Stillman:
We'll Google it later and put it into the notes.
Kwame Christian:
Exactly, exactly. They did a great study. They recognized that in their classes, the men were four times more likely to ask than the women. Based on their studies, they determined that a portion of the gender gap, the wage gap could be eliminated by effective negotiation skills. And then some more updated studies have demonstrated that now, because of their work and the work of other great people, especially people like Sheryl Sandberg with Lean In, women are now more likely to ask, but now what we're running into is they're finding that even though they're asking more, they're still getting less compared to men when they ask for a comparable amount.
Kwame Christian:
So, that's where you demonstrate that interesting dichotomy, because there needs to be an individual approach and then approach directly to society. Because individually, we can talk about the negotiation strategies and tactics that we can use to improve our outcomes. But then on the other side, we also have to address the reality that there are some structural and societal and psychological inequities that exist. When I talk about psychological, I'm talking about bias against women, where when a woman is assertive and advocating for herself, it's looked upon negatively too. So, we have to have a bifurcated approach where we focus on the development of our own skills to advocate for ourselves, while at the same time, addressing those inequities and changing culture to make it more equitable.
Daniel Stillman:
Yeah. So, this is where it comes down to because this idea that well, you should just ask for more. You should increase your aspiration value and just work through your internal conflict, there's data that shows that asking make somebody look bad, right? So, they're like, "Well, why should I bother asking?" So, I mean, this is one way I want to explore one of your statements from the book about fears and anxieties being the manifestations of a healthy, functioning mind. I often tell people that the emotions are just information.
Daniel Stillman:
What we do with that awareness is up to us. I'm just wondering if you can say more about how we should all deal with our own fight, flight, and freeze responses that we'll experience. If we're talking about designing the arc of the conversation and the negotiation arc of compassionate curiosity starts with acknowledging emotions, in there, there are those three directions that we might want to go. If we slow down and experience our response in that moment, what should we be aware of? What should we be doing with that information that's coming in?
Kwame Christian:
Yeah, like you said, we have to recognize that it's information. There's a difference between thoughts and truths, emotions and truths, right? So, we need to evaluate it. I think about it just like a signal. What is the signal saying? Okay, let's make an assessment and then make a decision based on that. Sometimes introducing a little bit of time between the feeling and the decision or the action, that can help you to think a little bit more clearly about the situation. One of the things that people have to recognize is this. For a lot of us, those feelings don't go away. They don't go away.
Kwame Christian:
For me, thinking about my fear of difficult conversations that I had in the past and my fear of public speaking, that a lot of people are shocked to hear when they see my TED talk and recognize that the foundation of my business is public speaking at this point. They're surprised to hear that I had that struggle. They're even more surprised to hear that I still have it, right? That's the thing. Daniel, the feelings are still there, but we go through a process called cognitive reappraisal. So, what we're doing is that even though we're feeling something, we change the appraisal of the phenomenon inside of us. So, I'm changing the way that I think about it.
Kwame Christian:
So, when my heart rate elevates, I perspire a little bit. My breathing gets a little bit shallow. Instead of saying, "I'm afraid," I say, "I'm excited." That means I'm having a conversation that means something. That means I have an opportunity to speak to people and share a message and change lives. This is a really good thing. I'm excited. That's the really interesting thing, because we have a limited range of physiological responses. So, if you're scared, you're going to have that increased heart rate, shallow breathing, perspiration. Same things going to happen if you're excited. So, I just changed the perspective to say, "I'm excited."
Kwame Christian:
So, now as a mediator, I'm constantly leaning into difficult conversation as a negotiator on behalf of my clients, because I still want to keep myself sharp. I still practice mainly to collect stories that I can use to teach people at a higher level, but I still do this and I get nervous. I feel that, but I've changed my perspective. So, whenever a mediation would come to me or a negotiation would come to me and it was really dirty, just highly emotional. People are using underhanded tricks. I get excited. I'm like, "Oh, this is going to be good. This is going to be good."
Kwame Christian:
Even though I still feel that, I feel that, I lean toward it. I use it as a reason to lean into the conversation instead of leaning away from it. It comes down to this one simple fact. Conflict is an opportunity. Conflict is an opportunity. If we learn to see it as an opportunity, it will make it more likely for us to actually lean in and engage in a high level.
Daniel Stillman:
This goes back to the opening quote that we started with. The best things in life, I would say not often, definitely lie on the other side of a difficult conversation. There's no way that you can get what you want generally speaking without asking for it. I'm having a flashback now. When I was a kid, there was a local pizzeria and my dad would take me and my brother too. I remember I finished my glass of water. I was like, "I want some more water." My dad was like, "Go ask for it at the front counter." I just felt terrified, terrified to go up and ask for more water from talking to an adult. My dad was like, "No, you have to go and do that."
Daniel Stillman:
There's this very primal lesson of, "You will only get what you're willing to ask for." It's hard. Reading your descriptions of fight, flight and freeze, I feel like I went through all of my own physiological responses. I like how you broke it down with if you fight, you will destroy the relationship. If you flee, there's a missed opportunity. If you freeze, you exist in a false relationship. I thought that was just a beautiful laying out of all three of these options are terrible.
Kwame Christian:
Right, exactly.
Daniel Stillman:
Which means that our other option is to lean into it.
Kwame Christian:
Exactly.
Daniel Stillman:
Oh, yeah. Sorry, go ahead.
Kwame Christian:
Oh, no, it's okay. I was never very good at baseball, but I understood it conceptually. If you're going up to bat, you might have an opportunity to hit the ball, right? But sometimes you strike out. Sometimes you can strike out by swinging. Sometimes you can strike out by looking. People who go down looking feel much worse than the people who go down swinging. So, the way that I think about it is that listen, there's a chance that I miss, but I'm going to miss by trying to be proactive and taking control of the situation rather than being passive and hoping that things go my way.
Daniel Stillman:
Yeah. So, there's something that came up, which is interesting. It's the third part of the compassionate curiosity conversation arc is joint problem solving. What I loved about this idea of being more creative in difficult conversations is that we cannot be creative when we are stressed. I was listening to one of your podcast conversations, where you talked about bluffing. This idea that a bluff is actually introducing stress into the conversation, which means everybody's rational capacity is going to be reduced.
Daniel Stillman:
I mean, this is a great example of how cognitive empathy can just give you a very clear step forward and what not to bring into the conversation. A bluff seems like, "Oh, well, what about bluffing? How much should I bluff? How often should I bluff?" You were saying, "Don't bluff, because a bluff is a threat," right? The threat reduces our creative ability, which means we can't do any joint problem solving.
Kwame Christian:
Exactly, exactly. I think, one of the things that's so important for people to understand too is that even if it's a strategy that you yourself will not use, you need to understand it, because other people will use it against you, right? So, for me, I've made a career in negotiating. I don't bluff. I don't bluff. I tell people, I offer warnings, not threats. It's an if-then proposition. But the difference is a threat is like, "Listen, I am going to do this to you, but with a warning." What you're doing is a semantic change, but it's important.
Kwame Christian:
You're saying, "This is a natural consequence of your action. If this continues, I won't have any choice but to do this. So, the choice is yours, but now you understand the natural consequences of your actions, but the ball is in your court." So, that's a different thing, because you're saying, "You have the control. You have choice, but I'm putting you on notice," right? Sometimes you have to put that barrier down, but the way that you do it is very, very important.
Daniel Stillman:
Well, so when someone does that to us, so the question is, "How in that moment do I, do you create safety for yourself?"
Kwame Christian:
Yeah, so what you have to do is take some time, take some time. Again, self-awareness, using that internally-directed compassionate curiosity. Say, "Okay, acknowledge emotions. What am I feeling? Oh, that scared me. No shame. No shame in that. It scared me." A lot of times people make the mistake of saying, "No, I feel fine. No, I'm good. I'm good." Are you mad? No, I'm fine.
Daniel Stillman:
Yeah, having feelings about your feelings is a dangerous spiral, but we have that.
Kwame Christian:
Exactly.
Daniel Stillman:
I get angry that I feel shame about my anger and I feel fear about my shame.
Kwame Christian:
Right. I think it was Brené Brown, who said, "It's not just that we feel bad. Sometimes we feel bad about feeling bad, which makes us feel worse. Then you spiral out of control." Listen, okay, that made me mad. All right, that scared me. Can I think very well at this point? Probably not, right? So, I said, "Why did it scare me? Well, I'm afraid I'm going to lose this opportunity." Okay, good. So, well, considering that, what can you do to make yourself feel a little bit safer, but at the same time, you don't make a strategic mistake? Okay. You go through that process, internally-directed compassion and curiosity. You recognize the best thing to do is nothing. The best thing to do is nothing.
Kwame Christian:
So, whenever somebody threatens me, I use it as an opportunity to get curious, but I'm not going to make any decisions under duress. I'm going to say, "Oh, that's interesting. Can you tell me a bit more about what you're hoping to accomplish? All right, what changed? Because last time we spoke you were saying this. Now, you're saying this. Now, I'm a little bit confused. All right. Help me to understand this." Because every time somebody makes an offer and a bluff is an aggressive offer that often is not substantiated with anything in reality, you're obligated to defend your offer. You can't just say, "Give me this. No, I'm not telling you why I need it." Just common courtesy, you have to explain that. So, I ask questions and then I get information. I use it as an opportunity to get information.
Daniel Stillman:
That was the strategy I think I adapted when somebody would throw out a number that I learned in negotiation training is that's an interesting number. Can you tell me a little bit more about where you got that? Because legitimacy is one of the criterion for good negotiation agreements. You just can't say, "That number is the number I want." It's like, "Well, tell me more about that number."
Kwame Christian:
Exactly. Yeah. It's so powerful. It's so powerful. And then the next thing too is sometimes people will push you. So, you're going to ask questions. My simple rule is I'm not going to make any decision that I wasn't prepared for. I concede according to plan. I'm not just going to do it off the fly. So, I said, "All right, listen, I'm going to go back. I'm going to talk to my clients about this. I'm going to go back. I'm going to think about it. I'll get back to you." Sometimes people might say, "No, I need an answer right now. I need you to answer right now." Simple response has never failed me. I say, "If you need an answer right now, then the answer has to be no." And then people find some patience every single time.
Daniel Stillman:
It's so interesting, because one thing I've learned is that speed is dangerous, right? It's also exciting, right? But slowing down is safe. It's slowing down the conversation. It's interesting that the compassionate curiosity is your way to slow down the conversation with inquiry. Tell me more about that. Let's dig into that. It's just for me, active listening is always a safe stance, because I can go into automatic mode and ask more questions while I'm freaking out inwardly.
Kwame Christian:
Exactly, yeah. You made a really good point, right? Slowing down is a safe thing to do, but going fast is sometimes more exciting. One of the things you have to recognize is that effective negotiation usually is boring, right? I'm not exciting to look at when I negotiate. I might throw in some jokes well timed and everything, but that's about it. Because I remember when I was learning to drive, my dad taught me a very important lesson. He said, "You're going to make more mistakes by driving too fast than driving too slowly."
Kwame Christian:
Same thing applies here in the negotiation. If I have any questions, any concerns, I'm not confident in what I'm going to say next or I'm just confused, I rely on compassionate curiosity to slow it down. If I still don't know what move to make, I just stay curious and then end the conversation. I can't negotiate without you.
Daniel Stillman:
Yeah, yeah, or ask for a bathroom break.
Kwame Christian:
Exactly.
Daniel Stillman:
So, I wanted to talk about vivid visualization, because I thought that it was a term I actually hadn't heard before. It seems associated with some things I might have experienced. But I'm wondering if you can just talk a little bit more about how vivid visualization is helpful in the preparation phase of going into a difficult conversation.
Kwame Christian:
Yeah, this is borrowing from sports psychology. So, when you think about sports psychology, one of the things I have the athletes do is actually visualize what happens, what could potentially happen, not just the perfect performance, but also what could go wrong. A classic example is Michael Phelps. In one of his many Olympic medal winning races, one of his goggles actually filled up with water. He couldn't see, but he had visualized not only the perfect performance, but also overcoming adversity. So, he's already been there. That vivid visualization is very, very, very powerful, like all the details. So, I think, the best example for me is the TED Talk, because I went over that hundreds of times.
Daniel Stillman:
You said, you did it backwards, which blew my mind. Did you really do that? Kwame, that's nuts.
Kwame Christian:
I literally did, because I used what's called the mind palace technique. This is an old Greek philosopher strategy. You put parts of your speech around your house, but in your brain. So, I'm just walking through my house. So, if you do it really well, you see those cues, those visual cues as you walk around your house. So, all you need to do is turn around and walk backwards. You can see those cues the other way. So, I was leaving nothing up to chance there.
Daniel Stillman:
Wow.
Kwame Christian:
Nothing up to chance. So, I would visualize getting up in the morning, driving there, putting on the clothes that I was going to wear, talking to people, walking up on stage, seeing the audience, and then going through, giving the presentation. I just saw all of it. The feeling that I felt when I was on stage was familiarity. I'd already been there. If you do that in your conversations, it will make you a lot more confident during them.
Daniel Stillman:
What's so interesting about this as we think about and where I'm probing on redesigning this internal conversation, often I find when we're looking at these fears and anxieties, we give more credence to some voices over others. It sounds like when I was reading your book that almost all of the internal voices are by default alarm bells, right? They're emergency voices. It sounds like the idea is to give equal airtime to some of the, "Well, what's the best that could happen? What are all of the things that could happen?" We're not just saying, "Here's the worst. Here's the worst. Here's the worst." It's like, "Here's a whole host of scenarios. I'm going to visualize the best and the worst of all of them."
Kwame Christian:
Yeah. On one slight edit, I would say the most likely ones too. Because our mind, my goodness, it can come up with some wild things that sometimes I find not helpful. So, I say, "All right, let me have a little worry session. Brain, go ahead. Have your fun. I'm going to let you run wild. You go ahead. Okay, that was a good one. I didn't see that one coming. What else horrible could happen, right?" I just let my brain go. And then I said, "All right. Now, what's most likely going to happen? Now, I'm going to focus on those outcomes and those contingencies." So, I have a feeling of what I do in each of those situations, but I allow my brain to go there, because it will.
Kwame Christian:
So, I think once I go through it, it helps and my goal too to avoid worrying. The spiral of worrying is I say, "Okay, I allow myself to think about it one time. I'm not going to rehash that horrible situation again that I already addressed. Okay, nope, nope, already been there. That's cool. We can move on." I think it's almost like a negotiation with myself. I don't say, "Nope, you cannot worry." No, that's not how my brain works. All right, how much are you going to worry. How are you going to do it? How can you actually make it productive? I think that's worked well for me.
Daniel Stillman:
Yeah. I mean, I'm looking at the steps of compassionate curiosity. You are practicing that with yourself. You're acknowledging the experience, getting curious with compassion, and then you're doing some joint problem solving. You're like, "What's most likely? What's the least likely? What's the biggest impact? What's going to be the least impact?" I would do with design thinking strategy session, let's address things that are in this quadrant, most likely, biggest impact. Let's make sure that we've got a plan for all of them. I think that's very reasonable.
Kwame Christian:
Absolutely.
Daniel Stillman:
I mean, it's also being compassionate with yourself. What are was your journey? Because on one hand, there's this active process in the internal conversation. There's also silence in conversations. It seems like you're somebody who's believed in the benefits of meditation, having some silent time with yourself. I'm wondering if you could talk about your path into appreciating and practicing in that direction.
Kwame Christian:
Yeah. Daniel, I got to the point where I just could not deny the science anymore. That's really what it was. Too many people that I respected too much said that it was beneficial. So, I started to do it. It's been really helpful.
Daniel Stillman:
Very rational.
Kwame Christian:
Very, very helpful. Yeah, I just had no choice, but it's been really helpful. I think for me, one of the benefits, the most powerful things that I did was I didn't force myself to meditate like other people, right? I recognize that okay, some people say, "Yeah, I meditate for 15, 20 minutes a day." I tried. It didn't feel great to me. I will concede that I didn't push myself to do it for an extended period of time, but I found a practice that worked for me. So, what I started to do is I blended it with two different things. Number one, gratitude, and number two, the science of neuroplasticity.
Kwame Christian:
So, with neuroplasticity, that's just the recognition that your brain changes with experience. Neurons that fire together wire together. So, the thing is if you train your brain to be resentful, that's how you will be. You will start seeing negativity everywhere and went through some tough times. I started to recognize, "Oh, hey, normal, happy Kwame isn't there anymore. He's starting to get really negative and the pattern was not good." So, I said, "No, I need to retrain my brain." So, what my new habit is, is in the morning, I go through my gratitude journal, write three things that I'm grateful for. Then I put it down and then I do a five-breath meditation, just long breath in, long breath out.
Kwame Christian:
The rule for myself is if my mind wanders during any of those five breaths, now I need to do another one. It needs to be five consecutive breaths of focus. So, it's a focusing exercise. And then I transition to the meditation but focused on something that I was grateful for in the journal. So, I smiled to myself while thinking about that, again, doing five deep breaths. So, what I'm doing is I'm really trying to savor that positivity, savoring that positivity. That's helped me to be more readily able to recognize negative thought patterns. So, I say, "Ha-ha, that feels different. Let's bring it back."
Kwame Christian:
So, again, it goes back to self-awareness and then having that practice of focus to train my mind to go to where I want it to go through meditation. So, it's a mini-meditation during the day when I recognize, "Oh, you're going the wrong direction here. Let's bring it back." That's been incredibly beneficial for me.
Daniel Stillman:
Yeah, I mean, you point out in your book that this is mental training. This is exercise for the mind. That if we put effort into it, it's going to bear fruit over time.
Kwame Christian:
Exactly.
Daniel Stillman:
Yeah. It's interesting, because this has been a really hard time to be alive. We started our conversation by acknowledging this is a very, very strange time to be alive. I'm guessing, even a stranger time to be a person of color in America. Americans seem to have noticed that the people who are White, who protest are treated very, very differently than people of color who stand up for themselves. So, this really, I think, goes 100% to this question of the legitimate fear that people of color and minorities would feel when negotiating for themselves.
Daniel Stillman:
So, there's this training on one side and this effort that you're doing, which I think is really noble and worthwhile. And then there's the fact that the stress is real. I'll just use the word 'ancient,' long standing. These are things that are in the conversation. Or if they're not in the conversation, they're hovering right at the edge of the conversation, no matter what. So, I don't know. How do you deal with that boundary and create safety for yourself with all of that going on?
Kwame Christian:
Yeah, even before we get to the conversations, I think it's important to train your mind by protecting your mind, because there is a concept in medicine called the minimum effective dose. So, it's like, "Hey, how many pain pills do you want to take?" Yeah, just enough, but not too much, right? That's how much we want to take, because we recognize there is overdoing it. When you think about being woke and understanding and knowing everything that's around you, we need to incorporate the same approach, right? We need to know just enough, but not too much. I think there's a point where we can overdo it and then it causes mental anguish. When we're under that stress and anxiety, it makes things a lot worse, more difficult than it needs to be.
Kwame Christian:
So, for me, I recognize I need to know enough, but then pull back once I get enough. I know enough to understand the situation, but beyond that, it is just a little bit too gratuitous, I'd say. So, one of the things too is that it leads to hypersensitivity to negativity in your environment. So, your system of awareness helps you to catch issues of inequity, helps you to catch issues of bias a lot more readily than somebody who is less aware.
Kwame Christian:
At the same time, it also pushes it beyond the fact that yes, there is an equity. Sometimes you start to recognize issues where they may not be. So, I think there's that really tough line that we need to straddle here in order to maintain our mental health and communicate effectively and connect effectively to make sure we're not getting false positives where they're not there. So, it's really, really important, but a tough skill to generate, being able to distinguish between the signals from the noise.
Daniel Stillman:
I think that it's important. I'll just speak to White people, because that's how I present. It's important for White people to understand that that is labor that people of color are doing. Measuring, "Wait, did he really say what I thought he said, or did he just say something that he didn't mean?" And then you go through all of the conversations, fight, flight and freeze with yourself about, "How should I respond? What can I say? Is it safe for me to say what I feel like I need to say?" I don't think many White people realize how much labor is being done. So, I think that's important for people understand that that is labor that you are all doing.
Kwame Christian:
Absolutely. The thing is the brain, like any part of your body, can get tired, right? You think about ego depletion, right? Even something as simple as, "Oh, I'm on a diet. There are cookies there. I'm not going to take those cookies," that makes people mentally exhausted. That makes people mentally exhausted.
Daniel Stillman:
I fight that fight every day, man.
Kwame Christian:
I lose that fight every day.
Daniel Stillman:
I lose that fight.
Kwame Christian:
So, people don't recognize, but studies after study after study demonstrates just how much of a toll that takes. So, it's not just, like you said, "Hey, was that legitimate? What was that about? Okay, all right. It was illegitimate. Now, what do I do? Is it worth the fight? What's the consequence?" All of this is happening made conversation that's tough. One of my professors told an interesting story. He's a White male professor. He was driving. It was a long road trip. He went to this really small hotel. He said, "Hey, do you have a spot for me and my wife." They said, "Oh, sorry, weird circumstances. We're actually full."
Kwame Christian:
And then on the way back home, he went to that same hotel and said, "You know what? I could stop in any hotel, but I'm going to try that one again." They said, "I'm sorry, sir. Very strange situation. We're actually full. It rarely happens, but we're actually full." He said, "My White privilege in that situation is that I could have the peace of mind to know that it wasn't because of my race." I know if it were me, you hear me talking. I'm a pretty chill guy, but I'm also a lawyer. I would have been like, "Oh, yeah, I'm suing you. You'll remember the day. I'm Kwame Christian. We'll get to the bottom of this to determine whether or not this was legitimate," right? It takes an emotional toll. It takes an emotional toll.
Kwame Christian:
So, you're absolutely right. It's significant. But I think the more aware people are, at least you'll start to be able to make better strategic decisions or maybe not even better, but more informed. So, you can understand why you feel the way you feel and then create personalized strategies to overcome it. But again, it's very similar to the discussion that we had about gender dynamics as well, because yes, you need to create a personalized strategy to put yourself in the best position for success in this society that isn't equitable.
Kwame Christian:
While at the same time, this bifurcated approach needs to be directed towards society as well. Society needs to improve. We need to raise awareness in general. So, we can make the changes that we need in order to make this the just and equitable society that we all want and deserve. So, we have to keep both things in mind at the same time.
Daniel Stillman:
Yeah, which is a lot. It's interesting. I'm looking at my notes. There's one point which we didn't address that I think is important to address is this idea that our internal voice is seeking to protect us, like that fight, flight, freeze response. Based on all of our history, we're reenacting strategies that in the past have kept us surviving. Acknowledging that work that our internal voice is doing is noble work, is important. But it sounds like it's also important to say, "I want to separate from that pattern," which seems like why meditation has been so beneficial for you to be able to have that space, even if it's a tiny crack between stimulus and response.
Kwame Christian:
Absolutely. Yeah, it's huge. It's huge. Again, it's so funny. In this conversation, we haven't had any hardcore conversations about specific strategies and tactics, because the reality is proper behavior flows from the proper mindset. Understanding the way that the brain works, these fundamental psychological concepts, helps you to make better decisions in the moment. Again, not a really difficult negotiation technique to understand, but it has a significant impact on your negotiations and difficult conversations. Waiting, simply having the mental discipline to inject a little bit of time between the stimulus and response. It plays a significant dividend during the negotiation.
Daniel Stillman:
Yeah, we also haven't talked about... It's interesting. I'm thinking about how the BATNA, your best alternative to a negotiated agreement. I've always thought that as a way to create psychological safety for oneself. It's like, "Well, here's what the worst case scenario, here's what's going to happen and a reality in which I will still somehow be okay."
Kwame Christian:
Yes, I love the word that you used, 'okay', because in the book, I described confidence in many different ways, but one of them is the general feeling of okayness, right? Regardless of the way things will end up in this conversation, I will be okay. I'll find a way. If you think about your survivability beforehand, you recognize, "Oh, hey, okay, this isn't that bad. This isn't that bad." One the most difficult and problematic emotions or feelings that you can demonstrate to the other side is neediness, neediness, right?
Daniel Stillman:
That's true. Nobody likes neediness in any conversation.
Kwame Christian:
No, but if you recognize, "Oh, this person needs it," what happens? Now, you have leverage. Now, you have leverage. A lot of people say the person who wants to deal the least wins. Because if you feel like you need the deal more, then you're going to concede more in order to get it. That's the reality. So, there's going to be just by taking the time to evaluate your BATNA and understanding your alternative. If you have time, strengthening your alternative, then it puts you in a better position, because you say, "No, you know what? That is not better than my alternative. It's okay. No stress here. I'm actually good with this."
Daniel Stillman:
This is why my wife and I have been doing some financial planning. I feel like this is why everyone needs to save for an emergency fund, right? The ultimate safety is, "Hey, listen, if every piece of work dries up, if this person fires me, I still have six months of running capital." That's deep core safety.
Kwame Christian:
Absolutely. I was talking to one of my professors. He was teaching a program called Law and Leadership. One of the things he said, he used more colorful language, but he said, "It's a forget-you account." If this deal doesn't work out, yeah, forget you. I'm good. I've got some options here.
Daniel Stillman:
Also, I feel like the amount of time you spend with yourself connecting to your gratitude and your humanity, that's a core BATNA underneath everything else. Even if you lose all that other things, you still have that.
Kwame Christian:
Right, right. What is the saying, what's the point of gaining the world if you lose yourself in the process? If you're okay with yourself, then you can lose the world, then you can still be okay with the outcome. I think that's really, really, really powerful, really powerful. The more time you spend with yourself appreciating yourself and taking the time through gratitude to appreciate the things that you already have, then you're going to be in a much better position. One of my favorite definitions of happiness and success is when you want what you already have.
Daniel Stillman:
Yeah. Kwame, it's beautiful. We're running out of time. Is there anything I haven't asked you that's important to say about these topics? Any parting thoughts?
Kwame Christian:
I think we did a good job of covering it. I think one of the most important things is I named my podcast Negotiate Anything for a reason, because I think a lot of times people are too limited in the way that they think about this skill set. They think about it only in a transactional sense. Or even if they think about it in a more relationship building sense, they think about it limited to the business world. But for me, I've used this in every aspect of my life, business, personal, everything. These are unnatural responses to these situations, right? The caveman way back in the day, when somebody offended him, he didn't say, "Let me empathize." It's not a normal human thing to do. You have to practice it.
Kwame Christian:
So, with my five-year-old at home with my wife, I have a lot of opportunities to practice the skill. When I do that, it makes it a lot easier for me to do that, do what I need to do in the business world, too. So, I just suggest everybody take the time to practice. These everyday conversations can become practice sessions.
Kwame Christian:
And then one last thing, I have a gift for your listeners. If they're interested in preparing effectively for their negotiation, if they go to americannegotiationinstitute.com/guide, they can get access to over 15 free negotiation guides from standard business negotiation guide to conflict resolution to how to have difficult conversations about race, how to have difficult conversations about politics, car negotiation, all sorts of guides that will just help you to prepare effectively. So, you can have more confidence in that difficult conversation.
Daniel Stillman:
I mean, we could have had this whole conversation about cars. Missed opportunity, we'll have to have you come back on and just have the car talk version of this podcast.
Kwame Christian:
Seriously, seriously. I have a three-part series on car negotiation. So, we got a lot of content on that too.
Daniel Stillman:
That is amazing. I've just started listening to your podcast, Negotiate Anything. It is really, really wonderful stuff. I'm in the middle of your book, Finding Confidence in Conflict. Is there anything and any other place in the internet where people should go to learn more about all things American Negotiation Institute and Kwame Christian?
Kwame Christian:
Yes. So, if you're interested in negotiation training or anything like that, check out the website but then also LinkedIn. I'm always on LinkedIn, trying to post things, thought provoking things, just random thoughts. Connect with me there. I'm really active there too.
Daniel Stillman:
That's how we met. I'm so glad you said yes to the invitation to come on the show. If you can stand in for another second, we'll have some parting thoughts, but Kwame, I really appreciate you coming on for this conversation. It's really great stuff. I think these are things that will stand everybody in good stead in any difficult conversation in their lives. So, I really appreciate it.
Kwame Christian:
My pleasure. Thanks for having me.
Daniel Stillman:
Yeah. All right. End scene.
Kwame Christian:
Nice, great interviewing. That was fun.
Daniel Stillman:
Thank you. Oh, man, that's such a compliment, because you're a great interviewer.
Kwame Christian:
Thank you. Tell you, it's a skill. It takes time to develop. I didn't realize how hard it was until I started doing it and realizing I was bad at it. Okay, there are levels to this game.
Daniel Stillman:
There are levels to the game. That's so true. Game recognize game as they say.
Kwame Christian:
Thank you. Appreciate it.