Master Conflict Without Losing Control: The Secrets of Elite Negotiators

Most people don't fail in difficult conversations because they lack knowledge — they fail because they lose control of themselves. In this special episode, our host, negotiation expert Kwame Christian sits down with Ohio State Moritz College of Law Professor Katrina Lee to answer the toughest questions from her law students about negotiation, persuasion, emotional regulation, and conflict. Together, they explore what separates great negotiators from everyone else—from mastering the empathy loop and building genuine trust to using storytelling, curiosity, and strategic listening to influence outcomes. Kwame shares practical techniques for staying calm under pressure, handling interruptions, navigating emotionally charged conversations, and finding confidence when the stakes are high. You'll learn: • Why listening is often more powerful than problem-solving • How to use the 70/30 rule to create deeper connections • The difference between genuine curiosity and strategic curiosity • How storytelling shapes persuasion and decision-making • Techniques for regulating emotions during difficult conversations • Why humility is a hidden superpower in negotiation • How to turn conflict into collaboration without sacrificing your goals Along the way, Kwame shares personal stories from high-stakes business negotiations, lessons from coaching leaders around the world, and the mindset shifts that have helped millions of listeners become more effective communicators. Whether you're a lawyer, leader, salesperson, entrepreneur, or simply someone who wants better conversations at work and at home, this episode will give you actionable tools to communicate with more confidence, influence, and emotional intelligence. Because the best negotiators aren't the loudest people in the room—they're the ones who know how to listen. Contact ANI⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Request A Customized Workshop For Your Company⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Follow Kwame Christian on LinkedIn⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠negotiateanything.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Click here to buy your copy of Finding Confidence in Conflict: How to Negotiate Anything and Live Your Best Life!

• 0:01Speaker 00

  Humility is a core negotiation skill in my perspective because it helps you to be honest with yourself and others about your limits of what you do know. Sometimes people are eager to not be humble. It's like, "I am in a state of humility, not by choice, but by circumstance." So you can still be extremely confident and extremely humble at the same time. And I know I can win games that are within my control. I can't guarantee an outcome of a negotiation, but I can always be in control of my performance. So one of the games that I play, especially in the tough negotiations, is how calm can I be? Fear is a useful tool. We just need to make sure that we're fearing the right thing.

• 0:46Speaker 00

  If you listen to this show, you're probably one of two people. You're someone who's trying to improve their communication skills and learn how to resolve conflict, or you're a dealmaker who's trying to learn how to get an edge in their next negotiation so you can either make more or save more. The American Negotiation Institute is built for both. We have keynotes for conferences, workshops for teams, and courses for everyone, because the best things in life are on the other side of difficult conversations. How about we set the stage by talking about the Edmiston Lecture and the folks that you teach, and then we could roll from there?

• 1:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, sure. So, the Edmiston Lecture is a lecture here at the Ohio State University Moritz College of Law. I love talking about our dispute resolution lectures. It's one of our major dispute resolution lectures here at OSU. We have the lecture open to the public. Students attend the lecture, faculty, staff attend the lecture, and this is a lecture that occurs at the intersection of dispute resolution and business law. And it's inspired by, it draws inspiration and support from our mutual friend, Ryan Edmiston, who is also a

• 2:10Speaker 01

  Former student of mine, I had the privilege of teaching him when he was the one L here. And you and he are both Lawrence Negotiation Competition Champions. You both carry that on through your career. And it was a real honor when Ryan came to us and said, I would love to support an event that occurs at the intersection of business law and dispute resolution. And so each year, we've invited someone who can speak from deep experience

• 2:52Speaker 01

  and with great expertise at that intersection. And so we were really honored, so honored, Kwame, that you accepted our invitation to be the 2026 Administin Lecturer. And I will tell you, you really filled that auditorium. And our students and the rest of the audience would have kept staying there if they didn't have to go to class. You had them riveted. So it was just really, really wonderful to welcome you back to Moritz and have you test Kwame AI.

• 3:36Speaker 01

  I think, was it the first time you had tested it in a public?

• 3:39Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 3:40Speaker 01

  Lecture?

• 3:41Speaker 00

  Yes, I was terrified.

• 3:46Speaker 00

  Because, so for the person who's listening here, whenever I do my keynotes, no matter how big the audience is, I use an app that allows people to ask questions. So I always tell people, ask your questions, the harder the question, the better. And then at the end, I'll get to them. And I had Kwame AI answer one of the questions. And if you know anything about the AI demonstrations from the big tech companies, most of them fail.

• 4:15Speaker 00

  And so I was very excited that Kwame AI did a solid job on stage. So I appreciate you all being willing to experiment with me on that, too.

• 4:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, more than solid, more than solid, I would say. I think it, we, so after your tremendous lecture, the Administin Lecture, and this is a few months ago. I ha- I, so I teach a class here. It's a one L class. It's a first year law school class and it's called Lawyer as Negotiator. And we, for most of my students, it's their introduction to negotiating in the lawyer role. And for a lot of my students, it's their first introduction to the field of negotiations.

• 5:06Speaker 01

  So it's a real privilege for me to get to teach one L students negotiation and also encourage them to take more of our classes. And I'll, I'll just put in a little plug. We are ranked by US News as the number one program on dispute resolution. And that's really, I, I'm really proud of our team here and what we're able to accomplish. Our students are at the center of all of that. And so after a lecture, like the Edmiston lecture, I, in the very next class after that lecture, I told my, in preparation for that class,

• 5:50Speaker 01

  I had my students reflect on what they had just attended and listened to with your Edmiston lecture. And they were assigned to write either a comment or a question for you. So they were to imagine, let's say, we had some additional opportunity to have time with Kwame, what question might we ask him? So they could do that. They could ask a question or they could just write a statement, comment reacting to what they appreciated from your

• 6:29Speaker 01

  lecture. So I have a list of questions that I gathered from my students as well as a few comments that were offered. I will say, so there was an interesting experiment, actually. Usually I will go the question route, but this time I gave them the choice of question or comments, or of course they could do both. And most still went the question route. Nice. So I have more questions than comments, but oftentimes within the question was embedded a comment, right? I mean Kwame, these are future lawyers.

• 7:06Speaker 01

  They're gonna have, they're gonna have comments and they're gonna have questions. So I thought it would be wonderful and I went through the questions and so what I've done is I've grouped the questions and paraphrased so that we can get the full, hopefully it's full of a response without going through every single question, every single question that was presented. So I've grouped them into categories for us to talk about today.

• 7:35Speaker 00

  Yes, exciting. All right, let's get into it.

• 7:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you talked about, so actually, so you had these beautiful slides, right? So thank you for letting me, this is a true honor, letting me ask you questions, Kwame. So thank you. So, so you presented slides and a student noticed that you had some really beautiful images on these slides. So mountains, streams, trees, lots of natural bodies of water in your slides. And so I'm going to start there. A student was wondering,

• 8:19Speaker 01

  why do you have those images in your slides in a presentation, a lecture that's about negotiation?

• 8:28Speaker 00

  This is a great place to start because it also shows, it informs my whole approach to negotiation too. Because law school and being a lawyer, that gave me, those gave me the tactics and strategies to be a good advocate. Being certified in mediation helped me to be a great third party neutral. But my undergrad degree is in psychology. So that is the base. You see that in every presentation, a lot of the answers, even offline when we're talking about parenting, you see psychology embedded everywhere in the approach. So what I recognized is just when we think about it through the lens of classical conditioning, there are going to be these associations, these subconscious associations that are made. And what I've recognized in, as I built this audience and started to meet more people,

• 9:13Speaker 00

  the concern when it comes to negotiation, Isn't so much that they don't know what to do it. When I surveyed the audience, it was the the word that came up the most was confidence and conflict. They don't feel confident and they have a lot of fear around conflict. That's why all the keynotes are called the Finding Confidence and Conflict, and that was the name of the TED Talk as well. So what I recognize is that we are really reinforcing the fear when we have classic negotiation imagery in all of the presentations. So you see people looking emotional or very serious at a boardroom table. That's exactly what we're trying to avoid because with my approach to negotiation, I define it as anytime you're in a conversation and somebody wants something.

• 9:57Speaker 00

  And I always tell people that when it comes to this, yeah, you bring me in for a specific reason, how to have better deals or be a better leader. But if you don't understand how to use this to have a better relationship with your family and friends, that I've failed. You know, so I want people to feel relaxed and not feel afraid of this. So when you think about the studies as well, when it comes to just your presence in nature, it has a calming effect. You can see it biologically, you can hear it anecdotally when people are walking through nature, it calms them down. Similar studies have been shown when it comes to the imagery on in rooms. So think about in waiting rooms, it's often a lot of nature pictures and things like that. So, long story short, the reason why I put all of those nature pictures in there is because I need people to chill out.

• 10:43Speaker 00

  People to calm down, hey, listen, we're we're all animals here, you like nature, I like nature, look at this flower as we talk about conflict. Right? And so it helps people to just be more at peace and I feel like it helps to to lower their barriers. Even with what I wear, you you unless somebody explicitly tells me to wear a tie, I'm not wearing a tie. Because if you see a big, serious lawyer wearing a suit and tie and everything, it just again reinforces the gravity of the conversation that holds people back. So especially when I'm talking to non-lawyer audiences, which is the majority of my clients, I'm more dressed down in the crew neck

• 11:21Speaker 00

  just to feel have people feel a bit more welcomed and make the whole concept, not just me, but also the concept more approachable.

• 11:30Speaker 01

  Mm hmm. Okay, so.

• 11:33Speaker 01

  You have given words to what I do with my slides at the end of so at the end of a slide deck. When I'm teaching students, they will often be greeted with flowers, a picture of flowers from travels that I've engaged in, or my cat with flowers.

• 11:53Speaker 00

  Oh, that's

• 11:55Speaker 01

  What I'll end my slide decks with, and I appreciate your giving voice to that. Would you go so far as to suggest that

• 12:08Speaker 01

  negotiation, training or teaching take place in a misnature? Or with a view of nature, do you think that can be helpful if it is feasible?

• 12:19Speaker 00

  Oh, incredible. That's an incredible suggestion and 100% yes. Because especially when we think about emotion management, we have to recognize the the beauty of time and space. And when we have a an event, we need to try to create a little bit more of a a gap between the event and then the response. Are we responding or are we reacting? If we're reacting faster, it's more likely going to be a limbic response, more emotional based than actual meaningful thought put into what it is that you're saying. So I believe that going out in nature would be a great way to do it because it eliminates

• 13:00Speaker 00

  a lot of the distractions that are just embedded within business spaces too. So it breaks a lot of those connections, those cues. Okay, there's a clock there. What time is it? What do I need to do? When was the last time I checked my email? All of these little things are subtle reminders of things that are not present in front of us. So I think it would be really powerful to enhance presence and be a great metaphor for the presence and calmness that we're trying to get to if we had those types of events outside. That would be brilliant.

• 13:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, so something, so I teach negotiation and and right. And sometimes it's a windowless classroom. Sometimes there there are windows.

• 13:45Speaker 01

  Wherever I teach, I

• 13:48Speaker 01

  Do try to open with, I do this a few weeks into my class. I have my students engage in a two or three minute mindfulness meditation. Before we launch into the substance of the day, like before we do the agenda even. And I will couple that mindfulness meditation with, and thank you for all these words. Like you are really helping me to, to reflect on how I begin and end my class sessions when I teach negotiation. So I will begin, I wait, I wait until we're a little more familiar with each other.

• 14:30Speaker 01

  And then because not everyone is ready to engage in mindfulness meditation. So I wait until a few weeks into the semester. And then I will often couple the audio mindfulness meditation. That I, I get from Insight Timer or some other source with a picture of nature. So streaming a waterfall or flowers or trees or a forest, a path through a forest, maybe, for example.

• 15:03Speaker 00

  That's good. Oh, that's great. Look at this. We're on the same page.

• 15:08Speaker 01

  I'm learning, I'm learning though. It's great. Okay. So my next question, and I'm channeling my students and shout out to all my students for these amazing questions. You talked in the Edmiston lecture about using the empathy loop. And, um, and I loved your shout out to Nancy Rogers. You talked about when you first learned the empathy loop. So you talked about that and my students reacted, several students reacted by saying,

• 15:45Speaker 01

  Doesn't that sometimes feel formulaic? And maybe you're communicating that formulaic nature to the other side? And maybe the receiver of what you think is the empathy loop will see it as maybe condescending, is maybe manipulative, or maybe just irritating, like annoying.

• 16:14Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 16:15Speaker 01

  Like, "Don't do that to me." So I'm inviting you, Kwame, to talk a little bit about the inherent risk, perhaps, that my students are perceiving in using the empathy loop.

• 16:32Speaker 00

  Yes, so all of those concerns, 100% legit and could 100% happen. Try this: Pull up your notes from a meeting last week. Do they still make sense? Or do they just seem like random notes that only the old version of you could decode? That used to be me. And as a negotiator, that's a real problem, because my job is to listen, not type or write notes. That's why Granola has been one of my favorite tools, period. It's an AI-powered notepad. I jot my usual rough notes, and then Granola securely transcribes the meeting in the background. And when it ends, I get clean, structured notes that still make sense a week later. Decisions, owners, next steps, everything that I would need to feel good about going forward.

• 17:15Speaker 00

  And it works through your device's audio, too, so there's no additional setup or any annoying AI joining your call. Just your normal meeting, but with superpowers. If meetings are eating up your day, Granola is a no-brainer. You can try it totally free for three months. Just go to granola.ai/kwame. That's granola.ai/kwame to get your time back. Get three months free at granola.ai/kwame. Every year, I swear that I'm going to get ahead of holiday shopping. This year, it started with a Quince cashmere sweater that I bought for myself. It was so soft, so well-made, and my first thought was, "Who else on my list needs one?" Quince makes high-quality staples. With one hundred percent Mongolian cashmere and Italian leather.

• 17:59Speaker 00

  And their cashmere sweaters start at just sixty dollars. All of it is fifty to eighty percent less than similar brands because they work directly with ethical factories and cut out the middlemen. As a negotiator, I know a great deal when I see one. This is luxury quality without the luxury price tag. I use Quince and you should too. Give the gift of quality this season. Download the Quince app for app exclusive offers or just go to quince.com. Get free shipping on your order and three hundred and sixty five day returns now available in Canada and the UK too. And when Quince asks where you heard about them, let them know it was Kwame with big swings only. That's the best way to support the show. So let's start there. So it's not that the the concern is unfounded, but let's break this down.

• 18:43Speaker 00

  So for the audience member who's listening here, when we're talking about the empathy loop, it's a three step process for listening to operationalize it. So its first step is listening, not surprising. That's where it should actually start. And then what you want to do is you summarize what it is that the person says. But you give a little disclaimer saying, hey, correct me if I'm wrong, but it sounds like this or correct me where I'm wrong. And then you give your summary, but you don't just parrot back what it is that the person says. You try to add a little bit of context, not just what they said, but what it actually means. And then you end with, did I get that right or what did I miss, something like that. So the concern is if you listen in that type of methodical type of way is doesn't the person recognize that you are using a technique? It is entirely possible.

• 19:27Speaker 00

  And then if they do recognize it, those cascading concerns, manipulation, is that is that possible? One hundred percent. But let's break this down a little bit too. When you think about an artist or a master at their craft. What we have to recognize is that all of them have started with the fundamentals. Every every one of them started understanding the very basics in the same way that everybody else did. At that same task, whatever it happens to be. And then over time, they added their own personality, their own adjustments to it. So you don't see the fundamentals, you just see the greatness in front of you. So thing is, when it comes to the empathy loop, you have Think about it as a skill and you have to recognize that the concerns that you have are legitimate.

• 20:10Speaker 00

  When you are not skilled at doing it and the the the solution then isn't to abandon the skill. It's to understand that you will have several bad reps. And you need to get those out of your system so you can gather the data and understand how people are seeing you and make those authentic adjustments. Because for one person, depending on their affect, their demeanor, their tone, how people perceive them. They might say you're being clinical and sterile and I don't feel connected to you. For somebody else, depending on their affect and demeanor, they might say you're being manipulative. Those two are very different things. So I need to see how the world is responding to me.

• 20:50Speaker 00

  So I can make the natural adjustment. So the person who is accused of being sterile or using a formula in a way that feels detached. And doesn't feel legit, they have to perhaps add a little bit of warmth, add a little bit more color to it. And and just say, okay, yeah, let me tie this a little bit to my authentic voice. Instead of saying, correct me where I'm wrong, because that is very different from the way that I normally speak. I might say, okay, so Katrina, tell me, tell me what I'm missing here. Oh, that sounds like a normal person talking. They don't, but it fits within the framework. Now for somebody on the other side who feels more manipulative, who who feels gets the accusation of manipulative. Maybe what they should do is give a little bit more of a humble disclaimer beforehand.

• 21:36Speaker 00

  So you you listen to the person and you say, hey, you said a lot of really important things and I want to make sure that I I slow down. And get this right because actually not just in the past in general, but in the past with you. I've recognized that I have let my assumptions take over inappropriately without making sure that I fully understand where you're coming from. So let me just recap here to make sure we're on the same page. Boom. Okay, I'm going to tell you everything. So my thing is that the transparency that is in that is the spirit. Behind everything that I say and do is going to be what helps you. Because whenever I see that skepticism, if we think about it through the lens of compassionate curiosity, which is my framework. So acknowledge and validate emotions, get curious with compassion, join problem solving.

• 22:18Speaker 00

  What I'd say is, hey, Katrina, I might be off, but it seems. Did you not, I summarized, it didn't seem like you liked it the way I summarized. It seemed like it somehow made you uncomfortable. Am I sensing that right? I don't know what it is, but you see how I fit that within compassionate curiosity. They're like, yeah, I just, I don't know. It's, I can tell you're trying something and it, I, I just don't feel comfortable right, right now. Okay, I definitely understand where you're coming from. Here's my thing, this is a really tricky situation for me, for me. And you've said so many important things that I don't want to assume I got it right. So the reason I'm asking these questions and summarizing is to make sure that I'm treating you with the respect that you deserve. I don't want to advance without getting that green light from you.

• 23:03Speaker 00

  Okay, so you see how everything that they say in, as a potential critique is 100% legit. But then there's a way around it. So we have to start practicing it because the way that you use any of these techniques is going to look different for different people. So we have to figure out what your version of authenticity would look like and feel like within the framework. So you can still stay close to the fundamentals while still sounding like yourself.

• 23:29Speaker 01

  That's a lot.

• 23:34Speaker 01

  That's a lot. So I am going to push back a little bit.

• 23:39Speaker 00

  Please do.

• 23:40Speaker 01

  Because remember, I teach law students all the time.

• 23:47Speaker 01

  And some students will just say to me, I'm very risk averse. I'm very risk averse. And so I'm going to pick up on something you said right at the beginning of your response to this question. And that was, you're gonna get better, but you're gonna have some bad reps.

• 24:10Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 24:11Speaker 01

  So a risk averse student, professional, what have you, just someone who's risk averse will hear bad reps, bad reps. Well, in this situation, bad reps, right, the, the mind races ahead and thinks bad reps means, uh, possibly in this situation, we're talking about a negotiation. Uh destroying a relationship or destroying trust. Um, because I haven't gotten to that skill level yet. And so how do we get in those reps without it having these negative impacts?

• 24:56Speaker 01

  That can happen in a negotiation, right? Deteriorating relationship, destroying trust.

• 25:02Speaker 00

  Great question. And here's the thing, I think fear is a useful tool. We just need to make sure that we're fearing the right thing. So whenever fear is present, I never with the person, I never try to eliminate it. I try to refocus it because when it comes to the that those concerns, again, that continued fear is legitimate. But what is illegitimate is the lack of fear of the problems you're already having.

• 25:30Speaker 00

  Because if we're saying, okay, I don't want to risk listening in this way. And and remember that we were focusing on the underlying framework. The nuts and bolts are the same. It's your responsibility to make it your own, right? But let's just focus on the the execution of a novel strategy. The reality is that if we're not doing listening in some intentional type of way, then we are not, we're leaving um opportunity on the table when it comes to depth of connection. Because what we're saying in that case is that I am choosing to be a subpar listener because I'm afraid of the journey of getting better at listening. And if you, because regardless of what methodology you use, there's going to be some uh difference

• 26:14Speaker 00

  in the way that you are currently listening and the way that you aspire to listen. So whatever methodology you decide to use, there's going to be that exact same friction. And so we don't often appreciate the cost of not listening effectively. And one of the things that I didn't fully understand until I got really deep into this is is. The power of listening by itself. And how that can solve so many problems. Because a sub- whatever the situation is, a substantial part of the solution is listening by itself. And especially as a leader, sometimes people will have complaints about problems that you can't solve. You can't change anything.

• 26:55Speaker 00

  But all, if you can stay present and feel connected and listen respectfully, that is all that they, that they need. And so people are often wasting their time trying to solve problems in situations where a problem doesn't need to be solved. Listening is all that's required, right? So I think that's one of the things, we have to fear the right thing. And we should be more fearful of being unskilled. And the thing is, there's always a gap between perfect listening and where we currently are. And every conversation, we can get better at that process. So yes, I, I, again, it's, it's very legit. We need to have the right fear in the right way. And then the other thing too is, again, there's a, there's a reason for my definition of negotiation.

• 27:38Speaker 00

  Because if we think about the classical negotiation description, we would say, negotiation is a structured process whereby two or more parties come together to reach an agreement. Okay, cool. Now, now we lost people. Now, now we lost people. And if we're being super technical, me saying a negotiation is anytime you're in a conversation and somebody wants something. If we're being purists, that is more of an app, um, definition of persuasion or influence, right? But this is more for an awareness thing. Because we need to create the negotiation habit. A habit starts with cue, response, reward. And a lot of times, people aren't having that fundamental first cue to recognize that it's time to negotiate.

• 28:20Speaker 00

  So hypothetically, you could have somebody who has elite levels of negotiation skills. But they never use the skills when it actually matters. So with this definition, we have a very broad, broad perspective on what negotiation is. So let me give an example. Let's say last week, mom had some feedback on parenting. And again, actually, I think I used this example on the, in the, in the talk too. And I remember now when I have conversations with mom, I'm like, you say this on stage, Kwame. How about you use, use the empathy loop? How about, how about you try that out? And so, so life, life will constantly provide you with opportunities to do this. So for instance, there's a, there was a time I was doing a, I was networking with somebody. So another entrepreneur in the community, learning about them.

• 29:05Speaker 00

  And I mentioned in the in the event that I like to follow the seventy thirty rule for listening where I'm listening seventy percent of the time, only speaking thirty percent of the time. But again, I create these little challenges to practice discrete skills within a negotiation and communication. So I said, in this meeting with this guy, I'm going to try to keep the breakdown ninety ten. I'm going to see if I can keep him talking ninety percent of his time focusing on my listening. And and it worked after fifteen minutes of just a monologue, he was said, oh, my gosh, I'm so sorry. I'm dominating this conversation. I never do this. Kwame, tell me about you. Tell me about your business, everything. So I speak for about ninety seconds more, and then I go back into asking questions, reflecting, trying, showing a deep amounts of respect while using the skills of listening

• 29:49Speaker 00

  to demonstrate that respect. And at the end of the conversation, he's like, Kwame, I feel horrible. I just dominated this conversation. I never do this to people. I don't know what's happening today. And I'm thinking to myself, I was like, hmm, I know what's happening.

• 30:05Speaker 01

  Yes, yes.

• 30:06Speaker 00

  So you need to find low stakes environments to practice. That's the key.

• 30:10Speaker 01

  Okay, so low stakes environment and still making sure to be authentic and knowing that you're what I'm hearing from you is knowing that it's you do need to get reps in and finding that style, that approach of the empathy loop of compassionate curiosity that works for you is going to pay off.

• 30:35Speaker 00

  Yes, one hundred percent.

• 30:36Speaker 01

  Like, big time.

• 30:38Speaker 00

  Big time.

• 30:39Speaker 02

  I want to share a personal experience about the compassionate about the empathy loop.

• 30:46Speaker 00

  Perfect, go ahead.

• 30:46Speaker 02

  Because I learned.

• 30:48Speaker 01

  I'd love to hear.

• 30:48Speaker 02

  I learned the empathy loop from Kwame. And at the beginning, if you haven't used it, you like you you're skeptical, you hesitate about it. But then when you're using it, it is in a very difficult moment. So the other person is not thinking about, oh, maybe he's doing that. They are like, please, listen to me. So once you say, okay, I'm gonna listen to you, they say, yes, okay, I'm gonna speak now, I'm gonna talk now. So they are in a position where they want to talk. So you're just giving them giving them what they want. So they are not thinking like, oh, maybe this is a trap or he's trying to do something weird.

• 31:29Speaker 02

  No, he's just, the other party is just happy that finally they will be able to say what they want to say. So I think it's very important to understand the moment when you're telling them, okay, I listen to you. And that changes everything. So when they practice, they will realize that the other person is just waiting for the moment to speak. So they will be happy.

• 31:52Speaker 00

  That's such a good point, Simone, because now that I'm thinking about it, the only times where people have said, what are you like, what are you doing? What is this? Is when it's a relationship that I'm resetting, where I say to myself, I haven't been listening very well in this relationship. Now I'm going to listen. What are you doing? You never listened before, right? And so that, but it's very rare that that happens. But once you establish that you're deep listening as the baseline, then it becomes the norm. And for people where you have fewer interactions with, they'll just say, of course, they're listening to me as they should because I'm brilliant. Yes, listen, you know, so the, the threat is, is not as big as they think it is. It's not going to happen as frequently as they assume.

• 32:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, thank you, Simone. That's really, really helpful. Uh, it, it gives me greater perspective, right? You introduced that real life perspective because the question that I posed, it often comes up in the context of the classroom. So this artificial atmosphere, I'm introducing a concept. They've read about it. It's a skill that, that we're touting in the class and they haven't, maybe they've tried it once or twice in the class, but they're getting maybe a little bit nervous thinking about implementing it in real life, maybe at home, right? With someone like Kwame was saying, someone who knows you, spends a lot of time with you

• 33:20Speaker 01

  and can see that you're changing your communication patterns. And that can lead maybe to some suspicion, um, but hopefully there's a space.

• 33:32Speaker 01

  I always hope this for my students and others who I'm working with, that they do have a space, a low stakes, using your words, Kwame, a low stake space where they can practice, but on real stuff, right? So they're practicing, but it's on real stuff. It's about where we're gonna have dinner, or where maybe how we should, you're getting a little insight to my own household, how we should be responding to the dog or the cat in a certain situation. So I hear both of you, and both of you have provided really, really helpful perspectives and anecdotes. Okay, so you said seventy thirty rule.

• 34:16Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 34:17Speaker 01

  So that is the perfect segue to the next student question. So the next student question, or again, this is like a paraphrase of a group of questions from students, is how can you implement the seventy thirty rule when the other person seems or is closed off and is giving you short clipped answers, even when you're using open-ended questions? You're just getting nothing back. And so is there a situation where maybe seventy thirty doesn't work? Maybe you should

• 35:01Speaker 01

  lower it to fifty fifty, or reverse the seventy thirty for a little while? What are the options, Kwame?

• 35:10Speaker 00

  This is so good. And this is such a law student question. Everybody is like, okay, well, how are you gonna grade? Let me say specifically, this is good. So let's start off with psychology, real quick, because essentially, using negotiation parlance, this is me anchoring pedagogically. Because I'm saying, all right, seventy thirty is a, it's an aspirational concept. There's almost no way for us to know that realistically. And if you think you're hitting seventy, you're probably hitting sixty or less. You know, so it's like, let's just get you in the mindset of trying to get there. The other one- Is I like to think about it oftentimes in the terms of a gas and brake pedal. So when I'm asking questions, I'm steering the conversation. I want to always make sure that my hand's on the wheel.

• 35:52Speaker 00

  Not in a Machiavellian controlling type of way, but just in the sense that I I trust my skills to steer the conversation in a productive direction. But the other person, as they answer my question, they have their foot on the gas or brake. So when they're answering with a lot of information, their foot's on the gas, but sometimes we feel them pressing the brake. And oftentimes, I think that is a result of a fact that number one, either they they might not feel safe. Or number two, they don't feel a sense of reciprocity where it feels like they are being some. Somebody's just extracting value from them without giving any in return. Try this. Pull up your notes from a meeting last week. Do they still make sense? Or do they just seem like random notes that only the old version of you could decode?

• 36:35Speaker 00

  That used to be me. And as a negotiator, that's a real problem because my job is to listen, not type or write notes. That's why Granola has been one of my favorite tools, period. It's an AI-powered notepad. I jot my usual rough notes and then Granola securely transcribes the meeting in the background. And when it ends, I get clean, structured notes that still make sense a week later. Decisions, owners, next steps, everything that I would need to feel good about going forward. And it works through your device's audio too, so there's no additional setup or any annoying AI joining your call. Just your normal meeting, but with superpowers. If meetings are eating up your day, Granola is a no-brainer. You can try it totally free for three months. Just go to granola.ai/Quami.

• 37:20Speaker 00

  That's granola.ai/Quami to get your time back. Get three months free at granola.ai/Quami. If you were going to take a big swing this holiday season and start a business, what would you build? Maybe it's that one idea that you can't stop thinking about. I've built a business from the ground up and I can tell you that the hard part isn't the idea, it's getting it live. That's where Shopify comes in. You can sell everywhere people shop, online, in person, across social media, even in AI chats. And Shopify Checkout with Shop Pay converts up to 36% higher than the competition. So more of the people who show up actually buy. Plus, Black Friday is when more people are already shopping and ready to buy. So the sooner you're live,

• 38:05Speaker 00

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• 38:20Speaker 00

  So whenever I see somebody slowing down, I say, okay, their foot's on the brakes, so I need to put my foot on the gas by giving a disclosure, being a little bit vulnerable, and often, or a statement against interests too. So I'd say, okay, well, let me tell you something. This is probably not something that's in my best interest to say, but this, or maybe I shouldn't tell you this, but blank. And the reason why I say that is because I want to make sure to give a little bit of a preamble to get people to pay attention. It's like going up to somebody and say, I've got some gossip for you. I don't care who you are, you're listening. Right? So in that situation, well, I probably shouldn't, I don't tell most people this, but now they're locked in and listening. And then they realize there's actually

• 39:00Speaker 00

  truly no advantage, other than demonstrating trust and safety in this situation. And so then they're more likely to reciprocate. Another thing that we should consider too, is also neurodiversity as well. If we're talking to somebody who might be somewhere on the spectrum of autism, the spectrum disorder, or something like that, this might be a situation where this is just how the person interacts. So you have to ask, is this a deviation from the baseline, or is this the baseline? And if that's the baseline, then you have to respect the person and accept them for who they are and recognize that you're going to have to invert that, that, that ratio in many cases. And that might not feel comfortable, but there's still a path forward in that situation. The last thing is, let's say it's an emotional

• 39:45Speaker 00

  challenge and they're, they're kind of shutting down. We treat that just like compassion, with through compassionate curiosity as well. We're going to label what we are seeing. So it might sound something like this, hey, Katrina, I might be off on this, but. It doesn't seem like you feel comfortable answering these questions right now. Am I close on that? Well, it's not that I'm not comfortable. It's that blank. Okay, now you're talking again. Now I ask you a question on that. And so we, the person feels seen, they're more willing to open up. Then also, we have to acknowledge that sometimes timing just isn't right. If on certain days, there, on certain days, there's nothing you can do to warm a person up. There's nothing. It just might not be the right time.

• 40:23Speaker 00

  And sometimes the, the skills of the greatest negotiators is the recognition that now is not the time to be negotiating with this person. If you think about you on your worst day last year. Think about the worst day you had last year and somebody's trying to sell you something or get your perspective on something. No, it doesn't matter who you are or what the situation is. Now is not the time. And so we can just say, hey, listen, it is, if now's about time, we can have a conversation on another day. We don't need to push this now. And then that also gives you relationship points too, because they recognize the respect and they appreciate the grace. So those are the ways that I would kind of filter through that.

• 41:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, I love this. This is really powerful stuff to follow up with students on. Is there a time, so with the seventy thirty concept? Is there a time in a negotiation or a conversation where you flip it? Where, so maybe you start seventy thirty on your end. So you're, you're doing the listening seventy percent of the time the other person's doing the talking. Sorry, you're, yeah, you're doing the listening seventy percent.

• 41:34Speaker 01

  Is there a situation where at some point in that negotiation or that conversation? Where it, that should be flipped? Is there a situation like that?

• 41:47Speaker 00

  Yes, and the, the word for me would be framing. So when I need to frame things, again with, let's, I.

• 41:56Speaker 00

  I'm going to touch on anchoring again, even though it's not conceptually like aligned at the moment. But I think it's a strategy that we underutilize. So when we think about the principle of anchoring, what it is is in transactional negotiations, we would think about what is the most aggressive request that I could reasonably justify? That falls somewhere within the more acceptable range of the zone of possible agreements. Right? Or maybe just outside of it and give them the responsibility to pull it back in. But it utilizes the contrast principle and it makes whatever you say seem more reasonable relative to where we ended up. Right? Now, for me, I don't think I, I, since I learned it in law school and learned it as a negotiation tactic.

• 42:39Speaker 00

  For me, my nerd senses started tingling. I'm thinking I need to understand the full psychological basis for this. And I'm recognizing that we underutilize it because it is, it should be a ubiquitous element of our negotiation strategy. I'm not just anchoring transactionally, I'm anchoring emotionally too. I'm anchoring in terms of the narrative as well. So if there's a storyline for the conversation, I'm setting it. If there's a vibe for the conversation, I'm setting it. So at the bookends of the conversation, I'm doing most of the talking. And then I generously let you, let everybody else talk after that. So, hey, when it, when it comes to the framing, I answer the question, who are you? Who am I? What are we here to do? So I might say, hey, Katrina, I'm really looking forward to this conversation.

• 43:23Speaker 00

  I saw your email. I recognize that there's a challenge that's in front of us. But based on everything that we've worked through in the past, I don't see any challenge, any, any issue that we will have when it comes to figuring this out together. And you might've come in like, you know, Kwame, I got, I'm going to tell you a piece of my mind. If I frame that heavily at the beginning, I want to frame so positively and generously. Cause it's not always self-serving. It's, it's, it's serving the productivity of the conversation, not just my negotiation agenda. So I want to make this so positive and mutually beneficial that it makes the other person feel silly to reject it. That's so I'm going to anchor on the framing at the beginning. So at the beginning,

• 44:04Speaker 00

  I'm setting the tone. At the end, I'm going to set the narrative for the memory as well. Because when you think about the psychology of memory, we have disproportionate levels of memory retention, depending on what is happening. So it's the primacy effect, recency effect, peaks and valleys. We give disproportionate memory to those times. So I'm going to frame around those times because depending on how you remember me in this interaction is going to depend, is going to have an impact on the level of trust and positivity you feel toward me in general. So at the beginning, I'm setting this tone because I know it is disproportionately likely for you to remember the beginning. At the end, I'm saying what we did. Hey, listen, we, I appreciate you having this conversation

• 44:45Speaker 00

  with me because we were at this point before and now we are here because we worked through this. And so even if we didn't finish this, we're well on our way to figuring this out. So thank you for taking the time. So I'm putting a bow at the end. So I'm creating that narrative there. And then for the most negative thing, because peaks, okay, the best part, the most positive thing in the conversation, cool, remember that. I don't need to do too much. But once I see the conversation starting to dip toward negative, again, that's where I say to myself, okay, the storyline has shifted from the story that I created at the beginning. So instead of addressing any of the, what the person said, they might have said something insulting, they might have attacked me, they might have tried to counter me or anything like that. I'm paying attention to the emotions. That's

• 45:28Speaker 00

  all I'm addressing at this point. So I'll say, hey, before I respond to what you said, because what you said is really important. I want to say this. Like I said at the beginning, my goal is to work with you to solve this problem. I have no intention to make your life worse. I want to work with you to see how we can make things better for both of us. So it's at those moments where I recognize that there's an opportunity to create a powerfully positive story, or a risk that the storyline is deviating. This is my time to shine now, Katrina. That's, that's, that's when I talk.

• 46:03Speaker 00

  And then, and then, once we reset the story, then I can be generous again.

• 46:08Speaker 01

  Okay, I feel like we're just nerding out because you're using terms like anchoring, imprimacy, recency. I love it.

• 46:19Speaker 01

  And when you were talking, you're beginning to respond to that question. I was waiting for you to get to this idea of story and this idea of storytelling. And I've heard you talk about storytelling and how powerful stories are. And I wonder about, so I, as you know, I teach negotiations, been teaching it since 2012. Help me out here. Help me get my students to a place where they're okay with telling a story.

• 47:01Speaker 01

  Because they hear the word story, that's not a statute, that's not case law. That's not logic necessarily. How do you get a business person or a lawyer or a law student to get in that mindset of telling a story? Because it can be really powerful.

• 47:26Speaker 00

  Yes, so I'm recognizing that so much in life is just storytelling. Even beyond the persuasive power of storytelling, but also the identity, like as it relates to your identity and how you see other people. So let's think about, let's evaluate it this way. So they are saying, I am a lawyer, or somebody might be saying, I am a business person. I'm not interested in stories. I'm not free, okay? You know, I've got, I've got work to do. You're telling me about stories. Okay. So for me, evaluating that, I would say, so it sounds like for you, you're more focused on things like, I'm assuming efficiency and outcome, right?

• 48:07Speaker 00

  Okay, good. So you're the kind of person that would use whatever tactic or strategy gets you to the outcome that you want most effectively, right? Okay, good. Now, when you look at the studies associated with storytelling and persuasion, you're familiar with that's those studies. No, okay, cool. Then we can talk about the narrative power of story. And then we also talk about. Just like I say in all of my keynotes, have you ever had a situation where you had all of the data, logic and facts on your side, but people didn't agree? Right, okay, so it's, so there's a difference between being right and being persuasive right now. And so you have a skill set of using logic and you've found a number of times that logic wasn't enough. And you probably lost to somebody who had a more powerful story.

• 48:51Speaker 00

  So the question is, you said you're a person who uses tactics and strategies to help you to win, but it seems like there's some resistance to using the one tactic or strategy that will probably help you to win the most. And so then you give them a new story for their own identity. I'm a person who uses the best strategies, storytelling are the best strategies, based on science, you know? Now, now you've given yourself license to use that strategy. And the thing is, when it comes to storytelling, one element that I don't think is talked about enough, in general, as it relates to persuasion, is that I, if you are trying to get somebody to believe a story where they don't look good, it's going to be hard for them to believe that story.

• 49:37Speaker 00

  And so I want to think about what is their self-concept? What is their, their personal identity, their narrative? How do they describe themselves? Not the way that I see them or other people say, how do you see yourself? Okay, is there a way for me to marry your own identity with the outcome that I want? That would also work for you, not just in the real world, but with your own personal identity. Okay, great. I can figure that story out. I'm going to tell you that story. So I don't need you to have this kind of record scratching type of unpleasant persuasive experience, where you come to, you, you change your perspective reluctantly.

• 50:19Speaker 00

  I want you to recognize, oh, I never thought of it this way. This does help me win. And sometimes you have to give them the story that allows them to give themselves permission to be persuaded.

• 50:32Speaker 01

  Yes, that's so great. And as you're speaking, I can see the similarities between what you're talking about and what we do as educators and as trainers, right? Because negotiation, a successful one, is where you've maybe taught each other something, where each of you has come away learning something.

• 51:02Speaker 00

  Yes, that's it's powerful. And also, I think it's endearing, because if I'm in a conversation, think about the hubris we bring to these conversations. We will often operate as though we are the sole arbiters of truth in this interaction. It's like, okay, cool, there's somebody ignorant over there. Let me give them my truth, then then they will be less ignorant. Not surprisingly, people don't like that vibe. It doesn't feel good. But if you but the thing is, we are learning from other people, we should be, but we also need to call this out. We have to let them know this stuff, because I'm going to pause and make sure that they know that the information they gave to me was not information I had, and I appreciate

• 51:46Speaker 00

  it, and it helped me in this type of way. That serves two purposes. So you'll see, in business and life and everything, I only believe in multipurpose strategies. I'm not just going for one goal. I'm seeing how many I can get at one time. So what I will so what I'll do is I'll say, hey, listen, you've taught me this. I didn't know this before. And this helps me because of this specific reason. And then I talk about why it's so valuable for me to learn this. So first of all, it helps them to feel really good about themselves. They like to feel intellectually superior. If you're the person teaching, you feel intellectually superior. But also, I am, I am reinforcing the fact that they should

• 52:25Speaker 00

  share more. Because when it comes to behavior change, we focus so much on negative reinforcement. Hey, set boundaries. Don't tell them what not to do. Tell them, don't do that. Don't do this. But what I want to do is I want to catch them when they are good. Catch them in those moments. Where they have done something that is actually beneficial. So you taught me something. I want to let you know that you taught me something. So you should feel good about that. In fact, you should keep on teaching me stuff. Keep on talking, keep on giving me information. And then also I'm demonstrating and modeling intellectual humility. I do not have such an ego where I'm not willing to allow my mind to be changed. And you too can do the same thing in front of me because that's what friends do, right?

• 53:09Speaker 00

  And so a lot of times we create this environment where it's so competitive, where even when you do make incredible points, the person doesn't want to give you credit or adjust because they've made great points and you didn't give them credit or adjust. So I'm kind of resetting the dynamic of the of the conversation in that way. And by not just listening and being willing to learn, but check these subconscious boxes to make sure that the conversation continues to flow in that positive direction.

• 53:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, I love the use of the word humility in this context. Humility, I've also heard you use the word humbleness or humble as well as generous and generosity. And something that I've said to my students over the years is

• 54:00Speaker 01

  it may be seem easier even intuitive that of course you would be generous, humble, use humility because you're just starting your career, right? And so when I say that to students, they seem like, of course, of course, so professor, I'll I'll be humble. I I'm new to this. So that's that's easy. And then I

• 54:27Speaker 01

  I just just caution them that maybe five years or 10 years, 30 years. Hopefully they have a long prosperous career down the road.

• 54:42Speaker 01

  They may abandon some of that if they're not minding it. And so I suggest just look out, look out for that. Look out for when you're feeling a little less humility or a little less generous. When you're in those conversations, check yourself, be patient with yourself, reflect so that you preserve that. So I've, I don't know, I actually do, I've been doing this long enough that I have had students come back to me after like a decade.

• 55:20Speaker 01

  So I, I'm hoping that that seed is effectively planted and I, and, and they will make sure as they go, a lot's easier said than done, but that they maintain that humbleness, that curiosity, that willingness at least to have humility and to be humble and to be curious. I think that can be really hard to maintain over the course of a career.

• 55:45Speaker 00

  Yeah, yes, and I agree 100%. And I think, tell me if this resonates because it's almost, it almost seems as though sometimes people are eager to not be humble. It's like, I am in a state of humility, not by choice, but by circumstance, and I cannot wait to earn arrogance. And the thing is for me, when I think about humility, I just think about it in terms of accuracy. So you can still be extremely confident and extremely humble at the same time. Because when I think about humility, again, it is an accurate assessment of what I do and don't know. I don't know the things that are in your head. I can't. I need to actually be genuinely curious in order to get that.

• 56:29Speaker 00

  So humility is a core negotiation skill in my perspective because it helps you to be honest with yourself and others about your limits of what you do know. And the, for me, when I think about the term, the word ignorance, it is, it is a state of not knowing. And so I will go in with a high degree of ignorance and my goal is to eliminate that by getting information. From you. That's crucially important.

• 56:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:53Speaker 00

  And that leads to true humility because, sorry, true curiosity. Because if I am genuinely curious, it has to come from an understanding of the fact that I don't understand everything. There's a difference between genuine curiosity and strategic curiosity. Strategic curiosity is a lawyer on cross examination. We have questions. We know the answers. We are trying to pin you and you can feel that. It's a completely different vibe. And so, once you start to recognize that humility is a skill that is just solely focused on accurate assessment, then you recognize that this is a tool to become great at this technique and the skill of negotiation

• 57:33Speaker 00

  and communication. And if you start to evolve, or I should say devolve away from humility, you're doing yourself and other people a disservice as well.

• 57:44Speaker 01

  Mm hmm. I like that. Genuine and strategic curiosity. Genuine curiosity on one hand and strategic curiosity on the other. Okay. If you're okay with this, I want to switch gears a little bit.

• 57:56Speaker 00

  Yeah, let's do it. Every year, I swear that I'm going to get ahead of holiday shopping. This year, it started with a Quince cashmere sweater that I bought for myself. It was so soft, so well made, and my first thought was, who else on my list needs one? Quince makes high-quality staples with 100% Mongolian cashmere and Italian leather, and their cashmere sweaters start at just $60. All of it is 50 to 80% less than similar brands because they work directly with ethical factories and cut out the middlemen. As a negotiator, I know a great deal when I see one. This is luxury quality without the luxury price tag. I use Quince, and you should too. Give the gift of quality this season. Download the

• 58:37Speaker 00

  Quince app for app-exclusive offers, or just go to quince.com. Get free shipping on your order and 365-day returns, now available in Canada and the UK too. And when Quince asks where you heard about them, let them know it was Kwame with Big Swings only. That's the best way to support the show. Try this. Pull up your notes from a meeting last week. Do they still make sense? Or do they just seem like random notes that only the old version of you could decode? That used to be me. And as a negotiator, that's a real problem because my job is to listen, not type or write notes. That's why Granola has been one of my favorite tools, period. It's an AI-powered notepad. I jot my usual rough notes and then Granola securely transcribes the meeting in the background.

• 59:21Speaker 00

  And when it ends, I get clean, structured notes that still make sense a week later. Decisions, owners, next steps, everything that I would need to feel good about going forward. And it works through your device's audio too. So there's no additional setup or any annoying AI joining your call. Just your normal meeting, but with superpowers. If meetings are eating up your day, Granola is a no-brainer. You can try it totally free for three months. Just go to granola.ai/Quami. That's granola.ai/Quami to get your time back. Get three months free at granola.ai/Quami.

• 59:56Speaker 01

  So emotional regulation. You started talking about this earlier. You mentioned in the Edmiston lecture at one point that something that can work as a technique for emotional regulation during a very difficult conversation is just having a notepad there and taking notes. It helps steady your mind, helps quiet yourself inside a little bit. And a student found that really powerful. I do too, right?

• 1:00:37Speaker 01

  And the student was wondering, and I've had other questions from students along these lines. What are some other techniques that you suggest for regulating emotion? That's right, my emotion as the negotiator during the negotiation during a very difficult conversation.

• 1:01:00Speaker 00

  Great question. And let's, let's try to get bonus points again, dual-purpose strategies. Let's use, let's tie this.

• 1:01:07Speaker 01

  I love all the layers. You always operate many levels, many layers.

• 1:01:11Speaker 00

  Yes, yes, yes. So let's tie this to the stories because. We need to tell better stories about what it is that we're going to hap- what's going to happen in these conversations. One of the magic, the superpowers of emotional regulation is switching from frustration to amusement. So before the conversation, think about the things that the person can do that might trigger you or frustrate you, those type of things. Let's figure all of those things out. And then what we're going to do is we're going to create a story around it. So I'll give you an example. One, one of the, the folks that I was coaching, um, they were in a situation where there were meetings where they were being interrupted. They weren't feeling like they were treated respectfully in those types of situations.

• 1:01:53Speaker 00

  They were, they were the other in the organization, which made it even harder. And so I said, all right, this is what we're going to do because we can't control their behavior. But we can control our reaction to it, our response, our preparation. So what we're going to do is we're going to play frustration bingo. It's so, I want you to think about all of the annoying things this person can do. And it was, and then we're going to figure out, let's just kind of check the box. You have your little paper, you know, you check the box off. Yeah, of course they're interrupting me. Yep, that is what they would do. Okay, great. Yes. Oh, yep, there's a side conversation. I knew it. So that exact same thing that used to really frustrate or trigger the person in the past now becomes amusing in the moment. So you provided yourself with a better story.

• 1:02:38Speaker 00

  Another story that I tell myself is when it comes to especially transactional negotiations. They're, I'm going to make good points. Their job is to like, try to knock down the points. Their job is to fight back. And if they're a good negotiator, they will often do those things. So that person is actually doing exactly what it is that they are supposed to be doing. So when I see resistance, when I see pushback and everything, I said, okay, they're doing their job. And it's my job to be ready for that, that that's what's supposed to happen. And so what I do is internally, I renegotiate the, the storyline. I'm telling myself a disempowering story. They're going to disrespect me, they're going to interrupt, and then I'm going to be mad. And then I'm going to, then I'm going to like lose my footing, whatever it is.

• 1:03:20Speaker 00

  We tell ourselves these stories and what I recognize is that a lot of these stories are either. Downloaded by either society or created automatically through our amygdala. Cause the the emotional center of our brain will have the first shot of interpretation of the situation. So I want to create those stories with intentionality. And creating those stories for myself before the conversation helps me to recognize that even though those things will probably still happen. Now I have a better story, so it doesn't affect me. So it I'm really trying to look at emotion management from a completely different perspective. Because if we think about emotion management, most of the time we say the emotion is here. How do I get it down to a manageable level?

• 1:04:02Speaker 00

  But I recognize that if we change our perspective and our story beforehand, then we don't have that emotional influx at the beginning. And so emotion management is not even required in that specific instance. Because the emotion never flared up in the first place.

• 1:04:17Speaker 01

  You've done a lot of preparation before the negotiation. And so that helps when you finally get into the negotiation.

• 1:04:28Speaker 00

  Exactly.

• 1:04:29Speaker 01

  Okay. The notepad, though, I want to get back to the notepad in the negotiation itself. So you've talked about leading up to the negotiation. How about during the negotiation? Let's say it maybe you didn't prepare as well as you wanted to. And your buttons get pushed during the negotiation and you feel it coming on.

• 1:04:53Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 1:04:53Speaker 01

  What do you do in that situation? Maybe just maybe that's not a day to negotiate. Maybe that's a time to use silence. Maybe that's. You tell me.

• 1:05:06Speaker 00

  A couple of things, a couple of things. Well, first I like to, I mean, it's this is classic Yuri and Fisher here where we go to the balcony. Can we get a third party perspective of ourselves in this situation? So what I find valuable in those moments is to not describe it narratively, but describe it just ruthlessly objectively. So for instance, the person disrespected me. Okay, that's I can't draw a picture of that. What actually happened? I was. Talking, they spoke, I had more to say, okay, now I can understand what that problem was. What was it that I want to say, I'm gonna write that down to make sure that the next thing I say is on that topic. So let's say the person interrupts, cool.

• 1:05:49Speaker 00

  All right, I let them get their interruption out, I say, all right, let's, let's address that in a moment. What I was, let me finish my thoughts and then we could get to that next thing too. So I'm starting to say, I'm gonna depersonalize it, what actually happened? And then what do I need to do? So I stay in problem solving mode. So it's just problem, solution, that's one. Another thing too is if I recognize I'm off right now, I don't, I'm feeling emotional and it's not going away. Then if we're thinking about it in terms of compassionate curiosity, I'll stay in the first two modes. I'm just going to stay in step one and step two. I'm going to acknowledge and validate and I'm going to, I'm going to ask questions. And use the empathy loop to demonstrate listening.

• 1:06:30Speaker 00

  And if they try to push it to problem solving, I'll say, hey, listen, I, I know right now, I'm not in a position where I can come to a good conclusion. But what I can do is listen to you and understand where you're coming from and then I can give you an answer later. But if you need an answer right now, the answer is no. And so usually people can get a little bit more patience at that moment. Um, taking a break is always an option and it's an option that people don't use enough. You know, the, I, I make the joke when I'm talking to folks who are not lawyers. But a substantial portion of the time where lawyers are saying, hold on, let me call my client. They, they, they just need a break, they need a timeout. Give yourself a little bit of space because if you say, hey, I need a, I need a second to think this through, they will, you, you get that time.

• 1:07:14Speaker 00

  And I think just giving yourself the power of controlling your pace is going to be very, very important. So the, one of the things my dad taught me when I was, when he was teaching me how to drive was you're going to make more mistakes by going too fast than by going too slow. So the more I start to feel emotions come up, the more I start to slow down in the moment. And then the last thing is of course box breathing, classic Navy SEAL strategy, breathing in for four seconds. Holding for four seconds, breathing out for four seconds, holding for four seconds. And the thing that I've recognized too is that this, when, when you bring in those kind of the, the breath work.

• 1:07:59Speaker 00

  To whatever it is that you do, you can turn anything into a meditation to a certain extent. And when you bring that meditative state into the negotiation, then you stay more present. Because when you are starting to get more activated, you have the sympathetic nervous system starting to ramp up. Breathing increases, the rate of breathing increases, your heart rate increases, cortisol spikes, all of those things, right? So by slowing down your breathing, you are triggering the parasympathetic nervous system, which has a natural calming effect. And so for me, it's, it's, what I start doing is I always play games that I know I can win.

• 1:08:41Speaker 00

  And I know I can win games that are within my control. This is classic Stoic principles. I can't guarantee an outcome of a negotiation because the other side has agency. But I can always be in control of my performance. So one of the games that I play, especially in the tough negotiations, is how calm can I be? Right? Can I be calm to the point where it is unsettling to the other side? Where it's like, I, I thought that would shake him and it doesn't, it didn't shake him. And actually, Simone has seen this firsthand because he saw, he saw when, maybe Simone, you break it down because I don't even want it to seem like this is planted. So when you saw, I'll just set the stage of what was at stake. And then what happened and then Simone can describe my response.

• 1:09:26Speaker 00

  So this was the, going to be the biggest media deal in the history of the company. So multi-six figures online. And we were very well positioned for this, exceptionally well positioned for it. So we worked for weeks creating this negotiation strategy. We were really good. We're saying, okay, we were at this point last year, we could up it, up it this much this year. And so we go into this negotiation and I go in ready to negotiate and they went in ready to tell me bad news. And they said, and they said, do you listen very politely? They, first of all, I knew it was bad when they started eulogizing me, Katrina. They're like, well, Tommy, you know, we have loved working with you. I was like, oh, God.

• 1:10:11Speaker 00

  It's over. Don't say nice things to me this early in the call. And they, they were shutting down the whole program, not just me, but the whole program. So there was no option there and we were banking on this money in a rough year. So Simone, when they dropped that, dropped that on us, what did you see when you looked at me on the, on the screen?

• 1:10:34Speaker 02

  A smile.

• 1:10:41Speaker 00

  It's like they just told you news. It's like, hey, by the way, you you didn't know this coming into it, but uh the future of your company is in jeopardy. And and my response was a smile. Cause in my mind, I'm like, oh, game on, because now we get to figure out how how good am I really? This is a chance to showcase skills. It's a skill. So what I did is I said, well, first of all, the we had half an hour booked. We are four minutes in. I'm getting my twenty six minutes.

• 1:11:12Speaker 00

  I said, I'm going to I'm what would I tell somebody else to do? I'm going into pure curiosity mode. Learned about the future of their company, what they're trying to do and position myself well for this year. And now we're taking advantage of those opportunities. But if I would have just not handled it well, we wouldn't have known. So it's it's an oper- the the way that works for you will be different from other people. And for me, it's gate constant gamification, because it can take my mind off of the difficulty of the situation. And then the skills required to make it through the situation. And that's what I li- like to latch on to.

• 1:11:46Speaker 01

  Spoken like the veteran chess player that you are.

• 1:11:54Speaker 01

  Yes, that's just oh, wow. So I'm gonna ask a last question.

• 1:12:00Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:12:00Speaker 01

  And so firstly, again, congratulations. What an incredible accomplishment. So when students hear from you, they inevitably comment on how polished you are and how uh you expertly weave through seamlessly. Weave in stories from your personal life. Sometimes Kai, your son, makes a guest appearance in your presentations. And so.

• 1:12:38Speaker 01

  On behalf of my students, I'm gonna ask you for a two parter. So one is, how do you prepare? How do you prepare? And after all these years, right, it's 10 years now, going into a podcast, going into a lecture, what do you do? What's your, before you get into the ring, do you have some secret sauce? Do you have a ritual? Is there something that you do going into it? And secondly, what is, so this is part two of the question. What have you found rewarding about all of this? 1800, that's a lot of reps, right?

• 1:13:22Speaker 01

  What do you, what have you found rewarding about all of this? And again, congratulations, just incredible.

• 1:13:30Speaker 00

  Thank you, thank you. It's, it's interesting because with the, especially with the, the marquee keynote that I do, Finding Confidence in Conflict, where I talk about the secrets of the world's greatest negotiators. I have, I've gotten so many reps of that, that it feels really natural, really, I could do that keynote in my sleep. And the, the preparation is usually, is, is really focused on optimizing it for the client. So what I would do is I would have calls with the clients and figure out what it is that they're struggling with. I'll survey their teams to figure out what it is that they're struggling with and come up with the most realistic examples for everything that we're going to talk about.

• 1:14:14Speaker 00

  So that once I get to the case study section, I see people groan and roll their eyes and sigh heavily. I'm like, yes, I know. I know, that means you got the right one. So it's the, the customization, that's really where I spend the majority of my time. Once it comes to the game day, what I've recognized is that everyone is so different that I have to have a very flexible approach. I want to come early so I can feel the room. I want to be able to understand how my words will land to the person in the back corner and versus the person. Who's up front, I walk the stage, figure out which area of the stage I need to stand on. Some parts of the stage are creaky, so I I'm anticipating where I will stand, where I won't.

• 1:14:56Speaker 00

  Um, and the best thing that I do to to to feel comfortable before one of those keynotes is talk to as many people as I possibly can before. Because what's funny is that before every keynote, the feeling is exactly the same as the the first time I did it. When somebody's up there read, when I see, so when you were reading the the bio and introducing me for the Edmiston lecture. I'm sitting there looking at you marveling like she is so articulate and she's speaking in front of all of these people. That's amazing.

• 1:15:28Speaker 01

  That is very funny.

• 1:15:29Speaker 00

  That's what's going through my head. I'm like, wow, this is ridiculous. And the the understanding psychology allows you to laugh laugh at it too, because it's a silly thing. And so what I need to do is I need to try to take myself out of the gravity of the situation as much as possible. By chit chatting with as many people as possible, so it's uh kind of a bit of a defense mechanism. Uh, distraction to keep me away.

• 1:15:53Speaker 00

  Then the next question, as far as the impact, I I have a I have a story for you. So I remember one time I was doing a keynote. It was for a company, an organization called the International Door Association. So yes, Katrina, I'm in with the door people now.

• 1:16:09Speaker 01

  The door, okay.

• 1:16:10Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:16:10Speaker 01

  I I wanted to make sure I heard that.

• 1:16:12Speaker 00

  So yes, International Door Association. So it's the folks who sell garage doors. To uh different families, different organizations and things like that. So I was chat uh. After the keynote keynote went well, somebody came up and they said, man, I was really excited to to see you speak because I've been listening to your podcast for years. And it's helped me to close more sales and things like that. But the thing that has helped me the most is the relationship with my sixteen year old son.

• 1:16:40Speaker 00

  That's what it's about.

• 1:16:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:16:41Speaker 00

  That's what it's about. Like, the, the messages that I get about relationships being rekindled. Um, people recognizing, man, I've been grossly underpaid. Somebody, the, this is gonna sound hyperbolic, but somebody sent me a message saying, yeah, I negotiated for the first time. I didn't even know I could negotiate and I didn't realize how much I was getting underpaid. And I was, I negotiated for the first time in my whole career and got an extra fifty K per year. And I said, and in my mind, I'm thinking, wow, congrats, number one. And then, number two, how grossly underpaid was this person for that, that amount of money to be on the table?

• 1:17:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:17:20Speaker 00

  That's wild. And so, the, the thing is, people are recognizing that they're living limited lives and they work really hard to cultivate these skills and get these relationships. But then you get to a point in your career where improvement on your skills doesn't get you any further. You have to advocate for what you want. You have to make sure your idea is heard and that's a persuasion challenge. That's influence without authority. When you think about the relationship, you might have great connection and, and chemistry with the other person, but when something difficult happens, which inevitably will in any relationship of any level of depth, you need to be able to communicate. And recognizing that it's not a binary, it's not your way or my way, but we could actually come together and find our way, for a lot of people, that's, is revolutionary.

• 1:18:04Speaker 00

  And so, I think a lot of times, especially when you are in this field or you become a thought leader, you start to take what you've learned for granted and recognize that for the majority of people on this planet, it'll be their first introduction. And so, it's just been great to, to not just build this, but also see the, the, the meaningful, tangible impact that it's having on people. And the, the format, the, the, the style is unique too, because the, the impact, the, the majority of the impact, sixteen million plus downloads globally, a hundred and eighty different countries, and everybody who listened never paid a dime. It's always the, I, but I'm able to go to these bigger companies, Google, Apple, Microsoft, Intel, Target, all of those people, they fund the generosity through the trainings

• 1:18:49Speaker 00

  and the conferences and everything like that. And then we got the, the, the podcast to a point where it's monetized, where most people don't get, get monetization on their podcast. So, it's been a fun journey and just seeing the impact, that's the thing that, that registers the most.

• 1:19:04Speaker 01

  Oh, wow. Getting all the feels again.

• 1:19:08Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:19:10Speaker 01

  Just amazing what you've done. I just, I feel so lucky to have such great alumni of the program like you, who keep giving back, teaching, showing up. And you gave the Emerson Lecture, right? We've talked about the Emerson Lecture during this time, but you're not talking about all the other times you've shown up in the building, right? Like you came back for the Emerson, but you're back here teaching every single year. You're back here, sometimes helping out with the competition. I mean, just incredible.

• 1:19:47Speaker 00

  Thank you.

• 1:19:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:19:48Speaker 00

  Never forget where I came from, you know, so always want to give back.

• 1:19:52Speaker 01

  No, we appreciate that.

• 1:19:54Speaker 00

  Thank you.

• 1:19:55Speaker 01

  We appreciate it.

• 1:19:56Speaker 00

  Man, Katrina, this, this was fantastic. Thank you for coming on the show.

• 1:20:01Speaker 01

  It's an honor, really, and so much fun. Like, we have not, right? Like, I know it sounds nerdy, but like, it's, we're always so busy, right? And so, we actually got to catch up quite a bit on your podcast.

• 1:20:19Speaker 00

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• 1:21:03Speaker 00

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