The Art of Negotiation: How To Communicate During Crisis & High Stakes Moments Feat. Katy Kvalvik

In your next high stakes environment or negotiation or high stakes conversation, you can breathe better, listen better and connect better. And what I imagine for all of you is to slow down. And in that next conversation or negotiation, maybe the last time it didn't go the best way, it did. But for some reason this time, with having that right approach and thinking about these three things, everything comes into place.

Clear communication can make or break any deal in negotiation or your business, especially during a time of uncertainty. But what if you were able to have clear communication in every conversation you had? Think about it. What would happen if with every one of your meetings, your conversations, your presentations and your negotiations, you and the other individuals were all on the same page? When you can do this, you can have an even deeper connection with yourself, with your team members, with your clients and with your loved ones. By revealing how to listen deeply, breathing correctly, building rapport and connection through verbal and nonverbal communication, Katie Kovalvik, I Did It Right will share with you how to navigate your communications in high stake environments. When you're a highly effective negotiator, you'll be able to slow down, connect and get to the heart of the matter with the most important people in your life. And you will also generate even more efficiency, influence and trust. The results effective communication that extends beyond your deals and meetings, the conference room and even your industry to have a ripple effect through all areas of your life. Katie will guide you in this negotiation process. For over 12 years, Katie, through her coaching, consulting, speaking and creating curriculum, has helped thousands of entrepreneurs, leaders and business owners as well as their teams, raise tens and hundreds of millions of dollars, scale their companies and experience both personal and professional breakthroughs. Along with preventing burnout, Katie has helped companies like Hyperloop raise over 300 million PivotBio 170 million and has worked with other companies like American Express, Sony and Beachbody. Along with being featured on NBC, ABC as a regular contributor to Thrive Global and Entrepreneur. She has an extensive background in sales and previously was a leader in the medical device industry. There she successfully ran multimillion dollar territories, managed teams under high pressure and was involved in the creation of leadership programs within her companies. Katie is the trainer of nlp, is a trainer of nlp, certified Executive Coach, conflict Manager and master practitioner in hypnotherapy. Later this year she is launching a brand new retreat center called the Conscious Ranch, a destination for leaders and entrepreneurs to elevate their consciousness and rewire their mindsets and belief systems so they can lead holistically. Katie's title is the art of negotiation in high stake environments. Please help me welcome Katie Kovalvik.

Thank you, Joe.

Thank you.

Good job.

I'm sweating, I'm sweating. Thank you.

I would think that most people would agree that when it comes to negotiation that all of us could have a little bit of improvement. Now, even if you are a seasoned negotiator, there are some times that you believe that you can maybe have said something a little different. So this talk is for you if you want to increase your negotiation skill sets, but also take it to the next level of how do you have deep connection in every one of your conversations. So through this three step approach, I'm going to be teaching you that. So before we get into this, how do we define high stake environments? Well, it's anything that is a negotiation, a high stake conversation or presentation. And it's also an area where we have to connect on a deeper level because we're going through maybe a challenge or a struggle. And it can also affect your time and your money and even how you perceive your reality. So even your values. So even if you aren't in the situation where you might be fundraising hundreds of millions of dollars in your life, you're in difficult situations and conversations every single day. How many people in here are parents? Awesome. So having those deep connection conversations with your loved ones and being able to have that effect that you want, what about your spouse or intimate relationships? How many people are in those? So it's slowing down, being able to get the most out of those situations so that you can get the results you're looking for. Team members and business partners. All of us, I'm assuming, even if we have that remote team member, we want to be able to connect with them, get to the heart of the matter. And then we have clients and customers and patients. How many people are connected to them? Yes. Only three or four. Come on. And then we have also team members and we have investors, board members and advisors. And so looking at how we navigate those situations. And so you're probably looking at me and saying, how did she get into negotiations and sales? Where did that start? Well, it started at the kitchen table. My parents were in real estate and real estate sales for over 40 years. So growing up in a very highly entrepreneurial atmosphere, I saw the highs and I saw the lows and everything in between. And so in the early 90s, I was a teenager. And as you know, real estate, we're going through it right now, has some cycles and we were in a deep recession and it was a time where I Got to wake up to a time in my life where I realized that if I was going to have something in my life, I had to own my results. I had to take ownership, I had to take responsibility and I had to make a decision. So you all in your seats right now and at home you might be at a spot where today is that decision to make that you want to take your relationships to the next level so that you can live the life that you want to live. And so that was a very impactful experience that led me to be in sales and to understand it on all different aspects and doing extremely well at a young age, making a lot of money and helping a lot of people and how to take things to the next level.

Hey, I hope you're enjoying this video and I want to let you know that I have a new book that's come out and if you'd like to get it absolutely free, there's a link below in the description. Or you can wait till the end of this video or you can Simply go to joe'sfreebook.com and you can get a copy there.

So where we got to start here is negotiation strategy. And so in negotiation strategy we have distributive and we have integrative. Distributive is that tug of war that you have that maybe that one time negotiation where you don't know if you're going to see that person again. And so it's a lot of bargaining. It's, you know, cards are close to your chest and so you're trying to get that result but you might not see that person again. What I really focus on is integrative, which integrative is looking at long term relationships that we all benefit, that we all win. But don't worry, Chris Voss, I'm not going to say win win, right? So it's looking at how do we get to that deeper connection. So this is an ongoing relationship that everyone benefits. So as you know, in negotiation there's a technical side which I could go into, which would be a two to five day intensive where we could go into things like pre framing, reframing, framing to agreement frames, anchoring to sales cycles, all these different things. And what I'm going to do today is really focus on the artist side because that's something that you have a lot of control over. And it's really looking at how we have this technical and artistic side combined which really makes it so that we are able to be authentic and have your true essence come out. So the first concept that we're going to go over is to breathe. And I love this group because we have Jason in the back right here who's done such an amazing job. I love being in groups and environments where there's so much pre framing and people are ready to go with breathing. And what I'm going to try to do is take that breathing, how do we bring it into our high stake environments, how do we get that artistic side with our breathing and start connecting those dots into those high stake situations. So here's some, just some basic takeaways is you want to elongate your breath, especially the exhale, because that stimulates the parasympathetic nervous system, which is really where we want to be in our rest and digest. So rest and digest. So we want to slow down and elongate that breath, especially the exhale. Because at the end of the day our breath is the entry point to increase our life force energy and really have that essence that we're looking for. And as you've heard, I'm sure from Jason too, but a lot of different cultures talk about this. In ancient wisdom we have ki mana, prana, chi. And so it's understanding that there is this thing called energy. And how does that we have this access point point of our breath and using that and to be able to slow down. And the big thing that you're looking for is to have that alignment, embodiment and congruency. Our breath is connected to so many things. It's connected to how we look at our values, which creates our beliefs and attitudes, which creates our thoughts, emotions, actions, behavior and our words and how we have clarity and how we execute. So slowing down and being able to embody your breath really gives you that range of what we want to look at. So something too looking at your breath, a part of my background experience, probably thinking like, okay, she's teaching us negotiation sales. Why is she slowing down and talking about meditation and breathing? And so something that happened to me over 14 years ago as I was a corporate sales executive and I was also a competitive triathlete. I was in two consecutive accidents where I had to rebuild my whole entire body and relearn how to walk. And it was a crazy time. And literally I didn't know what to do. It was one of those things. And it's something you could relate to too. When you're in a situation where the difficult things become simple, that you're not, you just don't know how to navigate. You've had these strategies your whole life and you don't know what to do. And so I wanted to give contribute to some teachers that I met along the way that taught me this information. Narazi Magnolia he was my first teacher coming out of these accidents where I could barely walk. And if it wasn't for this man, I probably wouldn't be here today. And he was huge believer in Tai Chi and Qigong and yoga and he even got me to live in ashram in India where I had a lot of healing and going through my breath work. I also studied with Harada Roshi for over 10 years doing silent meditation retreats in Japan and all over. And he taught me just the connection of our breath and how that is connected on all different levels and what we can do with it. And then I also wanted to highlight just one more person was our two people. Kathryn and I did voice work for three years because I had major PTSD after my accidents. And so what I wanted to do is just go over some basic things you want to do with your breath. So you want to speak at the top of your inhale. So when you're in high stake environments you want to be able to be at the top of your inhale so that you have that range with your exhale. And you can be able to do a lot of different things with your voice. So it's something to practice. You want to also do a 360 degree breath. Most people do 180 degree breath. And so you want to use your whole entire body, your lungs are in your back and so to be able to do that and you want to do four to seven cycles of breath cycles a minute. So something to focus on there as well. Most people do 14 to 17 breath cycles per minute and this is all to increase in being in the present moment. So breathing, the next thing we're going to go over, the number two thing is listening. So remember we have a three step approach. So listening and that is really looking at the levels of listening and breaking that down. And so the levels of listening, the first level is the level zero which is really no listening at all. It's no listening speaking only. How many people have been that experience? When you're in a conversation, you're not really even in that conversation. So it's something to slow down and look at. What level are you at? Level one is looking at subjective listening. This is all about the listener and their agenda. And this is where 80 to 90% of people are and this is where they're taking their reality through their filter and reacting to it. Level two is looking at listening and not being in the present moment, when you start slowing down and looking at the how and coming out of this to be present. A lot of times we're thinking about the past or we're thinking about the future or something that is on our mind or what we're going to say. And so it's being able to slow down five minutes a day and just being present with our breath and remember elongating, especially the exhale. Level three is objective active listening. So being able to objective active listen is really about problem solving. It's looking at the facts versus the story. How can we get to the solution? What is actually going on here? We can move it forward, which is great in work environments. Level four is looking at intuitive listening and this is where you're taking all five of your senses. So that's visual, auditory, kinesthetic, augustatory and you're able to see what's happening in between the lines. Because most of the time we're in these surface structures and we want to get to the deeper structures. So you want to slow down and be able to actually ask questions and look at how this all connected. And so within listening we have the levels. And then it's also looking at active listening and looking at things like it seems it sounds what I've heard and then asking. Is that right? And with that asking questions. So these are some of my favorite questions just to go through this quickly and to wrap up questions you want to ask when you're in negotiations because it's really about the other person and listening. So what does success look like? What are you looking for specifically? Tell me the next step in the process. Tell me how you make decisions. These are all really great questions to ask. So here's a summary of that. Take a picture. And so it's about practicing intuitive listening and elongating your breath in low stakes situations so you can do it in high stakes situations. And the last area I want to talk about is connection because that really, when you're able to breathe, listen, we're all looking to have deep connection. And so deep connection starts with us being able to slow down and connecting to ourselves first. So how do we do that? How do we connect to ourselves first? And how do we look at kindness, empathy and compassion for ourselves first and then we're able to do for others. Because most of the things that happen that happen is that when in most cases anything we do to ourselves, we do to others. So it's being able to slow down and be able to connect with ourselves first. Because at the end of the day we're meaning making machines because that's what we do on unconscious levels. We're making meaning out of our experiences and events. And I'm always curious what other people are meaning and making out of their events. And so understanding meaning is how do we bring the heart and the mind together? And when we're talking to people and connecting with them, that we might be talking about something and agree on something, but it might mean something different. So how do we slow down and actually ask what do you mean by what you're saying? Or what do you mean by this? So you can connect on those deeper structures I was talking about and so you can move the conversation forward and actually get to the heart of the matter of what's most important. And then just really quickly, I think people know about verbal and non verbal communication because it's such a huge component of connection. But you have physiology. We already talked about breathing and posture and being able to do conscious gesturing. You have tonality. And what I want you to take away from this is tonality. The most two important things is volume and speed. So having that range, especially when you elongate the breath, you're able to do that. And then you have your words, which is only 7%. Everyone's always surprised by this. And I know some people have seen this before. And so it's looking at predicates, which is your verbs, keywords, common experiences and content chunks. And so just to look at this all together, which is always interesting to me that 93% of communication is so non verbal and to slow down and really connect to all those different aspects of how we're communicating. And to wrap up, it's looking at intonation patterns. So especially when you're in big deals and you're negotiating or you're a difficult conversation with your spouse or your loved ones to when you're getting to certain important parts, especially when you're closing, for instance, you really want to be aware of your pitch. So where are you? Do you naturally go upwards sometimes when it's a little awkward or uncomfortable? Or do you go flat or neutral or a command? So for instance, I'm working with a security company right now that is pretty high up. They're doing a lot for Ukraine and they work a lot with the DoD military. And so one of my CEOs and clients, we have to work on his intonation pattern of doing a command language because military is very command like language at the end of a sentence. So these are just some things to think about. So what you can do is in your next high stakes environment or negotiation or high stakes conversation, you can breathe better, listen better, and connect better. And what I imagine for all of you is to slow down. And in that next conversation or negotiation that maybe the last time it didn't go the best way, it did. But for some reason, this time, with having that right approach and thinking about these three things, everything comes into place.

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