Behind The Scenes: Negotiating With My Publisher With Leah Wilson, Editor-in-Chief of BenBella Books

Hello, my friend, and welcome to another exciting episode of Negotiate Anything. Thanks for joining us today. With over 10 million downloads and listeners from more than 180 different countries, it's dedicated listeners just like you who have made Negotiate Anything the number one negotiation podcast in the world. I'm your host, Kwame Christian. I'm a business lawyer, mediator, author, and the proud CEO of the American Negotiation Institute. Now, before we get into today's insightful conversation, I have a golden opportunity for those of you who recognize the power of negotiation in your professional lives. Have you ever found yourself wishing that you could navigate those high stakes conversations with more confidence? Or perhaps you're looking to empower your team with the art of persuasion and conflict resolution? At the American Negotiation Institute, we've crafted specialized keynotes and workshops tailored for those very needs. We've transformed the negotiation skills of professionals worldwide, and we're eager to do the same for you. We believe the best things in life are on the other side of difficult conversations. And our goal is to help you improve your lives and the lives of those around you, one difficult conversation at a time. Don't let another challenging conversation leave you second guessing. Click the link in the description to discover how we can help you find confidence in conflict, negotiate better deals, and have stronger relationships. Because in the world of business, every conversation counts. And now, without further ado, let's jump into the interview. Leah, thanks for joining us today.

Hey, no, thank you for having me. I'm excited.

Yeah, it is my pleasure, my friend. So how would you get us started? By telling us a little bit about yourself and what you do.

Sure. So my name is Leah Wilson. I'm editor in chief at Ben Bella Books. We're a mid sized independent publisher based out of Dallas, Texas that we've got folks all over. So I oversee our editorial department. I do some acquisitions, generally make sure that the books get edited to our standard and that we have a good relationship with our authors.

This is great. Speaking of good relationships with your authors, who is your favorite author to work with?

I mean, I think. I don't know if you. I don't know if you've heard of him. I mean, I think he's a big guy in certain spaces. His name's Kwame. Kwame Christian. Does that ring any, any bells for.

You at all, Kwame? I've never heard of Kwame. I've heard of this Quain Christian guy. No, this is great. So pumped to have you on the show. So, yes, everybody, Leah is my editor in chief and she had the the, you know, sometimes misfortunes. That's fortune of working with me for the past couple of years. And it's been, it's been a lot of fun. And I'm really excited about this because I, I don't think people really think about the relationships that an editor and editor in chief would have with the. Their authors as like a negotiation. They don't think about the difficult conversations that actually lead to the successful creation of, of these books. So how would you just kind of set the stage by telling people about what it is that you do day to day and then how you interact with the authors?

Yeah, I mean. Oh, what I do day to day, I mean, that's. That's a tough one in terms of kind of interaction with authors. I mean, I think, you know, like you said, I think there is a lot of negotiation when it comes to the editorial process. Because the whole point of editorial is, you know, you are working with the author towards a shared goal. And you have to figure out what is the best way to get to that goal, you know, and make sure that any disagreements you have about what's going to best serve the book, what's the best way to produce the best book possible. You know, you have to make sure that those are kind of navigated in a way that leaves everybody both happy with the outcome, but also happy with the process you took to get there. So there's no hard feelings at the end also.

Yes, agreed. Yeah, that's really well said. And I think that it sounds really easy on the surface. Right. But then when you get into the process behind the scenes, that's where it can become challenging. Right. So can you tell us a bit about some of the things that might make accomplishing that goal you described difficult?

Yeah, absolutely. So, I mean, you know, authors are, unsurprisingly, very close to their books. Right. They've spent months, years. I know I had one author who had spent a decade researching and putting together her book. And so when they pass that manuscript off to you, that's like handing over their baby. That's handing over their life. And so when you then have to come back and tell them, hey, you know, you've done a lot of great stuff here, but I think I have some ways that it can be done better or this really isn't working, or, you know, we have talked together about what your goals are, and this part of the book isn't helping you meet them. That can be a lot. That can be really, really emotional. And I think that is the thing that I always try to keep in mind in any conversation and any feedback I give any author, just kind of making sure that I am taking that into account when I'm thinking about how I communicate with them and that, you know, I am, when authors do come back, feeling a little, you know, potentially a little defensive, especially if I haven't done a good enough job, you know, in kind of my communications, making sure that I am hearing them and validating those feelings, you know, and making sure that they feel heard and respected in a way that can let us then go, okay, I hear that. Maybe I didn't, you know, communicate that in the best way. Let's talk it through. Let's figure out, you know, kind of where we are disagreeing and let's solve. Let's solve. Let's find a solution to the problem. Let's find, you know, let's agree that it is a problem first of all, but then find a solution to that problem. That's going to work for both of us, that we're both going to be really happy with at the end, which, again, it's not always easy as that, but that's the goal.

This is great. And for me, it's fascinating from the author side to see it from your perspective, too. This helps me in my process of being more empathetic, too, to see how it could feel on your end. And I realized that I didn't do a good job of setting the stage too, because I said, yes, we're working together, I'm one of your authors, but I never said the name of the book. I can't just assume that everybody listening to the POD knows the book.

That's a good point.

Yes. And so the. My first book was self published, Finding Confidence in Conflict. My second book, working with Leah and her team, is how to have difficult conversations with your editor in chief. That's the name of that book. No, it's how to have Difficult Conversations about race, coming out September 13th. And we'll put links in the description so you could pre order it. That would be really helpful if we can get pre orders. That's, you know, just let me put that out there and make that request. You'll probably hear me say that 93 more times over the course of this interview. But yes, I, I really liked what you said about the conversations you have with authors where you have to take really, their. Their baby and let them know, hey, there are some tweaks that you need to make to this. And one of the things that you said, you run into a lot is defensiveness, which makes sense because when you think about the term defensive, right, the root word is defense. And so whenever somebody is feeling defensive, whenever they get defensive, that means that there's something that's important to them that they feel is being attacked. And even if you are supremely respectful and mindful of the way that you approach your feedback, it doesn't mean that the other person will not get defensive in how they respond to that. And so you have a lot of experience in this field, so you've seen that before. How do you work around that defensiveness?

I mean, I think there are two techniques, two tactics. I think one, first of all is to try to give them some space to start out with. I think I learned early on that if you. If someone, you know, because a lot of this starts over written communication, because we put together an official editorial letter, it's something that they can have in writing and reference back and forth. You know, I usually send that and say, hey, let's set up a call. But if they're having an initial response that is really strong, and they're like, can we set up a call right this afternoon? I usually try to push that at least a day, Give them a chance to take a deep breath, read it through. And so if there's an initial really strong reaction, they can sit with it for a while and see, you know, is that the reaction that they want to be having. And I feel like that alone helps a lot because then they're coming in with a more, you know, a more level head, more even tempered. They're going to be better able to communicate to me what the problem is and what they see is wrong with what I said. And it makes it easier for us to work together collaboratively to find a solution. Because often if you talk to them right away, sometimes they're upset. They might say something that triggers you and you get upset, and it just kind of spirals instead of being a really productive conversation. So that's the first thing. And the second thing is getting on that phone and being able to talk directly and be able to hear intonation and be able to respond, you know, immediately. Because I think while time does let, I mean, for all of us, it lets us kind of cool off. It can also let us spiral, right? So we are imagining what the other person is thinking. We're imagining in our heads, you know, what the other person's motivations were. Which reminds me of something that I know really resonated from your book that I want to talk about in a minute. But it, you know, so that time can also work against you. And so being able to connect after that and get back together and talk it through, I think is equally crucial in kind of getting past that defensiveness.

This is really, really good. So let's break this down. So step one to overcome that defensiveness is giving them the space that they need. And step two is actually having the conversation and talking it out. And so when you think about the science of sleep, one of the things that's really interesting about it is that the term sleep on it exists in essentially every culture, every language. That is really interesting. Right. And so what they found is that every night it's kind of like a therapy session that happens during the REM portion of sleep, rapid eye movement. And so that's why a lot of times you might go to sleep really, really emotional. But typically you don't wake up with the same level of emotionality. Nothing changed in your circumstances, but what changed was just psychologically underneath the surface, your brain is processing and you're cooling down. Now, even though there's a term for sleep on it in every language, and we recognize that helps with emotion management, we also realize that not all colloquialisms make sense because time heals all wounds. My wife's a doctor. That's not how time works. So even though sleep can do a little bit of work for us, it doesn't do everything for us. So then you actually have to have that conversation because it can help with that emotional processing, but it do everything. So you have that conversation. And I think it's really important for the listeners to realize that. You said, yeah, we did. I didn't have like an endless email chain going back and forth. When you realize that it's a highly emotional type of conversation, once you get that sense, you're saying, nope, this needs to be a phone call. And you talked about listening to the tone and hearing. And so I think this is a really, really strong approach for, for handling those difficult emotions that will come.

It feels good to have a professional, you know, kind of to vet my approach. Makes me feel like I'm doing something right.

Yes, you're doing a lot of things right. And again, listeners, as a, as a, as that, you know, author who is very proud of the work that he does, who thought that the work was done after he submitted his manuscript. I could tell, I could tell you that Leah is very, very, very, very good at this. And I think it's something else to, to give some context, some behind the scenes type of stuff. Authors think very highly of themselves a lot of times too. So it's not just that they, they liked their, their work, but they also think that they're exceptionally good and don't need feedback a lot of times. And so to give an example of where my head was at when I was, when I agreed to this, this journey, the due date was June 13, right? Leah? That was the due date for the manuscript. That was also the due date for my second son. And I said, I got this, right. Unwise, right? And so, but I said, okay, I'll get this done and we'll be done with the process. And I was surprised every time we had another editing call or request for revisions. I was like, first version was so good. No, it wasn't. No, it wasn't.

You know, I think the thing with, you know, you're an author, you're working on your own, you know, we want you to turn in what you think is the best possible version. But you know, anytime it enter like someone else reads it, you know, you're going to get a different perspective on what's going on. And I should take a moment actually to give a shout out to my co editor on this, Alan Wallace, because I want to make sure that she gets credit for all the excellent work that she did, kind of supporting that editing process. But yeah, yeah, it was another, I think, six months before we finally got that to the copy editor after that June, June due date. So, yeah, so a lot of back and forth, but it's, you know, oftentimes there's more, I like to say there's more back and forth when a book is good to begin with, right. Like you don't spend a lot of time polishing up something that doesn't have a ton of potential and that you don't see. And you see this is, this is something, this is going to be an important book. So let's put in the extra time. So if that gives you any solace for the amount of time that we worked on it after that initial submission. Hopefully.

Hopefully. Well, it does. It, it really does. It's helpful. And I think also when you, something I actually mentioned in the book is the concept of the curse of knowledge where you're so familiar with something that you forget what it feels like to not know that thing. And then when it comes to explaining that thing, you miss some of the basic things in that explanation. And it's funny, you know, here's a moment of self awareness where I talk about that concept as that being a barrier in the persuasive process in these difficult conversations where you think you're explaining something well and you're not. And that is exactly what was happening a lot of times with the concepts that I was, I was putting forth. It was really interesting to think. For me, I was saying, all right, steps 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. And then in my head, I already understood the gap between one and two, and it seemed obvious to me. But then for you and Alan, as you were going through, you're like, one and two don't connect. There are three steps that are in your head that you know that you're assuming everybody else knows that they don't know. And it's, it was just really eye opening to go through that process because it helped me to understand myself and my own concepts a lot better too. Hello, my friends. Before we get back to today's episode, I want to ask you a question. Have you ever wondered how to elevate your team's negotiation game and how you can help the folks on your team have better, difficult conversations? At the American Negotiation Institute, we offer transformative keynotes and workshops tailored to empower professionals with top tier negotiation and conflict resolution skills. Whether it's a keynote for your next event or hands on training for your team, we've got you covered. Don't just negotiate. Master the art with the American Negotiation Institute. Click the link in the description to find out more. Elevate, negotiate, and succeed.

Yeah, I definitely think that is a huge chunk of what the job of editing is, right. Is going in and teasing out those kind of things that authors, especially authors who are experts in their field like you are, who, you know, who can have that curse of knowledge going on, going in and teasing out like, hey, can you tell us a little bit more here? This is not quite clear yet to me as a lay reader, you know, can you tell me a little bit more? And I feel like that is a. If I had to make a kind of pie chart of editing, I would say maybe a solid, a solid fifth to a fourth, if not more of the editorial work is just kind of, you know, filling those gaps, crossing, crossing those divides.

That's great. And again, this is, this is very good for me to know too. So. So I don't feel like it was.

It is not just you. No, yeah, not. Not at all.

This is great. This is great. So tell us some, something else about the process when it comes to interacting with authors. Because again, people, people read books, they don't always think about the process behind the scenes. So, so what else have you learned through these interactions?

And so, you know, we talked a little bit about communicating with authors, you know, first when their manuscript comes in and putting together an editorial letter and kind of that to them and kind of laying out the big picture. But I think there is a lot of back and forth all through the process that people don't think about and a lot of back and forth that is, I think, aimed at. One of the concepts that really resonated for me from working on your book is the idea of collaborative problem solving. I do that in those editorial letters. Here's the problem I see. Here's why I think it's a problem. Here's a couple of solutions from my end, but give me your thoughts. Do you agree it's a problem? How do you think we should solve it? Sometimes the author uses my solution, sometimes they come up with their own, which is often way better. And that's my preference. That's awesome. That's why I give the problem because the person I'm talking to is an expert on their book. They're an expert on what they're talking about. They're going to know even better than I am what's going to work. But I also do that on the line level. So all the way through which I know you are very familiar with the idea that we've got a manuscript and it gets marked up and that anything, any problem I spot on a line level, I embed a comment, it does follows that exact same formula. It's just, hey, here's the problem I see. Here's a solution I can think of, but making sure that I'm leaving room for the author to come up with a better one too. But it is a lot, it can be a lot of back and forth to kind of make sure everything is really, really clear and really communicated to the best of. To take the author's ideas and make sure that they are as clear and as masterfully communicated as we can possibly get them to be. It is a lot of back and forth and a lot, a lot of collaboration.

Yes, a lot of it. And I. And again, let's break it down for the listeners too, so they can actually see, see what this looks like and tell me if I'm, if this is hyperbole, call me out if I'm. If I'm speaking too grandiosely about this. So, listeners. So let's imagine a chapter of a book, right? Chapter is long. Let's put it at like 20ish pages. And so then I get the chapter back and like the first time around, it has like literally thousands of edits, like thousands, thousands of them. And so because they're going to be some edits that are pretty, pretty simple, like, oh, you know, we should make this a capital or some punctuation or something that you all could go in and do and then they're going to be somewhere. It's like, like doesn't make sense. Clarify this. What does that mean? And so it can be really, really overwhelming as an author. And remember this, there's, there's several iterations. So we graduate from the first one, which is, it's thousands of edits and then in a chapter and then the next one we graduate to hundreds of edits. Like, it's like a never ending process. So a lot of times, let me just say, let me assume. Or maybe it's just me. Maybe it's just me. It could be overwhelming. So hypothetically, if other authors are overwhelmed when they're confronted with thousands of edits.

I know, I know.

On what they thought was already really great. How do you manage that shock and overwhelm?

I mean it is, it can be very surprising and it can, you know, sometimes, depending on how many edits I know they're going to be, I'll break it up into stages. So I'll do a pass where like, I just do the bigger picture ones. Then I do a separate pass where it's like the smaller stuff. I think with yours I threw everything at you all at once. So you had both those kind of. We did both the high level and the kind of like, hey, can we shift, you know, can we put a comma here? I hope that for a single chapter it was not thousands, but hundreds. Feels very, very easy to believe for sure. And I would not want to make a video bet on you being wrong. So I put money down on that. Yeah, but so that, and I think too, I mean the fundamental thing, the fundamental thing, because it is, can be a hard process. So the fundamental thing is really making sure that you are on the same page in terms of what, you know, your goals, in terms of that you both want to produce the most successful book you possibly can and to make sure that you trust that the other person wants that too. I mean, easy to trust the author, that they want that. But I think it can be more difficult for authors to trust that their editor and their publisher want that too. I mean, you hope that that's why they signed on, right? That you had, I mean, you know, when you and our publisher, Glenn, first talked, you know, hopefully what you came away from that with was the idea that I, you know, I trust what this guy's saying. I trust he's going to do best, the best he can buy my book. I trust they're going to help me sell this and get this out. You know, money aside, money is important. But that feeling of trust, I think really, really crucial. You know, Bimbella, we have, we put kind of front and center a partnership philosophy, which I think is one of the things that really makes us unique amongst publishers. We really emphasize the importance of working together with the author kind of top to bottom. So making sure our authors are involved obviously in editorial, but in cover, in the marketing plan, in, you know, what paper we choose, if that's something that they're interested in being a part of. I think all of that and all that focus on partnership and all the things we put in process wise to focus on partnership, it's all about building that trust. And it's all about making sure that our authors know that we are in it with them and that when we do offer information that might make arguments counter to what they believed, or when we do say, hey, I think we should rewrite this chapter, that they know that the place that it's coming from, that it's coming from a place of respect and a place of trust and a place of, you know, those shared goals that I know you talk about a lot in the book.

Yes, no, this is, this is really great. And I think just summarizing this, listeners, first of all, we can, we saw that Leah agreed with me. There were millions of edits, every chapter, millions. Now and I also want to talk about the, the trust element because that's big. That's really big because again, people are really attached to their ideas and not just their ideas in general, but in particular the way that their ideas have been articulated. And so think about, for me too, a lot of this comes from actual interactions that I've had with people one on one, or in coaching sessions with clients or in trainings and presentations. And so there is a. When you think about confirmation bias, another thing that's talked about in the book, what's interesting is that the more you go over something and the more you say something, the, the more accurate it becomes, not in reality, but the more accurate it feels. And so for a lot of authors, I know, for me I've been teaching in a specific way, in a specific order, with a specific flow and then to hear, oh, so it's actually better this way. There's a bit of a record scratch moment too. But you have to trust the process and trust the people. And you touched on how you start to build that trust. But let's go a little bit deeper on what that looks like.

Sure. So, you know, trust is. I mean, trust is built interaction by interaction. Right. It's trust. Trust is built through every moment where you do have a disagreement and how you handle that. You know, we. Because as a publisher, we aim to be very communicative and get authors involved. You know, with every step of the process, we have more disagreements, we have more moments where, you know, we think one thing is best and our author might think the other thing is best and where we get a chance to talk those out. And I think with each successful conversation, with each time, we resolve a difference in a way that's respectful, in a way that, you know, takes both sides expertise and both sides knowledge into account. Trust builds. And so, you know, hopefully that even if one interaction doesn't go the way we might want, hopefully we have so many of them that when something, if something does go wrong, you know, we have that trust built up behind and then we can kind of continue to build it going forward.

Yeah, I think that's great. You're absolutely right. And one of the things you talked about was disagreements and how they are essentially inevitable in this process. I tell people there's a simple equation for how you can determine when a conflict is going to happen. So what you do is you. You see, there's like one person and then there's another person. That's the extent of the analysis. As long as you have people, they're going to be disagreements. That's just how humanity works. But something I talked about in the book, something I talk about in the podcast and on all the trainings all the time, is that conflict is an opportunity. And I can talk about the fact that a lot of times we might not have always agreed on, like, the exact way things should be done, but I think we both learned through the process. I mean, because I'm thinking of. I was actually, as you were answering it, and there's probably some technology that could allow us to do this. This would be an interesting experiment. If you were to take the, like the initial manuscript that was submitted and then compare it to the actual finished product, what percentage would be the same? I would think it would be like 25% or something. It'd be pretty minor. It's. I don't know, It's. There were a lot of changes that were good and very necessary.

Well, thank You. I appreciate that for sure. I think, you know, even when. Because there's definitely. I've had editorial processes with authors that have been a little, A little tough before. But it's important, like at the end I want the author to be like, yeah, we had a, our publisher had a check in call that we do afterwards with a set of authors who. One of my favorite books I've ever worked on where I actually told them to rewrite. I asked them, I was like, I think, look, this is great. It's really well written. The stories you have here are great. I think you need to rewrite the entire thing. I don't think you. Yeah. That you. You know, we really wanted to highlight these awesome principles for. In this case it was raising successful fulfilled kids. That this is what was really special about the book. That this was this research that they'd done and these principles that they had isolated. And I was like, this book is great, but it doesn't do a very good job of highlighting those. They get buried, they get totally hidden. And as you might imagine, they were not really excited about me telling them that I thought that they actually needed to do an entire rewrite. But they had the same goal. Right. They agreed. We wanted those principles to come through as clearly as possible. But I was, and I think I'd worked with one of the authors before, lots of good trust process went. But I think it was tough. I mean, I think it went well. I was thrilled with the book that came out. They seemed very. After they kind of were like, all right, we're not happy about this but we're going to try rewriting it. They seemed happy with it. The most important thing to me was when we did our check in call a few months after publication is that they were able to say, you know what? We didn't always agree with Leah, but. And she worked with us and we didn't always take her recommendations. We found other solutions. But we're really happy with how it came out. We really value the process. We were really happy with the end result. And I think that's the thing that I am always looking for. Even if there's a little bit of difficulty, as long as we're still respecting and trusting each other through the process, in the end everybody is happy. I think that is what I was looking for. What's actually very interesting about that book is one of those principles that they distilled there. It's something called. The book is called the formula. It's eight roles that the research suggests. The parents of Successful children take on. But one of those roles is the negotiator, which I thought. So I thought of that a lot while I was working on your book. It's about teaching kids when and how to push for what they want and how to kind of do that effectively.

That is great. Yeah. So I think I have another podcast guest. I'll reach out to that person, too. That's really great. So a couple of key takeaways here. So first. First of all, I need to count my blessings that I did not have to rewrite my book, because I would have instantly died if that was their suggestion. Go ahead.

See, all of. All of that was to say that, I guess to put in perspective the change, because we did tweak a lot of things. We moved location for a lot of things. We pushed for more details, but the bones and the principles and everything were there from the beginning. We just kind of of slotted them into some different spots, which I will say, I think that's a thing that happens a lot with people who speak, and you do a lot of speaking for a living, is that sometimes things that work really well in speech, you know, when you're giving speaks and you're talking to people directly, don't necessarily translate exactly the same way when you're writing them in a book. And so that's kind of part of the editorial process, too, is figuring out, okay, what's still working, what might we need to tweak given this different medium?

Yeah, this is actually good because I think this is. Would be. This is really helpful for me to understand, too, because the way that you speak, you could convey a message speaking. It is very different from the way you convey that exact same message writing it. And so, again, as a professional speaker, that's how I process things. And then I think. I'm pretty sure I told you my process for writing. It's just going on long walks with a question in my mind and a topic, and then I just ramble. And then it's my. It is the unfortunate responsibility of my team and some outside consultants to take that incoherent gibberish and put it into something that is, you know, organized somewhat. And that helps me to understand, too, why there were those moments where there was a bit of a disconnect between ideas that worked really well in presentations like a keynote or something like that, where the connection didn't need to be as tight. But then when you come to writing, it really needs to be teased out really methodically in order for the person to have a Good reading experience.

Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah. This is fascinating. This is really, really fascinating. And so when you think about this collaborative process, because it's not just you and the author. We were working with Alan too, who did a lot of the editing process. Shout out to Alan. She's the person who got me interested in K, which was my, my shining light that kept me going through this process where I could listen to good music that I didn't understand. So it wasn't distracting. So that was beautiful. I appreciate that. But internally, I'm sure there are going to be times where you might think something needs to be done one way and then somebody else on your team thinks it needs to be done another way. And then we have the copy editor who wants to format something potentially differently. So how do you reconcile those differences internally within the Ben Bella team?

Yeah, I mean, you know, we, part of the way that that works is, you know, we each have our own specialties. Right. And so I can question and argue, you know, what we're doing with the COVID and offer my 2 cents and make an argument about something, but I, when I do that, I have to keep in mind, you know, this is our director, you know, Sarah's area. This is what she knows. This is her job. My job is to, you know, kind of poke her if I think she's making a mistake. But she's the one who has that ultimate decision making power. Right?

So.

But she also, but I also trust that, you know, if I put up a huge fuss about a cover direction that we're going, that she'll take that seriously. Right? That she won't just be like, well, this is my choice. And I disagree. If I'm really, really making a fuss about it, she will, you know, she'll, okay, let's get on the phone, let's talk her through, let's figure out, you know, what, how to do that. But I think, you know, it's the same way we work it with our authors in the area where it's an area of their expertise. You know, if I were to come to you with a change and been like, hey, I think we should do it this way, and you're like, no, that doesn't make any sense. Because that's not how negotiation works. You know, that's a change we shouldn't make. And I'd be like, you know what? You know this better than I do. You're right. Let's figure out, you know, kind of some other. Either I need to give, which I'm happy to do, or we need to find some other way to figure out how to make my problem less of a problem. So I think it's the same thing. I mean, internally, we obviously we want to kind of keep that. We try not to voice that too much in front of the authors, but sometimes we do because we want them to see both sides too, because they're going to have a valuable opinion and what both sides are saying may inform them or may kind of spark something for them that kind of provides a third way or lets them offer their expertise about which way they think that things should go. So it is a constantly moving process. But luckily, I mean, I love the people I work with. I think it's such a great company and such a great group of people. And so that definitely makes it easier too. And we've had most of them working there a long time. So I have been working with Sarah for more than seven years, close to 10. Marketing. Our marketing director, your marketer, Jennifer Cancunieri, I've been working with for more than 15 years. And so that helps too, those kind of long term ties. Again, we were talking earlier about building trust over time and over interactions and I think that is kind of an important element too.

Absolutely. The more trust you have, the more tolerant the relationship will be in the face of conflicts. And like we said, conflicts are inevitable. So it takes time, but it's important time. Time to build that trust with the people that you're working with. That's, that's really good to know. Really, really helpful. And as you were talking, there was, I was thinking about the times where there was, I would say some small C conflict in our approaches. And I think it was mainly internal conflict because I'm like, oh, I know that she's right, but can I convince her not to make me do this? But there was, there was one time because I think, and you correct me if I'm wrong because I might be romanticizing this in my favor, but I think there was only one time where I disagreed with one of the call outs. I think every other time I added or edited when, when you suggested it. First of all, before we reveal what that was, am I remembering that right?

I mean, I think there were a few, but if I'm thinking of the same one that you are, then yeah, I think you are remembering that. Right. Because I will say that I feel like, you know, I, I want the people I'm working with, the authors I'm working with, obviously I want them to agree with my comments, but if they agree with all of my Comments. Either they're not doing their job, pushing back where they should be pushing back, or I'm not doing my job, I'm not pushing hard enough. So if I don't get any pushback on my edits, I see that actually as a problem. Like, that means something has broken down in the process. So definitely, I think there are places where you push back and in a warranted way, either on the solution or on the problem in general. But you talk. Talk about the one that you're remembering. I'm curious to hear if it's the same one. I am.

Yeah, I'm thinking about the one in the conclusion.

So the conclusion. Because I'm thinking of the way we handled the appendix where we're doing the kind of. The conversations, the kind of frequent conversations you might end up having about race. And I was like, I think we need. God. Oh, God, it's now been, right, like, seven months since we last. Since I last kind of looked in depth at those edits, you know, I was like, I think we need a little bit more kind of preamble before that. And you're like. And when I looked back, I was like, no, he's right. That I'm. No, he's right. We don't need the preamble. I'm glad he pushed back on that. So that's the one that I was remembering. But tell me about the conclusion one.

That's really funny because I think my brain blocked out some of these ones because when you talked about the appendix, I forgot that there was an appendix until you. You said that. And when you started describing it, I was like, yeah, this was Kwame tapping out.

And it's a great appendix. I think it's such a useful kind of way to see your negotiation principles in practice and kind of get more context on that. Sorry, I will stop selling the book. Talk to me about the conclusion thing.

Keep selling the book, listeners. Buy the book. There is a link in the description of this episode. But. But the point that I was thinking about was in the conclusion, and I believe I said it this way, because the way that I wrote the book is that I want it to be something that anybody can pick up and use. So I think the description that we had with my agent is like, all right, somebody goes to school, takes a lot of classes. Now they're woke, and now they think their parents are racist. And so they could pick up this book, learn how to have that conversation. And then. Then a parent could say, my kid went to school, and now they're Woke and they said I'm racist. How do I have that conversation with them? Right? So anybody who happens to find themselves in a difficult conversation about race, whether they want to be in the conversation or not, because I think a lot of leaders find themselves unexpectedly in the conversation. I want you to be able to find value in this book, whether you're trying to persuade people or just trying to escape conversations, respectful, want people to be able to use the book. And so there was a part in the conclusion where you, I think the feedback was. And you, you correct me if I'm wrong, where you said the. The book throughout has been really approachable and really inviting. Pretty light. And as you can listen in this episode, I'm not very serious. Right. But you kind of came hard with this one line and it doesn't seem to go perfectly with the rest of the book in terms of. As a tone and maybe we should soften that or remove it. And I was like, okay, if, if it came off harshly, then it came off the right way because that's, that's, that's the way I wanted it to be. And so the line was. So a lot of times people want to have that badge of ally or advocate or something like that, right? And so you have to ask yourself whether or not you're truly being an ally or you just want to call yourself an ally to reap the rewards of the social benefits of that title. And so we had a little bit of back and forth and it stayed in there. But most of the other edits, I was like, yeah, Leah, you're right on that. But I pushed back on that. So I wanna, now, after the fact, I wanna get your opinion on that specific edit because that was, that was one that I fought for.

I'm glad you did. And it's. I mean, I agree 100% with the sentiment. You know, my kind of approach is always like, okay, here's the goal, right? Here's the goals we've talked about for the book. Here's the approach, you know, I'm going to take. So my part of my job is reminding you of that in places where I think that you might have kind of, you know, potentially forgotten. But in this case, it was an intentional choice. It was you making an intentional choice to step out of the approach that you've been using and that kind of lighter hand. So just making sure that it's intentional on your part. That's great. You know, I've done my job. I have made sure. I've brought it up. And your job is to make that final decision. Is this the right thing to have in there? And, I mean, I think it's a. I think it's a great line. And I would. The fact that I have forgotten this conversation entirely should tell you that I think it was a great Choice. And I'm 100%, 100% behind.

Okay, cool. Okay, good, Good, good, good. The other thing I wanted to talk about was what became chapter one, because the original chapter one was respectfully removed. And I thought that was a good call after the fact. And then we had to create a new chapter one. And so for me, as somebody who loves negotiation, conflict resolution, you probably recognized a little bit of impatience when it came to getting to that. I'm like, I wanted to start off with, hey, I'm Kwame. Negotiation, tactic, tactic, tactic, tactic, tactic. And you're like, wait, wait, some nuance, some. Some introduction here. I was like, but we have an introduction. That's what the introduction is for. Like, no, we have to ease people in. And so what ended up happening was, like, the tactical and strategic advice started to move further back, but we. We laid an important foundation there too. And so again, now I shared, like, my feelings going into it. I want to get a perspective on you when you were having that conversation with me, what was going through your mind?

Yeah. So I think, you know, like I said, it's something that a lot of we do with a lot of authors is having to kind of take a step back at the beginning of a book. And I think it has to do with the whole curse of knowledge concept we were talking about earlier is that authors are like, I have all this knowledge. I'm ready to impart it. And sometimes you have to step in and be like, okay, wait, except that's great. Let's take a step back. Let's look at what does the reader need to know in order to really appreciate this information? What mindset do we want them to be in? What should they be thinking about before they get to this? To make sure that they are in the most receptive potential place to get this information. And so, yeah, so I. I remember that happening, but honestly, it is so frequent of a thing. If I had to make my top 10 things that I do in editing, that would definitely make. Make the top five easily.

Wow. Okay, so this is. This is so interesting. This is. This is very interesting because for me, like, that was really hard because with chapter one, essentially it was, why should we have these conversations? And in my mind, I was like, what do you mean? Why Leah, they got the book. If they get. They made it to chapter one, don't they already know this? And it was. I. I really believe it was. It's. And it ended up being one of the most important chapters, but for me, it was exceptionally difficult. Like, I think when it came to talking about the tactics and strategies, that just flows. That's easy. I mean, the, the tactics, strategies, all that stuff, that was the first part of the book that I wrote, the easiest part. But, like, I was just. I was lost for a while with chapter one because it was almost something that I never once considered. You know, it's kind of like if somebody. It's like if somebody were to ask me, well, why do you brush your teeth in the morning? I'm like, how would. Where do I even start with that answer? This needs to be addressed, you know, so for me, with, with the, with that chapter, it took me a long time, and I remember the, the due date was like, coming up, and I was asking a ton of people, like, why do we have these conversations? What's the answer to you? And. And it took me a really long time. And I think one of the things that I like about persuasion, conflict resolution, communication in general, is that even if you are not the person who is creating the answer, you can be the person who is providing the pathway for the answer to be created. And so, you know, thinking about Socrates, the, The Socratic method, asking a lot of questions. One of, I believe it was Socrates is one of his nicknames, was the. The midwife of ideas, where he wasn't often creating the ideas, but he was asking the questions that helped other people get. Give birth to great ideas. And you and the team really were the catalyst for the creation of chapter one in its entirety. Not only the fact that it had to be created, but also what went into it was critical, but I struggled with it mightily couldn't have done it without those conversations that we had.

So first of all, I'm adding midwife of ideas to all of my editorial business cards going forward. I love that. I love that. Sorry, Socrates, I'm stealing that. Second, I think in your case, I think it was a more difficult chapter than usual, even because of the audiences that you're trying to reach and they're trying to straddle. That's, I think, what made that chapter one so hard, because you are trying to reach both the person who is really motivated to have these conversations and the people who. They're reading it because they don't want to be having these conversations. They're reading it because maybe they are in a company and they have been given this book and told to read it. You know, you have to. I think it was important to get those people on board without losing the people who are there intentionally and know they're ready to go and maybe would have been ready to jump right into those tactics. And so I think that's a tough set of people to make sure that you're speaking to. Although, you know, I don't think it hurts to remind that second group of all the reasons behind having that conversation, because I think obviously having conversations about race, speaking of emotional conversations, is an emotional thing. And there's a lot of different reasons to have them. And I think getting a chance to, in that first chapter, understand other people's reasons of having them, too, I think is a really good foundation for all the tactics that you talk about in the rest of the book.

I appreciate that. And yes, now that you say that, that is one of the biggest things that made it so tough for me to have to write that I had to think about the people that I was asking. So if I think about people who are, like, experts in diversity, equity, and inclusion, they're going to have a very passionate response like, oh, it's obvious, for these types of reasons that are deeply aligned with my values that I just assume are correct. And then for other people, like, you ask them who, and they might be trying to avoid the conversation. They're like, I don't know. That's why. I don't know why we need to have these conversations. And so it was really tough for me because I don't want to obviously pander to one side or the other. I want to make sure that this book is focused on the skills. And that's something I talked about in the. In the first. In the introduction, where I said, I don't want people to read this book for me to tell you how to think about race. I want you to read this book to understand how to talk about race. But laying that foundation in a way that wouldn't be triggering or, you know, isolating for anybody is in that chapter, was really, really, really tough. But, you know, we got through it. We got through it. And I think we laid the foundation really, really well there, too.

Yeah. I think the thing that I best remember from the answers that you came up with when I was like, can you tell us why we want to have these conversations? And that I think really did a lot to address the kind of dangers of being kind of isolating or Triggering is the idea that we have these conversations because we care about other people. We care about the people we work with. We care about our family. We care about the people we engage with. And having that as a foundation for the whole rest of the book, one of your motivations is to show care and to demonstrate care and to kind of build that relationship, I think ended up being such an integral part of that first chapter and also of the whole book. So I was. It is all coming. It is flooding back to me now as we discuss it. And I just remember, you know, how hard that was, but then how thrilled I was with what came back in that section. I thought it was a really, really great answer to, you know, kind of the questions Alan and I posed.

Thank you. No, I appreciate that. I appreciate that. And I think one. One cool way to wrap this up is to talk about trigger words. Trigger words. And so when you think about the term triggering, this is something that evokes an emotional response that's really strong. And so in the. These difficult conversations, whatever it happens to be, you want to try your best to avoid trigger words. And sometimes it's not always obvious what the trigger word would be. So, for instance, for me, as a. As a lawyer, if I'm negotiating with the other side and I think they did something that was wrong, they're going to be very like, the word fault or liability is probably going to be triggering to them. Right. And so I'm going to try to avoid that as much as possible as I'm negotiating separately settlement, because I want to get them to talk about a solution without getting fixated on saying, no, no, no, it wasn't my fault. This is like, okay, all right, let's circumvent that. Let's just talk about how you're going to pay my client. But when we. When it comes to this book, there was a specific word that was not a trigger word for me before, but subsequently became a trigger word. Do you remember what that word was?

Starts with an E. Starts with an.

E.

Is it explic?

Oh, you're close. You got the second letter. You got the second letter. Ex.

Oh, because I know. I know what you're talking about because it's something that I say in comments all the time, and it sounds like I should probably back off on occasionally. Okay, tell me. Tell me.

You want me to tell you. So it's ex.

Yes.

All right, that's okay. So the word is exoskeleton Bulletin. It's example. Example. An example. And so listeners in this book, you will see so many examples. And I want to tell you that 90 of those examples were not there. And so I would say something that made complete sense to me. And Leah and Alan say, this is intriguing. Not exactly sure what you mean. Can you give an example? And, you know, the first few times I thought that was cute. I was like, great. Examples are. Examples are nice. I can give you an example here. And then it happened 85 million more times.

The other E word that I use a lot is explicit. Like, can you be more like, you've left this implicit? Can you be more explicit about that? And so I'm glad to hear that that is not one that has kind of caused a problem for you. But I could, if you talk to some of my other authors, I'm sure there'd be like, can she stop saying specify? Can she stop saying explicit? I think it's all in that kind of example sort of area.

Yes. I'll be honest. I'll be honest with you, Leah. There were some times where I had to kind of like, walk away from it, because sometimes my response would be like, you know what? We can remove this section. I do not, not want to come up with another example here, but I respect it.

It's part of the process, man. Yeah, I mean, and I. Yeah, because I know. I know that I. My job is to ask obnoxious questions. Sometimes. That is how I describe editing, is the job of asking obnoxious questions. And I understand that it is a great emotional lift on my author's part to answer those. But, you know, if all goes well, at the end, they're like, I'm glad I did it. It. I'm glad the book that has resulted is better. If that's not the case, then I've messed something up along the way. But hopefully I've found at least that that has been the case so far. And if it hasn't been for the books, they haven't told me. So.

No, it made it better. And I think that was one of those things. It was almost like I felt like a kid whose parent told them to do the right thing, where after. After the fact, I was like, you know, pouting and everything. It's better, but I won't admit it, you know, But I think that that was. It was very helpful. And I think, again, when. When we're talking about how to have these conversations, there are a lot of things that are theoretical that I think a lot of experts just leave in the theoretical world because it's easier. I mean, that's why I left it out, because it would be hard to give a really detailed example is challenging. And I think with the podcast too, that's something that, that's. That we got. Because sometimes people would, early on in the podcast they would say, hey Kwame, this is great content, but sometimes I try to use the techniques, but it doesn't work the first time or reach resistance. What happens in that case. So that's why we started to do the sparring sessions where we have the. The practice rounds where I try to be absolutely obnoxious and then the guest has to deal with me. And so I'm not doing that to you, Leah, because you've already been appreciate that, you know, so. So we will do that. But I think it's really important to have those examples so people can actually see what it looks like in, in practice.

That's what I love about the appendix to the book. It is exactly that.

Exactly. You're. You're absolutely right. You're absolutely right. And then last thing too, when we think about again, the word that we talked about in, in chapter one, which is care, I think, and you tell me if I'm wrong on this, this. I think sometimes it might be surprising what authors care about in the process and what they don't seem to care about. Am I right on that?

I think that's true, but I think it's also really individual for each author. There are some authors who are very obsessed with where their commas go and others that are like, I don't know, throw in whatever punctuation you think best. There are some authors who are. Who the COVID takes up a lot of their brain space. There are other authors who are like, colors look nice. You guys are the experts. All good. There's some authors who I mentioned paper type before. There's some authors who come in and they're like, I need to talk about paper first thing. I really want this to be a 55 pound white and excited to have that conversation. But other authors are like, I have no idea what you're talking about. Is there print? Like, is it a physical page? I'm good. I'm good to go. So it is very, very individual. What? And there are other. In editing, there are some authors where they're like, if my idea is there, if you think that sentence needs to be rewritten, rewrite it. There's some other authors who. The exact wording is really important to them. And so part of it is figuring out what they care about up front so that we can take care of them during the editorial process. Process, Yep.

Makes a lot of sense. And again, just in difficult conversations in general, sometimes that's going to come up where it's like, oh, I didn't know that would be a big deal for you, or oh, yeah, that should be a big deal. I thought it should, but it's not very interesting. And so I think we have to shed those assumptions and be curious and ask those questions to figure it out. Because I know for me, I was, I was thinking about making sure that the theory, the practical application, all of that was sound. I wanted to make sure that, you know, with a topic as sensitive as this, I wanted to make sure that I was not triggering people without purpose. Because I told you, I mean, there's, there's that one line where I'm like, oh, I'm trying to trigger people on that record. Scratch, pay attention. But, but, but that's at the end of the book. I've already built that trust. Right. But leading into it, I needed to build that trust and, and be very mindful about the way that it could be perceived. But then on other things, things, for instance, with the COVID I was pretty chill on the COVID because your designers are. I don't have an artistic eye, you know, so I was pretty relaxed on it. You probably. I didn't mention this to you, but when we had the color options, we had, I like the color splatter on it. And then we had a white background, a black background, and then a bright yellow background. And so for me, I was like, oh, that bright yellow looks kind of cool. You know, Caribbean American. I like bright colors. That's really great. Do you know what killed that color for me?

I do not know. Honestly. I get, you know, some covers I'm more involved with than others. Here I got to see an early round and Alan and I kind of threw our comments at Sarah and she took them and ran with them and then came to you with them. Yellow. I mean, yellow. Yellow can be a really effective cover color because it's going to catch the eye. There's not a ton of books that are in yellow. But yeah, I'm, I'm now very curious. I'm totally going to go and email Sarah immediately after this to ask. But yeah, I don't know. I've got for you.

Oh, you like this? I put a lot of thought into it. So I'm a proud Caribbean American, but I'm also a proud Buckeye, a graduate, a three time graduate of the Ohio State University. And our rivals are Michigan University and that yellow looked shockingly similar to their colors. And so when I shared.

He didn't want to go with that anyway.

When I shared it with one of my friends are like, that's Michigan colors. I'm like, we're not doing that. You know, hey, people in Michigan buy the book. But I'm not going to, I'm not going to promote yellow on the COVID of this book. So they like, besides that, I didn't really care that much. But then we talked about like the description on the back, those type of things. One thing that I was a bit of a. That, that was a bit, I don't want to say diva ish, but I wanted to do. That was a bit outside the box was, was we had the, like my picture on the, on the COVID But then I wanted to push to have my, my family portrait on there too. And like, let me put a little line there for a shout out to say Whitney, Kai and, and Dominic too. And I, I remember there wasn't, I wouldn't say there was resistance, but there was a note that was made by somebody on the team like, hey, that's unorthodox. And I'm like, ah, I like, that.

Was definitely my first thought when I came in. I always like, huh, that's unorthodox. All right. It's a great photo. Your family is awesome. It's always lovely to see it on Instagram too. Definitely recommend use an Instagram follow for sure. For anyone listening, I'm doing my best. I'm trying to.

Thank you. I appreciate it. And Lee, I mean that's really the only reason people follow me. I've come to that conclusion. You know, sometimes I would put a, like a really thoughtful post and I'd post it on Instagram and It's on the LinkedIn and it gets a ton of shares, a ton of like engagement and everything like that. And then I take that same really thoughtful negotiation focus post and I posted and it gets like 3 likes and 1 comment from Whitney that says, cool. You know, people don't care about me on Instagram. I post one picture of like Dominic struggling to walk and people are like, oh my gosh, that's amazing. I need to follow.

That's what I followed for. I followed originally for the baby pictures. I can't, I can't lie. That was. I was like, ah, baby pictures sold.

I know it's crazy, but listen, these kids are expensive. They need to earn that money back for me. Put them on this book, sell me these books and we'll put it in your college fund. So. Oh and, and I love my family, so that's the real reason I put them on the COVID Of course. Of course. So this is great. This is great. And this is also officially the longest podcast interview, but it's been great.

It's been so great to get a chance talk to you and catch up since it's been been a while since I was bedeviling you with all of my various editorial questions.

Yes. And it's great to have you and it's great to to get to like laugh and joke about the process now that we have officially made it to the other side. And listeners, you are going to get sick of me promoting this book, but this is what I need to do. So how to have Difficult Conversations About Race if you want to check out the like the finished product now that you know what what went into it. A little bit about what it went into it. If you're curious, check out the link in the description below. The book comes out September 13, but pre orders are preferred, so make sure you check that out and yeah, I will catch you all in the next episode. Congratulations. You've just joined an elite club by listening to a full episode episode. You're now officially on the Negotiate Anything team. So welcome aboard. What most team members do is they subscribe to the podcast because that allows them to automatically get the latest episodes of the show. The best things in life lie on the other side of difficult conversations. Keep learning, keep practicing and keep getting better. Your relationships will improve, your career will soar, and you'll have the confidence you need to get the most out the of of these crucial conversations. Again, thank you for joining the team. We're excited to have you and I will see you in the next episode. I'll catch you later.