Can I Ask A Question? with Michael Ashford

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 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. Michael. Welcome back to the show, my friend.

Kwame, my man. Glad to be here. Always a pleasure.

It is our pleasure to have you back, my friend. So how do you get us started? By telling us about yourself and what you do.

I am full time. I'm the director of marketing at a software company. But on the side, I am a speaker, writer, podcaster, all things communication. I love communication. I want to teach us how to communicate well with each other. That flows over into the full time work that I do too. I mean, so much of marketing is about communicating a message well, right? That's been my focus, man, ever since I was last on the show. It's really honing that message in on what it means to communicate well with each other. So that's my wheelhouse. In 30 seconds or less.

That's very efficient. Very efficient. And can I ask you a question? Has anything new happened recently for you?

Absolutely, man. Well, I put you in a book that I just published last year. My book came out late last year, fall of last year of 2023. It's called Can I ask a Question? As you so aptly put in your question, There following your curiosity to shift to the paradigm of communication change and conflict and. And man, it's just. It has been a. This. As an author, Kwame, you put so much of your heart and soul. If you do it right, you put so much of your heart and soul into these books and into the pages and hope that that message in some way shape or form sticks and resonates with folks. And man, just you've been on my show. It's a collection of the wisdom that I've gleaned from the people that I've interviewed on my podcast. The follow up question to try and give some direction to, I think, the craziness that a lot of us are feeling right now when it comes to how do we communicate with people we don't agree with. And that's huge on our minds as we head into election year here in 2024, which I am not prepared for. I don't know about you, but hopefully if I go back and read my own words in my own book, I'll be a little bit more prepared.

Nobody is ready for this. It's going to be a spectacle for sure. But I think your work is more important now than ever. And listeners, in this episode, we're going to dig into the book and we're going to get some actionable practical tips for you. But when it comes to writing, there's something I want to explore that's, for me, it was really pivotal and I want to see how it hit you, because this is your world. Communication, asking questions, podcasting, this is your world. But when you take the time to organize a book, it changes you. Because if you want to write a book that is transformative for other people, the process kind of has to be transformative for you. So what surprised you about how you changed or what you discovered through the process of writing this book?

I think the. The system that came out of the conversations that I was having and I wrote about in the book. The. The book actually then centers on that system or that process of communication. Going into the book, I just felt that I was going to write about the conversations that I was having on my show and maybe try and glean some common threads of wisdom from the guests that I'd had and that I'd spoken with. But as I started to put the chapters together and as I started to begin to outline how this would flow from idea to idea and conversation to conversation, it became very apparent that there was a methodology underlying all of this, underlying all of these conversations and all of these people who had dug into difficult conversations with others. They all were in some way, shape or form subconsciously following this process, this methodology. That, man, when I discovered, and then when I could name it, that was just like the words were flying off out of my fingertips at that point, because I had something that I could point to that I could continuously refer back to. And it's called the Ask then See Approach to Conflict Communication. And Ask and see S E, E are both acronyms. Ask is assume positive intent of others. Set aside your ego and know that you can't know everything that's getting in your mindset, that's getting your head space in the right place to begin to have difficult and uncomfortable conversations. Then you go and see. You search yourself, you ask questions of yourself. You explore other viewpoints or other perspectives. So you begin to ask questions about others in your head. Get curious about why somebody might feel a little bit differently than you or why this conflict might be here and present. And then finally, the last E of C is exchange your curiosity with others. Go and actually have a conversation with somebody. Rather than rant and rave on social media about them or just shout into your echo chamber, go and engage with somebody who believes differently than you and use that methodology to see if you can actually find some common ground, shift the paradigm of conflict and communication and make a change and bring about something that actually changes things for the better. When that methodology came into focus as I was writing the book, Kwame, things changed. Things went like, into the next stratosphere.

This is amazing. And my. Michael, I think one of the things for me that's so empowering about this is that each one of these steps is completely within your control. It's an empowering methodology because a lot of times when we approach these conversations, we have a disempowering mindset where we say success and failure, productivity versus being unproductive. In this conversation, it depends entirely on the behavior of the other side. And if it goes poorly, it's their fault and we blame other people. And so it's empowering, but also it is a little bit intimidating because you say, wait a second, then it's my responsibility to change my mindset and perform at a. At a higher level. And so there has to be this, dare I say, paradigm shift when it comes to approaching conversations completely.

Right there does. And I am fascinated, Kwame, by that moment when people realize that that is a necessary step for them to take that. That moment where people get introspective with themselves and say something to the effect of man. The way I'VE been doing things, it's not working for me, or I don't enjoy it, or I'm not getting anything out of it, or perhaps most importantly, nothing is changing or improving. I'm just doing the same thing over and over again. And I still feel not at peace. I still feel unhappy. I still feel like I'm about to be attacked by somebody, whether that's an actual physical attack in some instances, or just like some sort of emotional or spiritual attack. Because there's always this lingering thing out there. I come into conflict with that moment when somebody actually says, I'm going to go inward here and figure this out for my. Like, what can I do? What can I change? How. What is it about me that I find myself in these situations? What is it about others that draws this out of me? I am fascinated by when we get to that moment and that has occurred in so many of those conversations. It's just I don't have a model for how we get to that place. But, man, it is thrilling when people do.

See you got my next question. I was going to ask how do we get to that place? Because it is empowering. I think you and I, we've experienced it at different times. I know for me personally, I've forgotten it sometimes and then it comes back. I remind myself. But when somebody's listening to this and they're saying, okay, I'm starting to recognize some of the problematic patterns that I. That Michael's talking about. How do we start to move in the direction of shifting that mindset?

I think it is when we begin to start asking ourselves, is this like, is, am I at peace? Is this working for me? And that was my second TEDx talk was a lot about was. We have a great tendency as humans to seek comfort and a sense of peace in some way, shape or form. What we are really good at is convincing ourselves that we are at peace when we've actually just kind of created this illusion of it around ourselves. And that happens when we draw ourselves into a little bubble, into perhaps an echo chamber, to use that cliche again, when we start to conjure up this idea of peace in our lives that isn't real. And it can be labeled as a lot of different things. It can be labeled as self care, for instance. Self care is good in and of itself. But when removing any and all discomfort out of your life is the way that you care for yourself. What are you doing to yourself? What kind of damage are you doing to relationships? What kind of damage are you doing to yourself? Emotionally and psychologically, when you begin to withdraw simply to give yourself this illusion of peace in your life. Because it's not real. Because if you never actually deal with the thing that is giving you discomfort or making you not at peace, then it's there. It's a specter. It's like a ghost. And you never know when that ghost is going to pop out. It could be in the next conversation that you have with the next person that you get in line behind at the grocery store. That sense of unpeace and not knowing how to deal with that in a real tangible way. It's the difference between a peacekeeper and a peacemaker. Keeping the peace. I'm just trying to remove discomfort from my life, making peace and getting uncomfortable, so that I can actually create the peace that I want in my life. I think that's. My hypothesis is just this. You've got to get to a place where. And Kwame, you know, this change. We do not, as humans change unless the cost of staying the same is higher than the cost of change. And you've got to get to that point. I think I said that right. It has to hurt more to stay the same than it does to change how we get to that point. And we've got to. We've got to get real introspective with ourselves and say, is what I'm doing working and be honest. And if it's going to get in therapy, great. I love it. I see my therapist every other week. Love the guy. If it's going and having some real tough conversations with some family members that are maybe don't see eye to eye with you. Right. I love it. Go actually take some action rather than consistently just withdrawing into yourself. End rant.

Oh, man. I listen. I would have just kept on listening. I love that rant. I'm with you all the way. And you know what's really fascinating about this, too, is that sometimes you don't really have a choice in when you get to that moment. And if you are intentional about seeking out that discomfort and seeking out a little bit of that resistance and friction by introducing yourself to new people, new ideas, and having tougher conversations, then you can organically start to develop and get to that point where you find that moment. If we don't and we stay in that little bubble that we create, that bubble of comfort, then what might happen is that moment is thrust upon you at an inopportune time, and that is infinitely more uncomfortable. And we cannot control everything. Right. But we have to recognize what we can control and focus on that. And if we start to shift our mindset and start to take those steps out of our comfort zone, then we can be in more control of when we get that to that moment. And then we elevate our skills, our mindsets, and our relationships in the process.

Beautifully said, man. Beautifully said. And Karen Hardwick, who I wrote about in the book as well, she said something similar, that if you keep kicking the rock down the road on this type of stuff, you seed the ability to actually have some control and it will just, it'll hit you like a ton of bricks at some point, whether it is you get fired from a job or you have a falling out with a family member or a close friend because you never dove into the discomfort. Like this doesn't always, I think so many people jump into the political sphere when we talk about uncomfortable conversations and conflict and polarization. This can happen in all aspects of our lives. It can happen with relationships, with a spouse or a partner. It can happen at work. And you wrote about that a lot in your last book, Kwame is how we take an active approach to having those uncomfortable conversations at work. Be the one to lead into that so that you can begin to kind of control some of the outcomes here and some of the ways that it can affect you rather than it having being dealt your hand dealt to you.

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. Right? Yeah, it's powerful. It is powerful. And listeners, I really want to hammer this home because think about it, we haven't gotten to that point where we started to talk about like the skills per se in the actual conversation, like what to say, how to say it and things like that. But we started off with the mindset because a lot of times proper behaviors flow organically from the proper mindset. And in your experience, when somebody says, oh, this is purely a skills issue, and they think about this purely through a tactical or strategic lens, what are they missing if they don't carry that mindset along with them.

Maybe not missing, but I think they're making a lot of assumptions. And that could be you're then missing information, Right. When you make an assumption, you're conjuring up an idea about someone or something that you don't have the full information on.

Right.

So maybe that's it. You're missing really important and relevant information that can give you a clearer picture of the disagreement of the conflict to where. If I don't have that kind of a view, if I'm making a lot of assumptions about what somebody values or what somebody believes or what somebody thinks or what somebody's going to say, how will I know how to effectively use the skills? Right. I'm going in with not even knowing what's in my tool bag and, like, how to properly use the tools that are in there. I'm not a good word worker, so you give me a tool back, I'm going to pull out, I don't know, an awl, and I'll be like, what do you want me to do with this? I don't know if I'm making a lot of assumptions about the situation that I'm getting into. I am ill prepared to even use the tools, no matter how well trained I am on them.

Absolutely. And I think one of the biggest assumptions is the fact that we don't need to improve our mindset, that we are not the people who need to change. It's always them, whoever they happen to be, that need to change. It's almost like you and I both are married, we both have kids. It's like reading a book on how to be a good husband, how to be a good father, but not understanding how to love. You're just robotically going through it. It doesn't work.

The, the. As you were saying, that the image that popped into my mind or the words that popped into my mind is like reading a book on how to be a good husband. And the whole thing is just, well, get your wife to improve. That's not going to work.

Oh, my God.

That will not work. Or is it true?

That's. It's so true. It's so true. It's so true. Oh, my gosh. I tell you, we have to do the work again. We. A lot of times when it comes to persuasion, we're just focused on other people. Other people need to change. But really, when it comes to these tough conversations, persuasion negotiation, we have to first persuade ourselves that, hey, you know what, there is room for improvement. I can get better My mindset isn't always in the best place. And then we carry that humility into the conversation, and it creates a little bit more psychological safety. So, you know you are not perfect, nor do you have to be to be effective. And then they also know I'm not perfect either, and I don't need to be perfect in this conversation either. So I think it just brings a bit more humanity to the conversation when you actually. When you actually care about changing and the mindset that you bring to the conversation, too.

That's why the K in the ask then see approaches is know that you can't know everything. You just simply can't. And if you claim that you do, you've got some other questions to ask. Like, it's just not possible for you to know everything about every situation. You can be an expert in things and an expert in areas and provide your expertise. But one of the things that I absolutely loved in the conversations that I had was with Dr. Kurt Gray. He's at the University of North Carolina. And. And he outlined this kind of approach to philosophy and morals and understanding with what he calls the problem of other minds. The biggest problem of other minds is that you will never know what somebody is actually truly thinking, feeling, believing, assuming there are ways that you can try and get that out of them. And I advocate for asking questions, obviously, with the title of my book and the title of my podcast. And he said the same thing. There's no way for you to get everything out of someone's mind. There's no way for someone. For you to prove to someone else that you are truly listening. You are the only one in the world who knows if you are truly listening to someone. So, yeah, you can take all the active listening advice and tactics that you want, for instance, but what's the greatest way to listen? Actually listen to someone. And only you know if you're doing that or not. So no matter how much head nodding that I do or how much physical affirmations that I give to someone, someone who I'm listening to, it could all be empty right up in here. This big bald head of mine could be filled with nothingness or be thinking about lunch because it's 12:15 my time here in Denver. You just don't know, Kwame. And that's the problem of going in, assuming that you know everything is there's no possible way that you can. So again, go back to the s. Set aside your ego, set aside your need to be right, to be certain, and actually ask yourself, what's my goal Here, if it's not to be certain and right, perhaps it's, do I want to improve things a little bit? Is doing something better than nothing? Instead of being certain or being right, do I want to have a more full understanding of. Of someone or this person or this issue that can show me a way that I can help improve it? And then assume positive intent of others? We don't do that enough. We assume if we are in conflict with each other, that they have negative intent and we are the ones that have positive intent. And we assign a value system. We rank someone else's intent based on our value system. Where when actuality, we probably all share the same values, we just rank them a little bit differently. But how would you ever know if you assume that they are evil and have negative intent right from the get go? We have, before we ever practice the skills of asking questions or active listening or any of this stuff, it's gotta be up here where we change our head. We've got to change our mindset first in our approach to these conversations. And it's in the work that you do, Kwame. It's in the work that I'm trying to do. There's a lot of people out there trying to fix this and show a different way. I want it to resonate more, like more of those voices are needed, More people are needed to step up and say, gonna take this in a different direction.

I agree. And we're leading by example, too. When you're in that conversation, whether you're a thought leader, like you have a platform, you have this book, and this is great. When you think about every single conversation that you have, you're showing people how to communicate. When you embody this and this starts to reverberate, I truly believe that it starts to have a ripple effect through communities, through families, through organizations. And it just starts with one person starting to adopt some of these mentalities and putting it into practice. And people say, wow, that's different. That's unique. I want to be more like that. And when you think about some of the goals that we have in these conversations, we realize, first of all, our goals are unrealistic. We go out there trying to achieve the impossible. Hey, you got 40 years under your belt thinking one way. Give me seven minutes, I'm going to change your mind on everything not realistic. Right? We hold ourselves to impossible standards. Okay, yeah, I know everything not possible. And think about it, Michael. Do we. Do we want to interact with a human being that does, in fact, know everything that'd be Quite annoying.

Be quite annoying. And yeah, I wouldn't. But you hit on something that's deeply important and that is the concept of change. I love to ask people all the time. I talk about it in presentations and keynotes that I give. I talk about it on my podcast. I ask people just in passing at networking events, for instance, do you believe people can change? No one's ever told me no. In fact, people argue that it is human to change. We can do nothing but change. We all know that change is inevitable, right? So 100% of the time, people have answered me in the affirmative on that question. Yeah, I believe people can change. Okay, do your actions match your words? Do your actions match what you believe? Because if you believe people can change, then you've got to start asking, well, how do I change my own mind then? When was the last time I changed my mind? Was it somebody sitting me down and telling me all the facts about something that I deeply care about? And then just in that instance, I went, boom, mine's changed. I'm all good. It might be somebody might have changed your mind about something that you don't really care about that much or that has not a whole lot of weight to it. Like, I don't know, the best hiking trail in Colorado. Yeah, sure, you can change my mind. Probably, probably not. Actually. I have my ideas there. But think about, think about at work. What's the best way to grow this company? 20% this year. I've got my mind as the marketer made up sales guy, he's got his mind made up. Product gal, she's got her mind made up. We all think and believe we have an idea of how we can grow this company. 20% CEO, he or she, they have their mind made up their company. Of course they have their. They have an idea of how they want to grow their company. 20%. Is anybody going to walk into a room and say, you need to change your mind right now? Because this is what I believe. Here's how I think it should be done. So here's my case, full stop. We're done here. This conversation is over. That's how we try to get people to change their mind. You can see it on social media, you can see it on the stupid cable television news shows. Like, we're all just like screaming at each other to, you should change your mind. No, you should change your mind. That's not how it happens. The best quote, I didn't put this in the book. The best quote that I ever heard on this is people as from JOHN C. Maxwell, Leadership Coach, Authority People change their minds when they heard enough that they have to, when they see enough that they're inspired to, when they receive enough that they're able to, and when they learn enough that they want to. Now, I say this all the time. One of those things is not like the other, Kwame. We all try to hurt people to have to change, when actually the way that we want to change is we want to be inspired to change, we want to learn enough that we can change. We want to receive something so that we're able to change. Maybe I have no control over the situation because I'm not able to. Maybe because of my experience or my life, my passions or the other things that I'm responsible for, the commitments that I have, I'm not able to. But we so often default to trying to get people to change through force, and it doesn't work that way. It doesn't happen. So you've got to change your approach. That's what I hope, the work that you're that's what I hope, the work that you're doing, the work that I'm doing, the work that so many others are doing, that that is the message that they're actually putting out there. None of us are saying, you have to do this right now. We're all saying there's another way. Here's a way that you could be doing it. Let me teach you how it's worked for me and for other people. Let me show you how this could happen. Let me outline the steps that you could take to possibly improve here, to get the results that you want at the end of the day that align with how you want to do it anyway, deep down, because you know people can change. You believe people are inspired to change and want change for the better. Nobody wants to change for the worse. So how do we get there? You can force people if you have that authority. But something you wrote about in your book, Kwame, more often than not, we don't have the authority to force people to change. It is so rare. And you wrote in your book, and I put that in my book, it's influence. It is leveraging your influences. It's placing yourself in a position of influence to affect a positive outcome for someone, to invite them to change rather than force them to change. It's such a beautiful concept, Kwame, that you outline in your book that I had to put in here, because it just speaks to everything that I just have been talking about for, like the last eight minutes. It's that's it. Do you have influence or control? 99% of us don't have the control. So how do we do it?

And here's the thing too. Even if we did have the control and we could force people to do what we wanted them to do, is that the world we want to live in? And think about the cost it has on our relationship. I've got kids. I guess technically I could force them to do things that doesn't work out the way I wanted to do. There are always unintended consequences.

Enjoy having a relationship with them when they're 25 and no longer are under your roof. Right?

Exactly. Exactly. This is so powerful. Before we go, because we've focused a lot on the mindset, I want to talk about the skill set a little bit. So when you think about everything that you've learned in the podcast, everything you've learned in your experience as a reporter and also in writing this book, what would you say is the most powerful approach when it comes to having the difficult conversation? Actually in the conversation?

Yeah, you're teeing me up a little bit here. But it's, man, it's asking questions. It's taking a curious mindset into these conversations and leading with questions first. Not your opinions, not your assumptions like we've already talked about. But leading with questions first, seek understanding first. And that understanding can bring about common ground that you can then build on and co create new solutions to big problems. And look, you don't have to be a trained journalist to ask really great, great questions. You don't have to be a podcast host to ask questions of someone. Just follow your natural human curiosity that we all have deep down inside of us. And if you don't think you can do it with someone right away, I mean, there are levels to this too. Like, don't go straight in for the big, hairy, nasty, gnarly issue right off the bat. Have a conversation with a friend who might think a little bit differently than you and get good at asking those questions. Or in a meeting that you run, if you're at work, make it a point to ask five questions to every one statement that you make. You know, don't hold yourself. That's not a hard and fast rule. But just aim for that. Aim to be a more curious, inquisitive person. And even, even if that feels too much, practice on yourself. Practice asking questions of yourself. Doc Yeager, he's the psychologist for the NBA's Detroit Pistons. He was on my show and he wrote a book called 40 Conversations to have with Yourself. Start there. And don't take it as, I gotta ask questions of myself to figure out all that's wrong with me. Ask questions of yourself to figure out what it is that you truly and actually believe. Because not enough of us have done that. Kwame. We are an amalgamation of the people and the experiences and the, the culture with which we grew up in. And a lot of times we just learned what we believe through osmosis of others. And it never was something that actually came to us through any sort of a process we took ourselves through. And intentionality was never developed to it. So practice on yourself. Practice asking questions and being really super honest with yourself. That's the safest way to do it. Because you know what, you can do that all up here in your mind. No one has to know, no one has to contradict you. You can just get really great about asking yourself tough questions. Start there.

You know, the word that came up to me as you were saying, this was scary because for a lot of people asking questions comes with the, the consequence of the other person talking more. And a lot of times we feel safer when we are the ones talking. And so if that is a mental block that people have, how can we help them to overcome that fear of the unknown? The.

The fear of the unknown of what somebody else is going to say next, that's fine. You don't have to be right. They don't have to be right. You don't have to agree with them. That's the big thing too is like, whatever they say, you don't have to agree with them. Just I tell people, my coaching clients all the time when they get feedback from like a speech or a talk that they do, take that feedback if it resonates, if it's something that you think, yeah, I should improve on that, take it in and figure that out for yourself. If it's not, set it on the shelf. Say, I don't, I don't need to deal with that right now. But seek understanding then. Yeah, if they go and say something that's conflict laced, give yourself the grace that you're not going to get it right every single time. Like, and what is right? But like, you're, we're human, so you're going to judge, you're going to get emotional and upset. Totally fine. By the way, we sometimes think that to have a difficult conversation and be good in a difficult conversation, we don't get emotional, which none of us are robots, although AI is taking over the world, I'm being told, so give yourself some Grace in those moments that you're not going to get it right every single time either. And that's okay. But you're trying. Show up and keep trying.

This is powerful. And again, the thing for me that I appreciate the most about just you personally, your podcast, your message, your book, everything, is that when somebody reads it, they say, I can do this.

I hope so.

I can actually do this. And that, that's what makes it so, so special. Michael, I really appreciate it. And before you go, make sure you let the listeners know again about the book, the podcast, and how they can get in touch.

So the book is available on my website right now. I'm waiting for Amazon and, and Barnes and Noble to approve it. So the self publishing world is fraught with hiccups, but right. The best place to get it, where you can also get a signed copy from me is my website, michaelashford.com Can I ask a question? All one word. And if you use the code negotiate, then you will get 25% off for forever. So I'll leave that up for however long years into the future, if somebody's listening to this, you can get that discount. And the podcast is the follow up question, which is also available on my website and any anywhere you get your podcasts. So Bobby, thanks man. Like giving me the space to just like talk about this. I appreciate you so much. Questions that you ask. I think we were talking beforehand like it's good stuff man, and much needed. So you've inspired me, your work has inspired me. Hopefully you felt that as you read through the book and found some of the references to you and your work in there. So I appreciate you man, and likewise.

I appreciate you brother. Congrats on everything and keep up the great work.

Thank you so much.

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