Chess and Negotiation, Principles We Can Learn From Chess To Improve Our Negotiations With Ernest Levert Jr.

Hello my friends, and welcome to another exciting episode of Negotiate Anything. This show is produced by the American Negotiation Institute and with over 5 million downloads and listeners in over 180 countries, listeners just like you have made this the number one negotiation podcast in the world. Hi, my name is Kwame Christian and I am the founder and CEO of the American Negotiation Institute. Here at AI, we believe that the best things in life are on the other side of difficult conversations. And we are passionate about providing you with the best content that will help you to make your difficult conversations easier, both at work and at home. Lastly, I want to remind you that we offer consulting and conduct trainings both virtually and in person all around the world. Our focus is in three main areas. First, negotiation and conflict resolution. Second, leadership. And lastly, diversity, equity and inclusion. Check the link in the description below to learn more about how we could work with you and your team. And now, without further ado, let's jump into the interview. Ernest, thanks for joining us my friend.

Hey man, thanks for having me back on the show. One of my favorite shows, my actually is my favorite show, favorite podcast man. So good to be back.

I appreciate it. I appreciate it man. Yeah, this is great to have you and it's always great to use this podcast as a tool to catch up with friends too. So for the listeners who might have missed your first episode, can you remind them a bit about who you are, what you do?

Yeah, absolutely. So, Ernest Lavert Jr. Here in Columbus, Ohio, with the Royal Oak Initiative, shortened to roi, we use the game of chess and the wisdom of chess to protect, heal and build community. We activate chess clubs around the community focusing really on engaging non traditional chess players. We host leadership training for youth and adults. We also recently opened the Cooperative Chess Cultural center, also known as the Fork. It is a really cool chess center located in Old Town east on the near east side of Columbus. And outside of that, we're always looking for ways to connect chess to different elements of culture. That way people can really absorb all the lessons that there are to be learned in the game.

That's awesome. That is awesome. So yes, listeners of the podcast know that I am a chess nerd. Love playing chess on chess.com and I always like to talk about my percentile and people ask why do you focus so much on getting better? I am chasing Ernest Lavert Jr. That's what I am trying to do. I'm just trying to get on your level man. This episode is going to be a lot of fun. It's going to be a bit more philosophical than our episodes typically are. But we're going to take that philosophy and actually bring it to life with some real examples. And I love using the. The metaphor of chess, the examples of chess, and the principles of chess in what I do in my business life, but also as it relates to the podcast, difficult conversations, too. And so really, what we're going to do is use Ernest's experience as a leader, an entrepreneur, and a community builder and see how those chess principles kind of inform his decision making and what we can take from it, too. So let's go a little bit deeper and tell the listeners about some of the newer things that you're working on, and then we could kind of reverse engineer your success using these principles.

Yeah, absolutely, man. So one of the first things I would say that makes it easier to build what we call this chess cultural movement here in Columbus is just this willingness to explore new ideas, to turn over rocks you never turned over, and to try new things. Um, you know, so I'll say with the. The Chess center, our main focus is on attracting people into this space rather than trying to force anything. You know, a lot of people, like, are saying, hey, are you going to teach people? Can you teach me? I say, if you come out, there will be someone there who will teach you. We very much decentralize how we build out the fork, build out the chess center, and build out the chess community. And that's just made it a lot more open for people, you know, kind of doing a quick shout out to the world of chess and even think about this conversation, sharing. How are we, you and I, constantly working towards getting better at chess? I think that also directly correlates to how we strive to get better in our. In our daily lives. So I got a friend of mine named James, and similar to you, Kwame, who are somehow chasing me because Kwame is really good online, but he's. He doesn't defeat me often in person.

It's true.

So my guy, James, man, he loves chess theory. He knows all the openings, he knows all the grandmasters. He knows all of that. And I was like, man, I need to just fit my natural style. I'm not going. I'm not really interested in that. I'm not really interested in studying necessarily, But I do enjoy chess puzzles. And so the way I was able to get better at doing those chess puzzles, kind of switching my frame of reference. Most people have mental habits in place, right? They go through a process all the time, and sometimes we can actually cut ourselves short, sell ourselves short if we do that. So what I tend to do when I come up to a new chess puzzle recently is I started looking for the non obvious moves, right. I immediately ask myself, what are the things that most people are not even willing to consider? Right. Most people are not willing to consider sacrificing a queen. Most people are not willing to consider smothered mates. Most people don't consider clearance sacrifices, you know, throwing out some chess lingo or decoys. And because those are things that I know most beginners, most intermediate people don't think about, that's where I try, I'm trying to reroute my brain to start thinking about that first. Right? And what that does is it's like it opens up a whole new world of opportunity and possibility and also makes you a lot faster on your feet when dealing with difficult situations. And so what you find yourself against is against harder opponents. But you've practiced getting outside the box, thinking beyond traditional responses. And I think that's been really helpful in my life. I'm always thinking about, okay, everyone else is doing this. What have we not done yet? What are we not doing yet? What's already working over here? Let me borrow the things I've seen working. I had to go explore them to find out what actually works and then come back and try to apply that to how we're building out both on the chessboard and in the community as well.

Oh, there's so much good stuff here. Okay, so. And again, what we'll do is we'll take these principles and we'll apply it to our difficult conversations. And so we can speak broadly and say, thinking outside the box. But it's definitely more than that because you are intentionally trying to reprogram your mind. Because just like with anything else, we have biases, we have preferences, and so we can start to get into patterns. And if we start getting into those patterns, ways of thinking, that it makes it more difficult for us to consider alternatives. And what's interesting is about. About what you said. One of the many interesting things I should say is that there are many different ways that we can learn. So your friend James, he learns through studying chess theory for me. I've read a few books on chess, but the only ones that I've been able to really complete are the ones that tie chess back to life, like business principles or something that's beneficial. Like Garry Kasparov's book is really good at taking chess principles and applying it to, like, business and politics. Really fascinating. Another one I like is the Tao of chess. Chess principle Applied to life, really great. But people learn differently. And so, for instance, I have a book on negotiation. Some people might not read the book, but they listen to the podcast. Sometimes people don't want to learn from somebody else. They want to learn from their own experiences. And so I would suggest trying to try different things in different conversations. And that's fun to do. You learn a principle, you apply it immediately, See how it happens. Another thing that I like to do, Ernest, I'd like to hear your thoughts on this one, too, because it's entertaining, but it's also fun. I would watch reality TV and watch the breakdowns of conversations. I'm like, okay, when did the emotionality increase? And what did the person do when that emotionality happened? Oh, they added fuel to the fire. That's. It's like, what is the inflection point in the conversation that made it go sideways? And then what could that person have done at that very moment to bring it back on track and then what happens next? So it's cool to see, like, almost like a decision tree of a conversation when you're watching the show. They made this decision, and that's why. That's why things fell apart. But if they would have adjusted, then they could have done better in that situation.

I will say one thing that's fascinating is how similar we are, that we have to go into these things with, like, a sense of purpose. If you were saying, hey, I'm watching these TV shows, the normal Kwame wouldn't be doing that. But Kwame is looking for something. Kwame is on a mission. He has a sense of purpose. That is how I am as well. Man, I went to, like, 50 parks in the city just trying to find the best park to host chess events, Right? And so we. It's fascinating how we can do things that seem so intimidating and so overwhelming, as long as we find something that's really important to us, that really drives us without us having to try super hard. And I would say the other. To respond directly to what you were saying earlier. That is one of the things that I did to get better. Right. After every game, I would always go back and find, when did the game change, right. When did I. Either I start winning or when did I start losing? Like, whether I won or lost, My hat that I built was always to go back and review what happened, Right. And. And I don't. And again, I'm not super into studying theory. I'm not going to put it in an engine. That's not my thing. I. I'm really into the human side of chest. I'm not really trying to be a machine. I'm not trying to be a grandmaster, but I will go at least back and find at least one move that I could have done better. And the move that changed the game, that is. That's what I look for. So I would say that's pretty similar to what you're doing on the reality shows. Like what? When?

Absolutely.

When did everything shift? If you seen Loki. Yeah, I'm not going to spoiler alert, but when did the multiverse begin to unwind?

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Yeah, you know, it's funny too, because to that point, one thing that I encourage everybody to do is replay the tape. So you're essentially going back and being your own chess coach, you're taking the time to see what shifted in the conversation again. What could I have done differently? Or, like, if things didn't go well, what could I have done differently to make it go better? And if I did do something good in the conversation, what was that moment? What are the inflection points? Because not every conversation, you could say the conversation is important, but not every part of the conversation has equal importance. And so I call these really important points inflection points where things shift, where there is a very important time. And so if we start to go back and replay the tape, then we can start to identify what those inflection points are. And so it increases our awareness of, oh, these are the types of things that will signal that we're at an inflection point. I should slow down and make sure I make the right decision in this moment. And if we start to get into that habit of replaying the tape, then we're going to be more aware and we're going to start to make the right decision as well.

And think about how that applies to difficult conversations. You know, One of the things that we know about chess is there are three phases of the game, right? There's the opening, the middle game, and the end game. And I was just replaying my mind because we're replaying conversations and situations. A difficult conversation I had in the last few months. And I just remember how proud I was of the outcome and how intentional it was. This was a person I had a lot of tension with that went unchecked and unaddressed for years. But in the opening, we established our commonality. You know, in the opening of a chess game, most people will go through the same moves, right? And it's almost like it's just the rules of engagement. It's just the opening. It's like it's just kind of the expectation. But the middle game is where things start getting. Getting crazy, getting murky. And I just wanted to give myself a shout out, because in that situation, I did have it open. I said, hey, these are the things that we're trying to accomplish. What's been going on with you? We're establishing trust, we're building familiarity, right? We're establishing. We're setting up the tone for the middle game. And if you don't take time to set up the middle game in the opening, the rest of the game is ruined. Right. And I just think about how even, you know, yesterday, everything going on in Columbus, how I was like, ernest, you're a middle game player. A lot of people are being really reactive right now. They're responding to such things going on. But, Ernest, you need to lock in on the middle game. The middle game is where you. I mean, it's easy to checkmate in the. Checkmate in the middle game if you're not paying attention. But also that's where you need to get all your resources into the game. That's where you need to start positioning people properly. So I just was thinking about how I'm building on the chessboard, how I build in community, a little bit of community organizing, and how that show has been difficult conversations is that you need to set it up properly or else you're not going to be in a position to respond wisely, let alone try to accomplish your goals.

Yeah, 100%. And I love bringing the ideas of the opening, the middle game, and the end game into this, too, because with negotiation, it's just like in chess, what they say is it's unlikely that you are going to win a chess game in the opening, but you could make a mistake that certainly loses the chess game in the opening. If you don't take care of it. Now, the problem that I see is that a lot of people don't know when the opening begins in a negotiation, in a difficult conversation, they just start the conversation as if we are beginning in the middle game. But the way I look at it, every relationship, every negotiation is just a never ending game of chess. So the moment I meet you, the opening has begun. And so we'll stay in the opening parts of the conversation in our relationship until a critical conversation happens. Okay, so I've been positioning myself well during the opening. And then there's going to be that opening of that conversation where you're building rapport, getting to learn about the other side, and then we can advance into the middle game where we're at the meat of the conversation. But a lot of people, they just, they don't understand when the game begins. And it's usually starts sooner than people are willing to acknowledge.

Yeah, I think about some of the opening principles. One of the things we've been doing lately a lot are we've been doing workshops. The Royal Oak Initiative has been hosting workshops with the, the library branches here. We're working this summer to do chess workshops, what we call Chess for wisdom and wellness with 12 library branches. And it's, it's fascinating. One is the, the humbling experience of a, of an experienced person. So I have young people who come in and they get bored immediately if we even think about replaying the rules, going over the rules. And I was always taught you need to simplify things to make sure the newest person can understand it. And if you can't explain it simply, then you haven't mastered it. Right? But these young people, they were so quick to jump in the game, so quick to get into it. Similar to what you're saying, people with difficult conversations. But when I challenge them on some basic habits, some basic concepts, like one, use all of your pieces, right? I challenged them. I said, no piece moves twice until every piece moves once. Which is just one of those. It's the neuroplasticity. They don't know these. They're 10 years old. I'm like, I have to literally reprogram your mind to think inclusively of all these players on your team, right? It was fascinating because some of the students who have been playing the longest were not able to successfully finish the challenge because they were so quick to get certain pieces in the game that they blocked other pieces from getting in the game itself. And I was like, man, there's so much application here. But some of the Lessons I think about that is always going in with the mind of a beginner, with the attitude of a beginner, that I have so much to learn, that every situation I'm here to learn. And then also, if you can't explain something, then you really haven't mastered it. And some of that just comes from repetition. Some of that comes from practicing and researching ahead of time. We talk about that all the time about preparation.

Yeah, absolutely. And it's really. I love that you brought in the term neuroplasticity. So let's go deeper into this. So essentially, neuroplasticity is a neurological concept where they realize that the brain is plastic, it can move, it can change with experience. So it's not so much that we have this brain and it's crystallized in our adulthood. It's that as we experience different things, the brain will actually physically change, which is really interesting. And so when we think about the challenge of thinking outside the box and doing something differently, we have to think about the interesting blend of, like, neuroscience and biology that actually makes that difficult to do. Because your brain is. You have designed your brain through your activity to do certain things a certain way, and then you'll start to do those things automatically. And it takes a lot of effort to reprogram it because of the way your brain has been designed. And so with that exercise, forcing yourself to try new things, like including all of the pieces on the board, I mean, I'm thinking about that. That would be really challenging to do. But then once expand your mind in that way, when you are go back to the actual game, the way that is traditionally played, now you can actually see more options that you wouldn't have even considered before.

That makes me think about what you were saying earlier about how people learn differently. Right. I really enjoy learning the game of chess through history and through the culture. And so there's a book that I have. I forgot what it's called, but it basically takes you all the way back to the origins of the game itself. And it introduces different chess concepts as you go. So some of the first openings that beginners learn is the Spanish opening and the Italian opening. Right. You know, Kwame, if you're familiar with the Italian, I mean, that's just E4, knight, F3. You're just bringing the bishops, the knights out, and the pawns out. Right. You castle, get the queen in the game. Super straightforward. But you notice that in that opening, you touch each piece only one time. Right. And so now what we're doing is you are recreating the mastery. But you're doing it very organically, right? You're. Now. You're understanding the concept rather than trying to memorize it. And that's. That's something, I think, that's really important, that you're. If you don't understand something in its essence, it's going to be very hard to pivot and to adjust to a situation that you didn't plan for. You know, that's. That's part of, you know, we. What I was going to talk about with you is like the Chess Power of Now. The book that changed. One of the books that changed my life is the Power of Now. And I think about the power of now when you're playing chess is that you have to be willing to release your plan. You gotta be willing to let go of the past. That way you can actually be present in the future and move into. I mean, be present in the. In the now and move into the future. You know, so it's. It's all these principles. I tell everybody, you gotta learn the principles. I'm sorry. You learn the rules, then the principles, then the tactics, and then the strategy. Everyone wants to jump straight to strategy. I was like, you got to learn the basics, and then you learn the principles, and then the principles will mature into strategy.

Okay, let's break that down, because that was deep, and I do not want to overlook it. So you said rules, principles, tactics, strategies.

Right?

So let's break down what each of those things mean and then why it's important to operate in that sequence.

Yep. So the rules are what you can and cannot do in. In general. In the general sense, they are the laws of chess. But what I like to call them are community agreements that when we come into this space, we have established the do's and the do nots, Right? Once you understand the do's and do nots, you basically have a skeleton in place. You can do anything. I can move my hands all over the place, but my skeleton is solid, right? And then you have the principles. And the principles are what allow you to start having a sense of direction, a sense of purpose. When I get. I give the students the challenge, right? I phrase it as a challenge and say, hey, use all of your resources. Every piece on this board is important, and every piece on this board needs to be in the game, right? We start talking about community building, how everybody is valuable and how sometimes you can be so quick to get in the game, but you're actually blocking other people from getting in the game. That your power, your Privilege is actually preventing others from using their power and their privilege. Right. So those are principles. These are just general thoughts that I think you can fall back on when you don't know what to do. That's why I like starting with principles before you get into memorizing anything. Right. A general principle is knights before bishops because knights have less options. And so it's a lot easier to decide where the best place for your knight is versus when you put a bishop out. That bishop is going to become a target. It's a long range piece. But you have to wait to see how things emerge before you pull out some of your best resources. Obviously, in a difficult conversation that's part of the opening is getting a feel for who I'm working with before I start bringing out certain tactics or certain approaches, certain tools, certain techniques. And then tactics come in. Those are your tools, those are your concrete, those are your. Okay, I'm going to use the principles I learned, but I'm going to have a very specific way of applying it. Right. So if I'm bringing this bishop out, I'm bringing this bishop out with the intention of causing this response or putting you in this situation. Right. It kind of turns it around. The principles are more about how you are moving. The tactics are more. Start to focus more on how you're interacting with the other person, with your partner. And then finally, strategy is how you put it all together. How does it all flow? It gives you the flexibility of the, of the principles, it gives you the structure of the rules, and it gives you the versatility of the tactics. They all come together.

And so go ahead. No, you go ahead. We can edit.

Yeah, it's all good. I was going to say, as long as you, I feel like you learn naturally and don't try to short circuit the process or shortcut the process, then your appreciation for chess is a lot easier. It's way less intimidating. Right. I had the students the other day. One of them was, was kind of, you know, furling their brow and I was like, raise your hand if you think chess is hard. And they were like, you know, a couple of them raised their hand. I said, everyone stand up. Everyone stood up. I said, everyone sit back down. I have a 9 month old who cannot do what you just did.

Right.

Never forget how we naturally flow, how we naturally had to emerge. We had to struggle with things. And if you struggle with the rules, then you master the rules, then you struggle with principles. You master the principles. And if you do that now you're, you're reprogramming your brain on how to learn. So when you get the tactics, you're like, oh, that's easy because I've already seen this before. I just didn't know that it was called a pin. I just didn't know that it was called a forklift. I didn't know this was a back rank mate.

Right.

These are. I just started adding names to it and then finally strategy, you bring it all together.

Okay, now what is the danger learning strategies first? Because I see this all the time in negotiation where people want to focus on the strategies. Just give me the strategies, just give me the strategies. Don't give me the principles or anything like that. Just give me the strategies. So what is the danger in getting the sequence wrong?

Yeah, I think if you, if you're so focused on the plan, so I think about strategy and strategy starts to look like in chess, starts looking like memorizing openings. Right. Because that is saying, I'm going to have this master plan of creating this outpost on this dark square and I'm going to move my knight up there and then I'm going to be causing wreaking havoc. It is a long term vision. But if your knights get taken off the board, what are you going to do with your outpost?

Right.

Man, I haven't talked that very specific about chess in a long time. But it makes it more challenging to respond unless you know the principles in place that should create the strategy overall.

There you go. Yeah, spot on. Right? It makes you more flexible and dynamic. And it's like, I believe it was Eisenhower said, no plan survives first contact with the enemy. And then, you know, a more recent philosopher said, everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face.

Yeah.

And that was Mike Tyson. Yeah, Right. And that's the thing, you know, because we can create this beautiful strategy. But as soon as you interact with the other side, your strategy will have to change. And it will have to change based on your understanding of the under underlying principles at play. And then you see a lot of people who are tactical, they are tactics junkies. So they're just constantly collecting different tactics. Oh, so Chris Voss said this, Alex Carter says this, William Ury says this. And so they're just picking out little tactics, do this, do this, do this. And then they're hoping that they can put these things together and then become a better negotiator. And I guess you can tactically become better than baseline. But if you're purely tactical, you're going to be missing out on something. So in chess, let's say if you don't have an appreciation for overall strategy, but you do have a lot of tactics, what are you missing?

I think one of the challenges I run into all the time with speed chess players is they come off, they feel really good about themselves, then we play in person, and their tactics don't work on me. Like, I know what you're trying to do here. I think that's one of the challenges is that when you meet someone else who understands the techniques, they're going to see right through it. And techniques are a part of the game. So, okay, I understand that you're doing this for this reason, but if it doesn't work, you're going to be like.

Ah, what do I do?

It didn't work the way I was expecting it. Oh, gosh. Like I. I think about the tactics for in sales, right? And if you are very robotic with it, your partner will know it and it changes the whole dynamic of the interaction. You're no longer natural with it.

It. Exactly. There's a lack of depth, right. Because we do this tactic and we want a specific payoff. A lot of times that tactic doesn't work or it doesn't work in the way that we expect it to, but we don't have anything else behind the tactic, or we don't have a plan B, or we don't have an idea of how we're going to shift if certain things don't work. We go into the conversation and we say, I'm going to do this and.

Then I'm going to do that.

Okay, well, things changed. It didn't work the way you thought. Well, what's next? Got nothing else to back up on, right? To rely on. And so strategy gives you the depth, principles gives you the ability to be dynamic. Right. And then, of course, knowing the basic rules, I would say in negotiation, it's having an appreciation of the psychology behind the conversation too, because everybody's different. But we can start to make better reads if we have a better understanding of the underlying software and hardware that makes us go as humans. But again, a lot of people are just trying to get that quick fix, those easy answers. And then it shows in their performance at the negotiation table too.

I also think about, in chess, for example, the difference between a relative pin and absolute pin. Right? You can know what a pin is, but one of the challenges you run into is the pin can be turned around on you really quick, right? And it turns into a discovery attack. Like your pin is your partner's discovered attack. You have a knight Pinned to a queen. And for those who aren't familiar, a pin is like you're putting a push pin into a wall and it keeps that paper in place. So you have a piece blocking another piece from an attack. And so you are pinning a knight to a queen with your bishop, but then all of a sudden you move the knight out the way, you check their king, and now their bishop is sitting death for the queen. Right. That if you're too rigid with it, you might actually. The tactics will turn around and hurt you in the process if you don't have. I say principles expand your. Your understanding of your environment. Right. One of the things I always say is the first thing before we even learn shows, I said, you need. The first thing you need to do when you come to a chessboard is you need to examine your environment. Is the board or even oriented correctly? Is there a light square on your right hand side? I know immediately whether I'm going to what skill level you're at. If you set the board up wrong, I'm like, oh, this is gonna be over very quickly.

Right.

You know what I mean? And so it's just really important to, to know how to apply the situations in real life. You know, you think about jiu jitsu, martial artists, right? You may know how to do an arm bar, but how are you gonna do an arm bar in a real life situation? Like, that person isn't going to be going through the drill with you. You have to be able to respond and set it up properly and pivot if it goes. Literally pivot if it goes wrong, or else you'll end up on your back.

Exactly. Exactly. Yeah, man. Oh, this is good. This is good. Well, for the listeners who are saying, I am now very, very interested in chess and I want to learn more. Ernest, what's the best way for them to get in touch?

Well, the best way to learn chess is to get online or get a book from your library. You are in control of your educational pathway. You can learn it. But the best way to get in contact with the Royal Oak initiative is just to go to our website. It is the T h e the roichess.org shout out to, you know, oh, state, Ohio. Yeah, the roichess.org you can also follow us on Instagram and Facebook at the roichess. And my email address is ernest e r n e s t herychest.org.

Ernest, appreciate you, brother. Thanks for coming on the show. Peace.

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