COACHING SESSION: Kwame Christian Coaches Trish Hill

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.

Trish, thanks for joining us today.

Thank you so much for having me, Kwame. This is exciting.

Yes, we are excited to have you, my friend. So how would you get us started? By telling us a little bit about yourself and what you do.

Sure thing. I farm in Australia and I reached out when I became aware that our family was going to be, at some point in the future, dealing with a fairly messy estate. And I had no idea how to conduct myself well in these negotiations so that the best outcome could be reached. A lot of anxiety, a lot of difficulty in my family. And I want to be able to be proud of how I conducted myself in these negotiations for. For myself, but for the whole. For the whole family and for the legacy of the family.

Yeah, that is a really tough situation. And unfortunately, this is a situation that happens pretty frequently where somebody passes away and things get messy on the back end between family and close friends. And so, yeah, this is a tough negotiation, not only because there's probably a substantial amount of money on the line, or at least not an insignificant amount, but also the emotionality that is tied with these negotiations. So it's really tricky, really difficult to deal with, but not impossible. And so let's talk through it. So, listeners, this is going to be kind of a different type of episode. So in this episode, Trish is going to be asking me questions and we're going to kind of brainstorm some solutions for the situation. So you gave us a bit of background here, Trish. Let's set the stage a little bit more and then we can just launch into what questions you have.

Sure. Thank you so much, Kwame. My family have been in agriculture for a long time. And in the past, farming hasn't always been, or agriculture itself hasn't always been quite so lucrative as it is today in Australia, land values have gone crazy. And where in the past inheriting the family farm might have been seen as a career path, it's now seen as an incredible wealth creator process. And so with multiple children in a family, the farm, the family farm can be quite a hotly contested asset because it become, it really could set somebody up for the rest of their life and have generational wealth from this process. But the other part of it is we have. So my mother passed away and left parts of her estate to her children, to my siblings and I, but my father continues to manage the land. And there's no relationships, no strong relationships left in the family. So it has the potential to be a fairly difficult negotiation process. Everybody is very attached to various parts of the assets. We all have a long history with the assets and the long history with the farming. And so there will be, I'm quite sure, a lot of emotion attached to this situation. So I would like to plan ahead so that it's not a train coming down the train tracks. I think I'd really like to know what I'm going to plan ahead and how I'm going to conduct myself ahead of time because it will be so difficult to deal with this, with the emotion of, you know, the passing of somebody and all of the other things that could be happening at the same time. So I guess my main questions are how do I prepare for something. Yeah. When I don't know ahead of time what the playing field will even look like. We don't, you know, nobody will know until the negotiations are imminent exactly what, what the playing field will look like, what the rules will be, what the, what the items will be that are going to have to be negotiated, whether it's, you know, the ongoing business, whether there's succession problem, you know, all of the sorts of things that plan ahead for, but not knowing exactly what those things will be until, until the negotiations are literally happening at the time.

Yeah, this is, this is a tough one. And first, condolences on the passing of your mom. That's. That's always something that's going to be tough. And. Yeah, yeah, that's. That's a tough one. Again, whatever the conversation has to be, if it's on the topic of the passing of a loved one, whether, even if it's a positive conversation, it's going to be a heavy emotional conversation. So that adds an extra element of difficulty, too. So I'm going to ask a question that will sound really basic. It'll sound really almost simplistic. But stay with me now. And so the training note for this is that sometimes the best questions are the ones that are. That seem obvious, where it's easy to fill in your assumptions for what the answer could or should be. And so I think a lot of times with your ego, our ego, just as people, we don't want to sound stupid, so we don't ask the silly questions. But I know in my experience as a negotiator and as a mediator, sometimes that's the best. Those are the best questions that you can ask because you get some really good information. So here comes the stupid question. Trish. Okay. What is your goal?

Oh, I think my goal really is to have better relationships with my family at the end of this and to protect some valuable family assets for the future.

Okay, and when you say better relationships, what does that mean?

It means being able to interact with family members with a mature relationship, not one that has been destroyed by another round of very immature negotiation with a lot of personal attacks and undermining that has happened. Don't want to repeat that. So that we can actually use this negotiation process as a relationship building experience as opposed to a relationship discussion drawing process.

That's good. That's really helpful. And again, that goes with our ethos here. As a listener of the podcast, I know you know, but we see conflict as an opportunity. And as difficult as this situation is, you are recognizing that it is an opportunity. Now, listening very closely to one of the things that you said. You said you don't want this to be another round of damaging negotiations, which makes me feel as though there have been damaging conversations in the past.

Yes.

Am I, am I close on that one?

Yes, you are. So when my mother passed away, the negotiations that took place were very, very poorly planned. We didn't know what, how it would be, what would happen in the estate. We didn't know who would be entitled to what. And in the end, it ended up being a difficult process, which it could have been so much better with everything that I've learned in the interim. And I think that process made me realize I have so much to learn if I want to be the person that I'm proud of in the next phase of negotiations when my, if my mother, if my father passes away now, being the holder of the remaining assets.

Yes. Okay, that makes a lot of sense. Now, when we talked about the goals, you said you want to use this as an opportunity to improve relationships. And you also said protecting some assets. So tell me more about the asset protection aspect.

Sure. So my parents were very poor. When I was growing up, we were very poor. But they accumulated through their life and through my childhood and my siblings childhoods. We worked together and accumulated a lot of land, a lot of farming land, which today is worth a lot of money. And it's distributed across Australia. So there's various parcels in various parts of Australia those assets have attached to them. A lot of legacy, a lot of family legacy. They were able to buy land from like ancestral land from other family members and accumulate that into their wealth. But actually for me, the, the real value that I understood of myself from the negotiations when my mother passed away was that the wealth itself, while attractive, is actually not what I valued out of that process. I was really upset in hindsight when my value of legacy was not able to be honored in that negotiation process. So after a lot of soul searching, I realized that was my motivating value that was undermining me in the negotiations. I wanted to protect these assets, not necessarily from the perspective of wealth, but from the perspective of being able to take care of this land for another generation so that my children and their children can continue that legacy of, of that farming history on the, on those lands.

Okay, this is, this is really helpful. Really helpful.

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Yeah. And now when we think about the conversations that you're going to have with your siblings and the other people involved, what are they going to assume your goal is in the conversation?

Oh, that is such a hard question, Kwame. Gosh, I have thoughts, and I would probably have had a very quick answer for you just three or four years ago, but today I think that question for me is quite difficult to answer. I wonder if they would suspect that I. Gosh, I don't know. Maybe we can circle back to an answer for that. That's such a difficult question for me to answer. I don't know why, but it is.

Yeah. I think it's important to consider with our strategy. And I know when it comes to difficult conversations, a lot of times our assumptions get in the way and affect the way that we. We approach the conversation. And I don't want to encourage mind reading because. Because we cannot mind read. It's not possible, but it's something that we should consider and then clarify. And so the. When it comes to assumptions, everybody's going to fill in the gap in their understanding with assumptions. That's just the way the brain works. But what's critical is that we challenge those assumptions. And so as we're revisiting in our minds what we do know and what we don't know, we have to be really honest with ourselves when it comes to coming to terms with just how little we know. And that can be scary because it is a humbling experience. But in order to be a good negotiator, you have to be humble. You have to be humble enough to ask the stupid question, humble enough to challenge your assumptions, too. And so that's a question that I think would be. Well, that is a piece of information that I think is valuable. Whatever assumptions we have about what they think, those are hypotheses that need to be tested through the con. The conversation. Because hypothetically, let's say that their concern is that their assumption is that you are focused on the money, that you're focused on the wealth. I think a lot of times when people think about family legacy, when they think about family legacy, they focus on the wealth. But when you described legacy, it was something very different. It was more like tradition and preserving that tradition and maintaining that opportunity for future generation, for future generations. Right. And so it's important to bring those assumptions that may in fact be negative to the. To the surface so we can actually talk about it and have a conversation about those stupid questions of, what do you want? What do I want? Because I think there. There could be surprises in there.

Sure thing. So just to clarify what you're saying, do you mean that early in the conversation with the negotiations, when they're actually taking place, it's not something really we necessarily could do beforehand, but when the negotiations are taking place. So the process might be, for example, that I would be able to clarify precisely what I want and verbalize it in a fairly non emotional way and then be able to ask them to also bring back to the whole group and to myself, what is it exactly that other parties want and what really do they want as opposed to what they might think that they want. Is that correct, Kwame?

Yes, yes. And just a couple of modifications too. Right. Because I would say when you said in a non emotional way, I think, Trish, if you're being completely authentic, this is something that makes you emotional. And that's not a bad thing because you're a human and that's part of who you are. And if you do get emotional, I think it's a question of whether or not that emotionality takes you further away from your goal or closer to your goal or maybe has a neutral impact. Because when you think about the. It's hard for me not to get a little bit academic, but stick with me here. When you think back to Aristotle, when he was talking about persuasion, he talks about the tripartite model of persuasion. You have ethos, which is logos and pathos. So ethos, these are appeals to ethics, to values, those type of things. Logos, these are appeals to logic and pathos, these are appeals to passion or emotion. And he understood that great communicators were able to touch on all three. And I think you might lose out on some of your persuasive power and your ability to connect if you try to make this a sterile conversation devoid of emotion. You're talking about family, legacy, you're talking about the passing of your mother. There's really no way to make it a non emotional conversation. So the only edit that I would make to what you said is that I would not shy away from the emotionality, but I would make sure that the emotionality doesn't take away from your goals.

Oh, I love that clarification. Thank you. I think I'm afraid of emotion and bringing emotion to our negotiations simply because it has not worked well in the past because I haven't used it and haven't managed my emotions in a way that's functional.

Say more about that.

Oh, I think. I think I have not been aware of the factors within me that have brought up that have triggered overwhelming emotion. And I have been quite reactive. I think that in the past Negotiation phase, when the first lot of assets were managed through the negotiation phase, when my mother's estate was realized, that was such an emotional time. And I think that what I took from that, possibly incorrectly, was that emotion is not good in the negotiation process, that it can be really disruptive and derailing. But I think what I'm hearing is, say, is that well expressed and well understood emotions can actually be quite helpful.

Yeah, I think about emotions kind of like nuclear energy. So nuclear energy can be used to power cities cleanly. Right. Nuclear energy can also make bombs that destroy cities. And so it's not necessarily that the emotion itself is bad, it's just how we use it, that that could be bad. And now here's the thing, Trish. We cannot consider the success of the future negotiations without addressing perhaps the failures of the past negotiations. Because reading between the lines here, what I'm hearing is that the previous conversations were explosive in nature and damage was done and that damage hasn't been addressed. And so there has to be a rebuilding process before we go into the next negotiation. And am I reading that right?

Oh, yeah, absolutely. It was a very damaging process with a lot of distrust created. I think we made everybody, including myself, made a lot of assumptions and there was a lot of jealousy and. And our family has got very big issues with ego. We're all very, very ego driven. And this is big challenge for our family that we have a lot of ego and a lot of unchecked passion and unchecked, what's the word for it, Desire to be very substantial in our field of agriculture. Things that are not very good to be bringing into an estate process. Ego itself, it was just, I know, not the word ego, probably I misrepresent it, but it was just such a. An eye opening experience to see everybody's true. Their lack of awareness, which created a really messy situation.

Okay, so let's focus in on a couple of key words. So damage done, I think you might have said, hurtful things were said, there was ego, those type of things. Have you had conversations with your siblings and the people involved specifically addressing those things explicitly and directly?

No, Kwame, we have not. It seems almost overwhelmingly difficult to approach this thing. And I do, I must say that I have done so, so much work to become more skilled and become more aware of what actually happened in the first phase of the negotiations than my siblings. I don't think that they have done the same reflection. And I can totally see how things became derailed from the different character traits, the different personalities, and my own contribution to that, I don't think I can find. Force them to go through the same process that I've been through. So I, I feel as though my role in the next, if, you know, when, when this happens, is to be prepared and to be the leader that I was not in the last round of negotiations.

Yeah, I think that's well said. And you have to remember, it only takes one person to improve the quality of a relationship. So even though you're not the only person who made mistakes, you have to assume that leadership role and take the lead. And that's going to require a lot of vulnerability, too. And one of the things just for the listeners here, too, to remember is that there's this, there's this saying, time heals all wounds. That's not true. You know, my wife is a doctor, and she doesn't just say, you know, just stop coming in. You know, that wound, it's just going to get better magically. That's just not, it's not how time works. You know, it could. It make. Sometimes it makes things worse. Right. And so one of the things that we have to remember is that these types of conversations, these negotiations, they don't happen in an instant. It's going to take some time. And when it comes to trust, trust takes time. Trust takes a lot of time to build, and it takes longer if you have to rebuild it after there was a violation of trust, too. And so when you think about this situation, you, thankfully, your father's still here. He's not going to be here forever. And so we understand what happened in the past with your mother. We want to make sure that doesn't happen in the future, but we don't want to be caught off guard and unprepared like we were last time. And so when it comes to addressing this, the time is really now, because we don't know how much time we have to address this the right way. And one of the things to keep in mind is the distinction between blame and contribution. Because a lot of times in these situations, the natural tendency is to shift blame to other people. You did this, you did that, you did that. And then what happens? The person says, well, you know what, Trish, you weren't perfect either. You said this and that. And so now we have an unproductive conversation, Everybody's blaming everybody, and now we're not getting anywhere. Oh, we're going somewhere. It's just the wrong direction and we're going there quickly. Right? But a simple semantic shift we can have in the way that we have these conversations is talking about contribution. No matter what happened in any type of situation, I should say in the majority of situations, there's some contributing factor that somebody added to it. So even if you are 99% right, still have 1% wrong. And if you're willing to say that, it makes the other person feel safer in sharing their contribution as well. And so I think as you're going through your soul searching and preparation, it would be helpful to identify some places where you, upon reflection, realize that you didn't do your best and leading with that and having that be that leadership too. Because I think about this in terms of conversational or relationship leadership. Because in order for us to do better, people have to accept responsibility for the mistakes that they made. But few people are strong enough to be the first person to take that step. And if you think about this in the concept of micro negotiations, recognizing that this is going to be a series of small conversations leading up to something down the road, it makes it a little bit clearer. So for instance, it might be you calling up a sibling and just saying, hey, this isn't an easy conversation. But I wanted to apologize for what I said at the time of our mother's death. I said, xyz, that wasn't fair. And I want to start. Start things afresh and just see where the conversation flows. And then the, the tool that you can use in all of these conversations is the compassionate curiosity framework that I talk about all the time. Acknowledging and validating emotions, getting curious with compassion, and joint problem solving. So with this type of conversation, we're not even getting to step three. There's no problem solving we're trying to do. Your only goal is to rebuild the relationship by acknowledging and validating their feelings, asking questions to learn more, and then ending the conversation in a better place than where you began. And so you just start this drip by drip, little campaign of communication and rebuilding. And then down the road we can get into more substantive issues. But there needs to be some an intentional amount of time focused on creating a stronger relationship first. Because the stronger the relationship is, the more resilient it is for conflict.

Sure, I like that approach. I must admit, in my imaginings, I was imagining that it would all have to happen quite quickly. I hadn't really thought through the idea of rebuilding prior to this. The actual discussion starting to take place prior to the negotiation.

Yeah, and Trish, I know this. I wish I could give you something that would be done quickly. Unfortunately, it's just, it's not possible. And it's The. But I will say, though, that I think it takes a bit of pressure off of you to know, like, some kind of negotiation wizardry to get this. This deal done. I don't. That's not necessary. I think what. What you'll find is that as you are intentional about just having positive interactions with your. Your family and the friends who are involved, over time, ultimately the big conversation about the substance will happen pretty organically. It'll be a lot easier. You're chipping away at that resistance without addressing the situation directly, because really, the underlying problem is the relationship. And I would assume, and what I've seen in a lot of these cases, is that when it comes to the actual substance of the negotiation, the parties are not that far apart in terms of substance, but there's so much emotion wrapped in it that they can't even see from the other person's perspective. That's what makes it so tough. But it's a really simple strategy. It's just difficult in execution because it requires a lot of vulnerability and a lot of discipline because you're going to have to open yourself up. And then at the same time, you're also going to have to hold back from tossing those jabs that, you know you're going to want to toss during those conversations. But vulnerability and discipline and sticking to the framework, that's. That's the best way forward.

Oh, that's so good. I love that. It sounds so simple to Kwame. I'm going to have to do a lot of work to be ready in order to do that In. In the precious situation. Yeah. Do you have advice for how to remove yourself from a precious situation, to sort of gather your thoughts so that you can come back improved or come back, reset yourself and come back into a conversation? What sorts of ways? You know, I know this is a very tactical question, but even in a more general sense, bringing yourself out of a relationship with dignity and grace, taking yourself out of a room with dignity and grace and doing the things even just on the day, but also in a relationship so that you can come back. Do you have any advice for how to do that?

Yes. Yeah. Yeah. So here. Here's what I would say. And this is a tactic that is underutilized. It is. It is honesty and stating the obvious, because a lot of times we. Everybody in the interaction sees what's happening, but nobody wants to admit that it's happening. And so it's. It creates this awkward situation where everybody sees what's happening, but nobody wants to admit it. So in a situation where you realize that the emotional temperature is getting to a point where people could get hurt. What you have to recognize is the fact that honesty can really set you free. The truth can set you free, as they say. And so let's say you and I are having a conversation. So I'll say, hey, Trish, listen, it seems like this situation is getting a little bit heated right now, and I'm afraid that the conversation might be going in an unproductive direction. And full disclosure, I'm getting a little bit emotional, and I don't want to risk hurting anybody's feelings with something that I say out of emotionality. So right now is probably not a good time. But here. But I think we made a lot of good progress based on what you shared and what I've shared. And it would be helpful right now if we just take a beat, take some time to kind of reset and give ourselves time to gather our thoughts, and then we can come back when we're a little bit in a better place. What do you think about that? And so the way that we do that is we state the obvious. The emotional temperature has risen. Everybody knows it. Nobody wants to say it, because everybody is afraid of damaging their ego in the situation because they say, I don't want to seem weak. I don't want to make it seem like I can't handle it. And so I don't want the other person to look down upon me for exiting the conversation. So I'm not going to exit the conversation, even though I know I am making things worse right now. Right. And so there's no harm in stating the obvious. And the person will probably feel relieved, too. But in the way that we end it, we're ending it in a way where we're not taking away their autonomy or control. I'm not saying, trish, I'm done with this conversation. We are done talking. I'm not making that decision for you. I ended it with a question. What do you think about that? The person might have something else to say, but that doesn't mean that I still have something else to say. And so if they have something else to say, what I would say is this. Trish, I appreciate that there are still some things that you want to share. And I want to say that I don't have anything more to add to the conversation at this time. But if there's something that you need to share, you feel compelled to share right now, I will listen. And so you listen and you summarize and you say, did I get a. Is That a fair summary of what you said? Yep. Okay. Anything else that you'd like to say before we wrap up? Again signaling, priming them that the conversation is about to end. But again, you have the floor. If there's still something you want to say, you could say it. But it's hard to have an argument with somebody who's not arguing back. And eventually they'll get to a point where they say, all right, I'm out of steam right now. And then you just make sure that you follow up the conversation. And I think another little thing that you could do is just afterwards send a text message either later that day or the next day and just say, hey, Trish, listen, I. I know that things got a little bit heated, but I think we're making progress because it's important for us to keep talking and communicating. And so what you're doing is you're rebranding and reframing the interaction so that even though it felt tense, it might not have felt good. We understand that it was still good for us. And just think about these small interactions as just putting little deposits into the relationship bank account. Just little deposits. Little deposits. Little deposits. Because what might be happening is that you might be overdrafting in your relationships with these. With your relatives. You need to create some more equity in those relationships for down the road when you might need to make a withdrawal in the form of a concession or conflict, whatever it happens to be. But it's hard to. To make progress in a relationship if the equity within the bank account. The relationship bank account is at a negative.

Oh, that is such a graphic description. That's wonderful, Kwame. Thank you. That's fabulous. Yeah, that really is clarifying for me. I hope that. I hope that I can develop the. The coolness that you just expressed in your own words then, Kwame, when the. When the heat is on. Yes. I think being calm and remaining calm and. And knowing when you're not is key.

Yeah, it's. And it's tough to do. It's not a normal human thing to do. It's not our. That's not our normal human response. And so one last thing that I would say. This is the simple, one of the easiest things you can do, but people don't do it. Talk to somebody you trust and do a role play and have. And walk them through the situation and tell them what you're afraid of, and then have them become the embodiment of your worst fear. Like, that's what our role plays are with the. Like this. The what's it called the sparring sessions, the practice sessions that we have on the podcast. And people really love those where I. Where I act belligerent. And then the guest has to deal with my nonsense. Because when you're doing a roleplay with somebody, it helps you because you instruct them to be worse than what the other person could possibly be. And so then when the actual event happens, it's not as bad as what your friend put you through in the practice session. So you always try to role play two ways. The first time, you role play as the other person, so you would actually be your sibling, and the other person plays the role of you. So it forces you to come up with arguments and say things that they will say. And it's to help you to empathize a lot better because you start to think about things from their perspective that you've never thought of before in the moment. You might say, well, they have some. They have a good point. They have some legitimate points. Oh, that is something they could say. Yeah, I should be ready for that. And then you switch and now you are yourself again, and the other person plays the role of them. And then they come at you with fire, like, worse than anything that you could possibly have that could possibly happen in reality. And so after going through the role plays in that in those two ways, then the actual conversation feels a lot easier. And so when we do our coaching sessions with different leaders and things like that and our trainings, we always make sure that we have a role play roleplay because you have to be able to feel that conflict a little bit beforehand. So you're not going into the actual conversation as if it's the first time.

I absolutely love that. I'm going to definitely, definitely act on that. That's fabulous.

Awesome. Well, listen, Trish, we are. Whoa, we're over time. I must like you.

I must really like you.

30 minutes. But I hope this was helpful.

Oh, crap.

I'm so grateful this was helpful.

Oh, it's such a generous, generous thing that you've done for me. Thank you so much, Kwame. I love listening to your podcast. It's just fabulous. I really am very grateful. Thank you. Are three or four things there that I'm going to act on really quickly.

Awesome. That is great to hear, Trish. Thanks for joining us. Really appreciate it.

Thank you for having me.

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