Designing Conversations for Negotiation with Daniel Stillman

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.

Daniel, thanks for joining us today.

Kwame, thanks for having me. I'm excited. It's. You're just fun to talk to, honestly. That's. That's the real truth of it.

Well, I appreciate it. See, now this is my opportunity to put you in the hot seat because I was on your great show and. Yeah. So let's take this opportunity to introduce. Introduce the listeners to who you are and what you do.

Yeah, Well, I like to say I design conversations for a living, and I generally insist that that's what everyone else does. Also, I mean, the types of conversations I enjoy designing. I coach leaders one on one, so I like designing those conversations for depth and effectiveness. And I also design workshops so that teams can learn new skills and apply them. And I also like to design bigger organizational conversations so that the new skills that a team learns actually get used and deliver results. So those are like the small, medium, and large conversations I particularly like to design. Well, yeah.

Well, again, you're being modest. You have to tell them about the book, too, and the podcast.

Yeah, I know. Okay, so maybe I need to hit my marks. So. Yeah, so I started a podcast about designing conversations. I guess like almost three years ago. I did my first interviews for it in 2016. I was working with the group in 2015 in Australia. This goes way back, but they called their facilitative practice conversation design. And I was very confronted by that. So I have a background in industrial design. I got a master's of industrial design at Pratt in New York. And industrial design has this view. Like, if you look around you, literally everything around you has been designed. Like your microphone, the picture frame, that bookcase, your jacket, the brush you were just using to touch up your beard. And like the food we eat, the houses we live in, the roads we drive on, the offices we work on. In all of those, everything we use has been designed. And as I've evolved in design, there's new ways of thinking about design that help us see with new eyes. So industrial design was like, oh, it's a physical object. And then there was interaction design, which was like, oh, actually it's not about the object, it's about the screen. And so he's like, oh, actually it's not about the screen, it's about the service it's connected to. So service design came up after for me. Interaction design, where people are like, no, it's about interactions. And somebody's like, no, it's a service, it's an experience of a product, is really, really just all of your favorite products or services that you experience over time. And so he's like, no, no, it's customer experience design. No, no, it's human centered design. So all these different ways of thinking about it. And so this group of non designers talked about their work as conversation design. I was like, well, what does that mean? Honestly? I was like, I know what an object and an experience. And when we do UX and user experience design, we try to break the problem down. We say, well, what are the pieces of the problem? So if we're designing for a customer, we design Personas and we do customer journey maps. And we try to use the tools of design thinking to be clear about the problem and to be clear about the solution. With conversations. Honestly, Kwame, I was like, well, what is a conversation? How do you design it? And so I actually sat down for three interviews, four interviews, but I asked them, like, what does conversation made of? What does the phrase conversation design mean to you? Like, what are the implications of it? And I don't know. The feedback was like, intriguing. And so it was just a bug in my brain. And so for me, I just kept exploring it and just being like, well, if we design conversations, and I think we do, what are they made of and what are the ways in which we can design them that are effective? And so, and I'll just give you an example of that. Today I was talking to somebody who I coach who's up for a job inside of her organization for a more impactful role. And so she has to go to the hiring lead who she knows very well. And it's this question of, like, she's tapped for it. It's one of two people internally who are interviewing for it. And it's like, well, if you want me for it, you'd know me a long time. Why aren't you just giving me the job? That's what she wants to ask. That's what she wants to know about. And this is the classic negotiator's dilemma. There's what you want to ask and what you want to know and the ways that you can ask it. And so she sort of started with like, well, we circled around and around and she's like, well, you know that I'm great for this job, which is why you've asked me to apply for it. Tell me more about why you think I'll be great for this job. I was like, well, that's a start there. That's a really interesting entry point into the conversation. And then you can go into the like, well, what are some gaps you see? Like, what are some things that you're not sure about? Or what are some things that I need to prove? And then let's go into, like, what are some. How would I grow in this job? And I was like, this is Rose Thorn Bud. Rose Thorn Bud is this classic conversation design framework that I learned about from the Boy Scouts of America. I used to work with this, literally an overgrown boy Scout who used Rose Thorn Bud. It's a check in tool. Rose is like something great from your day. A thorn is something painful or not great. Sorry. Rose is something great. A thorn is something painful, not great. And a bud is something that could become a rose that could develop or evolve into something beautiful. He used it to check in with his three daughters at the dinner table. Because, as you know, you have a kid, if you're like, how are your day? And they're like, fine. There comes a point where they don't really want to tell you, I use Rose Thorn Bud with my wife when we're on vacation. We do like a little stand up. I'm like, hey, let's do a Rose Thorn Bud of today. And it's one of these simple designs for the conversation of, like, well, positive, negative potential. And it's just. I love when you find a pattern that just. It's a design that works for everything, like, in so many contexts, like rose thorn bud. It's like once you start seeing it, you see it everywhere. Yeah.

Oh, this is crazy. This is really interesting, and I love the simplicity of this, but at the same time, the power behind it, too, because when it's simple and it's clear, then it leads to clear and consistent action and execution, which I appreciate. And I never thought about it in terms of conversational design. Yeah, I think that's a brilliant, brilliant concept. So we have rose Thorn. But again, can you hit those three points again? Just make sure we have it.

Yeah. Roses are rosy. They smell nice. So it's things that are positive. And look, I started with plus delta, just to give you an example. Like, plus delta is what I used to use to get people to reflect or do feedback. Pluses are something that are great. And deltas, there's no negatives. It's like you take a negative and you have to turn it into a delta. A delta is used in physics as the Greek symbol for change. I wrote an article about this recently. Getting people to reflect about the last year before they start to think about what they want to do differently with this year. What you reflect on will determine what you come out with. So my therapist and my coach were both like, oh, you should. And my wife all said, oh, if you're going to do a reflection on your last year, you should do a rose thorn bud for sure. But you should also do gratitude, like, just to really highlight what's something I'm grateful for. And it's kind of similar to rose, like, something that's positive, but the word matters. I think the word designs the conversation. So somebody said to me recently, like, oh, what if you do tragedies and gifts? She used this in a group. She was in tragedies and gifts. And those. You talk about designing a conversation that's like a different invitation into a different conversation. Rose, thorn, bud, something positive. Thorn something negative or painful. And bud, something that can grow into a rose.

This is cool. So why don't we just do a little role play here? Rose, Thorn, bud. And so let's say this is our. We're just. You're kind of breaking the ice. We're getting to know each other. And is this something that you would actually say, let's do rose thornbud or kind of guide the Conversation in that way, using that framework in your head.

Oh, my God. That is such an interesting question, Kwame. I want to. I want to pause on this, because I was just thinking about this question of, like, what's your theory of change? So when you're giving a group a new tool, do you say, okay, here's this new tool, and I'd like to use it, or do you just bake it into what you do so I can do rose thorn bud in my head? And you never know, right? It's like, hey, what's going on? Like, what's something that's lighting you up these days? You know, what's cracking for you? Like, what are you excited about? Like, you can say it in so many ways, and that's so much better than how's it going? How's it going in terms of designing conversations is like, one of the most lazy conversations because you're asking the other person to do all the work. Saying, like, hey, what's lighting you up these days? Is like. People go like, oh, well, what is lighting me up these days? Nothing. Okay, well, then, cool. Well, then, what's hard for you these days and what's on your mind? And they're like, this, this, and this. You're like, well, so if you're looking ahead, is there anything that's on the horizon that you're excited about that's like. And so it's just baking it in. But being explicit about it worked for me, especially, like, with my wife. And she'll listen to this. She had a job a couple years ago that was super stressful for her. And she would come home every day, and she would be like, here's everything terrible that happened with my day. And I'd be like, honey, what I'd like to do is I'd like for each of us to share one rose, one thorn, and one Buddha. And so that's about designing the conversation for equality. I was saying, hey, you're taking up a lot of airspace with all the negativity. And I could just be like, stop being negative. You're terrible person. But see, this is about. And I teach this when I teach groups facilitation. There's the push, and then there's the pull. So a push is like saying, you're doing this wrong. Fix it. And designing the conversation is just changing the parameters. So say, it's very hard to argue with. Like, yeah, of course we should both share one rose, one thorn, and one bud. That seems fair. And you can pass. You can say, I don't have any roses. Fine. Cool. Or oh, I've got two thorns. Cool. But there's a parameter and you're working against it.

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Right. Okay, so let's do it now. Let's do one where. Let's do it where you're. You are using it as your personal map, but you're using it on me. Just, I don't want to say with. Let's say with me. Using it with me during the conversation to make sure the conversation flows really quickly. Getting to know each other. So how would you start?

Oh, well, I mean, I don't know. What's a topic? Like, should we talk about podcasting or should we talk about family life? Or what's the thing that's most exciting for you about your podcast? Like, what's the thing that lights you up the most about it?

Well, right now it's the team. We have Maria Eaton, who's joined the team, Simone Perez, who's joined the team. And right now the fun thing is I get to talk to awesome folks like you. And that's all I have to do. I just. And as if by magic, everything just happens. So it allows me to produce content without stress. And now we're going to get to more episodes every week. I'm just really excited about that.

I'm so jelly. What's your biggest challenge with the show?

The biggest challenge is, I would say it would be consistent growth. And it's not to say that we are not growing, because we definitely are. So we're at about 34,000 downloads a week, which is great, but I'm really competitive, Daniel. So we've been on this slow growth path so constantly trying to think about ways that we can expedite that growth by adding more content, higher quality content. So that's a challenge that I really want to focus on this year.

So it's like you're almost kind of going into this what's something that's emerging? This is how I sometimes like to phrase the bud. Like, what's something that's emerging that you're excited to see come to fruition?

I would say it's the recognition that even though our bread and butter is negotiation trainings, that's the thing that brings in revenue. Recognizing and growing into the reality that we are a media company. First, we have the podcast, we have the YouTube page. We have a lot of activity on LinkedIn. And now we have the team and the capacity to grow in that in a way that I've always envisioned but never was able to do myself.

Yeah, that's so cool. And so I'm curious. So, to me, I started my professional career in design, interviewing people. And so this is why I think of having a spine that goes through the conversation. To me, I think about what you teach. Giving people mental models for negotiation. Having recipes is. Instead of just floating through space, you've got guardrails. You're like, oh, well, I'm just trying to find my Zopa. Before you even know that there's a term zone of possible agreement. You don't even know what you're doing. You just think you're haggling. And then you're like, wait a minute. And this is where I think a mental model can also change the conversation. Where you say, negotiation isn't about making agreements, it's finding agreements. It's not making deals, it's finding deals. And so that's another way I think you can redesign the conversation is just with a different metaphor. I had somebody on my podcast, Ian Altman, he wrote a book called Same side Sales. And he was like, look, some people think of sales as a game. You win, and we're on different sides. I'm trying to sell you, and nobody likes being sold. And this is a terrible metaphor. And so he's like, look, a puzzle is something we solve together by sitting on the same side of the table. And this is just what a negotiation is, too. We try to get on the same side, and we're like, well, what do we do with this orange? What is the best use of this orange? To use the classic William Murray story from getting to yes. And that's a different way of designing the conversation. It's a war or, oh, it's a puzzle. And that changes everything. I think once you change your mental image, it changes how you hold space for the conversation. I mean, like, that's so in my book, I wrote a book called Good Talk. I tried to get people To I tried to summarize everything I'd learned on the podcast for the last couple of years. And one of the ideas is, like, cadence, the temperature of the conversation. And I see this all the time with people. Like, my coach admits this. He's trying to learn not to step in, to create more spaciousness, to create more silence space for the other person. And I think until you start noticing there's some people don't even know that they interrupt people. And so once you start to see the temperature of a conversation, then you can start to try and design it. Some people like hot, hot conversations, and some people like cool conversations. And so I think there's preferences we have across these ways of being, and it's just good to know what our preferences are, what our conversational partners preferences are, and then hopefully find a place to work together in that space.

This is so cool. It's great. So let's list the things that I appreciate here. I appreciate, again, the simplicity. I appreciate the structure. I appreciate the fact that this is replicable in a variety of situations. And I appreciate the use of mental models. And it's funny, Daniel, because we're over 250 episodes in at this point. I think you're the first guest to use that term, mental models. And they're so powerful. And so for people who have not heard that term, can you give a definition that is broad, that encompasses everything mental models could potentially take on, and then more specific as how it applies here?

Organizing chaos, breaking the universe down into fundamental shapes smooths the way. It reduces cognitive load when you're thinking. And so just telling people, you know, there are three ways to think about this. That's a mental model, right? Zopa is a mental model. It takes the insane variety of the universe and says, here's what's going on. I literally just wrote an article about this. There's something called the Systems Thinking Iceberg. And the idea of the classic iceberg is like, there's something at the top and there's a bunch of stuff underneath it. And when anybody says, this is like an iceberg, it's a mental model, you're like, so this is what you see, and this is what's unseen. You're dividing the world into the seen and the unseen. And so now you have a picture, you have a model of what's happening now, what's really important. And I think this is important with negotiations. I certainly learned this from user experience design. My friend Indy Young wrote a book about mental models from a user experience design perspective. Because Our job as designers of objects and services is to understand what our customers mental models are. So when you make a new app or a new service and somebody looks at it and goes, what is this for? It doesn't fit with their mental model. And so this is, I think, what we're always trying to do when we're negotiating with somebody, when we're conversing with somebody, when we're trying to like, collaborate, we're trying to explore their mental models. Well, what do you mean when you say that? Like, when you think about this, what are the words you would use to describe it? And that's one of the reasons why one of my favorite ways to design a conversation is to get people to draw. Draw your solution. I'll draw my solution. Let's put a button on the wall and we'll talk about it so that I can literally see what you're talking about. But a mental model is taking the world and breaking it up into fundamental parts and putting them in relationship to each other in a way that makes you go, okay, I get it. There's a wonderful book called 50 Decision Making Models. Or I think it's a tiny. It's one of these. It's like a bathroom book, which is my favorite type of book. I aspired to write a book that was like, you could just. I don't know if this is crude, but it's like, you know, a book you can just pick up anytime and just flip through a couple of pages and get something out of it. The Decision Making Models book is like a mental model. For example, I'm working with a team and they're strapped for time to use these new tools. And I'm like, okay, well, here's the Eisenhower matrix. It sounds like you're familiar. It's like, what's urgent and what's important? And you're like, okay, so a lot of people have a to do list that's just a list. That's a very common mental model of like, I have some stuff to do and I'll put it on my to do list. That's a model, and it's one dimensional. The Eisenhower matrix is a different mental model. It says there's what's important and what's urgent. And then the mental model is which quadrant is number one and which one's number four. Obviously what's urgent and important is you do first, and what's not urgent and what's not important is you don't do. But then the next question becomes, what do you do next? What's important but not urgent or and the answer is you do what's important and not urgent or do you do what's urgent and not important? And these are the secrets of life. When somebody gives you one of those mental models, I think it can be life changing to be able to see the world in a new way. Mental models change how you think and how you think will change how you act forever.

Absolutely. It makes so much sense. And there, there's so much that I want to dig into here. For the sake of time, we have to move on, thus solidifying the fact that you will be back on the show. I mean, if for nothing else, just selfishly, because I want to keep on learning. This is great, but let's dig deeper into the inner and outer conversations. What does that mean?

You talked about this. I was just working on our show notes. So the idea of doing a rose thorn bud with someone else works for yourself. So, like, when I went off at the end of last year to do a reflection session with myself, I was like, well, let's look at the whole year. Like, what am I excited about? What worked? What didn't work? Like, what's on the horizon? Where do I feel the most energy? Like, I think what I've seen is that leaders make time to think. Taking time to think is important. And so I think negotiating with yourself is the same way. It follows the same pattern as negotiating with another person. And I think it's a weirdly profound thing. When I started my journey in designing conversations, I was not really that aware of my inner conversation. I wasn't that curious about it. But the idea that they were all related and that it was just as important, it actually changed how. So, like, I facilitate learning experiences and workshops for people, and it made me realize that I needed to give people more time to think their own thoughts. I think a lot of people think like, okay, yeah, let's talk about this. I'm like, sure, well, let's have a talk with ourselves first. What does everyone in the room think for yourself? So I'm going to set a two minute timer and I'm going to get everyone to just journal what they think about this challenge. What do they think is possible? What are your hopes and your fears and your dreams? What are your roses, thorns and buds? Whatever it is, and then let's share it out one at a time. That's like having the inner conversation making space. It deserves as much due as the outer conversation. I think it makes for better negotiations, it makes for better collaborative experiences. Anytime I'VE run a workshop and removed or shortened. It feels excruciatingly long for me. And so a minute goes up and I'm like, hey, everyone, that was just one minute. It's a muscle. So in the same way that we can learn how to negotiate with other people, I think we have to. It's a muscle to actually be. To journal, to be silent, to turn off the conversation.

It makes a lot of sense. And on the show we've talked a lot about the value of introspection.

Yeah.

What's really interesting to me is that you, in your trainings, in your facilitations, you are actually injecting time for introspection. And as somebody who does trainings regularly, I think that's. It's really, I think it's a really great idea, number one, and I think it takes a lot of bravery, number two as well. People are very uncomfortable with that silence.

It is.

And I think this goes back to mental models, like, so what you value, what you see is what you'll create more of. So it's like if you don't value introspection, if you don't even understand that it exists, you won't make space and time for it. But for me it's co. Equal. It's just as important as outer speech, if not more important. And so I give it its due. And so, I mean, so if that's your mental model, you create space for it. If it's not, you won't. And so that's. I think it's game changing to make sure that it gives. Gets its proper space.

Absolutely. And so I find it really interesting to do a bit of a callback here to what you were talking about when you were discussing the rhythm and tempo of a conversation. How some people feel more comfortable with silence than other people and how you have to feel that out when you are having that outer conversation. How do you go through that process of recognizing tempo?

Yeah. So it's much harder online because in person you can actually hear the room. So I know when a group starts talking and where the volume in the room raises to a certain level that it's time to move on to another topic. And so with online conversations, which is where obviously all conversations will be happening for a long time, I use visual boards, so we work visually like either in Google Slides or a tool like mural. And I can see people moving sticky notes around. And I'm measuring amount of activity so I know when things are. It goes in a curve. Everything just like every good story. There's a rising and falling arc of intensity. And I look at their conversation with the same arc where I'm like, okay, so I just put them in the room and they're kind of finding their way, and then they're moving stuff around, and then things are starting to slow down. And so that's where I start to see when it's time to bring them back and check in. That's how I'm measuring the temperature by, like. And this is, like, super nerdy, but my first degree was in physics. It's like temperature is actually almost like kinetic energy. It's like when gas particles are moving around in a vessel, they are actually pushing and moving and hitting the thermometer. That's the pressure that a gas creates. A group of people do the same thing. They're just moving around, they're talking and they're sharing ideas. And I have to have those sticky notes to sort of see the temperature, or I just have to do math. And I say, okay, they're in a breakout room and there's two people and four minutes per person. And just trust in the universe and say my Hail Marys.

This is great. I like it. And wow, it is 4:40 already. Okay. And so for the sake of time, we have to move on to the last point, which is facilitative leadership. And so tell us what that is and how it's beneficial to us as we move forward. Forward progress in our careers.

I was just watching somebody's presentation where they're pointing out the World Economic Forum, and there's tons of studies about this that'll say, like, what are the jobs of the future? And all of the jobs of the future are pretty much conversation jobs. They're meeting jobs. There's jobs where we are in meetings with each other, having conversations, solving weird, squishy, complex challenges. They are jobs that a computer can't do because computers will start doing more and more of the jobs that they can do. The future of work, I think, is in human conversation. Shaping human conversations is facilitation and leading those conversations. When a group of people come together and they need to make a decision, that's our job, is to shape the dialogue so that they make a good decision, to orchestrate meetings, to make sure the conversations that need to happen, need, need to happen. And this is my perspective. I feel like when you start to see the importance of the inner conversation, to honor and respect everyone's voice, this is table stakes now. I think you used to be able to do the command and control and bossing people around, jerk leadership, aggressive leadership. People can switch jobs. You won't get the best out of people by being abusive for long. You can get something out of people that way. And so I think facilitative leadership is a way of getting the best out of people, to really get the most out of everyone's creativity by honoring their humanity and by facilitating conversations that get people to great outcomes together that just think about like the best meeting, the best workshop you've ever been in. It was done on purpose. They shaped that conversation. They asked the right questions at the right time, they gave the conversation the right amount of space, they closed things off, they launched into the next conversation, they shaped the dialogue. Well, to me, that's the future of leadership is being able to shape conversations with yourself in the one on ones that you do. Being able to do in all hands. Being able to facilitate a workshop, a brainstorm that's conversational range is to be able to facilitate all of those conversations. I don't think you can just be like a chomp on a cigar and shout at people. Does that even exist? It probably does, but I just think it's dying, especially here in this digital space, being able to hold space for creative conversations, for forward thinking conversations, for difficult conversations, and to lead them to productive outcomes. To me, that's the skill of facilitation. Which is why I'm super passionate about when I say designing conversations, another way of saying that is leading conversations, facilitating conversations, directing them, shaping them. You could use whatever language you want, but it's like the future of work is in complex multi stakeholder human conversations and navigating them with intentionality. And that doesn't come for free. It's work.

Absolutely. It makes sense. And for the listeners who are interested in learning more about facilitative leadership, what would you say is the single greatest skill of somebody who is good at doing this?

In the conversation operating system, in my book, there's this idea of invitation. Invitation is what starts a conversation out. An invitation can be a push, it can be a shove, it can be a pull, it can be an outstretched hand asking a question that creates the conversation, that draws the circle that you want to create. That is without a doubt, the art of invitation is the ability to frame a question intentionally. That is what it is all about.

I love it. Thank you, Daniel. This has been fantastic. But before you go, let the listeners know again about your book, how they can get in touch with you and the podcast.

You're very kind. My podcast is called the Conversation Factory. It's a little personal joke I made with myself a few years ago, and I'm living with it because we manufacture conversations all the time, every day. I'd love to have people poke in on that. Listen to Kwame's episode. It's coming out soon. My book is called Good how to Design Conversations that Matter. If they head over to theconversationfactory.com, they can download some free chapters, they can download a whole bunch of worksheets from the book, and I have a whole bunch of other resources there as well. So those are. Those are the. That's the place to go. The conversationfactory.com to learn about the book and the podcast.

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