Enhancing Negotiations: Unpacking Emotion Science with Mike Macchiarelli

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. Mike, thank you for joining us again, my friend.

My pleasure. Thanks so much for having me back, Kwame.

Yeah, no, it's great and I we are long overdue for having you back on the show. So actually this will be great because your bio has changed. So tell the listeners a little bit about yourself and what you do. Sure.

I am the Chief Revenue Officer for KO Advantage Group. We are based out of Calgary, Alberta, Canada. Founded by Kim Orlesky, we help small medium sized businesses and entrepreneurs win more high value clients. Previous to that, when I was on your podcast the first time around, I was a regional Sales manager at Equinox Fitness and that is a global luxury lifestyle fitness brand most known for their fitness clubs. There is one hotel in New York City and really why I'm here actually is I started a blog in 2019 titled SavingFace blog where I write about the psychology of sales, negotiation and leadership.

This is great. And everybody listen. Mike is a very humble guy, so let me brag a bit for him. I was just telling him before we started the episode that a lot of people send me a lot of different articles on negotiation and conflict resolution. I Prefer reading books. That's my favorite way of learning. And usually if a friend or family member sends me an article, it's one of many that I've gotten, and I just say thanks and like it and then move on. I usually don't read it, but whenever I see Mike has written a blog, I always read that blog. And so we're going to put a link in the description below so you can check out the blog. Fantastic work. And that's really what brought you back here. So tell the listeners about the article that you wrote on emotional intelligence.

Yeah, so interestingly, a lot of the articles are kind of a snapshot of what I'm studying at the time, what fascinates me. And a lot of that comes from the books that I do read, the articles that I do read. There's a lot of. You start to see a lot of common themes, and then, you know, sometimes things resonate with me where I'm like, all right, well, that's talked about a lot. But this other thing isn't really. And I wonder why. One of those things was emotional intelligence. And I felt as though. And maybe it's just my experience, but I felt as though when you read about emotional intelligence or you see the conversations on social media about it, they're very much. I feel like they kind of fall into this other conversation that turns into either activist listening or empathy. And both of those are really, really important. And they're great topics. But at a certain point, I want to just know more about emotions themselves. And if I'm going to. If we're going to try to be better, active listeners, we're going to try to be more empathetic, then how do we actually identify these emotions as they're happening? Can we improve our emotional literacy, so to speak? And if we were going to do that, how do we do that? And I also found it very important going through the changes that you spoke about over the past year, because I switched over from B2C sales and to B2B selling and negotiating. And as much as there are some differences, I found a lot of commonality in regarding how much emotion comes into play. And the other thing is, now we're meeting like this, we're meeting virtually so much more often, and we're not able to have so much of that natural, I guess, perception of the emotional temperature in the room. So I feel as if we're gonna, you know, continue to elevate our game in these areas. We're gonna have to become even smarter about what emotion looks like. And how manifests itself throughout the process.

This is fantastic. And I really love the term that you used, emotional literacy. And the. Our emotional literacy is going to have an impact on the way that we perceive the world. I can't remember which book I was talking about, but different people see colors differently. For example, the way that I see colors is going to be different from the way that an artist sees colors. So if I'm trying to describe something as blue, I have about three different versions. Light blue, navy, just regular blue. That now you see, I'm already out. But an artist might be able to have like 10 or so words for the different types of blues. And so they would be able to identify those different blues more accurately. And so the same thing is going to hold true when it comes to our emotional literacy and our ability to identify and describe the emotions in front of us, both for ourselves and for the person on the other side. So I really like that term.

Yeah. And very similar to what you're saying.

Right.

Like, this can be very much a matter of perception. There can be so many different shades, and it can become very complicated. Which is definitely what is something that I found out in my research is that emotions are very much in the eye of the beholder and very much up for interpretation. And sometimes that gets very hazy. What I found interesting is that there are four basic primary emotions, similar to primary colors, Similar to the fact that all of music, or at least western music, is comprised of four notes, which always amazed me when I found that out as a musician. So, you know, that's what makes emotions interesting to me, is that we can condense it and simplify it. Now, of course, that's not going to fit every situation, but I think there's a great power in at least having a starting place.

Absolutely. So let's cover these primary emotions. Sure.

Absolutely. Okay. So the primary emotions that most social scientists, biologists, neuroscientists, universally agree exist are fear, anger, sadness, and happiness. And the interesting one, interesting thing that jumps out at me is about three fourths of those are negative emotions. So that in itself, I feel like, is a great lesson for us to pay heed as we are going through our negotiations or just our everyday interactions.

Absolutely. And so when we think about these emotions, what impact do they have on the outcomes that. That we see during these negotiations?

Yeah, I mean, ultimately, I think they have a tremendous impact. I think every. I mean, in terms of decision making along the way throughout the negotiation and in terms of the final outcome of the negotiation, those are very much Driven by at least one of these four primary emotions. Many times it's fear. And there's kind of a core corolli, like a corollary, a side parallel to these and those. And that is there's two basic social emotions. And those two basic social emotions, which is very related to actually the concept of saving face that we talked about last time, are pride and shame or embarrassment.

Oh, that's fascinating. Okay, so we have the. We have the four core emotions, fear, anger, happiness, sadness. And then we have social emotions, which are pride and shame. And now what is the value of being able to distinguish between those four core emotions and those two social emotions?

Yeah, so, I mean, it's great to know that when other people are involved, that this, this kind of factor of pride or this factor of avoiding shame or embarrassment is, Is always going to be in play. And a lot of time the fear, that is the quote unquote, maybe the primary emotion in the situation is the fear of embarrassment or the fear of shame or looking incompetent. So that's. They kind of come into play interestingly together in that sense.

This is fascinating. Okay, so everybody, I want you to focus in on this point. Mike said, he did not say that these are going to sometimes play a role. You said always play a role. And I think that's really fascinating when we think about it in terms of emotional intelligence and improving our emotional intelligence. Because if we say it might play a role, then it doesn't really cause us to look for it every single time. But now that we understand, hey, these two social emotions, pride and shame, they will always play a role in these interactions. Now when we're going through our essentially emotional checklist or an empathy checklist, we can say, all right, pride and shame, those two things are going to play a role. How are they impacting our interaction today? I think that's really fascinating.

Yeah. And absolutely that's as how you just described it, is exactly how I would recommend using it in a negotiation. And during a negotiation, use it as a checklist, have it on a whiteboard. These four primary emotions, these two social emotions. Okay, knowing that these factors are in place somewhat, how are they impacting the negotiation? Let's say we're sending contracts back and forth and the other side requests a change to the contract. Okay, what's sparking that? What is their fear? What is their concern? And who's maybe looking to avoid some type of shameful or embarrassing outcome due to this change?

This is fascinating. Okay, so let's say we recognize that one of these emotions, or it's probably multiple emotions are at play now. What do we do if we recognize that this is serving as an emotional barrier to our progress in these conversations?

Yeah, I mean, I think it comes down to understanding, okay, here's the emotion at play. We need to address it, we need to kind of wrangle it. We need to neutralize it in a sense, or at least make it not become so intense that now it becomes a deterrent, which, you know, there's kind of, it goes into, touches into motivation now. Right. There's the main forces of motivation approach forces and avoid forces. Obviously we want to avoid. We want to avoid avoid forces. So I think it comes down to, okay, we understand there's some concern here, there's some fear. How can we now propose something, a next step or a different alternative that addresses that fear but also still meets our needs of what we need for that next step or for to match in terms of the concessions. So I think it's again, understanding, all right, what is the emotion? And sometimes it's not always negative. Sometimes it's like, how can we engender more happiness, satisfaction or pride in the outcome of this negotiation for the other side? What does that look like for them? Obviously, everyone wants to appear victorious. Everyone wants to appear as though they're winning or at least won something. Right. You have to give people. I know there's a lot of pushback on this idea of win win negotiations. And yes, in a perfect world, it's not going to be equally win win for everyone, but you'll be very hard pressed to complete a negotiation where the other side isn't winning. At least something.

Hello, my friends. Before we get back to today's episode, I want to ask you a question. Have you ever wondered how to elevate your team's negotiation game and how you can help the folks on your team have better difficult conversations? At the American Negotiation Institute, we offer transformative keynotes and workshops tailored to empower professionals with top tier negotiation and conflict resolution skills. Whether it's a keynote for your next event or hands on training for your team, we've got you covered. Don't just negotiate. Master the art with the American Negotiation Institute. Click the link in the description to find out more. Elevate, negotiate and succeed. Absolutely. This is great. And so again, we're deepening our understanding here of emotional intelligence by understanding on a deeper level emotions themselves and the different kinds of emotions that are at play. We have the primary emotions, we have the social emotions, those type of things that's really important. And so now we have a deeper level of emotional literacy, so we can be better at this. And I think one of the things that's, that was most interesting about what you just said is the reality that there's a lot of focus on the negative emotions. There's, we're always focusing on that. When, whenever I do negotiation trainings, that's something that comes up in our surveys saying I need to understand how to overcome negative emotions. But people often overlook the flip side of it. How do I create some positivity here? And for me, coming out of psychology, yes, I'm a practicing attorney, but my undergrad is in psychology. There is so much literature dedicated to the negative emotions. There's so much literature dedicated towards pathology that we don't take the time to study happiness and all the positive things. And so when you are in these negotiations, your difficult conversations, what are some things that you do to strategically inject a little bit of positivity to make it easier for the other person to engage?

Yeah, I mean, so a lot of that is like climate and is like the tone of the conversation. Right. We don't want to have things being always so serious and getting people in like that kind of negative state that downstate when people are laughing, when the people are happy, when there's jokes are being made. You know, essentially it kind of sparks creativity of the mind. And that's what we need to create these alternative solutions that are going to work for both parties. You know, scientists have looked at this and negative emotions that the one of the downsides to them is the fact that they do restrict creativity and cognitive function, whereas happiness and positive emotions actually enhance creativity and positive emotion. So we do want things like to have a friendly relationship. We do want to have that rapport, that banter in the negotiation as much as we possibly can. That is one thing. The other thing is thinking about, okay, what would be how can we maybe turn this, negotiate this negative emotion into something positive? Which at first sounds really kind of out there and counter intuitive. But when you study emotion science, something that you find is actually negotiation. I mean, emotions are very actually similar in what they look like and how they're expressed and how they happen biologically in the body. Meaning. A lot of times it's hard to distinguish between fear and excitement. A lot of times it could be hard to distinguish between happiness and sadness. We cry tears of joy and we cry tears of sadness. Something to consider when we are thinking about the emotions is if this situation is very emotionally charged in a negative way, it should also have the opportunity to somehow become very emotionally charged in a positive way.

This is great. This is really great, Mike. And in psychology, when people are overcoming phobias, one of the things that they talk about is cognitive reappraisal. And so, like you said, a lot of times, the outward manifestation of our emotional state is difficult to ascertain because it looks so similar. And so what they say is you can reappraise that emotion in your own mind. So if you have stage fright, you can tell yourself, I'm not afraid. I'm excited, because this is an opportunity. And so what I've been able to do is kind of subtly walk people to. Through that process, because if somebody is in front of me crying because of this situation is so horrible, of course I would acknowledge the emotion that I see. I know this. This hurts you. This is a serious situation. But then I'll start to walk it to a little bit more of a positive interpretation by saying, mike, it would. It would be weird if you weren't crying right now, honestly, because you care about and you care about this because of this. These three reasons, reflecting back their understanding. And they're like, right, I do care. Now it's passion. Now they feel a little bit more positive about their emotional state. And so I really. I really like that because, again, most people don't think of it that way. But here you, with your work and the fantastic blog, also known as the Saving Face blog link in the description. All right, you're helping people to understand that there is an opportunity behind all of these emotions that can be very scary and intimidating up front.

Awesome. Love. I love everything you just said. That is the reappraisal I'm gonna have to look more into. That's phenomenal.

Thank you. Yeah. And so for the people out there who are saying, I do not have any time to deal with this emotion, it's about the numbers. It's about money. Let's get it done. What do you say to those people when it comes to emotional intelligence?

Yeah, you know what? So I almost want to put out a disclaimer before I say this, but you don't actually have to care about someone's feelings to understand them to create a better outcome and a faster outcome for yourself in a negotiation. It's. You know what? The way I would recommend it is think about it and analyze it the same way you would think about and analyze power. If you're thinking about power and alternatives in a negotiation, you know that's going to be a very Neutral. You're going to have a very neutral perception of that. Look at emotions the same way. Don't think of it as being, like, touchy feely or you need to be their friend. You need to be their counselor. Think of it the same way you would think about those other strategic factors. Think of it as a strategic factor that will help you get a better outcome and maybe even a faster outcome. Because the great thing about emotions is emotions move people. And a lot of times in negotiations, negotiations slow down, negotiations get stalled, or how can we make those go faster? Your answer might be emotional.

Yeah. And I know that's hard for a lot of people to accept because they don't want that to be true. Right. Essentially, it's confirmation bias. I don't want that to be true. So I reject it. Not because of the facts that you provided, because those facts are solid, Mike. I just don't want to do that. And that's the case too, for me, to be completely honest. So I just did a strengths finder assessment, and for people who have been listening to the podcast, they're probably saying, well, finally you've been saying you were going to do that for years. So I finally did it. And so they map your strengths from 1 to 34. And number one for me was competition. And then seven out of the top ten were strategy. And I thought that was really interesting, and most of my friends thought it was interesting, too. And I said, to me, it makes sense. I'm really obsessed with strategy because it is the best way to win competition. Right. Number 34. What was number 34? To me, that was actually empathy. It was empathy. Empathy isn't something that comes naturally to me, but I understand that it is the best strategy to help me win in this interaction. And so I think a lot of times people think about empathy like a. Like a feeling. I'm kind of being a soft, nice person, and that's why I empathize. But I think Chris Voss was the person who made empathy sound cool when he talked about tactical empathy. Right. And so if you find yourself being that person who says, I don't care about the weather, I don't care about their family, I don't care about how they're feeling right now. Just recognize you need to care about emotions if you care about being successful.

Absolutely. Yeah. Couldn't agree with you more. And it can't be said enough very much to how Chris Voss describes it. Empathy is not sympathy. You know, hostage negotiators use empathy to get, you know, criminals to surrender. They don't use empathy. You know, they're not agreeing with the hostage taker. They're. They're using it as a vehicle and as a means to create the outcome that is much needed.

Absolutely. And here's the thing that is a little bit counterintuitive. It's one of those things where they say, slow is fast, slow is fast. If we try to rush through it, get straight to the numbers, get it done, now, you're going to run right into that resistance and potentially make it worse. Because a lot of times if somebody is experiencing emotional distress and it seems like the other person doesn't care or realize it, what their amygdala says is, huh, they didn't hear me the first time. So let me go ahead and ramp this emotion up a little bit more. And it makes it even more difficult for us to get to the process. It ends up taking more time, and the process is a lot less enjoyable for you and the other person. And if you invest a little bit of time in addressing their emotional distress upfront, it makes it a lot smoother and more efficient down the road.

Yeah, I mean, absolutely. It's going to speed things up. It really is. You don't want the emotions to become entrenched. You don't want them to grow because it could become a thicket that becomes very hard to get out of. But very much like you said, if you can address it, I heard one person say, name it, to tame it. If you can tame it as fast as possible, then you can move on maybe to the more logical conversations and to, again, facilitating an outcome that's going to be in the best interest of your time, your energy, your resources.

Absolutely. And let's say there's somebody out here who's saying, all right, I never thought about emotions in this way. What would be the best way for them to start to improve their emotional intelligence?

Yeah, so, absolutely. I mean, so in one, I'm a big proponent of, you know, not only using these skills externally, like when I'm formally negotiating, because then it's actually limited. Bring these skills into your own everyday life. Start to analyze yourself, start to be mindful of how am I feeling? And which. Which of the four primary emotions am I. Am I feeling right now? Or maybe is it some mixture you can, you know, if you, whoever you live with, your family, you know, observe a little bit, start to gauge now when you have convers, maybe when there is that inevitable spark or argument or fight, like, what was really going on there, which one of the four. And that's what I love about condensing it down to four. Because if you look at multifaceted every single emotion that people name or talk about, I think there's upwards of 100. But if we can just now start with these four primary it makes it so much easier to understand what's going on because the rest of the 96 of those hundred are just a different version of the one of the four or multiple of the four combined.

That's fantastic. Now Mike, I really appreciate this. This is really helpful. I know other the listeners are going to get a lot out of this because I know that I did in this conversation. So I appreciate that. And before you go, let the listeners know again about the blog and how they can work with you and your team at KO Advantage, please.

Yes. So you can visit the blog at SavingFace blog. It's as simple as that. You can connect with me on LinkedIn. That's the platform I'm most active on. I am on clubhouse ikemacmac, I am on Twitter. But LinkedIn is the best place to find me. And you can find links to KO Advantage Group. We are most known for our sales training platform kayosalesu and it is business to business virtual sales training for winning more high value clients.

Fantastic, Mike. Thank you again my friend. Really appreciate it.

Thank you so much. Kwame. It was great to be back. Thank you so much.

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