Exploring Conflict Resilience: A New Approach to Negotiating and Mediation with Bob Bordone

Hey, I'm Kwame Christian, and you are about to step into the world of Negotiate Anything, the number one negotiation podcast in the world, where we teach you how to make difficult conversations easier while getting more of what you want in the process. Each episode is packed with practical tips and strategies from the experts. We delve into negotiation, conflict resolution, and leadership skills that are crucial in both business and and in life. Whether you're closing a deal, managing a team, or navigating personal relationships, Negotiate Anything provides you with the tools you need to succeed. Our conversations are real, relatable, and most importantly, rooted in practicality. So if you're ready to transform your conversations and elevate your negotiation skills, join me on Negotiate Anything. Subscribe and listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you love to listen. Let's make every conversation a winning negotiation. Bob, thanks for joining us today.

Kwame, thanks for inviting me. It's a real honor to be here. One of my favorite podcasts. Thank you.

That means a lot to me. I really appreciate it and we are excited to have you on the show, my friend. So how would you get us started? By telling us a little bit about yourself and what you do.

Yeah. So I spent my entire professional career in the world of negotiation and conflict resolution and mediation. Currently, I am a senior fellow at Harvard Law School and also founded a small negotiation consulting company called the Cambridge Negotiation Institute. I actually spent 21 years on the faculty at Harvard Law School, where I founded the school's negotiation and mediation clinical program, taught negotiation workshop classes on facilitation. I still do some law school teaching at Georgetown, but most of my work now is advisory, both consulting and coaching around conflict resilience and difficult conversations and negotiation, executive training, and then some mediation as well, and some writing. And I have a YouTube channel. So it's a fun blend of many things, but all related to the world. Negotiation and mediation and conflict resolution.

I love this. This is perfect. And listeners, you can tell Bob is well schooled, extremely experienced, well respected in the industry. And so we have a legend in our midst today. This is really exciting and I actually want to focus in on for a moment on one of the terms that you used because you just put two words together that have never been said in over 1300 episodes of negotiate Anything. And that is conflict resilience. Let's go into that.

Yeah. Well, thank you. This is. This is been my real focus over, honestly, the past, I would say eight or nine years. And more specifically in the writing of this book that's coming out in March in the last three years. So, yeah, what is conflict resilience? And is it just some kind of newfangled thing or is it different? I want to say it's something that's really different from conflict resolution or conflict management, although adjacent to it. So by conflict resilience, what we really mean is the capacity to sit with the discomfort of our differences with each other, meaning a combination of two skill sets that we talk a lot about in our field. Right. One is deep, active listening, and the second is effective assertiveness. But what's different about conflict resilience is that it is really a mindset. It's a broader capacity to be willing to enter into the uncomfortable places and sit there. And it is, I would just say, prerequisite to either doing conflict resolution or negotiating, because you can have a lot of skills, but if you are unable or unwilling to enter into highly uncomfortable places and speak with a degree of authenticity and listen from a place of generosity, then you're not really using the skills and you can't resolve and you can't negotiate. So I don't know if that's helpful.

It's extremely helpful and extremely necessary in the industry, too, because. And you know this better than anybody else because you were. You're schooled by the greats from Harvard here, too, because it's cool to see the history of negotiation and the evolution of negotiation and I think the godfathers of modern negotiation. We have to give it to Yuri and Fisher with getting to. Yes. And now we've started to build up on collaborative negotiation just as a methodology, but also started to deepen our skill set collectively as global people trying to negotiate more effectively. But now we are shifting to a point where, yes, we recognize, recognize skills are very important, but now we're recognizing that there are some more intangible aspects or attributes of the negotiator that are necessary foundations for those skills. And we really need to focus on those things because, like you said, you can have all the skills in the world, but if you don't have the conflict resilience to sit in that tension and discomfort, then you won't have the opportunity to utilize those skills when it matters most.

Amen. You know, it's interesting, Kwame, because I think where the first kind of seeds of this work came for me was actually teaching at Harvard Law School and observations that I noticed of a real change in the way the students both in my classes, in the school more broadly, were handling differences. And I could just say a few words about that, just for context. So I would say this started circa 2014, 2015, at least in a way that I noticed it. And by way of background, I was also on the admissions committee at the time. So I knew that we as a school worked very hard and I think successful in bringing together a really diverse set of people from across the country and the world to study law. And when I say diverse, I mean in all the ways you can imagine diversity, including political background and interests. Right. And ways of thinking about the law. But what I started to notice is despite that hard work, classrooms seem kind of boring. People weren't speaking. But then if you could get them into a room, like a small number of like minded people in the room, you'd be like, oh yeah, these are really conservative people. Or oh yeah, these people are quite progressive. Like not just a little left of center, they're quite progressive. And so what I started to realize is that, and I think this is more than just in the conflict world, but in the world in general. Most of us, we don't like discomfort, but particularly around conflict, it has become much easier to check out and avoid, right? I mean, obviously social media is a big example of that. But even in the classroom, right? Whether it's trigger warnings and the cost of speaking was much higher, right? You say the wrong thing, you're going to be on an anonymous blog. And so the better thing was to keep your mouth shut. But that to me was deeply, deeply troubling. Because part of what I think has caused our polarization, right, Part of the reason why we see, I think, more and more demonization and dehumanization is when we're not talking to each other, even if we're disagreeing, we get very thin stories about what people like them are like. And the thinner those stories, the more cartoon character ish it gets, the more they get dehumanized, right? And so that's where I kind of started to think about this idea of conflict resilience. Because I was like, I'm in a classroom teaching difficult conversations. They could kind of do it in a simulation, but in real life, not so much. So that's kind of where it came from, I would say, at least when I first started writing about this.

Incredible. And I've seen that too in classrooms and communities, everything. And for me, one of the things that pushes me and the team to try to spread the word as much as possible is we believe that conflict, our inability to resolve conflict, is the greatest threat to humanity. And when you think about every single challenge that we have, whether it's global warming, whether it's trade policies, immigration, whatever it happens to be, there are some significant, difficult conversations that need to be had that are not being had in a healthy, productive type of way. And I think what we're seeing that. We're seeing that lack of conflict resilience in individuals, but we're seeing it on a large scale within our population. And I think that's what is continuing to perpetuate the polarization. Because part of the polarizing news and messaging that we're getting is not just about, hey, those people are bad, whoever they happen to be, but also you are bad if you humanize them, too. You cannot tolerate. You cannot tolerate any idea that is at all different from what it is that you have. And so it's a very interesting blend between a lack of conflict resilience and then also really weaponized tribalism where there's a social penalty not only for speaking out in a way that people might not like, but also crossing enemy lines and empathizing with the enemy as well.

Yeah, I mean, Kwame, I couldn't agree with you more. Right. The act of speaking across with the other side ends up being perceived as betrayal.

Right.

And that's really, really, really scary. And I think what. What is one of the things. I mean, I'm so glad you brought this up, because one of the other shifts that I saw was that the more we think the other side is out there, whatever that means right there, the less we think there's any common ground, and the less we think there's common ground, the even more we like, why bother? Right? But I think part of what. Part of what I think we need to think about with conflict resilience is even if there is little, if any, common ground, which I think most of the time we'll find some. But let's pretend, let's pause it for our argument that we're not going to come with any common ground even there, the act of sitting across the table with that discomfort has some benefits. But if we can't. And those benefits are like increases in empathy, reduction of demonization, ability to work on other issues. But one of the things, and this is what has been really fun about this project for me, the book project, is that, you know, I ended up writing this book with a guy who's a brain scientist. He's a neuroscientist at Nyu Yi Langone. And one of the things that is really interesting is, you know, our brains from, like, a Darwinian perspective will move immediately to the place of easiest comfort that's what we're designed to do to protect ourselves. And in any given moment, avoidance serves that really well. So the way to get around that, and there's research on this, is you have to present something called the, what we call the bbo, the bigger, better offer. So if you don't see if, like, it's one thing, right, Kwame, if you and I are working on a problem and we think, gosh, you're thinking, I don't think I'm going to have much in common with Bob. But like, ultimately we're going to have to agree on how we're going to get the bridge across the river. You'll, you'll probably do it. It's not fun, right? But if you think we're net, like there's nothing we're going to agree upon, what is the bigger, better offer for you? The bigger, better offer is to go do something else. And so we need to retrain our brains that there is a bigger, better offer there, and that is stopping the unfraying that not only we see in our country, but, I mean, I don't know if you've had this experience, Kwame, but like in families, in friendships, I mean, I spend a lot of my time, like counseling just friends on, like, how am I going to make it through Thanksgiving? Or. And that's for reals. Like, it's not, it's not like a little bit. It's like, not like, you know, my uncle might say two or three offensive things. It's like, I don't know if I should go. Yeah.

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Right.

And so when we think about the bigger, better offer, we recognize that there is an element of metacognitive self negotiation that needs to happen where we need to become somewhat skeptical of the messages that our emotions are sending because the emotions will carry messages. Not all of them are very high in legitimacy. Right. A lot of times they're signals to let us know what we care about and why we care about that they are very helpful in terms of understanding ourselves. But we get to a very, very dangerous place where we think every thought is a truth and we say, okay, cool, if I feel it, that is what it is. And I'm not going to explore that any further.

Yeah. And I think, you know, one of the things that the brain does, right. It's really good at moving us to short term protection. And there's no doubt that in that short term moment that, that what are, you know, we talk about five Fs, fight, flight, freeze, fawn or fester. And like that response is, could be helpful in the moment. But in fact, right. There are, there are hacks that we can do to have us take a pause. And when we take that pause and guy named Matt Lieberman, who you may have had on the show, but if not, he's a great guy to have on your show at some point. But he talks about, he's at ucla. He's not really a negotiation person. He does brain science. Right. But one of the things his research is about, he talks about affect of labeling, that in that moment, when our. My co author calls this limbic irritability when we're like super emotional and we're going to one of those five Fs, if we can just actually pause and name for ourselves what we're feeling, that's the affect of labeling. It reduces the amount of time it takes for that amygdala, the emotional center, to return to kind of the frontal lobe. The more kind of cognitive part of our mind that allows us to think in a little bit long term, if we can do some of that work, which we can do actually, I mean, we know we could do this, right. It takes a little bit of effort. It's going to make us better at sitting at the table and doing the kinds of skills that in our field we talk a lot about. But that Work is people need to see it as worthwhile. But one of the things I always say is people think conflict is a threat to a relationship. And it can be. But actually conflict is a means of connection. Because if you and I are friends and I'm constantly saying yes to this and yes to that and yes to that, and then I finally say, no, I don't think that would be fun, or I don't agree with you, that's the moment where all of the other yeses have meaning. And if we can work through that, not necessarily that my no becomes a yes, but just work through the fact that we are not seeing eye to eye, that's a way of more authenticity. And so that piece, I think people have to feel persuaded of. And I think it's really hard to do in. I mean, in general, in our lives, but particular in a polarized moment where whether you say Kwame, where our own people are saying, you've betrayed us, there's no guarantee the other side's going to be a partner. And I could literally pick up my phone and have my people and not a deal with your people at all. Right, Right. And so part of it also, I think is really doing the work to realize the consequence of what happens if we don't. You know, I give these talks and a lot of times people say, well, you know, I don't want to get into it with my sister because I just don't want the relationship to go south. And I'm super empathetic to that. Right. I really am. But the avoidance in service of preserving the relationship is just a slow kill on the relationship. Because if the only thing we ever talk about is how good the apple pie is, you're kind of boring to me. And at some point I'm like, gosh, I gotta go feed the dog. Happy Thanksgiving. Right? I leave earlier, and at some point, especially after maybe Grandma and grandpa die, I'm like, oh, things are so busy, we're gonna stay in Seattle this year. And the relationship in the end ends up either non existent or thin. So doing the work now, as hard as that is, I think if you really want to stay in relationship is in service of that. And I think that at a familial level, at a friendship level, in organizations, and then certainly at a political level, I agree 100%.

And this reminds me of a quote. So it's. Sometimes we meet our fate on the path we take to avoid it. And that, of course, is from Kung Fu Panda.

The wisdom of Kung Fu Panda. But it's true, right?

It's so true. So we try to maintain the relationship by avoiding these tough conversations. And by avoiding the tough conversations, we destroy the relationship. And it's very counterintuitive. And if you really want to recognize how to perform well in difficult conversations and how to perform well in life, we have to recognize that there's a difference in approach when we are focusing on the long term versus the short term. When we focus on the short term, we make these emotionally based decisions that feel good in the moment, that keep us in comfort, and then we recognize down the road that it causes significant problems. And so people are listening to this, they're saying, okay, cool, I'm getting it. We need some conflict resilience. So if we're trying to operationalize this, if we're saying, yeah, I can recognize that I'm struggling when it comes to sitting in this discomfort, what would be the first step?

Yes. So great question. This is. It's funny because, you know, people have been asking me about my book and I'm trying to make it seem like it's really important. You got to read it. And then what I realize is that people are going to buy this book because they have somebody else in mind. And the first third of this book is all about yourself. Because I think the first step is really doing a self audit. And what I mean by that, what we mean by that is often, I think what makes us not so conflict resilient across a proverbial negotiation table is that we have lots of internal conflicts ourselves. On the one hand, I want to raise this with you. On the other hand, I don't. On the one hand this is important. On the other hand, you might get offended. There's a side of me that wants to fill in the blank, tell my, you know, parents that I want to be an archaeologist. There's another side of me that feels like they really want me to be a lawyer and I ought to do that. And those cells also get coded as selfish or generous or good or bad. So the first piece I think is taking a real step back and self audit of what are these different sides of ourselves? This ambivalence, how do we give each of those sides or that ambivalence a place at the negotiation table without weighing them down with judgment or this is selfish or this is bad, or her needs are more important than mine. Right. Just do that work. So, and we kind of break that into this first part of our book is what we call name, right? And we kind of break it into what we call mirror work, which is trying to just get these accurate kind of sides of ourselves that aren't distorted with the evaluation piece. And then what we call chair work, which is, what would it be? And when I say chair work, it's because when I. When I do coaching. Right. Kwame actually, like, will say to people, let's. Okay, you identified three sides of yourself. I'm going to put three chairs, physically chairs, and you're going to have a conversation back and forth with the three sides. I want to hear them talk to each other. I want to notice whether one chair shuts down the other chair or always wins the day. Because ultimately, I want each of those three voices in the room, or whatever it is, five voices or two voices, because that's often the opening. So what we would call the table work. There's a side of me that feels like it's really important to raise this heart issue with you. There's another side of me that's really worried that it'll go poorly and one or both of us will get hurt. And there's a side of me that feels like it's a little bit selfish to bring it up. And yet I think it's important to do right. That's the way in. And there's something about the authenticity. I don't know how you would react to this, Kwame, but I think we would say it has this unique blend of being both quite assertive and confident and also vulnerable at the same time, which is quite inviting.

This is brilliant, Bob. This is great because, oh, man, I love this a lot. Because what you've done is you've taken something that can be really ephemeral or nebulous or theoretical and made it tangible. So you've taken that internal dialogue that needs to occur and made it somewhat real and physical, which makes it easier for it to happen. And I was thinking to myself, if I were in a position where I was trying to have this table work here, I would say, I don't want to do that. That's cheesy. And then I thought to myself, I said, no, it's not cheesy. It's not. That is the deflection that I created to avoid the discomfort that will occur when. When the two parts of myself are at war. Because I'm thinking about, even in my own personal life, it is the recovering people pleaser side of me. And then it is the assertive business person. It is the strong family man and the person who sometimes just wants to sit down and relax. Bob. Sometimes I get Tired.

Amen.

And so now I have to have this conversation where it's like, hey, I want everybody to like me. But, hey, you have a business to run. Hey, you have to protect your family. Hey, hey, everybody. I'm tired. I am tired. I don't want to do any of this. Can we just do this tomorrow? Right? And then the various sides of us have to work that out. And I think a lot of times what would happen is that we're recognizing that we're going to be confronted with elements of ourself that we never wanted to fully appreciate or respect. Elements of that are of ourselves that we have hidden from other people and ourselves for so long. Because a lot of the conversations that we are afraid of are really just external manifestations of the difficult conversations that we haven't resolved within ourselves.

You have nailed it. That is exactly right. You know, and just in my career, I've been very fortunate. I mean, you know, my background is in law. I mean, I. My involvement in all this material was from the great people you mentioned. Bill Urie, Bruce Patton, Roger Fisher. But along the way, I was very lucky to start to do some work with people who do internal family systems, ifs. And I got to tell you, IFS has a lot to offer conflict negotiators because a lot of this naming of the selves piece becomes so relevant in terms of our own ability once we're at the table to stick with it. Because if. Just to use like, you know, little example you gave Kwame, right. If. If there's a piece of you that feels like you're a people pleaser, and that's the side that usually drowns out the other side. And now you're in the room and somebody does something that suggests you. You disappointed them, the people pleaser voice gets really loud because that's what it's used to doing, and out you go. Right? But if you've done the homework, you could say, you know, there's a side of me that wants to just say yes and run, but I also know there's three other sides of me that will be disappointed with me later. It's the side of me that knows I have to provide a living for my family. It's the side of me that knows I have to make a smart business decision here. Right. Whatever it is. And so I think I need to stay in this and ask you some more questions, or I think before I can just please you, which is something that's important to me, I want to do that if I can. It's not like I don't want to do that. It's just that I have some other responsibilities and duties that need to get met here. And so that naming work in advance and then imagining that you need to give life to that in the room is incredibly helpful once you're there. And instead of feeling all guilty, right. And oh, my gosh, it's like, no, no, I'm doing. I want to please this person, but I also need to please the family side of me. And I also need to do, like, I need to do all of these things, and there's nothing. It's completely acceptable. And you could do that in a way that's not offensive.

Right.

It's both authentic and not offensive. And so I think that's the other thing we really want to try to con. We want to give people some tools where they don't conflate aggression or pounding on a table with being assertive about your experience, being assertive about what is important to you, what's important to your business, what's important to your values. You know, fill in the blank.

This is powerful, Bob. This is really powerful. And when you think about this book and where it sits in the landscape of other negotiation literature and your legacy in the field, what is the change that you want to help to create with this book?

Yeah. Well, thanks, Kwame. There's a side of me that wants to correct you and say, legacy. There's going to be no legacy, but the side of me that wants to answer your question. Yeah. So I would say, you know, my hope for this book, like, what do I think the contributions are that I want it to be, I would say, one that folks would come away with a reframing of the power of conflict to actually build connection and relationships. So that conflict, it's not a bad thing. It could be a good thing. That's number one, related to that. Therefore, that conflict resilience becomes akin to something like emotional intelligence. Right. I would love, in five years, if you invite me back, that you don't have to say to me, what do you mean by conflict resilience? Because we know it in the same way we know emotional intelligence. That'd be one. Right. Number two is that there is an enormous amount of really important but also accessible brain science that can help us to do the kinds of skill stuff that we talk about in our field better. And I think for me, that's been a source of great learning, having a collaborator who comes from the world of neuroscience. And so that would be, I think, the second thing I would hope would kind of resonate for people here. And then I think the third piece would be that people find that the kind of ideas here can be deployed at a very individual and personal level, but that there are kind of more systems, effects, aspects. Right. The third part of the book tries to kind of talk about. It's great to build this internal capacity. It's great to be able to do this across the table. But if you're an organizational leader or if you're a manager or you're a dean or chair of a department, what are the moves you can make to create a more conflict resilient environment? Because if we believe that creating pluralistic or diverse environments makes an organization stronger, that is only the case in my mind, is if there's an environment that people can bring up those differences and not get punished or be seen as a troublemaker, or be seen as, like, the naysayer or fill in the blank. Right. And so there's some work there as well. Is that too ambitious, Kwame? That might be too ambitious, but. But since you asked, no.

That is brilliant and beautiful, and I am here for you because this. I agree. I agree because I think about some of the people I've seen, the people I've worked with and everything. And we do talk about emotional intelligence. We talk about eq, we talk about iq. And there's been more rumblings about cq, which is important cultural intelligence. But when I think about all of. Could be. All of those are elements of conflict resilience in my mind, in your ability to tolerate conflict. If you have a leader who has high, high iq, high eq, high cq, and low conflict resilience, you don't have a leader. You simply don't. Right. So I'm with you. I think this is brilliant. And then pairing it with the neuroscience is a. Is a really strong way to do it because it gives people, in my opinion, it gives people a little bit more faith in it. It takes it from something that's philosophical to, hey, this is actually based in neuroscience. And then this is just the way that people are. But we can also recognize that even though this may be our default setting, there's a pathway to improvement that's actually very robust, peer reviewed, studied. I love this, and I am proud to be able to promote this to my audience.

You're very kind. Thank you. Yeah, we hope that everyone feels that way. We really do.

Absolutely. Listen, I'm here for it. And before you go, just let's make sure we name the book and let folks Know how they can work with you, too?

Absolutely. So you can pre order this book at any of your favorite places, Amazon Bookshop, you name it. Barnes and Noble. The website is conflict resiliencebook.com conflict resiliencebook.com youm can also find me at my website, Bob bordon.com or at the Cambridge negotiation institute.com so that's cambridgenegotiationinstitute.com so any of those places. And yeah, Kwame, it's such a delight to spend some time with you. I love the work you're doing. I love the impact you're having. And so it's a treat to be here. And I hope some, some folks, some of your listeners will find something of value in the book as well.

Okay, let me. I know Simone's coming in hot with some extra questions. This is great.

Yeah, I, yeah, I have a question. I was really engaged in the episode and I have a question and this is my time to ask you all the way. I love this topic about conflict resilience. And I'm going to tell you something that happened to me before working with Kwame. I was selling carpets with a business partner and she was a very good architect. But sometimes she made mistakes in design and I could see them. But when we talked about finances and everything, it was okay. We could get to agreements. But when it came to design, it was not important for her. It was sacred. So it's like when I said, hey, when I would say, hey, this is probably, this is wrong. For her, it was not possible because that was her identity as an architect. So how could I persuade her? Because I said, okay, I have to listen, I have to do my best. But on the other side, I always faced no, I am right, you're wrong. I am right, you're wrong. I am right, you're wrong. So I decided not to say anything else about design. So we couldn't keep growing in terms of design because she was, in her mind, she was always right because that was sacred for her. How could I persuade her to change the mindset or what could I change in myself to keep growing the relationship?

Yeah. Well, thanks for sharing that. I mean, I think there's probably a lot of diagnostic questions I can ask you. Probably should ask you, but maybe in the name of efficiency, Just a few thoughts. So one thing that I'm hearing is that you've kind of thought about this in a binary. Right. I'm either going to engage her to persuade her or I'm going to give up. And I think there's lots of other choices in between those two. I think the biggest one for me, I mean, one thing I really just want to say good work on, is just the awareness that part of what is going on is an identity issue for this other person. Because I think a lot of people just miss that entirely. Right. But I think because you're aware of that, there's a lot more learning that you need to do if you have any chance of being persuasive, which you may or may not have. And so part of it, I would just say is instead of you said, well, I think this design is wrong, or maybe wrong, I think there's a lot more questioning. What does this mean to you? How did you think about it this way? What does it achieve? What doesn't it achieve from your perspective? How is it, you know, how. How has your kind of past training got you to this point, those kinds of things? And you have to do it from a place of genuine curiosity. You have to do it, I think, from a place of explaining why you're interested because you're advocate. Ultimately, if you're going to move to a place of advocacy, you need to know what would be persuasive to them. And just telling someone they're wrong for the following reasons. We don't really know what's persuasive to them, I mean, at all. So it might be persuasive. I think a mistake that, you know, I make this mistake as well, and lawyers make this mistake especially, is they think about, like, what a reasonable person might think or do. But a reasonable person doesn't really matter here. What matters in this case is your part, like this, this partner, this woman who you're working with. And the more you can understand the levers of her decision making, the things that matter to her and why it matters to her, it increases your likelihood of being able to share something from your perspective that would resonate. And even if it doesn't resonate in the process of making her feel heard and understood and seen. And then you could explain your perspective. It allows you to say, okay, so we don't see eye to eye in this, but what shall we do together that we can both work on? But if it's binary, it's either right or wrong. It's gonna be really tough, I think. But, Kwame, you've talked to thousands of people, negotiators. What do you have to say?

I love your, your approach here too, because I think you're absolutely right. In my last book, I talked about the like The Human Genome Project and how we mapped out DNA and everything. And everybody has their own kind of persuasive genetic code as well. And so when we think about, just like you said, with the reasonable person, that doesn't apply here. This is a unique person. We need to figure out their genetic code to persuasion, what is it? And in this case, it might not be the design itself. It might just be the acknowledgment and respect of her work, her work ethic and the thought that went into it. And I think if you could give those emotional payments, that they would be much more willing to move off of it because they would still feel seen and they wouldn't feel as though they are losing a part of themselves by conceding in this particular instant.

Yeah, I love that. You know, the other thing I might say on this is that it might even be the way in which you're doing it when I say that. Saying, well, you're wrong or this is not right can just be an irritator. If someone thinks of themselves as the expert and you as bringing a bunch of valuable things, but not expert in this. So I know sometimes I, you know, I. And I work in a lot of different professional domains because negotiation and conflict exist across them. And sometimes I'll see something. I can give you a real life example. Here's a real life example. I worked on behalf of a presidential campaign in 2020, and I did a bunch of things, but one of the things I did was go canvassing. And canvassing is basically a negotiation, right? So the first time I show up, they, like, have a script of how we're going to do this. And, like, I looked at the script and, you know, between the three of us, I thought, this is awful. This is like, so bad. But I was like, I didn't do anything. Then the second time afterwards, I said to the person, like, I wonder if I can ask some questions. Like, I'm trying to understand the thinking a little bit more. And when I would share my perspective, I would say, and I would listen to their thinking. And then I say, like, so, like, here's why I'm bringing this up from my negotiation world. Here are some things that we might think about or do. Because I felt like, this is the expert in. Like, this is the expert the party sent out for, like, canvassing. The last thing they need is some volunteer, know it all, who's gonna be like, wrong. The way you canvas is this way. So there's something about honoring, like, the expertise. I don't know if that makes sense. Which is different from asking lots of questions. It's meeting one of the core, like, emotional interests they might have.

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