How To Be A Great Dad With Dr. Robert Zeitlin

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

Foreign.

Robert, thanks for joining us today.

I'm excited to be here, Connie, and.

We are excited to have you. So how would you get us started? By telling us a little bit about yourself and what you do?

Sure. I'm a positive psychologist and I am an advocate for children, all children. Beyond my own, beyond the ones in my career. I really feel a calling to work with parents to help up level families so that we can raise the next generation of superheroes. I love this. It's not a long intro, but that's, that's the crux of it. I have a lot of training that comes to that task, but that calling has really emerged over the last 10 or so years where I've really been in the parenting space, writing, working with parents, creating programming, and now my latest program, Be the Best dad Ever.

Yeah. So tell us about that program.

Sure. Be the Best Editor is the culmination of me going out and collecting dozens and dozens of important insights and models and then boiling them down so that we can concentrate on one each week for six weeks. So it's a six week online program for a small cadre of fathers who want to up level their communication, how they deal with stress, how they feel connected with the other and just give each other permission to do what they need to do. Because fathering in this generation, in honestly every generation, last three, has taken such leaps and bounds above where our dads were. So this is giving dads a space to talk about fatherhood, which we don't often have. And so I created this program with short, tight and small cadres so we can make the gains we need to make.

I love it. Yeah, that's so important. And I know with your background in positive psychology and the focus that you have on emotional intelligence, all of this is coming together to create better fathers. So I appreciate this as a father. This is dad approved. So, yes, kudos to you and everybody. There'll be links in the description of this episode. And now I want to let you listeners into a little bit of, like, behind the scenes, a peek behind the veil. Because what I like to do is when folks jump on the zoom and we start chatting, I want to ask, hey, what's most exciting to you? What is the thing that you're most interested in? And Robert, your answer just came immediately, no hesitation. You said the process of discovery, which is fascinating. Can you go a bit deeper and tell the listeners what you meant?

Sure. What I meant was that we don't always know why we're coming together, even if we've known each other for years. Coming together today on your podcast to talk about something, we're not sure what that is. It's something that will emerge between us because of what we're each bringing from our days, from our weeks, what we're reading, what we're. What we're marinating in. But in this case, where we haven't worked together for a long time, really, this is so exciting to me to meet you and to come together and figure out why, why we're here, what, what we're supposed to discover together, what we're supposed to create together. And I think every human interaction is, is that whether it's with your child, when you come home and you find out what's going on with them with your, in my case, over 30 years, it's always a process of discovery.

This is great. And the thing that I love about this is the, the humility that is necessary to even take this step on the process of discovery. Because if you go in there with a little bit of arrogance and you assume that you know what each person is here to do, you're going to miss a lot of things. And I love the fact that you described it in terms of even if we have been interacting with each other for an extended period of time, what happened today, what. What happened in the past week, what new are you bringing to this interaction? So it's almost like we're reevaluating every interaction afresh. And I think that's a, That's a really important distinction to make.

That's great. I love that you brought the humility piece of that. Because as a positive psychologist, I talk about superpowers. I talk about these character strengths that make up the field of positive psychology. And humility is one that we don't talk about enough. But it is, as you said, inherent in that. Drop your weapons, drop your agenda, drop your opinions, open your ears, figure out what's happening in the room.

This is. Yeah, let's. Let's keep on digging down this rabbit hole, Robert, because I'm liking where this is going, too, because when you think about this in terms of fatherhood in particular, parenting in general, and leadership, even, like, a greater generality. Right. We understand the importance of humility because we might have a little bit of arrogance where we say, I'm the leader, I'm the parent. I know what we're here to do. I know the direction we should go. So can you tell us a little bit about how this process of discovery works with us, works for us in our role of parent or leader?

Yeah, it's really interesting. You frame it as arrogance, but I think sometimes we come into situations with a script or with some sense of expertise. The challenge of walking in with all of your training to this, to this moment, meeting me, with all of my training to this moment, meeting you, and for us to be two fathers who can exchange something that would be of value to each other, it's almost like you do all this preparation, and then you almost have to, like, leave it at the door and walk in and just be who you are. I find this. This process is really amazing. The more people that I'm meeting, especially having been seasoned and having some expertise and doing some things that if I'm carrying around my book and I'm like, I'm an author. I'm an author. I'm a. I'm a this, I'm a that. It interrupts the flow of discovery.

Yes. And I love that you use the word flow, too, because that is a term I keep coming back. We're coming back to because we're creating an online course. And I'm realizing that a lot of times in the negotiation industry, it can be kind of rigid and dogmatic in the way that we approach these negotiations, where we try to, like, force the negotiation to go in a certain type of way in order for it to meet the scripts that. That we're bringing to the table. And I want people to be able to flow in the interaction, which is scary because it requires you to recognize that every conversation is a bit of an adventure. And so you have to trust the skills that you have. To believe that you have the tools to address what's coming up on the path, but you can never fully anticipate it. And so for you, in your experience as somebody who was a practitioner or is a practitioner still, and you're working with people who have expertise, you're a father, a parent, and you have these ideas of how these interactions should go, how do we take that step of kind of letting go of these scripts or prescriptions that we have for the way that the conversation should go and flow a little bit more in the moment?

I'm imagining it's similar to in a negotiation setting, where you're creating a space where people can feel free to let go of some of their tools, to let go of some of their. Let's call them defenses, let's call them sort of armor, put down some of those weapons and armor so that we can move forward. But I think at the core of it, you hit on the word trust. And I think the idea of trusting yourself and trusting the process are going to be key, key variables. And if you are creating the space, addressing those and addressing places where that trust either needs to be bridged or repaired or might feel like it's a little bit broken down, because that's when we pull up that armor, that arrogance, that defensiveness, to kind of block the flow that you're describing makes a lot of sense.

Let's dig into creating space, and I would be interested to see your perspective on that term, like the topic, what does it mean to create space? And then as we go on in the conversation, what it means to create space with adults and how that might differ with our children. So when you say create space, what does that mean to you?

It means so many things to me, but I'm. But your question really helps me focus on one specific way that I think is really important, which is in this situation right now, you're bringing to the conversation your questions and your curiosity and this frame that you've created in this podcast, I'm bringing here a willingness to engage in a conversation. And I have other stuff that I want to share. But between us, there's a third space. There's a relational space that we're creating, this sort of burgeoning partnership, collaboration, friendship, that's sort of growing as you're asking me deeper questions. You're curious. You're kind of leading to more affirming ideas. And I'm feeling more comfortable that there's something in the space between us, what some call the relational space that I think is the most Important thing, especially when it comes back to your question, which I haven't been avoiding, but not addressing of parenting and fatherhood, of like, how do we connect with our partner or our child or anyone in that parenting game, an in law, a grandparent, in a way that respects that third space. It's not just who you are and what you're doing, who I am and what I'm doing, It's not necessarily a negotiation. There's also a negotiation table. There's a space there where you can create together and collaborate.

I love this because again, those keywords that you said at the end, creating together and collaborating, because this isn't something that you do unilaterally or you allow them to do unilaterally. Both parties need to be involved in the process of creating that space. And sometimes in these difficult conversations, neither party is interested in doing that. They approach this as an adversarial type of interaction. And so let's say we run into this and let's say it's a conversation, a relationship we've had for a long time. And this has been the pattern of interaction where it has been argumentative and combative in the past. And now we're having a conversation. They're still bringing that same energy and that same approach. But now you want to create this space. How do we start to make that shift if the momentum has been going opposite direction throughout the relationship?

You had mentioned humility before, which I mentioned is one of the 24 character strengths that make up the field of positive psychology. Curiosity is another one. And I come back to that as the answer. I think if there is a, if there's a lack of curiosity across this, if there's not any kind of collaboration to create that space, the first way to begin would be, as you've demonstrated already, sense of curiosity. Like, that's really interesting. Tell me more what's deeper if the other party isn't willing to engage, I don't know your business, but I imagine you don't have a negotiation unless you have a negotiation partner. If you don't have the ear or you don't have the interest of the other person, one way to tip the balance is to extend yourself further. And the best way to begin that is with curiosity.

I love that.

Being curious, being aware and bringing yourself as open as you can be, considering it's not a two way street yet.

Does your company invest in professional development training? If you believe that your team would benefit from a negotiation workshop, all you need to do is go to our website, fill out the workshop request form, and then we'll set up a time to chat. These workshops are completely customizable, and we've done them all around the country. Negotiation and conflict resolution skills are beneficial across all professions, but they're especially useful in procurement, purchasing, sales, sourcing, and contract management. Our calendar is filling up quickly and we even have some workshops scheduled for next year if you think you might want one. I'd suggest reaching out soon so you don't miss out. Check out the link in the description to learn more and we will be right back after this. Absolutely. And let's go deeper into that point because this is an expert level point that I don't want people to miss. Because curiosity is the first part, but being open to what you find is the other part. Because a lot of times we start to dig deeper and we ask those questions, we might be confronted with some information that we do not like. And so we might be tempted to combat what they say. So we hope, we say, okay, hey, let me ask you a question. Tell me about your situation. Now let me tell you everything that you said is wrong, right? Hey. Okay, message received. This Kwame guy, he wants, he's asking me questions so I could expose myself and he can hurt me. Note, I will never be vulnerable again. So when we talk about openness, how do we actually do that? Especially if somebody says something that we might not agree with.

That's a big challenge. I know you mentioned that you have younger kids, and I think the scenario you just drew is pretty common for people who have older kids because they want to impose and share their wisdom. They're probably getting a little more anxious as the kids getting older. They need to prepare them. But the feedback they get isn't necessarily an openness or a vulnerability. Getting back to your question, how do you, how do you demonstrate that openness? And how can you be vulnerable? The. The answer is always that it begins with me. The answer is always that I need to come back and figure out what I need to do to be centered, grounded, to feel balanced on my feet in order to enter into that situation, be open and be curious. If I don't do that work first, then what's going to be read by the other person who's already standing across the table with their arms crossed is going to be something that's less than authentic and less than trustworthy. So if I can't ground myself and center myself, then I won't appear trustworthy, and then we don't have a starting point.

Now, Robert, I know you frustrated at least 73% of the audience because they're saying, oh man, I have to do work on myself. I wish. Couldn't you just give me some kind of like magic trick, wave a magic wand, be vulnerable. I be open. But you're absolutely right. It takes self work. It takes self work. This doesn't happen by accident. And I think that's what makes. One of the many things that makes it so tough is the fact that we can't just get that quick fix. It takes a lot of work. We have to be patient even before the process of negotiation or conflict resolution begins. And so what are the steps for an effective conflict or effective difficult conversation? It starts well before the conversation begins with having that frank and open conversation with ourselves to do that internal work to get ourselves to the right mindset so we can perform at a higher level during the conversation.

100% agree. And that is hard work. And some of us aren't always prepared to do that. And you know what? It's okay to sit down with yourself and have that conversation and say, I don't want to do this right now. You know, you can't. You can force yourself to go to the gym, but you can't force yourself to have a great workout. You can get there. You can lead your own horse to water, but you can't necessarily drink if you're not ready for it, then maybe even digging deeper into that question, whether it's journaling, whether it's meditation, whether it's prayer, and looking at, okay, this is a part of me that doesn't want to do this today that isn't ready a ready able. You know, I don't, I don't have the, I don't have the bandwidth right now to be vulnerable like that.

Yeah. And I think that's an important point to come to because sometimes you just don't have it. But then we kind of. I call it shoulding on ourselves.

Right.

Well, I'm a father. I should be ready for this conversation at all times. I'm a leader. I should be available at all times. And I think one of the best things you can do strategically is honor the fact that you're not always ready. And that is okay. And again, going back to humility, I think that's really important. I've started saying that to my son, like, Kai, just give, give daddy a second. Just not right now. What's wrong? I just. Daddy just needs to think. Just, just leave me some time to think. And is it the most graceful thing? No, it's not, it's not clunky. People who are listening to the podcast will be like, that's our master negotiator. Really? No, sometimes I just don't have it. And that's okay. You know, you can't put the toothpaste back in the tube because sometimes you make certain mistakes, say certain things, you can't take it back. So just wait, just giving yourself sometimes even a few minutes to gather yourself, that that matters.

It does. And like you said, like you joked about, we're shooting on ourselves, I think as fathers and, and being raised as men with a certain kind of masculinity, this idea that you're always going to be available and ready and there is no take backs, there is no take a break, there is no stepping back, there's no the self care stuff should be stuff you do behind the scenes. It shouldn't like should, should, should, should. You already hear me using that language. And I think we are pushing back and fighting on some norms that we may have been raised with.

Absolutely. Let's follow that train of thought too because there are. When you think about mental health, a lot of times our emotional instability comes from problematic beliefs, cognitive distortions that we have downloaded from society, from our parents, or we have created ourselves. And we haven't taken the time to realize that these beliefs might not be true, they might not be accurate, and they might not be helpful. And so when it comes to starting to address those concerns, let's focus on dads because that's your main focus. What are some examples of problematic beliefs or distortions that hold fathers back?

So many. Well, let's be specific about fathers. I think there is, like I mentioned before, we're probably the third generation that's made a huge leap forward in fatherhood. The generation before us did things that their fathers never did. Our generation is doing things that our fathers didn't do or tried to do, couldn't do, whatever. So some of those distortions are what we grew up with and what a man should be, how a father should be. We're still carrying a lot of that. You know, I've called modern fatherhood a double edged sword. I think there is that programming to be a breadwinner and a protector and then also what we know of our nurturing side that has grown and developed so that we can be there with our family. And those two come into conflict often. So some of the thought distortions that come with that can be I'm either doing it all right or I'm doing it all wrong. I Have no idea what I'm doing. I'm lost in the desert. When, in fact, sometimes you're making gains and they just don't feel like gains. You're just confronting larger and larger problems. So that's why you keep running into the next wall, because you've gotten through that wall and you've. You've sort of graduated to the next level.

Yeah. It's so funny that you said it that way, because I was just talking to a friend, Leah Smart, on the in the arena podcast. I was a guest on her show, and she said, what's one of the things that surprised you the most about this journey? And for me, I said, it's the realize the realization that every level is harder. Like, I had this belief that was wrong, that as I got to a certain level, things will be easy. Like, oh, maybe when I have my first kid. That was. That was a funny one, Robert. When I thought that, you know. You know, once I hit a certain mile marker on the. In the business, those type of things, everything gets harder with parenting. It gets harder. And then your desire to get better, you start to recognize even though you are improving, you also recognize ways that you are failing, too. And so you strive to improve more, and then you recognize more ways that you're failing. So you're right. It can really hold you back and be discouraging. But I think it's really important for us just in general, as humans, but especially as parents, to recognize those. Those incremental gains and wins. You're never going to be perfect. You're just trying to get better.

I think that is also a remnant from the prior generation where things did get easier as you moved along. You got senior in your job, you could retire, you could take it easy, you could move. So there's all these sort of graduations that have. I don't want to say they've been inverted, but they've been flattened for our generation so that we are meeting challenges that we haven't met before that seem harder than the last one. And the encouraging thing is we have to remember that we've achieved this level, and so we've created this opportunity to meet that next challenge. And if we got through the last three, we probably can get through the next one. But some of these higher headwinds or what feel like thicker walls to get through are actually a sign of growth and a sign of having gotten to this point. It's just we're sort of. One of the things our minds inherently do is we forget all of that challenge and we tend to not accumulate our wins and recognize our strengths that we've gotten to this point, but we. You have all of that. It's all in your back pocket. It's just a matter of remembering it's there and using, using your tools.

This is great. You know, essentially, yes, I have a negotiation podcast, but really, you know, don't tell the listeners this, but I use this as my personal therapy session. So I appreciate this. Thank you for that. But it makes so, so much sense and it's very helpful for me because, you know, the thing that I was thinking about as you were saying that I was like, you know, what if I just decided to be like a worse dad, things would be a lot easier. And I think the fact that we are experiencing challenges as a parent, it demonstrates that we are putting forth effort to be good at this. Right. It's important. So this is really helpful, like very, very eye opening. And when you think about other fathers, because emotional intelligence is something that you focus on a lot. How has that journey been for you? Trying to get fathers and men who traditionally, when I'm thinking about in society, right, by societal standards, traditionally have been raised to not be as connected to their emotions. How has that process been for you, breaking through?

It's been, it's been a challenge and also has had some surprises, some positive surprises in it. I would say that, you know, I mistook my journey, which has been start with, start building emotional intelligence with emotional literacy and finding out what the names are for the things I'm feeling and starting to be able to label them and start to be able to identify them as they're coming up. And my journey was very sort of step wise. But I'm meeting dads along the way who, who are, well, along that journey and have tools. They're starting with tools that I didn't necessarily start with. So I, I think about the building blocks and I think about building them. And so that, that part of the journey has been exciting to help dads who really need to understand what is this unpleasant feeling I'm having? What am I supposed to do with it? And then I've met other dads along the way who are like, of course I cry in front of my kids. Of course I can turn things off and just be with them. And I was like, you're already in the 301 course. I'm not even. I'm sitting here teaching the 101. But that's been the cool part about this group that I've been leading because the interaction between dads who have figured stuff out, are in the process of figuring stuff out, or sort of came to the game with some tools. It's so inspiring to create a space where they can share those best practices, learn from each other, find out it's okay to do things, give themselves permission, and then the benefits that accrue to their families are just huge.

Oh, that's great. I appreciate the work you're doing. It's so important. And I know we're coming up on time. We usually try to keep these around 30 minutes. But we will definitely, of course, if you accept the offer, would love to have you back on to talk more about this. This is great. So before you go, can you let the listeners know about you again, how to get in touch with you, your book? Make sure you shout out the book and then also the program.

Sure. So they can find me at my website, Robert Zeitlin.com I'm sure they'll be in the show notes and we.

We'Re.

Running the Be the Best dad Ever program multiple times during 2023. It's an online program so anyone's free to join. You can find out more information on my website. My book that I wrote in 2015 and then I updated in 2020 in the pandemic was called Laugh More Yell A Guide to Raising Kick Ass Kids. And then I created the Stuck at Home edition for parents who are trying to figure out how to get through the pandemic with their whole family intact. And then also during the pandemic I wrote a second book which is on Kindle called But I'm Not a Teacher which is helping Parents. It was called A Guide to Learning During Lockdown because parents were trying to balance working from home and also with their kids at home, basically becoming their assistant teacher. And so drilling down to what I consider the learning superpowers coming from positive psychology, but also everything that I've learned for years working in schools. I just wanted to share some insights that parents could use. I published it just in time for that fall. That came right after the pandemic started so that parents could grasp onto some tools and possibly help themselves, say sane and help their kids benefit from zoom learning, which was a real challenge there in the middle of the pandemic.

Oh man, I wish I would discovered you earlier Robert. Oh man. Very necessary, important work. We really appreciate you. Thanks for joining us today. And yes listeners, descriptions links in the description of this episode too.

My pleasure. Thanks for having me.

Congratulations. You've just joined an elite club by listening to a full episode. You're now officially on the Negotiate Anything team. So welcome aboard. What most team members do is they subscribe to the podcast because that allows them to automatically get the latest episodes of the show. The best things in life lie on the other side of difficult conversations. Keep learning, keep practicing, and keep getting better. Your relationships will improve, your career will soar, and you'll have the confidence you need to get the most out of these crucial conversations. Again, thank you for joining the team. We're excited to have you, and I will see you in the next episode. I'll catch you later.