How to Get 8% More in Your Next Negotiation with Dr. JP Pawliw-Fry

Hello, my friend, and welcome to another exciting episode of Negotiate Anything Live. In this special segment, we're sharing one of our LinkedIn Live events where listeners like you can join the conversation and shape the episode with your comments and questions. We've put a link to the event in the description of today's episode, but make sure to follow me on LinkedIn so you can join the conversation next time. I'm really glad you're with us today. We with over 10 million downloads and listeners from more than 180 different countries, it's dedicated listeners just like you who have made Negotiate Anything the number one negotiation podcast in the world. I'm your host, Kwame Christian. I'm a business lawyer, mediator, author, and the proud CEO of the American Negotiation Institute. Now, before we dive into today's episode, I have a golden opportunity for those of you who recognize the power of negotiation in your professional lives. 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.

Hello everybody. Welcome to Negotiate Anything Live. We are here with my friend jp. Jp, thanks for joining us today, Kwame.

Totally my pleasure. I've been so looking forward to jumping into this conversation and I'm excited it's here.

Yes, yes, yes. So listeners, when when JP and I we first met, we were chatting on Zoom, kind of prepping for this. I was thinking to myself the whole time, I'm like, man, we should have just recorded this. We were vibing. So we're excited to bring you into this conversation, listeners. And I have the the privilege of getting to give you a little bit of background on jp. So JP taught executive education at the Kellogg School of Business. He's the author of the New York Times bestselling book Performing Under Pressure and co founded the Institute for Health and Human Potential, which was named by Profit magazine as the fastest as a fastest growing 100 company. So JP, thank you, thank you, thank you for coming today.

Yeah. And kwame wasn't number one. It wasn't number one. It was in the 100. Wasn't number one. Not that you. No, no, that's okay. That's okay.

No, that's my fault.

My fault.

Hey. Number one in our hearts.

There we go. There we go. Well, listen, I'm glad you're here, because one of the things that I recognize is that when it comes to performance in general, but in particular difficult conversations, people might have the skills in that that are required, and they might actually know what to do. But then there's a mental block that holds them back from performing what it matters most. So can you just tell us a little bit about how pressure impacts us when it comes to performance? Oh, boy.

Gosh. Do we have two hours? Well, you know what's interesting? I'm going to take a slightly different tact, maybe, and it's this. For any one behavior to be executed, right, There are really two influences in terms of human behavior, right? For somebody to have a hard conversation, 50% of what will influence them comes from inside of them. So it is things like mindset, things like skills, things like confidence to deliver the skills that's inside the individual. But here's the part that most people miss. 50%, fully 50%, comes from the environment that they're in. It's called the person situation, kind of dichotomy, right? So most people think of what's inside the individual, and they do training on that, and they try to build skills there. And that's important. That's only half of it. Half of it is what's in the environment. And so, I mean, Kwame, you know, you show up, let's say, on a. Let's say on a conversation like this with somebody you've known for 20 years, you're just in it. You're ready to go, you're taking risks, you're going for it. Now, imagine as an example, you walk into a hospital, which I know is like an apples and oranges thing, but you walk into a place where you don't have the same status, where you don't really know how things work. And you're kind of asking, and you're a different person in terms of how much risk you take. Same person, same capability, skills, confidence, but you're in a different environment. And so that has a big influence. And most people miss that. And so, you know, what does it take to have that hard conversation? Let's say something inside the individual. Let's work on that. But also what's in the environment. And the environment that we particularly pay attention to, you know, the culture that we're trying to affect is not across an organization. It's on the team. That's the fundamental unit. Fundamental unit where culture exists on the team. And so, you know, when we try to help an individual have those hard conversations. Your point? We're not just going to work on the skills, but we're going to work on that team for weeks and months before they actually have, you know, have to have that hard conversation. And so kind of 50, 50. And it's something that I feel like is missed out there, you know, in. In people's understanding of human behavior.

That's incredible. And I'm loving the fact that we started there too, because that's something that's often overlooked because you can have all the skills in the world and you might even have the right mindset. But if you bring that to a culture that is not receptive for difficult conversations or they. They don't have that type of tolerance for difficult conversations or whatever the environment might be, it is going to have a negative impact on the quality of the conversations we have.

It is exactly, Kwame. And here's what's interesting for a team. If that's a fundamental unit that we need to work on, and it is for a team to be successful, to be high performing, we know the biggest driver of that is risk taking. Smart risk taking, but taking risks. So to be high performing, you need to take risks. But here's the interesting conundrum. The very same time that you need to take risks to be high performing, our brain is saying, hold on. Default to protection, not risk. And we call that the fundamental conflict of performance. We need to take risks. At the very same time, our brain is saying, hold on, don't take that risk. Because it's job one is to protect the body. And that's why, if we're not actually creating that right environment to kind of act as an antidote, people will not take risks. We will be average. And that's what animates us. We want to help teams, people and teams be their best selves, working on both what's inside the individual, but what's in that environment, in that culture, on the team. And so, you know, to me, people get a bit of an aha when they hear that. They're like, oh, my God, that makes so much sense, right? It's kind of like, you know, when we talk about something like inclusion, right? Inclusion matters for reasons that people sometimes don't get. I'll give you an example. If the most Important kind of equation in physics is, let's say, equals MC squared, right? Or force equals mass times acceleration. I'm not a physicist. I don't know, but somebody corrected me last week in a program at a keynote. They said, no, it's not E equals MC squared. It's force equals M times a. Whatever. If that's the most important equations in physics, the most important equation in human behavior is that the fear of social pain is greater than the fear of physical pain. And the social pain that we experience the most is feeling excluded, feeling not part of the team, feeling excommunicated in some way. Why? Because for the brain, right, to be successful, we need access to resources and relationships. When we feel excluded, that's literally what we now don't have access to. And so that fear animates us. It's why we all do. You do, I do. We all engage in something called impression management, trying to manage the impression we have on our teams in whatever community we're in, whatever teams we're on. And so it's why inclusion matters. Because as soon as you feel like you're not included for whatever reason, then you will even more so, less take risks. That's a double negative. But you will less, you know, take less risks. And. And that's a problem, right? That's. That's what's getting in the way of performance today. And by the way, let's be really clear about something. Have any kind of life, you know, that. That we're kind of proud of, we have to take uncomfortable risks, right? Think about it. From asking a girl out in high school or a boy out, right? To asking someone to have a meeting, asking somebody for their business, if we're in sales, asking somebody for a meeting, asking someone to mentor us, and then all of those other things requires us to be uncomfortable, right? We won't have a wonderful life unless we can manage that discomfort that comes with taking risks. Let me stop there because, you know, I could go on and on and on.

That's why you're here. We want you to keep going on and on. I love this, JP because it reminds me of my. My favorite Chinese proverb. They say the best time to plant a seed was 20 years ago, right? And what we're recognizing is that in order for us to put ourselves in a position to be successful in a lot of these difficult conversations, it is going to be contingent upon the work we've done in our relationships and in our communities and in our organizations just in the past, over time. And so we can Create an atmosphere that's more tolerant. And so we should focus on targeting our negotiations toward improving the culture. And then.

Right.

Doing that, we will also improve our conversations.

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That's it. Right? When that person on the other side of the negotiating table, they're really, they're really assessing us for two things, warmth and competence. Right. Susan Fiske's work at Princeton. And so they're kind of assessing us, you know, our warmth, you know, are we a kind of a good person, a warm person that they can connect with, and are we competent? Those are really the two criteria they're using. And if we're completely on the competence only, not at all connecting, none of that emotional connection, you know, their perception of their environment that they're negotiating in, you know, is different than if we actually build that connection. And it doesn't mean we manipulate, but it says it makes a difference. Right? Because one of the things that for a team or in a negotiation, when you have that emotional connection, when you have that level of psychological safety, I will not be humiliated if I take a risk in this environment, means that we will be better in that environment. And so, you know, and, and people will take a risk with us. And ultimately, at the end of the day, for a good negotiation to happen, you, you need to take, you need. And the other person has to take a risk in, in, in a bunch of different subtle and plus, so not societal ways.

I love this. This is great. And now to the part of the conversation that everybody's been waiting for. We have this really cool headline, how to get 8% more. That is a very specific number. Right. So can you tell the listeners about that concept of the last 8%?

Yeah. Great. And it's something that you and I, we really kind of bonded on in our earlier conversation, which is. So if risk taking matters, and it does, what we tried to do is quantify the risks that people are taking and not Taking. And So the last 8%, based on a study of 34,000 people, is that difference between the risk we feel we need to take and the risk we actually take. That gap is the last 8%. It's about 7.56% rounded up to 8. And I'll give you a story to kind of concretize it. Working with two executive CEO, a CEO who just got put into position, he beat out another internal candidate. The internal candidate stayed. The new CEO wanted them to say, but they weren't getting along right. They were. They moved from this kind of relationship on the senior team to this. From a direct, from a colleague to a direct report, you know, leader. And they were struggling. They brought me in, I had conversations with them to have a hard conversation. And what we found is that we coached them to have a conversation. They went and had it on their own. Didn't work very well. They came back, they felt like, this is not going to work. Can we do a last gasp kind of Hail Mary conversation to reconcile or to exit? Have an exit. And so I mediated a two and a half hour conversation. It was interesting because I think it went reasonably well. Back at, you know, a couple days later when I'm having my independent coaching conversations with each of them, I asked them, how'd it go? And it was interesting. There was two questions that I asked Kwame that really set off our whole research agenda for about seven or eight years. Two questions. Number one, did you say everything you wanted to say to that other person? I asked each of them independently in their coaching sessions. And you know, this is after, you know, the second attempt. And they said, actually, yeah, absolutely. We feel really good that mediating conver mediated conversation. You, you know, walked us through. JP was helpful. And I'm like, okay, great. So. So they said, they said everything we wanted to say. But remember, I'm coaching them. I know all the issues. Number one, I'm in the room. I was there for the two and a half hours. They were not seeing everything they wanted to say. So I pushed them. I said, really? You said everything you want to say? And then they both kind of stopped and agreed. Okay, maybe not. That was the first question. Did you say everything you wanted to say? They said they did. They really didn't. Number two, what percentage did you leave out? And they Both said, between 5 and 10%. That was interesting. I'm like, huh? That's when we did the study of 34,000 people. We said, you know, what do you leave out of a conversation? What do you Leave out of some of the decisions you have to make. And so there's this gap we found between what we feel like we shouldn't say and what we actually say. The hard. And it's not just conversations, decisions to the decision you feel you need to make and the timeliness around it, and then the gap upon, you know, when we actually take the action to make that decision. But there's a number of things, like admitting a mistake, you know, speaking up, offering a new idea, giving feedback to our manager. There's a number of risks that we need to take to be high performing, and yet there's this gap. And so for us, we formulate that as the last 8%, the last 8% of a conversation or decision that we struggle with, and yet it has such an impact on the quality of our relationships, quality of our conversations, our decision making. So that's where it came from, Kwame. And we've been working on it for the last seven or eight years.

It's incredible. It is incredible because I think even for me, I can say this for myself, and I think the listeners would agree as well. We can think about times where we have had difficult conversations and we said most of what we wanted to say, and a lot of times, and I want you to correct me on this one, because a lot of times that last 8% that we leave on the table that we don't say, sometimes that is the most important part that we're holding back because we're so afraid to be vulnerable.

Oh, it is it like it is on so many levels. You know, Kwame, you're a pretty sharp guy. I hope I'm okay, you know, sharp, wise. But neither of us can read minds, right? We can't read our colleagues, our partners minds. We don't know what's really going on. And what's actually interesting is because we can't read people's minds, we actually fill our mind with a story when there's a vacuum of information, when we don't know. But the. But the bigger point here is we can't read their mind. And so if we're not actually coming clean and actually asking for our needs to be met, giving really good, you know, feedback, then we're not really having the right conversation. I mean, I think that happens in negotiation. More your expertise than mine. But, you know, when people aren't actually, until the very end, having the harder part of the conversation and, and I. The part that I find really unfortunate is that when in that conversation with those executives, but I've done This a few times where I'd mediated conversations. Like, 99% of the time, when people actually find out what that person was, their intention, and what they were thinking and feeling, it was, like, far less worse than they thought it was. And all of a sudden, they're like, oh, my gosh. And it actually is a bit of a breakthrough versus a breakdown energy. And it's beautiful. And it's like. It breaks my heart to see the amount of dysfunction on senior teams. We do a lot of work with senior teams, CEOs and their senior teams, and the amount of dysfunction. It's like I say now, every team is dysfunctional. It's really. Are you willing to look at your dysfunction? And so, you know, for me, that's. That's, again, what really makes me feel like there's a real need for this out there. People don't know. They're not good at asking for what they need. And by the way, in negotiation, I find that. So I'm an avoider. Here's what we know, Kwame. When we're In a last 8% situation, we found in our data, you can kind of have. You can respond in two ways. We call it a predictable default behavior. You can avoid. And 68% of us avoid. You know, we don't have the conversation. We don't articulate our needs. 32% of us make a mess. We come on too strong, right? We have impact. We don't intend. Okay, now, I'm an avoider. I. I work with my coach on it. I'm getting better at it, But I'm an avoider. Here's the thing, right? So many people in a negotiation don't really kind of ask for what they really want, what they really need. And so for me, the hack that really helps is I negotiate, not for me, but for my kids. When we negotiate for a communal interest, not our needs, but a communal interest, especially for a woman, by the way, the data shows even a bigger jump. But I'm way better at articulating my needs and being the kind of decisive, strong negotiator, still with heart and warmth. But I'm better at getting my needs met. And so whenever I go into a negotiation and, you know, Bill, my business partner, and Tamsin, my business partners, they're listening today, I'm sure. But I think of my kids when I'm negotiating, you know, my salary or when I'm negotiating with my clients, it's like, how would this impact my kids if, you know, and. And that gives me a bit more strength and so that's a good hack for everyone. Negotiate for your kids or something that really matters for you, and then you'll be a little stronger because sometimes you're, if you're an avoider, sometimes you're not as good at getting your needs met.

Incredible. And I think for the listeners too, it's, it's empowering to see somebody who is at your caliber, who's willing to, to say, hey, I still struggle with this and this is how I get through it because it's so important. I mean, for me, everybody. I think a lot of people in my, in my audience know this, but I'm a recovering people pleaser, you know, and so I've worked hard to overcome this too. And I think what's really helpful and what I really love about your story is that we all need to be able to have that vulnerable, introspective self negotiation to figure out what it is that really drives us.

Yeah.

And for you, it's your kids. And so you can motivate yourself by thinking about them. And for other people, it might be other things too. And so whatever that is for you, keep that in your mind to help you push through that last 8%.

That's it. That's it. And, and I can tell you it has helped me truly at times where I was like, oh, shouldn't I? Like, no, you know, I'm negotiating for something more than just me because it does feel selfish, right? It feels selfish and you know, or we want people to like us. I have that. Why do I avoid? Because I want people to like me. And again, that's the work I've done. I joke that, you know, for the last 17 years I've either had a coach or a therapist. When my life is going well, it's a coach. When it's not going so well, it's a therapist. But in both cases, what it does for me is it, it's that sounding board so I kind of can understand, you know, a reality test. Like, am I asking for too much? You know, am I being too strong? Do I need to be stronger? Right. Because you know, one of the things that we do as you know, is we help organizations build high performing cultures. And so we have this kind of map, elastic percentage culture map. And if you're more of an avoider, which I am, and working on recovery, I like that actually. Recovering avoider, I think I might use that. Call me. But it means that we can fall into what we call the family quadrant, where people are nice, but they don't do difficult things. And the challenge is that things move too slow. Then we don't have as much accountability, we don't have as much innovation. And so that's, that's my, like, that's our work that we are so excited to share with the organizations. But that's the work that, you know, I know for our team. Right. I. We've got to try to get to not family, but into that last 8% culture quadrant, which is, you know, what we call the upper right hand quadrant, which is high care, high accountability. Right. Which is people feel that care, they feel connected. That's, you know, one of the parts. But there's courage and accountability. And so that's what we want to do. We want to help organizations build really courageous teams and courageous organizations. And, you know, people feel better about themselves when they do. I mean, as recovering, you know, people pleaser, you know, when you actually see yourself fall into people please. When I see myself avoid what happens internally, we feel a bit of shame and embarrassment starts to downward cycle, eats away in our confidence. And the next time that we have to do a hard thing, engage in the last 8%, what do we do? We're not as robust, not as strong, not as decisive as the world needs us to be.

Absolutely. And really what we're doing is by getting into this habit of engagement and leaning in and having these conversations, every time we do it, we get a little bit stronger. We're increasing our self efficacy, we're increasing our confidence, and it makes it more likely for us to do it next time. And I think one of the most fascinating and encouraging things about this conversation is that throughout this conversation we have yet to discuss a precise negotiation skill.

Right.

But we have talked about how by shifting your mindset, you can get so much more out of your negotiations and difficult conversations simply because we're willing to take that risk and push a little bit farther and ask for what we want and advocate for ourselves. There's that blend between mindset and skill set. And so much of this is mindset. And if we can start to lean in, build our confidence and start to get into this habit, we're going to get more out of our negotiations. We have what we need already in terms of skill set. We just have to start leaning in.

Yeah. You know, I love that point. The last thing I ever say to an athlete before they go into competition is, and it mirrors what you're saying is, is you have everything you need to be successful right now. You have everything you need to be successful. And that can Be a really powerful message. And I'd say this to everyone who's interested in negotiation. It's the same thing right now. And what's interesting is you said something around that I want to pull on and underline when it's hard. These last 8% situations, if we can change how we see them. So for most of us we see that as ah, uncomfortable. It doesn't feel good in my body, I want to avoid, I want to run, I want to whatever, make a mess. But if we can see it differently and see it as actually our biggest opportunity, we call it the last 8% opportunity. Our biggest opportunity to transform ourselves through the negotiation. Right. Because I'm getting reps in negotiating, which is helpful. This last 8% is an opportunity to transform a relationship with potentially that person who might be a long term client with us. Right. But also to transform the culture on our teams. And that's so. So I think, I love that point that you know, we have everything we need right now and in our work it's less kind of, here's the tactic, especially with negotiation because our work is really more around leadership and culture, especially under pressure. But it obviously works in negotiation because in negotiation I'm going to come all the way back to your first question. If we're not able to manage our brain under pressure because it's trying to protect us, we can lose cognitive ability and now we can't think in kind of that lateral way both for our needs, but also for our partner in the negotiation, their needs. And then we can get very black and white and all of a sudden they see no give, they see no gray and that causes them to polarize. And pretty soon, you know, we're in kind of one of these where we're not really tuning into the other person. And so, you know, if you can manage yourself and that's really it, if you can manage yourself well and you can create the right culture, I really believe anything's possible. And there's. And there's really important skills around that and then culture like that 50, 50 kind of proposition. 50% in the individual, 50% in the situation.

Incredible. And listeners, hey, remember we are live here and I see a lot of activity in the chat, which is great. A lot of positive vibes.

Shout out to Ken, shout out to.

Cara, Michelle, all these folks in there, listen, I love asking JP questions and I have tons of them. We could talk forever. We've done it before. But put your questions in the chat. We want to hear from you too. So let's get this community conversation going. And I was wanted to focus on that leadership and culture element, because that. That's really your focus. And let's. There's somebody who's listening, and they're saying, all right, jp, I'm. I'm picking up what you're putting down here, and I want to start to create this culture. What would be that first step that they can take to start to create this type of culture?

Yeah, you said something interesting earlier, Kwame, around kind of vulnerability. Um, and so because culture exists on the team, it's the manager, the people leader that we really identify. So you can actually scale and grow your culture in months, not years. We have a kind of a proprietary way that we do that if we have time, I'm happy to outline. But the biggest thing is we want to give that people leader a structure to own the culture on their team. So it's not the chro. It's not the CEO, it's not people in learning and development. It's the people leader. So we give them this shell, the structure, so they can have the conversations. And it happens in the regular flow of their work week and month. It happens in their regular team meetings. And it's like a sprint approach where, you know, they have a half an hour at the start of four consecutive meetings. We do it across a whole organization. And so everyone's doing it at the same time. And we bring this language of last 8% and last 8%, culture and man, and having, you know, stepping into risks and decreasing that gap, that last 8% gap. But what's interesting is if you kind of do it this way, what we found is that people leaders really want to own the culture on their teams, but they don't know how. And they're busy, got all this stuff to do, but we give them this kind of sprint. And so, you know, they show a video, five minute video, they have this conversation, and then they make commitments as a team. And so that's acting on that 50% part. Right. And what's interesting is when that people leader has this kind of structure and it's norm that it's okay to be a bit vulnerable. I'll give you a great example. If you're a people leader right now, for you, you don't have to go through the sprint. Of course, we'd love you to, but without that, forget that. Just to ask your people, and this is something that we do within the sprints is ask them, how could I be a better manager? Be a little vulnerable? You'd be Shocked at what you hear back and, and people are like, okay, I don't know. Are you, are you serious, jp, do you really want to know? But when you, they see that you are serious and you're really vulnerable. But hey, I want to build a great culture on this team and it really matters to me. And I've been in bad cultures before and, but I want that and I won't be perfect. But like, I want us to really dig into this and how can I be a better manager for you? That to me is the first step. Because the problem, and you know this, Kwame, is a lot of people can confuse the impact we have for our intention. It happens all the time, especially when we're under pressure. And so if I can clarify my intention by being vulnerable, talking about what I really want for the team, talk about asking how I can be better, that is like the first step in to creating the kind of culture, you know, that high courage, high connection culture, upper right hand quadrant culture that people really gravitate towards, stay and take the kind of risks that really drive performance.

There is so much to explore in that response. Jp, this is great. I think, first of all, I think it's really encouraging to know that this could take months, not years. So this is something that can be.

Well, you know what, Columbia, this is very interesting. It fits with everything we've talked about so far. The reason takes months, not yours, is that if you do this across the organization all at the same time, you get that really powerful force of peer pressure. So in the same way peer pressure at high school was, this really had force that all of us hated and really, you know, was not a great force. Now when you know, hey, everyone's trying to be an upper right hand quadrant culture team. Everyone's trying to be curious, speak up. These are some of the tools that we use, you know, that we really try to embed the skill side, right? There's the culture side and there's a skill in the individual. But when everyone knows that's what we're trying to do here, and it's across a whole organization, the CEO is part of this, right? So when we do our culture change, we have this kickoff that's to like the whole organization, sometimes thousands of people. And so in that case, what we do is we interview the CEO and he or she really signals, hey, this is what we're doing on the senior team because we work with the senior team to try to be that upper right hand quadrant culture. And we're trying to build a courageous Organization, and it starts on the team. And so they're modeling that. And it's really exciting. Like, I have to tell you, like, the feedback that we get are people are having the most rich conversations they've ever had. And, you know, and what it means also is that when you're negotiating inside your organization for a project, for a priority, you've got that level of kind of connection, that emotional connection. So people can be more courageous and may not end up in your favor, but, you know, you've been listened to. They know they've been listened to. And so there's less of a residue that comes from, you know, negotiation that doesn't go well. And, you know, I think we have to be really mindful that most negotiation doesn't happen outside the organization. It happens inside the organization. And so, like, Those are last 8% moments that can go horribly wrong. And get this, Kwame, when we're under pressure, when we're In a last 8% situation, we have more cortisol in our brain. Cortisol is a stress hormone, as you know. And what does cortisol do? One of the things it does, it sears in memory. So whatever happens in that negotiation that was really, you know, maybe off values, not really cool, so to speak. And. And people feel that impact, it's even doubly because they got more cortisol. So whatever behavior you engage in, decision you make, negotiation tactic you use in that moment, get gets seared into their brain, which becomes your reputation in their mind. So there's a lot at stake, not just in the negotiation, but your reputation, your influence going forward. And so, like, there's a lot here. There's a lot at stake, as we like to say, in the last 8% moment, you know, for your reputation as a leader. And so it's really important that people grow these skills and these are learnable skills. That's the best news. You know, you can absolutely learn this stuff.

Yeah, this is so empowering because everybody listening can recognize, oh, this, there is something that I can do. And it can also be very scary because if there's something then that I can do, then I should probably do that. I know one of the things you mentioned earlier. Oh, go ahead.

Let me just say this. One of the members of our product team, Janine, has this great saying. She's like, look, if you're on a team, it's. And you know, you want to be an upper right hand quadrant culture, it's your right and responsibility to step in and have, you know, namely inconvenient truths. Do the hard thing. Have that last 8% conversation a right and a response. But I love that because as soon as you know that you're like, okay. And by the way, to be really clear, you will have more short term discomfort. Everyone listening. If you choose. And you got to choose right, if you choose to be a last 8%, you know, upper right hand quadrant culture on your team, that first of all, it has to be choice. But just know what you're choosing. It's not just, oh, everything's great now. No, you're actually choosing to have more, so to speak, conflict, more disagreement, more discomfort. But it's short term, it's acute, as we like to say. You know, you can choose short term acute discomfort or long term regret and long term residue on a relationship by avoiding or making a mess. And so choose what you're. Choose your poison. And so, you know, we choose to try to. On our team, we're not perfect to choose that acute short term discomfort because we know it really leads to the kind of culture that 50% of the influence for people then to go like this, I'm going to take that risk. I'm going to step in and give someone like myself, I'm a co founder, so it's harder to give me feedback. There's something called CEOs disease. The higher you go up in an organization, the less candid feedback you'll get. So Kwame, you and I'll get less than anyone. So we got to go out of our way to really make sure people know we want this feedback. It's safe to give us this feedback. And we have to do all that work ahead of time before we hit that last 8%. Building the culture on our team so people feel like they can do it.

Incredible. And this ties in really nicely with our motto. At ani, we believe the best things in life are on the other side of difficult conversations.

I love it.

Patience. Yeah. Now it might be uncomfortable. We are not promising you comfort, but when you look into the long term, look into the future, we can recognize there's a benefit on the back end.

Right? That's it. Yeah. And we can equip people to be better. Right. So it's both that 50% the culture, 50% skills, but we can help them manage their brain. Right. This is stuff we do with teams and athletes and coaches that we work with. Right. Like it's hard when you're under pressure. Right. In a negotiation, you feel the pressure, oh, I need to get a certain outcome. When you're a Sports, you know, athlete. It feels binary and. And it does things to our brain where we're not as effective. But the great news. And by the way, I love your podcast. You've got such great content. For anyone who's not subscribing, you gotta listen, you gotta subscribe, because there's just great tools almost in every episode that helps people become that student of human behavior. And that's what, you know, that's what excites me. Right. We want to challenge people, become students, students of human behavior. And that means every tough situation, you're growing some capability, you're growing repetition to be better in the next moment.

I love that. I think my favorite part was when you talked about the podcast. I appreciate that.

Of course. By the way, incredible how successful this podcast has become. Like, kudos to you, man. Like, I'm jealous. That's awesome.

That means a lot. Hey, it's because we have a great team and we have difficult conversations and, you know, not. That's not just a throwaway line. We do it all the time. And it. It's. It just pushes everybody forward. So, man, that means a lot to me. I really appreciate it. And jp, thank you again for coming on the show. And listeners, thanks for showing up live. And jp, before we go, just remind listeners where they can go to get in touch with you and how they can get 8% better.

Lovely. So our website, I, hp.com so it's Institute for Health and Human Potential, but you'll probably forget that. So it's just I, hp.com of course, you know, connect with me on LinkedIn, but that's where we're, you know, people can learn more about what we're doing. Got a podcast called the Last 8% Morning, which is a walking podcast where people can about 170 episodes where you can go for a walk every morning. And we've got the structure right, where, you know, big structure, you make your bed, you start walking, you have an insight, an idea of the day, and then you finish with goals and gratitude. A big structuring. The idea is in 15 or 20 minutes, you can kind of really get focused, build your skills so you can be better in those hard moments, the negotiation, the hard conversations. But I'll tell you, Kwame, you made this conversation easy for me today.

Thank you. Thank you, my friend. And really appreciate you coming and sharing your wisdom with us today.

Pleasure. Total Light. Have a great day. Everyone.

See it.

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.