How To Have Difficult Conversations For The Good of Your Community With Michael Corey

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

Thank you for having me.

Yeah, it's our pleasure. So how about you get us started by telling us a little bit about yourself and what you do?

Sure. My name is Michael Corey, and I'm the executive director of an organization called the Human Service Chamber of Franklin county, which is essentially a chamber of Commerce for about 150 health and human services nonprofits in Columbus. I'm a recovering lawyer and had the pleasure of working with you back at Bricker and Eckler many moons ago when we were summer clerks together. And I still get to use the legal skills more often than I would have anticipated in this role. But our job every day is to help the helpers of our community through government relations, distributing ppe, which is what is in these boxes behind me, convening our membership for regular meetings, distributing lots and lots of information every day, and trying to provide shared services and resources to benefit the breadth of the sector.

This is great. And everybody. One of Mike's greatest qualities is his humility. I knew he would do an insufficient job with his introduction. Let's add a couple things. Mike is the guy everybody wanted to be in law school. He's that all star. He is the award recipient of the Young Alumni Award for Moritz College of Law. And he is the father.

I am not. I did not.

Wait, what did you get?

That was you.

You got the other one, though. What did you get?

It was a humanitarian award.

That is more prestigious.

You walked me into that. You walked me into that.

That is more prestigious. So, yes, this man is dripping with prestige. My Friend. So we're in for a treat. And he's an awesome tennis player. Okay. So I just wanted to make sure that we covered all of the bases. And a great father and husband, too.

Thank you for that. That's the most important part. But you neglected to use the past tense for great tennis player. Great is too strong of a word. I was average.

Listen, average is good enough at this point. It's just cardio, camaraderie and not getting hurt. That's where we are at our age.

That's. Well played, counselor.

Y this is going to be a fun conversation because Mike has all sorts of difficult conversations that he's having in the role that he has. Because you're the inaugural leader of this organization, right?

I'm actually the fifth. The chamber was founded in 2010, and it was convened by about 70 or so nonprofits at the time to represent one voice on behalf of the health and human services sector, which mostly meant engaging with our city and county officials. And our first two executive directors were outstanding. Keanu Williams and Yvonne Honeycutt. And then there were two folks that weren't the best fit for the organization, and they got stuck with me in April of 2017. And this is the longest tenured ed that the agency's had, and it's the longest job I've ever had. So they're stuck with me now. I love my job. I'm unemployable going forward. So. Yes, but it does absolutely include some difficult conversations. And unfortunately, the difficult conversations aren't going away anytime soon because difficult circumstances we're in aren't going away anytime soon either.

Yeah. So let's dig into this, Mike. I think, because the position that you have is. It's so unique. It's so necessary, but it is so unique. What would be interesting first is to address the different types of difficult conversations that you're having just in terms of the stakeholders that you're interacting with day to day. What does that look like?

Yeah, the bulk of that is probably on the government relations side. We engage with local, state, and federal officials and offices mostly either beseeching resources or public policy, if it's depending upon the office that we're working with and the level of government. On the policy side, it's either please do this or please don't do that. And that has shifted over the last two years. The first four years that I was in the job with the prior administration of the White House, the bulk of our difficult conversations were directly with Senator Portman's office, where we would mostly be making the case for his office to go to the White House and stop them from doing what they were planning to do. That has changed where we're now trying to get this White House to do different things, but we don't have to play as much defense, at least not in the way that we were playing it previously with the state. The dynamic has largely stayed the same where we're mostly saying please reconsider that. But that's more targeted at the General Assembly. We found with the governor's office a strong ally on a number of issues even though our sector and the governor's office don't align 100%. That's not true of any office, but certainly not with the governor's office. But he has been, and his office has been eager to have some conversations on difficult topics and trying to find a way through. But often the backbone of those conversations is practical based upon what the General assembly might squelch. For example, we were part of a group of organizations urging the governor to urging the General assembly not to engage in a budget that the state Senate put forth last year that would have kneecapped five different subsectors of the health and human services sector in terms of the resources that they were allocated, among other things. And we partnered with many members of the business community in pushing against that version of the state budget. And for the most part that big we prevailed and the governor was able to sign a budget into law that was far better than it could have been. And at the local level with the city and county officials, the decisions are, I should say the conversations are challenging in that there's a finite number of resources available and there are many priorities and many folks seeking assistance from the city and county and doing our darndest to have urgent collegial conversations about the importance of allocating resources to help is that element of things right now. So that's where it is on the government side then you have difficult conversations with the stakeholders in our community and we work cross sector with business higher ed health systems. So we have to be engaging across sectors to try and galvanize resources for the sector and find alignment where we can can to amplify the work that we're trying to do. To give you a concrete example of that, we have been distributing a sign on letter that we drafted urging our two U.S. senators to pass a background checks bill. And we reached out to partners across sectors because advocacy is more persuasive when there are more people at the table advocating for something. And we had a number of stakeholders sign on to that outside of our sector, not all, but many of the ones that we were hoping would do so. Furthermore, through Covid, we found all sorts of partners across sectors to help the nonprofits and the people that they're serving. And sometimes those conversations can be difficult too. And those conversations are always ongoing. And quite frankly, they're probably going to pick up again. And I'll tell you what I mean by that. So first, between March 2020 and March 2021, there was no repository of protective equipment for nonprofits, the people that they serve. So it largely fell to the city and county and donors from the business, Higher ed Healthcare and other communities to donate masks, gloves, soap, sanitizer, and so forth. And they did that, all of them, with tremendous, tremendous generosity. And then last spring, the city and county opened up their emergency management warehouse of PPE for our folks, and they had a seemingly endless supply of masks and gloves and gowns in particular. And then eventually rapid tests, which made extraordinary difference for the agency's bottom line and the health of their staff and their client base as well. For various reasons, that warehouse is closing and so that resource will no longer be available. And we're going to be having some difficult conversations about how we can ensure our sector and our community have access to what they need should another disruptive wave of COVID emerge later this year, as unfortunately, we're all expecting. So that gives you a sort of broad range of the kinds of conversations we're having rather. But to be very honest, even the difficult conversations haven't been terrible. They've been very collegial. We've been fortunate that even with folks that may not be on the same page as us, we have developed a good rapport. And with folks where a good rapport is impossible, well, we tend to just circumvent those individuals or offices or entities where it's not going to be a productive conversation for either party.

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 now back to the show. Yeah, so this is great. I love this synopsis because you're having difficult conversations on all levels. And so I think a lot of people might think, oh, this is Columbus based or central Ohio based organization. No, we're having conversations at the highest level, national level, state level, local level, and with our stakeholders. And the stakeholders look different than what people would expect as well too, because it's not just the various nonprofits in the industry, but you're also creating collaborations with the private sector as well. What we're realizing is that for you as a leader, essentially having difficult conversations or negotiations, however you want to conceptualize it, it's an integral part of what you do. And it's almost like what part of your job duty does not involve difficult conversations. It's essentially everything, which is fascinating.

Yes. I think a lot about the legal training I got in private practice, where I was for three years, both as a speaker and as a writer, and as a writer, both of formal documents as well as emails, and having to engage with different audiences and be more succinct in certain settings than others. But the most important thing I do is write emails. I have a unique job for our sector because I need to communicate as efficiently and effectively as I can with the words that are before me and the numbers that our agencies deliver to me to then advocate with and for them. But so much of it boils down to communicating and then building relationships through communications to get the work done. And as Covid emerged, when the face to face was much harder or it was virtual wasn't quite the same as being able to shake hands and look one another in the eye. The importance of picking the right words and picking the right tone and having the right inflection and the right amount of urgency and whatnot was that much more underscored. And I had the privilege of being able to do that from the safe setting of my house for 13 months and then my office, where I'm isolated with a bunch of boxes ever since. So, yes, it's amazing how distinct that legal training has determined, I should say, ended up being. But beyond that, a lot of the communicating that we do is internal with the CEOs and executive directors that we're serving. And the most valuable thing that we do for them is email them once a day. We started doing that around March 2nd of 2020 because the pace of things happening was so spectacular and our agencies were all over the place and they're Very divers lot of organizations. We have organizations that have a staff of zero and a budget of a couple dozen thousand dollars. And we have agencies with revenue over 300 million and a staff of a couple thousand. So what can we do to benefit all of them, especially in the midst of a once in a century crisis? They all needed information. So turning all of the information that we thought was valuable for them into a digestible but comprehensive email every day became imperative. And then we tried to use that not only as a tool to share information, but to gather it and then take what we gathered and do the advocacy work that we needed to do with officials, funders and philanthropists and corporate folks and higher ed folks and everybody else that we needed to engage with. So I haven't given you a pithy response, but I promise you I can be succinct when I need to be.

No, this is great, Mike, because again, what we're realizing, again is that the importance of email, it's essentially a necessary evil. At this point, a substantial portion of our persuasive endeavors are going to be via email, whether we like it or not. You have to be good at it then. Also, you've identified something that a lot of professionals are beginning to realize is that the most difficult negotiations are going to be sometimes with the people who are on our team or ostensibly on the same side. So you're representing the people in the nonprofit world, but then you also have to get them on board as well within larger organizations. For example, we work with a lot of procurement organizations and they have to negotiate, of course, with the suppliers. But sometimes their toughest negotiations are with the people that they're buying things for, their internal clients, their stakeholders too. You touched on some tactics that you use, and I want to dig a little bit deeper on those too. We'll say two or three. One you've talked about is essentially coalition building. You are doing a great job of getting a lot of stakeholders on the same page. Before going and making your request, I want to dig deeper into that. You talked about the simple one of building rapport, something that is essential but people often overlook because they're so busy using air quotes. We are all busy, so nobody's busy. We have to make time if we want to be effective. But then also recognizing that there are going to be some relationships where you simply cannot create that connection despite your efforts. You can't build that rapport and then you circumvent that. So I think it's the opposite side of rapport, recognizing that sometimes you have to go around people. When we're thinking about coalition building, let's start there. Let's go a little bit deeper on what that means to you and how you do it.

Right? So it depends. It depends on what we're trying to build a coalition around. But what's transpired thanks to Covid is something that's made coalition building significantly easier, which is that folks, at least in Franklin county, have been looking for ways to help the helpers. And our agencies come up, or our stakeholders come up, or we come up, and we're quickly the beneficiary of folks being referred to us offering to help in some way. And we say, okay, let's find out how we can help you. And then we use that initial entree to find other ways to keep roping them into things as they might be valuable. Let me use Ohio State as an example. Prior to Covid, we hadn't partnered with Ohio State on anything. We just had some conversations with some individuals and administration over there about ways we might be able to work together. And since COVID I think we've touched five or six different colleges or elements of the university on a number of different fronts. And in real time, they're donating 5,000 portable air purifiers to our members. The next pickup is actually in the morning. And that was because they found us on Google. We needed a warehouse at one point to serve as a distribution point for some of the PPE that had been donated to us. And I sort of put out a call for help on Twitter through our chamber account. And somehow this business called Dancor Solutions, which I'd never heard of before, they never heard of us, found us. And we've developed a relationship where they've very generously given us a little sliver of their warehouse, which to us is a massive allocation of space. And we use that from time to time. And we just try to be extremely polite and gracious. And I sent them a bunch of hot chicken takeover the last time they helped us out with something. I can't compensate people in lots of ways, but I can give them gratitude, I can give them media attention, I can thank them on our social media channels, and I can send them lunch. So I try to do those pieces to continue that and demonstrate our appreciation, even if we can't do it in other more significant ways. When we need to go soliciting for assistance, I always try to find someone that can give me an introduction on behalf of the sector. And our reach is wide enough now that there's usually someone within our membership or our immediate stakeholder group that can make those introductions, and we use those somewhat liberally when we need assistance. And then the last place is through Twitter. Twitter has been a spectacular, spectacular tool for us to build relationships and find folks to work with locally, across the state, and even across the country for all sorts of random things. And we will continue using the heck out of that while it remains the service that it is now.

Yeah, one of the things that I'm seeing a lot in what you just described is something that's very, very simple, but something that's overlooked quite often is a direct request for assistance. A lot of times people make the mistake of kind of beating around the bush, and they're like, you know, it would be great if somebody could help. That's not how you make an ask. That's where the negotiation begins, and that's where most negotiations fail, because most people are not willing to make that request. I think there's a lot of ego that's wrapped up in it because sometimes people are afraid to ask for help because it's some kind of show of weakness. But the only way you can become strong is if you're willing to be vulnerable enough to let people know what you need so you can get the job done.

Well, if there's something I know well and we nonprofits know well, it's being vulnerable. And with COVID it's made what folks need and what we need very clear, and no one has time to beat around the bush. So I've gotten very good at being very candid, in part out of respect for those from whom we're asking something, to make it as easy as possible to digest the ask and then respond to the ask. But I also try to make it easy for folks to say no and try to be grateful regardless. To give you a concrete example of that, last August, we knew that the delta variant was having a greater effect on children than previous variants had, and we knew that there wasn't a ready supply of children's masks. So we went to the county and we went to children's hospital, and we said, here's the problem. We found a supplier in Florida that can manufacture these children's masks and have them available for us in five days upon receipt of payment. Would you be willing to partner with us by being the funder for. I think we got, like, 75,000 children's masks or something like that. And I just kept it real simple. This is how we need your help. This is how it would be beneficial. You know, I Can't offer you anything other than our gratitude and knowing that these will get out into onto the faces of a lot of kids in our community that may not have the resources to purchase the masks on their own or have their family purchase the masks on their own. And from start to finish, that was about a three week process of asking for help getting the masks, getting them distributed, getting them paid for. Nobody has time in our world to do the back and forth and go play golf and massage the ask and be passive aggressive and all of that and power to those that still doing that. At some point I'd like to get away from being so blunt and transactional with folks. But that day is not tomorrow.

Right? Right now I want to dig deeper on something that you said that was really interesting because you said you want to make it easy for the person to say no. And to a lot of people that will sound a little bit counterintuitive. So can you go a bit deeper on that?

If I back them into a corner or come on too aggressively, I feel like I might get an immediate yes, but I'll never get a yes again. So I try to make it as easy as possible for them to say no in the hopes that it might be a no, but I can refer you to or no, but come back with another ask. And sometimes I think that works to everybody's benefit and sometimes it doesn't get what we need in the immediate term. And that isn't good. But ultimately I think that that's an approach that we'll continue taking at least while I'm here.

Yeah, it makes sense. I mean, essentially you're playing the long game. You're recognizing that this relationship has more value over time than if I were to just get what I want right now in this immediate moment, but never have an opportunity to go back. This ties into the other thing that you've said a number of times, which is rapport. And now what I'm going to say next will sound like flattery, and it certainly is. But there's truth to it. You are a very personable person. You are somebody who is easy to like. When it comes to your ability to build rapport with somebody. I know there's going to be an element of it that is intentional, but there's going to be a significant element that is just your natural personality for the listeners. I want you to try to distill the parts of your personality and your approach that can be replicated. Essentially. Can we put Mike Corey into a pill so people can digest it? With their ears and replicate your success.

I've never been. No one's ever suggested I become pharmacological product here, but I'll take that. Kwame, I'm very self deprecating. I know that, that, that I wish I could minimize that. People criticize me for being too self deprecating and I like, yeah, I'm more critical of myself with that than you are. So thank you. I try to inject humor where I can. I try to always be gracious. I probably use too much enthusiasm through exclamation points than I otherwise should. I try to be very organized and put asks up front to make it clear for whomever I'm engaging with. As part of that rapport building, I always try to acknowledge how busy I know someone is. I try to thank people for just reading my email or listening to me talk about something. And then I always try to follow up with a letter, a handwritten letter. Although, as everyone tells me, my handwriting has gotten progressively worse over the years and I have to often translate them after people have received them. So I don't recommend writing something that's not legible, but that's what I at least sometimes think about. But it's hopefully become instinctual enough at this point that I'm not consciously doing these things. It's just me being me. And I can thank my parents and friends for shaping me, rightly or wrongly, into whatever I've become. In terms of a communicator, I think that's great.

And to me, if we were to synthesize this into three words, it would be authenticity. You are who you are and you lean into that. I would say it is respect. You're respecting the person that you're talking to by acknowledging how busy they are, respecting their ability to say no, and respecting the fact that you took the time to read my email and communicate with me and you did not have to. I see that. I appreciate that. And then consistency too. So you're really playing the long game again. Just want to really hit that home where we're saying, okay, I'm going to interact with, with you. I'm going to build rapport. And then after, either I get what I want or I don't get what I want. Regardless, I'm going to show you that you still matter by following up with communication in my authentic way, which is illegible, but they feel it. They feel the love. I think that's what's most important.

I appreciate that. I will say a challenge that I have and I'm sure, we all have is keeping up with communications. To me, my inbox has been unnavigable for about three months now, ever since the Omicron wave eased. I have not been able to keep up in any discernible way with my inbox, and I tried, thanks to Bricker, to respond to everyone within 24 hours. And. And I am not in a place where I can do that because you get Messages on Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, your inbox phone calls on top of meetings that you're in and work you need to do. And I still haven't figured out precisely how to navigate all of that, aside from I've now blocked off my Mondays and Fridays to not take meetings at all so that I can try and keep up. But it feels Sisyphean. But I do try to at least acknowledge I've gotten I've received your email. I know I can't respond substantively right now, but I will try to do so within a certain range of time. Something else I learned at Bricker is to not set the expectations to a place where you can't meet them and underperform. But I've even taken the tact, Kwame, of keeping an auto message up at my busiest times for a couple weeks in a row where I just said thank you so much for your communication. I'm particularly busy right now and I won't be able to get back to you quickly. So they've at least received something. I've set that expectation low in terms of my ability to respond in a timely way. And then I try to give them a way to communicate with me if it's an emergency outside of the inbox. So that was a long way of saying I'm really struggling with that piece of showing respect, building rapport, being grateful because it's drinking from a couple fire hoses right now.

In terms of that, yeah, listen, I have nothing that I can add to that because my inbox is a joke. Listen, I empathize with you and I admire your willingness to continue to try because like you said, it's Sisyphean, so shout out to Greek mythology there. But I would say for me, it's like that boulder has rolled over me and I'm okay with it. So kudos to you for still fighting the good fight. And I want to circle back to that one last point when you talked about those times where you can't build rapport, those times when you realize I am having a conversation with somebody who is not an ally. They're not an advocate. It's a reality that I don't think we address enough that just sometimes our goals are antithetical to the person who is across the table. And now we have to realize that we have to use our batna best alternative to a negotiated agreement. I cannot get what I need at the negotiation table. So I have a plan B and it doesn't involve you. So what is it that you do in those situations? How do you circumvent that person without creating an enemy that makes it harder to use that Plan B. Yeah.

So I've been fortunate in that that doesn't happen too often. It most frequently happens when the party or entity that we're trying to engage with is just overrun with work and probably has an inbox far worse than mine and can't be responsive. So it's not a matter of wanting to, it's a lack of capacity to do so. And I just find another contact and I will even note in that initial communication to circumvent someone or some office I have attempted, I believe they're extremely busy. So I'm coming to you because this is time sensitive or something to that effect. If it is in fact because of a conflict in terms of not getting what we need or getting the answer that we need or getting anything, it tends to be more due to politics and with an office that we have to work with but we are struggling to work with and we'll find someone at a similar level or just some other way around to get at least the message across or the information that we need just in another way. And again, try to be transparent but respectful, give you a concrete example. So we work with all the elected officials offices that have a place in Franklin County. We don't engage with the elected official in the General assembly that's in Ginadenhatten or Wapakonet or Zanesville. Although with gerrymandering, we do have some folks that serve both Zanesville and Columbus. And there are some offices in our footprint where they've made it very clear that they not only don't disagree with the position that our sector has on an issue, they don't want to hear what we have to say on a particular issue. And sometimes we'll continue communicating with them out of respect and to show that we're trying to to make an attempt, or sometimes we'll just leave them off those communications altogether because it's going to be a moot point for them and for us. So again, I'm privileged that that doesn't happen too Often in our line of work. And I'm privileged that we represent and work with one county as opposed to 88, where you have to be a little bit more persistickety when those issues do arise. But we're fortunate to be in a position where that's not the. And so I'm going to take that privilege and keep running with it.

Yeah, this is great, because I think what we can take from this is that even if our interests are not aligned, there are usually other avenues that you can at least explore to get your needs met elsewhere. Whenever you enter into a negotiation, you have to understand what your batna is, your best alternative to a negotiated agreement, because it'll affect the way that you have the negotiation and you can't be afraid to use it. And I love the element that you've added there that you use it with respect. Right. I think of people take the batna as it is a literal bat and they hit somebody with. Doesn't need to be like that. You could just say, hey, Mike, I see that our interests are not aligned. I appreciate you taking the time to talk to me. And honestly, I would rather somebody be clear about the fact that they don't want to work with me or we don't have the same interests. So I don't waste my time. I don't waste your time. We can agree to disagree and move on, right?

Yes. I'm not always feeling respectful after the fact, but in terms of our professional communications, they always need to be and they always will be. And through our work, we have to be nonpartisan. And we are. But we have a good rapport with all of the elected officials offices, with the exception of one in Franklin County. And that office has made it clear they're not interested in engaging with us. And that's okay. We don't need to work with them and they don't need to work with us. And we can do our work just as well without them. Even if we think that that's to the detriment of that particular office's constituency. Outside of that, we've been very lucky with all of our other sector engagements. It doesn't matter what it is. It's not been a problem. And I know that that's. We're very fortunate. It's one of the reasons I love my job. I don't love conflict. That's why I didn't go into litigation. That's why I went into the nonprofit space. But conflict is unfortunately a necessary part of things. We need to be in conflict. Okay. We can do it, but there's almost always a way around it for us where we can be conflicted in an approachable way.

Yeah, that's great, Mike. We are well beyond time. I must really like you or something, man. Jeez, let this go on forever. But it was so good. I really appreciate this. This is so helpful. And for the listeners that are out there who are more interested in your work and they want to learn more, how can they get in touch with you and how can they support the chamber?

Well, first, thank you. This was wonderful and it's great to be with you and thank you for having me. If folks, I haven't driven folks away, you can check us out@humanservicechamber.org you can follow us on Twitterhsc and you can sign up for our e newsletter. Also on our website, if you scroll down to the bottom, plug in your email address and I promise I won't email you as frequently as I email everybody else.

Mike, this is great. Thanks for joining us, my friend. Really appreciate it.

Thanks for having me.

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