How to Work (and Negotiate) With People You Don’t Like — From the Man Who United South Africa’s Enemies

What if the key to resolving conflict isn't control, persuasion, or even agreement, but creating space for people to show up.

As they really are?

In this episode, I talk with Adam Kahane, a global expert in facilitating breakthroughs when the stakes are high and the trust is low. Adam is a director at Rios Partners, a social impact firm that helps governments, businesses, and communities tackle their toughest challenges. He's worked in over 50 countries, often in the heart of deep conflict, and has brought together people who didn't just disagree, they despised each other. Adam is also the author of six books, a member of the Order of Canada, and was named Social Innovation Thought Leader of the Year at the World Economic Forum in Davos. In this conversation, he reveals the surprising secret behind effective collaboration and why it all begins not with control, but with. But with humility. And before we get into it, how do we know Adam's good?

Let me read you this testimonial for his book.

Solving Tough Problems is a breakthrough book that addresses the central challenge of our time, finding a way to work together to solve the problems we have created. You know who said that? Nelson Mandela, former president of South Africa and Nobel Peace Prize recipient. At negotiate anything, we're always trying to bring you the best, and Adam is one of the greats. So if you have ever struggled to connect with someone who sees the world completely differently, this episode's for you.

How I got started in this work, I really don't have. Don't have any proper training in negotiation or mediation. I was a extremely nerdy theoretical physics student and then ended up studying energy economics and going to work for Shell, the oil company in London in a department that was studying markets and what could happen in the future, using a methodology called scenario planning, telling stories about possible futures. And in 1991, we got a call from South Africa from two professors at a historically black university associated with Nelson Mandela's African National Congress, which had just been legalized the year before. And they'd heard about the Shell scenario methodology and wanted to use it to think about the transition from apartheid to democracy. And so they wanted somebody who could provide them with advice on the methodology and run the workshops. And as I was the youngest and most expendable member of the department, I was sent from London to Cape Town. That was in September 1991. One of my British colleagues gave me a piece of advice before I left for the organizers, which is that they should invite to the exercise awkward sods, sort of a British expression, but meaning, you know, people that don't think the same way. It might even be a little, you know, difficult to get along with each other. And that's what they did. So the organizers didn't invite just fellow university professors or just members of the African National Congress, although there were several seniors, ANC officials there. But they also invited leaders of all the other political parties, including the apartheid parties, and business leaders and trade unionists and community leaders, black and white opposition and establishment, left and right. And I'd never been to a meeting like that. I'd never even heard of a meeting like that. And I showed up and facilitated what ended up being four weekend workshops in this little hotel in the wine country outside of Cape Town. And it was extraordinary, and it was in every sense the hinge of my life. The idea that people that were certainly didn't agree, certainly didn't see things the same way, in many sense, were enemies, didn't agree with or like or trust each other, could work together and could be together, not just be together, but in a relaxed and creative and productive way. And through doing that, could develop ideas that had an influence on what happened in the country over the years that followed, leading up to the first democratic elections in 1994. This just blew my mind. I was amazed the hinges got blown off the door. Anyhow, to make a long story short, I ended up resigning from Shell and moving from London to Cape Town and marrying the organizer of the project. You know, the usual story. And that's how I got started in doing the work I've been doing now for 35 years. And that's how we founded Rios Partners, which was founded. It works all over the world, but was started in. In South Africa. And that's. That's what I've been doing all day, every day since then. And that's. That's what my work's about. That's what Rios's work's about. That's what my books are about. So that's. That's how I got started.

Incredible. Adam, thank you for starting off with that story. There's so much to learn and absorb from this story. I think the first thing is just going into something, being willing to experiment and try. I think that's the first thing, especially when you think about where you were at that time. We're talking 1991, apartheid South Africa, or coming out of it. And where we are now in the modern times, we can recognize. Well, there doesn't even seem to be a willingness to have those difficult conversations with people who have different backgrounds. And I think the first lesson that we can learn is that if you're willing to step up, have these difficult conversations, put different types of people in. In the room, you could find the love of your life and get married and live a happily ever after. Then the second, more practical point is that this is actually doable. This is actually doable at the highest level, because we're not just talking about people who might disagree about the strategic approach of a company. We're not talking about families who are disagreeing about spending. We're talking about fundamental differences in not just the direction of a company, but humanity and dignity. And so when we got those different voices in the room, how were you able to get people, first of all, to accept the invitation and sit side by side with people who see the world so differently?

Well, there's a bunch of things I want to say. The first and most important lesson is the one you said. It is possible. It can be done. It doesn't mean it's easy or straightforward or guaranteed, but it's possible. And I sometimes describe that experience in South Africa as being like a dark night. You're outside on a dark night and there's a flash of lightning, and for a minute you can see the whole landscape, and then it's dark again. So I use that image to say that I saw it all then, which doesn't mean I got it or that I could do it again. And in many ways, I've had to learn it over and over. And it's not straightforward, but I was lucky that I got to see it at least for an instant. And what I got to see is that in certain contexts, people realize, wait a second, here we are in a difficult situation. It looks hopeless. In fact, at that time, both internationally and within South Africa, people couldn't imagine how the situation could be changed, except for through violence. We've got an opportunity. Let's not waste it. And so I said that the meetings were relaxed and creative, but they were also serious in the sense that I think everybody had, the sense, we have an opening, let's do what we can now. There were many. It wasn't particular to this exercise. There were literally hundreds of such activities, not using scenario planning, but using different methods. There were hundreds of these activities taking place in those years and cumulative. They created this historic societal transformation. So that's the first thing. It is possible. The second thing I'd say is that I think I was able to do this through a very particular. Because of a very particular way I entered into this. And I'm going to exaggerate a little bit, but to make a point. But I'm quite a know it all. And certainly then I was, what, 30 years old? I was even more of a know it all. And I was. I. I was used to coming into meetings, having, you know, done some reading on the plane and thinking I understood what was happening and could tell people what to do. That's, that's my academic training and my personality. But in this case, it was different for a couple of reasons. First of all, I was very busy with my shell work, so I didn't actually do that. And I didn't know anything about South Africa. I. I'd been there only once on a business trip. And more to the point, what I knew about the people, I thought, wow, this is amazing. I've never met people like this. This is political leaders and business CEOs, people who'd been underground or in exile or really had done much things that I was very impressed with. So I came in with what, for me was a very unusual orientation, which is not knowing and respect. It's not my normal, normal modus operandi. Certainly not when I was 30. And this, of course, is, is the perfect formula. I didn't do it intentionally, but. And one of the, one of the participants in those meetings, a guy named Howard Gabriel, who was a leader of the Congress of South African Trade Unions, the ANC aligned Black Trade Union, said, adam, when we first met you, we couldn't believe that anybody could be so ignorant. We were certain you were trying to manipulate us. And when we realized you actually didn't know anything, that's when we decided to trust. So it's not that I'm counseling ignorance, but I did learn, and I do believe that people can tell if you're trying to help them or if you're trying to manipulate them. Everybody, no matter how simple, can tell if you're bullshitting them. I wasn't. And people could see that and they thought, okay, well, this is for real. Let's see what we can do. Now, just one other thing I'll say about this, because you used a phrase that people always use when we talk about this work. It happens 100% of the time. I'm in conversation with people. They say, how do you get people to. Those were the words you used. I just, I tend to hear it because I will always use that. And for me, this is a very fundamental point. I'm not trying to be picky, but my experience is you can't get people to do anything. At least I can't really. Not my colleagues, not my Staff, not my kids, not my grandkids, certainly not people I'm facilitating. And so even though that's the common phrase, it really doesn't fit what's required. And I wrote a book called Facilitating Breakthrough which is based on this, which is basically about this precise point. What's required is to remove the obstacles to people doing what it is they think they need to do. And that's what good facilitation is, that you can't get people to do things, at least not in, not in these contexts. So South Africans wanted to, or these South Africans wanted to transform the situation they were in. They could see it wasn't working, it wasn't going to work, and that they had an opening. And lots of things, not just what I was doing, but things many people were doing, created the space for that to happen. And it happened. Which doesn't mean South Africa is heaven on earth, doesn't mean everything got sorted, doesn't mean there aren't other later issues that arose and challenging that now. But they did do something amazing at that time and they proved it could be done.

Adam, there is so much to explore here. I love this lightning bolt mentality, by the way. I think this, you've given words to something that we've all kind of experienced where we can see an opportunity, but it disappears very quickly. But you have to trust and believe that you did see what you saw and you can still drive toward it. And I think a lot of times within our individual conversations, but also when we're talking about bigger issues within facilitations, societal level, corporate level, those type of things, it is the self fulfilling prophecy of the fact that we don't believe this could work that drives us toward that negative outcome. And there's none of that positive belief that even compels us to try. So I think that's a very important thing to explore. And then it's, it's funny, you know, because you shared it in a humorous way, but really what happened was a little bit of forced humility in the way that you entered the situation. And when I think about the best negotiators, the best mediators, the best facilitators, there is a, an element of either low ego in general or the ability to manage your ego in the moment. Humility is one of those key drivers of success and difficult conversations. But people think that they need to come in with a bravado that is really typically very off putting to the other side. And then lastly, I'm glad that you, you mentioned get people too because it is just common parlance. That's how we talk. But it's so important to be able to pause and recognize, hey, listen, we need to understand that we cannot force anybody to do anything. Everybody has agency and autonomy, and a lot of times it is. The countervailing force is that when you try to push somebody to do something, they push back harder. Not because they think it's necessarily the right thing to do, but because they're establishing themselves as an independent thinker. Right. I think this is. This is brilliant. There's so much to learn here. So when we're thinking about facilitation here, I think the next thing is when we're, like, kind of touching on facilitating breakthrough. What would you say for those people who are out there trying to facilitate breakthrough in their own type of way, when they're bringing different voices to the table? What would you say are the steps of an effective facilitation?

When I started this work, which was essentially with that first experience in South Africa, where I was running this set of workshops, and I say facilitating, I wasn't proposing a solution. I wasn't mediating between the parties. I wasn't arbitrating. I was setting up a series of. A sequence of conversations, in this case, to develop scenarios. But it could have been something else. So what do you work with when you have. When you're a facilitator, you work with space and time. That's all you have. You have a sequence of activities over time, and you have a physical space. It's interesting. It's this conference center where we met is quite a small venue. It still exists. And when I walked in the first day, there's one big meeting room and there were a series of tables, rectangular tables set in a big square. I guess that's how they normally at meetings. And I did just one thing. I took away the tables on one of the long sides and I hung a bunch of flip charts on the wall so that everybody was facing the flip charts rather than each other. And I know it sounds obvious, but I think it's a basic thing that right from the beginning, we're not focused on each other. We're focused on this thing we're creating together, as I say in this case, scenario stories. It could have been something else. And obviously the methodology has gotten a bit more elaborate in the. Whatever, 30, 40 years since then. But that basic idea that we're focusing on this situation we're facing and what can we do about it rather than each other, I think is quite basic now. This point about removing obstacles is something I learned a lot later, but in a similar workshop it was in 2017. I worked a lot in the country of Colombia since 1996, since the time of the civil war. And in 2016, that war came to an end, at least the major part of it. There was a peace treaty signed between the government and the FARC under President Juan Manuel Santos, and various activities started to get on with life and to try to make a better country. And one of these was in a part of Colombia that had suffered a lot in the war, the southwest part of the country, near Cali. And we had a workshop there again with all the parties, Afro Colombians, indigenous people, agricultural leaders, politicians, et cetera. And one fellow showed up who I'd met before because I worked a lot in Colombia. Quite a famous man. His name is Francisco Derues. He's a Jesuit priest and famous peacemaker. Had done really brave things during the war of trying to bring people together. And just the week before, he'd been appointed by President Santos to be the president of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. So big job. And so I was pretty surprised to see him at this out of the way workshop. And I asked him why he'd come and he said he was interested in the methodology. He thought it might help him with this big job he was about to start. And anyhow, the workshop was going well and I was facilitating it with my colleagues and people were doing the kind of things you do in workshops, right? On flip charts, use post it notes, build things with Lego. And it was going pretty well. People were, you know, starting to think, wow, there's something here. We might actually be able to do something other than slaughter each other. And at the end of the first day, a Francisco comes running up to me at the end of the day, he says, adam, I see what you're doing. And I said, oh, well, Francisco, what am I doing? He said, you're removing the obstacles to the expression of the mystery. Sort of a Jesuit, turns out, sort of a Jesuit thing to say. I had no idea what he was talking about. And we spent dinner together. My Spanish isn't very good and his English isn't very good. So we didn't make a lot of progress. And by the end of the dinner, I still didn't really understand. I mean, what is a mystery? It's not like an Agatha Christie mystery where you figured out it's this, this unknowable thing. That's why it's called the mystery. So I never really understood it. I couldn't say. I could tell you what it is now, but I thought the phrase was extremely evocative. Removing the obstacles to the expression of the mystery. So now, this is interesting. And then I could immediately see, well, yes, that is what I'm doing. And that's why I said it's not getting people to. It's removing the obstacles. So what's the expression of the mystery? So to fast forward a little bit, because I think. Sorry, this is a long way to answer your very excellent question. What's the expression of the mystery? Well, I think it's that everybody wants to contribute, everybody wants to connect, and everybody wants to be treated fairly, which I could elaborate or I could use fancier words from that for that, which is the drive to power, love, and to. Yeah, power, love, and justice. So what's facilitation? Facilitation is removing the obstacles to contribution, connection, and equity. That's what I think it is. And everything else is just technique.

Hey, Adam, give me one second. I want to talk to you. Yes, you, listener. I'm talking to you right now. If this conversation is challenging how you think about conflict or giving you a new way to see facilitation, send it to someone you care about. Share it with a colleague, a friend, or maybe even someone that you had a tough conversation with. Because what Adam's showing us here is powerful. Even when people disagree deeply, there's still a way forward, but only if we're willing to remove the right obstacles. And, hey, if someone shared this episode with you, take a second to thank them. It means that they care, and it means that they just handed you something that's worth keeping.

That is brilliant.

Brilliant.

Well, first of all, there was something that you said that was untrue. I walked into this room digitally, and you and Simone were speaking Spanish. Your Spanish is fine. That is the first thing. And the second thing is I love the brilliance in this, but also the simplicity in it as well. And one of my favorite quotes is the. The sign of a brilliant insight is that it seems obvious in hindsight. And you're absolutely right. Everybody wants to contribute. They think that they have value that they have, that they should have the right to contribute to the conversation. But there are so many things that can block that contribution.

Right.

So many obstacles. And let's go deeper there, too, because we could.

We could just say, okay, there are.

Obstacles, and let's move on. Let's. Let's talk about. Let's talk about some of these obstacles, because it seems like we have the. We have societal obstacles, we have interpersonal obstacles. But then internally, we have psychological and emotional obstacles within ourselves. So let's talk about some of these obstacles that are. That come up the most.

So I think it's a good question, and I think there's lots of obstacles. Why would I be unable to contribute or be blocked from contributing or feel unable to contribute? It might be because nobody invites me to, or they tell me to shut up and listen, or I don't think people respect me, or I don't think it's safe to say what I'm really thinking in this space. Or maybe I'm just having a really tough year and I don't have the energy to. To make the contribution that I. That I'm capable of. And similarly, why would I, you know, what would block me? What would be the obstacles to connecting? Well, I don't feel I belong. I'm not invited. We only do this on zoom. I'm not part of the clique. I don't feel that I have a warm connection. I'm in a different department. So all these reasons and the third part, the equity or the fairness or the justice, is what's the structure of the situation or the organization or the team that includes some people and values the contribution of some people and excludes others and diminishes the contribution of others. So, yes, it is simplicity on the other side of complexity. And I spent years trying to work out this triangle of power and love and justice, which is a. A triangle that Martin Luther King spoke about, often following, I think, a theologian that he had studied in his PhD whose name was Paul Tillich, who wrote a book called Power, Love, and Justice. So I think there's a lot there, and it is a simplicity on the other side of complexity. I think it's the foundation of being able to work together and being able to collaborate rather than impose.

One of the things that came to mind for me, Adam, as you were saying, those things, was when it comes to just everyday people having everyday difficult conversations, a lot of times we prepare in a very egocentric way. We think about the things that we want, the points that we want to convey, and then how we can navigate the conversation in order to achieve our objectives, then we might layer on the win win methodology, where you say, well, not because I really care, but because you won't give me what I want unless I give you something that you want. Let's figure that out. But still, ultimately quite transactional. And now what I'm thinking is that for us in our negotiations, whether it's business or personal, whatever difficult conversation that we find ourselves in. One of the we have to start doing is starting to think about what holds the other person back from truly expressing themselves. Because negotiation is an information game. The more information I have, the better I'll be, the more effective I'll be. But when it comes to establishing a meaningful connection, if I can create enough psychological safety for the other person to be vulnerable, now we can establish a deeper connection. But even just thinking about the obstacles that the person finds them in front of them, that's a really significant paradigm shift for our audience. Because when it comes to negotiation preparation, I still think we're stuck in that transactional mindset, and this will help us to connect in a completely different type of way.

Yeah, no, that's great. That's brilliant. And I also think what's also true is the more basic version of that is that often in negotiations, we spend all our time focusing on what we want to get and what's important to us and how come they're not giving it to us. And what if I offer them this and don't take the time to, as the expression goes, put ourselves in the other person's shoes? Well, what's going on for them? And why are they. Why are they pushing for this thing they're pushing for? And why are they so stubborn on this other point? And it doesn't mean we have to agree with them, doesn't mean we have to, like, it doesn't even mean we have to respect it, but we have to understand it. And that takes. Well, in my experience, that takes some focus because it's so easy to just get caught up in, you know, this thing that's going on for me. And why won't they. Why don't they understand me? And why won't they just agree with me? And, you know, they're such turkeys. And, you know, I had a friend in South Africa used to tell the joke about, you know, the guy who goes next door to borrow a cup of sugar, and he's. He's walking. He's walking over and he's saying to himself, you know. You know, this guy's so unfriendly, and he makes so much noise. On the weekend, he returned my lawnmower late, and. And so he knocks on the door and the neighbor opens and he. And the guy says, well, you can keep your damn sugar. So, you know, spend so much time talking to ourselves that, you know, we don't. We don't leave time for, like, what do you think's going on with them.

Wow, I love that story. I'm definitely going to use this. And it triggered something in me too, because when we are facilitating. So let's say we, the person listening to this episode, they absorb all of your wisdom, they've read all the books and so they understand what it is that they themselves need to do as the facilitator. But let's assume that the other people in the room haven't read their books and they are kind of stuck in that tribal mentality. And you see the in group versus outgroup bias starting to creep in, the us versus them mentality. And they start to get focused on, hey, this is what I need other people to know, this is what I need them to do. How do we start to as facilitators, how do we create an environment where people start to adopt and embrace this, this mentality where we're saying it is worthy and not a threat to who I am to take the time to understand and listen to somebody else, even if I don't agree with them.

Well, I'm going to give you a specific suggestion, but just to say, I wouldn't necessarily. I mean, we can focus on it in the role of the facilitator or mediator or the is organizing the activity. But I think it's maybe even more fruitful to think about how do I, as, as a party in this situation, how do I conduct myself? Because people always say, well, you know, I, I want to, I want to be respectful, but they don't want to be. And so that othering, that othering, I think John Powell calls it othering, I call it enemy, you call it tribalism, gets in the way from the very beginning. Let me answer with a, with a story. I've been doing these workshops of different sorts for 35 years on not training workshops, but workshops to deal with specific issues, whether it's peace or governance or water or energy or justice or climate change or racial equity or whatever. And pretty fancy workshops. And it's always interested me that the very simplest thing we do is the thing that people like best. And the simplest thing we do often is to say to people, okay, well, we've been at this for, for a while now. We're going to have lunch in 45 minutes. Why don't you look around the room, find the person most different from you, the person you actually never thought you'd talk to, and just go for a walk with them outdoors before lunch. And people look around, it's kind of funny. And they lock Eyes and. And then they go out for a walk and people go, oh, geez. You see, those two are going for a walk together. I wonder what the hell's going to happen? And it's always great. And people always come back and say, wow, now that was useful. You know, your flip charts, your small group sessions, your Lego. It's okay. But the walk, that was useful. Can we do that again? So I started to think, what's with the walk? Why is it always the most popular thing or that people find the most useful? And there's two kinds of explanations. The first one I had was, is the mechanics of the walk. Well, you're. You're facing in the same direction. You're moving through the world. You're. You're not looking at your phone or your paper. You're. You're navigating the world. You're coming to a fork, and you're figuring out which way to go. That's part of it. And for people who. Who, you know, don't physically want to walk, they can sit. Sit side by side and talk side by side. Not looking at each other, but looking at what's in front of them. Like the way I describe the tables at that first conference center in South Africa. But I talked about this with a woman in Mexico, Lucila Cerviche, who's a Catholic theologian. And she said, adam, you're missing the point. That's not why it works. She had done it in the workshop in Mexico. She said, that's not why it's important. What's important in the walk is the sequence. First you're meeting the other person as a fellow human being, and then secondly, maybe you'll decide that you think something different or want to do something different. The sequence is important, Adam. She said, it's the opposite of the traditional Catholic confessional, where first you have to admit you were wrong and then you're readmitted into the communion. And so it's a long way of answering your question. I think the basic thing is, can I see this other person as a human being? Doesn't mean I like them or agree with them or respect them or have the same values as them. But are they a fellow human being? And what's. Just have a modicum of curiosity. I wonder what's going on with them. Why are they going on and on about this thing? I don't get. And so the general advice I give to people is show some curiosity, show some interest. Like, oh, so can you explain to me why. Why do you keep making that Point. What is it? Why is that so important to you? Where's that coming from? So that, I think, is the foundation. It's the foundation as a facilitator. That's what Howard Gabriel noticed in South Africa is that I really was just trying to be helpful. And that's, I think, the foundation also for us as participants in this. Can I just even, just for five minutes, put aside my thing and my issue and my position and my demand and my needs and just ask, so what's going on for you here? What's, what's this about? Tell me about it.

This is so powerful. One of the things, my mind is racing now because I love the simplicity of it. I love the fact that we're talking about reconnecting as humans. And it's really, it's amazing how many of our problems can be solved if we just recognize, respect and accept the humanity of the other person. Which also helps us to recognize how dangerous tribalism is because we other the other person and a lot of times we dehumanize the other person as well. So bring just the simple act of bringing humanity back to these interactions is something that really, you can't really contrive it and you have to go back to these really simple approaches to do it. I love this because that's something everybody can do. And I'm also wondering when you, when you said, okay, pick the person who's different, just go on this walk, did you give them any homework in terms of what they should be talking about or should not be talking about?

No. It relates a little bit to, you know, how do you get people to. I find people in general don't like to be given a lot of instructions, at least not after the first morning. So it's generally, you know, talk about, you know, I. So the answer to your question is talk about what's going on for you. What's going on for you in the workshop or. But I was once at a meeting with a very interesting business leader, Gunning, and he was running a meeting project we were doing together. It was at Unilever and some meeting up people who didn't know each other. And we were just started and he said, well, we could go around the circle and ask you to introduce yourselves and who you are and where you work, but that would really be boring. So how about we do this instead? Turn to the person next to you, talk about your mother and your father and what in you you got from them. Wow. I thought. And it was, it was, it really worked. I wasn't running the meeting, I was a participant. I thought, wow, it just went from superficial. We don't know each other, like, in five minutes, to all the way down. And that was the same idea. You know, we all have a mother and a father, even if we didn't know them, and we all carry some of that. And that's a pretty interesting thing. And it's what's most per. As Carl Rogers said, what's most personal is most universal. So I don't know if I've ever given that as a. As a walk question, but that's the unexpected thing. What's most personal is most universal. Now, I don't want to be misunderstood. It doesn't mean we'll agree or like each other. Okay? That's important to understand somebody. I was once in a meeting in Texas. I was running a meeting with a brilliant woman named Betty Sue Flowers. And I was at a hotel in Texas. In Houston was a meeting of something about the future of Houston. And across the hall, in the other meeting room was a tattoo convention. And this was about 20 years ago, before everybody had tattoos. It was kind of. I remember thinking, oh, wow, I've never seen so many with tattoos. And then he. Sue said, okay, we're going to take a break. How about this assignment? During the break, everybody go across the hall and talk to one of these people and just see what you can learn. Be curious. So, you know, we had the break. People did it. We came back. Everybody said, oh, you know, I talked to these people. They're not so different from me. We all want the same thing. Well, that. It wasn't my experience at all. I went up to some guy and I said, well, it's a tattoo of, I don't know, Jesus on his bicep or something. I said, oh, why do you have that? He said, well, it's actually I. I had another one that I like better, but it. It wasn't really socially acceptable. So I got this to cover it up. I said, well, what was the one you covered? He said, it was a swastika. So I didn't feel better. I didn't like him more. I didn't feel we had. But, you know, well, I understood him better, and so I don't want to make it. I think it's. I think this is maybe the most important thing, and this is the thing that I. It's taken me a long time to learn, but we don't have to agree with or like other people to be able to. To need to work with them and to be able to work. This is the surprising thing about this work. Sometimes you just have to work with these people because. Well, for all kinds of reasons. Because they're part of the story or because you can't get around them or they have something you need or. Or it's the right thing to do. There's all kinds of reasons. And the idea that we have to have the same values, we have to have the same diagnosis, the problem, we have to agree on the solution. We have to like each other or trust each other. It would be nice. All of that would be helpful, but it's not necessary. That's the big thing I've learned.

This is powerful. And Adam, I could talk to you about this all day. I appreciate this. And when I come to South Africa at some time, it will happen. I will let you know. And we can meet in person and go on a walk. And before you go, I want to give you another chance to let folks know about your most recent book, the exciting upcoming book, and how they can get in touch.

Well, thanks. I'm enjoying it. Also, happy to talk. And I live part of the year in South Africa and part of the year in Montreal, so maybe we'll be able to meet in Montreal. I'm from Montreal. So the book that just came out today, April 8, is called Everyday Habits for Transforming Systems. And the book that I'm rewriting, and it will come out in November of this year, 2025, is called collaborating with the Enemy. And you can find out about those books and this work RIOS does on our website, which is riospartners.com r e o s partners one word riospartners.com so hope you find it useful.

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