Navigating Conflict in a Polarized World with Grande Lum

Hello my friend, and welcome to another exciting episode of Negotiate Anything. Thanks for joining us today. 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 of the American Negotiation Institute. Now, before we get into today's insightful conversation, I have a golden opportunity for those of you who recognize the power of negotiation in your professional lives. Have you ever found yourself wishing that you could navigate those high stakes conversations with more confidence? Or perhaps you're looking to empower your team with the art of persuasion and conflict resolution? 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. Grand. Welcome back my friend.

Kwame, great to be back here with you.

Yes, it is a pleasure to have you my friend. So how would you start us off? By telling us a little bit about yourself and what you do.

Sure, Kwame. I have been in negotiation dispute resolution most of my career. I currently and working with the Rebuild Congress Initiative, which is an initiative of the Harvard Negotiation Project and Issue one. And it's been working to help Congress function more effectively and we're doing really good work there. Prior to that I was the provost of Menlo College in Atherton, California. And the dispute resolution skills come in handy and really to help small colleges which really important right now, I think because of all the challenges from COVID and from other things. Prior to that I was working for your alma mater, the Ohio State Moritz College of the Law, was the director of the Divided Community Project which worked on polarization issues in this country. And before that I don't want to go too more deeply, but I do want to share. I was in the Obama administration. I was the director of the Community Relations Service, an agency within the Department of Justice that did mediation work on issues of race, gender, sexual identity, religion and disability work and just have been just a long time believer. I feel very fortunate to have come across negotiation and it's made just a huge difference in my life and my career.

This is great and it's awesome to have you back. And I love the fact that we get to start off with your bio because it is impressive and you've been able to touch so many areas of conflict resolution. And today I feel like, and I feel like I keep on saying this every year, but I feel like the work that we do is more important now than ever. Because when you think about we went through Covid, we are more divided politically than we have been in the past. And now we have the advent of artificial intelligence. There is a lot happening in society. And so I kind of just want to start off with getting an idea of your perspective of the role of negotiation and conflict resolution skills in this.

Evolving society with all those things that you mentioned. Kwame, There are things that tear us apart, that cause us to other the person that we may be interacting with, whether it's social media which leads us to vilify somebody who we don't see, or it's artificial intelligence that is now maybe actually the person we're speaking to or texting or emailing. And with COVID right where we're less likely to want to be in the same room for certain fears. So I think there's a lot of what goes on there is about intensifying fear for us and making us less able to or even less skilled to manage the everyday conversations to the difficult conversations work that we are all doing here. And certainly I think you're doing a terrific job going around and speaking and passing that to folks who need it. I think there's a greater need today to be able to sit across from someone whether who's similar to you or different from you in ways that help build rapport, build common ground, help you to communicate even clearly today. So for that reason, I think we do need to double down on negotiation and dispute resolution because there are so many conflict entrepreneurs out there. The media, they're conflict entrepreneurs, people who run social media companies, they're conflict entrepreneurs. It's stickier. People are likely to stay on their phones or on the Internet when something angers them. And so we're working against a lot of. And the skills that you teach, that I teach, that others teach, are even more important for us to be even happy in our own lives and for our society to function effectively.

I agree 100%, Grant and I love that term, conflict entrepreneurs. That's powerful. You're so right. And what we're realizing is that there are powerful forces that are weaponizing our psychology and creating tribalism, stoking up animosity in order to meet their own objectives. And so I didn't talk very much publicly about this, but when I was trying to get the TV show and I was out in Hollywood trying to get these deals, Grant, some of the feedback was, we think Kwame will resolve the conflict too quickly. They want the drama, and it's tough to overcome that.

That's right. That's so funny. Because conflict is what sells, right? It's what makes something dramatic. And conflict is human. We're not going to escape conflict, but we need to be able to resolve them just to be okay, you know, day to day. And I think what's important there, I think what we do is help to view conflict as something not to be afraid of, not to be something to avoid, but that there's something that comes out of it on the other side that's positive, that there is creativity that comes out of conflict, and that we forget that. It's easy to forget that when I'm upset with a family member or a friend or a colleague, I just focus on how angry I am. And I don't focus on the fact that that's human and conflict is inevitable and we just have to reframe it sometimes as something that is important and something that helps us to the other side, that helps us to greater agreements, greater understanding, greater relationships, and better communication.

Absolutely. And Grant, I love the fact that you. You talked about how it can be difficult, even for you, when. When you're having those difficult conversations with friends and family. It's the same for me. You know, sometimes one of the things I. I say to myself during the conversation, it's like self coaching. I'm like, kwame, what would you tell somebody else to do? Do that thing in the moment. But it shows that we are all human. Even though you and I are in this field, we still run into the same things, but we. We have these skills and these habits that we put into place to overcome those things. But when I look out into broader society, they don't have those same skills. And it's not just that they don't have them. It's. It's also a next level where there is almost like there doesn't seem to be much interest in learning them either.

That's a terrific point, because in a time where we're more likely to push away the other side. Right. I mean, cancel culture is an example of that. Where we're more likely, if you're not with me, you're against me. We're more likely to dismiss somebody rather than doing the hard work of, of understanding where they're coming from doesn't mean we agree. And I think that's important to frame. But it's just, it's not easy to be in a space where you're with someone who disagrees with you strongly. And in a more polarized world, we take those things so much more seriously. So that's why I think the skills are even more important than ever. And I love your point. We're not immune. I think even though you do it, it's just like a good therapist. Right. That doesn't mean you're not immune from problems because. And yeah, I don't know if it's an advantage, but we should be able to go to skills that we know in order to improve. And it's a lifetime journey. It's not a destination. You don't claim expertise and all of a sudden everything will be over. And I think you do a nice job of that in your work. I see some of your posts, when you talk about that, you know, whether it's with your spouse or with your kids or with your colleagues, it's real. And, you know, I think part of that comes from the fact that skills are important. Self awareness around our own identity and our own authenticity. Being more aware of our own emotions. Right. Being aware that I'm angry. Like, there are times where I don't. I don't think I'm angry, but my wife is pretty sure I'm angry, you know, and it's my own self awareness of my own anger or my own fear that will help in terms of dealing with those issues too. And that's something that's a journey for all of us and certainly a journey for me in that as I get older, I'm able to look at myself in ways that maybe like you were saying earlier, can I see myself a little distance and not see my emotions as myself, but see, like, oh, I'm getting angry. Maybe I can slow down a bit. Maybe I should take a deep breath or something like that.

Hello, my friends. Before we get back to today's episode, I want to ask you a question. Have you ever wondered how to elevate your team's negotiation game and how you can help the folks on your team have better, difficult conversations? At the American Negotiation Institute, we offer transformative keynotes and, and workshops tailored to empower professionals with top tier negotiation and conflict resolution skills. Whether it's a keynote for your next event or hands on training for your team, we've got you covered. Don't just negotiate. Master the art with the American Negotiation Institute. Click the link in the description to find out more. Elevate, negotiate and succeed. Absolutely. And that self awareness in itself is a skill. Right. The ability to slow down and just observe what's happening internally. I like to think about it in terms of like a map. We always talk about emotional intelligence and emotion management, things like that. And we have a destination of peace that we want to get to and stability. But you can't navigate somewhere on a map if you don't know where you currently are. And that's what self awareness gives us. And I think that's, it's, that's true within ourselves as individuals and I also think it's true on a macro level within ourselves as just a society. And when we think about where we currently are and where we want to go, I think kind of collectively there is a lack of societal self awareness where we are so, so rooted in our positions and our beliefs that we say, listen, I'm not the problem, they're the problem. And so we don't have that self awareness and that means that we don't even have the recognition that we need to make some kinds of adjustments collectively.

Yeah, I think of it often of if we're not in. I want to use the word harmony, but if I get into a point with a colleague where I don't trust them or I'm feeling misaligned with them, I'm much more likely to then blame them when something goes wrong versus the harder part, which is just to focus on, well, what did I contribute to that situation? Where is my own fault even? Or what did I do to make this situation happen? It's hard to do that. I find it hard if I'm angry, if I'm sad, to be able to have that space. And you focus on society as a whole, we're more likely to be positional these days. It's easier to stand behind. Here's what I think and if you don't agree with me, you're wrong or I'm not going to speak with you. I think the harder part is asking questions now. The hard part is having true inquiry and saying how'd you come to that belief about the situation? What are you thinking about? And I think we could all pause. You know, we can pause as individuals. We can pause as society and can we give each other the benefit of the doubt? Can we just hold off on rushing to judgment? We can all do it. You know, I can rush to judgment. You know, if I watch a basketball game and I can blame the refs pretty quickly or I can blame the other side pretty quickly, and that's fine. That's a friendly competition and we need competition. We need. That's something that's very human as well. And yet I think in day to day life, when faced with someone, when faced with conflict, when faced with someone else, can we do as I think you suggest, which is take a step back, understand a little bit more about where that person comes from without necessarily agreeing and without doing so. This is one extra thought before I want to share is there's something I was coming across of, you know, Darwin's evolutionary theory, which is like the strongest survive, right? And the strongest survive, but what's actually what actually happened in society. What Darwin missed out on this is there's an evolutionary biologist by Charles Wilson, I believe his name is, Said societies also progressed by cooperation. That's how, you know, it's the next level up. It's not just purely the strongest between an individual. It's also because human societies learned to band together. They became tribes and they became protective of each other. They looked out for each other. You know, my dog barks at, you know, barks because as a part of a. At night, because he's guarding the group, he actually likes to play only when we're around him because he knows he's now safe. There's safety in numbers and safety in groups. I think important to think about is we need to cooperate, but we need to be vigilant as we cooperate, that we're not going to just collaborate just to collaborate and make ourselves open to failure, open to being cheated. But we want to cooperate at the same time as we collaborate, we want to be vigilant for those people who are trying to take advantage of us. And I think in negotiation. Kwame, I'm sure you come across this all the time. People say, what's all this cooperative win win stuff? But that's not the reality is we always need to be vigilant as we cooperate too. I think that's an important piece that I've been thinking about a lot lately. It's important to cooperate, it's important to be collaborative. But as we do it, we also have to be vigilant and watchful for those who are trying to take advantage of us as well.

Absolutely. Because Those bad actors do exist. And I like to think about it in terms of like cautious collaboration. I'm always going to collaborate. I'm an interest based negotiator, but I'm not naive when I realize that they have interests that might be competitive. And I think the best negotiators find interest overlap. We figure out where we agree. But what's really interesting, we can see that within individuals we have that interest overlap. There's it doesn't harm us to be able to concede a little bit in order to help the other person and vice versa. And in an individual level, when we go back to the dichotomy between, or the false dichotomy between blame and contribution, it's either 100% your fault or 100% my fault. But we both contributed something to this, right? We can understand how that helps in relationships too. But then when you go to the macro societal level, if you're that person who is out front and you are willing to try to give a little bit, if you're willing to accept some of the contributions that you or your group has made to the collective challenges in order to connect with the other side, that's the kind of stuff that gets you canceled too. Because what ends up happening, especially on the political front, is that you'll just be primaried by somebody who's more extreme furthering the division. And it's this weird game that we have to play where it's like maybe people get into politics and leadership and things like that in order to advance society and things like that. But now they also have to retain their power by sometimes doing things that are not beneficial to society but beneficial to retention of power.

Absolutely. And that's a structural issue because it's structured in a way as you're speaking to now, somebody who wants to represent a district, they're much, much more likely to be beaten from their wings, not from the middle. So therefore it incentivizes a candidate, whether Democrat or Republican, to be more focused on their extreme side than toward the middle for everyone. Those who think about these issues a lot believe we need more reform to how do we reduce things like gerrymandering? Do we create multi member districts in which you get more representation? Do you go to ranked choice voting or top two so that regardless of what party the top two get in. So if you might get two Republicans or two Democrats and, and once you get into the general, the person who actually represents a larger, more popular interest is more likely to get elected and less likely to come from the extremes. So we have to think about this as a structural issue as well. Which leads to what the behaviors. If we want to seek people who are more collaborative, we actually have to change the incentive structures by which they run for office, for example, or by. By which they do so. But that's. Right. I mean, many members of Congress are incented from a fundraising standpoint to say the more extreme thing versus the thing that actually more people would agree to.

This is a very important point because this speaks to the work you're doing. Now. I agree with you 100%. The incentive structure is. Is twisted right now because if somebody goes in and says, you know what, I'm going to play this the quote. I'm using aggressive air quotes, listeners, the right way. Yeah, I'm going to lose next time 1,000%. Right. And so we understand that it's a structural issue. I like the suggestions that you. That you gave. Now the question is, what would it take for us to restructure our political system in a way that actually incentivizes the productive behavior?

I think it's going to take the people saying that's what they want from their representatives here. In 2013, I think only 9% people approved of Congress. So it's gone up slightly since then, but it's not high. I think it's going to be important that people request these, you know, these things, and that there are. That we find ways of making it more likely. And certain states have already done. Done that. They've actually moved to these sort of approaches. And there are. There are certainly laws that the Congress could pass to make it easier to do so as well. They could certainly change campaign finance laws, for example, and they can. You know, there are things that we can do around voting rights, for sure, that can help improve these things, but it's going to take the people demanding that really, of our legislatures to get that passed.

Okay, now the next question is, what will it take to get that critical mass of people to get to that point where they say, this is big enough for me to make that my issue.

Yeah, yeah. I think they're gonna have to see the connection to their daily lives. Right. That it will more likely lead to better jobs. Right. To more freedom. However we want to define it, there are very good people out there, political scientists, who are working on this issue. There's our Common Purpose Report that was by the American Academy of Science, that lays out a whole bunch of these reforms by a political science professor. Professor Daniel Allen, who's from Harvard University, was one of the folks involved that Eric Liu was also involved in, Yuval Levin. But there are folks out there working on the issue and working with different civic institutions, whether it's faith leaders or business leaders who need this, who have to say, oh, if the current system isn't working, then we have to all advocate for something different. And it's going to take a lot of different folks and a lot of different civic institutions, you know, like faith leaders, business, nonprofits, civil rights leaders, to say this is important for us to do as a country.

I like that. It makes a lot of sense. And it's funny, once you said it, it became obvious we have. People need to see the connection to their daily lives. And the thing that's tough is that everybody is so busy. We're so caught up in what we're already doing. And then the challenge is that when we go back to what we were talking about at the beginning of the conversation, we have these platforms that are kind of weaponizing our psychology. There's so much competing for our attention. And my concern, I don't know whether or not this is true, was that we would have to get to a point where things are so bad that people have no choice but to focus on it.

Yeah. Social media is one where I think if we were to start social media today, we would approach it very differently. We would design it very differently. Utah, for example, just passed some laws restricting the usage of minors on social media. Certain hours that you can't use it, you need your parents approval. That's something where I think there is some support across the political spectrum for how to think about social media. Their costs are externalized. The mental health issues that come out of social media, the companies themselves don't pay a price. The misinformation that goes on there, there's something happening to people, but the companies themselves are not having to pay the price. So therefore they don't focus on that. There's a lot of focus clearly on TikTok this week with the hearings. But it's not just TikTok. It's all the social media platforms, whether it's Instagram or Facebook or Twitter. We have to really, there has to be. I hope isn't true that things have to be so bad for us to do something about it. I think things are bad enough as it is today that require action by the companies themselves and by government as well.

I agree. I agree 100%. Sometimes I feel like Chicken Little. I'm like, hey, the sky is falling. Does anybody see this?

Right?

So I love this Perspective. And I really appreciate what you said about designing social media differently. If we had the chance to go back in time, and now we're living at a really interesting time where there is a powerful force that is coming into play and that's artificial intelligence. People are going as far as to say the information age is dead and we're moving into a completely different era, which is both exciting and scary. And what are your initial thoughts on artificial intelligence?

Yeah, I mean, I was just thinking about that even as we were speaking about social media. There's a lot of positives that came out of social media. Our ability to connect with people around the world, to stay in connection with folks, the ability to get certain things much faster when you order something via Amazon and all that. So of course there are real positives to our lives, but as we spoke to it, a lot of negatives as well. I think the same is true of artificial intelligence. I will not claim to be an artificial intelligence expert here. I've seen incredibly powerful things. I watched a demonstration of artificial intelligence as a mediator preparation tool for a landlord tenant case and it was really quite good, quite comprehensive. I can see the benefit to helping us negotiate more cooperatively, that there may be things that will more likely get to Pareto optimality in situations that we will be able to get our interests met very well. And those are really amazing things that it can help us accomplish those things, you know, and yet the other side of it, and I'm, I don't know, you know, I'm an optimist in many, in many things. But I would say that if we take, if we learn from our social media example, we need to look carefully as artificial intelligence is developed and changed. I live here in Silicon Valley and there was a sense that social media and the Internet would be such a wonderful utopian thing that it would help create lots of freedom and individuality. And it did do a lot of those things, but it also, but I think it also created problems in this attention commodization that, that we've gone into. And I think as we develop these wonderful artificial intelligence tools, we need to be very mindful. There needs to be oversight of some sort to making sure that we are doing it ethically and responsibly here.

Absolutely, I agree. It's, I think it could be one of the most powerful technologies ever in human history. And you're right, we have to think about the ethics behind it. And when you think about the, those ethical questions, what are some of the ones that come to mind.

In Terms of the ethics here, right? There's a whole bunch of things around. Does it develop on its own? And what does it actually then? Control? Does it overtake our abilities to control our power, our energy? There's so many things that it can do. There's, you know, I've certainly read about the amazing thing. Maybe it'll help. Help us cure cancer. Right? There are all these things that it can do. But the ethics are. When it, when it comes to consciousness, when it comes to who's watching the watchers here, I think we have to be extraordinarily careful about what are the safeties here and where do we need impartial boards or oversight before we take the next step, versus having individual scientists making the decisions on their own. And I think that can be a problem. We certainly have seen it in cryptocurrency, where in a highly deregulated way, all the dangerous things that can happen, where a lot of it's been scams, basically financial scams here, and that's having to do with money. And when we talk about artificial intelligence, there's so much more. It is so uncharted that I do think we need to have oversight boards and people who have thought through the ethics very carefully and the responsibility and the accountability here as well.

I agree. And I think it goes back to those incentive structures that you described we were discussing earlier, too. Because right now the major incentive is money. It's the wild, wild west. And essentially it is becoming a complete. It's an arms race between Google and Microsoft. It's incredible. It is incredible to see just how many billions of dollars they're putting into it. And they're focusing on gobbling up as much territory and market share as possible. But at the same time, those same incentive structures don't exist for people to have oversights. On the ethics side, there's no billions of dollars to be an ethical observer in this. And so there's naturally going to be a little bit of an imbalance in that.

And it's hard. You may have remembered it, there was that Supreme Court argument about the Internet. And I think Justice Kagan said we're not the nine best experts on the Internet. The Supreme Court justices, right. When they were talking about how to deal with a section 230 Community decency Communications issue there. So I'd say here it's hard because the regulators, they need to be exactly as you say. They need to be as staffed and resourced and as up to date as possible here. So that's going to be a challenge because often the lawyers who follow don't know it as well. And we say this, we're both lawyers here. You need the expertise on that side, too, to think about the, the oversight, the ethics and the accountability, the regulation, because there are so many scenarios here. It's, yeah, we can think about it for how we communicate, how we negotiate, but in so many aspects of life, for sure, absolutely.

And it's, it's, it wasn't until this conversation that I started to think about the fact that our government right now seems to be kind of woefully underprepared for this type of discussion. I remember seeing some of the, like the Twitter files hearings, and one of the congresswomen wasn't aware of, like, what a substack was, just completely unaware of what a substack was. And if we can't, if we don't have that level of savvy now for what's been in existence for years, we're seeing the evolution of artificial intelligence happening exponentially in a matter of days. I don't know how we can keep up in that. And that's a scary realization. I didn't think about that until just now.

It is going to be incredibly important folks who really understand it. Let's have the ethicists involved in this. Right. Let's have the folks who think about these sort of issues engaged and provide the expertise. For sure. Yeah.

Oh, this is good. This is good. Grant, I really appreciate this and I'm glad we took this approach. Just having more of an open conversation. This was fun.

It was a lot of fun. Good. Thank you.

I appreciate this. And before you go, can you let the listeners know about you have a really exciting article coming up and remind them about speaking up for democracy, too.

Yeah. So, yeah, a couple things that we're doing is that the Ohio State Moritz College of Law Divided Community Project is about to release a guide for speaking out to protect the guardrails of democracy. So it'll be available at the Divided Community Project website at Ohio State. But I think we, we talked to a lot of folks like Judge Michael Ludig and others who have been speaking out to help preserve our democracy. So it's a really good guide. It'll be coming out on April 3rd. And Professors Nancy Rogers, Sarah Cole and I have also recently written an article about framing in racial equity initiatives, and that'll be coming out in the next Ohio State Dispute Resolution Journal as well. Kwame, it's wonderful to speak with you. Always, always great to speak with you. And thanks for inviting me.

Yes, likewise, my friend. Thanks for joining us.

Thank you.

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.