Organizational Psychology with Mohamed Massaquoi

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. Mohamed, thanks for joining the show.

It's a pleasure to be here with you. I hope all is well in Ohio.

Everything is great. A bit cold. A bit cold, but we're making it happen.

Migrate down south.

Listen, because I know, I know you're in Atlanta. There are so many people in there. Atlanta trying to recruit me. I actually, I went to demo. I went to demo it and bro is the traffic. It is the traffic that keeps holding me back.

Every major city has traffic. Now that's. That's a minor detail.

Man. So how about you get us started by telling us a little bit about yourself and what you do.

So my name is Mohammad Massaqua. I'm an organizational psychologist. In simple terms, I consult with organizations to simplify their strategy, try to help them figure out how do you implement it, how do you communicate it, how do you sustain it within your organization in real time?

I love that, man. And let's just take a pause real quick. The level of preparation with the precision of that answer is something to be admired. So kudos.

Your time is valuable, so I want to make sure that we enjoy it together.

This is great. This is great. So, listeners, in this episode, we're going to talk about, just in general, what we're going to set the stage first with what organizational psychology really means within an organization. But then Mohammed's specific role as an organizational psychologist, because the difficult conversations he has to have in order for people to adopt these strategies, they're really nuanced and really interesting. So how would you start us off? By just setting the stage for organizational psychology. What. What is like a case study, a common case study for the clients you work with?

Well, when you think about organizations, what they're made of, you have your product and you have your people. And so some people lead with the product. Some people even try to artificially create financial results. But at the end of the day, your employees, your talent base, they're the ones who are really moving the needle for it. And you have to understand, are they engaged? Are they burnt out? What are the conditions that they're doing work under? Is there enough clarity? Do they feel enough identity with the work? Do they feel the work is meaningful? And so we kind of get into the weeds, needs of understanding what really makes talent perform like talent should perform, and helping leaders set their strategies in ways that talent can get it and go execute on whatever they want them to in a sustainable way.

This is incredible because we can see how every single organization needs this. And it seems like it's either a situation where an organization is being intentional about this and the psychology is moving in the right direction, or they are unintentional. And the elements of organizational psychology will still apply, but it just will not apply in a really positive way because they're just letting things happen without operating with any kind of intentionality Here.

I agree. Most organizations function in spite of. They function in spite of bad leadership. They function in spite of bad market forces, in spite of turnover. It just becomes. It's like the squeaky door that people tolerate, but they're not optimizing their potential. And so the question that we actually start out with in most engagements is, have you hit your potential? The answer is always no, unless you're dealing with a narcissist. And what that does is it starts to kind of break down the tension of it's not you versus me. It's not Kwame's right, Mo's right. It's what can we do to close the gap? And a lot of times it is aligning people to a common vision, aligning people to a common strategy. Because a lot of times that's very opaque. If you go and you Ask any of your employees what working on. On any given point in time, they may not be working on the highest priority items, they may not know the highest priority items, or they may all be working on different things. And so this strategy that you've worked so hard and these executive on sites, they just deteriorate over time. And that's what leads to all the factors that drive people crazy where they don't believe in the vision of the company, they're disengaged, they don't think that their work ties into anything. They are burnt out because they're doing things that they're never going to get a result on. At the end of the year, when it's time for compensation talks and it's time for promotional talks, that work hasn't actually pushed the organization forward because no one's given the framework to do that. And so if you can clean a lot of that up, you start to realize that generally people want to do a good job, but you have to help them get there. And so a lot of our work is trying to figure that out for them.

Man, that makes a lot of sense. And just for me, as a leader of the company, it's always good to have these reminders and just I think it's really important to normalize this just to recognize that every individual, every company, every organization, we struggle with this to a certain degree. And if we're not being intentional about this, then we're just going to continue to struggle and it's probably going to get worse over time.

Yeah, and I've learned to give grace just because people think about their job function. And so if you're a marketer, if you're in law, if you're in finance, whatever your function is, you're going to anchor on that. But, but it's not often that we learn how to be people leaders. It's not often that we learn to remind people we think that our knowledge is their knowledge. What we're seeing, they're seeing how we feel they feel. And it's just not always the case. You know, feedback is one of the most important things for employees, not just when it's time for them to move the needle on something, but every day so that they can do it. And this is one of the fascinating things from sports where at the every practice we get feedback after every game, we get feedback after every play almost we're getting feedback that allows us to course correct in the moment of truth versus waiting to the end of a particular block and trying to collect all the Data to figure out where we stand in this moment in time. Well, it's too late. We could have corrected something after the first play, but we've waited until the.

End of the season and now. Mo, I'm realizing we kind of bury the lead here because we have to talk about your background with the organization that you worked with in the past, too, because I think that'll give the audience some really great perspective to see the way that you take what you've learned from your experience in the league and apply it to the work that you do now as an organizational psychologist.

Oh, yeah. So my first real job is I used to play in the NFL and I got a chance to play for the Cleveland Browns. And what was really fascinating about that experience is that we had a ton of young, talented players. We didn't always know what to do at the highest level. And so you would have players in that system that kind of performed okay. They were athletic, but they weren't necessarily professionals. And then they would go to different systems and they'd be Pro bowl players or they'd be super bowl contributing players. And you just started to see that it's not always the talent. It's like how talent is led. So you may actually have a ton of talent in your organization, but can you develop the potential that they have? Can you streamline where their efforts are going to so that it all maps onto, at the end of the day, what everybody wants, whatever this goal that you've bought into. And so that was a very, very fascinating experience of just learning, you know, what could we be, what should we be and where we didn't close the gaps, where we had an opportunity to.

One of the things that you said as an organizational psychologist is that you need to understand the organization that you're dealing with, because you're coming in a lot of times from the outside, trying to provide structures, frameworks, and strategies that they can implement in order to be successful. Now, in order to do that, you have to gather information. And especially if an organization is underperforming with the leadership, they might take that personally. They might be guarded or defensive. When you're having those conversations and you're trying to get that information, how do you break through?

Well, it's. It's not a. You try to be as objective as possible, and you try to have a lot of grace, and so that you could be dealing with someone that is highly problematic. You're not going to tell them that they're baby ugly. That's probably like the worst thing to do. But you're really going in there to understand. And things are highly interrelated, they're interconnected. And the more you can understand the complete picture, the more you can offer insights. Not necessarily that I'm originating, but in every system, people know that system way better than an external person. It's my job to just find where those things exist within the organization and bring that institutional knowledge to the forefront. Whether it's a challenge that can be solved or an opportunity that isn't leveraged properly. And if that's done well, the system improves itself organically. Because Ashley down here, she knows something that is thorny, that she actually has a solution to. But no one knows that Michael over here has a solution to something. And the more you can cherry pick the best of what a organization does, the more you help it solve itself. In sports, we would call that teach tape, where you're basically highlighting something that the system's already shown you that it can do at a high level, and you're just bringing that to everyone else for their awareness and attention so that they can mimic those activities. And so it's not creating something new, it's finding the good already within, which starts to break down a lot of the tension.

That last part, not finding something new, but finding something that's already working. That sounds like the thing that you hear from the wise man on the mountaintop, like that, that golden nugget. Because I think that's so, so profound when you think about the fact that sometimes these organizations are struggling and they feel like they need to do something completely different from the outside. But what you're saying is that there are already things that they are doing well. It's about finding those bright spots and then finding ways to expand. 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 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 arts with the American Negotiation Institute. Click the link in the description to find out more. Elevate, negotiate and succeed.

I was. I'll use a loose analogy, then I'll. I'll bring it back. I was with a friend. I'm trying to learn how to play golf. Everybody says, you need to learn how to play golf. I've been putting it off for 37 years. And so we're sitting there and we're looking at clubs. And he played golf at Vanderbilt. He's a scratch golfer. And he says, you know, I could teach you golf and teach you how to hold it, how to do this. But guess what? Everybody on the PGA Tours has a different swing. They have a different way that they go about it. And so there is no right or wrong way. It's the way that works best for you. Organizations are very similar. There are certain things that live in theory. There are certain things that are best practices. But you're trying to figure out what is the best thing for this organization. Because what works for company A may not work for company B. They don't have the same personnel, they don't have the same culture. They don't have the same cadence. And so in understanding what does this organization want to do, what they are they already doing at a high level, you let it live and breathe in the culture, in the vision, in the mission of this company that's usually vastly different than another. But if you try to implement someone else's system, you're going to have a lot of tension because they're going to say, who is this outsider trying to teach me something? And they don't. They don't know what we're dealing with, and they're right. So.

First of all, stop talking about my company, okay? You have. You have no idea how timely this is. I'm going to send this to my team of professional development. This is wild. So let's put the serendipity aside. But I really like that, because essentially what you're doing is you are giving your organizations that you work with the. The right to be authentic. And it can feel really difficult to say, oh, I see this company doing it this way and this company doing it that way, and we're struggling, so we should try to be more like them. But really what you're helping people to do is be a better version of themselves, and that's really empowering. It can make this process a lot less daunting. And I want to go back to something that you said, because it was brilliant, but we didn't get a chance to highlight it, because when we're talking about gathering the information and if you're talking to somebody, regardless of whether or not you like them or you disagree with their perspective or anything like that, you talked about the importance of extending grace. This is so important. And I Think that it's something that people can say, yep, okay, extend grace, check. But we don't understand what that really means or how to operationalize it, so we don't do it. And then people feel judged, and then they get defensive, and then we don't get that objective information that is so vital for us in solving this problem. So if we're having a conversation with somebody within our organization and we're trying to get information from them to get an understanding of their perspective, but we disagree, how do we extend grace and stay curious so we can increase our understanding?

Certain things trigger us where a person could say something and it triggers us, and we automatically get defensive or we automatically want to correct what they've just said. A lot of times you have to understand things in context or you have to scratch around it to see where can I actually insert myself if I'm going toe to toe with someone? That's a recipe for disaster. The more I can understand holistically, why does this person view it this way? Why do they have this approach? Is this from a period previous experience? Is this person doing the best that they can do? Do they think that this is the best way because they've read it somewhere? Is this something that's been trained? Is this just innately their personality? Is it a cultural difference? There's a lot of things that we don't know without being able to get that. And so it takes time. And if you don't spend the time to kind of unearth these things, you can kind of jump in into a situation that you have to then clean up something else, because you're not fixing the thing that you're trying to fix, you're fixing the residual. And so that grace just gives you a little bit more time to understand holistically what you're dealing with. And sometimes you do have people that are problems, that they're true problems. And that takes a little bit more finesse and to figure out, okay, once again, what are you trying to accomplish? Are you trying to lead this team and perform? Are you trying to destroy this team? Are you. Do you realize that you're having this impact? This was where data can kind of show, hey, your people aren't. They don't have belief in the mission. Hey, your high performers are more likely to turn over. This particular site over here feels impacted. This may be related to this thing over there. And so it's a bit of storytelling, it's a bit of data, it's a bit of understanding how things are evolving holistically. But you can't change anyone. And so you may actually have a situation where a person, there's certain family owned businesses where a person's like, hey, we've done it like this for 50 years. It is what it is. And then you try to figure out, how can I create solutions? It may be a different area and maybe bring this person along later, but you're using everything at your disposal.

Yeah, no, this is, this is fascinating. This is fascinating because I, I'm glad that we started talking about the resistance piece because we don't want to play as if it's all unicorns and rainbows. When you're talking about the, like, the fundamental nature of a business, how it's structured, Lots of egos are entwined with that, money's on the line, all of these things. You're going to run into some resistance. So we talked about how we can gather information non judgmentally by extending grace. Now let's say we're getting to that point where we're giving solutions and we're running into resistance. What tools do you use to try to break through or navigate those conversations?

Yeah, I mean, I've been with executive teams and the CEO stands up and say, you know, I disagree. And they're at one end of the conference room, I'm in a different, and their team is in the middle of it. That is not the time to, you know, dig your heels into the ground. A lot of times what's more important is creating momentum in the right direction. And so what it, what are the wins that we can build off of and if they're early enough to where a person becomes a little more curious because they're still feeling you out. Yeah, you, you. Once again, this sounds great on paper, but you don't know my system. You don't know my thing. You don't know whatever. The more I can figure out, the more the team can figure out what are the things that actually push the needle forward right now that extends you a little bit more Runway to then figure out how to get to the more complicated things. And once again, that is. We're sitting at a table. You have a process that you're struggling with. Your colleague is thriving in this process. Y' all don't know because you haven't talked to each other. If we can just share that around and shave off time, off your already busy schedule, generate income in a way that's meaningful to the company, change the engagement so that people are feeling the same mission, that will buy you time to then get to the More thorny, sticky stuff sequence is also important when you're dealing with these things because if you try to go in the wrong sequence, things could get destroyed. But if you're picking your spot strategically, you give yourself a longer Runway to get to the more complicated things.

Man, this is powerful. This is powerful because again you, you might have let's. For the audio only listeners, I'm using air quotes heavily, unsarclastically here. You might have the right answer, but that doesn't mean that they're going to adopt it. There has to be a persuasive strategy behind that. And a lot of times people just say, you know, I'm going to move like with blunt force here and just say this is the truth, this is what you need to do. And then it becomes a war of wills and where egos are on the line. And it makes it almost difficult, more difficult for the person to adjust because now you've attacked the person directly and it makes it hard for them to save face, which is as exiting the conversation or interaction with dignity and self respect. And so we create a scenario where it's almost impossible for them to adjust even if they might on a certain level agree just on principle. They almost feel it's necessary to dig in. So I really love the fact that we're bringing in the concept of momentum. I think in tough conversations this is not explored enough. Because if you start to accumulate these small wins and start to move in the right direction now you've gotten yourself to a situation where you've earned the right to address these thornier topics. But if you start off with the most difficult problem, it's going to be very, very tough for you to see progress in that situation.

Yeah, it's not my job to be right, it's my job to be effective. And so if I'm right, you may not get the result that you want. But if I'm effective in continuing to make progress, and I'm doing that at a speed, at a cadence in which is pleasing to the organization, that is the ultimate goal. Because in reality you never solve everything. But can we solve the one thing, the two thing, maybe bring more awareness to the third thing that's meaningful. You. And if you think, if you have an organization of any size stature, you get a 5% increase in the area, you get a 10% increase in an that is so transformative and impactful. And so we're taking these wins with the understanding that they are moving the needle and some things that pie in the sky would be great to fix you may never solve. And so do you spend all your time, do you destroy something trying to get to or do you start to push the needle forward in ways that people actually care about and they can see results immediately. It's more about the effectiveness than the rightness. Or this is what theory says, or pie in the sky. If we could do everything and we had unlimited resources, what we do, it's. That's not reality.

Yeah, that's so important. And it's shifting to like deep negotiation. For a second. People sometimes ask me what the best strategy is. Like what's the best tactic, what's the best strategy and. Or how would you describe your negotiation style? I say my style is effective and that requires different things at different times. And so if you just go in with one approach in every situation is not going to be effective. You have to be able to be flexible. And I think people are going to be listening to this Mo and they're going to say, okay, that makes sense, that makes sense. They're going to listen and they're going to say, I'm going to do what Mo told me to do. I'm going to listen non judgmentally. I'm going to gather information, I'm going to build momentum. If somebody gets up in their feelings and tries to dig in, I'm going to just let that pass for a little bit, listen to them and then try to get more wins. They might understand that intellectually, but then when is the actual heat of the moment when it's time to actually put those things into practice, it's going to be extremely difficult even though they know it's the right thing to do. So now shifting to performance here, how does somebody actually put these tools into play when everything inside of them is telling them to, you know, shut the other person down?

Well, I think that you never stress test in the moment of truth and I think so many people wait until things have bubbled up to start working on these things. There's moments where you can explore other areas and you have to put parameters on it. There's certain things that you should do, there's certain things that you shouldn't do. One of the things people say about sports is that we function in the defined set of parameter. The football field is 120 yards long, 53 yards wide. You're not going to shoot basketballs on the football field. It just doesn't make sense in business. Sometimes people feel like anything can go. You can say anything, you can do anything versus actually putting parameters of how you Want your company to operate in simple terms, it's your mission, it's your values. If you can continue to map your activities onto that, now you have a built in accountability tool. And so if respect is one of our core values, of course it doesn't make sense for mean to cuss you out. And if we're continuing to reinforce those things, we're going to speak in a respectful way, even if I disagree with you. And so you're reinforcing it with timing. You're reinforcing it through the values that a company lives in. And so hopefully that just isn't jargon in, in text. Sometimes you bring in someone else that may be able to deliver the message better. Maybe it's because of power Dynamics, maybe it's because of other things where you could bring in a third party. Once again, you're using everything at your disposal. But if you're waiting to the moment where it bubbles up and it's super stressful, that's going to cause destruction. It's just, it is what it is.

Brilliant. No, man, that makes a lot of sense. And I think there might be some people in there saying, you know what? After hearing your description of organizational psychology and how you and your team can help, they might be saying, man, how could I, how can I get in touch with this guy? How can I work with him? So before, before we wrap up, I want to give you an opportunity to remind listeners about yourself about your company and how they can work with you.

Yes. So you can find me on LinkedIn. Mohammed Massaqua, one of the only ones you may find. My dad, I'm sure he'll afford it to me. We have the same name. Or you can go to thevessel.com T-H-E-V-E-S-S o l.com and me or my team, you know, we'd be happy to speak to you and hopefully help use your strategy to push your organization forward in a way that's engaging to your employees.

Love it, man. I appreciate you coming on the show. Really appreciate it. Congratulations. You've just joined an elite club by listening to a full episode. You're now officially on the Negotiate Anything team. So welcome aboard. What most team members do is they subscribe to the podcast because that allows them to automatically get the latest episode 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.