Rethinking Negotiation: Overcoming Resistance and Embracing Collaboration with Justin Wright

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 special 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. Justin, thanks for joining us today.

Thanks for having me.

Hey man, it is my pleasure. Whenever Max recommends somebody, the answer is always yes. So you come highly recommended. So how would you get us started? By telling us a little bit about yourself and what you do.

Sure. Well, thank you first for having me here. It's really nice to get to connect and before we get started, I think our conversation is really exciting to think about how the negotiation world interacts with so many different points and you obviously are deeply thinking about a lot of that. Where does this all connect? So anyway, you asked me about me though first. So I teach negotiation. I do multi party facilitation, I mediate, teach people how to have difficult conversations and recently have been getting into a lot of work around helping people run more effective meeting. How do you design and facilitate meetings at the scale of a team or also thinking big, multi stakeholder complex decision making stuff. And so that's sort of what I do day to day. I work at a business that's called Habitus Incorporated and we're B Corp, which means that we exist to fulfill a mission in the world, not just to make Money and we're certified as a B corp. And we, our purpose is to help change makers working on social justice and environmental sustainability to be more effective in what they do in creating systems level change. So that's what our orientation is as business. I have amazing team of humans that works with me to do this. And I hope you get to meet and talk to some of them at some point. So that's who I am. And my journey into this world was that I lived in Nicaragua as a kid. My parents were in the solidarity movement with the Sandinistas in the 80s. And I saw how messed up American imperialism is and I was like, this is not a good look. We gotta, this is, something's deeply wrong here. But I heard the propaganda in the US about free markets. It's all good for everybody. And I was definitely not good for everybody. I just saw that it was not good for everybody. And in college I studied political philosophy, ethics and economics because I want to understand how is this so broken? And I thought my arrogance of teenager. I thought I found the source code errors. We just changed these two sentences that David Hume got wrong in his Treatise of Human Nature, then all of this capitalist stuff would work. And so I ended up working with some communities in Pennsylvania to try to help them do some ecological footprinting and whatever. And in that work I realized it's not just a math problem. It is a math problem. Like our carbon budget is not balanced. Like the way we think about allocating resources as a society is deeply unjust. And like the math is wrong. But also it's negotiation challenge. We have to actually be able to persuade, to influence, to create changes. People are willfully creating a structure that privileges power not by accident. And so that's going to require organizing and negotiation. So that got me then into the negotiation work to say how do we become better at conflict management, negotiation meetings, et cetera. Because I believed those skills were going to be vital in change making. But also I need to learn the skills. So I just spent a bunch of time like in corporate America running random trainings to try to get good at this. And then in the last few years I've sort of been able to pivot my work to be more and more around supporting that change making. That's in the mission.

This is so cool, Justin. So I did not know all of that background. This is fascinating and listeners, I want you to pay attention to this really important point. So Justin's entry into negotiation is unique and what's really cool and I'd love to Hear your thoughts on this too, Justin, is that everybody comes into negotiation with their own lived experience, their own background and everything like that. And it colors the way that they see the world. And this is why it's so important to have a diverse group of people talking about negotiation. Because I want to hear from everybody's experiences and figure out what led them to realize that negotiation, conflict resolution, effective communication was the answer to whatever problem it is. We have people from law enforcement, people from the corporate world, people like me. I'm a lawyer. I did mediation, and that's how I got in. And for you, it came from your desire to have a positive, positive impact on the world. So I'd love to see how that mindset impact just the way that you view negotiation in general. That's really fascinating.

That's an interesting question. One of the things you said, I really agree with and I just want to plus one first, which is the importance of having a field that has a real diversity of points of view, lived experience and entry points into the field. Because we see a lot of the same story of how people got in. Is had enough resources that I was able to volunteer for a few years. I volunteered as a mediator and then I managed to get hired at some business at a low level thing and worked my way up and et cetera. But there's a route into the field which is I have no debt, I have a bunch of connections and I have privilege. And there's another route in which is that you go to a prestigious law school and you get connected to a professor and they hire you into their consulting firm. Those are the two most common routes into the field. And the result is that the field is overwhelmingly highly privileged economically and white. And that means then that we're teaching from a few points of view and we're not teaching from a lot of points of view. And so people who, as you said, come in from a law enforcement perspective. We have someone we work with who's an FBI negotiator. Great point of view. That is not common among my peers. Right. So helpful. It brings a different angle. Or someone who comes in. One of our colleagues, Nerissa, who just joined the team, comes in from an environmental advocacy perspective. Right. She saw a lot of the same things I was describing. We're doing such important work and we're just getting in our own way. How can we do this better? Right. But her perspective allows her to engage with an audience that would never talk to me because I haven't done that work. I'm not Credible in that space and she can then engage. And so one of the questions that I've wrestled with a lot in this is I can see how useful this is. And every time someone takes a class in this, taught by me, taught by you, taught our colleagues, like consistently, a huge percentage of the students, oh my God, why didn't I learn this sooner? This is going to change my life, is going to change my marriage, this is going to change relationship with my kids, my work. It shows up everywhere. And yet when I say to someone like, oh, I teach negotiation, their first response is like, I need to get some of that. They're like, oh, you sell cars, right? It's not that. How do we create a space for people to engage with this content that they think they already know or that they don't even realize exists or they don't know matters? I'm going to be honest with you, I can't remember what your question was anymore, so I'm going to stop and hand it back to you.

Listen, man, the answer was phenomenal. You know, you did answer the question because I was talking about the diversity of thought leading into the industry.

Oh yeah, right.

And you're spot on. Because the thing is, we have those transactional negotiations, they have a lot of value. Like the car negotiations. Actually that's one of my most popular episodes too. Right. And then I've got some folks who are clients who are in that space. And then what's cool though, it's the same with you, is that I've got clients in all industries. And that's what's fascinating because at the end of the day it's people talking to people. And if you're a person who happens to talk to people, then you negotiate. It's just a question of whether or not you do it. Well, for a lot of times people come in with this self defeating perspective, like, oh, you're a negotiator. I could never do that. First of all, you're doing it. What field are you in? Doesn't matter, you're doing it. And I want more people to just recognize there's a simple answer to this simple question. What does a negotiator look like? Look in the mirror and you will see what a negotiator looks like.

So that is a question for me that I want to ask you, which is you describe how negotiation shows up everywhere and you describe how it shows up across industry. And clearly a lawyer negotiating in the entertainment industry, their negotiation is going to look really different than someone who teaches preschoolers but they're definitely both negotiating. And this question comes up a lot also across culture. Like if you're negotiating in Saudi Arabia, it's going to look really different than if you're negotiating in China, it'll look really different than you're negotiating in Honduras. And my experience has been that there's some bones to what makes for effective negotiation that's the same even if the rest of the body is different. Right. That there's some sort of core. And so I'm curious, do you agree and if so, what would you describe as the bones? Like, what are the things that consistently, whether you're negotiating with a four year old or a corporate attorney, these are the things that are going to be really important.

I love this question and we've been thinking about that a lot. So we're in the process of creating this course called the Essential Elements of Negotiation. Because it's saying like, hey, We've done over 800 episodes of this podcast and we've talked to all sorts of people because again, like we said, I want diversity of thought, all sorts of backgrounds all around the world. What industry you're in, I don't care. I want to learn from you. Because you have a different approach. Right. And so what we've done is we've boiled it down to the essential elements and I'll name off a few. So curiosity, no matter what field, you have to be curious. One is that nobody says specifically, but they allude to is fluidity, the ability to adjust on the fly. You make reads, you make micro adjustments. It's not following a script and understanding that it's a play by play. They're going to do exactly what you know what you want them to do. Recognizing that you'll get more data, things will change and you're going to have to adjust and becoming okay with 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 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 more surprising ones. Humility is incredibly persuasive. Being willing to Accept responsibility for the mistakes that you made. And a lot of times humility just comes down to accurate assessments of the situation, your performance and things like that. Safety, like psychological safety, getting somebody to feel safe enough to share information so you can gather data to perform at a higher level in the negotiation. Cultural intelligence, understanding the difference between Big C and Little C culture, because we have geographic culture, national, you know, all of those types of things. But then we also have the general way that we do things. So within the same industry, you have the marketing department, sales department, legal department, all different cultures and being able to read that and adjust as necessary. So 100%, there are so many, so many of these commonalities that if you can understand those essential elements, then it's just a question of how you apply it in your difficult conversation.

Thank you.

Yeah, man, it's fascinating really. One of the things I admire about your approach is that again, you are using this as a tool to improve your lives, but also your communities, your organizations, and you really see it as a change making tool. Can you go a little bit deeper into how you see negotiation and effective conflict resolution as one of the keys to really creating the society that we want to see?

That's a great question. So I think there's two ways that this has come up for me. The original hypothesis I shared a little bit in my intro for me was that activists working around climate change are going to be more effective if they can actually collaborate, talk to each other, resolve conflict. I worked with a group in Washington D.C. that was trying to pass a carbon tax in D.C. proper, not for the country, in the District of Columbia. They brought together a bunch of different organizations and we're trying to agree on what policy to put forward. Now they hadn't even touched the business community yet, who you knew was going to freak out. They just need to agree with each other. And naturally they all had different interests and needs. And the intuitive approach for most people is have someone else state a demand and then you haggle and it can be more or less glorious. But that's kind of the core concept most of us have. As a child, you said, I'd like a piece of cake. And your parents said no. And so their position's 0 cake and your position's 100 cake. And so then you start haggling, you're like, well what about 75 cake? Like, what if I 3/4 of a piece? And the parents like, man, no, we can't do that, I'll give you a quarter. And they're like, well, how about half. And so we learn this approach. In some sense, it's simple and easy. Getting to the why is much more challenging, but also more effective. Now, you imagine you've got this coalition and it's got seven organizations, and they all have their own position. I mean, that's going to be a deadlock unless they can unlock that through being able to get to their underlying purpose and then having curiosity and compassion for each other's point of view and then becoming a team that generates ideas together. And so we facilitated a process for that team, and they did come up with consensus, amazingly, after six meetings. And then they brought it to the business community, and the business community shredded it, which is what you'd expect to happen. And we are gone at this point. They're working without us. But they then had the skills and the capacity as a team to say, well, okay, we're going to have to go back to the drawing board. What could we add? But wait, why do you want that? Oh, if you want it for that reason, what if we did this? Cause that would work for my why. And they came up with something completely different than what we came up with in the facilitation, but they were able to get it passed. Right. So that's one sort of core hypothesis for me about this, is that trying to create change requires engaging a lot of stakeholders. That's complicated work when we do have the skills to be able to organize, engage stakeholders, be clear about how we're making decisions, identify what people's underlying needs are, generate options that work for everyone, use objective standards, et cetera, et cetera, that we're much more likely to actually be able to then align on something that we can move forward and advocate. The other approach, I think, for me, comes more out of the work as my understanding of the systems of dominance that our culture based in. Right. That we're thinking about scarcity, individualism, domination, sort of like principles of how we organize our society. We assume there's not enough for everyone, so we're going to have to fight over it. We assume we're in it alone. And we assume that ultimately somebody's going to win and that person will then dominate and exert their will over others. But that's a cultural construct, probably in your context, big C culture. Right. And we all express it in little C, different ways. My individualism shows up different than yours. We're all fighting it. Bell hooks has this amazing book called the Will to Change, which is about men. It's specifically about patriarchy and men. But her argument is that patriarchy is not good for men. Right. It tells us we can't have emotional depth, we can't have deep connections to others, that strength is our only value. All this stuff that I don't want that. So I think as I've started understanding what a conversation about collective liberation means, reinventing, envisioning a world that's actually based on abundance, based on community, based on collaboration. Right. The opposite of dominance isn't submission in a new version, it's collaboration. Right. It's actually being in partnership. And it turns out being in partnership requires these skills. Because if I'm really going to be in partnership with you, I have to know what matters to you, I have to listen, I have to respect you. And we're going to disagree. And I have to be able to do that skillfully. That really requires what we do. And so to me that's less of the big societal change, although probably it connects to that. But it's interpersonal. If I'm working with someone on my team and, and we want to model a different way of being that isn't based on scarcity, individualism and domination, we have to have skills for partnership. This is what you and I were talking about before we got on the call. Like hierarchy is easy. You just tell people what to do and then you fire them if they're ineffective. It's not that complicated. And yeah, how to be a good manager, there's lots of skill in there. But being in true partnership, where you're engaging with someone as peers, that requires a whole different level of skill because we have different lived experiences. So we're not the same. My brain and yours aren't the same. I have to be willing to be humble, as you were saying, right? To be patient, to be understanding, to be fluid, to adapt. So I think as I've gotten more and more into the work around saying what does the work of building a side that's not oppressive? Right. What does anti oppression work look like? What does us seeking collective liberation mean? It has to have this. And that's been new for me. I think the first hypothesis is why I got into the field. But this has really started to change how I think about what we do and how it's so integrated to any work that focuses on trying to create something, society that's more fair and just and thriving.

Yes. Oh my gosh, I love that response. And I'm going to focus in on one line that you said. So if we're going to address these challenges, what you said is that it Requires engaging a lot of stakeholders. Now look at that word engaging and let's swap that for the common mentality. It requires destroying a lot of stakeholders, overcoming the resistance of other stakeholders. Right, Vilifying other stakeholders. We have this fixed pie mentality, this zero sum type of mentality that holds us back where we say that two competing interests cannot exist at the same time. And there may be some situations where that's the case, like it really is that situation where there is just one. What I found is that in the real world that's relatively rare. And there may be some situations in like sales and procurement where it's like, hey, listen, and I have a budget. Okay, cool, we get that. But especially when we're thinking about things as fluid as policy and community building and trying to restructure organizations and things like that, we have to recognize that the people who we are visualizing as against us are, if you zoom out far enough, our colleagues and our neighbors in some capacity. So before we even get to the skills of negotiation, we have to have a mindset that would actually allow us to see the other person in a very different way. And a lot of times the other person, even if we try to be collaborative, they still have that fixed pie mentality and they still see you as the enemy. So if you're trying to engage at this high level, how can you take your skills and apply it in these situations where the other side might not see it that same way?

Oh, it's such a great question. I'm sure you have played versions of the multi iteration blind prisoners dilemma games at the start of negotiation training. We'll often start a negotiation training with situation where we split people up and we make them basically play a game against each other to try to see who can get more points where they have no opportunity to communicate and they're just sort of sending bids back and forth and based on the bids they get scored. Not worth explaining all the details, you know what I'm talking about. So in those games, what we find, and there's research that backs this up, is that a lot of people come in with a I'm going to see what you do attitude. There are people who are strategic who come in and say, I'm going to try to convince them to collaborate or I'm going to take them for all their worth, I'm going to deceive them and I'm going to crush them. But that's actually a fairly small group with this large group in the middle that says I'm going to wait and see. So I want to answer your question, but first I want to say a lot of the people that we perceive as not being aligned with us are actually undecided, not unaligned, and humans are creatures of imitation. How is it that I can talk? I imitated a bunch of people who can talk. How is it that I can walk? I imitated people who could walk. I figured this out by watching other competent people and imitating them. And you see this in all kinds of ways, but it shows up in negotiation. And what we see. I did an anecdotal research. I took 2,000 versions of this game and just ran some numbers. Now, it's not like blind control, so it's not real science, but from just the anecdotal versions. When you lead with collaboration, people respond. When you lead with competition, people respond. They match you. So if I compete, you will compete. If I collaborate, you'll collaborate. Not all the time, but if you compare the second move of someone whose partner is collaborating, they are substantially more likely to collaborate. If you compare the second move of someone whose partner is competing, they're much more likely to compete. Which means they didn't have a core strategy at the beginning that they're like, I'm sticking to this, right? They said, oh, I can adapt. I see what you're doing. Fluidity. I can respond to you. Okay, so what that means is the first lesson should be lead with the behavior you want from the other person. Because most people treat you like the weather. I don't go outside and be like, oh, really wish it was sunny. I'm going to go get my flip flop. The weather doesn't care, right? Like, it's like, I'm wearing flip flops. It's going to keep raining. So I treat you, though, like the weather. You come in really hardball, and I'm like, oh, I better go get my raincoat. This man's going to be difficult. I need to prepare myself. But you're not, right, because you see me the same way. You see my behavior as fixed, and then you adapt to it in many, many cases. Now, there are people who seek to shift other people's behavior through how they act, but it's a tiny minority. And so that would be the first piece of advice, is be clear that you want to collaborate. Don't start with the, so what are you thinking? And definitely don't start with the, I'm going to take you for all your work, right? Unless you want to compete. Sometimes that's strategic. As you said, sometimes there is no way to divide the pie. You just. I mean, to expand the pies, you just have to divide it. But if I can start by saying, I'm so glad you're here. I'm excited to work with you, and I believe that there's a way for us to both get what we want out of this. If we can work together, if we can figure out what both of us want. The probability that you're going to say, that sounds pretty good is much higher and collaborate with me than if I came in saying, so what are you thinking?

Right.

Which is an ambiguous signal. You talk in your TED talk about the amygdala and how our fear center drives so much of our behavior. It is adaptive in a scarce world, which is what we grew up in, a dangerous, crazy place as a species. It's adaptive to be like, is that a snake? Maybe it's a stick. Maybe it's a snake. I think it's a snake. It's adaptive to assume the worst. But in our world with relative abundance, that doesn't always serve us. But if I come in with an ambiguous signal, you're more likely to assume I'm hostile. Okay, so anyway, so that was a big tangent on that direction. And then the other is that you want to create. William Ury talks about the idea of, like, building a golden bridge. Right. I want to be able to create an opportunity for you to join in, something collaborative while I show that I'm not willing to play your game. If you come in and you're not convinced and you think we have to compete. I have two jobs in that conversation. One job is to say, I actually have good boundaries. I can see what you're doing, and this isn't going to work. You talk about that emotional response. Most difficult tactics. Most of the time when people are trying to push us, they're trying to get us to have an emotional response and then accommodate. Right. In essence, flee to say, okay, sure, take it, whatever you want. So I need to be clear. I can be curious. I can be calm. You can be mean. I'm not going to give you anything, but I have an alternative for you. I have another way we could work together that's going to work way better. And so I think for me, when I'm in that kind of someone's coming in, and it's like, I really do believe in scarcity, individualism, and domination. I need to be able to say, I can meet that. I can play that game. This is why it's important to teach CAR how to negotiate Car sales, because you need to be able to meet that when that's happening to you. And I also want to offer you a different way of working together.

This was a masterclass. Let me address this in reverse order. I love that last point, too, because we have to recognize there are going to be those people who want to play hardball. Honestly, I think hardball is strategically easier to play. It's just annoying to play. But okay, you're going to be tough. I'm going to be tough. I prefer not to do that. So that goes back to the fluidity, because a lot of times people are like, I'm a win, win collaborative negotiator, period. I'm like, cool, that will work in the majority of cases, but somebody is going to take you to the cleaners at some point, and you won't have any skills to address it. So fluidity in that regard. One of the things I talk about is I call it conversational leadership. And you've described it in a much better way than, oh, thank you. Well, essentially, it's like just recognizing that it only takes one person to improve the quality of the relationship. And I want people to take ownership over that process and leadership. So a lot of times, what ends up happening, and you've been mediation. So you see this. Nobody ever feels like they did something wrong. And if they did something wrong, it was always in retaliation.

Right? Right.

And so sometimes people will say, yeah, I did this because they did that to me. Okay. Conversational leadership says, okay, you accept it. Just like the example with Yuri. It's like, I see what you're doing. I can do that. I'd prefer not to. Here's an alternative path. Conversational leadership means that you take responsibility for getting on that alternative path of collaborative negotiation. And I love what you were talking about. Just recognizing that a lot of people are undecided. They are creatures of imitation. So it reminds me of the concept of mimetic desire. So mimicry. We're looking at the behaviors of other people and we're mirroring that. And so if you are being that conversational leader and essentially showing them how to operate, then they often follow your lead. A lot of times people say, well, Kwame, what happens in a negotiation when somebody is belligerent, when they're yelling at you and doing these types of things? And what I found is that a lot of times I don't find myself in those situations because I can diffuse the problem beforehand. I'm also leading them and saying, ah, you know what? I saw that bad behavior that's unfortunate. You clearly don't know how to negotiate. This is not only a negotiation, but I am also teaching you how to negotiate through conversational leadership. And then their behavior improves slowly over the process. So, man, I love all of this. This is really great.

And it's a counterintuitive point, the one you just made. You would think in a competitive world where my goal is to dominate you, where I'm acting as an individual, you would think I would think that I want to be skillful, and I want you not to be skillful. Right. If we're boxing or wrestling or whatever, I would prefer if I want to win, for you not to be skillful. But if we're collaborating, the better, you know, the dance move, the better we're going to be able to dance together. And so there's this counterintuitive move you just named, which I just want to highlight because I think it's so important and so astute. I actually benefit from you being a more skillful, collaborative negotiator. It doesn't make me worse off. It makes me better off. And so it behooves me to teach you how to do what I'm doing so we can do it together. But that requires a fundamental shift of mindset to, we're partners, not I'm going to dominate you.

Bingo. Exactly. I get that question all the time in trainings. They're like, hey, Kwame, great training. Love this. But what if they know this playbook? What if they do these exact same thing? And I say, what if I have a spouse that loves me too much.

Or they listen too well?

It's not a problem.

Great.

So, yeah, man. Oh, this is great. And we are way over time. I'm not surprised, because this was a lot of fun. So we're definitely going to have you back on because there's a lot more to explore. But, Justin, before you go, I want to make sure that I give you an opportunity to shout out your company, the trainings, and how people can get in touch with you.

Oh, yeah. Thanks. So Habitus Incorporated is the name of the company. We're habitusincorporated.com you can find us online. And the other thing I wanted to mention is that we've been trying to figure out how to get these collaborative skills to be worth learning for people. Because one of the questions that often comes up is, as we were talking about earlier, people are like, yeah, I don't really negotiate. Well, you do, but I know that you don't know that. And you know, it's going to be hard to bring you along. And one of the things we found is that anyone who works cares about advancing their career. Anyone who works wants to be able to have a job that really meets their needs. And that we were able to find an audience that cared about that, and then we were able to teach them negotiation skills kind of secretly. It's a secret agenda. So we've recently written a book that's called Finding a Job that Loves yous Back. But the book is really teaching the skills of collaborative negotiation. For how could you make your career one of partnership that's done in community that really creates a life of abundance for you? How do you shift into that mindset so that you're able to. In your conversations with informational interviews with connectors, with the decision makers, even negotiating with yourself, how are you able to use the skills that you teach every day to be able to then get what you want out of your work life? So, anyway, so that's another thing people can check out. And it's for sale on our website, on Amazon, on Barnes and Noble. I mean, anywhere you get books, you can find it.

Perfect. Justin, this is great. And listeners, all of that information will be in the description of this episode. Justin, really appreciate it, man. This was great.

Thank you so much. I can't wait for the next one.

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, 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. Listen, I love your hair.

Thank you. Thank you. You know, nice to be mirrored in the Zoom world.

Yeah, man. I'm glad Max put us together. How's your. How's your day going? Things good?

It's good. It's good. I'm two weeks out from taking a sabbatical, and I'm really excited about it for three months. And also getting to the end has been chaotic and joyful, you know, trying to. Oh, this is cool.

Tell me about the sabbatical.

Well, so I started in the negotiation space 10 years ago. Ish. And I love it. It's fascinating. It's like really fun, interesting work. It's probably what I would do for fun if I didn't have to work. And 10 years of running a business and trying to make sure we're covering overhead and all that, I'm sure, you know, can sometimes be stressful. So I'm just like ready for a break and I expect after some time off I'll come back and be really excited to keep going. But I find that some of the joy of the work, it's like I feel more anxious going into it and then I do it. I'm like, oh yeah, I enjoyed this. But there's just enough of the churn that I'm like, I think I need a break so I can like step back and. And also I'm. We, you know, we've built a team at this point where I don't need to be the one doing everything and I can step back and think about what do I want my contribution to be. Like, how can I be most useful in the field, et cetera. So anyhow, I'm just like kind of in that decision making moment. Exciting.

I feel you. This is, it's super exciting to hear and very validating. We should start a self help group.

Seriously.

That journey is tough. And you're right. I mean, it's. You just grind for so long and you just need to sometimes take a break to fall. Fall back in love with the work.

Yeah, exactly. How about you? How you doing, man?

Things are good. It's funny you say that. I was just on a call with my chief of staff and we were talking about some of the same things, like, wow, it's like sometimes we get caught up in the fog of war trying to launch these programs and do these new things and then just stopping and taking a step back and say, hey, why, why are we trying to like, why are we breaking ourselves and hurting our mental health chasing these things where at the end of the day we just want to help people be super generous and we're doing all right. We don't need to. To stress this much. And I feel, I don't know, you tell me what you think about it. I feel like sometimes we can focus so much on the business and learn and absorb so much from other people that we kind of lose sight of what it is that we are here to do.

Well, and there's so much. You've been in the field long enough. You've written books, like people are coming to you and So a lot of you are like, well, that sounds like a fun project. That sounds like, you know, and it's like, but actually, what's the work? I want, you know, that you're at the point, I'm sure, where you're having to say no to work or subcontract or delegate or whatever. And so then it's like, well, do I really want to be working for this client? Like, because a lot of, you know, the amount of time you've been in the field, experience teaching, et cetera, like, you can step back and ask, where is this needed? And be able to actually go have those conversations. Like, I saw your book around Devote Conversations and Race, which I'm really excited about. So super interesting conversation. And that's not like a Someone comes to you and is like, hey, you know, you should do this. It's like you saw something that was needed, and we're willing to step into that, you know, like, and that's. But you need space for that. Yes. Right. You can't be in the. Like that, you know, to be able to actually think where. I was talking with some colleagues recently about political organizing in the progressive space and how useful these skills would be, but no one's coming to me from that space saying, like, hey, we need this. Right. That's us going to them and saying, like, it occurs. We have a hypoth that this might be useful to you, but I need to know, who are those people? Have enough of a relationship that they trust me. Like, that's a project and it's. I love that. But that takes time and space. And so how do you create space when you are now successful enough that you're in demand and people want workshops or coaching or whatever.

Yeah. You know, tell me if this resonates with you, Justin, because I feel like sometimes I. When I look back on things that I used to do in the past, I struggle to separate strategy from identity. And so here's what I mean. So it's like back in the early days, when you're starting off the business, you're doing whatever it is to get money in the door. So it's like, I say yes to everything. Everything I do that I do this and everything like that. And now, like you said, work is coming to me. And so I'm just like, hey, I am that guy who says yes to anything. It's like, am I that guy? Or is that who I had to be at that time? And so there's like an identity shift that has to happen where it's like, okay, now success requires me to say no to more opportunities than I say yes to. And now just becoming okay with that reality has been really, really challenging.

Yeah. And the identity of being the like, I'm sure you have this experience where so much of what we teach is so common sense as we teach it. You're like, how are you paying me to tell you this? Like, this is so obvious. And yet it like changes people's lives. You see people, you know, I've seen you've taught university level classes and when you do that long form teaching, you really see the change when you're like, oh, I had someone for a semester like that. Those people are really transformed at the end. It's amazing. And you, you end up in this sort of like special teacher mentor role to people. But as you grow a business, it's more. My experience is it's more important for me to be supporting and mentoring the people in house because I'm not scalable. I can't clone myself. I can't just copy Justin and be like, right. And so I can go be the special whatever to some random business, but I can only do that for a handful at a time. And so I'm also having that identity issue of like, I want to be invaluable and special and amazing. But also actually that's probably not the highest in base use of my time is probably actually to have the enough experience and enough reputation I can bring in work that then other people can do and I can mentor and coach them. But then I don't get to be special. Right. And I have to say no to people. And it's like, I feel like that what you're saying about identity and strategies really resonates with me both in the saying no and in the like, my role shifts from being like flashy front of the room, giving talks, whatever, to actually being more of the capacity building and empowering and helping putting other people in front of the room and helping clients have confidence in them. And, and I really want that to be the move I make. I'm already making it and I want to move, I continue to make. And there's definitely some part of my ego that's like, but I'm special, you know, and that's hard.

Yeah, man, it's hard. It's tough. I'm smiling because I'm like, well, at least I'm not the only one.

Yeah, yeah.

There's not something wrong with me.

Yeah, no, and it's nice. As you said, it's nice because I Have a friend who started a worker owned brewery here in Boston. You know his challenges as someone organizing and running a business. I'm just like, oh yes, yes. That happened to me today. And oh yeah, I have that problem. And oh, yep. You know, and it's like. But my friends who like, you know, work as employees and businesses, they just have different challenges and you know, so it's really nice talking to people who have started something and it's just there's a whole set of pain that is. Not everyone resonates with.

Bingo. Yeah, man. It's a lonely journey even when you're surrounded by a lot of people because the people you're surrounded by often cannot relate to the challenges and the pressure. It's like, okay, we, even people who might hear us talking now, they're just like, oh, okay. Well that doesn't seem too bad. It's just, it is so mentally and emotionally draining. Like constantly go through this over and over again and then you talk to people, they're like, oh, it's not a problem. I'm like, well that was validating. Thank you.

Yeah, yeah, you clearly understand. Well, and we're going through this interesting process of becoming self managed. So we're. I don't know if you've seen the like reinventing organizations and like some of that literature. There's some really interesting stuff. I have this under a monitor. I'm not sure I can pull it out without knocking everything over. Let me try. There's some really interesting stuff around. How do you build teams that aren't hierarchical, you know, that are actually. And it's not just like the matrix BS that we see in so many organizations. This is the book. It's really interesting stuff, but what's been cool about it is as authority and decision making has spread through the organization, so has a lot of the decision making responsibility. And so I, I feel like my team is starting to get it because now all of us are responsible for the decisions. That used to just sit with me or people have carved out domains. So someone on the team is in charge of R and D and they get to just make those decisions. It doesn't like roll up to me, you know, and it's really interesting. And, and I don't know how anyone does this without the skills that we teach because it's, there's so much conflict and there's so much need for facilitation and opportunities to negotiate. And without these skills it would be very like. I can see why people do command and control because it's much less skill requiring. You can be pretty inept and do command and control. And it's also really demoralizing and has all kinds of other, like you make worse decisions and et cetera, et cetera. So I'm not like advocating for command and control, but the newer ways of working really do require a greater degree of interpersonal skill. I was watching your TED talk and like the conversation around. How do you bring compassion and curiosity into a conversation? That's a skill you have to practice. That you can't just be like, oh yeah, I'm going to just check curiosity. Boom. Every time. Like that's a habit that you build. Yeah, right. That you have to have enough space and like whatever is that called the refractory period. Right between the emotional response and when you choose, you have to actually train yourself to like create that space and then be able to say, okay, what's my curious question here? How do I, you know, and that you need that to be able to do the self management stuff.

So you got me off a little.

Bit of a rant.

I love it. No, man, this is great. This is great. This is a strong start and I'm seeing clearly why Max introduced us. This is awesome.

I agree.

Yeah, man.

Well, cool.

As it relates to negotiation, conflict resolution, human interaction in general.

Yeah, right.

Right. Now, what is giving you the most energy?

The very interesting question. I think there's something old and something new for me in that. The old thing is I worked. One of the reasons I was been trying to have conversations like these is that two colleagues and I wrote a book around collaborative negotiation and career development. But we've been working on that for. I mean, you know, writing books is a real saga. We were working that for 10 years, just published it. And so I'm sort of, I'm really excited about that. And it's all, you know, it's stuff I've been thinking about for a long time, but it's like we finally gotten into the world. We've been able to start sharing with people. And so the idea that. And I was curious as I was prepping for this, thinking about if you would share this experience that as you learn collaborative negotiation skills, you find that like your example with Whitney and the serial. Right. That everything is a negotiation and that that includes your career. And so if you want to learn about how a world works, you need to find out about the interests of the people who work in it. If you want to figure out how to get a role at a business, you need to think about what are their alternatives? What objective standards can you bring? I mean all the like standard collaborative negotiation stuff actually becomes highly relevant. If I want to get an informational interview with someone, I need to think about what their relational interests are, what their procedural interests are. Like, is this the person who I need to show up 20 minutes early in a suit and tie because it's all about respect, right. And status. Or is this the person who wants to like this all about time. So I'm just, you know, I'm going to like accompany their kids to them, to their kids baseball game. You know, we'll just like chat in the stands, right? Or is it someone for whom it's about actually building an authentic relationship? Our field can be very lonely because once you get good enough that you're training alone, you're training alone, right. And so then someone who just wants company and be able to talk shop. Right. But I'm not making a deal with them. I'm just, I want their advice. But even there I need to be so. So that's one set of ideas I'm really excited about. It's like how do we integrate collaborative negotiation skills of career development? Because, and this is sort of the other part of it for me is I'm really excited about the idea of it is collaborative negotiation and sort of effective meaning design, facilitation. Is that one of the core catalysts that we can use in the places where our society is seeking change? Right. Rather than investing more money, I mean, do that too. Right. But rather than just investing money or just throwing technology at a problem or you know, whether it be climate change or trying to figure out what does actually dismantling white supremacy look like or whatever, does having these skills in those conversations in the room where it's happening, is that a catalyst that really creates change? What would it be like if organizations that are really moving on change making had in house support with people who could help them design their meetings, who could coach them for their negotiation skills, who could help them manage their difficult conversations and mediate the conflicts? Would we see a real sort of stepwise change in effectiveness in our ability to move and collaborate and work together? And again, I think like I was saying with you at this book, like, I have become increasingly convinced as I've, I've done my own sort of personal anti racism work and like learning, trying to learn and understand. Also looking at all the stuff around climate and like it's all one system of dominance. I know we're kind of getting off negotiation here, but if you look at that system. An alternative requires partnership, right? Yeah, it requires. And partnership requires much better interpersonal skills.

Bingo.

And so how do we. So any. So that's the other. So those would be the two things. That's the new one and no one.

Let's do this because we'll clearly we are not going to touch everything, so. Oh, no. I'm going to have to have you back on the podcast.

That'd be great.

I would love to.