Reverse Interview: How to Handle Emotions in Difficult Conversations- Jeanine Carroll M.Ed interviews Kwame Christian, Esq., M.A.

Hello, my friends, and welcome to a special episode of Negotiate Anything. As always, we are produced by the American Negotiation institute. With over 10 million downloads and listeners in more than 180 countries, you've made us the world's number one negotiation podcast. I'm Kwame Christian, the founder and CEO of the American Negotiation Institute, and our goal is simple. We want to make your difficult conversations easier and more productive. In today's episode, it's a little bit different. It's all about you, our listeners. This is part of our Negotiate Anything live series on LinkedIn. We record the episode live, allowing you to ask your questions and engage directly with the content. If you want to join the next live session and be part of this interactive experience, make sure you follow me on LinkedIn. We'll put a link in the description for you. Now, before we dive into this episode, remember, we offer keynotes and trainings in negotiation and conflict resolution. We're here to support you and your team both in person and virtually wherever you are in the world. Check out the link in the description to learn how we can work together. And now, without further ado, let's jump into your questions and explore the art of negotiation together. Let's get to those questions, some of those leftover questions, and what we'll do is we'll just treat this like a question and answer session.

Well, thank you so much, Kwame. One of the questions that I'd like to to bring up that the participants asked was, how do you keep the emotion aspect out of future planning? For example, we had a person who works with children and teens with disabilities, and future planning with families can create a lot of conflict. So could you help to address that question?

Yes. First, I will give an unsatisfactory response and then give an elaboration that can make you feel a little bit better about it. So the response is that you cannot keep emotions out of these difficult conversations. The emotions are going to be a natural byproduct of difficult situations. And if you are not feeling emotional in these situations, to a certain extent, that means you're a psychopath. That's another problem. Okay, so let's start there. Now, the real issue becomes how do we prevent the emotions that are at play from coming into the conversation in a way that is unproductive? I think that's the bigger issue. And so let's start first with our own emotions. And so when it comes to our emotions, we can't just push them down to the surf below the surface and. And simply have that be our strategy, because what happens is there will be psychological leakage, emotional leakage that will come out, and that it would come out oftentimes at inopportune times. And so the EMOT needs to be addressed. And in my book, I gave a three part strategy for addressing conflict both internally and externally. And it can be applied in the exact same framework, in the exact same order internally and externally. And that's compassionate curiosity. And so the steps are, first, acknowledge emotion. Second, use compassionate curiosity. And then third, engage in joint problem solving. So let's work through this for us within our own minds. So first, we need to acknowledge the emotion. Once we feel that thing inside of us, we need to label it. What is it that we are feeling? What's. What is the name? How can. Where did it come from? And so simply labeling the emotion has the impact of kind of giving us a little bit more control and power over it. Because the emotions come from a part of our brain called the amygdala, which creates these negative emotions and positive emotions. But the amygdala doesn't lead to rational thinking. The part of our brain that does lead to rational thinking is the prefrontal cortex. And the way we can label that emotion is if we utilize the prefrontal cortex. So it's a little bit of a mental trick there, because by actually taking the time and slowing down to identify clearly what we're feeling, it forces us to engage a higher level part of our brain. And so the next step, which is getting curious with compassion, is when we start asking why we feel this way. Where did this emotion originate from? And the reason we want to do this with compassion is because we can judge ourselves prematurely. And if, if we judge ourselves, what happens is that it stops the process short and we don't analyze beyond that point. So if I'm saying to myself, kwame, you're upset, but you shouldn't be upset. You're a lawyer. You're in conflict all the time. You should be better than this. Now I stop investigating, and there's important information that lies behind there. So we need to ask ourselves those questions. And so once we figure out those answers, now we engage in the third step, which is joint problem solving. And so it might seem weird. How are we engaging? Enjoy problem solving within our head. And in this stage, what we're doing is we are getting our hearts and minds on the same page so we can create solutions that satisfy both. Because the reality is the emotions play an important role, and our solutions need to address our emotional needs and our substantive needs. And through going through this process, it allows you to identify what your emotional need is and then what your substantive need is. And then when you actually get into the conflict with the other person, now you have an idea, you have a clear understanding of the solutions that would be able to satisfy both.

One of the things that I can hear the participants saying is, well, what if the other party isn't doing the same thing? How do you get them to do that? What if they're in denial about their emotions and can't label those? So maybe that's what you're going to get into.

Yeah, exactly. And like I said, it's the exact same process. But we often run into those people who don't want to own their emotions. So if we ask them a question that pertains to it and we say, how are you feeling about this situation? Or something to that effect, they might resist because they don't want to be vulnerable in that way. And so they say, emotion. I'm not emotional about it. This is what I need. And so just by their tone, we could say, okay, well, there's clearly some emotion back there. We're not saying that audibly, of course, we're saying that to ourselves. And so what I often do, and especially I use this especially as a mediator, is I own the emotion for them. And so sometimes people don't want to own it for themselves. And so I would say, listen, if I were in your situation, I would be frustrated, too. Or if I were in your situation and I haven't gone through this process, I would be a little bit scared, or I wouldn't know exactly what's going to happen. That would make me feel uncomfortable. And so simply by acknowledging it for them on their behalf, they could either silently accept it or oftentimes, what often happens is the fact that people don't like to be misidentified. They might not want to tell you, but they hate being mislabeled. And I remember distinctly in one of my mediations, I said, yeah, if I were in your position, I would be frustrated. And this woman was stoic the whole time. And then she said, I'm not frustrated. I'm angry, and I'm angry because of blah, blah, blah. Now, hey, now we're getting some gold here. I hit it. I didn't hit it directly, but I was wrong, and she corrected me with the correct answer. And so that is a way that you can kind of circumvent that. That barrier that prevents other people from sharing their emotion. And then once you've Addressed it. What you. What you'll notice is oftentimes they'll start to calm down a little bit, and then you move into the next stage, and that's where you're asking questions with compassion. And you do this compassionately because oftentimes our tone is. Is in the wrong place. And our tone, even though we are asking a question and the wor taken by themselves, are not aggressive. Our tone is aggressive. And then it registers as a threat, and then they start to bottle up. And now we have a barrier to the. To the free flow of information. And so that's why I use the term compassion in that stage. And then joint problem solving, once we've gone through the process of acknowledging the emotion, to remove that emotional barrier or at least diminish it a little bit. And now we've gathered information through asking questions and being curious, now we have enough information that we can to start trading proposals. Well, based on what I see, I think this might work. What do you think? And then they say, well, no, maybe not. What do you think? And so this is really just the heart of collaborative negotiation. Now we're working together to try to solve the problem.

Got it? Got it. One of the things that we talked about during the first webinar was taking a break. Sometimes it's so emotional that you need to take a break. And one of the questions that the participants asked was, well, how do you re approach then? Once you have taken that break and the emotional charge of the situation is diminished, then how do you re approach it? So would you suggest that joint problem solving is where you need to go there, or do you still need to acknowledge what took place?

I think one of the most important things to recognize here is with the compassionate curiosity framework, it's not rigid. And so what you can do is if you are revisiting the conversation, you can start it off with small talk and then try to assess whether or not that emotional barrier is still there. And if it is, then you start at step one. If it's not, then you can go to steps two and start asking questions. And if you feel like you already have gone through those. Those two steps in the previous conversation, then you can just start at number three and start trading proposals. But it's important to. To kind of test the waters to see where it is you need to start. And with regard to taking time, I think more specifically, if possible, try and take a day. And the reason I say take a day is because you allow people to sleep on it. And what's interesting is that the term sleeping on it is a term that comes up in different ways in almost every single culture around the world. It is embedded wisdom into our worldwide traditions that sleeping on a problem makes it better. But for centuries, we never underst understood why, but now we do. And so what happens is that through the process of sleep, you engage in emotional therapy. Essentially through the REM process, the dream process, we are able to start to process and work through some of the emotional events that happen during the day. That's why we can often go to sleep really, really frustrated and angry and mad, but we rarely wake up with that same level of fervor. Right. And so giving people the opportunity to sleep on these problems has the impact of diminishing the amount of negativity and emotional barriers that you're going to face when you revisit the conversation the next day. 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 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.

Another thing that I hear is, well, that's well and good, but we can't, we don't have time to do that. We have, for example, an IEP meeting and it has to take place now and we have half an hour and we've gotten all these people here. How do you address that?

Yeah, well, first, before the conversation starts or at the very beginning of the conversation, what I would do is I would set expectations and say, listen, in most situations, if we hit a certain kind of barrier, I think it would be better to take time and patience would be helpful. But given our time restrictions now we have to reach a certain conclusion just because of the restrictions here. So there might be times in the conversations where it feels like I'm pushing hard and I am pushing hard unnaturally so because of this time constraint. And so that's why I know for me it's going to be tough because sometimes I get frustrated. But I'm going to try to keep it together and push through. And I'm hoping that you can do the same. But unfortunately we just don't have the time to slow things down if it gets too heated, because frankly, we just don't have the luxury of rescheduling this, doing it at a different time or something like that. And so what I'm doing in that is I'm giving the. I'm setting the expectations. Because if somebody feels bullied or pushed or feels like I'm not listening without that, that's going to be the extent of their analysis. Kwame is a jerk. He's not list listening to me. But what I'm doing is I'm setting the expectations and letting them know that, hey, you are going to feel this. And it's not because of a level of disrespect that I have for you. It's because of the level of respect I have for the time. And so there are going to be levels of discomfort that both of us are going to feel and don't feel as though that's an indication of this thing going poorly. I want everybody to get on the same page.

I love that you mentioned setting expectations. And, Helen, you might want to speak a little bit to that, too. I think that's kind of a theme of some of the guides that we've put together is setting expectations and being prepared and knowing what you want to be asking and all of that so that some of the anxiety is taken out of the situation. I think that's exactly right. And again, the perfect example in our arena of families who have children with special needs is really special education. Because, again, you have families who very understandably want to make sure their child is getting, you know, the very best education possible. And, you know, the conflict comes in because the law actually does not call for that. You know, the law requires that children with special needs get an education, but it does not require the very best. And although school districts, for the most part, really do care and really do want to do best by children, they simply don't have the resources. And so they may be meeting what the law requires, and yet the parents don't see that. So maybe their expectations are just sort of out of sync with what the school is going to be able to deliver. So expectation setting is, you know, is really critical. One of the questions, too, came from a parent, mentor, and many times, Kwame, these are individuals who work for the school district or sometimes not for the school district, but their role is to help the parents and the schools try to find happy mediums and help to understand each other and understand the process. And she indicated she realizes that we're not going to be able to give what the parents want sometimes. What's the best approach to addressing that with the parents?

I think we can revisit the previous answer to a certain extent on this. Going into those conversations, I think it's often helpful to let people know that there are going to be things that you want that are completely legitimate requests given your needs at the moment. However, recognizing the limits of my power and limits to the. The power of the school district, there are going to be things that we will not be able to deliver. And so I want to let you know beforehand, it's not an indic indication of our unwillingness to help or the fact that we don't care. We are going to do the best that we can to serve your needs and the needs of your child. But given our lack of resources and the constraints of the regulations that we're dealing with, there's going to have to be a little bit of compromise on both sides when it comes to this conversation and making sure beforehand that they get a clear understanding of that. And if you're serving as essentially a pseudo mediator role between them and the school district, kind of giving the same spiel to the other side would be helpful too. So people don't think, all right, I know I am right, and because I'm right, I'm going to get 100% of what I want. You want to avoid that type of mentality as much as you can by setting the stage and setting clear expectations. At the beginning of the conversation, Kwame.

One of our participants, wanted you to speak a little bit about what the difference is between conflict resolution and mediation. And how do you know when you need to go to mediation?

Well, when it comes to the decision of whether or not to go to mediation, or in a less formalized process, recruit a third party to serve as the intermediary between you and the other party. I think the determination is whether or not you feel as though you are the right person to deliver the message. In negotiation literature, there's something called reactive devaluation. And with reactive devaluation, essentially what that means is that just because you said it, I don't believe you. And so I think that's something that a lot of parents can relate to. Just because of your position as the parent in the situation, you feel as though the. The teenager is not paying. They. They just cannot respect what it is that you're saying. And so that can be frustrating. But a solution is to find a third party that could deliver the message for you and what's critical here is when you're making this determination, you need to include the other party in the, in the process. And I say that because if they feel like you chose the intermediary, then they are going to experience reactive devaluation with that person as well. And so you need to involve them in the process and make sure that they have bought into the idea that this person is an unbiased third party representative that's solely focused on trying to reach agreement, if an agreement exists. And I think that's going to be the main thing. Now, if you feel as though you just need to try a little bit harder to work with the other person, then I suggest continuing to use the Capacity Passionate Curiosity framework and the other tactics and tools that we've discussed on the prod on this podcast over the past two years. But yeah, if you don't feel as though you are the right messenger, then that's when you need to bring in a third party.

What would you suggest doing? Let's say it's not that the other person is emotional, but maybe they're just in complete denial or they're naive about, you know, what the problem is? How do you deal with that situation?

That is tough. That is tough. And I think one of the things that we need to consider is persuasive weight. And with persuasive weight, this is a term that I included in the book or coined in the book, you have to consider how heavy is this conversation. So, for example, if I'm having a conversation with my significant other and we're trying to decide where we're going to eat tonight, that's a pretty light conversation. If I have an agenda with regard to where I want to go, I don't think it would be too difficult to persuade my, my wife in this case to, to go and eat at the restaurant that I suggest, that's pretty easy. But if there's something that's a little bit heavier, that's where she's experiencing what I consider to be. I recognize that there are going to be steps that need to. The cognitive steps that she needs to take in order to reach the point where I am at this point. And so even taking it away from a situation where somebody's in denial in a negotiation sometimes where we have a big request and just because of the perceived risk they might not be willing to give you everything you want at one time. And so what I suggest doing in these cases is breaking the conversation into micro negotiations. And so we recognize that, okay, I can't get everything that I want right now. So what I'm going to do is in this conversation, I'm going to try and take one step forward. My only goal is to move the needle forward in this conversation. And if I'm able to do that, great. And then maybe the next goal in this same conversation is to schedule a follow up conversation to continue to move the needle forward. Because sometimes it is just too big of a jump for somebody to make in one negotiation. And it might take multiple conversations. But think of it kind of like fishing. If you try to get too aggressive while fishing, then the fish scatter and then you've undone all the work that you've done previously. And so especially if it's a highly emotional issue and you genuinely believe that it is an issue of denial, it just might take more than one conversation.

Another question from one of our webinar participants, Kwame, was what if you continually experience passive aggressive behavior from those you work with with, and that leads to conflict?

I think what would be helpful here is to start off with an operational definition of passive aggressive and essentially what it is. If somebody is being passive aggressive, they are. They have an agenda, but they don't want to bring that agenda to the surface where we could have a level discussion about it. They want to veil their actions and what they say in a cloak of plausible deniability, where if you try to address it head on, they could say, what? No, me? No, no, no, no, no, everything's okay. But they'll keep on trying to do things to frustrate what it is that you're trying to accomplish. And so one thing that we can do in those situations is try your best to address it directly. And then if they try to avoid it, address it hypothetically. And so what that would look like is, hey, Janine, in the meeting it seemed as though there was something that you wanted to say. And I know it can be tough sometimes where there are a lot of people going back and forth and some side discussions happening. But I wanted to give you an opportunity here, it's just you and me, to voice any concerns you might have. And so you see here what I've done is I've said, listen, I see that there is some behavior that indicates to me that there could potentially be a problem. And so I've given you the opportunity to say it so we could have a discussion about it without any subterfuge. And so then what you could say, let's take it to the next level of frustration here, and the person denies it and says, no, no, no, everything's fine, everything's fine. And so then I could say, okay, well, great. Now I, now I would introduce the hypothetical situation and say, well, listen, if there's ever in any situation where there's something that you want to say, please do not hesitate to say it to me. So for example, if you have a situation with the way that I'm handling the meetings or the way that I've distributed the resources or responsibilities, I'm really open to a discussion and I would love to hear what it is that you have to say about it. And so there I'm getting a little bit more, a little bit more specific in a hypothetical because I don't know exactly what it is you might want because of that, that veil of ambiguity that you've intentionally put over the situation. And so I want to get more specific to let you know that I have an idea of what your problem might be. And so again, here's the opportunity to discuss it. And so oftentimes when somebody is approached in that way, they will abandon their efforts because if somebody's being passive aggressive, it means that they don't want to have a confrontation, they don't want to have a level discuss about it. And now that they see that their, their behavior has been identified and there is a prospect of potential difficult conversation on the horizon, they might just abandon their efforts and say, it's not worth it because I'm afraid of the conversation. But you also want to approach it in a way that gives them a way to have the conversation in a non threatening way, because maybe that was what they were afraid of, maybe they were afraid of the way you would handle it. And by approaching the conversation here in this, in this manner, in a respectful way, they might feel a little bit safer. And so that's the strategy behind that. And so again, if we think about it like a micro negotiation, in this situation, we are trying to negotiate for a real conversation. You know, that's our goal here. And so it breaks down what we want into a smaller piece that's easily digestible for you strategically and easier for them to handle to. 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, 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.