Reverse Interview: Kwame Christian, Esq. On Compassionate Curiosity - Behavioral Grooves Interview

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 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.

Kwame Christian, welcome to Behavioral Grooves.

Hey, thanks for having me, guys.

Oh, we are super, super excited to have you. So.

We are. And let's get started with the speed round. So tell us, do you prefer coffee or tea?

Tea.

All right, same here.

We didn't do coffee, so I was raised on tea.

Wow. I was raised in a coffee household and just couldn't stand the taste of it, so I.

All right. Would you rather have dinner with your favorite sports star or favorite musician?

Well, my favorite musician is dead, so that could be kind of weird.

Well, you know, we suspend all, you know, physical laws of the universe and have them be alive. Or her alive. So cool.

Let's go with it. So, Bob Marley and Kwame. Oh, there you go.

Marley the Bob. Oh, my gosh. We just found out that we have a new puppy. And our dog responds really, really well to Bob Marley.

Oh, that's great.

We get to wait in vain. And he's just like, the dog is just chill with Wade in vain. It's just fantastic.

That's great. That is great. It's hard to chill with Bob playing.

Exactly. Exactly. Okay, so would you rather learn A new instrument or a new language?

New language.

Okay, awesome. All right.

You know which one?

So I, I speak English, as you can tell, and then so intermediate Spanish. So I studied abroad in Ecuador and have a minor in Spanish, so I can, I can survive in, in Spanish speaking countries. I am fluent in pig lat. And then I would add French to that.

Oh, very good.

Okay, good.

Your family's from Jamaica, right? And is French one of the Jamaican Caribbean?

So my dad's from Dominica and my mom's from Guyana. So both of them have English as the native language, but the creole is like a French patois in Dominica. So I'd be able to kind of at least understand it a little bit more.

All right, fantastic. All right. Coming home from a long day at work. Cinnamon toast crunch or granola?

Oh, my gosh. What kind of question is this? Cinnamon toast crunch all day.

All right, so had to bring that in just because I saw your TED Talk that you were talking and might have gotten a little upset with your wife a few times about eating the last bowl of cinnamon toast crunch, right?

Yeah. And the funny thing is it still happens. And now my 4 year old is. He's adept enough to get it himself and he does the same thing. So I'm going to need to have a secret stash.

Well, actually, it was really interesting in your TED Talk when you talked about that because you used it as this element to kind of talk about negotiation and how you do that and various different things. So just to start off, you kind of focus in on negotiations. Tell us a little bit about that. And how did you get into that?

Yeah, so I'm a business lawyer by trade, so negotiation is what I do. So I'm of counsel at Carlisle, Patchen and Murphy, in addition to what I do at the American Negotiation Institute. And really, when it comes down to my passion, I love teaching negotiation because originally what I wanted to do was be a therapist. That's what I wanted to do because my undergrad's in psychology. And then I got swept into politics and I said, okay, I want to be a politician. Then that's what led me to get the law degree and master's of public policy. Policy. That's what where that combo comes from. But then as I started to learn more about politics, I said, I do not want any part of this lifestyle. Okay, fair enough.

You are a smart man right there.

So for me, when it comes to negotiation, really, it's about me putting myself in a position where I can help people. Because what we always Say is the best things in life are on the other side of difficult conversations. And so for me, when I'm able to help people to overcome their fears, anxieties, and all of those things related to the difficult conversations they're having in their lives, not just in traditional business negotiations, but difficult conversations in general, these everyday discussions, we're helping them to live the best version of their lives. So this is my, really the avenue I use to go back to my psychology. Negotiation, the word negotiation is really just a branding tool. That's really it. It's all about the psych.

Would you have even gone so far as to say that a good negotiation skills leads to a happier life?

Mm, absolutely. And I think the thing is, for negotiation, people don't really understand what a negotiation is. They think about these really stuffy conversations, car sales, house sales, those smoky rooms, you know. But the reality is we're negotiating all the time. And so the definition I like to use for negotiation is anytime you're in a conversation and somebody in the conversation wants something. So really, I don't think about negotiation like a tool. I think about it more like a life philosophy. I want to filter every single interaction through the lens of negotiation, and then that helps us to be more intentional about the way that we go about interacting with each other.

Well, give us an example if you could. Could you walk us through a simple example of this example?

So Kai, four years old, last night he was out of bed. And so I said, hey, Kai, all right, why do you. Why are you getting out of bed? What's wrong? Well, I want somebody to cuddle with me. Okay, well, Kai, did we cuddle with you before? Yes, you did. Okay, so what do you think the reason is that we have you go to bed when you do, so I can get big and strong. Well, do you want to get big and strong? Yeah, I want to get big and strong. All right, guys, so what do you think you should do right now? Well, I should stay in bed. There you go. Negotiation one. So instead of approaching it through an authoritative approach, just as a parent with maximum leverage, you, four year old, stay in bed. Now do what I say and do it right. I could do that. Number one, it would be less effective. Number two, he wouldn't feel good during the process. And number three, we miss out on the learning opportunity that he has by learning to communicate and express himself in the process too. And so I use negotiation every day as a relationship building tool. And the thing is, when you filter every interaction through this lens, when those bigger negotiations Happen. You're always ready, you're never caught off guard.

So you have a component that you talk about compassionate curiosity. And it sounds like actually in that conversation that you had with Kai, there was some compassionate curiosity that came out of that. Can you explain to our listeners a little bit about that methodology and how you approach that?

Yeah. So in my TED talk I talked about this, but in my book I go a lot deeper. So the book has the same name, Finding Confidence in Conflict. And so with the framework, it's three parts. And the first part is acknowledging validating emotions. The second part is getting curious with compassion. And then the third part is joint problem solving. And the strategy behind this is really just laying this framework over the psychology that we all know. Because the reason why a lot of times we fail in these difficult conversations and negotiations is because we don't handle the emotional side. We don't even get a chance to even wrestle with the substance at a high level because we're not even engaging in the conversation with our higher level thinking. It's just two people emoting at each other and we wonder why things are going so poorly.

Yeah, classic human interaction right there, isn't it?

Exactly. Yeah.

So I find this particularly interesting that as Kurt brought up, this whole compassionate curiosity is really different from just this emoting exchange. Right. We're too often caught up in our quick and and responsive activities to actually stop and think. Right. You as a father, you took time to stop and think with, with your four year old son rather than just doing this. It's hard for us to stop and think. How do you help people have that moment where they stop to think about something rather than just boom, boom, boom, boom, rather than just be reactive?

Yeah. And I think that's something that we both, that we all have to acknowledge. This is difficult. And what I tell people is that we are develop unnatural responses to these situations because the natural response is usually the thing that you want to do. The things that you instinctually want to do or say in this conversation is the wrong answer. That's usually how it is. Right. And so in my book I talk about developing the habit of engagement. So thinking about negotiation as a life philosophy and taking these opportunities to negotiate every day, even on these lower level types of negotiations with family, friends, colleagues at work, it helps to develop that habit. Right. Because it's not natural to engage in the way that I'm describing. And so when you think about a habit, oh, this is great. This is a nerdy psychology podcast. So let's get into it.

Yeah, yeah.

It's not just about thinking about it like a habit. Hey, this is something I regularly do. Let's talk about what a habit really means. What is it really? Let's use the word grooves here. Right. Essentially, we're creating these grooves in our brain that make it more likely for you to engage this behavior. And so when you think about what it takes to actually use cognition at a high level, the parts of your brain that are associated with habit forming are not even there. It just becomes who you are. We're talking about changes in the basal ganglia. Right. These are things that just happen automatically. So for me, when it comes to engaging with people in this way, it is automatic. It's not natural. But it has become natural to me because of constantly filtering every interaction through this framework. Hello, my friends.

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Yeah. And so building up those habits, obviously habits take. You can look at a habit loop. There's a cue, there's a behavior, and then there's a reward afterwards. So how do you go about starting to get yourself into a habit of this type of thinking and response?

Yeah. We have to reframe the way that we think about these difficult conversations. You think about the way that any animal determines what's going on in a situation. We have that approach, avoid type of mentality here. If I see it as a threat, I'm going to avoid it. If I see it as something that's positive, I'm going to approach it. And so when people ask me, what is conflict? I'd say conflict is an opportunity. So I challenge people to see, to say, where is the opportunity here? Where is it? If you are creative enough, you can find it. It's an opportunity to learn, opportunity to strengthen a relationship, opportunity to improve a relationship, solve a problem. The opportunities are endless. Right. And as you start to train yourself to have this opportunity framework when it comes to these engagements, then you're going to start moving toward these conversations. More often it starts your mentality, and as you start moving forward to them, that's when you start to develop that habit. Now we also have to rethink the payoff too, because we always think about whether I win or lose in negotiation. We think about it only in terms of did I get what I want? But again, there's always going to be a payoff, a positive payoff, if you're creative enough about it. So maybe you don't get exactly what you want, but you can engage in a way that strengthens the relationship. That's a win. Maybe you don't get what you want, but you use the framework and you hold yourself to a high standard and you engage respectfully and you improve. This is a practice. Any skill, you practice it. So this is a practice session. I think about every single interaction as a practice session. Sweet. I have an opportunity to practice here for free here at the grocery store. Yeah, I'm going to have this conversation regardless. It's a win, win. Not win win in the traditional negotiation sense, but win, win in that if I get what I. If I don't get what I want, I still win because I got better in the process.

Yeah, I want to come back to that win, win thing because that's. That, that's a big curiosity to me. But first, how did you get to this perspective? How, how did you come to reframe these. The. This. The idea of conflict as an opportunity.

Yeah. So when you think about it, there's this joke in psychology that anybody who is in psychology, studying psychology, they're really studying themselves. Yeah, right. And so for me, I was a people pleaser. Hard for me to stand up for myself, have these conversations. And so this was a lot of me working on myself and then subsequently recognizing that other people have the same challenge. And so that's how it got to this point, really. I think about the people struggling to engage just like any other phobia. What can we use? Let's use the fundamental tenants of cognitive behavioral therapy. Let's see what we can do to work through this. And it fits really nicely.

Yeah, well. And you talk about being a pleaser, and I think there are a lot of people out there who would probably say that's a personality trait that they, that they have. And, and with that, there is this fear of conflict there. The idea that I can't say something because then they will feel like I don't like them or it may engender or endanger. Not engender, endanger the, the relationship that we Have. So if I'm a pleaser, which actually I kind of am, you know, what do I do to really change that mindset? I mean, is it. Is it really just as simple as shifting that mindset to saying that this is an opportunity as opposed to being something I should be fearful for? Or is there other tricks that we can do?

Yeah, there are other tricks, because I think we should layer these things. All of these things kind of fall on top of each other. And the thing is, when somebody's afraid, you can't just say, hey, stop being afraid.

Oh, that works all the time.

It's like, oh, I never thought of that.

Right?

Your response. I'm sorry, man, I've just told you to not be afraid all those years.

And so for me, what I do is I say, listen, it's okay to be afraid. Just be afraid of the right thing. And so I moved from the fear of failure to the fear of regret. Will I look back on this interaction and regret the way that I had it or did not have it? And I recognized when I evaluated my performance in difficult conversations, if I actually had the conversation, regardless of how it turned out, I felt really good about myself. I looked at myself and I'm like, that's a guy I can respect. That's what I wanted look at. I want to look back on my behaviors and say, that's a guy I can respect. But then on the other hand, if I avoid the conversation and with this mythical goal of. Of preserving the relationships through avoidance, I look back and I'm like, I don't. I don't like that guy. I don't like that guy. And now sometimes in the moment, the issue is that we don't have that perspective. We're just living here, and we get this fear. Fear focuses, right? It focuses you, and it focuses you oftentimes on the wrong thing. We need to get some perspective. And the way that I do it is by having kind of a deathbed perspective, which is a little bit morbid, but it definitely pulls you out of the moment. And so I say, looking back on this, when my life is done, and I think back to this very moment, how will I feel about what I did or didn't do? How will I feel about my decision to not engage in this conflict? Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, this is deeper than just what is at issue right now. This is about self. Self respect. And so once I started to think about these interactions in that way, it became a lot easier to make the right decision.

So for a part of that sounds like there's a self identity that comes with this. Right. So you are looking at this through a lens of who am I as an individual and are my actions then reflecting who I want to be as that person? And so the reframe is more than just reframing the situation. It's reframing who you are and how you show up in the world. Is that an over kind of statement there or would you agree with that?

Yeah, that's a perfect synopsis. That really is. And it's so funny. You think about people who might be life coaches, business coaches and all this stuff. You might be a business coach, but you've never made a business. Or you might be a life coach and your life might be in shambles. And people kind of look at that and they say, well, what, what is that about? What is that about? It's because as a life coach or a business coach, whatever it happens to be as that advisor or think about it even as a friend situation, somebody as a friend could give great advice, but they're not following their own advice. It's easy to see what other people can do from the outside, can or should do from the outside, because you have the benefit of perspective. You're not feeling that emotion. People make bad decisions because they are not thinking through it. They're making emotional decisions. A lot of times in negotiation, one of the most difficult things for people to struggle with emotionally is pressure. They'll make bad decisions simply to alleviate the pressure. Right. And we want to avoid that. And so what I had to do for a long time before it became a habit doing this this way, when it relates to negotiation and conflict in particular and just general life choices, I had to ask myself, who's the guy I want to be? Who is the guy I want to be? Okay. What would he do in this situation? Well, I guess I'm going to do that. And that's what I would listen to. It sounds simple. It's difficult to do, especially at the beginning. But in after you start to get used to it, it almost becomes kind of like a joke. You start to feel that fear, the pressure that to me, that doesn't go away. I just change the behavior. Right. That's the difference. Yeah.

So let's go back to the win win thing. For decades we've been on this, the win win solution. It's if you win and I win, then everybody wins. And it so oftentimes in my work life, it just felt like a bunch of baloney. It just didn't Feel like it was really sincere. It felt like people who were saying, okay, what we want is a win win solution meant that was sort of code for I'm going to get what I want and you're going to feel good about me getting what I want. Is win win a myth or is it a reality? And if it is a reality, Kwame, tell us about how we can achieve that.

So it's funny that you use the word myth because in an episode, February 2020 of this year, I have an episode with Alan Tsang called Negotiation Myths. Win win is one of them. Yeah, here's the thing. It creates a false dichotomy because oftentimes we think about win win and juxtapose that with lose. It's not that simple. It's really not that simple. And if you are, if you approach it that way, you're. You run into some problems. If you have somebody who's win win negotiating with somebody who's win win, hey, I mean, that's cool. Everybody's generous sharing information. Things can work out really nicely. But what if somebody who's win win goes against somebody who's win lose? What's going to end up happening is the person who thinks in that win win mentality is going to bear the entire burden of adjustment because they are going to say, this is a win win solution. I need to be generous here. I'm going to give this to you in order to trigger reciprocity. And the person who's win lose says, why, thank you, I'll take that. And then you do it again, why thank you, I'll take that. And so it just becomes a train wreck if you go up against win, a win lose type of person. The reality is what we have to do is we have to have a flexible approach. We need to be able to adjust the situation. You know, we have to have multiple paths to victory. And depending on the person on the other side, depending on the situation as a whole, depending on your personality makeup, these are all things that we need to consider when it comes to our approach to negotiation. And so I think about it, like any other strategy creation, we have to have a very, very clear goal. Then from the goal we backtrack and we create our strategy. And from our strategy we backtrack and create our tactics. And we have to do that after making a thorough analys analysis of the situation. And if you are just going to use the same strategies and tactics for every situation, I mean, it just doesn't make any sense.

Well, and it sounds to a degree like the win win. If we're looking at the outcome of that negotiation, particularly if you're thinking business and near negotiating cost or terms of an agreement, etc, and you have your goals and they have their goals, you may not get to a win win there. Right. Somebody might, might leave that negotiation saying we didn't get what we wanted. But I think your earlier conversation was, there's a win from the perspective of what did I learn from that situation, how did I approach this, how did I take the insight? So it's being aware enough to be able to say, all right, what can I take from this? And can I maybe build? So we might have lost in this short term negotiation piece, but did I build that relationship up so that next time we can do better and that I understand things better, Maybe I'm misconstruing that, but that's, that's one of the things that it came across as me from.

Yeah, you're right. You're right. And here's something else to consider too. A lot of times people talk about negotiation as the, the art of deal making, but really negotiation, in my opinion, is the art of deal discovery. We're going to come together, we're going to share information, we're going to ask questions, and we're going to try to be creative enough to see if there is a deal to be had. And if not, no harm, no foul, I'll move on. That's it.

All right. All right. So in your TED Talk, and again, I hate to keep coming back to it, but it was really wonderful. And so every listener, you should definitely go out there and get his book, but also go watch Kwame's TED talk because it's 15 minutes packed with a, both laughs and lots of insight. But one of the things that you mentioned, and maybe you've improved on this, but one of the things that you mentioned is that you apply these principles to your work and you get that pretty much down, but you find it's a little bit harder in your personal life. And I think that's probably true for many of us. I know when I go into work and I'm thinking about how do we have to have these tough conversations, how do we have to do this? I put on that work Persona per se, and I don't necessarily do that in my personal life. So do you find that to be true with the people that you interact with and work with? And then what do we do about it?

Yeah, it's, it's tough. And that's something I struggled with. For a long time. Just really honestly, in the last couple of years, I started to figure it out, being completely honest. Yeah.

Wow, your wife still eats the cinnamon toast crunch.

Listen, some people can't be helped. That's really what I learned. I will go. I go back to another episode we had with Jen Goldman. She talks about freeing herself from conflict. Great book on the topic. And really, she says some. Sometimes you're in a conflict pattern that just doesn't end and you have to find other solutions. So my solutions is, is make more money and buy more cereal. That's really.

The basement is stuffed. Never run out. All right.

Yeah, but. But yeah, it's. It's tough. And here's the thing, it takes a lot of self awareness. A lot of self awareness. You're more likely to get emotional when somebody's close to you. Because the reality is, for me as a lawyer, I really care about my clients a lot and I care about what happens to them and I care about their outcomes. But ultimately, when the day is done, the problem isn't mine. You know, that's the reality. And it's easy to disconnect from other things with work too. This is just business. That's really it. And for me at least, it's easy to do that. But at home, I come home and I expect to be understood. That's what happens. You should see, my heart hurts. And when. When it doesn't happen, I'm like, why don't you get me? It's been over a decade and that's not persuasive.

It's not reality either. Right. I mean, I've been married 20 plus years and it's still like, don't you get this? I mean, 20 years. And it's like, well, you never talk about it, I guess, like, okay, that's part of it.

Exactly. And so I had to realize, okay, what this again? Again? Let's get some perspective. If it was a listener of your podcast or if it was a client, what would you tell them to do? Okay, now I start making the right moves. That was it. That. That simple mindset helped me to make the right moves. And then, yeah, that was. That was really it. So in the moment, I'm a lot better now because I've given myself that perspective. I slow down and say, if you were talking to somebody else, what would you tell them to do? That. That helps. And then another thing I've recognized, and this is not something I suggest for everybody, but try new things. You evaluate the responses and then you use the right Tactics. A tactic that's often not used for good reason is negotiation or conflict resolution via text. Turns out when I'm talking to Whitney and it's a heavy conversation, it goes a lot better over text message. That is the only relationship where that is true.

Why do you think that's the case?

I think because I'm trained in conflict resolution, I can kind of sit in it a little bit better than she can. And so by going into, by having the conversation via text, I can recognize when she's getting a little bit more emotional. And then it's easier to inject some time so I can say, all right, I'm going to give this about 30 minutes before I, before I respond. Slow down the process. And it makes it less likely for me to make a mistake too, emotionally. And so one of the things I always say is that you can't put the toothpaste back in the tube. You know, once you say certain things or make certain mistakes, you can't come back. I can take the time and wordsmith my responses really, really well, and it helps significantly. And also, there's a paper trail too, because I can go back and say, listen, we actually talked about this. If you go back to the text at this time, because again, if somebody's emotional, your memory is not the best either. So it makes it easier for people to kind of backtrack and review. And even if it's not a situation where there's been some kind of commitment made, it provides you with a. Of self reflection where you can look back on the, on the transcript and see what somebody was doing after you've given yourself a day or two to calm down.

Yeah, I think there's two things that you said there. One is you can slow the process down. And I think that's really important. Even, even in, if you're not doing it on text, Right. If you are just in a conversation that heated, you know, immediate response, if you can just take a couple breaths and slow that down, you know that that can help. And then you talk about the emotion side of, of this and, and being able to. How that emotion inhibits some of our cognitive functioning. Right. And we, we know that when you're under stress, particularly acute stress, which may be in, in one of these things, you're feeling that fear, you know, your, your amygdala takes over. You get, you get the amygdala hijacking, and your prefrontal cortex gets offline more. And to your point, you're not thinking in the same way. You're Processing your memory of those situations gets hyper focused and you miss much of the nuance and various other aspects of it. So how do you deal with people in your work? How do you teach them to maybe slow down and to realize some of these emotional things are coming in?

Yeah. One of the things I have them do is think back to some of the conversations that they've had that didn't go well. And what are the commonalities there? Different people have different patterns. Right. And then that helps them to understand. Sometimes in the moment, it's hard to recognize where things are starting to go awry. But then in hindsight, you can look back and say that was the moment. Because the thing is, in these difficult conversations, not all moments are created equally. They're going to be the moments that are more important and you need to recognize those moments. If you don't recognize those, then you can't do the right thing and up your game at that time. One of the things we have to do is recognize once somebody shifts from thinking in a way that's a higher level thinking, like using your frontal lobe, actually thinking on a deep level versus thinking emotionally. The amygdala leaps clues. I wish I would have thought about that before I wrote the book. That is a cool statement.

That is awesome.

The amygdala leaves clues.

Yeah, the amygdala leaves clues. What is it? Right. That I'm noticing the posture change, I'm noticing that the voice elevates, noticing the different difference in the body language, those type of things. The pacing changes. They start to go a lot faster. Oh, wow. They are enunciating every single word. I wonder what that means. Right. And so I'm going to stop back and evaluate and I say, oh, they're gone, they're gone. And so here's the thing with the compassionate curiosity framework. That's what it's designed for. So anytime you see the specter of a problem, problematic emot, you know that it's time to acknowledge and validate emotions. And you acknowledge and validate until it disappears. Sometimes it doesn't disappear. And that tells you that we're not going to have a productive conversation today. And then we use what I would like to call magic.

Wow.

You use magic.

I use magic. And that magic is sleep. Because every time you go to bed, it's like a therapy session, Right? Because when you think about the benefits of REM sleep, it is significant. Significant. The. The book Matthew Walker wrote on why we sleep is really fascinating. You think about it, you can go to sleep really, really mad. But you don't usually wake up with the same level of rage. It's because there's emotional processing that happens. And so sometimes if somebody's really emotional, I sit back and let sleep do the work. I acknowledge emotions, I ask some questions. And then I say, listen, I think we've made a lot of progress today and I'd like, I'd like to continue this conversation. Let's, let's pick this up tomorrow. Tomorrow. Well, let's pick this up later this week. And then a couple days passed. Oh, look, they changed their perspective position. I didn't have to do anything.

So this is in opposition to the old rune that says never go to bed angry.

Yeah. Let them go to bed angry. Yeah. Because the thing is, again, let's even think about night. Let's think about what happens to the brain as the day goes on. So you get up in the morning, you might work out, you go, go to work. You might have to take your kids to school. You do a long workday, you put your kids down for bed. Are you at your best cognitively? No, you're not. And so your frontal lobe is tired. And the thing is, think about what happens late at night. You're more likely to make mistakes late at night. That's why when somebody's engaged in late night snacking, they're not usually going to get a salad. Their inhibitions are down. And so emotionally your ability to self regulate is lower. And so if you're trying to have a conversation with, especially somebody that you're close with, most likely like your spouse or your partner, whatever it happens to be most likely, because of the way our days are structured, it's going to happen at night. When you're not at your best, you're more likely to get emotional. And if that person is starting to get emotional, it's going to make it more difficult for them to recover because they're tired. So I'm going to go ahead and let them sleep on this.

Well, and like you said, you can't put the toothpaste back in the tube. Right. And so you're tired, you're worn out, you're not thinking there. And you may say something to your point. You talked about regret earlier. You may say something that you regret that if you just had a night to sleep on it, that's not going to happen.

To what degree, Kwame? Earlier you were talking about fear of failure versus fear of regret. And we had a conversation, we've had some conversations with researchers recently that kind of imply Roy Baumeister specifically implies that we make a lot of, we can make a lot of decisions based on this anticipated regret that we are actually kind of putting ourselves in a future state to say, I don't think I want to do that because I don't want to regret it later. And yet we also know, of course, there's a lot of emotion that drives our current behavior. Is there a sense of sort of present self versus future self in this idea of fear of failure, which is very present versus fear of regret, which is more, more of a, a future thing?

Yeah, that's, that's exactly what I'm trying to get at too. Because my thing is I'm going to make the assumption that the, the future self is a little bit wiser than, than the current self. At least that's my hope. That would be, that would be sad. The other direction. And so the benefit there is, is the, the perspective. Because right now the thing is, it seems really important. So an ant relative to the size of a human is very small, but if close to that ant, it can look really big. So what I want to do is I want to take a step back and so I have a more accurate view of where this particular conversation sits as it relates to the entirety of my life. And then once I recognize that, I say, oh, wow, this, this one isn't that big. This one isn't that that big. So we have to make a determination on how we're going to handle it. And the thing is, it doesn't mean that we're not going to have the conversation because we're going to say this conversation doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things. It'. What we say is we're going to have the conversation, but we're going to do it without that fear that focuses us on avoiding it. Because the thing is, when we think about the term avoid, a lot of times we say avoid as in not have it. But you can still have that avoiding mentality with a conversation that you were unable to avoid. So let's say it was an unavoidable conversation, but you still have that avoid approach. I shouldn't say avoid approach. That avoid mentality. Then you're just not going to engage at a high, high level. You're going to be, you're going to, you're going to relent when you shouldn't relent. You're not going to be as assertive. And so that's, that's why I like to take a step back and think about it from the Future Kwame.

Okay, I want to, I want to shift a little bit. So we were introduced to you by our mutual friend Brian Ahern. And, and when he introduced us, he sent me a, A webinar, a link to the webinar that you did on social justice and race and social justice, which by, again, again, really fascinating and again, great insights on that. And so, but one of the things, and it was right at the time of George Floyd, which, you know, we're in Minneapolis, so it was really felt pretty, pretty strongly with both Tim and me. One of the things I just want to get at from you is how do we have those tough conversations on race and social justice in this day and age with everything that's going on and, and are there things that we need to be thinking about? And particularly, and I'm coming from a white old male perspective here, how do I go about having these types of conversations in an appropriate manner that is reflective of what we need to do and be concerned about?

Yeah. So one of the things we have to do, I guess we would say that it requires a, an approach that avoids overthinking, but at the same time requires some deeper thinking. So let's get into that. So when we think about avoiding overthinking, the compassionate curiosity framework works the same way. The psychology, same. The emotions are just deeper, they're just stronger. Right. So if you're talking to somebody who's very, very upset about the situation that we're experiencing here, you could again, acknowledge and validate emotions. So when we're acknowledging, using psychological terms, this is affect labeling. So we're labeling the emotions, been seen for years in numerous studies that that helps people calm down. And the reason is because once you label that emotion, it triggers the ventral medial prefrontal cortex to either determine whether or not we are accepting or rejecting that label. So that's what causes people to slow down and calm down. So we're going to acknowledge it and say, hey, it sounds like this is really having an impact on you. It sounds like you're really bothered by this situation. And then they explain themselves. And then you say, yeah, that makes sense. It makes complete sense that you feel this way. That's the validation because people want to be understood. And so you do that until the emotions go away. Here's the thing. A lot of times in these conversations about race and social justice, we always assume that somebody wants us to necessarily do something. And so we kind of put push it to the problem solving portion of the conversation. Sometimes they just want to be heard and that's really it. And so listening, just listening, acknowledging and listening, asking questions. And one of the best questions that you can ask as you start to transition into getting curious with compassion is how can I be supportive? What can I do to be supportive to you as a friend? Really simple. And just listen to what they say. And if you just stay right, really hold true to that form and just use a meat and potatoes approach to these conversations, it becomes a lot easier. Now when it comes to the deeper thinking, we need to educate ourselves too. So we need to take some time to think about what are the, what are the concerns, what are the problems, what are the issues as it relates to this situation and looking into that. So self education is going to play a huge role. Role. So you could be more aware of the role you do or do not play in this and what you can or should not do in the situation to make the situation better.

Yeah, thank you for that and thank you for bringing in the psychology terms.

On that double bonus bundle on that one. So this is, I think sort of more specifically about applying what you just shared to, well, relatives that are sort of concerned, but not nearly as concerned as I am about what's happened with George Floyd. I mean, a man being murdered by the police is just really, really hard for. Very incredibly difficult to deal with. Right. And I have some relatives who are. They sort of share that, but not nearly at the same level. And they don't see the social justice implications. So if I were to take your advice from the perspective of start with acknowledging, label, understand what their concerns are, that they've got all kinds of other perspectives on this and then taking it to the deeper thinking, can that be posed back on them to challenge them to deeper thinking, to higher education, to. For them to better understand what's going on?

Yeah, definitely. Again, let's stick to the framework. And so you can use this regardless of whether you agree with somebody or not, we have to remember acknowledgement doesn't mean agreement. We can acknowledge without agreeing. That's the first thing. And also remember, empathy isn't a concession. A lot of times when it comes to these difficult conversations, let's say you're somebody who is really upset about what's happening. Things need to change. Everybody needs to be in on the change. Then they're talking to somebody who disagrees. They might feel it's a concession to empathize. I'm not going to listen to them or appreciate what it is that they say, absolutely not. They need to change, not me. Right. That's the approach. And the thing is, it's not that empathy is a concession. It's a necessary part of the equation. Imagine if you're a soldier and they say, okay, we're going to invade this territory. All right, good deal. So what does the territory look like? Hey, no, no, no. We do not care what the territory looks like. We're going to go in, we're going to do our thing, regardless of what the territory looks like. Wait, sir, don't you think it's important to know what the territory looks like in order for us to competently move forward in this engagement? No, screw the territory. We're going to move it our way.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

How are you going to persuade somebody if you don't understand where they're coming from? Coming from. You don't need to agree. You just need to recognize what the barriers are. And once you appreciate and acknowledge what those barriers are, then you can structure your argument or your conversation to address those specific barriers. So what would this look like? So we can say. Yeah, it doesn't seem like you. You think this is such a big deal. No, I think they're blowing this way out of proportion. I think they're bigger issues, blah, blah, blah. Okay, yeah. It sounds like you think that this is. This is doing more harm than good. Is that a fair assessment? Yeah, it's more harm than good. Look at all the riots. Look at all these things. It sounds like you think that kind of restoring order should be one of the priorities. Absolutely. Okay, great. All right, so now they're starting to calm down. It's not that I agree with them. I can. I can acknowledge and listen and see. Yeah, that makes sense. I think order is something that. That's really important. So what do you think is causing all of this? Now? We're transitioning into getting curious with compassion. Well, they. Everybody got mad because of that George Floyd situation. So what. What, in your opinion, what happened there? Well, you know, a cop made a m. He shouldn't have done what he did, but I don't think that's a big issue in this situation. Okay, fair enough. And so what do you think? In the minds of the people who are protesting, what do you think this means on a bigger scale? Not just in this particular situation, but on a bigger scale? Okay, well, it sounds like there seems to be a bit of a pattern. I'm not sure. I haven't seen anything in my experience that suggests there's a pattern. But it sounds like they're. They're complaining about some kind of Pattern of injustice or something like that. Okay. Could it possibly be that because of your perspective and your lived experience that you just haven't had the opportunity to see that? Well, I guess it could be. Well, yeah. All right. See, now we're slowly inching our way toward it because the thing is, we're letting them convince themselves. I barely said anything. I just asked some questions and listened and then saw where they were coming from. Okay. This is what you're seeing now. I get what you're missing now. I can have the conversation and pull you in that direction.

Yeah. I think the important piece that you said there is empathy doesn't align with agreement. Right. You need to understand. Again, it's understanding the. What's the. What's the territory that we need to go into, and we need to understand what that looks like and what are the. What are the things that are. That are going to be there. So. And I think Tim is probably itching to do some musical conversation.

I am. I want to know what's on your playlist right now. Have you got a Covid playlist going on?

No. Try not to think about it as much as possible. So I usually listen to music in the mornings, so when I'm at the gym. And so I like things with bass, and so, you know, so I like dubstep. I like hip hop, rap. And I grew up in Tiffin, Ohio, so small town Ohio. And so when I was playing sports there, what was blaring in the speakers was AC dc So I like old rock. And so the thing that I've been really getting into is the song that's really speaking to me right now is under the Graveyard by Ozzy Osbourne. Oh, love that song. When it's when. It's when I'm lifting heavy because it talks about death. And I'm like, man, death would feel great right now. Yeah. But I mean, the thing is, my listening tastes have evolved a lot because as a Caribbean American raised on Bob Marley, calypso, soca, dancehall music. And so there's. There's a limited amount of that. There's less than other genres because there are not many of us compared to other parts of the world. So I've learned to diversify my listening to.

But the contribution is outsized as far as I'm concerned. The contribution that Caribbean music brings to reggae specifically. You mentioned soca. There's a lot of really good, great music that has come from that region that has influenced the whole world with rhythms, with. Well, I mean, Africa pretty, you know, right. Historical, you know, African rhythms have influenced everything in rock and roll, pretty much.

Exactly.

So it's, it's a, it's an oversized impact, really.

I agree. I agree. And it's, it's cool to see it creeping into other genres. You see with, with, with dubstep, it's really creeping in with major laser. You're seeing a influence there. Sca, of course, old school, really old school. But that influence, it's. It's so funny. Very few people. Scott was not very. I mean, it was popular where it was, but it didn't really travel as much. But it did travel, like you said, Tim, in the influences it had in other genres.

So my, my wife is a huge Clash fan and, and the, the impact that that Scott had on the Clash is just amazing.

Or the Police, you know.

Or the Police or, you know, and, and, you know, Ozzy Osbourne was my first concert I went to back in 1983. So that he is still out there bringing in good, you know, music that people are listening to is amazing to me. So, Kwame, one of the questions that we ask, we're actually doing some work with, helping out a researcher on this is do you listen to music when you work? You said you listen to music when you work out. But, you know, if you're writing or doing anything like that, Is music in the background or do you need silence?

Well, I'm going to answer like a lawyer and say it depends. If I am doing work that I enjoy, I want silence. I want it to be quiet. And so I might. If I'm doing creative work, sometimes I like to go on walks and dictate my thoughts, and I have my team actually take it and put it into article form. If I'm reviewing a contract for a client or whatnot. Again, I like silence. But if I'm doing something, I actually. No. If I'm reviewing a contract, I'll do classical. Classical, okay. But if I'm doing something that I don't really like too much, that's when I need some encouragement. And that, honestly, again, it's psychology. It's classical conditioning, okay? I feel good when I listen to this music. I am going to listen to this music while I check my emails and go through all my LinkedIn messages. Okay? So now I can do it. I can push through because I get a ton of messages on LinkedIn and I tell my listeners, and I'll tell your listeners, too. Reach out to me. Me. If you connect with me, I'll send a personal message to everybody that connects with Me, the thing is, I'm about three months behind, so I need to keep on doing it. And so when I'm. When I'm checking emails or checking my messages, I like to listen to smooth jazz because I used to listen to. To study in school, and so I would listen to it, study for my assignments and everything. And then I. I would say kind of envision what my life could possibly be like after I get through school and I'm living the life that I want. And so I have to. I listen to that smooth jazz to remind me, hey, you're kind of living the life that you dreamed of, so get over it. Get through this email. It's not that bad.

Are there any artists? Is smooth jazz just sort of a blah, just sort of a category, or did you. Do you have any artists that you're like. Oh, yeah, I actually like. Like to go to Bob James or a Clue, you know, something.

Yeah, I like. I like George Benson. I like Grover Washington. I like David Benoit. Yeah, there. There are a few people that. That. That come to mind a lot. The thing that's tough with. With smooth jazz and keeping up with the. The artists is that there's usually no words, and if it does have words, I skip the song. I'm like, I did not come here for.

Washington.

Yeah.

Grover Washington can trip you up every now and then because you might want to throw it to him with some lyrics in.

He can. Yeah. Oh, Lee Retinore. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, and the. The Rippingtons. I like. I like 90s smooth jazz a lot. Wow.

Wow. That's amazing.

This is a fun conversation. I never get to talk about my. My bizarre musical blends.

You have an eclectic mix. You're talking about classical when you're, you know, doing contracts to smooth jazz, to Ozzy Osbourne and David Bennett dubstep. Oh, man.

I'm pretty sure that we've never, never had a conversation that included Major Lazer and the Rippingtons and Ozzy Osborne in the same conversation. I think that we've just accomplished something fantastic.

Tommy, it was and an honor to have you on the show. And thank you. If people wanted to reach you, how can they get ahold of you?

Yes, reach out to me on LinkedIn, but be patient. And then if you're interested in negotiation and conflict resolution trainings, check out the website. We have a contact form there. Those are the two best ways. And then also people. I've come to terms with the fact that people only follow me on Instagram to see Kai, which is. Okay, so Kwame Negotiates is my Instagram handle.

All right, well, fantastic, Kwame. And again, thank you very much.

Thank you. No, it was my pleasure. 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 thing is 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.