Reverse Interview: Kwame Christian with Nicholas Brazzi

Hey, everyone. Now that we're part of the LinkedIn Podcast Network, we're going to do more LinkedIn Live events that will show up on the Negotiate Anything podcast. So what this means is that you have the opportunity to actually be part of some of these episodes. So if you haven't done it yet, make sure you follow me on LinkedIn so you can stay up to date on when these events are happening. And now, without further ado, let's jump into this LinkedIn live.

Welcome, everybody. We are live. This is another LinkedIn learning office hours event. I'm Nick Brasi. I'm a senior staff instructor at LinkedIn Learning. And this month, staff instructors at LinkedIn Learning are sharing information and hosting live events all about knowing yourself in the workplace. And for today's event, I'm going to be talking to Kwame Christensen. He's the CEO of the American Negotiation Institute. Hello, Kwame.

Hey.

And as the CEO of the American Negotiation Institute, you offer workshops, you do direct consultations with organizations that need help with management or conflict resolution. Am I saying that right? Is there anything you would add to that?

Yeah, no, that's a pretty good synopsis. Negotiation, conflict resolution. And I think it's important to define negotiation, too, because we define negotiation as anytime you're in a conversation and somebody in the conversation wants something. And so with that really broad definition, you realize you're negotiating all the time. So I think that's an important distinction because negotiation is everywhere.

It's not exclusively about making a business deal. It's about fostering relationships. It's more than that.

Exactly. Cool.

Cool. And by my count, you've published 16 training courses on LinkedIn learning, and they're all about leadership, conflict resolution, negotiation in the workplace, those, you know, themes that you cover at the American Negotiation Institute. So a lot of courses on LinkedIn Learning. What's your experience making courses on LinkedIn?

It's been fun. It has been fun. Content creation is what we love to do at A&I, so we do our trainings, but we also have a podcast as well. And so it's really great to work with people who are have expert level course curriculum and creation expertise, you know, and so it really forces me to hone in my, my focus a little bit more for specific topics. And it's a lot of fun working with the team.

Yeah, I find that, you know, if you focus on this particular type of communication or this particular type of teaching, then you have the opportunity to do a different type of teaching. It really sharpens those skills. It Improves the way you think about those things.

Absolutely.

And what can you tell us about the podcast? Negotiate Anything. Yes.

So Negotiate Anything. It is the top ranked negotiation podcast in the world, thanks to our help with being on the LinkedIn podcast network, of course. So we have over 700 episodes. And I think about it kind of like intellectual cross training. So we like to have all sorts of different people on the podcast. So we might have teachers, relationship therapists, hostage negotiators, police, interrogators, lawyers, doctors, anybody, because we're all having difficult conversations and we can learn from each other. So there's sometimes I learn a mediation technique that I can use in my negotiation and vice versa, those type of things. So I think my favorite part about it, Nick, is that every single episode, even though we're at over 700 now, I learned something new every single time. So that that is my favorite part about it.

Cool. And is that weekly podcast monthly? What's your schedule? Or is it.

We are daily. So three throwback episodes, three new episodes, and then one highlight reel where it's just snippets of our best episodes on a specific top.

That's an incredible amount of content.

Thanks.

There's a link to it on the screen, but of course the link is a little awkward. But if you go to the Apple Podcast directory or whatever podcast directory you use, just search for Negotiate Anything and you'll find that podcast. And of course, as we go today, we can talk about stuff you've covered from that podcast or any of your other LinkedIn learning courses. But our main focus today is on your course, leading and motivating people with different personalities. And I've got a list of questions that I put together as I was watching the course. So I think we've got a lot to talk about. And if anybody is watching this event live, you can use the comments field on. On the LinkedIn Learning Live event page, I'm going to be looking at the questions. I won't be able to get to all of them, but if anything looks interesting that we want to bring in, I'll bring those in. But let's just kind of get started by. By setting the stage. Hopefully some people have watched your course, but there's a lot of people in the live feed today who may not have watched your course. So maybe we can kind of set up the basic idea. And I think the idea is, you know, every person is motivated by different things. Everybody has different personalities and different personality traits that define themselves. So as a team leader, you should be prepared to develop Motivation strategies that encourage people with different personalities and different motivations. Once again, am I saying that right? You probably have a better way to summarize that.

No, you summarize it well. And listeners, this is, this is the benefit of listening to the course. See, Nick, you're already summarizing things really well. You see, you're a pro now. So that, that is a solid summary. Cool.

Well, it's a great course. It's, it's, you know, there are so many different types of people in the different ways people think, and I think there's a lot of really solid information in that. There was something early in the course that stuck out to me and you posed this hypothetical question and then you answered in the course, but I wanted to talk a little bit more about it. The question was, do I need to customize my approach for each member of my team? Do you have a different way to communicate with the different people on your team?

Yeah, it's one of those questions that you ask because there's not one right answer. The answer is yes and no. Right. So as much as possible, do we want to customize it for each member of our team? The answer is yes. But practically speaking, are we able to customize every message that we're making to the members of our team individually? The answer is no. So what we want to do is if we're communicating one on one with a person, we want to be able to make a read and understand who it is that we're talking to and then create a customized persuasion strategy for that person. They have a different motivation style, they have different personalities. So we want to make it narrowly tailored to the person at hand. But in general, then when you're talking in general to the entirety of the team, it's impossible to customize every message for each person. So what do we do? What do we want to do is we want to think about the group as a whole. What are the key personality types of some of the key leaders on the team? Is there any consistency based on who is on the team and what skills lead people to be on this type of team? So for example, if you're talking to an administrative, administrative team that has to work closely with other people, then you can assume they're probably a little bit more outgoing because that's what's necessary for that specific group. Same with like a sales team, for example. And so you can have a personality based strategy for that group because you have a general outline of the people in that group. So you're still considering the personalities of the people involved. But you have to recognize, you have to be a little bit more general the bigger the audience gets.

So you may be developing multiple strategies and finding ways to implement different types of communications in different times, different places, different people. Does the do those techniques change depending on the size of the team?

Yeah, I think it would. I think it would. Because for instance, if we're talking about a team of 100 people, the newsletter that goes out or the speech that's made, because it's not like a little meeting anymore. Now if you're talking in front of 100 people, now we're giving speeches, right? And so again, we have to consider the, the people that we're talking to, but also the mode of communication. So if it's a like a bigger meeting, then we have to be a little bit more generalized. But you can still consider personality characteristics in your overall persuasive strategy, because most likely that meeting is going to be one of many interactions that you're having. So you might have some key leaders on the team and you might have one on one interactions with them before the big meeting and then maybe after the big meeting as well. And so you have to consider the overall negotiation or persuasive strategy to figure out how you should approach each interaction, considering the mode of communication and the personalities that are involved.

You know, something that popped up as I was watching the course and thinking about things. Do you think it's possible for somebody to be a very successful, very well respected leader? For years, everybody looks at them like this person knows what they're doing, but then suddenly they get a new team member with a different personality from what they're used to, and then they might start to feel like they're failing. Is that, is that a phenomenon that you've seen that you think, is that real or is that something I'm kind of making up in my head?

Oh, no, it's definitely real. And it's really frustrating when it happens because essentially what happens is we get into a groove, we have a pattern of communication, a pattern of behavior, and it's been working for us. And then if we are put into a new situation or we have a new team member, whatever it might be, now we try to use those same patterns because that's what's been working for us in the past. And now it's not working for this person, or now it's not working in this situation. And it can be frustrating. And so I think what we have to do is we have to be humble enough to recognize that we need to adjust these. The situations will change and we need to be able to adapt and change with it. And so I think it takes a lot of self reflection and humility to recognize that, hey, I might not enjoy negotiating or persuading in this type of way. In order for me to be successful in this relationship, in this interaction, I'm going to have to tweak it to match the personality style of the other side. So I think it really comes down to flexibility. But this is something that happens pretty frequently, especially when you think about the increased level of diversity and the multi generational workplace. This is going to happen with increasing levels of frequency. So I think we have to stay on our toes and make those adjustments.

When necessary and probably changes to in person versus remote workplace. And that's probably shaking things up quite a bit.

Absolutely, yeah.

So you think that this is a reason why somebody might want to take a look at your courses and learn some stuff, even if they already feel like they're, you know, really successful and really effective, they might get some techniques that they could use in the future?

Yeah, I think almost especially if you already feel like you're effective. Because the more confident you are in negotiating and persuading in a specific way, the more difficult it will be to make those adjustments. Because we have to remember something important about confidence. Confidence is compartmentalized. So I might be really confident and comfortable negotiating in a specific way with a specific type of person. But now we put another person in there, I don't have that same level of confidence with this kind of interaction. And so I think there is something to be be said for yes, if you're new at leadership and the psychology of personality is completely new to you, you want to be more persuasive. Of course, this course is really helpful for you. But even if you are somebody who is highly experienced and you are not experiencing any types of persuasive challenges or leadership challenges right now, just understand that works right now. But those circumstances can change. So you want to be well versed so you can adjust as necessary as time goes on.

Excellent.

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. So.

So why don't we kind of set up. Your course hinges on understanding five personality traits. And you. You had a. An acronym or an initialism to help you remember those five traits. And it's funny, I'm looking at my notes. Was it Ocean?

That's right. Exactly.

Okay. I can't even find in my notes, but I did remember it. So maybe you could give us a brief introduction to that. Of course, there's more information in the course, but let us know. What are the five personality traits we really need to be thinking about?

Yes. So the five personality traits and the acronym is Ocean. We have, number one, openness to experience, two, conscientiousness, three, extroversion, four, agreeableness, and then fifth, neuroticism, which is also known as emotional stability, because over time, socially speaking, neurotic. Calling somebody neurotic or saying neuroticism has been considered an insult in some situations. So we want to make sure that we're not stigmatizing it. It's emotional stability, too. And I like this approach because it's flexible, it's easy, it's very broad. You don't need to take any kind of specific test in order to put your people in different boxes. And so I think it's really handy because of the practicality. All right, I can remember the five things. We have a handy acronym, and I can identify whether somebody is high or low in these different things without having to need a PhD to figure it out. So it's good for quick reads.

And I did find that interesting in your course that there is not a test that you take to identify these personality traits, but more it's a technique, a way of a manager or a leader to observe and try to identify these traits. And what tips would you share on how to identify these traits among your team members?

Yes, this is good. And just a quick note, there are tests out there, but this is one of those few types of personality analyses where you can make pretty solid reads without a test. That's why I like it. And so here's something to remember. Your assessments will become more accurate with time, so you need a larger sample size. So if I meet somebody one day and they're mean to me, I'll say agreeableness. Low in agreeableness. This is a disagreeable person. But then what if they, like, a loved one, died? That day, you know, there's something that's having an impact on that specific interaction that's coloring the interaction. And so I made a bad read because I moved off of just a singular data point. And so your reads will get more accurate the more time you take to make those reads. And so I am hesitant to assess somebody, like a specific personality trait or make any hypotheses on their personality. If this is the first time I'm meeting them, if I've talked to other people and they've given me consistent stories about what this person is like. Now I can feel a little bit more confident. Even I'm just having one interaction. But in general, we want to have multiple interactions because the more you get to know somebody, the more you understand their personality. The more you understand their personality, the more customized your persuasive approach will be.

You know, that's interesting and just a little behind the scenes here. I have a list of questions, specific things I wanted to remember to ask you. And there's one I have later, and I want to make sure I come back to it again. But also it's very relevant to what you're talking about now because as I'm watching your course, I'm thinking there are times when somebody would, would find me very agreeable and times when people would find me very disagreeable. And I know that about myself. And, and you were kind of talking about get a solid sample size, get, get a range of interactions. And I wonder if there's anything else you would comment about somebody who's like, well, I think I'm, I'm disagreeable depending on the scenario or depending on the situation. And what are your thoughts on that?

Yeah, for sure. You'll, you'll recognize that pretty consistently as well. And so with humans, it's funny, we are consistently inconsistent sometimes. Right. And so let's just use you as an example here, Nick. So in certain circumstances, you'll be more agreeable, certain circumstances you'll be more disagreeable. Right. And it depends on recognizing which, what are those circumstances. So again, there's going to be an asterisk in my mind with every time I make a, an assessment on what somebody is in terms of their personality. Because I know it'll change. I know it'll change based on circumstance. I know it'll change based on, like, their mood, their temperament at the time, those type of things. So I'll say based on my assessment, I've no, I know Nick at work. Nick is like this in this context. And so I want to be as specific as I can be with the assessment that I'm making, because now I see you in a different context, you might act completely differently. And so I think it's an opportunity for us to sit back and reassess once we recognize that, hey, I'm having an interaction with a person that I know very well, but I know very well in a different context. So if I'm negotiating with a friend, I might think I understand how they negotiate in a. Like, just based on the times that we hang out as friends. But then I negotiate against them in an actual transaction, and I think I have a good read. And then they're a lot more aggressive, and so then I. I don't have a good read that then it can really take us off guard. So I think we have to recognize, hey, if I'm shifting into another type of scenario with this same person, I still need to take a little bit of a step back and reassess to make sure that my original assessment and original analysis stays the same. Because every time we make an assessment on somebody's personality, we have to remember these are rebuttable hypotheses, rebuttable assumptions that we're making. We might be right, we might be wrong, but we need more data in order to guarantee that we're moving in the right direction.

You just said an interesting phrase, and I wonder if there's anything to it. You said, when you're negotiating against somebody.

That was an interesting.

Is that how you classify it?

Yeah. No, this is. This is. This is the fact that I'm a lawyer. I'm a recovering lawyer. Sometimes that adversarial mentality is in there. So this is. This. Actually, this is a good example, Nick, because when I write, I'm a lot more precise. So I'm glad you called me out on that, because I don't want us to think about the other person as, like, the opponent. It definitely not. We are co. We're collaborating together to figure out what the deal is that works for both of us. And I think that's really the ultimate question we're asking when we're resolving conflict or negotiating, what does our relationship look like going forward? And so we should be working together to create a functional relationship for both of us. Okay.

I didn't want to call you on anything, but it is good to have that clarification. It's just. Is an interesting word.

Yeah.

So to follow up. And now you're. You're juggling my notes all over the place, but I've got. I'VE got to ask this question. Is there a value for not the leader, but for individual team members to identify those traits for themselves? Can that help them as contributors in the organization?

Yeah, absolutely. Just the, the more we know each other and the more we know ourselves, the better our relationships will be, the better our conversations will be. Those type of, of things. And just taking a step back, one of the benefits of reading people in general is the fact that it helps you because you're not taking things personally. So I think, for instance, the example that always comes up is the person who is classically defined as disagreeable. We could take it personally because it seems like they're being tough with us. Why are they so skeptical? Why don't they believe the things that I say? Why do they keep on pushing back? And it can give you a lot of peace of mind to know that it's not about you, it's not anything about you personally. This is how this person just interacts with the world in general. And that can help you to, to be more okay with the difficult situation. So going back to the individual contributor, does it help to. For that person to understand their own personality? I think yes too, because again, we are, we can understand where we need to allocate energy. So for instance, if I recognize that I'm a very agreeable person when I get to a more transactional part of an interaction, I understand that's going to be more difficult for me. And so it can help me to close that performance gap. So I can recognize that I might be. Feel like I want to give in during this conversation, but I need to allocate a little bit more effort to. To assert myself in this situation. So I think the, the more we can understand ourselves during the process, the better off we're going to be in general when it comes to interacting with people. Oh, Nick. I think I. Hmm. Seems like Nick is gone. Very interesting. Okay, so I can see the computer. Oh, Nick crashed. Okay. Hey, can you all send me a comment? Just put in the comments. Do you still see me? Am I still live? Because what we can do is you all give me questions and I'll just answer your questions until Nick comes back. And I know there's about a 30 second lag on, on Streamyard, so let me give you a little bit of time. Let me know first, can you still hear me? And second, what questions do you have? So I'll give you all some time to let that populate. Aha. Okay, I see Steven Rice now. Now I'm seeing the responses I'm still live. Cool. So give me questions. This is a new LinkedIn Live with Kwame Christian. So, yes, give me questions. Let's see what questions you have. We'll just freestyle until Nick comes back. I'm cool with that. What are good reads on leadership other than your course? Well, great question. Two books I'd recommend Finding Confidence in Conflict and how to have Difficult Conversations about Race. And yes, that is self serving, because those are my two books. So I would suggest that. But on a more serious note, I do think that leaders in general, the more well versed you get on persuasion and negotiation, the better off you're going to be. Because ultimately that's what we're doing day to day in different formats. So of course I'm, I'm a little bit biased. Check out those books, but I think that's a good place to start. Okay, so great question, great question. Thank you, Raza. Let's see what other. So I got that question. Christina, what do you do in a situation where the person is essentially miserable and rude?

Yes.

Christina's like, yeah, I didn't see anything on the ocean. You know, openness to experience, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness and neuroticism, but just generally rude and mean. What do I do for those types of people? Okay, so in, in those situations, I would say again, this is one of those benefits of recognizing that when you're analyzing personality and you recognize that somebody's personality can kind of be consistently more tipping towards the negative, just recognize it's not about you and think it's more of a mindset challenge than a persuasive challenge. Because a lot of times what happens is we go into these conversations and then we are confronted with that rudeness, that negativity, and then we pull off of our strategy, we get disheartened, we get frustrated, and then we say, you know what? I'm going to give up on this person. I'm going to give up on this situation. And a lot of times when we're dealing with those difficult people, it's almost like we just give up too soon. It's not that what we're doing isn't working, it's just that with that particular person and their particular personality type and it will take more time for it to work. So like I said, if somebody is lower on the agreeable scale, also known as a disagreeable person, it's going to take more time for them to trust you. They're going to be very skeptical. They're going to be very critical. And in those situations, we have to just be a little bit more patient, give them some more time to adjust and feel comfortable enough with us. And I think it just takes a little bit more time, but we can still break through. Nick's back.

My computer crashed, and I am pleasantly surprised. You were still live. You were still streaming, even though I dropped out.

Yeah, man. We were still freestyling here. We were having a good old time.

That is so great. You're such a great person to do a live event with. Thank you so much.

My pleasure.

That was crazy. I got the message, hey, your computer's running out of memory, which I hadn't seen before. And then suddenly it just crashed and burned.

That is the worst. Listen, we've been there before, but we're hanging out. We're good. Yeah.

Thank you for keeping it going. Let me get my notes back here. And, you know, I haven't really been keeping an eye on the chat. Here's an interesting one. What do people.

What?

What do you do when people are competitive in the workplace and are bulldozers?

Oh, that's good. That's good. Oh, let me give a quick shout out here, too. So, hey, thank you, Stephen. Stephen Rice, for putting that in the chat. Links to my books, but yeah, and Leonidas says our connection has been failing. Let me know if mine is a little bit off. Nick, if you notice any issues with my connection, too. Am I coming through?

You look fine to me. And we can kind of depend on people in the chat if they have anything to point out.

Okay, perfect. Yeah. So this is a tough situation. So one of the things that I like to do on my podcast, to my knowledge, I'm the only negotiation podcast that does this because it's terrifying. It's. We do. I call them sparring sessions or practice sessions where somebody comes on the podcast, they talk about their topic. Then we have a bonus episode where I try to become the embodiment of your worst fear. And we do a completely unscripted negotiation. So you can see how imperfect these interactions are. And it reminds me of a sparring session that I did with my friend Rebecca Zung. And she is an expert in negotiation. Check out her. Her books, Negotiate like youe Matter. She has some other ones and she's coming out with another one as well. But her focus is on negotiating with narcissists. Narcissists and high conflict people. So that's who I got to be. It was a lot of fun. And one of the things you have to do is you have to make sure that you are you. It's, again, it's like a mindset type of issue because they are more well versed in playing that competitive, mean and nasty game than you are. And so once you start to try to go toe to toe with them on the negativity and the. The competitive nature and those type of things, you. You are now choosing to be on their. Their turf where they feel the most comfortable. Right? And so for me, the way that I would describe my negotiation style is I'm relentlessly collaborative. Even if somebody is really competitive, I am going to reframe everything that they say in terms of something that's more collaborative, right? So if somebody's like, I need to have this or there's no deal. Okay, cool. That's very competitive. I'm very aggressive. And so what I'll say is, okay, what I'm hearing is you need XYZ in order to accomplish abc. I'm going to summarize that. Is that right? And then I'm going to wait for them to confirm and I'll say, yeah, that makes sense. Considering your needs and interests, I can see why that's important to you. And I think there's a way that we can make that happen. But we. There are things that we need as well. So let's talk through about how we can work through this and make this happen. And so anytime somebody frames something in an aggressive type of way, I need this, I need this, I need that. What I'm doing is I am going to reframe it in a collaborative way. And so I call myself, like I said, relentlessly collaborative. And so we have to win that framing game because they're trying to frame this in a competitive, adversarial type of way. And whenever they do that, I'm reframing it in a collaborative way. And so every time you're in these difficult conversations, I want you to think of yourself as a conversational leader. So you're not just leaders in the workplace, but within this interaction, within this conversation, you are leading the interaction. So when somebody misbehaves as me, for me, as a leader, I take it as an opportunity to show them the right way to negotiate. So the more aggressive they get, I pause the conversation, I show them how to be collaborative, and then I keep on going forward. And again, that the term relentless applies here. So they keep on trying to be aggressive, I keep on being collaborative, and I know that I'm just going to be a little bit more patient with that constant reframing so, again, it takes work, but it certainly can be done.

I want to punctuate something that you said there, because I actually went through a conflict resolution issue in a workplace one time, and there was something that came out of it that was, in my mind, life changing. And it's something that you kind of mentioned a moment ago is this exercise where you make sure before you respond, before you communicate what you need in response to somebody. You have to go through this exercise to make sure that you hear them and that they understand that you hear them. And the negotiator had to really hammer this on me because the person would say what they want and I would come back and I would. Retaliate is not the word. I would have my response to argue against them. And they said, no, no, no, you're not responding. You have to tell us what that person said. We have to understand. You have to know that you heard what they said before you're even allowed to respond. And it's life changing from a negotiation, from a conflict resolution stand standpoint.

Absolutely. Remember this. So you think about Newton's third law. Of. Of. I forget Newton's third law. Yeah, yeah. So every action has an equal and opposite reaction, right? So let's call this Kwame's law of persuasion. Every. Every point has an equal and opposite counterpoint. So a lot of times, like you said, Nick, remember that Freudian slip you had where you said, hey, I want to retaliate. That's exactly what it is. Right? They make a point, we want to counter it. And it became. It becomes a game of conversational tennis. Point, counterpoint, point, counterpoint. But nobody's advancing because we're starting to become more entrenched in our positions. But when we think about this in terms of a competition, I think about it more in terms of like a listening conversation where the other person is the. Is the. Is the scorekeeper, right? So it's not just enough for me to listen. I need to prove to them that I have listened. I need them to say, yeah, Kwame, you did listen correctly. You did understand that the right way. And so once I recognized that, that it. There's a two pronged approach to listening, not just the act of actually listening and absorbing the information and retaining it in a meaningful way. It's also making sure that the other person can feel as though they have been heard. And I need them to verbally confirm that. And I'm not going to proceed until I have. And so you're right. It is a complete paradigm shift, but completely Changes the way that we interact with each other.

And it's so hard to do, but once you see the value in it, man, it changes everything.

Absolutely. And, Nick, to that point of difficulty, I've realized something. I want to approach listening very, very differently after realizing this. Because anytime you talk to a communication expert, a negotiation expert, they'll tell you to listen. Right. You need to become a better listener. Okay, Got it. Okay. I'm going to do that, too. But here's the thing that people don't realize they don't talk about enough. So I really want to hammer this home. Listening is really hard to do. And when you're listening, well, it might actually hurt. And so I'll give an example. I. I remember when I was. This was last Christmas. I remember it like it was yesterday. I was talking to my mom, and she was disagreeing with a, like, a parenting move that I made. And I don't know what it is. Nobody likes getting unsolicited parented and parenting advice, but when that unsolicited parenting advice comes from your parent, it, like, makes it more annoying. I don't know why. Right. But it does. And so I said, listen, Kwame, I was just fresh off a presentation, so I was well schooled in my own teachings. So I said, all right, what I'm going to do is I'm going to use the empathy loop. That's it. That's all I'm going to do. So I'm going to listen to what she says, I'm going to summarize it, and then I'm going to ask her to correct my understanding. So correct me if I'm wrong, but it sounds like you're saying xyz. Is that a fair synopsis? Okay, good. Confirm and then move on. And I said, that's all I'm going to do during this conversation. And so 16 minutes, I didn't inject myself at all, Nick. I just listened, summarized, and asked if I understood it and let mom get all of her complaints and criticism out of her system. And then I. I said. I did this. The empathy loop, after 16 minutes again. And then I said, is that a fair understanding? She's like, yeah. And I said, what else would you like to tell me? And she said, nothing. And I. And then I said, okay. And then she said. She said, kwame, are you okay? And I was like, yes, I'm okay. I just wanted to make sure you were understanding. Do you care to hear what I. My thoughts on it? She said, sure. And then after, you know, a 30 second explanation, she said, oh, that's right, I get it. I'm on page, I'm on the same page. But this is the thing, nick. Listening for 16 minutes without defending myself or countering registered through my body like a physical pain. Like I was all uncomfortable, like I felt it physically. And so sometimes when it hurts, it might be a sign that you're doing it right. And a lot of times we feel that signal and we say, no, this is my body telling me I need to jump in and say something right now. But imagine what that conversation would have looked like if I would have just jumped in and started countering every single time. We'd, we'd still be arguing to today, Nick. So I think that's for years and.

Years of their lives.

Yes, you're so right. And so you're right. Just that, that small tweak, massive difference when you listen the right way and.

You'Re reminding me that is something that I learned from, from that, from that conflict resolution session. I didn't know the name for it. Empathy loop.

Yeah.

And so that's, that's a powerful thing to remember. Wow, thank you for that. Since I may be a super valuable stuff a little bit off of the tangent of the course and to bring that, bring it back to your course, let's talk about how you contextualize motivation in the course. Because you talk about the difference between whipping up energy to act in a moment compared to long term motivation. What can you expand on that?

Yeah, and I think the word motivation has been on an interesting ride semantically in our society. Right. Because when you think about motivation, we think about the people who are super charismatic up on stage, work hard, you can get it, it, do your best and everybody gets like out of the event, like, yeah, I can do it. And then they can do it for like a couple of days and then the motivation goes away. Right, that's, that, that's not what we're talking about here because that is just whipping up emotionality in order to encourage us to do what we need to do. But the thing is that it is a short term fuel supply. You can't rely on it, you can't always be motivated. And so I think that's the difference. So for us as leaders, we want to tap into motivation that is lasting, that's the key. And so when we think about the different types of motivations, we have the power motivation, we have affiliation motivation and achievement motivation. Those are the key different types of motivations. So we can go into those in a little bit but you go into.

Them in the course, there's. Yeah, people are listening to this. Check out the course for the more details on this.

Definitely, yeah. And let me give a quick summary. So achievement motivation. These are people who are, who are motivated by victories, by wins. And so you want to talk about how this is a win for them, how does this advance their career, how does this meet their goals, those type of things. Important thing about people who are. Achievement motivation. Achievement motivated. Yes, they're going to be motivated to perform at a high level, which is great, but this is an important thing. They hate to lose. And so sometimes that, that, that fear of loss motivates them to do well, but sometimes if the loss seems more likely than the win, then they won't want to compete. So it's not just that you want to frame this in terms of something that is a win for them. You want them to leave the conversation feeling that it is winnable. That's a difference, right. Not only can they win it, but not only is there a win in there for them, but it's also winnable. They can do it. Power motivation. And I think this is a. I would change the name of this if I could just rebrand this framework. But with power Innovation, we're not talking about a Machiavellian desire to control people though of course, CEOs, doctors, lawyers, politicians, yes, they might want to have control, but it's really more of a desire to have influence. So people who are psychologists, teachers, for example, maybe even people who are religious leaders, they want to have a positive influence on people. So they would position themselves so they can positively influence people. And then affiliation motivation, this is a social drive. They were driven by connectedness. So if you have a situation, situation where they might be able to make it to another level, but they might not have as much like a much of influence on a team. They might be more individual contributors, solos. That's not going to be very motivating to somebody who is motivated by affiliation because they need to see how they're going to be interconnected with other people too. And so once you start to get an idea of which motivational style match is going to be represented by the people on your team now you can be a lot more intentional about the way that you frame the message. Could be the exact same message just framed slightly differently based on the motivation style.

Cool. Let's switch focus a little bit to some of the specific personality traits. And there was a question from one of the viewers. Do we change our personalities through our lifetime?

Yes, To a certain extent. To a certain extent. So think about the different circumstances that we might be in. We might need to change our circumstance, our personality, in order to match the circumstance. That might be more of a circumstantial change than like, like an actual, you know, change in our predisposition. Right. So let's say if at a young age my parents are struggling and I need to step up as a leader within my family at a young age, right. So maybe from the ages of 12 to 18, I might display a bit more of an assertive personality style because I see myself as the leader of the family. I'm protecting my siblings, my family, those type of things. And so the person might appear a little bit more disagreeable and more assertive, a little bit more willing to stand up and say something. So it might seem like they're less, less agreeable, but more extroverted. So you're hearing a lot from them and they're very assertive in their position. But then when they get to college, for example, just creating this narrative off the fly, if they get to college now, they might be able to relax into who they really want to be. Somebody who's more introverted and more of a people pleaser. That might be who they are when they're not under duress. And I think it will change. And so I think one of the things we have to do is analyze where we feel most comfortable and recognize sometimes we might need to flex our personality based on the circumstances. But in order to see how we typically are, I want to see the things that are more consistent through time. And when I'm not under duress, when I'm not pressured, how do I typically show up? And that'll give us a little bit more of an idea of who we are consistently. And then we could use more approaches that are more in line with our authentic self. But I think we need to be a little bit more skeptical of our own personality because it'll manifest differently in different circumstances.

I think it's interesting that we've talked a little bit about significant life changes, more or less what you were just talking about. Affecting change in your personality traits, but also situational moments day to day in the workplace that could affect your personality traits. Is there terminology for that? Those two different types of, of situational changes or shifts?

There might be, but there is a term. It's not coming to me right now. Yeah, it's possible, but it's interesting to.

Acknowledge, you know, there are longer term significant life changes, but then there's also Just like, here's what happened at work today, here's what happened at work yesterday.

Absolutely.

And I think I like going back to what you were talking about earlier, like the sample size. Don't make a judgment based on two interactions. You've got to make a, a general picture of somebody based on multiple interactions.

Absolutely. And this actually speaks to the benefit of getting to know each other, like building rapport with intentionality. How are you at home? How were you in your last job? Like, those type of things. We get a fuller picture of this person who's in front of us. And the more data we have, the more accurate we will be in most situations.

Yeah. And it's interesting, I think, and I noticed this before our live event started and we were just chatting. You had a great way of just like asking questions about something I'm interested in and really engaging and what you knew about the things that I was interested in. And suddenly two people have barely spoken to each other.

You've.

You developed that rapport very quickly. And I was impressed by that. Just talking you to before this live event.

Thank you, I appreciate it. And Nick, I think that's something I'm realizing too in myself is that like after so many episodes of the podcast, I'm becoming a better conversationalist and good off topic. But I think this, this helps too, because whenever somebody says, hey, Kwame, what do you sound like in a negotiation? Like, what's your tone? What's your approach? Because I think a lot of times people say, oh, Kwame, in a negotiation, he. But he actually buttons his coat, he leans in, he has a little bit of a, you see my, my furrowing of the eyebrows. I'm serious now, Nick. But no, that's, it's like I tell him, listen to my podcast, that's how I sound. And I, I think it's like I realized over the years that the conversational aspect, asking questions, it's a skill. And I'll tell you, like, after reading several, like several books just on asking questions, like listening to how mediators ask questions, therapists ask questions, people in counterintelligence, FBI agents, like those type of people, I realized, wow, there are levels to this game. And so for as a lawyer, as I came to this like, conversational game and negotiations game with like this, a certain skill set. But there are just so many different levels of how to ask questions, how to make somebody feel comfortable, those type of things. But you want to take those tactics and skills and incorporate it into your authentic way of self expression. And so it feels smooth, but, like, everything that I do, I can refer back to where I got it from. But now it's just part of my conversational toolbox.

That's great. If I can learn more about that by listening to the podcast, I need to subscribe.

Thanks.

You know, talking more about specific personality traits, there's. There's an interesting technique. In your course, you were talking about working with introverts.

Yeah.

Because with an introvert, you need to give them time and space to think. You can't pressure them for an immediate response. And. And I wanted to make sure I understood this because you. You were saying that the leader should take the time to count.

Yes.

That person, time and space to think. Do you mean literally? Like, I should sit there and go, 1. To, like, literally count in my head?

Yes.

Give that person space to formulate their thoughts and their response.

100. I turned it into a meditation, you know, because there I. I think I would tip a little bit more to the extroverted side. So, like, I process very quickly, and externally, somebody who is more on the introverted side, they process slower and on a deeper level. Right. So when I'm doing my. My trainings in person, this is what I do. So I'll walk you through this little exercise here year. And so you don't. I don't need an answer. And if you actually know the answer, Nick, it doesn't make it fun. I need you to not know. Okay, so what year did Abraham Lincoln die?

I really don't know. Mid 1800s.

Good. Okay, so mid-1800s. So people who are watching you can go back on the tape. So watch. So Nick's eyes looked up to his right and then his left first, and then gave his answer, meaning that you went back in time, you looked at some reference points, point in your mind's eye to come up with the answer of the. The mid-1800s. Right. And I think it's like 1864. People. You can, you know, fact check me on that. But usually what people do is they say, okay, 1776. That's when we became a country. All right? Then we had. He was 16th president. So that puts us in the 1800s. And there's a civil war that was around this time. Right. So what you're doing is you're bouncing back different reference points. So the reason why we let people think in silence is because they're working, they're coming up with an answer, and they're coming up with an answer using different reference points in their minds. And so if somebody is A deeper level processor, they're going to like really deep into their mind to find that right answer. So if I jump in and interrupt the person, they haven't completed the thought yet. And sometimes when I'm being persuasive, sometimes they're questions that I want them to answer and I want to get the information. Sometimes I'm asking a question just to get their mind to go somewhere where it has a. Hasn't gone before. Even if they don't provide me with the answer, I want them to go there. And so with the, the introvert, I need to make sure that I give my time, like my questions and my statements, time to marinate. Because that's an important part of the persuasive process. So usually I can, in a situation, just a general conversation, talking to an introvert, 5 to 10 seconds. Just 5 to 10 seconds. Give them space to talk. The longest I've ever waited in a mediation was about 84 seconds. And the longest I've waited, like in an interpersonal conversation was 120. And Nick. Oh my gosh, horrible. Felt horrible. And you know the thing that kept me going, I said to myself, man, once I survive this awkward silence, it will make a great story one of these days. So hold on for the lesson.

But you're probably going to get a very good thought out. Out, effective answer.

Yes.

You're not speeding along the conversation. You actually want a thought out answer.

Exactly, exactly.

And it's interesting as you're describing that because I, you know, the, the looking up as I'm thinking about something. And what's interesting to me about that is there is nothing to the, the physiological process of coming up with an answer that is assisted by me looking up like that. But it is a mannerism that I think I've unconsciously developed that communicates to people that I'm thinking about it. And, and so maybe there's something to that, that the introvert will communicate to you not verbally, but through those unconscious developed mannerisms. And if you can look for that, you can acknowledge. Okay, they, they're really working on this thought.

Yes, exactly. Yeah. Now we're getting into reading body language because you're absolutely right. Yeah. Because this is science for that. There's a whole science. Right. And so the things that I would look for, again, it's easier with when you're in person. Right. But if somebody's actually thinking, you will actually see like constriction of the, the pupils. Right. There's a focus. You can actually tell when somebody Stops processing if you're. If you know what to look for. Right. So for you, there's a, there was a quick look up here, look up here. And then like a bit of the, the squinting of the eyes. Right. I. This is now I, I'm getting a read on how you look when you think. And so if I ask you a question and then you answer very quickly and I don't see any of that, I'm like, that was interesting. Shallow processing. If anything, that's a signal for my future curiosity. I'm like, for some reason, Nick did not go deep for that one. Very intriguing. Is he protecting himself now? I want to know more about that specific thing. Thing. So now we're seeing how not only reading, understanding the personality style is important, but understanding the, the, the tells that you're getting from somebody's body language, that's also important too. And understanding when somebody is thinking versus when they're not. That's critical.

And I like how you didn't say you make a judgment in that moment. You file it away as useful information to help you develop a picture of that person.

Exactly. I think this is where one of the many examples where overconfidence can get in the way. Way. Because a lot of times what people will do is they'll read the body language but read the wrong thing. Because when you're reading body language, you have to recognize that there's a limit on what we can, we can get. Like, it doesn't tell me anything specifically. I don't know if you're lying or telling the truth. I can't tell that from body language. But I can, I can tell whether you are thinking and I can tell whether you are feeling comfortable with the topic or feeling uncomfortable with the topic. Those are really the only things. Right. And so it's, it's giving me signals to guide my curiosity, but it's not giving me clear answers. And I think being humble enough to recognize the limits to our ability to make reads helps us to make more accurate reads. Because we're not going way too far with what it is that we're. The conclusions that we're coming to this.

It's that broader sample size that.

Exactly. Talking about.

And you know, another thing that, that I really liked in your course is when you talked about certain personality traits that you would clearly identify as negative personality traits. But you were clear that there are things that somebody might think is as negative, but there are actually different ways to look at them. Do you want to talk about. And I think the disagreeable the agreeable, disagreeable personality trait is easy to box into. Positive or negative.

Yeah.

But I think there's more to it than that.

Absolutely. Absolutely. I think about it like chess. I'm a chess nerd. If anybody's a fan of Chess.com I've logged over 20, 000 games of Chess.com. so I'm always thinking through chess principles. And so there is not a piece on the board that's either good or bad. It's just about the right position. If I have. If I put the queen out in the early parts of the game, the queen's gonna get destroyed. Now I'm down to queen. That's probably problem. It's not that the queen is a bad piece. It's that I put the queen in a bad position. So let's talk about the people who are more on the disagreeable side. We've talked about them a lot and so they always are the ire of a lot of people when it comes to the difficult conversations we have. But what do you do with the difficult person on your team? They are very, very valuable. So think about playing devil's advocate in a meeting. We're trying to build up different ideas, things like that. That's the person that I want to bring in to critique the. The ideas. What blind spots do we have? What vulnerabilities do we have? That's really important if I'm thinking about a team negotiation. A lot of times when you're having a big negotiation, it's not just one negotiator, it's multiple negotiators. So let's think about it in the terms of like a procurement team. So the people who buy all of the things within big organizations, so they're the chief negotiator, the procurement professional. But then they have their internal stakeholder. Let's say it's a medical situation. So they have a surgeon. They, they know what tools they need to. To use. That's the internal person who is the subject matter expert. You might need have somebody else who knows the numbers really well. Right. So it's like three different people at the negotiating table. So you might want to sequence things like this. You have the person who has really an open and bubbly personality. Open the negotiation, really focus on the collaborative nature. Build rapport. And then you have that person asking questions because the person feels safe giving information to that person. As we go down the line of the negotiation, we might get to the point where it's a little bit more transactional. That's when we're talking about numbers, who gets what and how much, those type of things. Now that disagreeable person is very, very helpful because they love saying no. So you don't want the agreeable people pleaser to be in that position where they have to say no. Instead of a boundary, that's when you get the more disagreeable person to be a little bit more skeptical to set up that boundary and protect our interests. So you have to understand how to position the pie on your team in the right place to make sure you're getting the most out of them.

I love that. I didn't think about that. The idea of building a team like finding, okay, I need these characteristics and these characteristics. And if you know your team well and you know their personality traits, you can build the team that you need for a situation.

Exactly.

That's very cool. We're, we're into the last 10 minutes of our hour, so we should start working towards wrapping up. But, but maybe we should hit a few of these viewer questions that I've been expecting. Somebody was asking whether the, the events are recorded and they absolutely are. You can watch any of our live events after they've been, you know, streamed live. It's the same link that you use to get to the live stream. You can share that with your friends, your co workers, or just watch this event later. Somebody had a question about how you deal when people are upset when you correct their work. Wonder if you have some thoughts on that.

Yes, they perceive it as a personal attack. This is great. Cool. Nick, you want to do a freestyle? You want to have some fun here?

Okay, we're going to do another exercise.

Yeah, let's do it. So let's say I'm criticizing. I'm a boss. I'm coming in and criticizing your work. Right. So let's run through this type of situation. So how do we start a difficult conversation? I like to use this really simple format. Situation, impact, invitation. So what's the situation? We describe this just using what I call naked facts, just describing the situation without any interpretation, any opinion or judgment. That type of thing. Impact. What is the impact that it had on me? I want to personalize it as much as possible. Then invitation to have the conversation. So this is a nice way to ease into the conversation. So we'll start the conversation with you, Nick. So, Nick, hey, I saw your last report. I appreciate you getting that to me on time. Time. There were a couple of things that I wanted to address within the report and I think if we were to make those changes, it'll make life a little bit easier for some of the other people on the team, including myself. I was wondering if you'd be interested in having a conversation to talk through some of those things.

I put a lot of work into that. I think I got what we needed in that report.

Yeah, and I understand you did put a lot of work into it, and I can tell, and I appreciate that. And, and for me, my goal in this is to see how we can work together to make that even better. Because the work ethic and everything that you're putting into that, just supreme. Right. You're in a good position there. And I think if we were to collaborate a little bit and talk about it, we could find a way to make it even better. What do you think?

Okay, so what are you thinking?

Okay, so in this situation now, I'm trying to make up a mistake in this report. Right. So here. Here's what I wanted. Christina, to your point, right. The. The hardest point is going to be the entry because, you know there's going to be some skepticism. And so what I want to do is I don't want to counter anything that Nick's saying. I'm going to recognize it's an emotional issue. Right. So first it was clear that he wanted to be acknowledged for that work. He put effort into it, and he wants to be seen for that. And so a mistake that we could make is say, hey, Nick, this isn't about effort. This is just about getting it right. Right. Oh, no, now he feels invalidated. And so that' ramp up the level of emotionality for so first step I want to do is I want to win the framing game. I want to frame this collaboratively. So I'm pausing the conversation every time Nick seems to be framing it in terms of, hey, I did this work. Cool, you're right, you did do it. Right. I want to make sure that I'm continuously staying on message, making it collaborative and addressing the emotions first before I get into substance. And so something that I didn't talk about, Christina, but I always talk about, it's in all of my books and all of the. The courses at some point. The Compassionate Curiosity Framework. Acknowledge and validate emotions. Get curious with compassion. Joint problem solving. And so we saw an element of that with the acknowledgment and validation of the emotions that he showed, and then transitioning with getting curious with compassion to lead him more into the conversation. So I hope that is helpful, Christina. Let me know in the comments. Great.

I think we might have time for one More. And sorry for everybody. Had questions that we didn't get to. I thought this one looked fairly interesting. Somebody who suffers anxiety due to PTSD has trouble with conflict in the workplace. So how do they navigate that?

Yeah, that is. That's tough. Right. And so disclaimer. I studied psychology. That's my undergrad degree. But I did not study ptsd, nor do I personally have it. So this is going to be a.

Lot of depth there.

Yeah, so there's going to be a lot of depth. But what I will say is this. In. In my first book, Finding Confidence in Conflict, it was all about recognizing that everybody, no matter who you are, you're going to have some element of emotionality, something from your past, something in the. Your personality that will make difficult conversations particularly difficult for you. That's going to be something that leads to your. Your p. Your performance gap. Right. So in that first book, it's all about overcoming that. Probably about 80% is overcoming your psychological and emotional barriers and giving you a process to address that. And so every single challenge is going to manifest itself somewhat differently. So what I would do, if I were you in your position is I would think about the specific way that your PTSD is manifesting itself during the conversation. So, for example, it might be before the conversation in a way that prevents you from even having the conversation, or it might be during the conversation where you get triggered by something that somebody says, and so emotion sparks up there. So we need to get a little bit more specific about how it's affecting you during the conversation and then finding ways that you can tweak your approach in order to address that type of situation. So for you, it might be beforehand getting therapy, cognitive behavioral therapy or something like that to raise your baseline level of performance, and then doing some introspection to see when that performance gap manifests itself during the conversation. But I think it really comes down to being really, really specific about. About the trouble that you're having and how it manifests itself during the conversation and then finding strategies to address that.

Thank you. That might have been a little bit more of a hardball question than I recognized at first, but I think you gave us some really good things to work with.

Thank you.

And I didn't have a link to your books, but what's the title of the book again? And where can we find.

Yes, the first book is Finding Confidence in Conflict, all about addressing our own emotional and psychological barriers for the conversation. Because it doesn't make sense to give recipes to people who are afraid to get in the kitchen. So if we can't address our own unique performance gap, it doesn't matter what tools and techniques you have, because you're not going to use it when it's time to use it. The second book is just came out in September called How to have Difficult Conversations About Race. I named it that because, Nick, I'm not creative. I didn't know. What's the book called? What's it about? How to have Difficult conversations about race. There you go. That's the type. So for me, I want to be where the toughest conversations are. And so when I started writing this in 2020, that was the toughest conversation that we were having. And so my methodology is if you can handle yourself emotionally in those conversations about that sensitive topic, if you can keep your cool and be persuasive and empathetic and respectful during that conversation, then you could use those exact same tools to be successful in any difficult conversation you have. So that one is just taking it to the next level, but focusing negotiation and conflict resolution skills to that tough topic topic.

And you also have one or two of your LinkedIn learning courses are about that topic as well. So somebody wants to get some of that information in a video training course form. Yeah, there's more depth in the book for sure.

And Nick, fun fact, it was actually LinkedIn that launched that book more or less, because I did a live event and it went really well. And then that led to the course that was my first ever LinkedIn learning course. And that course made it to like number one on the platform for a certain period of time. Time. And so I said, man, people like this. All right, I guess that's my next book.

And.

And there we go. But the questions and comments from people from that course is over, like over 200,000 or so who have gone through that course at this point. And that gave a lot of intel for the book. Excellent.

Okay, well, we should. We should probably wrap up here. And I'm. I'm very interested to go back and watch the recording. I wonder, is the stream dream better when I fell out and you were handling it by yourself, or did I actually bring some value to this?

Hey, everybody, give Nick some love in the comments. I want you here, man. You did a great job.

It's a little stressful, but I'm so glad that you kept the stream going.

Congratulations. You've just joined an elite club by listening to a full episode. You're now officially on on the Negotiate Anything team. So welcome aboard. What most team members do is they subscribe to the podcast because that allows them to automatically get the latest episodes of the show. The best things in life lie on the other side of difficult conversations. Keep learning, keep practicing, and keep getting better. Your relationships will improve, your career will soar, and you'll have the confidence you need to get the most out of these crucial conversations. Again, thank you for joining the team. We're excited to have you, and I will see you in the next episode. I'll catch you later.