The Art of Insubordination: How to Dissent and Defy Effectively With Todd Kashdan

Hello, my friends, and welcome to another exciting episode of Negotiate Anything. This show is produced by the American Negotiation Institute and with over 5 million downloads and listeners in over 180 countries, listeners just like you have made this the number one negotiation podcast in the world. Hi, my name is Kwame Christian, and I am the founder and CEO of the American Negotiation Institute. Here at A&I we believe that the best things in life are on the other side of difficult conversations. And we are passionate, passionate about providing you with the best content that will help you to make your difficult conversations easier, both at work and at home. Lastly, I want to remind you that we offer consulting and conduct trainings both virtually and in person all around the world. Our focus is in three main areas. First, negotiation and conflict resolution. Second, leadership. And lastly, diversity, equity, and inclusion. Check the link in the description below to learn more about how we could work with you and your team. And now, without further ado, let's jump into the interview. Todd, thanks for joining us today.

Hey, good to be here.

Yeah, man, it is a pleasure to have you. So how would you get us started? By telling us a little bit about yourself and what you do.

So, I'm a professor of psychology at George Mason University, and I have been running the Wellbeing Laboratory for over two decades. A little bit embarrassed to say that. And we study all the things people want to talk about at cocktail parties, but they don't. So we study creativity, curiosity, love, meaning and purpose in life, sexuality, parenting, social anxiety. You name it, we're exploring it.

You sound like a fun guy to hang out with. That is so cool. That's awesome. Well, also, listen, my humble friend, you got to let the listeners know about your book, too.

Well, a couple months ago, I published after six years of Working the Art of Insubordination, how to Dissent and Defy Effectively. And basically, I wrote the book that I wish was already out there. There's 60 years of research on minority influence, which is, if you lack power, if you lack status, if you don't have the numbers in terms of allies, how do you make a dent in making sure that your message or idea get some influence in society? And there are. There are clear strategies, and no one's put the pieces together before until Todd.

Came into the room. I'm pumped about this. This is great because this is something that people talk about all the time. How do I influence without authority? I don't. I. I don't have rank in my organization, but I want to create change. How do I do that? And you're Right. There really hasn't been a good guidebook on there approaching persuasion from that angle. So I'm really pumped that you produce that type of resource.

Yeah, I mean, it fits with a lot of sociological trends. Right. We've had a racial reckoning in the past couple years. We've had people really think about, okay, what do we do with people that are in rural and rural Midwestern environments as opposed to being on the elite coasts? And we've been having conversations about what does it mean that people have this residential mobility where the vast majority of people are no longer living in their childhood towns next to their family and friends, and they're starting new social circles. So there's a lot of social trends where you might have once been a cool, socially attractive, popular character, and now the average person has 12 jobs that they spin through over the course of their adult life. So how do you gain inroads in actually doing the things you want to do and trying to make the world a better place?

Oh, this is great. Okay, so let's start off with this. And it might seem obvious, but I think it's important to start off with the unique challenge of negotiating or persuading or trying to create movement or change without power or authority. What is it that makes it so tough?

Well, one of the hardest things, which is the first test you have to walk through, is that to showcase that you are the type of group member that is worthy of attention in the first place, as opposed to those people that are obsequious. They've put their hours in, and they show that they've shown loyalty over the years. And one of the ways you do that is show some behavioral evidence that you understand the group's needs, you understand that you understand what the group is up against, and you understand that the health of the group or the longevity of the group is at stake. So anytime that you clarify that, you basically have people, Their heads kind of peep up a little bit to say, oh, you're one of us. At least you understand what we're like. And, you know, there's a great story of I'm going to pronounce the name wrong. Camille Khan. He went to Bangladesh, and his basic public health risk message was, how do we get people to do their thing in a toilet as opposed to near their house, affecting the water supply. And the story was, was that people kept on coming in and saying, listen, people are dying. Dysentery, you know, it's. It's entering into the food supply, the water supply, and we can Stop this. But they weren't showing that they understood the town. And this guy went in and he asked people with rocks on the ground to point out a drawing of the town of here's where all the homes are. And then put next to them these smaller rocks of where do you go to the bathroom? And the visual display of their world, with no intervention from him, had people have the aha moment of, oh, we're actually going really close to where we live. This is problematic. And from. As opposed to coming in with all this knowledge, I'm going to vomit all over you. He led with you. Show me what your town is like, how you act. And from that I'll use that information to sell you of, hey, you see what I see? Let's go fix this problem.

So, Todd, if you were to synthesize what it was that made him so successful in this endeavor, what would it be?

So instead of him coming into the community as the pseudo quasi expert of how to engage in healthy behaviors, he sat back with the humility and say, I want to learn about what it is that. That your group is like. And then with that knowledge, let me insert just a. Not a bit of knowledge, but insight that you shared to me.

Right. And so it's really interesting because in so many of these episodes, we find the persuasive power of humility. It's so fascinating how consistent that is. That's the first thing. And essentially what we. What he did in that situation was he came in, was humble and respectful and learned from them. And through learning from them, he was able to open them up to what he wanted to share as well too.

Yeah. And we might call that the good group member test that he passed. It's like, okay, you're not an outsider that's trying to own us, control us, assure that you're more intelligent and attractive than us. You're actually someone that's actually interested in us. And you can pass that test number a number of different ways. You know another way of passing that is if we were playing in the. In the world of American politics, you might, if you want to convince conservatives that, hey, maybe we should ban assault rifles, you might showcase, hey, listen, let me talk about the list of how many people I voted for as conservatives, what I do in my household in terms of signs on my yard, and then what are the policies that I've agreed with, but not this one. So you're showing, oh, you've got bona fide credentials. You pass the good group member test. And now all of a sudden you don't win on the argument. You now win in terms of getting the attention of the crowd.

Yeah, that. That's such a profound point, because everybody wants to win on the argument. And I don't think that people fully appreciate what that entails, because essentially what it entails is the person on the other side of the argument admitting your intellectual superiority and their intellectual inferiority. Because we come in and we say, hey, this is the. These are the stats. This is the right answer. Listen to me. I don't know you at all, but I know what you should do. And then we're anticipating the person is going to say, you know, you know what? You are smarter than me. Thank you. I'm going to change my ways. I appreciate you. It's just not realistic.

Yeah. And also, I mean, this goes with this. You could think about this in everyday conversation. Whether you're a parent, you're talking to your coworker, you're hanging out with your friends. We often skip this stage and we go right into the meat of our argument. But you forget is your number one strategy first is how do I get someone to consider the quality of my message? But to get there, you have to get past the test of are you as the messenger, are you worthwhile of me devoting my finite energy and attention? And social media doesn't provide that intentional deliberate pause to allow you to showcase your worthwhile messenger. And a little blue star or a green tag or a bunch of Alphabet soup after your name, that doesn't impress anyone. Because when you, when you. When you get the entire global landscape of people that you could possibly talk to online, there are just tens and thousands, tens of thousands of people that have those credentials. So you must showcase you socially are worthwhile for my attention.

Absolutely. And Todd, to that point, thinking about the letters at the end of the name and thinking about where you're from, maybe what institution you went to or all of those types of things, what we don't realize is that that is a way that we show people who are like us that we are like them and we are to be respected. But those same things might be signals to not trust us in other social circles, too.

Yeah, I love where you're going here. So, okay, so we're about to talk about one of my favorite topics about negotiation and persuasion, which are core proxies of intelligence and performance and potential. And that is, we tend to look at. And this is really what society is fighting against right now, which is, it used to be that if you look at. In the 1890s for articles about what makes an exceptional leader or what shows up in the top five are normally being Baptist, being male, being tall. Now we know that none of those three variables have any correlation whatsoever of oh my God, this must be an incredibly rational decision maker. This is somebody who clearly can handle their emotions well and deal with their anger and still effectively make the other person feel comfortable to express their thoughts about this. There's nothing to do with height and those things. So then you move in society wise, you move into the 1960s, 70s and 80s, you start thinking the more socially effervescent someone is or extroverted someone is, that's a proxy for quality of ideas because they speak up in meetings. Well, that's not correlated with performance or the quality of what you're saying. And Susan and Susan Cain wrote a great book about this called Quiet. And then you have assertiveness, the degree to which you're able to express your ways not passively, not aggressively, but, but acknowledge other person's feelings. This used to be authentic leadership was a hot topic in the 90s. And that's not correlated with the quality of ideas. But we still have these really poor crappy proxies. And as you said, you think about being in an elite institution, being the type of person that people want to sit next to and what I call is socially attractive. You're interesting, you're witty, like, you think quickly on your feet, you know, you're just like, you have a calm presence. Being around all those things make you feel good. But likability is also a horrible proxy, uncorrelated with creativity, intelligence or good decision making.

Does your company invest in professional development training? If you believe that your team would benefit from a negotiation workshop, all you need to do is go to our website, fill out the workshop request form and then we'll set up a time to chat. These workshops are completely customizable and we've done them all around the country. Negotiation and conflict resolution skills are beneficial across all professions, but they're especially useful in procurement, purchasing, sales, sourcing and contract management. Our calendar is filling up quickly and we even have some workshops scheduled for next year if you think you might to want one. I'd suggest reaching out soon so you don't miss out. Check out the link in the description to learn more and we will be right back after this. And so essentially what we're seeing is the shifting biases of time, more or less, and the fact that again, it is one of those situations where the biases that lead us to Come to conclusions about people aren't always accurate. And when it comes to conveying that, when we're thinking about, how do we convey the fact that we're trustworthy, that we're intelligent enough to be respected in this conversation, how do we determine how to do that when we're trying to persuade, one, without power and two, maybe somebody that we who's in a group that we don't currently belong to?

Yeah. Kwame, I'm glad you hit this. I want to flesh it out even further to add a few silos. So you can imagine there's four silos for thinking about the person that's right in front of you who offers an idea, and that in front of you might be a book as opposed to a face to face conversation. So you say to yourself, as you're saying, trustworthiness, likability, competence, bias. Now let me bust out a controversial example about where I think this went astray. So when Biden was considering the last Supreme Court justice for Supreme Court Justice Brown, it was a very interesting thing because of the four silos he led with bias. And if I was a consultant for Biden, I would have said, why would you do this? She went to Harvard. She was an editor for one of the most esteemed law journals in the country. She has prosecuted more cases as a public defender and as as an attorney than anyone's ever been a Supreme Court justice. Why wouldn't you lean with competence? Why wouldn't you lean towards trustworthiness? Why wouldn't you lean towards likability? Why of the four would you say, I want to choose a justice that's black and that's a woman? That's a very interesting strategy. And you know, I'd have been public about this of it's worthwhile to deconstruct when this goes astray so we could do better next time. I think if he led with the other three, everyone else who is a critic would be on poor footing because they would have to lean on bias of the four legged stool.

Oh, this is so good. Okay, so let's recap here. So we have trustworthiness, likability, competence and bias. This is so fascinating because you're absolutely right. And I feel like. And this might be my bias here, Todd, so I want you to check me on this. I feel like him leading with those. The fact that she was black, that she is black and is a woman, I feel like that's invalidated the decision and decreased the amount of respect that she could have gotten had he not approached it in a different way.

Well, you know, I really do think of this, of when Condoleezza Rice talks about the bigotry of low expectations is no one had seen what she looks like. She didn't exist. Exist in the public eye. Because the public eye, you know, is not aware of what. Who are the candidates? Who are the. Who are the best lawyers that are out there that are possible, possible Supreme Court nominees. And so if you saw there was the possibility of doing the dream hiring process, which is. Everything's just on paper. Check out. It's a. It's just like getting a height, you know, a baseball or basketball prospect. Check out these numbers. Look at these points. Look at these MVPs, look at how many times they won the championship. And you place all these numbers now in the legal world, right? The number of cases, the number of times they served the public pro bono, the number of times that actually the Supreme Court made a decision as a precedent based on the quality of things that she brought into a courtroom. And all of a sudden you hear all of this. You're like, wow, what a great person. And then all of a sudden, the reveal. You see a visual of what this person looks like. Oh, huh. I was imagining a male. I would say this. I don't want to be too harsh on Biden, but I want to say for those people listening, when you make these decisions in the workplace or in the education system or in the talent pool of evaluating and judging the merit of people, there's some you should consider intentionally. Where do you want to lead? Because it could be really helpful or hurtful to the exact person that you have good intentions for.

This is great. And so, Todd, correct me if I'm wrong here. It's sounding like when we think about these four or silos, when we're trying to persuade anybody in general, with or without authority, we should be mindful of making sure that we're kind of checking these boxes in ourselves. Am I coming across as trustworthy, likable, competent? The bias one, I have to articulate that differently. Do I need to be mindful of the biases that are standing in my way and also mindful of the biases that could potentially be working in my favor as well?

Yeah, I'm glad you put the bias aside, because now we can play with that one a little bit. Let's poke and prod the bear. So the bias one. And my ex postdoc, Dr. Laura Wallace, did some really cool research about this. If you are high in competence or expertise in an area one way to convince skeptics is actually providing two sided versus one sided messages. Now this is a little bit counterintuitive to a lot of people. So if I wanted to convince you that a college education is not worth the price of admission in 2022, which is most people in society, particularly on the east and west coast of America, don't believe this. One way is if I point out not just the benefits of how much money extra you'll make in the past 10 years if you're a college graduate versus a high school graduate, but the two sided message. I talk about the problems about this in terms of here, the years of income that you lose, the years of experience that you lose, and then the perspective, the lack of varied perspective that you'll get if you continue sticking in a college system where you're going to be around people that are in the same socioeconomic class. So if I can talk about is that your gain of perspectives will probably decline by being in college as opposed to if you worked on a farm in Missouri and then you decide that you're going to work in Venice, Italy and kind of, you know, and you're going to explore kind of a different culture, you're going to learn a new language and hang out in New guinea for a little bit, your perspective taking and wisdom might actually be greater than in terms of MB college. You're going to have a lot better stories and a lot more, a lot more varied experiences by giving the two sided message. If you're high in competence or expertise, you tend to have a little bit more persuasive power than just the pure, seemingly singular one sided message.

Okay, Todd. Okay, we need to, we need to break this one down because this is, like you said, very, very counterintuitive. And I want to make sure that everybody's getting it. And so I'm going to give a quick synopsis. You tell me if I'm following here. So if you are perceived as somebody who is high in competence and you are delivering a message, it's actually beneficial for you to give the counterpoint as well as the actual point in order to strengthen your persuasive power.

We need to get rid of our partners, live together, because you convert all of my ideas into much more interesting, palatable ways. So thank you.

I will let Whitney know and let the negotiation begin. No, this is great, Todd. That's so fascinating. And I think again that this is something that even I'll be honest, that's one that I did not know, that's brand new to me. And that's really fascinating. And now for the listeners who say, okay, two sided arguments, they might have a self serving bias and say I am all, I'm perceived as competent. So then the question becomes how do we know whether or not the other side is perceiving us as competent so we can actually know whether or not this approach will work for us.

That is a great question. It really gets to the molecular level of the situation. So let me, I'll pick another controversial example. Play with the book banning, bizarre thing that's been happening over the past couple years. So this both, you know, it's happening all over the political spectrum. But one of the things about, about book banning for most people that are arguing something at these, you know, parent teacher association meetings is often the conversation begins with what is the problem with the book. So if it's, you know, if it's on the left end, it ends up being that it's that, you know, there's, there's some ism there, right? There's some racism, there's some sexism, there's some ageism. It is a lack of appreciation for diverse viewpoints. And then if it's on the right end ends up being, it's, it's too sex positive. It is, is degrading. It is, you know, it is, it is failing to appreciate and respect history and trying to rewrite history. So these are kind of the, the arguments at their simplistic level for both these sides. What you don't see is anyone saying, here's the knowledge that I have in terms of reading books, understanding children in terms of what they can acquire, what information, what level, what level of abstract thinking is possible by a young child or teenager? And then what's the evidence that exists for an individual book is dangerous for a kid, especially what adult might be teaching them about this book? So it's almost as if nobody has provided an argument about children have agency, children have brains of their own. Children aren't many adults. They actually have their own constructed views of the world, themselves and other people. So what do we know about how books infiltrate and break through their immune system, change everything that they think about themselves, other people in the world. If someone was able to provide that without any discussion of where they stand on an issue, you would be showing a level of competence. Lean with that first, then be without any knowledge of where you stand. Left, right, thumbs up for book ban, thumbs down for book ban. Reveal the competence first and then you reveal what your point is in terms of this provocative topic. Wow.

It'S so funny because I heard this quote before, Todd, where they. The sign of a brilliant insight is that it's obvious in hindsight and it makes so much sense what you just said because essentially in a heated topic, what's ending up happening is no matter who it is in this conversation, right, left, pro, book ban against book ban, whoever it is. In this example, they're leading with their amygdala. The amygdala is leading the dance. The people on the other side, they're leading with their amygdala. So without, perhaps in a lot of cases without reading a book, boom. The amygdala produces that bias and says, not reflexively saying no to that book, I'm rejecting it. The other person on the other side responds with the amygdala, nope, this is a threat. I'm going to fight you. And now we have two people operating with their lizard brains, not listening, starting off at the wrong part, just arguing where with each other. And instead what you're suggesting is that the most persuasive thing to do in this type of situation where you probably don't have any authority in this interaction to force anybody to do anything, you have to come in and lead with your expertise, not with your bias, which is what your brain would naturally want to do. So you have to slow down and use your higher level functioning and demonstrate your competence, get people to see you as an expert. And then at that point, when they respect your competence and expertise, that's when you provide your position after you've established that respect.

You're so good at this. I mean, I'm going to tell you that, I'm going to tell you one of my two favorite compliments in 23 years of college teaching that I've gotten, which is by the end of a semester. I have no idea where you stand politically. And, and I, and I firmly believe, even if you are an ardent like you're. The political side of your identity is incredibly strong. I think part of being a leader, whether it's being, whether it's in the educational system or whether it's an organization or a team, is that people should not be able to describe in a quick list of exactly where you stand politically. The idea is you facilitate information. You're trying to, you're trying to acquire the best information. And maybe the decision is with your political affiliation on this exact topic, and maybe it's not. And I think something has happened. It's a little bit different than the conversation about identity politics. Something has happened where temporally, time wise we reveal this part of our identity quickly and early and with intensity, as opposed to making it a backdrop that I feel that you may or may not need access to. And I would argue that it should be more like the, the backdrop of the, you know, of the zoom meeting. It's the backdrop that you might pay attention to this, you might not. I might point it out, I might not. But I'm not going to make this the fulcrum of what we're talking about because I don't know where we're going yet because I haven't collected all the information. There's a lot of unique perspectives other than my own I want to extract. And if I reveal and discuss the background too early, there are certain diverse voices in this group setting that will not, will silence themselves because they now know or they now believe that I'm not going to be privy to being open minded to what they have to say.

This is so good. And I. So, listeners, what I'm hoping is this. So a couple of things. What you should be noticing or what, let me say it this way, what you could be noticing is this the incredible contrast between the way Todd is describing persuasion and leadership and how persuasion and leadership typically occurs. Right. Because what you're saying makes complete sense. And then it makes me wonder, why are we not seeing this more often? Because I think people intuitively understand that this forceful rhetoric and identity politics and this really biased approach to having these discussions at a deep level, we all understand that it is not persuasive and yet we continue to approach these conversations in this way. So what would you say is the resistance that precludes people from actually approaching these conversations in the right way?

So here's just one mechanism of many that I think is part of it. And I want to avoid social media because I think that's. It's a very tired and overblown conversation, but important, I think it's there, the dopaminergic pleasure of actually trying to get into the heat of an argument. I think some of us have played sports, some of us have been on debate clubs, some of us have been in the arena. And when you get older, you miss some of that action. And there is a pleasure that comes with this, of being in the arena. And I don't think we acknowledge this is a fleeting pleasure. And over time it actually erodes some elements of the virtuous and the character elements of who we are as a person. We get caught into these, this heat, this hedonism, but not for ice cream cones and not for errant drugs on the weekend after our kids and our loved ones go to sleep. It's really about these arguments. It really feels good. You feel alive. But it's just like being in an environment, a toxic work environment that over the course of time, while you've got a lot of stories and you have a lot of things to talk about when you meet your friends, it is taking wear and tear on your physiological system. Your heart, the gastric juices in your stomach. And eventually you're going to see physical ailments that come from it. And the same thing psychologically, physically, happens from the dopaminergic hit you get from being in arguments on a regular basis.

That's deep. So essentially, we're addicted to conflict.

Yep. That's. Yep. Again, my. One of my weaknesses is making things into long paragraphs that you turn into a single bumper sticker.

I appreciate it. Well, listen, 600 plus episodes, I've got some. Got some experience with this, and this is great. This is so good because I love what you said there. You said the virtuous character elements of who we are. And it's like instead of highlighting the virtuous character elements or feeding into those virtuous character elements of ourselves, instead we've gone towards more of virtue signaling. So instead of trying to be good or trying to be effective in these conversations, we are trying to signal to our tribe that we are good. And so it's like we're focusing on that identity and that team membership. And one of the ways that we do that is by not only talking about what we stand for, but also what we are against. And by attacking these ideas and perspectives and people who we see as the other, even though we know that it is not effective in the moment, it makes us feel good because it reasserts our position within our own group.

Yeah, just. I mean, just, you know, I'm a big fan of having heroic exemplars of every virtue and character strength that I aspire to be, because then I can have a little version of them on my shoulder as a reminder of, hey, listen, Todd, you're not going in the direction of that biography and autobiography you read. So this year, we lost Desmond Tutu and he. And to me, he's the exemplar of reconciliation. I mean, so I think of mercy, I think of charity, I think of forgiveness, I think of gratitude, and I think of reconciliation. These are lost virtues in the era of speed and the speed to intolerance that we have in society. So for Desmond Tutu, I mean, the idea that you could have. You can reconcile with people who, like, in the midst of apartheid in Africa, and you're basically, we're unable to function as a everyday citizen. And not only what. Not only was there forgiveness, but there was a sense of essentially, is that we will be able to. We will construct a new society together. It is hard for a human being even to, like, understand the concept of that. And so the idea that someone could outrage us with their belief and we can't even. Even if they entered the room, we view that as like a form of disgust and into an intolerable act. And the idea they would be invited to speak is an intolerable and disgusting act. And then I think of Desmond Tutu. He didn't just let people speak. He didn't just go into the room with them. He shook their hand, and then they sat there with a blueprint and said, hey, we are reconstructing governmental and civic structures together as a unit. That is a far cry for moving from that. So there's something to be said about having a Desmond Tutu on your shoulder, you know, a Mandela on your shoulder, and having a Malcolm X on your shoulder. And when you have. And when you have these characters and look through the annals of history and you say to yourself, this is the most partisan period, the most animosity at any period of our lives, the answer is no. You just haven't been paying attention to what happened the past 400 years.

It's so fascinating, Todd. And I think one of the things that we have to start to ask ourselves, too, when we think about this, people listen to the podcast. They. They're here to learn how to persuade effectively. They're here to learn how to negotiate effectively and resolve conflict effectively. And we're seeing that, especially on the most sensitive issues of the day. We are not doing what we need to do in order to be persuasive or effective in these conversations. And we talk often about negotiation with other people. We don't. Often we don't talk about the negotiation with ourselves enough. And it really makes me wonder that we have about how many people who feel so strongly about these types of issues, the sensitive issues, whether it's political or otherwise, it might just be trying to create positive change in your workplace, trying to negotiate with somebody who you don't have a great relationship with. It makes you wonder whether or not they're having that conversation with themselves. To say, am I more interested in asserting who I am within a group in order to make me feel good in this moment, or am I more interested in actually coming to the table and being effective and accomplishing my goals?

Yeah. You know, you reminded me of a documentary just watched last night. I'm not sure you saw it. It's Untold the story of the girlfriend that didn't exist. The Nordic.

I watched that last night.

I watched that last night. Oh, crazy. We should be living together. We don't need our partners. It's just me and you. Our kids can raise themselves. All right, so there was the scene last night at the. Oh, my God. So first of all, let's not tell the listeners anything because they need to watch this themselves. Untold, the story of the girlfriend that didn't exist. But at the. But there's a point, I think you probably know where I'm leaning towards where after experience all this adversity of being one of the greatest defensive players in Notre Dame football history and was one of the most highly recruited people in the NFL for professional football in history. And it was just, it was just, you know, it was just discovered. It's the title of the show. It was discovered that a girlfriend that he dedicated the season to never existed. And it was a very strange thing for people to understand. But the key that, the key link Kwame to what you said was the moment of peace for him. And part of negotiations is a sense of peace, a sense of tranquility that I did the best that I could without detracting from the well being of other people in the negotiation. I do believe people should try to hold that view. And that's assertive, not aggressive, not passive that comes in there. And there's a scene where he faced so much strife of people. I mean, making fun of him is actually too small of a statement to say, but really tearing his soul apart publicly once it became revealed that his girlfriend didn't exist. And he reveals that he saw a therapist. And the therapist says, hey, I have a question for you. Did you forgive the perpetrator? And he says, yes. And then the therapist says, I have a more important question. The second question. Did you forgive yourself? Did you forgive the young version of you that fell for this stunt? And that was like the key moment of this whole thing. And even me as, as an adult clinical psychologist in his 40s, it hit me so hard of are there parts of my journey of negotiating, interacting, other people asking for things, people asking things for me, Are there points that, that I am ashamed of how I responded or upset at myself that I didn't deliver on my end, that I forgiven Myself. And the answer is there's a lot of parts I haven't. That, that one moment made me think about. There are some parts and there's something to be said about that self forgiveness that it almost is like it allows parts of your energy, parts of the things that make the whole version of you come back to the forefront where they are fully recharged and ready for action again that are right now inert because you didn't engage in self forgiveness.

It's. This is, this is great. This is great. Too many weird connections between God. So I'm going to. I'm going to fly, fly to the East Coast. We're going to hang out. That's the first thing. And it reminds me in my, in my first book, Finding Confidence in Conflict, I had a quote where I said self forgiveness and self compassion are the unsung heroes of confidence. And it's really, really hard to get to that point. But if you can, it's. It's quite liberating. It's quite liberating. It's. It's freeing because I don't think we fully appreciate the baggage we can carry just as people navigating the world in general. And then we don't appreciate the baggage that we carry into these conversations because they're going to have an impact on the way that we navigate these conversations. That's why with that self negotiation portion of the self work that we have to do, it's so critical. It's so critical. And if we don't have those deep conversations with ourselves and go through that introspective process and potentially seek therapy if we need it, it's going to have an impact on our lives in a way that a subtle current would have an impact on a body of water where it's, it's moving things in a way that might be so subtle that it's imperceptible but incredibly impactful.

You know, I never heard the term self negotiation before, but I love that because we. So as we're talking right now, the day before yesterday was National Grieving Day. And so it was a lot of people kind of publicly, publicly and privately kind of really kind of coming to grips with, you know, loss of children, loss of adults, loss of family members, loss of friends. And what I love about this self negotiation is this sense of coming to, coming to a sense of willingness to grieve of moments in your life where you wish you had behaved in another manner. Whether that's the regret of inaction where you didn't say something and you feel like, and you feel like you now, now if you're in the workplace, you're making a lower salary than everyone else because you started at a lower base level, you decided not to speak your piece. Or if it's the regret of action where you decided not to quit or decided to. You decided to quit a job, you decided to take a job, and it was actually, you know, something that actually was. You chose it for the wrong reasons, or you chose it for a particular person, ended up being problematic. And there's something really beautiful of what you're saying in terms of this. Recognize that any of these moments are sitting there in the ether that are waiting for a mea culpa that you're allowed to give to yourself. And what will that do in terms of that? Extra liberation and extra energy. And I love that framework that you give.

Thank you. I appreciate that. And you know, it's so funny, a lot of times we look for the answers outside of ourselves. I need another tactic, I need another strategy, I need another degree. But a lot of times the thing that'll give us the biggest return is taking that time and dealing with the baggage that's inside that we haven't touched and we've locked inside of us and pretended like everything was okay. But one of my buddies has a book, it's called you're not okay and that's okay. Or something to that effect. And just coming, just accepting that as a natural part of humanity. I think that's the first step in improving.

Yeah, I think it's really important actually to hear it from you as well, because there is a social script in particular for men where this is an area where you're supposed to be a little. Have a little bit more mental fortitude. You're supposed to be a little bit more like a Navy SEAL who just passed buds in terms of, you wear your armor thick, you wear your armor proudly, you have thick titanium skin, and maybe every once in a while you let your hair down, let your guard down when you're alone by yourself, listening to Pink Floyd at 3 o' clock in the morning. And I think this is a very antiquated view. And every male who has a little bit of a platform, who speaks the inanity of that idea breaks it apart a little bit more.

Appreciate that. I tell you, I'm an advocate for self care. My undergrad degree is in psychology, as you could probably tell. So your path is the path that I always wanted to take. And then, you know, I was walking to school one day I tripped and fell into law school and you know, the rest is history. So. But yeah, this is great. I appreciate that. And you're so right. It's really important for us to offer ourselves that, that self compassion because once we do, then it makes it much easier for us to offer other people that same level of compassion. And if we approach these conversations with that, with that mindset and that methodology, we're going to be a lot more persuasive. And I know the listeners are probably tired of hearing me talk about it, but that's the framework I talk about, the compassionate curiosity framework for having these difficult conversations. It's, it's so critical, but it's really cool to see it applied in, at this level with, with the types of difficult conversations that you were describing.

Well, it's particularly important because if you're the person that is having the moral courage to speak up and protect someone who's being bullied or point out that someone is cooking the books in your firm that you're in or doing something unethical, you're unlikely to get the dopaminergic hit. It's going to be probably the opposite. People are going to turn on you and say, listen, we had a good thing going. Now we cost my job. Now the organization doesn't exist. You're the reason that I'm unemployed right now. You do everything, everything right. And in the short term, there's probably much more suffering and costs. The group and society in general gains and the dissenter ends up losing their well being. It's a detriment to their well being in the short term. This is the dissenter's dilemma. What's bad for the individual is good for the group. And so it requires this level of self care, it requires this level of self forgiveness, it requires this level of self appreciation because it is going to be painful, but it is. Society doesn't just need people that are willing to have this moral courage. It is the only strongest safeguard against conformity, mistakes in society.

Oh, that is so good. That is so good. Todd, about an hour ago, I told you we like to keep our episodes at about 30 minutes. And as soon as you started talking, I was like, there is no way this is going to be a 30 minute episod. Todd, I really appreciate it. This was exceptional. Before you go, let the listeners know again about your book and the incredible work that you do.

Oh, thank you. I mean, this is, this is the dream podcast conversation. So the art of Insubordination. How to dissent and defy effectively it's available on Amazon and Barnes Noble and everywhere else. And if you're interested, I have a substack called Provoked where you can, you know, I like it's. You can just collect all my interesting non conventional ideas of how to have a more fulfilling life and how to be more effective in being persuasive in trying to create a more utopian society.

Oh, I love it. Todd, thanks so much for joining us. Really appreciate it.

Nah, this was really fun.

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