The Art of Negotiation: Chit-Chat Between Two Negotiation experts, Mikkel Gudsøe and Kwame Christian

I have some incredible news. My second book, how to have Difficult Conversations About Race, is now the number one new release in its category on Amazon. I'm so excited, so excited for this because we've put a lot of work into it, and this was risky because as a lawyer who's focusing on negotiation and conflict resolution, talking about race seems for many to be outside of the scope of what I usually do. But again, how are we defining negotiation? We define negotiation as anytime you're having a conversation and somebody in the conversation wants something. And as the podcast is titled Negotiate Anything, we can negotiate anything.

And in my years of doing all.

Of this work in the professional world, difficult conversations about race is something that comes up over and over and over again in the workplace. And there isn't really a solid resource out there that blends the fundamentals of negotiation and conflict resolution and effective communication with this particular topic. So it's risky. It is risky to venture in this way. But I'm really excited and encouraged by this early result. So this is not just a win for me, this is a win for you too, because you are part of this tribe. And so a quick note about the book. Who did I write this for? I wrote this for the person who was passionate about changing the world and their organizations for the better. The the leader who leads a diverse team, and the professional who wants to learn how to overcome the hidden barriers that make it tough to connect with people with a different background. So whether you consider yourself an ally or just want to avoid making a critical mistake when discussing race, this book is for you and for you as a podcast listener, I'm making a direct request. After six years and over 600 episodes.

Of Negotiate Anything, I'm asking for your.

Support in this endeavor to make the world a better place. Our goal of the American Negotiation Institute is to change the world, and this book plays a crucial, critical role in making that happen. And we would love to have your support. We have the links in the description.

Of this episode so you can get.

Your copy of how to have Difficult Conversations About Race.

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 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.

Well everybody, you are in for a treat today.

I just finished the call with our guest Mikkel and he. He's incredible. He's incredible. So incredible in fact, that we had an agenda for what we were going to talk about and then we just started chit chatting and the conversation turned into what serendipitously became an incredible longer form podcast. So I hope you all enjoy it. And this is just an example of what happens when you put two negotiation experts in a room talking about negotiation. And it really speaks to the spirit of what I want this podcast to be. These are conversations that I would have regardless. We just happen to record it and share it with the world. So here's a behind the scenes look at what my conversations with other experts in the industries usually looks like. Hope you enjoy it. And then we'll have him back on to talk more specifically about the Ukraine and Russia negotiations and what hypothetically we could do to potentially get that done. So I think that'll be a really impactful episode. But I hope you enjoyed this one in the meantime.

So yeah, my name is Mikael Gulsrg. I'm a Danish negotiation expert, former lawyer, specialized in negotiation and conflict resolution. I've also been an honorary associate professor at Aarhus University in Denmark, where I teach legal negotiation since 2008. And I work with clients and companies in so many aspects of conflict resolution and negotiation. And it has been my entire focus also in my career. Before I became a negotiation and mediation consultant, I worked for almost a decade as chief attorney in the Danish Federation of Fashion and Textile, dealing with negotiation and conflicts all around the world. In the industry, I've been an executive vice president for a large company in Denmark where again, focus was on getting the best negotiation, getting the best out of conflicts, you know, dealing with conflicts effectively. So I'm happy to be on the podcast and meet a fellow exquisite negotiator like you.

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

But before we start the actual podcast, Kwame, I just want to hear a little bit about American Negotiation Institute. Did you start it and what came across your mind? Because my company used to be named Negotiation Institute in Denmark, but then I just changed it to my name like got so aps, but I still have it as I still have it as a buy company name Negotiation Institute. So maybe you're just also another passionate like me and created American Negotiation Institute.

That's exactly what happened. That's exactly what happened. You know, because I love negotiation and I'd like you see the power of negotiation to really change the world. And so for me, one of the goals was first of all to create a movement to help people to understand how empowered they are to affect change. So I wanted to create a tool that could do that. And so that's where the podcast came from and then grew into trainings and things like that. So it's cool to see it catch on like this.

It's great. And when you build it from the scratch as you have done and as I have done and being able to live of it and still and spread competences that people can do good things with for themselves and for the companies and for colleagues and friends, it's quite amazing. The thing I'm growing more and more into is that I treat negotiation like fitness. So I actually have a program, I actually have a program called Negotiation Fitness where I tell my client, yeah, I tell my client, well, it's like a muscle, you know, you can go to Howard and take a five days course or a seven days course or whatever and then you get a fine diploma. But if I meet you 10, two years down the line, maybe just one year down the line, most likely you will have fallen back to your old habits because it's like, it's like knowing how to train and how to eat, but not going to the gym and not choosing the right food. So you may have taken a course at your Negotiation Institute or with me, but if you don't put that knowledge into action continuously, you will still have a dead body at the end of the day. So that's why I compare it to fitness. I personally know everything about how to eat and train properly, but I just don't necessarily do it. So I'm just like regularly built. And to me negotiation is sort of the same thing. If you don't put yourself in doing the right stuff continuously, you will know all of the things. You'll know the patina, you will know the sopa, you will know all these fancy terms. But if you don't do it, if you don't prepare for the majority of your negotiations as you should Prepare. If you don't execute tactics, strategies, thoughts about strategic decision making, then you have become smarter, but not better at negotiation. You know more, but you are not growing as a skilled person. Yeah. So maybe that's one of the things we can touch upon as well. Because I really started to in my older years, I'm 44 now. But when HR departments are calling me and saying, oh, will you come and train our people? And I say, well, train is a continuous thing. So if you're talking about a one day or two day course, it's more of an entertainment and enlightening experience. It's not necessarily a transforming experience. So either you can book me for two day course or one day course. And every quarter I can visit them for half a day to keep, keep them up to beat, or you can initiate it internally.

But.

Unfortunately I recognize a lot of the HR departments, they do it to tick off. We have, we have, we have now given the employees a course. Right. Yeah. They don't necessarily check on the bottom line if it moves the needle in terms of shorter time spent negotiating, better results of negotiation or whatever. A lot of them, they don't really measure it. They just take it off as an employee benefit or something along those things. I don't know if you share the same opinion as I. Oh my God.

Yeah, I'm smiling so. Because I say the same thing to my clients and our staff every single day. Because you're right. I think a lot of times it's performative. People are checking their boxes so they could say, hey, my negotiation team is trained. But that doesn't necessarily mean that they've become better negotiators. And I think it's a lot of theater behind it. When you think about any sport. Imagine if the owner of a sports team went to the coach of the sports franchise and said, hey, what are you doing to improve the performance of the team? Hey, we had a training camp. It was one week long, five hours a day. And they're, they're great. That's a great start. So what else? What do you mean what else? You're not training during the, during the season. You're not reviewing the tapes and seeing how well you did and tweaking performance. Nothing. So once a year is, the coach would be fired. And I think that the professional athletes take their professional development a lot more seriously. They're constantly practicing. But with, with the business world, it's like there's not a full appreciation of what it means to constantly improve and get better. And I tell my team this all the time, as much as possible, can't always pull it off. But probably 95% of the trainings that I deliver, I have somebody on my team watching me do the trainings and immediately they call and give me feedback. So I Kwame Christian I'm getting better at delivering the material because there's no limit to how good you can get at your craft, especially when we're talking about soft skills.

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 want one. I'd suggest reaching out soon so you don't miss out. Check out the link in the description.

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And I, I also believe it's like when, when they do the training and they return, it's like imagine how many people who go to like a personal trainer, I get one hour of round trip in the fitness center and then they are on their own. How many of those people who have received one hour personal coaching ends up getting consistently better in shape, Whereas those who have a coach who two times a week meet them in the gym, measure them, talk to them, how have your eating habits been since last time, where you feel accountable to that person, etc. Even there we see people that are not getting great results, but the majority are getting better results than if they just get a training and then they are left on their own. Because at the end of the day, your old habits are in many instances stronger than your new learned capabilities and skills if somebody is not helping you to focus on them. Right. So it's really a thing that has started to fascinate me over the years and some clients think I'm just trying to sell more. But I'm saying, well, I'm just trying to create results. And to me it really is like going to the gym. You know, if you stop going, you will lose your muscle mass, you will lose your peak performance and then. Yeah, but has it then been wasted? No, because you have something called muscle memory. So once you return to the gym, you can pick it up exactly fairly quick. Fairly quickly. So that's what I call all the knowledge I give them about negotiation. That is muscle memory, because now you have it, but if you don't apply it, it will only be negotiation memory, not negotiation skills.

Bingo. Oh, that's beautiful. Yeah, you're spot on.

Spot.

So that's. Maybe we could do a negotiation fitness course one day. That could be cool.

I love that. I love that. I love that. This is great. And I was thinking, like, even this little snippet here, this could be maybe like a bonus episode or something, because I think it's so important, especially you think about procurement teams. Procurement team, sales teams. For instance, one of our clients, we have a lot of Fortune 500 clients, and their spend could be like $2 billion. And I remember one time I was telling one of our clients about this. He's like, all right, so I'm going to have to justify this expense to my leader here to the cfo. How do I do that? What would you expect me to say? I was like, so tell me your spend. He's like, yeah, we're at about 2 billion. I said, just tell him that we'll try to make you 1% better. That's. Yeah, you know, just.

Just 1% is extraordinary amount of money. Right, Exactly. That's why I also tell. Well, I'm not here to. To teach you how to negotiate. I'm here to teach you to negotiate better because you already know how to negotiate. I'm just trying to give you better. Just like everyone can walk into a fitness center and can train and do something, but I'm just giving you the right amount of sets, the right amount of tension, the right amount of exercises to get the most out of your negotiations. And then you. And then. And then it's up to you afterwards, do you want to go to the gym and be effective, or do you want to skip the gym and do what you've always done? That's up to you. You know, I'm just giving you the tools, but the responsibility for you as a negotiator is on you. And that's what I really emphasize a lot when I do the training. I say, well, I cannot lift the weights for you. I can show you how to lift them properly. And the funny thing, because I train a lot of lawyers and upcoming lawyers, and the amount of time they spent on preparing for the oral hearing in a litigation where they really rehearse all their arguments, all their pictures they can use in the framing of the procedure, the oral procedure procedure. And then I say, well, why are you doing that? Oh, because I'm trying to convince the judge. Okay. But in a negotiation, you're trying to convince the other party. How come when you're entering a negotiation, which you do far more often than you litigate, that you spend so much time on your oral procedure in a litigation, Right. And then when you negotiate, it's like on the way in the car, you scribble down some ideas. I'm pretty sure your clients would like you to be equally prepared, maybe even more so in a negotiation than in a litigation. And another crazy thing, I think, is that lawyers, they think by definition that they are great negotiators because they have this sort of oral capabilities and they are good at speaking. However, the only thing the law study, or most of the law study focuses on is how to convince a judge or a jury, which are neutral third parties, where negotiation is always a subjective counterpart. And, and, and, and that's why when I, I tell the lawyers, well, negotiation requires a different skill set than what you do when you litigate. Because when you litigate, you try to convince a neutral person to say yes to you in negotiation. You're trying to convince someone that is subjective and is sitting on the other side of the table. You're trying to get them to say yes. And they, and their mind is not operating from a neutral standpoint. So if you think that you can use the same verbal techniques that you use in litigation towards a subjective counterpart, that is why you have distributive negotiations going over and over and ending up in litigation. And who's paying for that? The client. And the client think that you. That it just ended there because it couldn't go anywhere else. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. But we know for a fact, and you know for a fact, when we give 50 people the A side of A case and 50 people the B side of a case, and we get them together and negotiate one on one, they, if not 50 different results, they get at least four or five sort of, broadly speaking, different results. Right. Some don't reach an agreement. Some is close to recent agreement. Some end in a worse relationship than the case started off, and some end in a good agreement, and some end in a fantastic agreement. And then I say, so we now know it's not the case that's the issue. It's the people administrating the case. Because if Mikhail and Kwame can get a great result from the case and two other people can get a worse relationship out of the case, but it's the same case. It's Only the people involved and the interaction between those people. That is my definition of why negotiation is important. Right?

You're so right. And speaking as a lawyer, I see this all the time. Because you think about it, we think that there's this belief amongst lawyers and clients have of lawyers that we're expert negotiators just because we do it all the time. But you don't become an expert simply by doing things a lot. You have to actually hone and practice your skills. Right. And so the thing that people don't realize is that at least in the United States, negotiation, conflict resolution, mediation, all that stuff, those are elective classes. They're not mandatory, and there are very few of them even available in schools. And so you're absolutely right, because when I train lawyers, and sometimes I would ask them same questions that you do, so I would say, hey, how long would you take to prepare for litigation? And they say, oh, I mean, at least weeks, but months go into the preparation, and then the two or three weeks, like two to four weeks going into it. I mean, that's all we do. We just prep for that. I say, okay, that's great. That makes sense. You're prepared, right? Good. So what percentage of your cases actually settle before they go to trial? They're like, oh, 95%. How much time do you spend preparing for the negotiations and the mediations? And then there's usually silence at that point because they realize the massive discrepancy. Because, yes, it's great that you're well versed in the case, but just having the data and the knowledge and the facts and the legal precedent, that's. That's important to have. But when you're having the negotiation actually going back and forth, there's a bit more art to that than just being right. You know, there's a strategic preparation that's lacking, and that's what they miss a lot of times.

Well, I have. I've taught at the law school of Aarhus University since 2007, 2008. Ish. At the course called Legal Negotiation, both the Danish version and the English version. And it's striking to see that it's. It's becoming one of the most popular courses. You know, it's constantly filled, but it's still on. It's on master's level. You know, it's on when you are doing the master degree. And it's an elective. It's not a mandatory course. And I would really like it to be a mandatory course. Not for me to make more money, but to make sure. That all of the students get these skills right, or at least gets introduced to them, and then they can later on, hopefully build upon them. And you're totally right when you say that just because you've done things a lot doesn't make you good. And again, my fitness analogy, I go to the gym three or four times a week. I just don't pay the right attention to the right amount of intensity, the right amount of sets. So I have an average male body, you know, and, and that's you. You can negotiate. You have negotiated the entire of your business career, but you have. If you have always done it without proper preparation, without proper intensity, proper focus, you have done it a lot. But you've, You've just done low intensity a lot. You have done. You, you have done. You have done. You have done. You have done average. You, you're. You have become an expert, average negotiator. And I'm not trying to, I'm not trying to point fingers. So that's why I use myself as a fitness example and say, well, but I'm also not selling myself as a fitness expert. Right? And if I was, you know, I'm pretty sure I would be. I would, I would need to use a lot of very experienced funnel. Funnel marketing to get people into my system and maybe even some, some editing of my photos, Heavy editing. So. Yeah, but. Yeah, but, but I really, I really think it's. It's important that you and I and our fellow negotiation experts and consultants all around the world that we don't view each other as competitors, but more like, you know, inspirational fellows, like a circle of people who want to actually give people tools to create a better situation for themselves and those around them and also recognize that this is not a listen and then you're better. This is a listen and apply and apply and apply and evaluate and apply. That's how you, that's how you, you do it. Right? And still, still, I, I don't know if it's the whole training culture or it's just a human, you know, we, we tend to skip our, you know, our basic behavior tends to be dominant regardless that we know we shouldn't go to McDonald's or we shouldn't go to Kentucky Fried or whatever. Even though we know it, we do it. And even though we know we should prepare for a negotiation, I think a lot of people think, well, look at themselves in the mirror. It could be better, but it's okay. And I think it's the same with negotiation. Well, I could prepare more, but Am I really sure I'm getting the results? Is it really worth it? And that's why, again, when I say, again, it's like fitness. You don't necessarily see the results immediately once you start to prepare properly. It's not necessarily results the day after because maybe you're not yet still relaxed enough to actually execute your preparation. You might get thrown off the balcony by someone changing the meeting setting or changing the agenda or showing up three people instead of two people or whatever, or insisting on a criteria to be discussed that you didn't have on your preparation or whatever. And then you grow frustrated and you lose your head. Maybe not in an angry way, but you lose your focus. All of these things, you know. So I usually say it's like, like running. You don't lose a couple of pounds by running three times in a week. It's only when you run three times in a week consistently. And. And it's the same with this, you know, so. So when people say, well, I. I did prepare a couple of times after the course, but I really didn't see much results right away, and I say, no, because you have, you have to do it until you become comfortable with it.

Exactly.

The first couple of times you run, you'll be sore. The first couple of times you prepare all the things you've learned at my course or your course or any other course, the first couple of times you do it, it will be a bit exhausting because you are not used to write down the questions you want to ask the other party. You're not used to consider the question that they will ask you and how you will respond to those questions if they arise. You are not used to thinking tactics. You have already. You have always used tactics. You have just not been aware that those were tactics. So just increasing your focus will fatigue you in some way until you have done it so many times that it becomes a bit more of an automatic thing where you see it while you're watching like this, where in the beginning you have to watch like this, you. And really focus on it. And that's exhausting. So it's. So that's why it's so easy to give up. You know, after a couple of times, you. You did what Kwame said or what Michael said or what Kelly Jensen or whatever said, and then you found out that it was, it was. It took a toll on your time and it took a toll on your energy level because you were not used to be focusing on so many things. And that's why I think a lot of People unfortunately, tend to quit just like in the gym. You know, they. They might keep going there, but they will end up, like, slacking around. And, and that's another thing, Kwame. I tell people, have you ever been to the gym for, like, 90 minutes? And people raise their hand, yes, very often. And I see. Have you ever seen somebody be in the gym for 45 minutes? And they have accomplished way more in those 45 minutes than you have? Yes, they have. And I say, okay, so can we agree that it's not necessarily the time that is the problem, it's how you use the time. Because if you say to me, I don't have time to prepare, but I actually think that right now you are using. You're wasting your time when you prepare because you have no structure in your preparation. And that's why when my students at the law school go to the oral exam, they have 30 minutes to read a case they haven't seen before, and they have to read it and analyze it, and they can do so in 30 minutes after 40 hours of training. But if I gave it to somebody, when I do it in my open courses where I train people for, like, a day and they get a case and they try to analyze it, they can't do it in 30 minutes because they need to be trained, you know, over and over again. But then eventually they can do it. It's like you start out by run 2 miles, 3 miles at 40 minutes, and then if you continue to do it, eventually you'll run three miles in 20 minutes. But you will only get there if you do it consistently. Right, so.

Exactly.

Yeah. I don't know how you, how you look at it. When you teach your clients, have you, have you tried to get them on board on this fitness idea of doing recurring training?

Yeah, we have. And it's, it's starting to catch on because I, I haven't done a, like a full day or two day or even a half day in a while because we're, we're pushing people to, to think about it differently. So the example I give is cramming for a test. We've all gone to school. We've all had those times where we weren't prepared. And then we spend, like, two days and two nights straight just preparing. And so you might take the test and you might. Who knows, you might pull it off, and you might be able to stuff enough in your mind to get an A or a B. But then if you have that same person show up a week or two later and say, take the Same test. They can't do it because it was not retained. So when you think about the science of learning, what they found is spaced repetition. Learning is the best way to go. So if you think about like a peaks and valley in the, in a graph, there's going to be a peak of learning right there. And then after a little bit of time, the memory is going to decay. And so we need to have the space between each pulse check of learning. So once it starts to go down, boom, we have another intervention at that point. And so now we're talking to our clients, talking to them about only doing 60 to 90 minutes increments and spacing it out between either like two weeks, a month, or maybe a quarter, based on budget, of course, and helping it so that each training builds on the last. We're reviewing a little bit of the key stuff and then building on top of that, so there's going to be a lot more retention. And they can actually take the time between those sessions to focus on one or two things to implement, put it into practice, then we build from there.

I like that a lot. I like, I like that a lot. That's not, not entirely the same, but one of the ideas behind the negotiation fitness is that after they have received like the full, full training, the idea is that every month or every two months, we can do like an online, you know, fitness training where we give the. Give them a case, they are assaulted into breakout rooms, they get time to prepare it, and then they can negotiate, and then we can bring up certain topics. Like in, in this case, I want you to really prepare your questions and prepare for what questions the other party might ask and how you will respond to that in a confident manner. Because sometimes people will ask you questions that if you are not prepared, you will be uncomfortable. And sometimes you will be so uncomfortable that you speak the truth to the question. But you would actually have liked to maybe conceal some of the information. Not in order to be a bad person, but in order to. Maybe it's a business secret. Maybe you get asked a question that is essentially tapping into your business secret. And if you're not prepared for it, then maybe out of the sheer stress of getting that question, you'll reveal something that you wouldn't, had you been trained to take a pause before you answer and had you maybe rehearsed two or three standout responses to questions you were not prepared for. Because I'm not teaching my client to prepare for every question in the world. I'm teaching them. Are there something that you would Ask you if you were the other party and after that, if you, if you get questions outside of that, how can you respond confidently and not be a deer caught in the headlights of a car. Right. And not come across teeth or you know, nervous or whatever bodily reaction you get when you, when you get uncomfortable. Right, Because I also teach, I'm sure you do too, that being uncomfortable is not only revealing something, it's also creating uncomfortability, uncomfortable feelings in, in the counterpart. Right. Because we have the mirror neuron. So when we see someone, when we see someone getting uncomfortable, we sort of get uncomfortable as well. And from there the quality goes down in the conversation and the negotiation. Not necessarily it breaks down, it's. The quality just goes down. But I like the idea that you say that just keeping it like 60, 90 minutes. And maybe it's also easier for people to, especially in these days, to fit into their everyday life because I also see, as you probably also do when you do one day courses or two day courses, that people tend to have their laptop in front of them and they can, their attention span can drop. And also not because they are like generation set, but because they have inboxes building up. Right. And they also need to text the wifi who is getting the kids or who is making dinner tonight. And, and, and, and I like the idea of doing the 60, 90 minutes and then have them really focus on one skill because even, you know, even active listening, everybody has heard about active listening, but, but so few do it. You know, you can, you can feed pics with people who know about active listening, but once you give them a negotiation case, they do very little active listening. That's why I say, well, it's because you have grown smarter. You have not grown better.

Yep. Yeah, no, you're absolutely right. And you think too about the science about focus. People can focus really intently, intensely for about that 60, 90 minutes. So I want to be able to, I want to do these trainings in a way that maximizes absorption. And so I know that if I go beyond that, science tells me that there's going to be wavering of the focus. And I don't know when it's going to happen. It's going to be different for different people, but I can guarantee that people are going to be missing critical information. And so we're not all learning together. And then when it comes to like focusing on one thing, that was tough for me because when you think about the different negotiation techniques, there are hundreds of that we could teach. And so I felt a lot of pressure early in my career to try to give people as much as possible. But then when I would come back and say, all right, what did you learn from the last training? People would just focus on one or two things and so it was better for them to settle it down. And then lastly to that point, with talking about knowing how to respond to those questions, again, like that in itself could be like a narrow training on how to respond because you have two options. So let's say you're negotiating with somebody who is not well trained in negotiation, which most likely the other person is not. So with talking about the mirror neurons, I feel uncomfortable, they feel uncomfortable. They don't know what's happening on your side. They just see that something's weird. But I don't know how to read it, I don't know what to do with it. The entire interaction goes down. Then on the other side, you might be against, up against somebody who is well versed in negotiation. And so it's all about asking great questions. I'm going to ask the question and I'm not just going to see what you say in your response. I'm going to see how you respond. And if I see that discomfort and I see that hesitation, even if your words, if we look at the transcript of your words and you actually answer it well and conceal the thing that you wanted to hold, I'm going to see as a negotiate, as a trained negotiator, I see blood in the water. There was something there. You revealed a vulnerability. I don't know what it is, but I am going to really hone in on that thing and dig deep into it. And so there's so many nuances into this. And again, a lot of people, they don't really see it and they're not willing to invest in getting better at it.

I smiled a bit when you said in the beginning of your teaching career that you wanted to cramp as much knowledge into your seminars and your workshops. Right. And I did the same thing. I just recently started trying to really cut down on my slides and on my skills that I want to teach people because I don't think it was out of an imposter syndrome, but I think it was out of the. I want people to feel that negotiation is really a science or an art or whatever you want to call it. So I really wanted them, even in a one day course, to touch upon strategies, tactics, negotiation types, negotiation personalities, body language, active listening, questioning techniques, all of that in one day, you know, and people left, people left amazed about how Entertaining and how interesting it all was, but putting it into practice was another thing. And then I started realizing, oh my God, for many, many years I got people smarter, but I gave them tools. But I gave them so little training in the tools that, that the amount of homework that they would need to do just to be able to hold the hammer and the saw correctly, they would never go, they would never do the homework. Right. So they left thinking it was a great toolbox, but they probably didn't become acquainted with any of the tools to a degree where they would actually start to build a house.

Yeah.

So I really think you're hitting the nail on those sort of expert things and we should not be afraid of telling people. Well, I could just, just questioning technique could be a full day. You know, just cutting it down to 90 minutes in itself is, is very condensed if you look at all the things you could touch upon. But having them focus just on that very single skill and maybe in between sessions. In between. That's at least the idea with my fitness negotiation. Negotiation fitness is that in between the sessions I want them to pick two episodes that they have been involved with where they did something good or they failed to do what we had talked about or where the other side did something that was very great in terms of questioning, if questioning is the issue, because that also, you know, puts a bit of a responsibility on, on, on them until the next time they meet the personal trainer. You know, if they, if they cannot show that they have been to the gym in between the sessions, they, they will be a bit embarrassed. So I don't make it like, oh, you need to give 10 examples over the last month, but just two examples of things that gives the accountability. And then I like, and I haven't done that yet, but I think it's a great idea about taking one topic and condense it into 60, 90 minutes and then, well, basically we, it could also be an online course, but then you lose some of the interaction. Right? Yeah, I like it.

Yeah, it's, it's. And I'll tell you, this was one of the things when I'm thinking about negotiating with the clients, even after the deal is done, I'm still negotiating with them to, to, to buy in to this methodology because we've been taught in this old school type of way for such a long time. So we have to share that science and, and, and help them through it. So I'll give an example. There was one like what, like a Fortune 50 company, a big company we were working with, they wanted us to train some of their up and coming leaders. And so they said, all right, we want this training. And so the first day we wanted on conflict resolution. You can talk about the Compassionate Curiosity Framework. Focus on that the next day. We want advanced leadership and persuasion strategies. And I said, strategies, plural. So you want multiple. They're like, yeah, we want multiple strategies. And we have all of these scenarios that we're giving you and we want to have a strategy for each one. And I was like, so, you know, this was a longer conversation, but letting them know, I'm not going to do that. I'm going to give you one strategy on day one, and I'm going to give you one strategy on day two. And that same straight. It's the exact same strategy. And I'm going to show you how that same strategy can be utilized in every single one of your scenarios that you've given me. You don't need more strategies. You need one right now and you can build on that. And they were really, really surprised to see just how versatile the Compassionate Curiosity Framework was. It's not just for emotion management. If you understand how to use the tool in various situations with exercises, so you can play around with it now, it can be utilized. But again, they're focusing. They're. A lot of people have that mentality where they're saying, the more techniques I learned, the better. Not necessarily. I think there. I mean, there are a lot of people. I mean, look at me. I don't build anything, but I have a whole lot of tools not helping me.

It is like going to the gym. You know, you can have like 50 machines. Right. But basically you could. You could be fine with five of them. Mm. You know, you basically. Basically you could be fine with them if you use the right focus and the right amount of intensity and the right amount of exercise and food supply. If you did that, you don't need all the other stuff. But it looks fancy. Right. And that's one of the things I'm really trying in the later years and onwards to. To simplify things a bit more. And I came across. And now we're not sort of changing a bit topic. But you said the compassion. What do you call it?

Compassionate curiosity.

Yeah, curiosity. Yeah. And I came across a couple of years ago a mediation format called transformative mediation.

Yeah.

Where because I was usually trained, I'm a mediator, I was also a lawyer, but I was usually. I was trained a traditional facilitative mediator, where you have certain sets of steps that you want to take the parties through in order to get them down the ladder and into brainstorming and into creative problem solving, all of that. And then I came across the whole transformative mediation because I was working with Constructive Institute in Denmark, which is trying to get journalists to be more constructive in their news coverage.

Wow.

That's because they have, they have the saying that the world doesn't need more news, we need better news. Right? And by better, it doesn't mean that we should close the eyes to the negativity of the world. It just means that every, every time you open like CNN.com or something like that, 90% of the news have a negative connotation. Child missing, shooting, bus crashed or whatever. And a lot of the media is irrelevant. You know, I can see a headline in Danish online media saying Bosch crashed in a yellow frame and a black text with a red mark on crashed. And then I click on it and then it's in Brazil, a school bus crash. And you know, it's sad and it's, it shouldn't happen and all of that.

That.

But it has found its way to a Danish media in order for me to click on it. And I think our brain is losing its relevance compass. Because if my brain gets fed since I'm a. Since childhood when I read news, if my brain gets fed that a bus crash in Brazil, however tragic it is, if that is as relevant as a guy is missing in Denmark, because those stories are placed next to each other with a yellow frames, both of them, my brain gets taught that everything is equally important. And what basically that does to your brain, I believe, is that everything, because not important becomes not important. So Constructive Institute works with that. And I was trying to work with something called Bridge Building Toolbox for how journalists can COVID negative stories or just conflicting stories in a more productive, constructive manner. And I came across the transformative mediation and I want to dig into your compassionate curiosity thing. But what I liked about transformative mediation is that they only focus on two important things, empowerment and recognition. So they say whenever two people or more are having a conflict, it is usually because empowerment inside yourself is going down. And when you lose empowerment, you start to be a wrong version of yourself. You scream at your children instead of talk to your children. You grab their arm instead of correcting them nicely. You interrupt people instead of hearing them out, you know, because you start to feel insecure, right? When you lose empowerment, you start to feel a bit more vulnerable and insecure. So you start to act in a more hostile, aggressive way or maybe passive way, but none of the Things are really something you want to be in a conversation, right? And at the same time, empathy is one of the first victims. When I start to feel disempowered, I start to become focused on myself and self centered. So my recognition for you starts to go down, right? So that's when I start to roll my eyes or I discredit what you say or I even say, well, it's like the last time you also did like this, you know, you start to blame. And the interesting thing about transformative mediation is that they have no focus on or a goal that the parties should reach an agreement. An agreement is only a byproduct of increasing the quality of the conversation and the transformative media. And I'm not trained trained in it, I'm just trained in it. But I really want to do it more because I think it's so interesting that if you manage to increase the empowerment in both parties and the recognition in both parties, the dialogue will enhance so much in quality that the parties themselves will want to find a solution or even if they don't find a solution, they will part ways, but they will have a higher degree of respect for each other as they part ways. So I have taken that into negotiation as well and said, well, when you find yourself in a negotiation, try to find your inner temperature on empowerment and try to find your inner temperature or on your recognition. If you start to feel that, oh, I'm disliking the other one, I something, pay attention to it. Because the moment you start to feel like that, that is where you start to go down the spiral in terms of constructiveness. So I really think we can borrow, even as negotiators, we can borrow from many of these techniques that various professions are using. And I really think the whole transformative mediation thing has an, an interesting thing. If you see a transformative mediation and there are some clips on YouTube, you will see there's a full mediation called the Purple House conversation that you can Google on YouTube and see it. Not Google on YouTube, but you can look it up at YouTube. Purple House conversation. When you see that, you will realize that the transformative mediator is doing something very, very differently than a normal mediator. Just to give you just one simple example, for instance, as a facilitative mediator, I was trained that if Kwame said to another party in a mediation, I think he's an idiot because he terminated the contract without giving me a notice, then as a facilitative mediator, I would usually soften your words and say, so what I'm hearing you say is that you were frustrated that he terminated the contract without giving you prior notice. But now I'm actually almost talking down to you because you use the word he's an idiot. So now I'm almost schooling you on what you should have said. And when I school you, I also disempower you. Right? So the transformative mediator, instead, one wants the person to. Because when I. When you call someone an idiot, it's because you have lost recognition for them. And you don't go around calling everybody an idiot when you are empowered. You use those words when you are insecure and disempowered, when you are not the best version of yourself. So what the transformative mediator does instead is they mirror. They don't soften, they mirror. So they look at you. And then instead of looking at the other party for their response, I'm looking at you who called the other party an idiot. And I say, so you think that he's an idiot because he terminated the contract without giving you prior notice. So what happens now is you see yourself on surveillance camera, and very often that is not how you would like to be seen. So you now have the opportunity to say, well, maybe he's not an idiot, but I just think it's a weird business practice not to give a notice of termination in due time. See, now you have re corrected your statement, but you have decided to do it because you saw yourself in a mirror and you recognize that this is not the kwame that I want to be. Much like if someone records you when you have yelled at your children, if you heard that recording, you would be embarrassed and you would like to rewind the situation. Right?

Yeah.

So, so, so, so that's, that's what transformed mediation is. So it's very interesting.

That's fascinating. And so, so I'm a. My background is in psychology, my undergrad degrees in psychology before getting into law. And so what this sounds like to me is a lot of Carl Rogers approach to therapy, the client centered therapy approach, where you were giving the client full autonomy on what they want to do completely. And instead of being, instead of trying to push people in a specific direction, you're that mirror. Like you said, you're reflecting themselves back to themselves. And they keep on digging deeper and deeper within their own psyche. And if. And it's really in their hands whether or not they want to transform or how they transform that cycle. That is fascinating. It's fascinating. I can see how it's definitely empowering. And I can See why it would be very difficult for it to catch on. Not because I'm questioning the efficacy, but I'm question. I'm realizing that for many mediators, ceding that level of control to the parties, especially when they're triggered and emotional, must be absolutely terrifying.

They say that the worst people to train as transformative mediators are mediators that have been trained in traditional mediation because we've been taught to do a lot of things that are great. It is not a saying that transformative is better than facilitative or whatever. It's just two very different approaches where for instance, when you call someone an idiot or you, you discredit them. If I would turn my head to that person, I am inter socially saying to that person that you should now speak as a response to Kwami's insult. But what if that person is not ready to speak, but I make them speak by just turning my head? Just the very, just the social construction of me turning my head to them is suggesting, so what do you have to say in response?

Response.

And now they feel obligated to respond. So they are not responding out of an empowerment that they feel they want to respond. They respond because you tell them to do it. Even though you don't say, what is your response? Just by turning your head and looking at them, you're sort of suggesting, now it's your time to speak up. But what if that person actually needs time to consume the insult, needs time to think about what the other party just said. So as a transformative mediator, the whole empowerment and recognition thing is really, really a tricky thing. And I'm not even an expert on transformative mediation. I just think even in a negotiation using some of the tools that you said, Carl Rogers. But the transformative tools of mirroring and they also have something called chicken and summary and check in is basically where you just ask the parties, what do you want to do now? Instead of saying, oh, right now I think we should go to this agenda point or this, then you're taking empowerment away from them because you are saying, now we go to this, now we do this, now we do that Again, I'm not saying it's wrong. But in a transformative mediation, the mediator is simply just asking the parties, what would you like to do do? And if one party says, well, I think we should leave if they say that with a loss of empowerment, body language say, well, I think we might as well just stop. That is a disempowered person, right? Because they're giving up on the situation. So now you would mirror to them and say, oh, so you want to stop. And you also mirror the body language so they see themselves on surveillance camera. And then they have the opportunity to say, yes, because I don't think we're. We're getting anywhere. Oh, so you don't feel you're getting anywhere? No, because I think we're going in circles about this topic. And I would like to talk about this topic. See, now the conversation is going on again because now we know we need to address this topic. So you, it's. So it's really fascinating instead of just. Because very often you would just say, if you, if someone said, well, I think we should just stop, then you might say, okay, so do you agree? You know, I would turn my head to the other side and say, so, do you agree? Yes, I think if he says there's nothing more to talk about, I think we should stop as well. And then you would say, okay, well, maybe we could schedule another meeting, blah, blah, blah. But imagine if you had just a mirror back to that person and you had actually made that person speak for himself until he revealed that, that he feels frustrated you didn't touch upon this topic and now suddenly the conversation starts to be about that topic. But you could also have ended the session. But now you have maintained the conversation and you have increased the quality of the conversation. And the person feel that now we're talking about something I wanted to talk about. So they feel empowered. Right? They have not been directed in a certain way, path or certain topic. They have chosen it themselves and they have been helped to see what they want to do, but they have not been asked to do anything. And that's what I find very interesting. So what you and I talk about, negotiation, I think it's sometimes interesting to consider because we all. Empowerment and recognition is like a fluctuation. When we are with people without thinking about it, and most people don't think about it, we go in and out of feeling empowered or disempowered or high recognition, medium low recognition. But I think if you as a person, as a negotiator, starts to become more aware of when you spot loss of recognition in another person or you spot loss of empowerment and you spot it in yourself, maybe you can change your way of negotiation with some very simple. Right.

I love that. And I think that really speaks to one of the things I like about, like about doing this podcast in general, because it's. I consider it intellectual cross training. Right. So if I'm a, if I'm an athlete, I'm playing basketball, for example. I could learn a lot from tennis, right. Of lateral movement. Right. And so with this, I'm there. I might be a negotiator. I mediated for a while, and I was trained in the facilitative model as well. But I use some of those mediation skills as a negotiator, But I was not trained in the transformative model, so that's new to me. But I can see how that model could be really effective given certain barriers that you run into. So somebody says something offensive, and usually our. Or we get defensive and then we fight back on what they're saying. But borrowing from this transformative model of mediation, you could reflect that back, inject some silence and see how they respond to looking in the mirror, and then the conversation can still stay productive. This is so cool.

Exactly. Because even if you're not a mediator, even if you are the counterpart or one of the parties in the negotiation and someone says, I think you're completely unprofessional, instead of reacting by saying, how dare you? You know, that is the most unprofessional thing to say. You know, look at your own behavior. And then we have a fight, right? What if we just said, oh, you think I'm unprofessional? And you mirror their face, you mirror their gesture, and you almost mirror the words one to one, and then you don't say anything else. And then maybe they will say, well, I think it's unprofessional not to listen to blah, blah, blah. And then I can say, well, I want to listen to you. And I think I listened to you. And I'm sorry if you didn't pick up the fact that I was listening to you. So tell me it once again and make me understand your needs. What you did here was actually borrowed a little technique from Transform to mediation. Not because you were a mediator, but you prevented yourself from reacting to the loss of recognition that was sent in your direction, which is very human to do. And then you stepped up on humanity and you maintained your composure, you maintained your empowerment. You spoke from a level of clarity of decision making, and not out of apathy or out of frustration or out of aggression. Because every time we do that, we are not the finest version of ourselves, right? We are a normal version of ourselves. Because it's normal to react with hostile in response to a hostile attack, right? That is normal. Either you fight back or you run away. So that's normal. So when I train people or I. I have mediations, I say all of these behaviors are completely normal. So I'm not trying to point fingers. I'm just trying to get you to be the most optimal version of yourself, because I know that you want yourself not to be like this. But most of us will be like this if we don't pay attention to our automatic responses to outside pressure. And I think you know it as well that sometimes we, maybe even in a workplace, it can be a certain colleague, they induce submissiveness into us. So when a certain colleague speaks to us, we become submissive and, oh, sorry, and I'll do better or I'll help you even more or whatever. Yeah, but another colleague or your wife or spouse or husband or family member, they induce, like, aggressiveness into you or domination, like, no, I don't have time to help you. And you will. You will act in a certain way towards certain people. And I think that's one of the things I also. I think you also train people in is recognize your own triggers. Is it when I meet someone of a certain profession, Is it when I meet someone of a certain age from a certain community, from a certain Fortune 500, then I get a bit more submissive or a bit more easy to push around because I feel less empowered to be on their turf? And if you don't realize these triggers, you will just have a lot of socially inherited automatic responses that are normal but not optimal. Yeah, so I use that a lot. I usually say a lot of our responses are normal, even though they are not optimal. So I'm trying to get people to understand normal behaviors and then personally normal behaviors, because it can also be that this is not normal for me, but you grew up in a certain way, that when you are exposed to a certain situation, your normal behavior is this, but it's not optimal. So we can have general normal behavior like most people will have, and then we have individual normal behavior like it's a normal behavior for someone who has been in an abusive relationship to go into another relationship that is abusive and another relationship that is abusive. And we can all see that's pretty normal because that happens. Because unfortunately, people have learned the habit of finding some sort of comfort in the stability of being in a controlled, dominated relationship. But we can all agree it's not optimal, but that is individually normal to that person. And the same with negotiations. We have a lot of normal responses as human beings, but we also have individual normal responses. Triggers, you might say, that sometimes bring the best out of us and sometimes bring the worst out of us, and we need to identify the worst so that we not 100% of the time, but maybe more of those times when we get exposed to that certain situation, we deal with it from a more empowered and recognizing point of position and thereby we get a better conversation and a better negotiation out of the situation rather than the same result in the same situations.

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