Think Better Win More With Tony Lopes, Esq.

Hello, my friend, and welcome to another episode of Negotiate Anything. Thanks for spending time with us today. It's listeners like you in 181 different countries that have made Negotiate Anything the most popular negotiation and conflict resolution podcast in the world. I'm your host, Kwame Christian. I'm a business lawyer, mediator, professor, and the director of the American Negotiation Institute. Before we get started, I have two quick questions for you. Is negotiation a critical part of what you do? Do need to resolve conflict and persuade at work? If you answered yes to both of those questions, visit our website to learn more about our negotiation workshops. We've traveled the country working with professionals just like you, and we'd love to have the opportunity to work with you, too. Check out the link in the description to learn more. Tony, thanks for joining us.

Thanks, Kwame. It's great to be on your show.

Yes, it's great to have you on our show. It's long overdue. I've been on your show twice, so I need to get you on now and then very soon after. But for the guests, tell them a little bit about yourself and what you do.

Yeah, so I academically and professionally, I'm an attorney, much like Kwame. I'm in the recovery program. I do still practice. I have my own practice called loplaw llc. Not the most clever name of all time, but but it works. It's evocative of what we do. And I also host the Self Made Strategies podcast, which Kwame, you've been gracious enough to be on twice, and we really appreciate you coming on and now having the opportunity to come back onto your show. I'm also an adjunct professor at Temple University's Fox School of Business, so I teach undergrad business students about intellectual property law and entertainment law.

Fantastic. Well, we are excited to have you. And this topic that we're talking about today is something really interesting and I can say with confidence no other guest has talked about it. And it is dualism, dualistic thinking in negotiation. So the three things we're going to talk about are, first of all, what is dual? And then next, how does dualistic thinking help in negotiation? And then how can incorporating this mindset into our practice lead to more understanding and empathy? So let's go ahead and start off with number one, what is dualism?

Well, so dualism in our context at least, because I don't want to go off on too crazy of a tangent here, comes from the concept of thinking about things from two different perspectives. So we in the West, I say the west sort of, you know, to generalize a little bit, and I apologize for that. But we in the west tend to think more linearly and more about one solution to any problem. Right. Eastern thinkers, maybe from the Asian countries, have more of a split thinking, philosophical background. Right. And it comes from culture and from history and all sorts of other things that have kind of impacted the way that we've gone in two different directions from a philosophical perspective. So just looking at Daoism and not to get too, too deep into this, if you look at the symbol yin yang, which most of us recognize, some people might look at that and say, well, there are two opposites there, right? A white half and a black half. And if you look closely, you'll see that the black half includes a little bit of white and the white includes a little bit of black. And that's exactly what we're talking about here. That in reality, if you think about it, most things are not exactly opposites, even though we're sort of conditioned to think of them as opposites. Right. So you might think of Democrats and Republicans as opposites, for example, or you might think that someone you're in the middle of an argument with has a polarized view to what you're thinking about. And sometimes if you think about, for example, hot and cold, to take it to a very simple version, you might think that those two things are opposite. Well, quite frankly, they're all really just two parts of the same hole. Right. You can't show me where hot ends and cold begins or vice versa. They're really just from the perspective of another or relative to another thing. Right. And the same thing happens in negotiations. So when we're talking about dualism with respect to negotiations, we're talking about being able to view a problem or a point of conflict from both sides so that you can better argue not only your point, but see things from the point of your opposition.

Yeah, this makes a lot of sense and I can see how it can help in these negotiations. And one of the things that we have to do is when we talk talk about beneficial things that we can incorporate to our practice, we have to understand what the barriers are. And so you talked about the barrier that might come from our Western approach, our mindset. What else makes it so hard for us to incorporate this type of mindset into our negotiations?

Well, quite frankly, that's a great question, by the way. Quite frankly, I think one of the things that causes that is sometimes just the antagonistic approach approach that many people take to a negotiation or a conflict, depending on what we're talking about. Right. And if you think about it, we're kind of juxtaposed into these positions throughout our culture, predominantly in the United States, across the world, things might be a little bit different. So the idea is I like to consider myself a collaborator more so than an antagonist, even in my legal practice, but definitely in all of my relationships, I try to take that approach. And I think when you look at it from a more collaborative, let's find a mutual goal, rather than how can we air quotes, compromise so that, you know, you air quotes get something that you want, and I air quotes get something that I want, and we really both just end up unhappy. Right. Nobody gets. Nobody really gets what they want. But what we need to do is think about this third sort of entity that exists. So there's you, there's I, and then there's us. And when you look at it from that perspective, it adds to this sort of more dualistic approach to negotiating or arguing and helping us to overcome some of those hurdles.

Yeah, this is great. I like this. And I'm a professor like you, and that's one of the things with my students, especially in the law school, that I have to. I have to really force them to understand. I shouldn't say force. I help them to understand. Oftentimes there's a little bit of unlearning that has to happen. Because again, going to what you said, we have this false dichotomy that's presented with our adversarial legal system. It's me versus you. I defend myself, you defend yourself. Let's go at it. And what I have to tell the students is, listen, we're not litigating yet. We can still try to work something out. And then I'm sure for you, as an attorney, you've had those situations where the other person is taking a very adversarial approach. And then you have to find a way to get them to approach it a little bit differently. So let's transition into the second part, when we're talking about more in depth, how it affects negotiation. What if you're in a situation where you have embodied this approach and you're trying to approach it in a way that incorporates what they want and thinking from their perspective, but they haven't done it. They're just straight antagonistic and adversarial. What can you do when you're confronted with somebody like that?

Well, it's funny you mentioned that, because I'm in the middle of one of those right now. I may have some Case study examples to provide, but of course I'll keep the names out of it to protect the innocent. We are in the midst of a dispute among business partners. And in that context, there's a situation that arose where we basically made the side, the other side, an offer that was. Right, cut to the quick, right? We know you want this. We're going to put this out there. And it was such a good offer, so collaborative, that the other side is basically looking for, what am I missing here, right? Like, how are they scamming me in this? And we're basically saying, no, we're, we know you want this and we would rather put the past behind us and move on. So let's just cut to the quick. We'll give you what you want right now if you give us what we want. And we're just in this weird cement mixer of very slow moving kind of process to try to get them to understand. So one of the major hurdles that occurs when you're trying to implement this with someone who's a traditional antagonist, as you kind of pointed out, and that's very prevalent in the legal industry in this country, unfortunately, is that you're going to get some pushback because they're not used to it, right? They're not used to a collaborative approach and they don't understand why the other side is offering me something that seems too good to be true at times, maybe. And so the way to overcome that is to be ultra transparent. Of course, you know, being attorneys, and you and I know this, of course, so we'll just elaborate on this a little bit. I do have a duty, a fiduciary duty to my client to represent them in the best way possible. So I do have to protect their interests. I have to be careful about what I say and how I position it. But there are ways to say, look, we want to move past this. Do you really want to litigate? Sometimes a good way to overcome that is to say, do you really want to waste hundreds of thousands of dollars in litigation? Do you really want to go to battle over this? Is it worth it? Maybe we can find a ground that's mutually beneficial. And that is the key, by the way, is genuine search, curiosity for a mutually beneficial way to protect the we part that we were talking about, right? When we're looking at it from you or I, you or I, we're still stuck in this sort of one track mind style of thinking. It's not dualistic, right, because we can only look at those perspectives from one side or the other. But when we look at it from this us or we approach, we start to see a bigger picture that involves a collaborative solution to our problem.

Right now that makes a lot of sense. And I really like the metaphor that you used of a cement mixer because sometimes you, you think you're in a situation where, okay, this is pretty straightforward. We're just going to have a conversation, work it out, and then you say, oh, no, it's one of those cement mixer kind of conversations. And here's the reality. You can't make the cement mixer go faster. It's just, it's going to take time. It's going to take time, and with certain people, it's just going to take a little bit more effort. And one of the concepts I talk about in the negotiation trainings for the American Negotiation Institute and when I'm teaching this that I talk about often is called reactive devaluation. And I call it the just because you said it, I don't believe it bias, because it sounds like that's what happened there. You gave them what they wanted and they said, no, no, no, there's got to be a catch. But I really like your approach there by using transparency. And I think for everybody out there, this is something that we can utilize. But you have to be very, very mindful about the way you do it because sometimes you share too much and then you can't take that back. And so I encourage everybody out there to those free negotiation guides, if you haven't done it yet, so go to americannegotiationinstitute.com and/guide and you can get those guides. And there's a link in the description there. 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 to learn more. And now back to the show. This is great. And let's wrap this up with talking about empathy and understanding. I think we can spend a lot of time here. How does this approach help us to be more Empathetic and understand at a higher level.

Well, I'll start with a Abraham Lincoln quote. And not to get too pedantic, but I think he's one of the greatest orators and probably one of the most compassionate leaders that this country has seen. The quote I'm going to cite is, do I not destroy my enemies when I make them my friends? And if you think about that really deeply, if you meditate on that, you might come to the conclusion that, yeah, if I start collaborating with everyone, it's going to be really hard to have enemies. Because if I take this value forward approach, it's just. It starts to disarm people. That's why the genuine transparency in a negotiation that's become hostile can just bring the room to a dead stop and make it silent. Right. Because people become disarmed by it. Especially in our society today, we know that there's a lot of negativity in the news and in the press, and with everything that's going on in the world, we're in this position where people are looking for someone to just say, hey, I notice you, understand you and hear what you're saying. Truly, truly, genuinely. You can't fake that, by the way, because you will get found out one way or the other. You just cannot go that long with this sort of fake Persona of genuineness. It doesn't exist. And what I found, both professionally and even in my friendly relationships, is that the more genuine and transparent you seem to become, the less scam artists and antagonistic people seem to radiate. It's almost like a repellent to them. Like, ah, this is too much work. I'm gonna go find somebody else. So I found that taking that approach, taking this dualistic approach in and of itself requires compassion, empathy, thoughtfulness, active listening. All very good traits for someone who's going to be a good negotiator, right?

Absolutely.

Yeah. I think that that's where sort of the rubber meets the road.

This is great, Tony. This is fantastic. And I'll tell you, one of the things that I love about doing this show is that I learn something every time I do it. Yes, I'm teaching it. I negotiate all the time, whatever. But every time I learn something new. And this is an important remind too, because I am right now in the middle of a negotiation that is getting higher than I would like on the annoying scale. I'm focusing on my frustrations and the frustrations of my client. Now I'm also practicing at Carlyle, Patchen and Murphy doing business law. There and it's frustrating right now. And we received an offer, a counter proposal. I felt like we've been done with this negotiation on five or six different times over the past three months or so, and he made a counter proposal without much explanation at all. And so the natural inclination is to just go right back. Right. Going. Using that straightforward approach instead of taking a step back and using a little bit of empathy. Let's think about it from a different perspective. I don't understand why I need to figure out the interest behind the request. And then I also need to express myself instead of just expressing how people pissed off I am right now and let them know exactly what the problem is with this new counter. And so I really appreciate this because it is, it is changing the tenor of my next email that I'm going to send. We all need those reminders from time to time.

Absolutely. Yeah. And to your point, look, we're both podcasters, by the way, anyone who's listening who wants to check out our show, www.selfmadestrategies.com or self made Strategies, wherever you enjoy your podcasts or on YouTube. And again, I appreciate the opportunity, Kwame, but one of the things that you said is that you're always learning, right. And I think that's a part of this, is having sort of this growth mindset leads you into a more dualistic approach. Right. By the way, meditation, mindfulness, empathy, compassion, all of those things start to kind of become a part of this sort of new cocktail of or new toolbox of tools and solutions that you'll have in your negotiations. The major issues and the warning I give, again, is that genuineness is a minimum requirement of it at its core level. And to the other side, air quotes to the, to the individuals who are more, you know, egotistical in their negotiation style. Right. All about me. I'm going to try to win as much as I can. The warning is that when you're across the table from someone who's one of these more collaborative and dualistic thinkers, you really don't want to piss them off by trying to take too much when they're being transparent. That can shut a negotiation down very quickly. Because what will end up happening is, let's say I come to Kwame and we're negotiating on behalf of our clients and everything's going well until we finally get to the key sticking point. If it's a residential deal or a business merger and acquisition deal, maybe it's the selling price, right? You obviously want more. If your client's the seller I want more if my clients. I want less if my client's the buyer. Right. So the biggest problem that can occur in one of these sort of more collaborative style negotiations is if I come to the table and genuinely say, look, we're going up 10,000. You're coming down 10,000 on every one of these back and forth counter proposals. Why don't we just meet in the middle? Let's cut to the quiz. We're going to end up there anyways. Let's settle on, you know, let's say we started at 200 and 300. Let's settle on 250 right now. And I put my hand out to shake it and you go 245. That is one of the worst things you can do. Because once somebody's shown their cards, this has happened to me, by the way. Of course, once somebody has shown their cards and kind of opened up to you, they've sort of extended an olive branch of vulnerability, if you will, and transparency. And now to take the approach of I'm going to get a little bit more out of this. Just it will break down in negotiation very quickly. So for the individuals who might be listening that don't want to take this approach, and I'm not saying that it's for everyone because of the genuineness that's required, the individuals who. This just doesn't fit within your style. Be very cautious about your strategy and your empathy. Think about dualistically about what the other side might be doing or thinking, because you could break down the negotiation very quickly and odds are that that sort of, that vulnerability, the reaction on the back end if you go against it will be very bad. It could be a deal killer.

Absolutely. And it's really. I like what you just said there too, because it helps us to understand too, as we embody this dualistic mindset, as we try to be a little bit more vulnerable with our information. We're not advocating for being naive and we're not advocating for not meeting your interests in these conversations. You have a responsibility to yourself. And especially for us as attorneys, we have responsibilities for our clients to do what's best in these situations. We have goals and we need to meet them. But if we recognize that the other person isn't meeting us with this type of approach, then we have to adjust and we have to be more assertive. We're still going to be respectful in everything. But again, we are not at all advocating for kind of laying down and getting and letting people roll us over. And so I think what's really cool about this approach is that it helps us to create better relationships, it helps us to be more collaborative, but at the same time, we can be assertive and get what we want and need out of these conversations.

Yeah, I agree. I actually think it's more powerful than an antagonistic, you know, hammering the fist on the table, cursing, or trying to disarm the other side with, you know, high pressure tactics. I actually think this is way more powerful and impactful. And if you're coming from even a different perspective, let's take someone who's in more of a sales role. Right. Which quite frankly, sales is a negotiation. Right. Every single transaction is some form of negotiation. Either they buy or they don't. But that's ultimately the sort of input output that happens right at the end of the day. Now when we're looking at those, if you take this more collaborative value add, I care only about the client and what they care about, you're going to see your sales numbers spike astronomically because people will be rushing to buy from you over your competition merely because you're the genuine, trustworthy, forthcoming individual. That is so refreshing that they're just going to want to be around you. And that's just the way it happens. Trust me that my. My performance. I've been in sales positions in the past, and obviously, you know, as attorneys, we sell our services. And quite frankly, honestly, I'm one of those individuals that think you're selling all the time, no matter what. You may. You either realize you're a salesperson or you don't realize you're a salesperson, but either way, you're a salesperson. And so one of the things I would say is I've seen a lot more success when there's no pressure, speaking purely and with genuine curiosity about a client or an individual. And they just. People start to radiate to you, if they need an attorney, you're the person they're probably going to call because you were nice to them and because you actually cared about them enough to listen to their story and to get to know them on an individual level. So this dualistic thinking really starts to apply more and more and more in all of the relationships that we have and thinking about, okay, you know, how can I make this individual's life better, even if it's just for five seconds? And you're going to see drastic changes in all of the discussions and conversations that you're having.

This is great, man. I'm so glad we had you on the show today, Tony.

This has been Fantastic.

Yeah. So before you go, let the listeners know again, remind them again about the podcast and your law practice in Philly.

Thanks. Thank you very much for the opportunity. I appreciate it. Yeah, both. Either way, you can contact us@infoloxlawlc.com if you need an attorney or you're just looking to have a conversation and need some advice. We don't charge any of our clients for an initial consultation or just to have a quick discussion on the phone about a problem that you're having. So feel free to shoot us an email and we'll be happy to get back to you. Or you can find the podcast Self Made Strategies. We're on Instagram, elfmadestrategies, All one word or self made Strategies. Wherever you listen to podcasts, Apple podcasts, Google Podcasts, etc. On YouTube. Self made strategies. And you can also reach out to us@infoelfmadestrategies.com Fantastic.

Thank you again, my friend. We really appreciate it.

Thanks, Kwame. This was great.

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