Top Tips: Mediation and Negotiation- Highlight Reel

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 AI, 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.

What do I want to do? And I was asked, like, you know, what kind of job do you want? And I said, I don't know. But I know that I really love mediating. I enjoy it. And my friend said, why don't you become a mediator? And I said, don't you need to be a lawyer? And this is a very common misconception. Like, a lot of even lawyers ask me, how are you a mediator? Like, you're not a lawyer. And I just want to dispel that myth for everyone that's listening right now that you do not need to be a lawyer to be a mediator. So I went and got certified. And the teacher who certified me also said, you know what, Alice? Of course, he was probably selling me, but it worked. He said, you should come and take my arbitration certification training. So I did both of those around the same time. So I'm a certified mediator and a certified arbitrator, and I have done, like, a few arbitrations.

Wow.

And I've been called, your honor, which is kind of a cool. But majority of the time, I am mediating. And so that's kind of how I circuitously got to mediation. And I feel like I use a lot of the skills that I learned as an actress in my mediations because I can, like, pull out, like, what's really happening underneath. And in acting and theater, we call that subtext. And so we're always having to read subtext. And when you're opening a script and you're seeing the words of whatever the characters are saying, as an actor, part of the Work is to try to understand under these lines, what is the other character's subtext? Always.

Always.

And so when I'm mediating, it's the same thing. It's trying to understand, like, what's happening, like, what's really going on underneath the words. And here's the scenario, but the scenario that's really in front of you is not the real scenario. It's usually some other scenario that's, like, hidden. What's the background agenda? So, like, really, I like in both in negotiation and mediation, is to uncover that secret.

Yes.

Oh, that's good. There's so much to delve into, but I want to focus on. Let's go deeper. When somebody wants to fix, let's say it might be somebody who has negotiation, background, whatever it happens to be they want to fix, what is it within themselves that they need to change in order to adopt a better mindset, to be a better mediator?

I love that question. I think it comes down to being able to let go, right? That. I mean, it's that maximum. It's not your conflict, therefore, it's not your solution. And sometimes, you know, it's one of those moments in training where you're just waiting for something to click, you know, And I see this, you know, training professional coaches as well. And I think for me, it comes down to the intention behind the action. Are you doing it for you? Are you doing it for them? Also, this idea that if. I mean, let me just take it from a very practical standpoint. If you are the negotiator who's now working in a mediation capacity, and you see the solution, you feel the solution, and then you give the solution. Yeah. Again, it might make you feel good. Right. And it gives you that, you know, dopamine hitting all the bad stuff. And it might work. It might work in the short term, but I guarantee you this, if you go back in the long term, you've removed ownership over that solution. Right. And it's now your solution, which might work on paper, but how much real emotional investment do those individuals have who've been in that room with you? And particularly then if you're dealing with different power constructs. Right. People say yes if they know that their boss needs them to say yes. For example, or in a community setting, there may be other pressures there. For example, who are you doing it for? And are you sure?

Okay. So I love the fact that we. You're asking that. That grounding question, are you doing it for you or doing it for them? Because I know there have Been times in my life where I realize, why am I pushing so hard? What is this? Oh, this is about me because I, as a negotiator, sometimes we have that deal making bias and then we make it about ourselves by saying, listen, if I'm a good negotiator, I can get this done. And it becomes very problematic, especially in your personal life, because now you're removing somebody's autonomy agency and they feel like you're being, you're forcing them. And it reminds me of one of the things a saying somebody brought up in one of the trainings. And I told her, I'm like, listen, I'm going to put this in every training going forward. Collaboration builds commitment. Collaboration builds commitment. If they feel as though they can look at the deal and see some of themselves in the deal, they can look back and remember the process and see that they contributed to it. Now they're bought in because it's not your deal, it's my deal. And I want this to succeed. And so we have to be able to remove ourselves not just by recognizing, hey, my ego is now getting in the way, but also we realize that even if I let my ego get in the way and I do get a deal done, it's good for me, but it's not good for them. Because the deal, what we want are lasting deals where people are bought in. That's really, really important.

Absolutely. And I think, you know, the ways that we can help negate that are, you know, having good professional supervision as a mediator, for example, can help that. Having that, you know, sounding board outside of the system and the process that you're currently working on. And the same as, you know, coaches. Having coaches as well. Right. Having someone to work that through, you know, absolutely.

It's, it's critical. It's critical when, when you are seeing people going through this process because you've trained and a countless amount of mediators at this point, what would you say are the elements that separate the good mediators from the great mediators?

I think a few things. One curiosity, the ability to take that step back, you know, emotional maturity sometimes and the ability to realize that you're not always right and there's always more to learn, I think. And you know, when you do get those individuals on programs who are clearly, you know, coming from a maybe previous experience or maybe naturally, you know, inclined towards this work, the idea of going, actually, I do need to do some stuff on myself that somebody said to me really, you know, years ago, that really defined it really well. A good Friend of mine who works for UCAN in Canada, you know, it's about, you know, when your stuff, you know, your own stuff. And I mean that in a non patronizing sense, you know, realizing that, you know, you got to know your own conflict resolution skill is your style. Sorry, you know, are you more inclined to avoid? Are you Again, somebody said to me, a mentor from years ago, Mari Fitzoff, said to me, you know, some people who work in this field, and I mean that as negotiation, mediation, conflict resolution in general, sometimes some of us tend to be naturally attracted to conflict. And we got to be careful with that, you know.

Oh, that's fascinating.

The shooting at the Sikh Gurdwara in Oak Creek, Wisconsin. And I really want to shine a light on these incredible mediators who work in confidentiality without publicity, but have really helped this country in really challenging times.

Definitely. This is great. And thank you for writing the book and thank you for your service to the country and what you're doing. It's incredibly important. And then I think for this presentation, well, this podcast, I think the two things that I want to focus on today are first, how mediation has helped over the course of American history, again, in ways that we probably haven't even recognized. And then also for people who want to be involved in community mediation or see opportunities for racial reconciliation or community building through mediation, let's talk about some best practices there. So when it comes to mediation in history, where should we even start?

Yeah, so I'll start with this. The community relations service. It was really pushed by President Lyndon Baines Johnson. If it weren't for him, it wouldn't have existed. And if we may remember the. I'll just start. What led to the creation was the Birmingham boycott in 1963. We remember the photos of Bull Connor and of the, you know, the dogs and with the young African Americans there, you know what we don't quite always remember about that, it was really a boycott about black business boycott, basically saying, we're not going to serve segregated businesses unless you desegregate Birmingham. And the civil rights assistant Attorney general that point, Burke Marshall spent a lot of time mediating between the civil rights protesters in that situation and the mayor at that time. And so going forward, when we were thinking about the 1964 Civil Rights act, there was concern of all this desegregation happening and how that would take too many lawyers to go out there and too many. And they wanted mediators to be helpful. Burke Marshall said, oh, this is too hard. I can't be. I'm a civil Rights attorney. I need other people to go out and mediate because this is too hard. It takes up too much time. So that's how it gets created. So that's the. It starts from successful mediation, but the recognition of how hard it was to do this. I'll start with just one situation. In Selma, we remember when John Lewis, the former congressman who passed away recently, the great John Lewis, and Bloody Sunday, where a numerous amount of protesters, civil rights protesters, blacks, were beaten up by the Alabama State troopers. LBJ was concerned that there's going to be more violence, sent this agency, the Community Relations Service out there. And the first director of that agency was a man named Leroy Collins, a white governor from Florida. Former governor from Florida. And he worked hard, especially with Andrew Young, who later became a congressman and a mayor and a United nations ambassador, to work with them. What we often remember is the movie in Selma, and certainly for those who know the history, where Martin Luther King leads his congregation and leads the people across the Pettus Bridge in Selma. And at that point there's a fear of facing the Alabama State troopers. Leroy Collins and other mediators worked out a resolution to keep it safe. And that was part of the story that then. It helps keep. Keep them safe, but it also then helps move it toward. That was a voting rights situation to the. To the important legislation of the 1965 Voting Rights Legislation that then gets passed because of the protests that happened in Selma over, over voting rights. And of course, voting rights are still a huge issue today for, for blacks and for. For many other people as we face it in the election in six days. So that's another example I could. So then from there, there are many situations where the CRS has gone to Wounded Knee. When the American Indian Movement took over there to the Alien Gonzalez case, ultimately that was a situation where he was taken from his Florida family. But what really helped was there was a serious attempt by CRS mediators, including a man named Thomas Battles, who works also with the Advaia Community Project today, to reduce the possibility of violence. There was a lot of tension in Florida at that time, and there was a really valiant effort in that situation. Fast forward to when I was director in Sanford, Florida, after Trayvon Martin was killed, as we remember, as he was going home after going to from 711 and was accosted by a wannabe neighborhood watch guy named George Zimmerman. And there were protests in Sanford. Community Relations Service made a huge difference in helping the protesters protest safely and making their protests against the stand your ground law, which was a big deal. In that situation and working with the protest groups, working with Al Sharpton and the National Action Network, working with Jesse Jackson and working with the mayor, the city manager, to keep it safe, working with black and white pastors to reduce rumors and to help them, help them heal as well. And to this day, the mayor and many others credit the CRS with keeping the protests safe, allowing them to express their First Amendment free speech right. But it was a situation where there were many, I think over 80 protests, but not a single bottle was thrown and not a single arrest was made. Partly because different from some of the other situations, the protesters worked well. They worked, I should say more. They worked with the city to allow peaceful protests to happen. So that's a lot, Kwame, but that gives you just a sense of the breadth and the scope over time. It is, I think we forget. And what's important to know is that mediators can help what social justice is about, that there is a moral arc and that it does bend toward justice. And the purpose of here in the Mediators is created by the 1964 Civil Rights Act. It's to accomplish those goals. It's to help move it in a way that we believe is right for our country.

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