Understanding Difficult Conversations: Exploring Your Mind with Jay Fields

Hello, my friends, and welcome to another exciting episode of Negotiate Anything. Negotiate Anything is produced by the American Negotiation Institute, and with over 3 million downloads and listeners in over 180 countries, listeners just like you have made it the number one negotiation podcast in the world. I'm Kwame Christian and I'm the director of the American Negotiation Institute. We're growing and I want to introduce you to our new team members and new trainers. This will give you new and diverse perspectives on negotiation and conflict resolution. And that's why Shane Martin, our head of sales and partnerships, is going to serve as co host of the show from time to time. We're excited to continue to provide you with the best content that will help to make your difficult conversations easier, both at work and at home. Lastly, our team conducts negotiation and conflict resolution trainings in the United States and abroad. Our trainings will give you the practical skills you need to resolve conflict and negotiate, lead and persuade with confidence. Click the link in the description below to learn more about how we can make your difficult conversations easier. Jay, thanks for joining us today.

Thanks for having me.

Yeah, it's our pleasure. So how would you get us started? By telling us a little bit about yourself and what you do.

Great. I am a coach and an educator, and I work with individuals and organizations, and I help people to leverage their body and their nervous system and their brain to show up as their best selves in the situations that matter to them most. I often say that I help people to be themselves in other people's force fields.

Oh, I like that. Okay, dig deeper into that last line because that's fascinating.

Well, I guess I've heard you say that you're a people pleaser as well. Recovering people pleaser here. And I know for me that my experience growing up and in my 20s and even my early 30s, my sense was if there was another person in front of me, it was all about, what do they need from me? Who do I need to be? How do I need to show up? You know, And I would. It was. It was as if it was like my. My soul gets sucked out of me and I have no sense of myself. My opinions, my feelings, you know? So what I mean by that, not losing yourself in other people's force fields, is that I still get to have a sense of solidness, of being here in a body, of being impacted by what you say, of having needs, of having preferences and being actually capable of tracking them and then communicating them or acting upon them.

Oh, that's fantastic. And I think that's a Great segue into what we are here to talk about today. So, Jay, I'll give you the floor to set the stage.

Right, well, so we've, we've established that we're both psychology geeks and we're going to nerd out a little bit on what is going on internally when we're in difficult conversations or this the psychology of our own presence in, in life. Is it. Did I get that? And how we discussed about that?

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. This will be fun. This will be fun. Now, when it comes down to understanding your own psychology, especially in the context these difficult conversations, whether it's work or personal, what would you say are the most important things that people need to know?

Well, it's interesting as you say that. I think maybe it's a little bit of talking about what I mean by psychology and self awareness, because we have different kinds of self awareness. And when we talk about psychology, we're usually talking about conceptual self awareness. Right? We're talking about like the inner dialogue that we have, the part of us that tells ourselves the story of what's happening. Oh, man, you just messed that up. You probably should do that better next time. You know, that kind of the self awareness of the dialogue and of the analyzing of how things went, projecting in our, in our minds what's going to happen in the future. Most of us have that in spades. But there's also something called embodied self awareness. And embodied self awareness is the self experiencing the self. So you got conceptual self awareness over here. That is the self thinking about the self, narrating, telling story, analyzing. Embodied self awareness is the self experiencing the self. Things like, are your hands cool or warm? Are you sweating? Are you shaking? Are you tense? What's your energy level? What's your mood? Do you have a headache? Are your pants too tight? Like, we're like, right. What is your actual experience in your body in the moment? And we don't pay enough attention to that in, in our exchanges, in our awareness of ourselves. And that is a liability when it comes to showing up as our best self.

This is fantastic. This is going to be a great interview. Okay, so I'm thinking too, and you tell me if I'm off on this. Yeah, so when we think about the way that the brain works, there's something called the default system. And I think, simply put, you can think about it in terms of time travel. It thinks about what happened in the past. Rumination thinks about what happens in the future, often manifesting itself in worry or fear, something like that. And so that sounds like what you're talking about with that first part, that consciousness, and then with the second part, that sounds almost more like mindfulness. Experiencing the moment as it's happening. And tell me if I'm off at all on that.

No, you're. I think you're spot on. And now I'm like, ooh, this is fun. We've got some dorks hanging out. Yeah, so you're right. That default network is the, the analyzing past and future and kind of the narration of your own story. And you probably know this, that the, that the less emotional resonance a person has had in their life, the less someone has validated how they're feeling on the ins and the more trauma they've experienced, the more toxic that inner dialogue gets to be and gets to, you know, like really start to constrain. And oh, that was you messed up there, you know, so that's that kind of inner dialogue and how it either constrains or expands. And then you're right, the embodied piece is more of what we'd think of in traditional mindfulness, though I'm not a huge fan of that term in the sense of it tends to be full of mind. The way we think of mindfulness is usually, usually very heady. And so I think of it in terms of embodiment. And I think embodiment is what we're talking about when we're talking about mindfulness. But it's like the. I call it Mindfulness 2.0 is embodiment is, are you, are you in your body fully? And when you think about it, like, some of the most mindful people I've ever been around are pretty heady. There isn't a sense of presence to them. You think about a kid though, they're embodied, right? Like you can feel them and you can see them in their energy and how they move and how they feel. So you're not wrong in saying it's like mindfulness. And I think I'm just trying to like pull you along and say, like, yeah, and I want to think of this as Mindfulness 2.0, where it really isn't about you have to be in a narrow bandwidth of experience in order to be embodied. Does that make sense?

What I'm saying there makes a lot of sense. And so yesterday when we chatted, I told you I was reading some of Carl Rogers work. And so for those of you who don't know, he's one of the leaders in psychological history. Big time advances when it comes to talk therapy and how that works. And one of the things that he brought up was his concept of the human organism and really honoring the fact that essentially who you are as a body, existing in the world. And so it's like, listen, if you're. Your body will feel things, your body will experience things. And a lot of times we are not very attuned to what our body is feeling or experiencing. And that disassociation makes it more difficult for us to really honor what it is that we really want because we're so caught up in that time travel of default. Thinking. Thinking about the past and thinking about the future that we don't fully embody or exist in the present and honor ourselves as a human organism in the moment.

Yeah. And to tag onto what you're saying there, what neuroscience research is now telling us is that conceptual self awareness and embodied self awareness offer us different resources and gifts. So one isn't worse or better than the other. They're just different. They light up different parts of the brain. And. And when we're in that embodied awareness of the human organism, we have more access to things like emotional regulation, the ability to more accurately read other people's facial expressions and tone of voice, more courage, more attunement with others. Like all of these different skills that we would attribute to an awesome human being, they come from being in a body. They don't come from thinking. And that's one of the reasons why in my. It's on my website where I say, like, if you could get to where you wanted to be by being smart, you'd already be there. Because this stuff isn't about being smart in a heady way. It's about knowing how to show up reliably in your body.

Absolutely. And think about it too, because you brought up a really good point. There's. Both of those pathways have their benefits. And it's kind of like a hammer. A hammer is incredibly helpful if you're building something and you know, you have some nails around. But if I'm at a dinner table, it's of limited utility and might cause problems, Right? Because.

Absolutely.

When you think about the. One of the benefits of the human mind is that ability to time travel, to look back in the past, to learn from past experiences, to look into the future and foreshadow and create strategies and. And think about contingencies. But at the same time, that is not as beneficial when it comes to really honoring the. Let's say, for example, your emotional response in a conversation. So I'll give an example here too. So I'VE been. I think it's important for everybody, just almost like a. Like a personal trainer. We don't always know what our body needs. We talk to a personal trainer. We might not be injured, but, hey, let's talk to a personal trainer. Right? That's the way I think about therapy, too. And so I've been feeling a bit down. Let's get some therapy, right? So I've been trying to honor that human experience. And for me, very cerebral, as you can tell. I'm always thinking all the time. And so sometimes strategic Kwame comes in when. When emotional Kwame is trying to speak up. And so I would push down that emotional response, and people would say, kwame, are you upset? And I deny it. And it's. And it's not necessarily so much that I'm lying to them, but I'm more lying to myself that I say, kwame, as a professional, in this moment, you shouldn't feel that way. But what I'm recognizing, I'm demoing it over the past couple of weeks, especially in the personal, within the personal realm, saying, well, actually, you know, I am angry, and I'm feeling angry because of this reason, and that's the impact it's having on me. And stating that has given me an opportunity to actually honor that emotional feeling. And then it doesn't plague me for the rest of the conversation. And now the other person is on notice, and they don't take it personally. And so I just. I say it very calmly and very respectfully, not in an attacking way. Just as a matter of fact, this is how I'm feeling. And now everybody can proceed with that knowledge. 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 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. To the show.

Yes, absolutely. And you're speaking my language. And here's the thing. When you can name the feeling that you're having, it's like you meet back up with yourself. Again, and you're reunited with your sense of having your legs underneath you. And like, what do I need to say to this person to be true in this moment, to connect in this moment? Because here's the thing. If you're not in your body, you can't actually connect with reality in yourself or in another person. And the thing about your strategic kwame versus your emotional kwame, they have their own embodiment. And so let me, let me ask you, like, when you feel in strategy in your strategic kwame, can you identify that that feels different to you than when in your body you're an emotional kwame?

Oh, it's completely different. It is a completely different experience, for sure.

Yeah. And so that's how if you have embodied self awareness, which is to say you can track in the present moment, am I tense? Am I at ease? Am I hot? Am I cold? Am I. Is my spine stiffened? Or am I, you know, relaxed in my body? Those are all clues to is this strategic me that's showing up? Is this emotional me that's showing up? Is this my little kid me that's showing up? Like, all of these different parts of us have their own embodiment. They have the tone of voice, they have the way they stand. Right. And that's part of how we track being conscious about how we show up in the. In the difficult situations.

Absolutely. So. So let's get deeper into this, and maybe perhaps we could paint a picture of what it could look like, approaching it one way versus another way. So let's get a concrete example. So let's say we're at work and we're having an issue with a colleague. You were working with the colleague on a. On a part of a project, and this colleague is chronically late getting their deliverables in on time. And now when you are there in the meeting, they. You are looking bad because of their inability to perform. So now you have to have a difficult conversation with this person. And so you are feeling upset, you're feeling angry, you're feeling embarrassed. Recognize those are through three different things, you can experience it at the same time. Right. And so now you have this interesting emotional cocktail, and you're going into the conversation, what does it look like if you're handling it in a good way, a productive way, a healthy way? And what does it look like if you are doing it in, let's say, a less productive way?

You know, that's a good question. I think that it depends, and I would go back to your language you were using before. It's the difference between strategic and, like, your true self. Right. So my strategic self might be the pleaser. So if I'm having to have a difficult conversation with you, it might actually look like I get a little small at my shoulders and say, hey, Kwame, I know this is, you know, I don't want to upset you. And it might look a little apologetic, you know, but if my strategic self is more of the tough girl and more of the fighter, I might come in and I might be, you know, leaning in, and my voice tone might come up, and I might have an edge to how I'm saying things, even though I don't want to. But that's that. That's that, like, part of me that comes in more on a unconscious level. So I'm not. I'm not answering your question directly because there isn't necessarily one way that would look, but the way would feel is that you're not in your center. There's some form of shrinking or some form of getting bigger or some form of, like, doing the tap dance, you know, like wiggling around versus coming in the healthier way. There's a sense that you can be your own speed and how you're talking. You can use your own voice. You can feel like you can feel your sit bones on your chair or your feet on the ground. For example, I have a client who I was working with last week, and her strategic self is the do gooder. They're like, I'm just going to jump in and make everything better for everybody else. So she knows when she's in one of those difficult conversations or difficult scenarios, she said, I always step in. I'm always leaning in, and there's this sense of like, I'm going to lift you up or I'm going to make it better for you, or I'm going to take the. Take the pain away or take the hard work away. But she's like, I walk out of those conversations. I am worked. I'm exhausted. And so with her, we worked on, what would it feel like before you go in to have one of those conversations, to practice taking one step back? If you're a stepper, inner, like, practice, what does it feel like in your body? Take one step back, feel yourself in your feet, feel the back of your body and some awareness of, like, oh, yeah, there's space back here. It's not just everything that's out here in front of me and take the deep breath and speak from there. So that's just one piece of the embodied part of how that might look.

Or feel different, and correct me if I'm wrong here, Jay, but it sounds like perhaps one way of describing it is with the word alignment, right? Because I think when there's a little bit of cognitive dissonance that could occur, when there's a bit of a turf war between your strategic self, for example, with me, and the. The embodied self, too. And so you're doing, like you said that, that tap dance. Oh, I'm feeling bad, but I need to be stoic and strategic. Right. And it's funny because you say the strategic self. Who is that for me? And as you said that, I said, oh, no, it is the lawyer. It is Kwame the lawyer coming in. And that is not good in personal scenarios. It's not good in really most scenarios, you know, but this. This is really enlightening for me. So thank you for the therapy session. I think the. The listeners would appreciate this too, because if you think about the. The Finding Confidence in Conflict, that's. That's my book. So we talk about the compassionate curiosity framework, but we talk about it internally and externally. So acknowledge and validate emotions, get curious with compassion and joint problem solving for your external negotiations and your internal negotiations. And what I found to be really helpful is taking a step back before the conversation happens, because a lot of times you can start to anticipate what you could potentially feel, or you've already started to feel that going into that conversation. Right. And so taking that step back and acknowledging and validating those emotions to say, what is it that I'm feeling? Okay, what else? What else? Okay, where did that come from? Okay, yeah, maybe feel that way. Okay. And that's the compassion. Getting curious with compassion. And then joint problem solving is reconciling the differences between heart and mind. So what is it that will serve me substantively in this conversation? What's the actual outcome? But also what will serve. Serve me in emotionally, too, because I want to be emotionally satisfied as well. And so you have that internal negotiation so you can perform with a lot more clarity in the actual conversation.

Yes. You nailed it. I love your language for all of that. And I would say that that piece of compassionate curiosity, the way I would speak to that is that it's self empathy. It's. It's under. Is putting yourself in your own experience and understanding why you would feel that way. Because if you can say, okay, I'm feeling anxious and say why, as opposed to, well, you shouldn't feel anxious or don't feel anxious, you're going to screw this up or if you weren't so sensitive, you wouldn't feel so anxious. You know, all the stuff we normally do in the anxiety is there. If you can at least. If you can then say, I'm anxious, why then it. It hooks you back into lines. You again, to use that word, aligns you with your purpose. It aligns you with what's important to you because we don't get emotionally upset about things we don't care about. You know, the opposite of love isn't hate, it's apathy. So if there's a feeling coming up, if you're scared or you're sad or you're mad, you're darn tootin. That's something that you care about, has been stepped on and you're trying to realign to, oh, I'm anxious because, you know, it's really important to me to do good work and to be respected and. And I don't know if I'm going to be able to do that here. So what do I need in this scenario to be able to do that? And the other piece I'll add to what you said, Kwame, is, you know, it's. It's that checking in with yourself before you go into the conversation and then the tracking yourself throughout. Right. And this is where that embodied self awareness comes back in. I talk about this in the sense of like a sonar ping. When we're in a conversation with others, or we're leading a group or we're giving a talk, all of our sonar pings tend to go out. We're reading people's facial expressions. We're, you know, we're reading the room, we're reading the energy. But if you can start to train yourself to send a ping to yourself every once in a while, like, what is my body doing? Am I leaning in? Like, I just realized that my, my hip flexors were gripping. I was like, there is absolutely no need for me to grip those. I can let go. You know, I'm looking at you, I'm. I'm reading your face, but I'm also feeling hip flexors gripping. I'm going to let that go because I can feel how that's like the jaw gripping that I would normally do if I'm tense. And I can be more in a flow if there is some form of that constant curiosity to my own experience and not just, what are you getting from this?

Ooh, you said flow. It makes me want to cite Mihaly and I never say his last name. Me neither.

I was hoping you were going to say it.

I wasn't going to try, but yes. His first name is Mihaly and he, his book is called Flow. Essentially, it's if you're into sports, it's called being in the zone. And you're just kind of like caught in the moment. And one of the things, one of the sensations of being in the zone is that it's almost like you're watching yourself perform. You're seeing it almost like as a spectator, but you're completely there. Time doesn't matter. You think about those times where it's like, wow, time flew. I didn't even realize it was passing. Yeah, you were in the zone. You weren't time traveling. You were actually in that moment. And it's, it's sometimes challenging to get into that because you're so into your head. And we've told ourselves for so long, hey, you have to be smart, you have to be intellectual, you have to be heady and really focused on that during the conversation. And to a certain extent you do. But I think if you're adequately prepared and you prepare well enough, then you can flow with the moment and be more attuned with what's happening, not only with your own body and your own experience, but like you said, being in the moment helps you to appreciate and honor and observe other people's responses as well. And so in before your negotiation. And I know everybody has already downloaded our 15/free negotiation guides@AmericanNegotiationInstitute.com guide. I'm sure they have. But if you're a person who has done such a thing, right. You can get a lot of information through that research process. But at the negotiation table, during the conversation, you're going to get information that you could never get from any other location. And the thing is, it's not just going to come in what they say, it's also going to come in what they don't say and what their body is saying. And if you're too up in your head, you're going to miss a lot of it.

Bingo. And it's going to come through how you feel when they say or don't say whatever it is. Right. It's like I talk to clients a lot about going into a job interview, for example, and most people are so focused on what do they think about me and how am I performing that they don't focus on how do I feel when they answer my questions, how do I feel when I'm answering their questions and I'm watching and they're not making eye contact or they are, or we lose a lot of information that's really useful if we're not able to feel what's going on. And so it's, it's presence over preparation.

Like, oh, I like that.

Right. I feel like I've gotten to the point in my career where I talk to colleagues about this all the times. It's like, if you just put me in the room, I think I can do it. At this point. I've got enough experience, I've had enough times of preparing that if I were actually. This happened the other day. I was doing a webinar for a large organization and there was two different times during the day because it's a global organization. So I did it in the morning, I was going to do it again in the evening and I messed up the time and it was supposed to be 4 o' clock and I was thinking it was going to be 5 o'. Clock. So at 4:05, everything on my desk blew up. I got text, I got a call, I was getting emails, I was like, what is going on? And I realized I was late, I had gotten the wrong time, so I had to jump in. And it was pretty funny because I was like, look, I'm about to, I am showing up right now and I'm going to be teaching you in real time from my own experience because my heart is pounding and I'm in that like, oh no, I screwed up, you know, and all that to say I wasn't prepared, but I knew how to get back to my own presence and from my own presence. I've done this enough. I've been on this, you know, this isn't my first rodeo. I can, I can get there. And I think we don't put enough stock in how much weight our presence carries, not just for other people, but for our own mental state.

100%. Yeah, I agree, 100%. And I think that's a really powerful place to end. But before we do, I want to give you an opportunity to give the listeners one last tip. So one last parting tip that is just on your heart that you say, I cannot end this interview without sharing this. What would that one thing be?

Well, because we've been talking about these different parts of us, you know, we've named the strategic part. I want to say that. And this is kind of getting into the psychology of things a little bit more. But we all always have our little kids self too. And our little kid self shows up in every professional setting we're in, whether we want it to or not. And so when we're thinking about being more in our bodies and feeling what's happening in emotions, it's really important to be able to kind of untangle, is this present day me, or is this little me that's. That's scared or wanting to perform or please. And if so, using all the things you know about, like grounding yourself, taking a deep breath, that's all to get back into present day you. But you might need to take care of your little self when you get out of that room and just say, man, that was scary, wasn't it? Or hey, like, in your mind's eye, imagining, just kind of taking that little self with you and making sure that they're protected and taken care of. Now, I realize I might have just gone off in a whole other angle there, but I think the tip is that recognizing if you're going to be more present in your body, you have to be able to recognize, is this my present self? Is this the strategy self that's going to go in there and be the lawyer or the pleaser? Or is this the little kid that would rather not even be in this hard conversation in the first place? And knowing that it's your job to kind of care for and use that compassionate curiosity through these different parts.

Absolutely. Yeah. I think. I think about it almost like a. A gathering of the round table. They're different versions of yourself. Yeah. And you just kind of have to acknowledge and honor it. Right. And I know for a lot of people there are versions of themselves that they do not like. It doesn't mean that the person doesn't still have a seat at the table. And pretending that that version of yourself isn't there just makes that voice even louder.

Yeah. Yeah. So you got to make sure that when you're in the. You're in the driver's seat and they're in the backseat with. With their crackers and their snack and they're not talking.

Exactly. This was fantastic. Thanks so much for spending time with us today.

Yeah, super fun. Thanks for having me.

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