Using Self-Empowerment to Thrive in Your Negotiations with Prof. Dr. Kasia Jagodzinska

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, 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, 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. Kasia, thanks for joining us today.

Thank you, Kwame, for inviting me to the podcast. My pleasure to be here.

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

Great. So I have a dual background in business management and academia. I'm a professor specializing in international negotiations based in Switzerland. I lecture at several universities, so I'm always around in my car between the universities, under normal circumstances, obviously. I consulted also for the United nations in Geneva. And I'm a trainer for the Schroner Negotiation Institute and also an author, and creator, I would say, of my methodology and approach to negotiations, which is the Negotiation Booster. So in a nutshell, that's what I do.

You do a lot. That's really impressive. It sounds like you're busy. And lest we forget, you are pursuing an additional degree too.

Yes, I am. So I'm doing a degree in analytical psychology, Jung Institute in Zurich. Fascinating studies, allowing me to understand what are the psychological basics of what drives the negotiation process. Since I'm talking a lot about self empowerment, my methodology is all based on self management, the management of stress emotions. So I wanted to understand how the ego factor will impact the negotiation process. The self, the Persona, the masks that we wear in the negotiation process. Are there any archetypes that govern our behavior? So it's really interesting.

That's fascinating. Yes, that's really exciting. And so let's talk more about the Negotiation Booster. Fantastic book, by the way. So where should we start? What is the major inspiration for you when it came to creating the book?

The inspiration came years ago when I was starting out in business. It was always a dual career track. So I remember when I started, I moved to Paris. I started my first job in Paris. It was a life sciences company. And a week after I joined, I got a call back from my home country, Poland. They said, lecture for us. Because I was looking for a job for several weeks before I actually moved. And I said, I'm already in another job in another country. And they said, well, lecture for us on the weekends. And I started my dual career track, which was quite interesting. And I met a lot of people always, because I was always traveling and doing a lot of research on the plane. So everyone was fascinated. What are you reading? What are you marking? What are you looking at? And so on. And I came across research that said that female negotiators, for them, strategic tactical preparation for a negotiation. So a training is not enough to win a negotiation to their full potential. And that intrigued me, you know, as a young woman starting out in business, getting comfortable, more or less in that international environment with all its challenges, and a foreign woman, I thought, well, that's interesting for me, but does it only apply to women? You know, is it not universal that we all need empowerment, that we all need conviction in the negotiation process? And then slowly, once I, once I started working with executives, once I started working with higher level business professionals, you know, in a training situations, the situation, the mask comes off. So that is not the classic business situation where everyone has to play a role. Very often when the mask comes off, they say, listen, you know, I'm not convinced about my opening offer. I'm hesitant. I don't believe I can win this. You know, And I thought to myself, this is actually a universal problem that we have here, that we're training people. We have different approaches. We have the win win, we have the FBI model, we have the Kremlin school and so on. There's a lot of strategies and tactics there. But are there really resources that will allow us to grasp and manage our own emotions and to believe that we can actually win and then only apply the tactics? So this is, this is in a nutshell. It's how it all started years ago. And I mentioned to you earlier when we were getting to know each other, that I never had the time to actually physically sit down and write this book. It was in me. I was already full of ideas, mostly from my executive trainings, from my business interactions, from My own mistakes. I love to write about my mistakes. I think that is very something that people can relate to and understand and find something that maybe they can overcome in those stories. So that book has been living in me for years. But the COVID situation, one of the biggest advantages of the lockdowns was that I actually had time to sit down and write that book and the second one as well. But we're going to talk about that later.

I assume that is exciting. Yeah. And I'm happy that you're approaching it this way, because one of the things that I always say is that a lot of times with negotiation trainings, it's like we're giving recipes to people who are afraid to get in the kitchen.

Exactly. Exactly. Sure. I always compare it like, you know, if you give me a hammer and an instruction, this doesn't mean I will build, you know, a closet for you. It's, you know, it's not going to happen.

Exactly. And it's so important for people to start to. To recognize that there are other barriers to effective negotiation, because we often just say to ourselves, the barriers that we're facing are strategic, they're tactical. So I need to learn more, I need to get better strategies, I need to understand more concepts. But that's not the thing that holds most people back.

Definitely not. You know, and I've been in high performance leadership at the best business schools, and when I was starting for as a young professional and then several years later, and I saw a clear switch in the trend of what we're teaching executives, which is no longer purely tactical and strategic. In fact, when I was in the last high performance leadership program, I was sitting there and thinking to myself, we're teaching people how to be human. You know, like, we've already given them all the tools that are out there, and now we're back to the basics. And I very often see that if you don't understand those primal instincts, those drivers of behavior that are embedded, maybe archetypal, we can call it. I don't want it sounds too Jungian. But archetypes as well, the patterns of behavior. If you don't understand that, it's really difficult to manage the process.

Absolutely. So let's get deeper into it. So now we have what inspired you to write the book. And now we have the. Essentially the background and a little bit about the methodology, but let's actually get deeper into it. So for somebody who's reading the book, walk us through what you hope that they get out of it as they are consuming this information.

So the book is divided into, I would say, two parts, the theoretical part, which is not really just theory. I'll explain that in a moment. And then you have case studies. So real cases from my business practice examples, something that I've observe the challenges or that people put me to the test. And I've been put to many tests in negotiation circumstances to see how tough are you, are you going to manage this? And so on. But let's talk about each chapter. So each chapter leads you through the phases of the negotiation. So obviously I'm not reinventing the wheel. I'm talking about how to open the negotiation, how to prepare for the negotiation, how to create your options, how to look at alternatives. So all the classics are there. However, all of those elements are presented from the perspective of self empowerment. So how can you not tactically, but how can you tackle these issues by managing yourself first? Each chapter finishes with tips and advice and also the added benefit. What I noticed very often is that business professionals are very busy, so they don't have time for literature review. They don't have time for reading too much. Compiled for each chapter, three resources that are or are not related to negotiation and extracted the most important information that pertains to the negotiation process. And I talk a lot, a lot about, I talk about, for example, men's search for meaning, Edith Eger's choice. So, you know, ultimate life and death. We use this expression so often, life or death negotiation. For me, read the Choice by Edith Ager, read about the Holocaust, the ballerina of Auschwitz, and then redefine what you consider a life and death negotiation, basically. So, you know, I read a lot. Obviously that's part of my activities as a professor, but I'm not, I would say, a conventional academic. So from these books, I extract the most important elements that can be used for negotiators. And that's a huge added benefit because you have a compilation of around 30 books that you can basically summarize for you and referred back to the negotiation to give you a boost in your negotiation power.

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 say suggest reaching out soon so you don't miss out. Check out the link in the description to learn more. And we will be right back after this. This is so exciting. As a fellow nerd, I have to say thank you because I like when people are able to take different topics and pull them together. I remember I was watching a speech from Kobe Bryant and he said that when you're obsessed with your craft, the world becomes your library. And that's clearly what's happening with you because you're a student of the game and you've been, you have the experience both in teaching but also in negotiating yourself. And you can recognize as you are consuming information and getting knowledge from different avenues, from things that don't even seem like they apply, you can take those truths and pull them here and give people a new perspective on the topic.

And you know, this got me thinking that now what is important is that we talk a lot about this multi dimensional, the synergy, you know, of many different disciplines and fields of knowledge. But I actually, this is something that I lived through because I remember when I defended my PhD, I was, you know, I was quite young. It took me two years, full concentration to get my degree. And when I started out in the business world, my career, I was rejected and rejected and rejected and rejected, which was very demotivating for someone, you know, young and who put a lot of effort into her studies. I have two master degrees, the doctorate degree and so on. And they would say to me, you don't fit anywhere. You know, you don't specialize in a narrow field. Now, I'm not going to say how many years ago this was, but trust me, it was long enough for the trend to change. And now the trend is develop a talent stack. Now we no longer want people who are narrowly specialized in one field. So let's say, I don't know, negotiation or marketing. You have to have a broad outlook. What we call Scott Adams, one of my favorite authors, calls it a talent. I love his books, by the way. Really, for me, he's so intellectually stimulating that it's incredible. I love the way he sees the world and describes the world. He talks about the talent stack, how important it is. And I was pretty hard working always when I wanted to, when I was motivated. So I always wanted to maximize on my talents. You know, that's the, I don't believe in, you know, slavery on your weaknesses. I think that you should enjoy what you're doing. I think that this is something that you could, you should focus on what you like and what you enjoy and find your niche and try to give it a fresh outlook, which is basically what I'm trying to do, and empower people in the process. Because I've been through all these, all these things that I write about are personal. They're human. So, you know, if you watch the Godfather, there's this line that, you know, that he says, it's not personal, it's business. I dare to disagree. For me, business is relational, it's personal, it's human to human. And primarily, the first human is yourself. So if you can't manage that, then good luck, my friend, with managing the negotiation process.

Yes. And it's so funny because a lot of times people would say, how do I deal with the irrationality of the other side? How do I deal with their emotional outbursts and their challenges and things like that? And you're right. We have to start by focusing on ourselves. What are our barriers? Self awareness is the key to emotional intelligence. And it sounds like that's one of the important points in your book too.

That sounds like a great quote, by the way, as well. You know, I'm going to start quoting you. Yes, it is. Yes, that's. That, that's actually what it is. That, that self awareness, that not, I'm not just talking about emotional intelligence, but also understanding, for example, the brain structure that we are not rational. You know, if you look at the brain structure, we are emotional beings. And this is something that you have to acknowledge, you cannot skip, that you have to manage those emotions and then just make the best of what can be using the tools and strategies and tactics that are out there. Like I said, there's no point in reinventing. There's many great approaches there. I mean, how could one challenge the principled approach to negotiation? It's one of the fundamental, I would say, approaches, but you need to add that element of empowerment. And it's like I said, it's gender universal. Men, women. I've trained thousands by now of executives from all over the world, Europe, Middle East, Asia, US Innovatively. I hear the same thing when I hear hesitation, when they, for example, present demands or make the opening offer. Why are you hesitating? Why is there lack of conviction in your voice? Because I don't believe we can get this. Just the other day I was thinking, well, not just the other day, time flies. It was January actually. And I thought, I'm going to make my first in my life the first Time in my life. I'm going to make a dream board, you know, a vision board, a dream board. So far, I put one thing up there. I've not had time to put more items on the dream board. But when I was putting that first photograph with my wish or my dream on that board, you know what I was doing? I was negotiating down with myself. As I was pinning that image there, I was thinking, this is not possible. This will never happen. And then I stopped myself and I thought, damn it, it's a dream board. Dream. Allow yourself. Don't negotiate even down with your own dreams.

You're absolutely right. And you think about it, a lot of times that negotiation is lost internally before the negotiation even happens. You are never going. Or let me say this, it's rare that you will outperform your aspirations. And it's. It's. And it's true. And you think about the. One of my favorite books on negotiation is Warrior Within. It's. I. It's a book that I don't think gets enough acknowledgment in the industry. It's really powerful. But the author talks about the. The four different internal negotiators, the thinker, the dreamer, the warrior. And of course, I always forget whatever the last one was, but the dreamer was one of them. And that's the part of yourself that hopes for more, that aspires for more. And for a lot of people, either based on their personality or the way they were raised or their life experiences, for whatever reason, the dreamer inside of them has become depressed and now they're more focused on survival or maybe just complete avoidance of these difficult conversations, but not really considering what is possible. And if we. If you don't have that inside of you, then you're not going to be very successful in these conversations.

Definitely. Well, it's like, you know, the child within. We say that you should cultivate that and you should, you know, keep that child within you with those hopes and with those dreams. Obviously, I'm not talking about lack of maturity, but I'm talking about the not putting, you know, a limit on your own dreams, which is very often what we do. Because if we do that in a negotiation, then by all means, the other party is going to pick up on that and they're going to be more than happy to negotiate down on what you want, basically. So that is my. I hope that this book will empower people. I hope that it will give them an understanding of how the process looks like, because you need to. You need to understand the process Obviously, you can't just talk about Fluffy. Nice. Self empowerment. I think that the book is strongly embedded in. This is the way I designed it, that it's very strongly embedded in the process itself. Understanding and guiding and leading you through the process, but also from a perspective of very strong. You can do this. You got this. Don't do this. You know, don't look at it from this perspective. Focus on this and so on. Very. A lot of practical insights and a lot of practical tips and a lot of also personal experience experiences that I went through. So it's not invented. It's not talking about, you know, hypothetically, or this is what I read or this is what I heard and so on. This is actually something that I observed both as myself, both consulting, both mentoring people, coaching people through their difficult negotiations. Obviously, in Confidential, the confidential aspect has been maintained, unless it's, of course, my story. So I think that people can find some of them. I know, you know, parents always say, my mom always say, says, at least I think everyone's a mom. Probably learn on my mistakes, you know, not possible. But however, knowing that other people share it. Just the other day, you know, I was training A Group of 20 executives, and we were. We had a roundtable discussion on what their main challenges are. And then we were debriefing it. And the first thing that they told me was, you know, we're shocked how universal the dilemmas that we have and challenges that we face are. And that empowered. You could sense the vibe changing, you know, that they were actually. That awareness. I'm not the only one. And then what they said, they went one step further. What they said was, so if it's 20 people like this here, then the bets are that the other party that we're negotiating with also has the same challenges, you know.

Yeah. And normalizing the experience, whether it's an emotional challenge that you're experiencing or just a lack of confidence, is one of the first steps to getting through it. Because I think one of the things that's really tough about it is when you feel like you're the weird one going through it. Right. But a lot of people struggle with things like this. Imposter syndrome comes to mind as well, too.

Exactly. The imposter syndrome. I don't belong here, you know, I don't deserve this. And it's universal, it's human that we're facing this and that together and that it's very empowering. You know, if we. If we see that it's a shared experience, basically, so that we're not the weird one. And so on. And I would say, I think this comes with age and experience that people don't focus on you as much as you think that they focus on you. So just do your thing and do it to the best of your abilities and in an ethical manner. I'm very strongly convinced. And my negotiation approach is very respectful. I think that every person has the right to have their opinion. I think that every person should be heard out, that they need to be understood as well, to unblock, unlock the negotiation, the dialogue, the communication process between people. So they need to feel safe in that relationship. I think that's fundamental.

Absolutely. And if somebody were to read your book and walk away with one thing, one thing, what would you want that one thing to be?

I think that that one thing would be confidence, visualization and an enormous boost of confidence that it's in your mind. There's this saying, I forget always who said it, but if you think you can or you think you can't, either way you're right. So that's what I would say, that this is the biggest takeaway from my book. I think that it's all in your mind. The most, the biggest success that you can start to have starts in your mind. And the biggest failure as well. Unfortunately, it starts in the mind 100%.

I love this. And so Kashra, I want to say thank you for creating this amazing book and empowering people all around the world. This is really great work.

Thank you very much.

Perfect. And so for the listeners out there who want to learn more about what you're doing and get in touch, what would be the best way to reach out?

My listeners can get in touch with me by visiting the website Negotiation Booster. Very easy to remember. They can also reach me via LinkedIn. On the website they will see different modules that they can take that they can sign up for depending on what their need in the negotiation is. They can also. Here is the book so the Negotiation Booster, if you're interested in reading, finding out more. And I'll be back in June with Kwame talking about my second book actually, which is the prequel to Negotiation Booster. It's entitled negotiate your way to success which is a very personal. I mentioned Paris, I mentioned how I found myself there and those two jobs and the constant travel. This book is also a self empowering journey but from a very. I call it my practical philosophy of personal success. So with guidelines, concrete guidelines on what to do, tips and tactics on how to win your negotiations and approach them from a position of power, basically.

Fantastic. Kasha, thank you so much for joining us today.

Thank you. Thank you, Kwame, for the fascinating interview and for the work that you do. As mentioned earlier, thank you so much for empowering at your end women negotiators and authors for compiling the Forbes list. Thank you for that initiative. Thank you for the podcast. I really appreciate your work and your approach as well.

Thank you. I appreciate that. Congratulations. You've just joined an elite club by listening to a full episode. You're now officially on the Negotiate Anything team. So welcome aboard. What most team members do is they subscribe to the podcast because that allows them to automatically get the latest episodes of the show. The best things in life lie on the other side of difficult conversations. Keep learning, keep practicing, and keep getting better. Your relationships will improve, your career will soar, and you'll have the confidence you need need to get the most out of these crucial conversations. Again, thank you for joining the team. We're excited to have you, and I will see you in the next episode. I'll catch you later.