A conversation with Kwame Christian, Director at the American Negotiation Institute & Masterful Negotiator
“More and more people are starting to recognize that the problems that we’re having usually aren’t issues of good versus evil. It’s differences of perspective. And if we can take the time to learn these skills and use negotiation as a tool to resolve these conflicts, we could leave these conflicts with stronger relationships and better deals.” -Kwame Christian
Kwame Christian is the Director at the American Negotiation Institute, a consulting firm that focuses entirely on embracing the negotiation skills of entrepreneurs and small-business owners. He believes negotiation is arguably the most important skill set for professionals. As the current host of the ‘Negotiate Anything’ Podcast, Kwame continues the conversation surrounding negotiation as the foundation forward when conflict or uncomfortable conversations arise. As he empowers others to seek confidence in conflict, Kwame is committed to his mission of leaning into conflict to uncover resolution, while building better relationships through authentic, honest conversations.
In this episode of Control the Room, Kwame and I discuss breaking down biases in negotiation, the unique approach in negotiation scenarios, strategizing conversations and key recommendations within conflict, and the unique superpower of negotiation in all aspects of life. Listen in to hear how Kwame is encouraging voices to lean into uncomfortable conversations, and how to have effective relationships from the kitchen table to the conference room. The power is in the art of negotiation.
Show Highlights
[0:57] Kwame’s Start in Negotiation
[5:24] Breaking Down Biases
[14:25] The Approach in a Spectrum of Negotiations
[19:59] The Mistakes & Misses in Negotiation
[22:26] The Key Recommendations in Strategizing Conversations
[29:19] Kwame’s Skillset in ANI
[34:29] Kwame’s Look Ahead to the Negotiation Future
Links | Resources
Kwame’s LinkedIn
The American Negotiation Institute
The ANI All-Access Negotiation Guides
About the Guest
Kwame Christian is the Director at the American Negotiation Institute. He is the host of the Negotiate Anything Podcast, known as the world’s most popular negotiation podcast with nearly 2,000,000 downloads. He is the author of Finding Confidence in Conflict: How to Negotiate Anything and Live Your Best Life, a guide to empowering individuals to overcome their fear, anxiety, and stress surrounding uncomfortable conversations. He currently practices business law at Carlile Patchen & Murphy LLP, where he oversees many areas of legal needs. With a previous background at the Kirwan Institute specializing in criminal justice and health equity, Kwame continues to have a unique voice for difficult conversations and conflict resolutions through negotiation. He continues his crafted skillset at the American Negotiation Institute to eliminate the stigma of uncomfortable conversations and to sharpen the negotiation approach.
About Voltage Control
Voltage Control is a change agency that helps enterprises sustain innovation and teams work better together with custom-designed meetings and workshops, both in-person and virtual. Our master facilitators offer trusted guidance and custom coaching to companies who want to transform ineffective meetings, reignite stalled projects, and cut through assumptions. Based in Austin, Voltage Control designs and leads public and private workshops that range from small meetings to large conference-style gatherings.
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Full Transcript
Douglas:
Welcome to the Control the Room Podcast, a series devoted to the exploration of meeting culture and uncovering cures for the common meeting. Some meetings have tight control and others are loose. To control the room means achieving outcomes while striking a balance between imposing and removing structure, asserting and distributing power, leaning in and leaning out, all in the service of having a truly magical meeting.
Douglas:
Today, I’m with Kwame Christian at the American Negotiation Institute, whose mission is to empower professionals to negotiate anything and find confidence in conflict. He’s also the author of the Amazon bestseller, Finding Confidence in Conflict: How to Negotiate Anything and Live Your Best Life. Welcome to the show, Kwame.
Kwame Christian:
Hey, thanks for having me. Appreciate it.
Douglas:
Absolutely. Thanks for being here. So excited to chat with you today. For starters, how did you find your way into negotiation?
Kwame Christian:
Yeah, it’s an interesting question. I’m a business lawyer by trade, and so most people assume that that is what led me to this because of the business negotiations that I had. They wouldn’t be completely wrong, but they wouldn’t be completely right either. My undergrad degree is in psychology, and I was always interested in how people can overcome their fears. Because for me, I had a lot of fears regarding difficult conversations.
Kwame Christian:
And so then when I went to law school, I discovered negotiation and that’s when I learned that having these difficult conversations is a skill, not a talent. For me, what I’m doing now with the American Negotiation Institute is I’m blending that love of psychology and helping people to overcome their fears through empowerment with the skillset of negotiation so they can have these difficult conversations effectively.
Kwame Christian:
The model that we have is that the best things in life are on the other side of difficult conversations. For us, we just want to make these difficult conversations so you could be in a position to live the best version of your life.
Douglas:
I love that. I was just having a coaching session with an engineering leader earlier today, and he was kind of explaining a situation he was having with one of his coworkers. It dawned on me that he needs to lean into that conflict and have that conversation because he’s just been ignoring it so far.
Kwame Christian:
Exactly. And that’s the thing. I think this is a great example. Because with a lot of people, they come into their field, let’s say engineering or web development or something like that, and they hone their skills and they become very proficient and excel at that. The hope is that that skill alone is what’s going to take them to the next level. But typically as you matriculate through your professional career, you get better, you get better, you get better, and then they say, “Hey, you’re really good at this. You should lead.”
Kwame Christian:
That’s a completely different skillset. Even with something like engineering, we’re talking about numbers, we’re talking about data, very hard facts and things like that, we’re recognizing that other people might have different perspectives and still we have to negotiate the resolution between our team members to see which idea goes forward. Regardless of what your field is, whether you want to be or not, you’re a negotiator because we’re all having these difficult conversations.
Kwame Christian:
I want to help people to recognize that so they can develop these skills and have the conversations more effectively.
Douglas:
It also brings to mind to this notion that, especially with engineers, they’re systems thinkers, and they have to be analytical and kind of unpack things and figure out how they work and maybe design them to work new ways. When they start to apply them to human relations or psychology, I think that can lead to assumptions, right?
Kwame Christian:
Absolutely.
Douglas:
If I’m unpacking the system and I think, “Oh, I’m convinced this is how it works.” And to your point on the data, I don’t always have the data to back up some of our assumptions around what people are thinking or why they’re behaving the way they’re behaving.
Kwame Christian:
Absolutely. And here’s the thing, a lot of times, it’s tough for people to recognize the difference between facts and feelings. They’re not the same. But in the moment, they can feel the same, right? A lot of times we fill in the gaps in our understanding with these assumptions, with the biases that we have. And I talk a lot about biases because of my background in psychology.
Kwame Christian:
And I think the modern day conversations about biases are too limiting, because we often focus on race and gender ethnicity, sexual orientation, those type of things. And that’s important. Those things are very important, but your mind is naturally biased in general. It’s impossible to not to be biased.
Kwame Christian:
We will have biases in all of our interactions based on things that we like, things that we don’t like because of our lived experiences. The more aware we can become of these biases, the more clearly we can see the world.
Douglas:
Yeah, I love that. And also, I think some of the things you mentioned around the biases that are kind of very topical right now, to me seemed like they’re higher level biases, right? Where there’s a lot of low level biases at work that caused those things even happen, right? I’ve always been fascinated when people shine the light for me on these more underlying biases. I think that comes from the world of psychology, like Tversky and whatnot.
Douglas:
I’m curious, in your work, what’s some of the biases that you find most helpful for folks to become aware of and what are some tactical ways they can put this to you?
Kwame Christian:
Here’s a good example. I’ve found that in my negotiations, let’s say if there’s a heated negotiation, my client is really mad. They’re telling me the story the way that they see it. I get heated because I want to defend my client. The clearer and more certain I am about what is happening, typically, the more incorrect I am about what is happening. Because like I said, okay, I’m not exactly sure what’s happening in this moment, but my bias is toward my client and against this person.
Kwame Christian:
I believe that whatever happened there that I don’t know is in favor of my client, right? I have to recognize that tendency in order to pull back and approach this correctly. And the thing is, Doug, I still practice, even though I’m running the American Negotiation Institute and we do these negotiation and conflict resolution trainings, I still practice law. I bill about five, 10 hours a month, because I want to keep my skills sharp, because I can’t be a good teacher if I’m not still practicing at the same time.
Kwame Christian:
I’m still learning too. And I think that’s one of the most exciting things about this topic for me. Because with our podcast, Negotiate Anything, we’re at over 300 episodes, over three million downloads. And even though we’ve had that many episodes, every single time that I interview somebody, I learn something new. There’s just no end to the depth of knowledge you can gain on this topic and that’s what’s so exciting to me.
Douglas:
I had Gary Noesner on the show, gosh, last summer, I think, and it fascinates me when I think about folks that are in these super high stakes negotiations and how the rules and some of the moves are really similar to facilitation and how we have to think about interacting with coworkers and whatnot. But there’s quite a bit more stake, and it’s quite a bit more extreme, right? I’m just kind of curious, in your work, what’s the spectrum of the types of negotiations you’re doing?
Douglas:
Do they typically fall in the business arena, or are they stretching out into like terrorism and like some of the things Gary deals with?
Kwame Christian:
Yeah. It’s really cool, and I think that’s one of the things that’s so exciting about the work that we do with the American Negotiation Institute, just the diversity of clients and backgrounds that we work with. I will say, I haven’t had the opportunity to do those types of negotiations with lives on the line, but we have had some really high stakes business negotiations, hundreds of millions of dollars on the line, consulting on those types of deals, all the way down to interpersonal family conflicts.
Kwame Christian:
The thing is, with those interpersonal family conflicts, the emotions are so raw. In many ways, they’re more challenging, because it’s more emotional than substantive and rational. The thing is, with those multimillion dollar deals, let’s say I save them 10%, which is significant, or it doesn’t work at all, which is significant. Everybody goes home. Everybody’s well-paid and they tried their best. That’s it. Everything’s fine.
Kwame Christian:
But when it is your home that is housing the conflict, the stakes are actually higher in a lot of ways. It’s been really fascinating to go into smaller organizations, family conflicts, those types of things, and help and offer guidance in those situations. It really runs the gamut. And I think more and more people are starting to recognize that the problems that we’re having usually aren’t issues of good versus evil.
Kwame Christian:
It’s differences of perspective. And if we can take the time to learn these skills and use negotiation as a tool to resolve these conflicts, we could leave these conflicts with stronger relationships and better deals.
Douglas:
That’s a fascinating point. It brings me back to the whole bias notion. It’s like realizing it’s not good versus evil. Even though it goes against my values, I can’t demonize it. Because as soon as I start demonizing it, then that means I can’t work with it.
Kwame Christian:
Exactly. Exactly. One of the chapters in my book or sections in my book rather is called the benefit of the benefit of the doubt. A lot of times when I say, “Hey, we have to give people the benefit of the doubt,” they think it’s naive. They say, “Why would I give that to them?” But really the benefit of the doubt is a gift that you give yourself. Because if you give the other person the benefit of the doubt, then you’re really forcing yourself to stay more engaged.
Kwame Christian:
And if you think about let’s say a physical competition or working out or something like that, if I’m working out, that’s hard enough. If I’m working out while under tension, my body is just tense, my muscles are flexed the whole time unnecessarily, then I’m going to tire out a lot faster unnecessarily in that physical activity. The same thing holds true in our difficult conversations. These conversations are psychologically and emotionally taxing.
Kwame Christian:
And if you are going into this conversation, not only saying, hey, there is a problem that needs to be resolved, but, there’s a problem that needs to be resolved and this person is evil, you’re making it harder on yourself. You’re not seeing the situation clearly, number one, and you’re going to get emotionally and psychologically exhausted throughout the interaction. And people don’t make good decisions when they’re tired. This puts you in a better mindset for having the conversation.
Douglas:
It also strikes me too, as you said that, and this person is evil as hyperbole, right? We’re kind of becoming victims of ourselves or our own hyperbole.
Kwame Christian:
Absolutely. And here’s the thing, most people don’t wake up and say, “I wonder how I can be evil today.” Most people don’t think that way. Most people think that they are trying their best to approach this the right way. The assumption that I have in these conversations is that the person on the other side of the table, given their skills and their understanding and their perspective, is trying the best that they can.
Kwame Christian:
Sometimes the best that they can isn’t good enough. Okay, that’s great. This is a coaching opportunity. Now I can share my perspective, have this conversation, and help them to understand things differently. And if you approach it that way, then they say to themselves, “Oh, you know what? I’m thinking about this differently, and now I’m going to change my approach.” They own the transition. And if they own that change in mindset, it makes it more likely for that change to be longer lasting.
Kwame Christian:
If they feel like, “Oh, Doug bullied me into this, or I have to do this to assuage his concerns,” those types of things, then they’re just doing it for you and not for themselves. If we make this more of a collaborative process, it makes the changes that come as a result of it a lot more longer lasting.
Douglas:
Yeah, that would make sense. It’d be more durable because people will fight to undo it later when they get a chance. Reminds me of like the politics, right? One group changing something. And then four years later, it gets changed. And it was just back and forth where there was no real agreement in the first place.
Kwame Christian:
Exactly. And here’s the thing, I like to use the example of toothpaste in a lot of situations. For instance, if you say something wrong in a conversation, it’s kind of like you can’t put the toothpaste back in the tube. You can’t pull that back. If it’s out, it’s out. Another thing is, imagine if you have a tube of toothpaste and you squeeze one area, right? The toothpaste just moves to another area of the tube.
Kwame Christian:
In this situation with these difficult conversations, let’s say I have all of the power, all of the leverage in this moment, and I decide to not build a relationship. I decide not to respectfully engage them and give them an opportunity to share their thoughts and feelings. I decide, “Hey, it doesn’t matter. I have the leverage. There’s nothing they can do about it. They’re going to have to do what I want to do and that’s just tough for them.”
Kwame Christian:
People remember and they have this internal scale of justice in their mind and they say, “I remember what Doug did to me two years ago.” A lot of these interactions are not one shot deals. You’re going to have multiple interactions with this person throughout your career, throughout your lifetime in the majority of situations. They’re going to carry that with them. The reality is, power shifts with time.
Kwame Christian:
And sometime they’re going to have the upper hand and they will not have forgotten the way you treated them in that moment. Again, when we talk about these deals being longer lasting and the person wanting to get out, we want to make it so that it’s a deal that they look at it and they can see their fingerprint on it. I had some agency autonomy and control over how this deal was settled, and I’m okay with this. This looks good.
Kwame Christian:
But if they say, “I was bullied into this,” and then the situation shifts, they’re going to be trying as hard as they can to change things to make it fairer for them, and at the same time, get back at you.
Douglas:
That experience just leaves a bad taste, even if economically or comfort level has improved, like it turns out it wasn’t that bad of an outcome for them, they’re still going to not remember that fondly, right?
Kwame Christian:
Exactly. Remember, perception is reality.
Douglas:
Yeah. I want to come back to your point around the spectrum of multiple millions of dollars at stake in a business negotiation or highly emotionally charged personal negotiations. Those sound quite different. I want to hear how you might approach those differently from a principles or just a tactic standpoint.
Kwame Christian:
I think one of the biggest mistakes that people make is that they over complicate the process. When it comes down to it, there are people on both sides, people dealing with different things. I think for me, that’s the advantage that I have is because my background is in psychology, so I look at the people differently. I’m trying to figure out what are the emotional levers that are being pulled at any given time.
Kwame Christian:
When it comes down to it, the difference is complexity. What’s at stake? In that $600 million deal that I worked on, what’s at stake? Okay. It’s money and each in each organization has different interests. What are the varying interests organizationally, and then what are the varying interests of each of the players at the table, because each has their own different set of interests?
Kwame Christian:
For instance, I’m usually on the procurement side, so the people who are buying something. The people on the procurement side, they’re playing defense. They’re saying, “I want this. This is a high price. I’m trying to knock it down.” And then the people on the sales side, they are trying to maximize the deal. They want to make it bigger. But then we have to also think about it from the individual perspective, the sales person often gets commission based on sales.
Kwame Christian:
The procurement person doesn’t have that same incentive. The incentives of each person on the table are going to be different. For the procurement person, whether or not the deal goes well, per se, doesn’t have a direct impact on their paycheck. Yes, if they perform at a high level, then it makes it more likely for them to rise through the ranks, but it doesn’t have that same urgency as the salesperson because they can see their paycheck tied very clearly to each interaction.
Kwame Christian:
And so that’s important. But then with the family side, the things that need to be resolved are not as complex. Smaller dollar values, usually like two or three issues that need to be resolved, right? But it’s that emotional component that is the biggest issue. That’s where it gets messy and interesting. It’s the complexity of the big deals that makes it more difficult, but it’s the emotional complexity of the smaller deals that make those more intriguing.
Douglas:
Yeah, that’s really fascinating to me. It sounds like the personal deals might be complex in a way that is somewhat unknowable, right? Because we don’t know how those emotions might shift and change, so maybe that’s the difficulty in navigating that versus where the business deals are complicated, there’s a lot of moving parts, a lot of stuff to deal with, but some of it’s kind of knowable, right, because we can unpack those incentives and things.
Kwame Christian:
Exactly. I think though, the range of emotions that you need to tango with are a little bit limited in the business context as well. We have pride. We have frustration. We have anger, annoyance, impatience, those types of things. But then when it comes to the personal world, you have those exact same things. Then you have love, affection, attention, betrayal, jealousy, all of those things. The range, the spectrum of emotions becomes a lot more complex. And that’s what makes it more challenging.
Douglas:
I want to come back to the point around… I wrote down needs and incentives, understanding the needs of both sides and what the incentives are. Are their corollaries? I guess, needs would make sense in the personal relationships. I’m kind of curious on the incentive side. Does that play out or is there a corollary there?
Kwame Christian:
On the personal side? Yes and no. But in the personal side, there’s a risk of seeming a bit too transactional too. That’s the challenge as well, because you want it to… You can use the same negotiation techniques, and you pull on the same psychological levers, but you have to tow that line to make sure it doesn’t seem transactional, especially if the relationship goes into the future. So let’s say it’s a family business.
Kwame Christian:
Regardless of what happens to this business, the family structure is still there. You know? Even though we’re talking about dollars and cents, we still have to consider the structure and strength of the relationship going forward. Sometimes you could be a bit more aggressive and a bit more assertive in those business negotiation things, because when it comes down to it, it’s a business. It’s a corporation.
Kwame Christian:
But on the family side, it is a business and a corporation. At the same time, it’s a family too. You can still use incentives, like an if, then proposition. “Well, Hey, this is one of my concerns. If I give a little bit on that, would you feel comfortable giving a bit on that?” That’s something you can do. But if you make it too transactional, then you run the risk of diminishing the relationship in some senses.
Douglas:
Yeah, yeah. It sounds like it could trivialize it too.
Kwame Christian:
Yeah, exactly. Like cheapening it, right? It’s like, “Oh, I thought I was your brother, but now it seems like I’m somebody you just pay off to get out of your face. Okay. I’ll see you at Christmas.”
Douglas:
I guess that’s a real risk on these personal things, right? You could navigate the negotiation and have a successful outcome, but then it’s not necessarily ideal from a relationship standpoint afterwards.
Kwame Christian:
Exactly. Yup.
Douglas:
I’m kind of curious about what you see as common negotiation mistakes. People that think… Maybe they went online, did some reading, and they think they’ve got it. Like not mistakes people who are just like totally ignorant are making, but people that are really trying. What do they trip over and need more practice or experience to get right?
Kwame Christian:
Well, here’s one of the biggest things, and this is shocking to most people, even before that is that people have low levels of negotiation awareness. These are negotiations happening all the time, but people don’t identify them as negotiation, so they don’t negotiate. That’s the biggest mistake. For me, I like to broaden the scope of negotiation. I call a negotiation anytime you’re in a conversation and somebody in the conversation wants something.
Kwame Christian:
We’re negotiating every day, right? So that’s the first thing, it’s awareness. Now let’s say somebody says, “Hey, Kwame, I get it. All right. I’m negotiating. I’m going to prepare. I’m going to do this the right way. I’m going to do some research. I’m going to learn about it.” What they do is they go into and they get a laundry list of different negotiation techniques that they could potentially use in the conversation.
Kwame Christian:
They don’t think strategically, they think tactically. Whenever you’re thinking about how to approach any type of problem, you have to start off with your goal. And then from the goal, you reverse engineer and create your strategy. And then from there you pick which tactics you can use. What is the approach that I’m going to take strategically? And then which of these tactics do I use in order to get there?
Kwame Christian:
It’s essentially like going to a store and saying, “Okay, yeah, it’s time for me to cook. I’m going to cook now,” and then you just go to the spice aisle and you just grab every spice that you can, and then you come home and you think you’re ready to cook. If you haven’t taken the time to create a recipe or come up with some kind of plan, what do you hope to accomplish with this meal, it’s still not going to taste very good.
Douglas:
Yeah, no doubt. I see that at all levels of business and everything, right? Just focusing on the tactics without having a clear strategy or even understanding the purpose. That’s a common problem in business right now of people just crop dusting your calendar with meetings. It’s like, why are we having those meeting? Just a pure example. Also, kind of curious about… What is your recommendation?
Douglas:
You kind of hinted to this already around focusing on setting your goal, thinking about the strategy. But if someone’s wanting to… Maybe they have a goal in mind and maybe they’re like scratching their head, “How do I even formulate a good strategy, or how do I even know…” I mean, is it called the ANI? What are some steps they could take to get a little more comfortable to lean in to maybe select the right tactics?
Kwame Christian:
Right. Well, Doug, of course, if they want coaching and they want a training, they could, of course, call ANI. But just on the basic level, I think really there’s a lot that we can do personally to improve our skills and our ability to perform in these specific conversations. I have a gift for your audience.
Kwame Christian:
If they go to our website, americannegotiationinstitute.com/guide, they can get access to all of our free negotiation guides, how to negotiate for your salary, how to have difficult conversations about politics, how to have business negotiations, how to negotiate as an introvert, or negotiate for your car.
Kwame Christian:
We have over 15 guides that can help people to prepare systematically for these conversations, so you’ll get a little bit more clarity on your goal and what you should do in order to achieve that goal. Really it reminds me of this quote from Martina Navratilova. she says, “Everybody has the will to win, but few people have the will to prepare.” Preparation is the thing that really distinguishes people when it comes to these negotiations.
Douglas:
What’s the biggest advice you have for negotiating salaries? I think that’s one that people have to do quite often. I see varying approaches that people take. I’m curious, what approaches you found to be the most successful?
Kwame Christian:
Well, what I’d say is this, first, you have to ask yourself, am I negotiating from the inside or the outside? This is one of the major strategic considerations you have to have. Do I have this job already and I’m trying to increase my salary from what I already have? That’s negotiating from the inside. Is this a new opportunity? Did I just get a job offer? That’s negotiating from the outside?
Kwame Christian:
One of the biggest questions people ask in negotiation in general is, who should make the first offer? And it comes down to knowledge. Some people would say, “Oh, always make the first offer.” Some people say, “Never make the first offer.” I’m a lawyer. I say it depends. Okay?
Kwame Christian:
What you have to do is you say to yourself, “Okay, if I have as much knowledge or more knowledge than the other side, then I make the first offer because I can be strategically aggressive. But if I have less knowledge than the other side, then I let them make the first offer, then I counter it. Because if I make the first offer without knowing the situation, I might price myself out and sound ridiculous or go way too low.”
Kwame Christian:
So imagine this, Doug. Imagine if you get a job offer for this dream job and they say, “So, Doug, how much would you like to make at this job? What do you think is a fair salary?” And you say, “I think $100,000 is a fair salary,” and they say, “Yeah, absolutely. Let’s do that. Let’s do that.” How do you feel? You’re like, how much could I have gotten? They said yes too quickly. In that situation, you don’t know enough.
Kwame Christian:
But in the situation for when you’re on the inside, you already know what your salary is. You have some general idea of what’s possible, so you are in a position to competently make the first offer, and then have them play defense and respond to you. That’s the number one strategic consideration you have to have. And then you get to a point usually where they make an offer and it doesn’t seem like they’re moving very much anymore.
Kwame Christian:
What I would suggest is just asking this question, and I think this is one of the most powerful negotiation questions that you can ask in general, what flexibility do you have with your offer? That’s it. Number one, it’s open-ended, so they can’t just say yes or no. They have to elaborate. Number two, it assumes that there is flexibility. So it forces them to think about where that is in order to answer the question, right?
Kwame Christian:
The power of this question is annoyingly consistent. Here’s an example, I mentor kids who are going into law school, talking them through how to do the application, just before they get into legal career. The thing that’s annoying about this is that I discovered this question after I graduated law school. Again, with the podcast, it’s called Negotiate Anything for a reason, because we don’t realize just how many things we can negotiate.
Kwame Christian:
I teach the kids how to negotiate their scholarship package. And all they do is they get the scholarship offer from the school and they say, “Thank you very much for this offer. I really appreciate it. I’m considering a lot of schools. Finances are important to me. I just have a question, what flexibility do you have with your scholarship package?” 100% of the time they get something more, 100%, which is wild to me.
Kwame Christian:
One of the students even got $7,000 per year. $21,000 of over three years of law school. They realized just how significant that is after they graduate and they have to start paying that back. That matters. Simply asking, what flexibility do you have, in this salary negotiation situation and in other situations in general probably one of the most powerful things you can do.
Douglas:
It’s also very unassuming and very curious, because I would imagine it disarms the other side, right? Because then they’re like, “Hmm, let me think about that.” It haven’t told you I need you to do anything. I’m just kind of asking where the boundaries are. It also reminds me of your concept of who has the most knowledge.
Douglas:
It also makes me think of the concept of BATNA, which means that if you have more knowledge, you probably have a better understanding of where the BATNA lies, which means that you’re going to be more equipped to make that move.
Kwame Christian:
100%. And that’s a critical theory too, the best alternative to a negotiated agreement, because you’re only as strong as your next best alternative. If I don’t have an alternative, then I kind of have to take what I get at the table.
Douglas:
But also if you’re on the flip side of that, if they have an alternative, you should know that. I think that’s part of your conversation about the preparation. It’s like, look at the edges. Are you coming into an entry-level position and you know they have at least 15 candidates that would probably do just as good a job as you would? That’s a different scenario than if like you’re the only neuro-ophthalmologist in town, they pretty much have to figure out how to make this work, right?
Kwame Christian:
Exactly, exactly. So again, that preparation is going to be critical. Because you can have all the skills in the world, but if you don’t prepare and see the entire landscape, you’re going to be limited in the way that you can perform at the table.
Douglas:
When we were chatting before the show, you mentioned that you were excited about your team growing. And so congrats for that. That’s awesome times. It’s exciting in a company’s journey to be in those moments of growth. I’m kind of curious to hear how your expertise and your work’s been impacting growing your team. Two things come to mind.
Douglas:
One is internal meetings and the way that you collaborate might be impacted by these skills, and also when new recruits are interviewing and thinking about coming in, there might be some nervousness, right? Like, “Man, this is the expert there. Can I hold my own here?”
Kwame Christian:
Yeah. It’s been really, really fun growing, because that’s the name of the game this year. It’s scaling, scaling, scaling. We brought on a number of new trainers, new full-time staff as well. I think the most important acquisition was a business development guy to put fuel in the tank to make everything move forward. And it’s funny, Doug, because the thing is people often ask me during these trainings, what if you’re up against somebody who is doing the exact same thing that you’re doing?
Kwame Christian:
What if you’re up against somebody who knows these negotiation skills just as well as you do? So for me, asking that question is kind of like asking, what if I’m in a relationship and somebody loves me too much, right? Because for me, if you’re up against somebody who uses this interest-based negotiation where they actually care about what you care about, because they realized that’s the key for them to get what they care about too, you’re in a good position.
Kwame Christian:
They’re going to listen to what your problem is, and they’re going to try to work together to solve it. That’s a good thing. It’s been really interesting with all of the full-time members of the team, they negotiated their way on. I never had any traditional interviews or anything like that. They were always looking at ANI, learning more about it, and they kept on making offers, increasing their involvement, and they negotiated their way back onto the team, right?
Kwame Christian:
It’s really, really interesting. And I just have to sit back and laugh to myself, because every time I said yes, it was because they negotiated and we created a win-win solution for both of us. Okay, you can provide this. That works. Then I can pay you this. Fair deal. Let’s go. It’s been really, really cool to see how negotiation is really within the lifeblood of this organization. It’s something that we really live.
Kwame Christian:
We’re negotiating with each other all the time, communicating effectively, and everybody’s winning as a result.
Douglas:
I love that. It made me think of a comment that you mentioned a little earlier around people are going to remember if you took advantage of them. I think sometimes people think of negotiation as getting the best deal for yourself. But as we both know, negotiation is about finding the best outcome. I once read about this idea of finding where there’s perception on uneven value.
Douglas:
If there’s something I really, really value in something you don’t really value much, that’s an amazing negotiation to foster, right? Because we can exchange that and be very, very happy about it, right?
Kwame Christian:
Exactly.
Douglas:
Because you don’t feel like you’re giving up very much and I feel like I’m getting a lot. That’s amazing, right? I think, to your point, when both people are very skilled at facilitation, then we can actually find these amazing opportunities because we both know what to look for.
Kwame Christian:
Exactly. Exactly. You hit the nail on the head there, because that’s one of the keys to creativity, trading things of unequal value. I want something a lot. You don’t want that thing too much. Hey, let’s swap. It’s like lunchtime. That’s really the way it should be and it’s great. And again, the only way you figure those things out is through effective communication. So many people are so focused on just telling people like it is.
Kwame Christian:
“This is what I need. This is what you need to know. You don’t know this. I do. Let me educate you.” But they’re not taking the time to listen effectively to figure out what it is that the person needs. And if you can figure that out, figure out what they want and need and why, now you’re in a position to actually solve the problem and create synergy.
Douglas:
It reminds me of a concept that is a profound principle in the world of facilitation that we use a lot, which is the difference between inquiry versus advocacy. If we’re in inquiry mode, that’s exactly what you’re describing, where we’re digging deeper into the wants and needs versus advocacy, where we already know where we want to go and we’re just going to try to sell someone on that destination.
Douglas:
I would imagine that plays out a lot in negotiations where someone’s already got it figured out, they know what they want, they’re just trying to push someone toward that outcome, it’s probably going to be a lot more fraught with tension and issues versus listening and trying to figure out where we might better take it.
Kwame Christian:
Exactly. That’s very real because people can sense that. And I think that’s one of the biggest mistakes that people make when it comes to these difficult conversations. They start to persuade too soon. And if you begin the conversation telling people what they need to do and why, we are inviting unnecessary resistance through the process.
Douglas:
I’m curious to hear more about your vision of the future of negotiation. Where are things headed in the next five, 10 years?
Kwame Christian:
I think the industry is ripe for explosion, because it’s an industry that is really… It’s too thin. It’s very strange. Let’s just give an example. We’re both podcasters. How many sales podcasts are there? Thousands. I think a better question is, how many sales podcasts start every month? That would be more intriguing because there are so many of them out there. How many negotiation podcasts are there?
Kwame Christian:
When I started, Negotiate Anything was the only active negotiation podcasts on the market. The only active negotiation podcast in the market. The only one for all of the podcasts. Like what? At the time when I started, it was about 700,000 podcasts. One active negotiation podcast. That’s preposterous, right? How many people are negotiating every day? Literally everybody who can talk.
Kwame Christian:
I feel like there’s a lot of opportunity here, and I want to blaze the trail on rebranding negotiation. Because when people hear that term, they think of stuffy, old people talking about big deals that they can never ever relate to. But I’m saying you today right now, you’re negotiating. You’re talking to your child, you’re negotiating. You’re talking to your spouse, you’re negotiating. You’re resolving things between your team members, you’re negotiating.
Kwame Christian:
I want to be the leader in making this concept more approachable and accessible to the masses. My hope is that the industry follows suit. We grow, we diversify, and we start approaching things in different ways. Because I think now more than ever, people are struggling to have these difficult conversations. The stakes are higher than ever, and we’re struggling more than ever before. I think we are uniquely positioned to lead the charge in that way, and I hope a lot of other people follow suit.
Douglas:
That’s amazing. It sounds like the kind of thing where there’s a real opportunity as it grows and expands and awareness and knowledge that there could be specializations as well for different industries and purposes. Maybe they start to refine the tools in some new and novel ways, which then has awesome rebound effect, because then you start looking cross industry and cross sector at like, “Oh, what are they doing over here?” And then it just amplifies.
Kwame Christian:
Exactly. And think about it, again, since it’s everywhere, we’re going to see this skillset showing up in different places. So it’s 2021 now for the listeners. But in 2020, once all these difficult conversations about race started coming up, leaders around the world were faced with this situation. I came to this business because I like what I do. I like my skillset. Let’s use the engineer, for example. I’m an engineer.
Kwame Christian:
Wait, now since I’m leading a team, I have to address this with my team? Talking about racist coming up for me? Why? I don’t want to do that. I’m scared of doing that. Hey, well, if you take that lens of negotiation and conflict resolution and put it in this field, now you have a skillset and a set of tools that you can use in order to have these conversations in a way that makes it more comfortable for you, because it’s very uncomfortable.
Kwame Christian:
And at the same time, it makes it less likely for you to cause unintended offense. Oh wow. I didn’t think I could use it in this way. What I’m hoping to see is more of this focused approach for negotiation. We have the broad topic of negotiation, and then each industry has a really unique and interesting angle to it. You can take those same skills and then make it more specific for the industries involved.
Douglas:
I want to end there. I think that’s a great place to wrap today, and I would just love to give you an opportunity to leave our listeners with a final thought.
Kwame Christian:
Yeah. Just remember, the best things in life are on the other side of difficult conversations, and you are in a position to have these conversations more effectively. And if you do, it will have a profound impact on the quality of your career and the quality of your life. I think one of the things that we to start doing is taking a bit of personal responsibility for the quality of our relationships.
Kwame Christian:
It only takes one person to improve the quality of your relationship. And the reality is, a lot of times, we’re waiting for other people to get better, but we can get better first, right? And negotiation is one of the tools that we could use. If you’re interested in learning more, check out the podcast. You’re listening to a podcast now, so I’m assuming you listen to podcasts. Check out Negotiate Anything.
Kwame Christian:
And we also have a book, Finding Confidence in Conflict. And if you’re interested in a negotiation or conflict resolution training, check out our website, americannegotiationinstitute.com.
Douglas:
Excellent. Thanks for that, Kwame, and it’s been a pleasure talking to you today. I hope we can do it again sometime soon.
Kwame Christian:
Absolutely. Thanks Doug. Appreciate it.
Douglas:
Thanks for joining me for another episode of Control the Room. Don’t forget to subscribe to receive updates when new episodes are released. If you want more, head over to our blog where I post weekly articles and resources about working better together, voltagecontrol.com.
