How to ACTUALLY Have Difficult Conversations — Masterclass on Turning Conflict Into Connection | Negotiate Anything

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Welcome to this negotiation masterclass edition of Negotiate Anything.

With over 1600 episodes featuring some of the world's brightest minds, we've carefully curated three powerful conversations for you.

What makes this so special is that you'll hear how different experts from different industries approach the same challenge in their own unique ways.

Our goal is to give you multiple perspectives so you can build your own unique style.

Success doesn't look the same for everyone.

And in this masterclass, you will see exactly why.

Let's dive in.

Sheila, thanks for joining us today.

It's a total pleasure to be here.

Yes, it is our pleasure to have you, my friend.

So how would you get us started by telling us a little bit about yourself and what you do?

Oh, golly, how do I describe what I do?

So I wear several different hats.

Probably the easiest one to describe is that I'm a professor at Harvard Law School where I am responsible for the negotiation teaching curriculum, and negotiation just became required for graduation at Harvard Law School.

So that we're expanding the program and expanding courses and seats in those courses, which has been really fun.

On the side, I write books and I also run a consulting firm called Triad Consulting, where we do work with clients, both for-profit and nonprofit, trying to equip leaders to have better conversations and make better decisions.

Incredible.

And listeners, my friend Sheila here is quite humble here.

We are talking to the queen of negotiation, in my opinion.

And that is a high honor coming from somebody who graduated from the Ohio State University.

We don't give that the to that many people, even though with queen it's not grammatically correct, but we'll keep it.

Okay.

I'm really excited to have you.

And today we're really celebrating the third edition of your best selling book, Difficult Conversations.

Can you tell us about that?

Thank you for asking about it, because it's been a project that has been in process for a few years in fact, and it's probably a little bit overdue.

So, So Difficult Conversations came out in 1999.

We issued a second edition.

The 10th anniversary edition came out in 2010, which just suggests we can't count.

And for that edition, we didn't really touch the text.

We just added 10 questions.

People ask about difficult conversations to the back, so that was about 60 pages of new content.

And so now we're in 2024 and it was feeling like we were pretty overdue for an update, partly because it should reflect what we've learned since, partly because the examples Some of them were starting to be a bit dated or it had become clear over time which examples were getting pushed back or weren't as clear as we wanted them to be.

So for the third edition, we really took apart the whole book again and re-examined every word.

We rewrote certain chapters.

So for those who are familiar with earlier editions, the framework, and main messages remain stable.

And although I advocated for us to flip the order of two of the chapters the blame to contribution chapter and the impact intent chapter I actually teach it in the other order now.

And I think it's a little easier to explain If you explain contribution first, like what are we contributing to the problem, and then explain why did we do what we did like, why was it that we contributed to the problem in that way?

So I teach it in that order now, although the book has it in the opposite order and I advocated that we flip the chapters.

My co-authors successfully persuaded me mostly that that's just going to be a headache for people assigning the book, like if people have different versions of it.

So anyway, and then the last thing I should probably say about the third edition is that we also really re-examined Two kinds of things.

One is what are the limits to this approach?

Like when doesn't it make sense to listen to someone else and understand, work to understand their perspective, perhaps?

And then the second was that we spent a six months pretty intensively working trying to figure out what we think about power and the role of power in difficult conversations.

So we totally rewrote questions I think it's four and five at the back of the book which are all about power.

And we probably wrote, you know, 300 pages worth for the 10 pages that made it into the book as we tried to figure out what we thought.

So that's a little bit of a walking tour through the third edition.

Incredible, okay.

There's so much to explore here and i think for me one of the most fascinating things is the fact that this was really a a groundbreaking piece of literature when it came out, and to see that we have stuck to it and then continue to hone it and change it and tweak it, that's exciting for me because it shows a lot of depth and nuance, but still within the same parameters of the initial book.

That gives us a lot of room for exploration.

Since you spoke about blame versus contribution, I think we should just go ahead and start there, because just understanding that concept alone, before even getting into the skills, can completely change relationships and interactions.

So can you give us a bit of background there?

Yeah, you bet.

Probably one thing I should say is that one of the key insights that we had while working on the book was that, in order to understand a difficult conversation, you've got to look at what people are really thinking and feeling, not just what they're saying, particularly in polite cultures and across cultures.

Right.

And then second, so that we call that our internal voice, which we all have.

Second, that if you look at people's internal voices, when we're in conflict with each other or disagree with each other, frustrated with each other, what we're thinking and feeling is very predictable.

And that we tend to be preoccupied with the same kinds of things.

So it doesn't matter who you're talking to, like your personal life or your professional life, or what you're talking about topically, the same kinds of things show up in our internal voices.

And one of those things as we think about our story of what happened, what has happened, what is happening, what we think should happen is blame.

When we're in conflict, we all naturally want to know whose fault it is that we are having this problem.

And so blame is a feature, either implicitly, we don't quite say it, but it's quite clear that I think that you are the problem, not me.

Or sometimes explicitly, like, look, you screwed this up and you're the one who needs to fix it.

And it's not always.

It's often pointed at the other person, but it's not always pointed at the other person.

It's not actually easier if we feel like this is all our fault and we feel guilty for the problem.

So, So the usual advice I think around blame is, well, gosh, blame usually isn't helpful, right?

It chills conversation.

It makes people defensive.

In organizations.

If you've ever lived in what you would describe as a blaming culture, it means it's really hard on relationships and trust.

Like, do I trust you're not going to throw me under the bus if this doesn't work?

It means people are reluctant to take risks.

It also like people spend so much time trying to avoid the blame and talk about whose fault it is, rather than just fixing the problem.

So it's a huge drain on morale and productivity.

So great.

We all we all would agree with that from experience.

The usual advice is, OK, just don't blame people.

And that seems like good advice, but the problem is that it's still in our internal voices.

So we end up having these crazy conversations where it's like well, I'm not saying this is anybody's fault, but if you could not screw that up next time, that'd be helpful.

So nobody's really fooled.

So anyway, what do you do instead?

I think that the key is, rather than trying to sidestep blame, to channel that energy into something more constructive.

And that's what we refer to in the book as joint contribution, assuming it's not just either your fault or my fault, or will agree to blame somebody not in the room.

It's those guys' fault.

They're the ones who dropped the ball.

But instead to assume almost every problem has been produced by things that each of us did or didn't do.

And so it's, We each contributed to where we are today.

Even if my contribution is.

You know, I could kind of see this coming and I probably should have dealt with it earlier, but I was just too busy.

So it's not necessarily did something wrong.

The fact that I have avoided this or not addressed it until now doesn't mean I did something wrong, but it is part of why it has festered for a while and now it's worse than it was before last week or last month.

And that if we can shift our mindset just to understanding boy, what did we each contribute to where we're at today?

That's the thing that actually tells us well, what would we have to change if we want to not make the same mistake or be in the same place?

Or what do we each need to change if we're going to actually improve the way we're handling this?

And so it's aimed not at finger pointing and punishment, which is the underlying underpinnings of blame, but instead assuming we each did things that may not be blameworthy.

They might have been perfectly reasonable, but now looking back, we realize they didn't help.

And the point of this conversation is to try and figure out how to fix it.

Oh my goodness, this is.

This is great, and what i love about this is how practical it is.

Number one, because we can recognize how we can tie the theory to practicality in a meaningful way in the conversation.

And then What I realized is that a lot of times, not just in negotiation but also in life, we get advice from people that essentially comes down to be less human.

Because think about it.

Yeah.

So we're saying, hey, don't blame people, but the internal voice is still going to be blaming.

And then that subconscious drive will direct the conversation in a way that we'll be trying to escape blame and still assign blame without seeming as if we're blaming.

But what we're doing is we're recognizing all right, this negotiation advice is going to go to humans.

So let's embrace that humanity recognize that we will still have this energy channeled in this direction.

Now let's channel that energy in a productive way.

Yeah, and I think in a way that has a purpose that we both buy and can sign on to.

Because sometimes my purpose in having the conversation is like I really need to confront you and let you know what you're screwing up, because somebody needs to tell you that you're the problem or in what ways you're the problem.

And that's not really a conversation you're going to be that interested in joining.

Mm hmm.

So it's no wonder I'm predicting it's not going to go well, because I am actually.

My purpose is not one that is likely to be successful.

My purpose is to tell you off, tell you what's what and what's true or get you to change.

And I'm actually not in control of any of those things.

Only you are in control of those things.

So I'm kind of setting myself up to fail.

Yeah, absolutely.

And now let's say we have a listener who this is new for them.

And they say, All right, Sheila, I'm on board now.

All right, I'm going to shift from blame to contribution.

But the person who I'm talking to unfortunately hasn't read the book and they haven't listened to this episode.

And they are blaming me all the time.

So how do I change that dynamic when it seems like the other person doesn't want to play by the same rules?

Yeah well, so the first thing i would say is it's clear that we both know some of the same people um, and you're right to identify that.

The fact that i can't control the other person also means it feels really risky to take this whole contribution approach and so counter-intuitively, our advice is actually, if you can see what you have contributed to the problem, looking back, taking responsibility and owning your contribution to the problem early and often in the conversation is actually good advice.

Why is it good advice?

It's not without risk, just to be clear.

But First of all, it's relatively rare that the other person is not clear on what you have contributed to the problem.

Like they actually have a list of things that you have contributed to the problem.

And so it's not, in many cases, it's not that you're telling them something they don't already know.

What you're telling them is, I actually also know that, right?

So I might start the conversation by saying I think we probably should have had this conversation a while ago, and I've just been a little bit distracted.

So I just wanted to mention that I do think we're a little bit behind the eight ball, and I'm partly responsible for that.

Or I wish I had said something when I saw you at the conference last year, because I

I had a sense that this might be an issue, but I just didn't think to mention it to you.

So, whatever I'm doing, I'm naming.

Hey, there's some things looking back that I wish I had done differently.

The reason that that matters is that I am sending you a super clear signal that this is not a conversation about blame.

I am inviting you to trust me.

In the research, one of the fastest ways to create trust is to do what's called making a statement against interest, which I'm sure you know.

So if I admit something or say something that it otherwise wouldn't be in my interest to share, I'm signaling that I'm being candid and truthful.

And then the third is that the other big reliable dynamic in the research is reciprocity.

If I attack you, you're going to attack me back.

If I own my contribution, I'm making it at least a little more likely that you're going to be willing to own yours.

And you may not take that invitation in the first round, but that doesn't have to be the end of the conversation.

In other words, let's imagine I own my contribution and you say well, I'm just relieved to hear you say that you think this is all your fault, because I would agree with that.

And then I can say, look, I do have some things I wish I had done differently.

I don't think I can fix this by myself.

So if you're not willing to also look at some things that I think would have to change if we're going to go forward and fix this problem, I fear that we're going to be stuck.

So I don't have to accept that you keep all the blame on me.

And that actually gives me a way to mitigate that risk because I'm not agreeing with that.

Right.

And you're clear about that too.

And I think about this in terms of conversational leadership.

So I'm not just trying to be a leader in an organization or whatever the situation might be.

In the conversation I want to think about the negotiation principles that could apply and demonstrate those first, and then they would reciprocate.

And it can be scary, like you said, but if you blend that vulnerability with the strength of negotiation skills, then you're a lot safer.

Because what you did in that example is that you protected yourself without being defensive and set a clear boundary.

And that is, it's such an artful distinction that can be really difficult to make.

But with practice, you can get a lot better at it.

Yeah, that's really well described.

And I also think that naming it doesn't have to be accusatory.

It can be an invitation like, hey, I really think we can make this better.

Would you be willing to do, or I don't know if this is realistic, but what if?

On your side would it be possible to?

And you can name someone else's contribution as a request request for change which implicitly says what you were doing before really didn't help, so do it differently.

But you're just exploring options in negotiation speak as well.

Absolutely.

And it's great because we're seeing how this flows seamlessly into the collaborative model of negotiation.

Totally.

So we're recognizing that the blame game can be a serious challenge.

And now we have a specific approach to addressing that.

And then we just fluidly shift into the collaborative negotiation model.

Yeah, I think that's right.

And you're also highlighting that every negotiation is also a negotiation about relationship and about process.

And so talking about hey, how do we get where we are, is partly about the content, but it's also about what process should we use to untangle and change it?

And also, what kind of working relationship do we want to have as we navigate some tough issues where we're not going to totally agree?

Definitely.

And now this provides us with a really fun segue into power dynamics.

Oh, yes.

Because this can be made a lot more complicated when you sprinkle in the power dynamics that apply.

And so first, let's start off big picture.

When we're talking about power dynamics in difficult conversations, what does that really mean?

Yeah.

That i'm so happy that you started with that question, because I think that we often throw around this word power and, and we can.

We can be a little bit sloppy and how we use it or we're I mean it in one way and you mean it in another, and we're just kind of talking past each other.

I think bottom line, the way that i've come to think about power, is power, the is the ability to make things happen or not happen right, but to influence other people in negotiation world and the world um, and influence events, decisions etc.

And so One way to think about that is that each of us well, power tends to be very fluid.

I might have a lot of influence in one context and very little in another.

As CEO of a company, I can decide fill in the blank, but I can't get the two-year-old to go to bed or go to sleep.

Yes, this is speaking to you, I can tell.

Yes, it's turning into a therapy session.

That's right, that's right, that's right.

So power is context dependent and it's also fluid.

Right.

So so you might make a really insightful point that I'm like oh, I actually hadn't thought about that.

Your influence in our conversation just went up because you gave me a new way to think about something that spoke to whatever a frame or value or interest that I have.

Right.

But that also means that power isn't zero sum.

Because, in being receptive, what the research shows is that if I am open and receptive and curious about your perspective, you're actually more likely to be curious about mine.

And so I actually, by being receptive, increase my power with you, by being willing to be open to yours.

So I'll say one more thing about power.

There's so much to talk about here, which is really your fault.

Just I want to say for raising such a complex and interesting topic.

But one thing that maybe I'll add is that I've also come to think about two kinds of power.

I have some unilateral power in many situations, and then I also have to have persuasive power.

So if I'm a member of the city council, I have unilateral power decision rights to cast my own vote.

But if I want you to vote with me, I better use persuasive power.

And so we're often using the two in combination with each other, but they are different.

And I think sometimes when people talk about Who has power in an interaction?

What they're focused on is often unilateral.

Like you get to decide this.

And that's one aspect of power, but power comes from a lot of different sources.

Absolutely.

And when you start to get deeper into it and you start to see the nuance, sometimes it can be overwhelming, but at the same time it can be really empowering because you might be able to recognize oh, I might not have the unilateral power, but I might have strategic leverage in this situation.

I might not have power in the traditional sense, but I have information because of my unique experience that I could provide.

But at the same time that power from information will not be utilized or will not be have efficacy in the conversation if the person is not receptive to that information.

Which brings it back to that counterintuitive realization that sometimes being willing to listen and adjust appropriately is one of the best ways to open the door to your path to power, because you're actually creating a scenario where the person would be receptive to what it is that you have to say.

I think that's exactly right.

And one of the traps that's easy to fall into is that we think of power as, well, who has more?

And if I have less, I'm screwed.

Full stop.

And we don't think about both the fact that it's fluid, but also that there are lots of sources of power where I can build my power or influence with you, one of which is just through better understanding you.

If I can understand your interests And I have the creativity to see some options that might appeal to you and meeting those interests.

Well, i've just persuaded you to sign on to options.

Despite the fact that, you know, 10 minutes ago I felt like I had very little power in this situation.

So the negotiation skills of listening and understanding interests and creating options and thinking about what criteria are out there, that suggests what's fair or legitimate that I can also use to say you know look, if I look at the standards, you know this is how this is handled in other places and it seems like that's how it should be handled here.

Well, then I'm not saying you have to agree with me because I'm backing you into a corner.

I'm saying, you know, let's look outside ourselves for a reasonable way to resolve this.

And that may turn you right.

So there are all these sources of power that we're apt to overlook.

Um, if we, particularly when we feel disempowered.

Yes.

Oh, I'm seeing.

Um, I am having to use a lot of self-control because I just want to keep on going deeper and deeper, but I want to be respectful of your time.

So there is one lingering topic that I wanted to explore.

Since writing the book, in 1999 and now here we are in 2024, I had to check myself there too.

What would you say are the biggest differences in negotiating in the 90s versus negotiating today?

Oh my goodness, that is such a great question.

Well, just going back to the revisions that we just worked on, I mean, when we wrote it, email wasn't such a thing.

Like we had email inside organizations but it was not the main mode of communication and negotiation externally.

And so partly changes in negotiation have been driven by technology, right?

And how many different platforms and methods and modes do we have?

You know, the course we teach now has a segment on how do you choose your forum, not just who should be there and who do I want, you know, do I want to check in one-on-one with these folks.

How do I want to build a coalition or a do my preparation.

But also, is this a situation where we should be exchanging emails or texts?

Or we're on Slack, or I need to pick up the phone, or should we be on Zoom, or should I wait to see them in person?

And there are so many different modes and some are better than others.

So email, text, etc. are not really dialogue.

They're serial monologue.

And so if a conflict starts on email or text, it's actually quite challenging to resolve it on email and text.

Often you need to at least pick up the phone or hop on Zoom to have a conversation about it.

As a lawyer, this is something I saw in my clients all the time.

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And all of our young listeners shuddered in fear.

I know.

It's just, we've gotten so out of the habit.

And I think that, I mean, my students are horrified, of course.

But I think that they attribute that it was not anxiety producing, you know, for prior generations.

And I can tell you from growing up in the 70s and 80s that calling someone was always anxiety producing.

It was always like, but what if I say the wrong thing?

And what if their mom answers?

And, you know, like I'm supposed to call this employer.

It feels really awkward.

Like that is just a set of skills that have always been anxiety producing to develop.

And it's so much more efficient in terms of just quickly developing.

Talking through, what is the problem that we're trying to understand here and what do you think we should do?

So you'll solve something in seven minutes that otherwise is going to take, you know, seven weeks.

Right right okay, and now this is just a purely selfish kwame nerdy question here.

Um so for me, when i think about negotiation and conflict resolution, the the world view that i have is that conflict, unresolved conflict, is the greatest existential threat to humanity.

And For me, that's the hidden agenda with this podcast and everything that we do with AI is trying to figure out a way that we can deploy these skills in a way that makes the world a more peaceful place.

And so when you look out there, you see what's happening in Ukraine, what's happening in Gaza.

And just even domestically here in the United States, there's a lot of unresolved conflict.

And so when you think about ADR in general alternative dispute resolution in general what role can that play to make the world a more peaceful place?

Oh, there's so many important answers to that.

And by the way, I really appreciate you naming that as the not the any more so hidden agenda.

Because I do think that it's an agenda that I really feel called to as well.

And it's a big challenge.

I think that the skills that we're talking about are skills that are Necessary if humans are going to live with other humans on this planet, and that it's so much easier to talk to other people who agree with you.

And that has always been true, which is why, you know, gossip and triangulation happens, you know, starting today in middle school and then proceeding through the nursing home.

Frankly,

But what's changed, I think, in the modern era is that that triangulation and talking only to people who agree with you now is global.

So we get our news from a point of view that tells it like we think it should be told.

That reinforces our views.

And I was just reading Cass Sunstein's book Going to Extremes, where he cites research that if you take generally like-minded folks And they talk to each other about the issue that they're like minded about,

They each emerge with more extreme views than they had going in.

Because now that I know that you agree with me, well then we must both be even more right than we thought we were.

And I add your arguments and observations to my own, which moves me even more extreme.

And that happens on a global scale now.

And we're less likely to talk across those divides.

Or if we have relationships across those divides, we avoid the topics where the divide is because we don't want to harm their relationships.

And so I think that what we have probably overlooked is that peace is actually really hard work.

Roger Fisher used to say, who wrote Gang DS, used to say, peace is not a piece of paper.

Peace is a process and peace is hard work and it is continually.

It's establishing the kind of working relationships where we can continually tackle what's next for us to understand and work our way through.

And that's not so sexy.

That was a great answer.

And I agree.

I think going back to that point, peace is hard work.

I think that's something that we have to really absorb, because i think there is this glorification of being right, whatever that happens to me, And so we say well, if we just carry the truth which really is our truth, that should be enough.

And then what I'll do is if they don't accept my truth, I'll use the truth as a cudgel.

I also think that being right is such a dopamine hit.

So it's so much more fun to be right, or be affirmed that I'm right, than it is to be like oh shoot, maybe I'm wrong about this.

That actually introduces complication in my day-to-day that I really didn't need.

Or maybe there's something I wasn't understanding about this.

Or maybe I owe somebody an apology.

That's rarely good news, that realization even as in fact it is good news for us in the relationship and in our lives.

And I think that that's the challenge, which is it both requires skills that you're doing an amazing job of democratizing, but also it involves an ability and willingness to tolerate the stuff, the learning part that is the less fun learning.

Once we then integrate it, we're like, oh, actually I learned something new.

That was pretty cool.

Like now that it's resolved, now I get the dopamine hit because now actually we talk through something and our relationship's actually stronger for that.

Incredible.

Now, given the time, I think this is an important thing to consider.

Now, let's say there are leaders who listen to this podcast.

If there is one piece of parting wisdom that you would want to share with them if they wanted to make their organization or community a more peaceful place, what would that be?

I think it's role modeling.

I think what we need from our leaders is not, you know, the clever tweets and the bracing pep talks.

I think it's showing us what it means, and it looks like to be open to learning and to be walking the talk of curiosity day in and day out, even with the people that we consider enemies.

You know, the Harvard Negotiation Project is best known for what is sometimes referred to as win-win negotiation.

And we have issues with that term just because I think it's often misused or misunderstood.

But it's usually contrasted with win-lose.

And I actually think in many of the places of the world that we're talking about today, we're in a lose-lose.

And that it's going to take a lot of foresight, skill, and hard work to turn that around.

And we're perfectly capable of it.

We have done it in the past historically, but it's in the depths of darkness often that people step forward to say We, we have to learn something and do something differently if we're going to turn this around, and so I actually think that this is a really beautiful time where people are stepping forward in many of their communities.

To actually think we've got to change how we're approaching this and reach across to get help from each other to do that incredible.

Sheila, this has been a masterclass.

I really appreciate you joining us today.

And before you go, remind the listeners about the new edition of the book and how they can get in touch.

Yeah.

So the third edition of Difficult Conversations has a totally different cover.

Who the heck knows why?

It's blue and white.

You may have the purple one.

It came out in August of 2023.

And to get in touch, Triad Consulting Group.

More easy to find online, triadconsultinggroup.com.

Beautiful.

We have a page, actually.

We have... on your line.

We do have a page on the website called Help Yourself and it has some free resources to get you started.

And thank you so much for this podcast.

As I mentioned to you before we started, I teach an advanced negotiation course at Harvard Law School and assign one of the episodes from this podcast.

So I love the work that you're doing and just keep it up, man.

Thank you so much.

That means a lot to me.

Thank you.

And thank you for joining us.

This has been amazing.

Absolutely.

It's an honor to be invited.

That was the first part of today's masterclass.

Up.

Next we'll hear from another expert with a different approach, giving you even more strategies to add to your toolkit.

Let's keep it rolling.

Laura, thanks for joining us today.

Oh my goodness.

Thank you for having me.

What a delight that I get to have another conversation with you.

Yes.

I think we're actually just using these podcasts as excuses to chat at this point.

I mean, honestly, I'm okay with that.

I have no shame in just calling out that I have built something purely on my desire to have interesting conversations.

And so probably have you in some ways.

Exactly.

So how about we start off by telling the listeners a little bit about yourself and what you do?

Awesome.

Well, I'm a licensed clinical psychologist.

I've been in private practice, for you know, I always say 10 years, but I forget that every year I should say an additional year.

So it's about 12 years at this point, but I've been working for 15 and You know I've really in so many ways built my practice off of the idea of curiosity.

And I've worked significantly with individuals who have eating disorders and then athletes.

Some of those athletes have eating disorders.

Some of them don't.

But that has really been the bulk of the work that I've done.

And then I've also in my practice, specifically as I entered into the world of eating disorders, I worked significantly with parents because, as many could probably imagine, much of my clients were adolescents.

So I would run parent workshops, parent groups, to really help them understand what are maybe some better ways of navigating parenting just from a foundational perspective, not even when you necessarily have a child with a mental illness.

So That's been the bulk of my work in private practice.

And then in the last few years I've joined with an organization called Spartan Race and done some consulting with them and then some consulting with some other organizations, like the Unbeatable Mind, with Mark Devine, really working on fleshing out some of the mindset performance issues that individuals might have in wanting to increase their athletic performance or their athletic endurance.

So that's been really exciting and new for me and has sort of thrown me into a whole new arena which I've loved.

That's fantastic.

And congratulations and kudos for everything you've accomplished.

And thank you for the good work you're doing because it's really, really important.

Well, thank you.

Yeah, it's amazing.

And it's an incredible time, I think, right now to be in the mental health space, specifically because I think that we're becoming much more curious about what works and what doesn't and allowing ourselves to really kind of flex muscles outside of the standard on-the-couch therapy, which I think is really, really important.

I think, for example, podcasts can be an incredible resource for individuals who are struggling with mental health issues.

And the truth is that standard talk therapy doesn't work for everybody.

And so...

I love where we are right now in the mental health space in really flexing different muscles and getting curious about what could work and maybe what's not.

This is fantastic.

Well, great.

Well, let's jump into our topics for today.

Speaking of curiosity.

So the three things that we're going to talk about are first, why is it important to be internally curious?

Second, how does internal curiosity help us to be better negotiators internally?

And then lastly, how can we maximize curiosity during the conversation?

So let's start off with number one.

When we say internal curiosity, what do we mean by that?

So when I talk about curiosity, and specifically internal curiosity, I'm talking about us being an inquiry around how we think, how we feel and how we behave.

And so when I, for example, am becoming internally curious, it's about what am I thinking at any given moment?

What are the thought patterns that I'm, what are the thought patterns that I use that work?

And what are the ones that I use that don't?

When I'm getting curious about my internal feelings, I'm wondering, what am I feeling right now?

You know, so often, for example, we have standard ways of answering that.

You know, fine and okay, by the way, are not emotions, but people, like, how are you feeling?

I'm okay.

That's, I have no idea what that means.

You know okay, could mean I'm angry and furious, or it could mean I'm sad, or it could mean I'm feeling shame.

So internal curiosity for me around emotions is really being able to accurately identify and get curious about what emotion it is that we're feeling, or emotions, because we could also, of course, have more than one.

And then around how I'm behaving, right?

So when I'm curious about the behaviors that I'm engaging in, I'm wondering are they in alignment with my values?

You know, is this a way that I want to behave?

Is my choice right now being informed by something that happened in my past or something that's going on for me in the present?

For me, it's really about being in inquiry.

And I believe that when we are in inquiry with ourselves, we are investing in ourselves.

We are creating a vehicle that allows for a greater return on investment, because when we get curious, we actually make better choices and we are more productive and we allow ourselves greater creativity.

So I believe that internal curiosity really fuels a better way of living in so many words.

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

And one of the things I like to do is play devil's advocate here.

So I'll play the role of the skeptic.

Oh, I love that.

You're like my oldest child.

Exactly.

So what about those people out there who say well, all of this psychological woo-woo is a waste of time?

You know what the right thing to do is, just do the thing and then get it done.

I love that you've said that, because first I've gotten that question not only from you, but from clients you know who say look well, why does it matter?

You know why does it matter if what I'm thinking right now is grounded in something that happened when I was 5, 15 or 25?

I'm 45 years old right now.

The choice in front of me is A or B or C.

What do I need right now in order to make that?

And I guess my response would be, listen, we're complex human beings and we are complicated.

And it's not always easy and people don't always know.

And in fact there's so much that goes on at a psychological level that we are not conscious of that.

If we can pause for a minute and get curious, maybe we can become a little bit more conscious of which can actually allow us to make maybe just an incrementally better choice than what we might have made if we weren't as curious or conscious.

For me, I guess you know I always like to think of you know, do I want to be like two times tougher, or do I want to be 10 to 20 to 30 to 40 to 50 times tougher?

Right.

And I am always looking to elevate and level up.

And so I want to go more beyond.

You know well what's just adequate right now, or what's good enough.

I want to excel and really make the very best choices for myself that I can in any given moment.

And, for me, having that self-awareness and self-understanding and introspection aids me in order to do that.

Yeah, it makes a lot of sense.

And it reminds me, I just bought a new car and it requires a different gasoline.

So it's premium.

But I'm just over the course of my entire life I've been putting in, you know, the regular gas.

And so I accidentally started putting in regular gas in the car.

So half of the tank was full of regular.

And then I said, oh, no, I need to put in the right gasoline.

And Laura, I could tell.

I could tell very clearly that there was something not right here, right?

That's amazing.

That's a great metaphor.

Exactly.

Because what's inside will have an impact on what's outside.

And so somebody might look at the car and just say, hey, it's a nice car.

Just drive it further, drive it faster.

And I say, well, there's a problem on the inside here.

We have to address it.

And that's essentially what we're talking about here.

But we won't know about what's going on in the inside if we don't take the time to go through this process of internal curiosity.

That's right.

And our internal journey shapes our external experience.

And so to understand how we are operating in our external experience and how we are contributing to our external experience.

We have to, from my perspective, get curious about our internal journey and know more about that.

Absolutely.

And what's interesting too, let's go back to the person who might be skeptical of all of this.

Yeah, just do what you need to do.

All right, let's say you are able to push through and then do what you need to do.

And then you're able to do it actually at a decently high level.

But did you enjoy that?

How was that experience?

Right?

Because we can't just focus on the outcome.

We have to think about the process and how we felt about it too.

Because if you present somebody with the option hey, you could be successful and miserable versus hey, you can be successful and feel good about yourself.

The obvious answer is feel good about yourself, right?

But a lot of times we're not willing to do the internal work in order to get there.

That's right.

And I think you know, what's really important to me sometimes too is, you know, we're always talking about like well, what's your next step?

You know, what are you going to do next?

What's your next best choice going to be?

And I like to weave in the idea of how do you want to feel next?

You know, like in your next step, how do you want to feel?

Because it's not just about the doing part of that.

I mean, we like to believe that we are doing and thinking beings.

And we like to kind of think of this feeling being as something that like Yeah, maybe we experience during Christmas time because it's nostalgic, or during our anniversary, when we hold up the idea of having a loved one, or maybe if we lose a parent and we experience grief.

But like all these other feelings, I'll keep them at bay for now until I'm ready to address them.

But the truth is that we are walking around feeling beings all the time.

And so if we can have a greater understanding of where those feelings are coming from and integrate them with our thoughts and our behaviors,

That integration to me means more integrity.

It means more thoughtful and meaningful choices that allow us to move forward with our values intact.

Yeah.

So I think that this part is really important because from my perspective, you know, I like to think of everything that we've gone through up until this point, everything that we thought felt behaved related, all of our relationships kind of find themselves in a metaphorical backpack on our back.

And when we move into any experience, any next challenge, any next job interview, any next difficult conversation with somebody that's in front of us, we bring with us that backpack.

And if we understand what's in the backpack, then we can actually utilize things that are in the backpack to make us better negotiators or to allow us to be more present in conversation.

And I'll give you an example of that.

So let's say, for example, in my previous job, I had a boss that never gave me positive feedback ever and was not only like devoid, of you know, positive feedback, but also layered on criticism and layered it on pretty heavily.

That job's over.

I'm in a new job.

I have a new boss.

And I come into her office and our first performance review and she starts in.

But the language that she uses to transition some of her sentences is the exact same language that my previous boss used.

Now my brain, just because of neuroscience, is going to naturally associate uh-oh, like there's that word.

What's coming next is criticism.

Oh, there's that word what's coming next is criticism.

And so I might literally shut down, like I might begin to turn the volume down on her and put up my walls, because I have this, have had this experience before.

And so I believe this is what's coming.

But she might be sitting there giving me nothing but praise and or constructive criticism.

That's really useful for me and important for me to hear.

But if I don't understand that my response to what she's saying is based on a previous experience that I had with a previous boss, then I'm not going to be open to receiving that.

And I'm not going to even necessarily hear what she has to say.

So, for me, understanding and getting internally curious about the way that I'm thinking, feeling and behaving at any given moment allows me to show up and be present and to understand if the things in my backpack right now are maybe preventing me from being a good negotiator in that moment, or if they are helping me be a good negotiator in that moment.

Does that make sense?

Yeah, it makes a lot of sense.

And what I like about this is that we can look at it from the lens of our own experience and our own goals in these negotiations, but also from the experience of somebody else on the other side.

Because we've probably had situations where we said something that was benign and then somebody took it the complete wrong way.

And you're saying, what in the world just happened?

That's right.

I was trying to be nice.

What is wrong with you?

And so we can recognize how relationships start to break down because of the baggage that you described right.

That's an excellent point, because i think the truth is is that curiosity is contagious and so the more curious that we can also be internally with ourselves.

That provides sort of a vehicle for us to be curious, just like you said, about how our engagement with somebody else might be impacting them.

And we might even be able to get curious about them too.

Like I wonder if one of the reasons why they're shutting down right now is because maybe they had a previous boss who was XYZ or whatever it is.

So I think that sort of dual relationship is really important.

And the way that the arrow can kind of go both ways is critical to think about.

Absolutely.

And that's something that I found very helpful as a mediator and in my negotiations, too.

I remember in the book called The Charisma Myth.

One of the things that she said you could do is essentially psychologically give somebody a pass for bad behavior. not in that you're not holding people accountable in the real world, but in your head, just so you don't get all caught up in it, you can make up an excuse for them.

And I thought it was really interesting.

So I tried it one time.

And so, let's say, somebody is blowing up in a mediation, acting improperly, accusing me of things, accusing the other side of things.

And then I say to myself, I'm recognizing I'm starting to get upset.

Then I say, you know what?

Their dog might've died this morning.

You know, oh, they might've lost their job, something like that.

They might've broken up with a loved one.

And so I don't know if that's true, but it helps me to depersonalize a personal attack.

And so I can say, no, that wasn't about me.

And so now I can get to the point where I don't need to make up that excuse.

I can just say, yeah, that probably wasn't about me.

And it helps me to keep my head in the game during a difficult conversation.

Yeah, I think that's essential.

You know, when you talk about that, it really makes me think of, in so many ways, some of the work that I do with my clients.

A lot of it is really about discovery.

It's about kind of understanding.

You know where and when is my client most willing to get curious with me and where and when are they going to shut down real quick.

It was really interesting, for example, in sessions with adolescents, because when I brought parents in for some parent education, I would begin to understand maybe why an adolescent might have a difficult time with me when I'm talking a certain way, because oh, mom does the same thing.

And so her experience of me in that moment is more like a mom than maybe it is like a therapist.

So I think it's so important, this curiosity piece, for us to just consider how it might serve the conversation.

And I think sometimes we worry that curiosity again is sort of this like psychobabble nonsense That doesn't really get us very far.

But in fact I think the toughest individuals and the ones that really hone in their skill set are the most curious individuals.

Absolutely.

And now during the conversation, because when we're talking about this, a lot of it sounds like pre-work.

Before the conversation

Is it possible to be curious internally during a conversation?

I think so, very much so.

I mean for me, for example, one of the things that I like to talk about is really understanding what's showing us for us by tuning into our own body, right.

And so by considering our own body language.

So, for example, if somebody says something and you immediately back up I'm backing up now, but if you immediately back up in your chair, and What is that about in that moment?

And can you quickly check in with yourself and say I just literally created six more inches of distance from this person in this moment?

What does that say?

Am I uncomfortable with something they said and I want to create space?

Am I feeling like maybe attacked and I'm trying to get away?

You know what is it that's happening right now for me, that is showing up physically in this manifestation.

So I always think, I always love this idea of body language and understanding where our body language is.

Or, for example, if you are with somebody in conversation and they scratch their nose and then you scratch your nose, are you then maybe in a greater opportunity for empathy in that moment?

Because you are literally mimicking their behavior, not consciously, but you notice that you're actually doing it.

So I think if we can tune in and become curious and just ask ourselves short little bits of question,

Listen.

It doesn't need to be a 20 minute internal therapy session here, but just inquire sometimes about what's going on.

I think can really serve the conversation.

Absolutely.

It's incredibly powerful.

And I do the same thing.

A lot of times, usually it's blocking behavior.

So it's blocking and then leading back a little bit.

And I say, the simple question I ask myself is, what was that?

Like, hey Kwame, I saw you do that.

What was that?

Or maybe it was a response that came just a little bit too.

It was a little bit too short, just too sharp.

And I'm like, ooh, you might've caused some damage.

What was that?

I'm like, okay, well, yeah, that was something.

And I think that's one of the big, big things we have to recognize.

It's something.

And it's really funny because it's almost like our subconscious is signaling to ourselves constantly that there's something there, either a miss, or maybe something that we like, or whatever it is.

But they're signals.

But since we're not very curious a lot of times, at least not naturally curious about our internal states, we often miss it.

So it's important for us to start to generate and cultivate this new cognitive habit.

Yeah.

And I think and I'm going to go back to also what you brought up in the first question, which is, you know, does is it both ways too?

And I think too, we can get really curious about how somebody else is responding physically.

I mean I, when I'm in sessions with clients, will observe it out loud, which I wouldn't necessarily recommend in a conversation with someone.

But, For example, if the client grabs a blanket and covers themselves after we've had a difficult conversation, I'll point out to them you know, I noticed you covered yourself with that blanket.

Do you feel like you need some kind of like hug right now, right?

Because they're sort of metaphorically getting it from the blanket.

But I think that we can also do that when we are in conversation and in negotiation with another individual.

If they, for example, begin to back off, they cross their arms, they maybe even turn their shoulder a little bit, as if they're turning away from you.

How can you begin to weave that into your own knowledge and understanding of maybe, what it is that they need right then, in order to be more in the arena with you, because they're getting out of the arena, right?

So what is it that you might be able to do?

Do you soften your tone?

Do you pause for a minute?

You know what are the things that you can do to maybe allow them to come back into the conversation.

You use something that I love so much, which is how do you call people in rather than call people out?

And I think that we can begin to call people in more to conversation when we are in tune and curious about when are they shutting down?

Absolutely.

And this is great.

I think I need to have an episode just fully on body language at some point.

It's kind of ridiculous.

We're at 215 plus episodes.

I haven't done it yet.

But for anybody out there who wants to learn more about body language, check out the book What Every Body Is Thinking About by Joe Navarro, FBI agent.

Whenever counterintelligence people read books about persuasion or reading people, read that book.

Yeah, exactly.

That's very good.

So with the time we have left, let's cover the last part, when we're talking about curiosity during the conversation, more specifically externally, because we've been focusing a lot on the internal curiosity.

What are some unique ways that we can mobilize curiosity externally?

Well, I think language is key.

I think language is really, really important.

For example, right now, it feels like people are really hot.

It's an election year and there's a lot going on in our country.

And so oftentimes people are starting out conversations with things like how could you?

Which immediately puts the other individual in a defensive position because it's accusatory right.

And so even just a tweak in language of, I'm wondering what makes you, right?

Or I'm wondering why.

And why is even a word that sometimes I hesitate to use, because why?

Also, sometimes initially like, makes you feel like a child, you know, when someone says like well, why'd you do that?

That's what teachers and parents say to us all the time right?

So i think, just tweaking our language a little bit and understanding that too, you know, another thing that i think is really important right now is that there's this idea of well, i just don't understand.

Well OK, then let's get curious about it.

You know, how come?

Gosh, I'm so curious about that.

Right.

Like that's even to me like the tone that we use.

And I think even using that word curiosity in conversation can really create more of a collaboration than a debate.

Right.

Because you're calling again, to use your language, calling somebody in rather than calling somebody out, which I think is so essential, because you know, we know that the defensiveness also increases our experience of shame, because it feels like we've done something wrong.

So the language around how could you vote for that person, right?

Immediately is, oh my gosh, am I doing something wrong?

Let me defend my choice rather than let me get curious about it.

Absolutely.

I think those are great examples.

And going back to the point that you made where sometimes people say, I just don't get it, right?

Well, then just say, help me to understand.

Exactly.

A really easy way to do it.

And I honestly think, Laura, that curiosity is almost like a magic word.

Because it doesn't offend people too much.

I can't think of one time in a difficult conversation I've been in or somebody else who's been talking about negotiation for a while, when they use the term curious, people don't say you're curious.

I am offended.

I've never heard that.

And so it really softens the approach, because if you just say out of curiosity, or I'm curious, usually people receive that really well.

And I think if, especially if you're having trouble empathizing with somebody in the moment, just using those softeners can do wonders when it comes to getting people to engage more wholeheartedly in the conversation.

Yeah, I couldn't agree more.

And in my experience as a psychologist it's interesting because for the first few years in my work I wanted to do therapy really well.

I wanted to make sure that I was pulling out all of the psychological constructs and the verbiage and all the vernacular that made me sound really smart and made me present all these ideas to the client who, oh my gosh, had maybe never thought about that before.

And I realized, quite frankly, that it was horrible.

It went nowhere.

It was awful.

And it wasn't until I began to and I remember actually the minute that I was in a supervision, like a supervisory role, and I was sitting with another clinician in in a therapy room.

They were doing therapy with the parents and I was observing.

And I remember she said, I would like us to all get curiosity.

It was mind-blowing to me because I'd never heard a therapist use that word before.

And I was like, I'm going to start doing that.

And the minute I started doing it and changing my language with my clients and allowing myself to be more in collaboration with them, rather than teach them, it just shifted the work substantially.

And I've never turned back because it's just worked so well.

Clients are so much more responsive to it.

And similarly when I've done consulting work and gone in to C-suites and had conversations.

It never goes well when I try and teach them something.

You know, they all have egos too.

And so it's really about, I want to get curious what's working, what's not.

I want to be in collaboration with you.

Can we get curious together about this?

So I agree.

I think that word is a magic word.

Yeah.

And that's a really interesting approach too.

And I'm thinking about some of the conversations that I've had.

And I think actually saying that explicitly, let's both collaboratively get curious.

Because the thing about curiosity is you can't say, yeah, that guy, he's so arrogant.

He's always curious.

Arrogant people aren't curious.

Exactly.

That's right.

And so you're assuming a stance of humility that's endearing, that's inviting.

And so you're not just saying, hey, I'm asking questions, you're answering it.

So you're the only person getting vulnerable.

But when you're saying, let's get curious together, you're saying, hey, I'm going to be curious too.

I'm going to be humble and vulnerable, and I'm inviting you to do the same thing.

And it'll just lower the barriers in the conversation too.

Yeah, and I think the other thing that it does too is it gives us permission to not have an answer.

You know it gives us permission to not end the conversation with either I've changed your mind or you've changed mine.

You know, it just gives us an opportunity to sort of like explore the uncertain, even if we're relatively certain in our ideas.

It's sort of like we can hang up that jacket for a little bit and just enjoy the party.

So I think that part is really important too, because I think sometimes and I'm sure you know this better than anybody that we enter into conversation with a specific goal in mind of that ending a certain way, you know, and how do we allow ourselves and give ourselves permission both, you know, externally and internally, to not always end it that way?

Yes.

And Laura.

This is perfect timing because yesterday I was in a QA session on how to have difficult conversations about race.

So-

That's something that I've started to do this year because, with the American Negotiation Institute, you know, our motto is the best things in life are on the other side of difficult conversations.

And so right now, the difficult conversations are in race politics, not just business and law, where I feel very comfortable.

And so I started off the QA session and I said hey listen, I want everybody to feel comfortable here.

This is a safe space.

And I'll be honest, I don't know all the answers here.

You're probably going to ask something at some point where I don't know.

And that's okay too.

So don't feel bad.

You can't hurt my feelings.

And let's just assume the best of intentions.

And then, of course, as the conversation went on, a person asked a fantastic question and I answered it for a little bit.

But then I said, you know what?

I think I've reached the extent of my knowledge on this question.

And I know it's insufficient as it relates to an answer for you.

So I'm curious, too.

I need to go and I need to learn a little bit more and then maybe I can come back and we can continue the conversation.

But it is so liberating in a difficult conversation and to be able to say I don't know.

That's a good question.

I'm curious about that too.

Yeah, absolutely.

Well, and I think, you know, it shows our humanity.

And I think in my work with clients, when I've said to clients because they'll look at me desperate, wanting me to fix them, wanting me to give them that magic golden ticket out of their depression anxiety addiction, bad relationship,

And when I say, I don't know, but maybe we could get curious about it.

It's like, Okay.

You know, we don't always have to know.

So I think it allows us to really take that turn of stepping into maybe each other's shoes, the shoes of common humanity, of uncertainty and unknowing.

Exactly.

Well, this has been great.

A lot of fun.

And I wish we could just keep on going.

So that means we're definitely going to have you back on the show.

But before you go, two things.

Can you give a challenge for the listeners?

And can you also tell the listeners a little bit more about what you do and where they can reach you?

Yeah, absolutely.

So the first one is actually the easiest one, which is a challenge for the listeners.

And what I challenge each listener to do today is to pick one thing to get curious about.

What are you thinking?

How are you feeling?

Or how are you behaving?

And just get curious about it.

Just get curious about, you know, what am I thinking today?

What are the thoughts that are popping up for me right now?

What did I think about this podcast episode?

Did I like it?

Did I not like it, right?

Or how are you feeling?

And try and use a word that you're not used to using.

And by the way, okay and fine are not feelings, right?

And then also how in terms of your behavior, like what are you curious about there?

Are you curious about why you're picking certain choices, or are your behaviors in alignment with your value system, right?

So that's my challenge.

Just get curious today about one of those things either the way you're thinking, how you're feeling or how you're behaving.

And where you can find me.

It's always the more difficult one, because sometimes I forget where people can find me.

So I am certainly on Instagram at Dr. Laura Pence.

You can also go to my website. drlarapence.com.

You can sign up for my newsletter, where I unravel something each week that to me, doesn't really make a lot of sense.

And so let's get curious about it together.

I've also recently come out with a product called Lifebox.

It's spelled L-I-G-H-F-B-O-X, which is a box that of 180 questions and prompts that spark curiosity.

So you can go to lifebox.com and check that out as well.

Very cool.

That's awesome.

Well, Laura, thank you so much for coming on the show today.

We really appreciate it.

You've just heard one powerful perspective and now we're moving on to the next, a fresh voice with a new angle on the same challenge, so you can keep expanding your skills.

Let's dive in.

Kenji, thanks for joining us today.

Thank you so much for having me, Kwame.

Oh, it's my pleasure, my friend.

So how would you get us started by telling us a little bit about yourself and what you do?

My name is Kenji Yoshino.

I'm a law professor at NYU.

Specifically, I'm the Chief Justice Earl Warren Professor of Constitutional Law.

But perhaps more importantly for these purposes Kwame, I'm also the faculty director of the Meltzer Center for Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging.

This is great.

It's also, it's refreshing to have somebody else who has the legal background.

This is, and your career is really impressive.

I mean, I even think back to con law when I was taking constitutional law, and just how challenging it was.

To talk to a professor who has this background, not just on the legal side, but also has the heart for DEI and a focus on how to have those conversations.

This is a beautiful combination.

Thank you.

Yeah, so let's jump right in and talk about the book.

Say the Right Thing.

Tell us about that.

So this book really came out of my executive director, David Glasgow, and my belief that there are tons and tons of allies out there.

So, as a political writer, Matt Iglesias, has said, what we're experiencing right now is a great awokening.

And I mean woke there in its positive, original sense, rather than its distorted, more contemporary sense.

And what he means is that this is a really interesting time, where non-Black people are going to Black Lives Matter rallies, men are going to the Women's March in Washington, straight and cisgender people are standing up for the LGBTQ plus community in ever greater numbers, and people without disabilities are standing up for people in the community with disabilities.

So it's a really hopeful time, despite all the noise that we hear, where people who don't belong to particular groups are stepping in and stepping up to actually be allies to those groups.

And one of the things that David and I found in this hopeful moment was that we weren't realizing its full potential, because so many people who wanted to be allies said I want to do the right thing.

I want to step in, but I'm terrified of one thing in particular.

And we heard this over and over again.

I'm scared of saying the wrong thing.

I'm scared of saying something inappropriate and hurting someone I care about.

Realistically.

I'm also scared that I'm going to get canceled myself if I say something in the wrong way.

So we wrote this book in order to provide some hopefully comfort and safety for those people who want to do the right thing, by giving them some guardrails around how to say the right thing.

I love this.

I'm smiling for a number of reasons.

First, because you're absolutely right.

This is necessary.

We need to have the skills to have these conversations.

Second, people want to be involved, but they struggle to get involved because they're afraid of saying the wrong thing.

And then third, there was a selfish smile.

So last year, my second book came out, How to Have Difficult Conversations About Race.

And it's just validating to see the research that you did is showing what I found as well when it comes to the reasons why people have the conversation.

And I'd be interested to hear your perspective on this little element, because there's that fear.

So many people would say that fear of saying the wrong thing that holds people, people back.

What I found is that a lot of times they themselves cannot even identify a specific conversation that they had that went poorly, but they are still afraid, even though it might not have actually personally happened to them.

I totally agree with that.

And I should say, you know, at the outset that I'm so delighted to be with another lawyer.

And I also have just as much to learn as to teach here, I suspect, if not more so, given your prior work.

So I really look forward to this conversation as well.

And I would say that people are often unable to even articulate what they're feeling, much less, you know, drill down to the level of a specific conversation.

So oftentimes it's just this inchoate sort of discomfort that people keep alluding to of.

I'm really uncomfortable.

And one of the things that we really try and do at our center is to say look, just what are you feeling?

And people really can't articulate it.

And so we have to make a multiple choice, Kwame.

We have to say, is it fear?

Is it guilt?

Is it anger?

Or is it hopelessness?

Because in our experience, those are the dominant emotions.

Fear would be what we're just talking about.

I'm going to get canceled.

Guilt would be, well, maybe people are right in what they say about me.

Maybe I do harbor these unconscious or maybe even conscious biases about others.

Hopelessness is, I'm never going to get this right.

When I speak up, people tell me to shut up and share the air.

When I'm silent, people tell me silence is violence, and then I need to actually do better.

And let's see, what did we do?

Fear, anger, guilt, and hopelessness.

Anger, I guess is the one that we've left out. is this notion of, you know, I'm furious, right?

A lot of times people are just so angry that they feel like they have been burned in the past.

Right,

Or they're angry because they feel like their own group or their own identity is beleaguered in American society.

And oftentimes they can't distinguish or disambiguate those four emotions.

So the first step is really just being able to name it.

And then we have some control over it.

It pushes it up from our reptile brain into our more conscious brain where we can manage it.

But I agree with you.

Once you actually get it out in the open.

It's actually rare that people are able to say you know, here's a conversation or here are the life experiences that led me to have this fear.

For example,

But we regard that to be a really hopeful thing, because once you understand that there is no real basis in your personal experience for that fear, that can actually give you a lot of courage.

Absolutely.

And it takes a lot of courage first to even go through this introspective process to figure out what it is that we're feeling.

Because when we feel that discomfort, a lot of times we just want to, we don't want to explore it.

We're like, I feel bad when I think about this.

So I'm not going to think about this anymore.

So I'm glad we're starting here because naming it.

I mean, this is classic psychological research.

We name it to tame it.

When we actually articulate how we're feeling and name those emotions, then we can start to become better able to control and manage them, so we can then overcome them.

Exactly right.

And we actually, in the first chapter of our book, describe those let's flee from this conversation reaction and these four reactions that we call ADDA behaviors, which is avoid deflect, deny and attack.

So someone comes to me and says you know Kenji, you were in the hiring committee for the law school last year and the diversity numbers of the candidates you hired were terrible.

Do better.

You know, I would hope that I would be able to have the resilience and the curiosity in order to respond to that in a mature and level-headed way.

But in point of fact, it's quite likely, more likely than not, that I will react in one of those four ways.

So void would be, look at the time.

I have another meeting to go to.

Can't have this conversation.

Deflect would be oh, I really appreciate that conversation, but I don't really appreciate the tone in which you put it.

I thought it was a little inappropriate, thereby changing the tone topic of the conversation from the substance to the tone in which it was framed.

Deny would be, I deny that you have a legitimate case.

So if I say something like oh, I don't think diversity should play any role in our hiring, it should be based on merit alone.

An attack is carrying war into your conversation.

Partner's camp the most aggressive, which is, you know why do you have to make everything about diversity?

Why do you have to make everything about race, right?

And just really attacking them.

Why are you such a snowflake?

Why are you so thin skinned?

And the minute that you can actually describe those four reactions in yourself and connect them up to the emotions that we were just discussing, then you're just way ahead of the game, because you can just see that these are unproductive responses.

All your colleague is trying to do is to open up a pathway for you to have a conversation about diversity on the faculty.

If you can't sort of even sit in your seat for that, then we're not going to get very far.

This is really helpful.

I mean it's almost like.

It's almost like the four horsemen of the apocalypse for relationships, right.

This is really helpful because when John Gottman did his research on marriages that work, I forget the four horsemen that he identified.

But I know, like sarcasm contempt, like those type of things.

I love the fact that you've given us four very clear ways to identify a conversation or an interaction that is not going well in these.

Okay, i see avoidance, we get denial, We get attacking.

I think the other one was defending?

Deflect.

Deflect, right?

And so I think one of the things that's so powerful about this is that if we all just slow down and look into the mirror,

We have all demonstrated these behaviors.

We probably did it today in some capacity, Kenji.

And it helps us to recognize that again, we have to take responsibility for the quality of these conversations.

So if somebody demonstrates this behavior, we should be able to say, hey, I saw this coming.

These are predictable responses, and I have the tools to overcome this.

But then for ourselves we can slow down and actually take that look in the mirror and say you know what?

Hmm, this is, I'm doing this, I'm attacking, I'm avoiding, and it can help us to course correct in the moment and get the conversation back into moving into a productive direction.

Exactly right, and you know, i'll break some news here and say, like we don't do this uh, by name, we use an anonymous professor, but the professor is actually me.

Uh, where a student says You are using the words about, you know, 10 years ago, illegal alien, right.

When you teach your constitutional law class.

So if you cast your mind back to con law, you know, Kwame, you'll remember, right?

Cases about the alien is distinction.

And again, I would have expected and hoped for better for myself, but I said I'm going to defend myself and say this is what the Supreme Court uses.

So are you saying that it's wrong to quote the language from the Supreme Court?"

The student was like, yes, kind of.

We shouldn't take their judgments for our judgments.

At a minimum, just use their language when you're quoting from the case.

But when you're using your own terminology, Use your own terminology.

And then again, I would have hoped that I would have been able to rise above and to listen to this critique.

But I went and immediately defended by and deflected to my own credentials.

And I said you know.

You may not know who I am, but I spent my entire life working on civil rights.

Like, my specialty is the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment.

Like, I've spent all of my life working on these issues.

So it makes me kind of think that you don't know who I am, right, to launch this criticism at me.

And the poor student was like, no, no, no, I do know about all that stuff.

And that's exactly why I was surprised to hear you use this term, which is disfavored.

And that's why I felt like I could bring this to you.

And ultimately we got to a better place, right?

But the first round did not go well.

Like ultimately, you know I ended up saying to the student you know I apologize for being so defensive.

You are actually right, you know, on the substance and I'll change the terminology that I'll use.

But I tell stories like that, you know, Kwame not to kind of self-flagellate myself, But simply to open up the space to say I have been in the diversity inclusion space for a number of years now.

I'm still making these mistakes.

I'll do that till the day I die.

And so the point here is not to be perfect.

The point is to be able to identify when we've fallen short of our own ideals and to be able to correct it.

First of all, thank you for your courage in sharing that story.

And I say courage because I think now we're living in an age where it's really hard for people to recover from making certain types of mistakes.

And I think there let me actually say it this way there is a perception that it's hard to recover from making certain types of mistakes, because the punishment for saying the wrong thing, cancellation those types of things, that's real.

And it can come swift and forcefully, right?

But you're living your ethos by actually saying, hey, I make a mistake.

I make mistakes and I still will.

Here's an example.

And I think the most encouraging part about this is that you said the first round did not go well, but you recovered by apologizing and the conversation ended up in a positive space.

So we will make mistakes throughout life, but we'll also make mistakes throughout these conversations.

But if you have the right skills and the right mindset, you can course correct in the moment and get things back on track.

Exactly right.

And one of my huge role models in this space is a wonderful scholar, a psychologist.

I was a colleague of mine at NYU named Dolly Chug.

And one of the things that she does is in her classes, she puts up a slide of a professor.

And she says, here's a day in the life of a professor.

She said this professor confused two people of the same ethnicity and called them repeatedly by each other's names.

This professor misgendered a student.

This professor laughed repeatedly at inappropriate jokes about identity.

This professor had a syllabus that was stacked towards dominant groups without any justification for why that needed to be.

And you probably see where this is going, Kwame.

The next slide is, and that professor was me.

And I think like what an incredible act of courage, as you put it, and role modeling for her students to say none of us need to be perfect.

None of us can be perfect in this space, right?

But all of us can get better.

And part of getting better is sort of admitting when we've made mistakes and trying to improve, rather than bunkering down and trying to pretend that we have it all sewn up, because none of us do.

So one of the things that David and I are really trying to argue for is a gear shift from cancel culture to something that we call coaching culture.

So I hasten to add that as critics of cancel culture were pretty mild.

Sometimes people do engage in egregious behavior over time, and then the so-called cancellation is just consequence culture.

But for the vast majority of people of goodwill, You know, cancel culture is really inappropriate and unproductive, because someone makes one mistake and then they risk being ostracized for that one mistake.

And our criticism of that kind of cancel culture is really twofold.

One is that it's indiscriminately punitive, so it's unfair.

And then the other one is that it's actually, in the end, not very practical because it doesn't teach us any skills, because being ostracized is not the same as being taught a skill.

So our hope for this book, which is arrayed across seven principles that are all meant to be kind of tools in a toolkit that you can use immediately after reading it.

The goal in the book is really to be like this is not a high concept book.

This is not like a fancy theoretical book.

It's a screwdriver, right?

It is like a multi-tool that allows you to have these conversations a little bit better, with a little bit more confidence that you know that things are not going to go off the rails.

This is great.

And again kudos because, as we could talk as lawyers, I'm an adjunct, I'm not a full professor, but coming from academia to a certain extent.

Here too, there is a lot of pressure in these professions that really love prestige to make things almost difficult to access in order to amplify that level of perceived prestige right.

So for somebody at your level, with your credentials, to write a book that is a screwdriver and not a theoretical manifesto Again, that takes courage because, at the end of the day, what we want to do is we want to give people the tools to be able to have these difficult conversations more effectively.

You can read the book and you can do the things.

And so many of the books that are, you know, well-meaning in nature often make the concept so inaccessible and so theoretical that it makes it impossible for somebody to actually put it into practical action in their lives.

Yeah, thank you for seeing that so clearly, because it was, you know, the cause of some sleepless nights where I was thinking, like you know, If you look at my early work, you know I was insecure and the words were very, very long right.

And the sentences are very, very obscure, because I was trying to protect myself in exactly the ways that you described.

So I knew that the right decision was to make this to meet the need that I saw that was out there.

What problem am I really trying to solve here?

The problem is not I need people to respect me more as an academic.

The problem was I'm trying to solve a societal issue that I see, where people of really goodwill are still terrified of having these conversations.

What would the world look like if those individuals felt like they could be mobilized to live up to their ideals rather than living under their ideals, right?

So that was the goal.

I did you know in candor have some sleepless nights over whether or not my reputation would take a hit, because you know it is a really kind of basic.

You know there are bullets at the end of every chapter.

It's a really short, you know, you can read it on a plane flight kind of book.

But to their credit, my colleagues have been really wonderful about it, at least to date.

It came out in February, so we'll see, maybe it will come later.

But people have been really supportive of it because they see what we're trying to do.

They understand that if we want to meet the need This book is for really, really busy people in all walks of life who are not necessarily going to have your legal training or my legal training.

And so it's really important that we meet the reader where that reader is, and to be as kind of plain-throated and as helpful and as relentlessly practical as possible.

I love this.

This is great.

And let's get into the principles, because there are three principles of the book that I want to make sure that we can cover here.

So we have cultivate curiosity, disagree respectfully, and apologize authentically.

So let's just run through some of those.

Absolutely.

So cultivate curiosity is one of my favorite principles here, because I think oftentimes we think that we are much better prepared for these conversations than we actually are, until things go disastrously wrong.

One of the things that we were thinking about is where do the gaps in knowledge lie?

One gap in knowledge is where you know that you don't know something.

If I raise my hand to be an ally to the neurodiverse community And then I start having the conversation and then suddenly I realize gosh, I just don't know enough to be an effective ally here.

That may be embarrassing, but I kind of know what to do with that, Kwame.

Like, you know, I'm a researcher, you're a researcher.

We got this, right?

We can just go out and read the books on neurodiversity or listen to the podcasts or watch the documentaries and we're good, right.

The really hard question that we came across with the curiosity chapter was what happens when you don't even know what you don't know.

This is Donald Rumsfeld's famous distinction between the known unknowns and the unknown unknowns.

So the unknown, unknowns are the trickiest, because you're ignorant of your own ignorance and you don't even know what you don't know.

So how the heck am I supposed to fill a hole when I don't even know that hole is there?

And the person who was like so amazing on this, is a philosopher.

So a lot of the times in this book we're dealing with social scientists psychologists, organizational behaviorists, but here the humanities, like saved us, because this philosopher named Christy Dotson, who's an epistemologist, says whenever you're in an identity conversation and you may not know until, like the minute, the issue arises that you're having an identity conversation, a conversation about our demographic differences.

She says, here's one line of advice for you.

Put yourself in a nuclear physics seminar.

What does that mean?

It means that if I'm having an identity conversation, I'm going to put myself in the nuclear physics seminar and say Kenji, you may think you have this and you know all there is to know, but you don't know anything.

You're in a nuclear physics seminar.

If you were in a nuclear physics seminar.

You think of yourself as a pretty smart guy, but you'd be incredibly humble.

You would listen incredibly attentively.

You'd share very, very tentatively and drafts rather than complete utterances.

And you would have a posture of radical humility to say I've done all the reading, I've tried to be prepared, I've tried to listen, but I really don't know this field.

It's a really hard field, so I'm going to be very cautious.

That's going to save us from so many errors.

And as a riff on that, when Sharlyn Ifill, the former president of the LDF, came to my center, I asked her what cases the Supreme Court had decided on race.

She would want to have had decided differently.

And she kind of rejected the question in her inimitable way.

And what she said was you know, Kenji?

I hear the question as what do I want the Supreme Court to do differently?

And it's not about a particular case.

It's about a mindset, because the justices are not arrogant people where they know they don't know, something like a case about social media.

They will be very, very cautious.

They'll hire a special master.

They'll do their own research.

They'll send the clerks out and research.

They'll read the briefs really carefully.

But she was like a weird thing happens when it gets to race where the justices believe that simply because they've grown up in a multicultural, multiracial society, they have it all down.

And they know everything there is to know about race just by living in society.

And she was like, that just seems like such a fallacy, given that they don't.

And so many people have devoted their entire lives to the history, the politics, you know, the sociology of race.

So I remember thinking, like when I came across Christy Dotson's work, like Sherilyn Ifill would give Christy Dotson a hug, right.

Because what Christy Dotson is saying is, like all of us, when we're talking about issues of identity, should put ourselves in that nuclear physics seminar and convince ourselves that we don't have this.

It's going to be just my luck that all your listeners are nuclear physicists, but if that's the case, they should think of some other terrifying area of knowledge that they think is super arcane and hard, like literary theory.

But like, I think of myself as like a decently smart person.

But I know if I were in that nuclear physics seminar I would be very very, very cautious.

So like I tend to think, like when I'm trying to be an ally to the woman in my life you know, I have a sister

I have a mom.

I have lots of women in my life.

Right.

So I got this.

But in point of fact, a much more helpful way to approach those conversations is to go from the baseline of this is nuclear physics.

I don't have this.

Right.

And I should actually listen incredibly attentively and share incredibly tentatively.

Wow.

So Kenji, first of all, one piece of feedback from your book is that you should have published it two years earlier, so I could have read the book and then cited you in my book.

Wow.

This is so good.

I really love this because we I think negotiation experts, people in conflict resolution and communication we always talk about curiosity, curiosity.

And we talk about the need for genuine curiosity, because if it's just strategic, people can say OK, cool.

Kenji setting me up.

This is a cross examination.

It's over soon.

I know it's going to be bad for me.

Right.

But true curiosity is powered by humility.

And it's not often easy for us to generate humility in the middle of a conversation of consequence.

And I think this mindset of saying put yourself into this nuclear physics type of mentality, I think that's the perfect way to say it.

I remember taking astrophysics in undergrad.

I was a psychology major.

I was just curious.

I thought it was really interesting.

So I could come in and feel confident in the fact that hey, I know the things that I do know and I know enough to know that I don't know anything about this thing.

Right.

And I think we are.

It's almost like the Dunning Kruger effect in action in all of these interactions, because we vastly overestimate the level of confidence we should have in these topics just because we have tangentially interacted with them in some capacity.

My dad's a doctor.

My wife's a doctor.

That doesn't mean I know anything meaningful about medicine, right?

And so I think that genuine humility is the lost piece of a lot of that curiosity that we're looking to foster in these conversations.

I couldn't agree more.

That was beautifully said.

Thank you.

No, this is really great.

Well, let's listen.

If this is principle, the first thing we're going to talk about, let's go to the next principle and see if we can keep on this momentum.

So disagreeing respectfully, tell us about that.

Yeah, here I really have to give a shout out to my co-author, David Glasgow, because he was so powerful as an architect of this chapter.

And his kind of initial insight was when we have disagreements about identity, oftentimes we miss each other because we are at different points on what he calls the controversy spectrum.

So if you think about a controversy spectrum stretching from left to right, you can imagine over on the least controversial side, something like taste.

And then it escalates to facts, and then it goes to policies, and then it goes to values and then finally, we have equal humanity as the most highly controversial topic.

So, starting with taste, if you and I disagree about which Netflix show is better or which sports team is better, or what flavor of ice cream is better, we're actually probably gonna become closer rather than further apart if we disagree.

We can just razz each other and it'll be like friendly banter.

As we move over to facts.

So long as we're really talking about like journalistic facts, like who did what, where and why, as opposed to debates over values by proxy, like alternative facts If we're really talking about journalistic facts, then we're probably still okay.

When we move to policies, things get a little hotter, values hotter still.

And where it gets really kind of white hot is with regard to equal humanity, where one or both parties feel like the disagreement is implicating their equal humanity.

And oftentimes what we see in disagreements and identity circumstances is that one person is having the debate as an issue of policy and the other person is having the disagreement as an issue of equal humanity.

So just to give you a example of that, because I think examples almost always help us get our arms around this idea.

I can give a personal one.

So I am in a same-sex relationship and now married to my husband for 14 years.

But prior to 2015, when same-sex marriage was made the law of the land by a Supreme Court decision.

As a constitutional law professor, I used to go around the country arguing for same-sex marriage against individuals who believe that it didn't have a constitutional dimension.

And in green room after green room, on prep call after prep call, I got the same advice from my party opposite, which was you know Kenji, we know you're in a same-sex relationship, so this is personal to you.

But please leave that aside when you go up on that debate stage.

You know, we think that, you know, making that kind of human appeal is kind of unfair to us.

So let's have an intellectual debate about this.

And I was always so puzzled by that because, on the one hand, I was thinking like well, of course, like I'm not going to go up there and talk about my memoir, right?

Like this is like, you know, constitutional law and I'm a constitutional law professor.

But on the other hand, I was also thinking like you could have done yourself so much good, and I don't think you would have deprived yourself of a single substantive argument if you had been able to acknowledge that we are at different points on this scale.

So if you had been able to say we are going to argue this as an issue of values right, but we want to acknowledge that this may land differently for you and we'll try to honor and respect that as we have this conversation.

And to the extent that we fail at that, we would love to hear about it.

Like we would love for you to give us feedback, right?

I don't think that that would have deprived them of a single substantive argument, but I do think it would have made the conversation much more human and humane.

So one of the things that we say is oftentimes when you disagree with somebody on an issue, right?

The other person's reaction, particularly if you're on the more empowered side of the exchange, may seem really outsized to you.

And if it seems like a shaken up can of soda has exploded in your face.

One thing to ask yourself is could we be at different points on the controversy scale?

Am I arguing this as an issue of policy when the other side is experiencing it as a strike at their fundamental humanity?

Kwame, lest I sound overly pious or like this is super easy, why can't everybody do it?

I acknowledge that this is hard.

Now that we're on the other side of 2015, the shoe is on the other foot, and the people that I'm debating in legal circles are people who want exemptions from laws of general applicability Now that same-sex marriage is a law of the land.

So the Christian baker is debating me, or his lawyers are debating me, saying we don't want to have to bake the cake.

We want a religious exemption from this non-discrimination law.

And I will die on the hill of saying those exemptions should not be granted.

I just think that that makes a Swiss cheese of our civil rights commitments.

But in these conversations, I have to take my own medicine.

And in those green rooms and in those prep calls, I try to say in some way that is appropriate to the occasion.

I acknowledge that I'm arguing.

This is a matter of policy, but I want to acknowledge that for you it may feel like an issue of equal humanity, because this is about your capacity to live out your faith in the public sphere.

Think I understand where you're coming from.

And I want to honor that as we have this conversation.

My priors are my priors.

I've thought deeply about this.

I am not going to change.

I don't think anything that I believe with regard to the right outcome in these cases.

But that doesn't mean I can't acknowledge your equal humanity stakes in this conversation.

And the conversation goes so much better if I have the gumption to utter those words.

This is so incredible.

And just as an aside, You're like author to author now.

You're showing me how to appropriately market a book because I'm just like, I need to read this now.

So kudos to you.

This is great.

And I agree with you 100.

That mere acknowledgement can go a long way in changing the complete dynamics of the conversation.

Exact same conversation, more or less, but it feels so much better.

Now, what is it that makes it so hard for people to give that acknowledgement to the other side?

Yeah, it's a really good question.

I'm not sure how smart I'm going to be about it.

But my guess is that people have a hard time acknowledging it because they really don't want to humanize the other side.

They really want that person to be demonized to some extent, so that they can make what they believe is the strongest arguments for their position.

And I worry about that, you know.

I think it's a really natural impulse to say you know, I don't want to empathize too much with this person, because then I'll be able to see their side of the story.

But this goes back to sort of classic kind of John Stuart Mill type principles right of like If truth grapples with error, we want truth to prevail and we expect truth to prevail.

So why am I so threatened by a person who holds views that are different from mine, if I believe that I have the truth?

If I'm wrong about something, then I'm the winner in the debate when I lose the debate, because I've actually learned something right.

So if we can just approach the debates in that way and say I lose nothing in humanizing, really just in seeing the humanity I think is a better way to put it of my opponents,

And I still have the capacity to disagree.

It's just that the disagreement will be a lot more agreeable and a lot more respectful if we can talk to each other as human beings rather than demonizing each other as people of nothing in common.

Brilliant, i love it.

And with all of these points listeners, i hope you respect my restraint here because i want to dive in to all of them again.

So uh, but we're going to get to this last principle, which is apologize authentically.

Oh, this is good.

And on the eve of my anniversary, this is great.

Yeah this, this one is uh, really near and dear to my heart, because we had this experience where initially, we were kind of throwing up our hands in despair, thinking this is such a complex topic that really deep thinkers have addressed.

And how on earth are we going to distill this down into what lawyers like to do?

As you know, Kwame, here are the kind of four elements of a successful apology.

Sure enough, though.

After we sent an army of research assistants out into the theological literature, the psychological literature, the pop culture literature, the social science literature, what we found was that you can really find some commonalities in what all of these kind of scholars and thinkers say are the elements of a successful apology.

Maybe oversimplifying a little bit, but I don't think terribly.

We think that there are four elements.

And so we call these the four R's of a successful apology.

So the first one is recognition.

The second is responsibility.

The third is remorse.

And the fourth is redress.

So the first one is recognition.

And the danger word that we want you to look out for here is the word if.

So if I say to you you know, if I did that I'm sorry, or Kwame, I'm sorry, if you feel that way, I should immediately kind of bite my tongue and start over, right?

Because One of two things is happening there.

Either I'm really not sure of what's going on, and if that's the case, then I should exercise more curiosity.

If I really don't know what I did that hurt you, then I'm back to curiosity.

But, you know, more likely than not, I know exactly what I did.

Right.

And what I'm trying to do by using the word if is to soften the blow on myself, is to kind of limit my exposure, because apologies make us feel so vulnerable and exposed.

If I can say, if I did that, then I'm not quite copying to the fact that I did something wrong to you.

But that non-acknowledgement is something that you'll hear loud and clear as a recipient of the apology.

And what Aaron Lazar, one of the most brilliant thinkers on apologies, has said is you're trying to limit your exposure And you're trying to offer an authentic apology, but you're going to succeed at neither of those ends if you give an if apology right.

Because the apology won't be authentic, right?

And you will not have really protected yourself because the apology will be rejected.

And like it's not, you'll have to apologize for the apology, right?

Not going well.

The second one is responsibility, and the danger word here is but.

So if I say I'm sorry comma, but I was having a miserable day, or I'm sorry comma, but I was really stressed, you're left wondering, as a recipient of the apology, what happens next time Kenji has a terrible day or is stressed.

Am I to expect a repeat of the same behavior?

Our favorite example of this is Roseanne Barr's apology for a tweet that she sent out about Valerie Jarrett that was racist.

She acknowledged that it was racist.

She apologized.

But then she said I'm sorry comma, but I was ambient tweeting and it was 2 am in the morning.

So you know, if you look at that, you know Sanofi, the maker of Ambien, tweeted out you know, racism is not a side effect of any of our medications.

So it's like if you don't want like a big pharma company dunking on you, right then don't use the word but right, because it just sounds so insincere.

And I think one of the things that we've really learned in our work is that there's really nothing wrong and a lot good with saying I'm sorry, period.

There is no excuse, period, right?

Rather than lapsing into I'm sorry, comma, but formulations.

The third element is remorse.

And there are no real danger words here, Kwame.

It's much more about context.

And I think the way that I can sort of land the plane on this one is with the Mario Batali apology for alleged sexual assault.

So he rendered a passable apology until the very end, and then he blew up all of his good work by saying you know oh, for those of you who are interested in like a holiday recipe, here's one for cinnamon rolls.

I'm just like, what?

You know, so.

Hold up.

Wait.

Wait, wait, wait.

So after his apology.

He gave a random recipe?

Yes.

It was like, I'm so sorry for engaging in this alleged sexual assault.

By the way, here's a recipe.

I'm like, these two things do not go together.

So choose one.

Choose the apology or choose the recipe.

But once you put them together, I'm done.

Like, I'm not making the recipe and I'm not accepting the apology.

Kenji, I just imagine somebody really mad listening to the obology like, oh, okay, this is good.

Well, you know what?

Now I'm going to make some cinnamon rolls.

That would be a much more evolved person than I am capable of being at this point.

Yes.

And then the fourth one is redress, which is you can't talk your way out of something you've acted your way into.

So if I apologize to you and I do the same thing tomorrow, that's not really an apology.

You're right to reject my apology.

And so one of the things that we underscore is that the reason that apologies can be kind of scary is that we all kind of implicitly know that We're closing the book on something, but we're also opening the book onto a future course of conduct, right?

We're effectively promising that we're not going to engage in the same behavior again.

And so that's a real kind of commitment to act differently in the future.

And so it can be a heavy lift, but that's intrinsic in an apology, we believe.

But we think that if you hit those four elements again of recognition responsibility, remorse and redress, you're gonna be really good right.

And a lot better than most of the apologies you see in the public sphere, because you'll be able to sort of hit these elements.

I loved what you said earlier about strategic apologies.

We're not in the business of offering up these four elements of a strategic, you know, of an apology for strategic purposes.

What we're trying to do really is to say here are the elements of a strategic apology.

Can you authentically adhere to them?

So if I think like oh like, I can't really take responsibility for this right.

And my tell is that I'm using the word but a lot.

And so I don't really feel like I owe this person an apology, because I don't really feel like I was responsible.

Well, at that point we would much rather have you say I can't meet one of the successful elements of sorry, one of the elements of a successful apology.

What does that tell me?

It may tell me that what I really want to have is a respectful disagreement rather than an authentic apology.

And we would prefer you to have that respectful disagreement over the inauthentic apology any time.

Again one of those situations where I'm going to need to use restraint Kenji, because you know what?

If you accept my invitation, I'd love to have you back on, because there's so much to explore with this.

And I think that's really important.

This last point, because we're not suggesting that you apologize for things that were not wrong.

If you genuinely don't believe then you were wrong.

I think this is an opportunity to have a conversation.

And it's not a.

I think that's really empowering for people, because I've seen that in a lot of situations where somebody says this person thinks I did something wrong and they're wanting an apology.

I genuinely, upon reflection, don't believe that what I did was wrong.

And what you're saying here is that that's fine.

Now you have an opportunity to have a respectful disagreement.

I think this is a really, really important fork in the road for a lot of relationships and conversations where people understand.

Now I still have a viable option that can still leave the relationship intact.

Exactly right.

And we hear so.

First of all, I should say extremely yes, anytime you want me back, as my kids say extremely yes to that.

But I also feel exactly that this is a really important sort of fork in the road where People often ask us like am I allowed to disagree?

So a student kind of broke our hearts when we write about this in our book.

When he came to us, both of us after an event and said you know, I made a comment and, as a man and a colleague of mine is a woman thought I was being sexist and I didn't think I was being sexist.

Am I allowed to disagree?

And it broke our hearts because we're like, of course, you're allowed to disagree.

You're in an institution of higher learning.

Even if you weren't, you should be allowed to disagree for the sake of your own integrity and authenticity.

But we also got where he was coming from, not just this notion of the climate that we're in and cancel culture and self-preservation.

But also from this notion and I believe he was really coming from this place of curiosity, of like I don't have a woman's lived experience.

And so therefore, like, I may need to defer to her.

I could be wrong about this.

But sharing tentatively that you disagree is something that we all have to be able to do.

And put a little bit more sharply, Kwame if we shut down the capacity of people to disagree in these conversations, We're also shutting down drastically the number of conversations that are going to be had about identity, because if people feel like their only options are going to be to like nod in agreement or to roll over and apologize, they're not going to want to enter into these conversations.

Sometimes our integrity and our authenticity demand that we be able to disagree.

And even if we're wrong to say, you know, I could be wrong.

But I just don't see it that way.

Of course we have to be able to say that in these public debates.

This is so good.

Kenji, I appreciate you.

And listeners, for those of you who say this episode is too long, I don't apologize.

I respectfully disagree.

That's a mic drop right there.

And so, before you go Kenji, please remind listeners about the book and how they can learn more about your work.

Yes, absolutely.

So the book is called Say the Right Thing, How to Talk About Identity, Diversity and Justice.

And David and I are both available on the NYU website.

If you just Google Kenji Yoshino or David Glasgow and NYU will pop up.

Perfect.

Kenji, really appreciate you.

Thanks for all your great work.

I appreciate your comment.

Thank you so much.

[Mastering Difficult Conversations: Insights from Negotiation Experts]-[How to ACTUALLY Have Difficult Conversations — Masterclass on Turning Conflict Into Connection]

📋 Summary

Mastering Difficult Conversations: A Strategic Framework

Shifting from Blame to Joint Contribution

The Power of Internal Curiosity

Redefining Power Dynamics

Overcoming the Fear of Saying the Wrong Thing

The Architecture of an Authentic Apology

Conclusion: Peace is Hard Work

🎯Key Sentences

📝Key Phrases

📖 Transcript

[Mastering Difficult Conversations: Insights from Negotiation Experts]-[How to ACTUALLY Have Difficult Conversations — Masterclass on Turning Conflict Into Connection]

📋 Summary

Mastering Difficult Conversations: A Strategic Framework

Shifting from Blame to Joint Contribution

The Power of Internal Curiosity

Redefining Power Dynamics

Overcoming the Fear of Saying the Wrong Thing

The Architecture of an Authentic Apology

Conclusion: Peace is Hard Work

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🎯Key Sentences

📝Key Phrases

📖 Transcript

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