If you're the person that everyone turns to when things fall apart, this episode is for you.
We all face moments when emotions run high at work, at home, and in conversations that matter.
In these moments, the hardest thing isn't finding the right words.
It's staying centered enough to use them well.
That's what stoic empathy is all about learning to stay grounded, to feel deeply without losing your balance, and to keep your clarity when tension takes over.
It's a skill that changes how we lead, how we listen, and how we show up when the stakes are high.
Today, I'm joined by my friend Shermaine Cruz, a lawyer and author, speaker and TED producer, whose work explores how stoic empathy can transform the way that we lead and connect, even in moments of conflict, pressure or pain.
Her insights will change the way that you think about strength, emotion and what it really means to stay in control.
Let's jump in.
So you've produced a lot of different TED Talks.
How was it actually giving one this year?
Yeah, so I actually, I've given three and they all had different producers.
Oh.
And so I have a lot of different experience with different production groups.
And through my own production work and then also through giving the talks, I learned a lot about the production of short films.
I learned a lot about production outdoors versus indoors.
I learned a lot about different types of cameras and different types of microphones and things like that.
And really what I learned more than anything are the producers were really great.
Just make sure you look really good, you sound really good and keep you on sort of like the straight path without imposing too much on people what it is that you're going to say, because a lot of the producers I mean I as a producer co-write most of the talks.
So it's learning as a producer when to step back from the people who really don't need you to co-write any of their talk for them, versus the people who maybe are quantum mechanics professor and need to maybe speak about quantum mechanics in a manner that the average intelligent person can understand, who doesn't have a PhD in theoretical physics, and so there's and sort of seeing that difference and then also, as a speaker, seeing the different producers approach it that way.
It's been really.
It's been interesting and exciting and I feel very well equipped to advise people on what to look for when they're looking to give a talk actually what to look for in a producer in the.
I'd be interested to hear something from you about just the power of storytelling as it relates to the skill of storytelling and how it's shaped, the way that you tell stories.
Because like you said, you've produced many of these and you've done three of them.
And when I listened to your last one on Stoic Empathy, it was so The way that you told your stories.
They were so powerful and so vivid, but also so tight because it's very time-bound in it.
So...
How did the process of producing so many TED Talks impact you as a communicator and storyteller?
Wow, what an excellent question.
And especially given that this is a negotiations podcast.
It's such a central point vis-a-vis negotiations because stories are such an excellent way to demonstrate points.
What I've learned, both through my work as a litigator and an advocate, as a professor, but also as a producer and speaker, is that people don't remember statistics.
They really don't matter to them.
You know, it was Stalin said, one death is a tragedy, a million deaths is the statistic.
And that's why the charities that you watch on TV make a plea for your 5 a day, the price of a cup of coffee will tell you about one boy and give him a name, and give him a face, and put him in front of you instead of just throwing stats at you.
And I've also heard that images in the context of a talk matter very little.
Images are only useful if they in fact convey a thousand words.
If they don't, then they're a detraction from the connection and the energy between the speaker and the listener.
And, at the end of the day, that connection between the two that is created is the most profound aspect of advocacy change clarity, etc etc.
You can back it up. with statistics just to give credibility to a particular point or a notion.
And that's great.
And people do that all the time.
You can have a photo in the background as well.
But especially if you're producing a TED Talk.
That's very particular because in TED Talks, whenever there's an image on the video, it cuts away from the speaker to show the image.
And it's very different than a live presentation where the image is just kind of In the background, right.
It can just be an assist in the background.
But in the actual talk, it cuts away from you.
And we only get, you know, nowadays, it's not even 18 minutes, it's 10 minutes.
We get 10 minutes with you.
And you have probably the first 60 to 90 seconds before somebody clicks the little scroll button and moves on to the next video to get us to stay for the whole video.
And half of that is what you say.
And the other half is how you say it in the connection that you form.
And if you're going to spend 90 seconds talking about just your name and your experience and where you went to school and how fancy you are, you've lost them.
They're gone.
They're long gone.
And so there's this idea of moving beyond your own self.
At the end of the day, this talk is not about you at all.
This talk is actually about the idea.
You are an ambassador for the idea.
You have qualifications to be that ambassador, but it's not about you.
And what I learned is it's never about you.
In fact, for most people, it's about them.
Most people want something reflected back on them.
They either want to feel something or get reminded of something, or be inspired by something or form a connection.
They want, they need to be a part of, even if they're just being talked to, they need to be a part of that process.
And so the idea that what we're doing is we're showing people how to tweak the way they think about a particular subject matter.
So by somehow connecting them to a person of brilliance, by humanizing that person and then utilizing the story form instead of the statistics form or instead of the third person form to help create that personal connection and make the message more memorable, it changes the way you communicate with human beings for the rest of your life.
I mean it's a really powerful.
I mean it's not the only way to teach, but it's a very powerful and effective method.
I agree.
I agree.
And the more that I studied it, the more I appreciated the art of it.
And it completely changed the way that I talk and present now too.
You'd find this funny because I remember when I first did the, we had some auditions that we had to do.
And so I did my audition and they said it was good.
The information was really good.
It felt more like a workshop or like a professor talking.
And I was like, yes, that's what I was going for.
They're like, this is that's not good.
You need to learn how to tell more stories, be more interesting.
And it's it's funny.
And this is something Simone, our producer, and I will talk about a lot too.
As I've developed as a speaker, learning to be okay with being more authentic has been a challenge, because the years in academia teaching at the business school and the law school you learn how to talk like an academic.
And it's a very different game when you're keynote speaking and telling stories and wanting to keep people engaged.
And when you talked about the TEDx, you mentioned it is all about the idea.
And Sharmeen, your idea that you shared is, is so brilliant.
The stoic empathy.
Can you let's start off talking about that, because those are often two terms that are never seen together.
So can you tell us how you first came up with this idea and where it's taken you?
Yeah, no, I appreciate it.
It really is something that I've spent decades thinking about and doing research on and putting into practice, because?
But the language itself is really fascinating, unless you're a true student of philosophy and neuropsychology, in which case you very easily see the relationship between the two.
And the way you guys can think about this right now, the listeners, is you've all done this.
You've all used your awareness of the people around you, and precisely their vulnerabilities, and your awareness of those vulnerabilities, to maintain control over yourself.
I had an incident a few years ago where I got a very traumatic phone call in the middle of mothering my four children.
And if I was alone, maybe I would have screamed or punched something or cried hysterically or had shown some sort of of reaction.
But I knew my small kids were in the room and I knew that.
It's not that I was going to hide the information from them.
In fact, it was something that they were going to need to find out, but I had to control that method of delivery and I had to control the way I seemed in that moment.
It's okay if I seemed upset. but I couldn't traumatize my children.
And so I was able to immediately gain control the way these parents grab their kids, put them on their back and run through minefields.
We've all done that.
The way leaders do that, right?
The way that we can accomplish that, in the midst of a heated negotiation, suddenly the awareness of all of the interests in the room and around the table is precisely what gives us the calm in a moment that might otherwise be fueled with panic anger frustration, fear or anxiety that we need to guide and steer that ship in the correct direction.
So therein is the perfect utilization of my empathic awareness of the room, combined with my stoic control over myself.
And one of the things that that unfortunately, has happened to the word Stoic in the modern vernacular is it's lost a lot of its original connection to the philosophy of Stoicism, which is just as much justice and courage as it is resilience.
And what they might have called justice or courage, we might call ethics and empathy, right?
It's just a different way of talking about really doing the thing that you want to be doing based on your moral values, not mine, right?
But yours, despite the fact that you're in an emotionally heightened space, so that you show up in that space the way you want to show up.
And if you don't, you learn and become better next time, right?
And that's really the core idea behind it is how do I self-regulate but maintain awareness and, in fact, allow my self-regulation and my external awareness to feed off of each other and strengthen one another, so that I can optimize my performance, even in a moment that might otherwise have compromised me emotionally?
This is powerful.
And I think the nexus between this concept of stoic empathy and effective negotiation is pretty clear.
Because in negotiation we want to make sure that we are saying things that are strategically aligned with our goals.
But we often don't take the time to fully explore the things that hold us back from doing that seemingly simple task.
And usually it's our emotional regulation that can get in the way.
And I love the fact that you are rooting for stoicism with its philosophical origins, because you're right semantically culturally, it has shifted.
In fact, in many cases it is almost used as an insult to talk about somebody who is cold, callous and detached.
And I think it would be very helpful for the listeners to appreciate the the power of stoicism and the power of empathy by first debunking some myths about the two, because we might get a lot more clarity on what it is that you mean when you say it, when we talk explicitly about what it is that we are not talking about when we talk about stoicism and empathy.
So what are some of the chronic misunderstandings that we have as a society about those two terms that can often hold us back?
Thank you.
That's such an excellent question.
And I think you really hit the nail on the head in the way you described it.
Let's start with stoicism and then we'll move on to empathy, because they're both actually quite misunderstood concepts.
Stoicism.
As I mentioned earlier, it's this ancient, 2300 year old philosophy that is rooted in the idea that certain things are beyond understanding our control and certain things are within our control.
And the way we approach those things needs to come from a place of wisdom and not necessarily a place of instinct, instincts which we all have.
There's nothing in the philosophy that is antithetical to an emotional state of being.
Rather, the idea is how do I maximize the And Aristotle said this the emotions that I want to feel at the time?
I want to feel them right.
And, to the extent that they're not providing a service to me, how can I maximize the information that they are giving me and combine that with all of the other information from my environment?
Emotions give us lots of data.
Saber-toothed tiger, scary, run, don't die.
Helpful information.
Right.
And if you suddenly have decided that you are a person who never feels fear, you will get killed by the saber tooth tiger, and that will not be helpful to you.
But if the saber tooth tiger causes you to freeze in a manner that will also get you killed?
Now you're using the information that is being given to you through your emotion and you're ignoring all the other information in your environment.
That's such as I should run.
Otherwise this, that or the other thing might.
What I am aware of cognitively, what I know the other people are doing?
Who else is with me?
Where does my responsibility?
This is all information, and if we take all of that and use the emotion as just one aspect of it, it is no longer our master.
It is just a tool that is at our disposal.
But there's never an emotion of its lack of existence, right?
The idea is that this is a tool, it's information, it's extremely helpful to me.
And at certain points in my life, it can allow me to maximize my humanity to a point of richness that is beyond the description that words can offer.
And yet I can also fall prey to it.
I can also become its servant.
And I have to be careful that I do not compromise my own morality, the responsibilities that I have toward myself, toward my family, toward my community or anything that is of value to me, simply because I
I gave into a feeling, a momentary feeling, right?
It is in my control.
It is in fact, the only thing to a large extent that is at least partially in my control, right?
Whereas a lot of external events the presence of the saber tooth tiger might not be in my control, but how I respond to it emotionally is
And again, nobody says don't be scared.
The idea is How do you utilize your fear in a manner that maximizes not just your survival, but also your ability to really thrive in that scenario and in that situation?
So that's really the primary thing that people in modern vernacular, and just the way what the meaning of the term has become, the way in which people misunderstand stoicism.
Empathy is also very misunderstood.
Empathy is, the field of psychology would tell you is divided into two aspects.
There is emotional empathy, your pain in my heart, right?
I experienced this even when I'm watching my favorite TV show and my character, who I've been in love with for nine seasons, is suddenly involved in a car accident.
I Physically recoil with a gasp in my seat in response to an event occurring to a fictional character in a box on a screen in front of me, because I feel pain in response to their pain.
Now, replace fictional character on a box with your child, right, or your brother.
It's great.
This again allows us to live these incredibly rich full lives, maintain great relationships and also escape into entertainment and imagination.
On the other hand, there's cognitive empathy.
Cognitive empathy is, it isn't your pain in my heart, but I am smelling what you smell.
I see what you see.
I hear what you hear.
And I touch what you touch.
And so I understand you in a way that is far more intimate than if I was merely looking but not seeing.
This is essential if you're my patient and I'm your surgeon, right?
I don't need to be feeling.
I don't need to be crying.
I don't need to be displaying similar emotions to the type you're feeling.
But I certainly need to have full awareness of what's connected to what, how things work for you when you're in pain, and also what sort of situation I release you to.
What if you're a patient because you're a child whose dad shot them?
Do I release you back into the hands of that family or do I call social services?
I mean, I can't save your life just to release you back into that circumstance, right?
So there's a certain amount of caring, a quality of involvement that needs to take place.
But the emotional separation is actually a significant component of me engaging in empathetic service.
Right you in that situation, right?
A lot of trauma counselors have to learn how to do this.
A lot of surgeons have to learn how to do this.
A lot of negotiators have to learn how to do this, right?
When there's a hostile counterpart.
Now, here's the reality.
It's never either just cognitive or just emotional.
If it's just emotional, gosh, you lose it.
Right.
And you have so little of yourself remaining in that moment that you become useless.
If it's just cognitive, you're a freaking robot or some sort of psychopath or something like that.
So it's really more of a spectrum.
Right.
The idea.
There's always some emotional and some cognitive if you're a healthy person.
But you are able to dilate that.
And why are you able to dilate it?
Because of your stoic training over your own emotional state.
That stoic training gives you the ability to dilate your emotional involvement, while always maintaining your understanding, so that you can maximize again your impact based on the situation, as you deem fit, not as I, an external person, deem fit, but as you deem fit.
And if you see all my relationships are falling astray, then maybe I'm not doing this balance exactly right and I need to be shifting some things.
And if you see you have some really close relationships but man you're, you're losing your home, you're losing your car, you losing your job you, you can't negotiate anything because of how emotionally involved and engaged you get in particular discussions, communication settings, so maybe you're doing something wrong there too.
As a lawyer, this is something I saw in my clients all the time.
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This is so good.
This is a masterclass like no other.
If Marcus Aurelius was here live, he would be impressed too.
This is brilliant.
And before I go on my nerdy response because I'm loving this I need to advocate for the listeners here.
Because you said the person, the character on my favorite TV show.
Now we need to know.
What TV show are you talking about?
What shows do you like?
I just want to take this one detour.
Oh, no.
Now I have to out my total geekness is what you're saying.
I have to sort of come clean with my obsession with Star Trek series.
Okay.
Well, let's say they're all Star Trek.
I would probably start with Deep Space Nine, then Next Generation, and then Strange New Worlds, and then Voyager, and then maybe the first season of Discovery.
Do we really need to talk about this?
It's really embarrassing.
These are some deep cuts.
That's really cool.
Because when you said it, I'm like, oh, she's talking about something specific we need to know.
Yeah.
So thank you for indulging me here.
I appreciate that.
And this rundown Sharmeen is just a masterclass, because it's really interesting to see how modern neuroscience and psychology has evolved, gone back and validated so much of the Stoic wisdom from hundreds of years ago.
And I love how this is giving us the ability to kind of be the captain of our own ship, where we can determine what it is that we need, at what time.
Because we're not detaching ourselves from emotionality.
We're connected with it in a real type of meaningful type of way.
And essentially, in order for us to really maximize this and be the empathetic Stoics that I think you would hope that we would become, we have to renegotiate our relationship with our emotions.
We cannot get rid of them.
We need to understand what purpose they play.
What role do they play in our lives?
Because they do come with messages.
They teach us something.
There's something that we can learn from every emotional response, but we need to make sure that it's our hands that are on the steering wheel, driving the conversation or our responses in the right direction.
The problem is, a lot of times people will try to either A just, either just let go and let the emotions take the wheel.
And now we're making emotional decisions and emotions are by definition short term.
So we make short term decisions that have long term ramifications, which is obviously problematic.
And then the other people who would say, okay, well, I am so above this.
I'm Spock.
Okay, so I don't feel anything.
I just I can just think, right?
And then now you go to that side of the spectrum and using this in a psychologically sound type of way, more of the psychopathy type of way, where you can just think and act but not feel, and that's dangerous for other reasons.
So it is really incumbent upon us to understand how we need to utilize the emotions that are present in the moment to to bring the right version of ourself to the fore at the right time.
And that's what makes a really good leader and a great negotiator too.
I love that.
And I appreciate you indulging my Star Trek universe.
In fact, in one of the chapters of my book Stoic Empathy, I talk about Spock and how stoicism is not volcanism.
Those are very different things.
They're interrelated, but they're not the same thing.
And it's really important to understand that distinction.
And I would go even a small but meaningful step further Kwame, and say there are times when we actually probably should submit to our emotions, right.
For instance, maybe in our relationship with the divine, maybe in a magical moment we're sharing with our child.
Maybe there's something that's happening in your life during which that momentary full submission and surrender to the emotional experience is something that you and your judgment have deemed safe healthy positive, right.
And even if it results in a sucker punch right or a gut punch, something you can recover from and is worth it.
Because that moment of submission, the joy, the bliss, I myself don't have a strong relationship with the divine.
So I'm not trying to preach to anybody here.
But it's my understanding.
I have had experiences like that with my children or amidst meditation.
Or even some people have it when they experience the runner's high.
I mean, there are just times in your life where, for that moment, if you just choose to submit and exist, because you have wisely based on your experience and the other information available, deemed it to be sufficiently safe to be worth the exploration.
And there is an adventure and a thrill and an excitement in that, right?
Sometimes we jump out of the airplane, but we don't tell a woman we love her.
And there's something, even though we do, right?
Now, sometimes you shouldn't tell the woman you love her.
She's horrible.
She will destroy you.
But other times, she's worth it, man.
Go get her.
I mean, so this is the thing, right?
I mean, it's knowing even when the submission is necessary.
And I think about this sometimes in mixed martial arts terms.
I'm a huge MMA fan, which I know conflicts significantly with my love of Star Trek and meditation, but I'm a huge MMA fan.
And I've done a lot of hand-to-hand combat.
And the idea of putting yourself in that position.
Sometimes, if you're training in hand-to-hand combat, the instructor will like put a blindfold on you and then spin you around three times and then take the blindfold off and then attack you.
So the idea is first they discombobulate you. right, to mimic a real life situation.
And then they attack you.
And now what do you do?
And do you always just turn around and run away?
Or do you sometimes remain and take the hit?
And when do you do that?
And how do you utilize your wisdom in making that determination?
And how much confidence do you have in your ability to take the hit and get back up in conjunction with the wisdom of?
But this is the right hit for me to be taking.
Because I can't be getting hit from everywhere all at once at the same time.
That is a waste of my resilience resources.
So some of it is actually that.
And a lot of your listeners will relate to this in a negotiation context as well.
How many times have you had to take a hit during a negotiation session right?
Either a hit to your pride or a little bit of a wound, because you know that's what that other person needed to do and say in order to give you everything that you want right and for you that was a.
Again, i'm not judging whether it was right, i'm just saying you decided because you weren't overtaken with fear anxiety depression anger jealousy, right.
Pride, whatever it might be.
You decided it was worth it in that moment, or you decided it wasn't.
There's so much to explore here, because first of all, I agree with everything you said.
But second of all, what is this thing where peacemakers like violence?
Because I love MMA too.
I am proudly undefeated in all of my fights.
I am O and O, zero fights, zero losses, zero wins, and I'm going to keep it that way.
So I was at Francis Ngannou's last title defense before he left.
So I love that watching MMA, because there's so much of the human condition wrapped up into it.
Leading up the jockeying, the alpha domination displays.
You can start to see who's getting in whose head.
And then you can see just the strategy within there.
But being able to maintain a sense of calmness in the storm is fantastic to watch, not partake in.
So, let's talk about the psychology here.
Another little fun detour.
Why is it that people like us seem to be drawn to something that seems antithetical to everything that we talk about and believe in?
Yeah.
So it's so here's the thing.
And I love that you're into it.
I got into it in my 30s.
So I wasn't into it until I was a little bit older.
I was always into martial arts, but I was never into MMA until I was a little bit older.
And that's when I started to appreciate boxing and such.
There's a guy on the south side of Chicago.
His name is Jamal Cannon.
He runs a gym.
I produced his TED talk for him. which Ted elevated, by the way.
And, and it really this guy runs a gym, he looks for the most violent kids on the street, right?
Not the ones that are the greatest.
Leaders are the ones who are getting straight A's.
But like the violent kids and teach them how to box.
And the reason he teaches them how to box is if you are able to think rationally While getting punched in the face, then you are able to control and modulate yourself despite the trauma that is going on around you, and behave in a manner that is far more aligned with the choices that you think are the right choices for you in your life, versus just trauma reacting.
And it's a really fascinating way to think about creating peace by teaching discipline amidst trauma.
Right.
And and punch in the face really is like it's a small trauma, but it's a trauma.
Right.
It's not as major as watching your dad get shot in front of you.
That's a small trauma.
There are other forms of small traumas.
Even, like you know, an ice bath can be a small, a small little, tiny little thing, stressor on your body.
So we take these stressors.
We, at the custom ourselves to strategic, rational thought, emits this the stressor and thereby enable ourselves because listen, you get punched in the face in life you just do right, unless you decide to just hang it all up and live in a bubble, and an agoraphobic bubble, you know, which is not a healthy place to be.
You get, you're going to get punched, and the greater risks you take, the more you're going to get punched.
And again, the idea is when do I pull, when do I turn my cheek so that the 90% impact becomes 10%?
When do I call it?
When do I rise again?
Right.
And these are all lessons I think you learn from fighting.
I think they're also lessons you learn from meditation.
People can learn through different things.
It doesn't have to be through aggressive violence.
But in terms of a physical metaphor, it works really well.
And I find, especially with men it really hits home because men are a lot more comfortable being told to take a hit in the face than being told to take a broken heart, say.
It's just something that feels more aligned with the way that they've been raised in this society, but they're the exact freaking same thing.
Obviously you don't want to take a hit in the face because it's just fun for the other person to punch you out and you sit there defenseless and let everybody in the office come around and punch you.
That's absurd, right?
Similarly to a broken heart.
You don't allow yourself to get vulnerable with every single individual that walks in through the door.
But if you don't get in that ring, you're not living life.
And the idea isn't to not get in.
The idea is to get in with wisdom and not allow the pain or fear of the pain or whatever that emotion is right.
For a lot of people, by the way, it's jealousy.
So I talk about that a little bit too, or pride.
Not allow that.
To get in the way of you doing what you deem to be the wise move in that moment.
Oh, that's so powerful.
And you're right.
It is a powerful metaphor because it's like a proxy for so many things in our lives.
We can associate it or describe it in some kind of way. war-like metaphor in a sense.
And you have to be able to stay cool under pressure.
But also I want to evaluate one of the things that you said, because if you're going to be in mixed martial arts or something like that, in the arena, you have to understand that you need to be strong enough to take a hit, because everybody at some point will find themselves in a position like this.
And I think that gives us an opportunity to go back to the idea of vulnerability when it I feel like you know what, I am interviewing you.
I'm not going to get on my soapbox yet.
No, get on your soapbox.
I want soapbox.
Okay, you want the soapbox.
Listeners, are you with me?
Because we probably never get any Kwame soapboxing on the show.
That's fair.
I'm sure it's not a soapbox.
But let's look inside of Kwame for a second.
So here's the thing.
When it comes to vulnerability, I feel like it is a word that has been utilized and overutilized to the point of meaninglessness, where we are just saying hey, be vulnerable, be vulnerable.
And we never recognize that vulnerability is a skill and a tactic at the same time.
And so if you don't know how to use the tactic at the right time, you use it inappropriately, you get hurt for no reason.
If you don't have the skill of vulnerability, then you're going to be vulnerable at problematic times.
You have people tipping into narcissistic vulnerability where it's just kind of trauma dumping at inappropriate times.
And I think that, when it comes to vulnerability, it's kind of like giving a person the license to drive without teaching them how to drive.
And we just look at everybody and say you know what your problem is, you need to be more vulnerable.
And we never tell them how.
I think it's almost irresponsible.
Unless you're.
Otherwise, we put ourselves in a position where people are just kind of getting hurt without any meaning or purpose.
So, when it comes to how vulnerability wraps into everything that you're talking about, what is the right way to utilize this?
What are some wrong examples of how vulnerability can come into play?
Because I know, whenever I hear somebody talk about vulnerability without going deeper, I would just roll my eyes.
I'm like, oh, my gosh.
Here we go again with the talking points on how vulnerability is perfect always.
Yeah, I love it so much.
And now you're a few steps ahead of me.
The book I just pitched my publisher for my next book is called Stoic Vulnerability.
And so this is something.
The one that's out right now is Stoic Empathy, but the one I just pitched for my next book is Stoic Vulnerability.
And there's this idea of intentionality, wisdom and control in the manner with which we express vulnerability in our lives and how essential that is.
And again, if you think of the physical parallel right, it's thrilling to jump out of an airplane, but don't do it without a parachute.
Don't do it if you're going to depressurize and get sucked out of the airplane.
Don't do it if you're not properly trained.
There's a lot of times where you wouldn't want to do it.
But there's a lot of times when you would.
And if you're uncomfortable jumping out of an airplane, think of whatever metaphor works for you in your life.
What risks have you taken?
What thrills have you engaged in?
And now think about that in the context of a negotiation.
So much of the risk reward analysis lies in your cognitive evaluation of it.
Right.
And therein lies the same with vulnerability.
And, by the way, also with authenticity.
If I see one more LinkedIn post that was written by chat GPT, let me get vulnerable here and be authentic.
You know, I mean, come on, you didn't write that.
You're not really getting vulnerable or authentic.
Let's be honest.
It's a gimmick.
So sometimes you just, you're trying to also fool others with the language that you're using.
And that's not useful either because, The goal is to really just evaluate how will this serve me?
How will it not serve me?
And how much can I take if it ends up blowing up in my face?
Yes.
Can I take it?
And that works really well in a negotiation too.
If I end up losing this gambit, can I survive it?
What will it mean?
So is it then worth the gamble? or isn't it?
And that is essentially the equation.
And it really doesn't change whatever the risk might be.
But there is this fundamental need to recognize that life isn't worth living unless you experience the true thrill, which isn't jumping out of an airplane but jumping into love.
Right.
And that love can be for your God, for your child, for your parent.
I don't necessarily mean it in a romantic context, but those relationships, the preservation of those relationships, and the fact that sometimes your submission is required to experience them to their fullest extent and to even preserve them in the way that they matter to you.
And sometimes they're not worth it.
I mean, they're just not.
So that's the evaluation.
I love this.
This is great.
And yeah, we are clearly on the same page when it comes to vulnerability.
And you got ahead of me too.
I was going to ask you about authenticity as well.
Because I think one of the things that surprises people when I negotiate with them or teach negotiation, it's how they perceive what I'm doing as vulnerable.
And in terms of, I guess, the definition of vulnerability, I guess so.
But for me, I always think about it through the lens of strategic vulnerability.
And when you have a better understanding of the dynamics of the negotiation, you know what you can and cannot say.
And also that sharing is often reciprocal in nature.
There's a strategic element of sharing, because it makes it more likely for the other person to share.
And I think a lot of times people haven't done the homework to recognize just how much they can share without it being a problem.
And what things you can share, but also being very clear on what things you don't share.
So for me, it doesn't necessarily need to be kind of like part of this big vulnerability movement.
It's like recognize what it is that you're trying to accomplish and what gets you closer to that goal.
And if sharing a little bit gets you there, do it.
If sharing will put you in a vulnerable position that you cannot recover from, then don't.
And I think it's that element of strategic thinking that's often missed.
And I want to ask you something though, because one of the things you mentioned before was taking hits in negotiations.
And this is an element of negotiations and tough conversations in general that people often overlook because –
Let's say, if a person were to think about a perfect negotiation or a perfect tough conversation, it's where okay well, I get everything that I want.
The person submits to my brilliance and they land no punches on me and then we move on.
But that's not how it operates in reality.
There are going to be times where you take some hits and –
Can you talk about some of those hits that you kind of have to absorb in negotiations and explain why that's necessary?
Because this is something that is truly underexplored in the literature.
Yeah, I completely agree.
And I think a good way to intuitively understand this is to think of it in a personal context and then interpret.
And then translate it into a corporate or professional context.
So, in a personal context, think about all the negotiations you engage in on a daily basis right in your personal life.
And 95% of them are with people with whom you have longstanding relationships that you value.
Right.
Your spouse, your family members, your colleague.
Right.
Your business partner, even like your longtime vendor.
Right.
In a professional context, it could still be a long personal relationship that you, in fact, value.
And really what you're what Kwame is talking about there, you guys, is really just taking a step back and viewing the whole relationship as the forest itself.
And not missing that forest for a particular tree.
Again, it doesn't mean you ignore the tree.
It's there, right?
But there's this whole other forest there.
And I'm just going to take a step back because that's what my marriage is.
That's what my business partnership is.
That is what this joint venture is.
It is a forest.
And I need to be able to see, if I'm game-theoring it, right?
I need to be able to see the entire picture and the entire landscape which, by the way, is always moving, always changing right, always altering.
So it's all a predictive analysis anyway, and you could be mistaken, in which case you have to backtrack retreat, redo something different, right?
But the point is I visually see this whole thing and just like I would in a chess game.
Sometimes you got to give up a pawn and in order to gain a rook, right.
It's just, you're seeing that, and that can mean different things in different contexts.
If you don't want to give up any pawns ever.
It's possible that you could only choose relationships where you were the 100 dominant person in the relationship, but I'll tell you they're not going to fulfill you.
And certainly in your professional life, in your corporate life, There's never going to be any thrill, excitement or actual meaningful gain.
Similarly, in your personal life, there won't be any thrill, excitement or actual meaningful gain.
If you're constantly choosing relationships of total and complete dominance.
Right.
Or you control every pawn all the time.
Right.
And in fact, if we think about it in a personal relationship context, it almost seems a little pathological sometimes.
And that level of control can't possibly exist in a healthy relationship, right?
So really, again, translate that to a negotiation.
See it for what it is, right?
And try to determine for yourself, based on the way it looks now and your predictive analysis of how it's going to look five minutes from now, what it is that you're willing to lay down, chop down, cut down and what it is that you will absolutely hold on to, no matter what.
And how do you go about strategically protecting and giving in that manner?
And I think if you really view it in a personal context, it's a little bit easier to then figure out how to translate it to a corporate or professional context.
I feel like sometimes we're almost better at this in our personal lives than we are in the deal room.
In the deal room.
We sort of forget or we let our pride get in the way or need to win that particular situation.
And we forget all about the post-merger integration and the massive amount of money that is to be made.
Maybe, if I give this thing up now, I can build the sort of trust with these people that will enable me to have a meaningful partnership for life.
Might not be, but I should consider it.
And I should really think about that. right?
I should look for it and evaluate it and analyze it.
And, by the way, if I, if my last three mergers fell apart three months into the integration phase, maybe I need to learn something about how aggressive my negotiations are at the acquisition level, right?
And again the same thing goes for relationships is just sort of look back, not to not to, not to beat yourself up, but to just reevaluate your strategic outlook in these situations and try to figure out if there's an emotion that's blocking you in that moment, dictating what you ought to give up or not give up versus your own sense of wisdom and justice and ethics.
So first of all, I have never had anybody in the podcast say check so many of my nerdy boxes in one response.
You talk about game theory, chess and strategic sacrifices.
Oh my Lord.
This is, that's incredible.
That's incredible.
So thank you.
The second thing is I love how you tied this all back to stoic empathy, because you have to evaluate whether or not these emotions are working for you or against you.
If you are doing this to the detriment, pushing really hard and uh, dominating people to the detriment of the deal once it's done, then you have to ask is my ego out of whack in this?
Is it out of balance?
And a lot of times, when you bring it to the personal life, you can win the argument but lose the relationship in the process.
And you're 100% right.
It is a little bit pathological to want to, or feel the need to, dominate or be right in every situation.
And if you're in the forest?
Going back to this metaphor, if you're in the forest and It's okay to care about all of the trees, but if you're unwilling to let go of any of the trees, then that's a forest you're probably going to end up being in alone.
Because it becomes a lot more obvious once we flip it.
Do you want to be in a relationship with somebody who always needs to be right?
Do you want to be in a relationship with somebody who always needs to have the last word?
Do you want to be in a relationship with somebody who never feels the need to adjust?
The answer is going to be no.
So why do you aspire to be that person in your relationship?
And you brought up something interesting, though, because for me, it's actually the opposite.
I'm more willing to let things go in business negotiations.
But when it's the personal negotiations, I care more.
And so, since I don't care as much in business, I'm like this person is having a little tantrum here.
You need that for your ego.
Okay, get your licks in.
Let me get what I want out of this deal.
We can go home.
I don't care about you.
But then, you know, if it's with that home, I can't then, you know, the same thing.
Oh, you go home.
I go home.
No, we're in the same home.
That's the thing about family.
They're like always around.
Always around.
Yeah.
Thereby significantly increasing the likelihood of conflict.
Exactly.
And so how do we, for those folks, this is going to be my last question before I bring Simone in.
How do we start to let go of the ego?
Because I think everybody has that one emotion, whatever it might be, that is really really hard to let go.
Who has a really firm grasp on the steering wheel of our decision making, driving our decisions at home?
There's in our life.
How do we start to let go of that one emotion that is that is gripping us the hardest.
This is such an interesting question and I think this is so tricky and I mess it up all the time.
It's very easy to do a misstep here and I certainly wouldn't want people to think I'm some sort of you know, emotional or spiritual guru on relationships.
This is what's worked for me in the past.
And this is what I've done research on for the last 30 years.
So this is what my book is about.
At the end of the day, what we really don't want is a sense that we've lost control.
When we have the sense that we've lost control of a situation or a dynamic or a relationship, there's something that's extremely uncomfortable about it.
And it's not entirely incorrect.
It's just half incorrect.
We just need to realize that there are in fact some things we don't control, but there are always things we do control.
So if we're able to fall back on what is in our control, right?
And if we're getting back to the forest analogy, this is a controlled burn.
It's not a forest fire, right?
Right.
And if I can perceive it as such, then I can truly evaluate whether or not my forest needs this to get through the day or to become a healthier forest in the future.
And by the way, it might need some things in exchange for that.
Or maybe that's not the right relationship for you.
And so this idea that, no, I'm not in control of everything that happens in my life.
No, I'm not in control of everything people say to me or everything they do to me or everything that happens to me.
I can't even control the weather, right?
Whether it rains on me or not is not something I can control.
But there are things that I can control.
First and foremost among those are my own emotions evaluations, feelings and judgments.
Not just feelings, but also judgments and the wisdom I utilize in reaching those judgments about particular relationships, particular scenarios, particular situations and the aspects of those situations that is out versus in your control.
And I think, if you always bring it back when I get really overwhelmed and I don't know what to do next, that's when I struggle the most, because I'm overwhelmed And I don't know what to do next.
Right.
Either I've been stabbed in the back and I don't know how to respond.
Do I walk away or do I stay?
Here are all the reasons to walk away.
Here are all the reasons to stay.
But I don't know which one to do.
And in that moment, sometimes you really don't know what to do.
But you know what you do know.
I know what I do want in that moment.
And I know what I do control in that moment.
And I know who I love and I know who I am and how I want to show up. in that moment.
And so as these unpredictabilities or lack of predictabilities come at me, I know that I can at least control the way I show up in that moment.
And that control, it could be called egoism.
I don't think it needs to be.
I think it's just awareness of who you are, right?
The ego comes in when you try to control other people.
But when you're trying to just be in control of yourself, whether it's in a Buddhist meditation, whether it's in your chronic pain or whether it is in response to negative emotions that are deeply impacting your relationships, that's a different kind of control and it doesn't need to involve ego at all.
It's just a fact.
This is something that I get to have a say in.
These are things that I don't.
Right.
But I always can come back to this and I can always find my grounding and my center in this.
Viktor Frankl writes a lot about this when he writes about the way in which he emotionally survived the Auschwitz concentration camp.
It's not his fault that he was in the concentration camp.
It's not like he was asking for it.
It's not like he was looking for abusive relationships.
And he ended up in a situation that is literally as horrific as a concentration camp.
But there are things he still controlled.
And falling back onto those things every day enabled him to preserve a sense of dignity and a sense of self during times of significant compromise and injury or pain.
And that is what gave him the strength he needed to survive.
Thank you, Shivreen.
This has been so good.
And I know the listeners are going to want to hear more from you.
So, before you go, can you let them know the best way to get in touch with you and learn more about the work that you're doing and work with you too?
Yeah, absolutely.
I don't coach or anything like that.
I do corporate stages, but you can find me for just $26.99 through my book.
It's probably the most affordable, easiest way to gain access to the material.
You can also Google me for free online.
This book tour, I've done, I think, close to 50 podcasts now.
So the amount of material that's available online is extensive and plentiful.
None of it is as interesting as the Negotiate Anything podcast with Kwame.
If course.
So maybe listen and re-listen to this episode over and over again.
I am on Instagram as well as on LinkedIn if you want to professionally network.
I'm slow to respond, but do respond to everybody on those outlets.
And I just joined the nerds on Substack.
So I'm still catching up with my Substack platform, but I'm told it's where all the good dorks need to be.
So that's where I'm trying to establish a setting.
I also write for Psychology Today, so feel free to look up my articles as well.
Nice.
Charmaine, thank you again for coming on the show.
Really appreciate it.
Thank you, guys.
I had so much fun.
Yes.
