transcript

Speaker 1:
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Speaker 2:
[00:55] Hey folks, welcome to Typology, the show on which we explore the mystery of the human personality and the great human adventure all through the lens of the, you guessed it, Enneagram. My name is Anthony Skinner, your producer and co-host. We're so happy to have you here today. We've got some good stuff coming to you over the next few weeks. This month, we're working through a kind of negotiation series, which we kicked off with Atiya Koreshi's interview. We're gonna get to have her back, which will be awesome. And we'll go into a deeper dive into her book to get some specifics by Enneagram type. So before we do, we wanted to give you some valuable information about the emotional intelligence companion to negotiating. We talked about this with our Typology Institute members a few months ago and thought it's an important component that ties so well with Atiya's content that we wanted to share it with you all. So take a listen and then let us know what you think about this episode and this whole series. It will really help us to know what content you want more of. So if it hits home, don't forget to share this content with your friends and family. Hey, that's it for me, Anthony Skinner. And now without any further ado, let's get to my conversation with Ian Cron.

Speaker 3:
[02:16] Hey, friends, welcome back to Typology. Yes, I am Ian Morgan Cron, and today we are going to jump into a topic that I think is of wide import for everybody. We want to talk about those conversations most of us spend a lot of time trying to avoid, right? That's what I'm talking about today, our hard conversations. Anthony, are you good at hard conversations?

Speaker 2:
[02:42] That's a good question. I have developed a muscle for that over the years.

Speaker 3:
[02:49] Yes.

Speaker 2:
[02:50] I really have.

Speaker 3:
[02:51] Yeah. I'd say that I've gotten better, but only because I've done some work around it.

Speaker 2:
[02:56] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[02:56] And some of that work has been... Yeah. And some of that work... I'm not by nature a person that is comfortable having hard conversations. I tend to withdraw rather than have a hard conversation. But as I've gotten older and I've done some work, I've done some reading, I've really been stepping out. And recently in this past year, I've been doing a lot of training in companies around having hard conversations. Now, much of what we're going to talk about today is material that I've actually learned from two books that I'm going to recommend to people. The first one is a book called Crucial Conversations. The reason I love this book is because it's research-based. So lots of what you're going to hear today is found in that book, and I would recommend that everyone go out and get it to read a more comprehensive exploration of the topic. The other one is the book Nonviolent Communication.

Speaker 2:
[03:54] Well, yeah, I've read that one. That was great.

Speaker 3:
[03:57] Yeah. And so today, what we're going to do is talk about why we don't have hard conversations. We're going to talk about how to actually have one and to actually give people a map.

Speaker 2:
[04:09] Come on.

Speaker 3:
[04:10] Right? For trying to figure out how to have a hard conversation. And we're going to weave some Enneagram stuff in here. And it's just going to be a self-awareness fest.

Speaker 2:
[04:19] Sweet.

Speaker 3:
[04:20] And one more thing. We just came up with this amazing conversation about negotiation with Atiya Qureshi, where we talked about strategy and clarity and advocacy and all these things. And this episode is kind of the emotional intelligence companion piece to that.

Speaker 2:
[04:37] That was a strong conversation, and everyone needs to make sure they go hear that one. We have two believe from her.

Speaker 3:
[04:43] Yeah. And listen, you can have the best negotiation strategy in the world, but if you don't know how to navigate the human dynamics of a hard conversation, you're kind of dead in the water.

Speaker 2:
[04:53] Hey, can I tell you a little something?

Speaker 3:
[04:55] Oh, yeah. Just the way you asked that, the answer is yes.

Speaker 2:
[05:01] When we finished our first podcast with her, I was saying like, hey, great job. And there was a little bit of, we were trying to line up the release of the podcast with her book, of course, because we're excited about her book coming out. And in the process, I said, I'm actually heading into a really challenging situation. Could you give me some, you know, could you hear me out? And she said, yeah, she said just, she said, send me a voicemail of, you know, what you're going through and what's going on. And she sent back a detailed six or seven different voicemails walking me through the process. Me and my brother went into this situation and it changed the game. Wow. So shout out to Atiya. And I'm down for this conversation. Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[05:55] I love it.

Speaker 2:
[05:55] Really great.

Speaker 3:
[05:56] All right. All right. So why are hard conversations so hard? Well, first of all, part of the thing is nobody ever teaches us how to have them. Like when you're a kid, did your parents ever say or in school as a third grader? Like, why not?

Speaker 2:
[06:16] No, exactly. Right?

Speaker 3:
[06:18] Why didn't someone say, today we're going to do a module on how to have a hard conversation where, you know, you are able to express something that you're unhappy or uncomfortable with to another person, here's how you do it. And so we're never explicitly told or very rarely. And so we learned it implicitly. And I was telling a group of people this past Sunday, I was teaching this. I was like, you know, my parents, like in my home, implicitly, the message was, for God's sakes, no matter what happens, never have a hard conversation.

Speaker 2:
[06:57] Like with each other, you mean within the home?

Speaker 3:
[06:59] Yeah, oh no, none. Like it was like dangerous to bring up hard conversations.

Speaker 2:
[07:04] Yeah. Right.

Speaker 3:
[07:05] And if you learn it on the playground, you know, you're gonna learn really walky stuff about expressing your needs, right, or your wants. And so number one is we don't really, you know, we kind of, I don't know, there's the old rule in the alcoholic family, which is don't talk, don't trust, don't feel.

Speaker 2:
[07:29] Right.

Speaker 3:
[07:30] Right. So we either avoid conflict or we come in hot without any finesse.

Speaker 2:
[07:36] Right.

Speaker 3:
[07:37] And by the way, just because I tell Aids this all the time and other types that are comfortable having hard conver, you know, just their nervous systems don't light up when they have hard conversations as much. Right. Some of them. And I'm like, well, listen, just because you're comfortable having a hard conversation doesn't mean you're good at it.

Speaker 2:
[07:56] Exactly. Or that the other person that you're talking to, that they're comfortable with it. So you have to be self-aware enough with what you're bringing to the table and be able to communicate clearly for someone else that may not be wanting to have the hard conversation themselves.

Speaker 3:
[08:13] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[08:13] Right?

Speaker 3:
[08:14] Yeah. So this idea, this definition of a crucial conversation comes from that book, Crucial Conversations.

Speaker 2:
[08:22] Okay.

Speaker 3:
[08:23] So according to those authors, a crucial conversation is one where opinions vary.

Speaker 2:
[08:32] Okay.

Speaker 3:
[08:33] The stakes are high, and emotions run strong.

Speaker 2:
[08:38] So we're not talking about just deciding to go to dinner?

Speaker 3:
[08:41] No. No. This is more like, do I ask for a raise? Do I confront my partner about a behavior? Do I address that thing at work that's been eating at me for six months, right? That's like, and usually, again, opinions differ, the stakes are high, and emotions are strong. So here's an example. You believe that you should get a raise, okay? And maybe you sense, or it is in fact true, your boss doesn't agree, okay? Or some variant thereof, but there's a variety of opinions. The stakes are high. My wife or my husband is going to leave me, or we're going to lose our home if I don't get that raise. And then emotions are strong. I'm a nervous wreck about this, or I'm angry and resentful because I haven't gotten a raise, or I feel unseen or undervalued, whatever the case may be. Now, today, we're going to be talking about how to plan for a hard conversation versus what to do when a conversation turns hard.

Speaker 2:
[09:55] Okay.

Speaker 3:
[09:56] Without being ready for it.

Speaker 2:
[09:58] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[09:59] Without being ready. Because I will say this, what we say today, as we map this out, can be once you learn it and you've practiced it, you can turn it on very quickly, should you find yourself in a normal conversation that suddenly turns crucial. Because sometimes you'll be having a conversation in the car with your partner or with a child or with a friend, and suddenly it goes from being a regular conversation to being, uh-oh, this is now turning into a hard conversation. Right? So again, you're right. This isn't like deciding where to go to dinner. This is like big to big league conversations.

Speaker 2:
[10:36] So Ian, let me ask this. What is the message that we implicitly get growing up about hard conversations?

Speaker 3:
[10:43] Yeah. Great question. I think we're faced with what the authors of Crucial Conversations call the fool's choice. And the fool's choice is where you think to yourself, I got two choices here. I can either speak the truth and blow this relationship up, or this job up, or this marriage up, or this friendship up, or I can suffer in silence. And we think those are our two choices.

Speaker 2:
[11:12] Right, yeah, and that's not much of a choice.

Speaker 3:
[11:15] That's not much of a choice, right? There's a third alternative, which is, I can speak the truth, I can have a hard conversation, and strengthen this relationship at the same time.

Speaker 2:
[11:25] Yes.

Speaker 3:
[11:26] That's the choice we want to make.

Speaker 2:
[11:28] Yeah, that's good. I actually was just heading into a conversation recently, and I have a friend who's a coach, Jamie Slingerland, you know him, and he told me basically that very same thing. It's like, there are more options than just these two, and it can also change later, so you're not locked in. But all that to say, I realized through my conversation with him what you just said, we can tell the truth and strengthen relationship, right?

Speaker 3:
[11:54] Yes, exactly. So before we even get to the mapping of a conversation, right, we've got to deal with what's happening internally. And this is a big piece of what happens in the book Crucial Conversations, which is the bulk of the work has to happen internally before you have the conversation. Okay, so let me give you how I was trained in graduate school to think about human behavior. We were told that you observe a behavior or you hear something, it then gives rise to a feeling, and then that feeling leads to an action. And there's a step missing there that's really, really important. The truth of the matter is that you observe something, and then you tell yourself a story about what you observed.

Speaker 2:
[13:03] Right.

Speaker 3:
[13:03] Or experienced.

Speaker 2:
[13:05] And then you have feelings about that story.

Speaker 3:
[13:07] Then you get a feeling about that story.

Speaker 2:
[13:09] Exactly.

Speaker 3:
[13:10] And then you act or react.

Speaker 2:
[13:13] So it's not necessarily what the person did, it's the meaning we assign to what they did.

Speaker 3:
[13:18] Exactly. And this is so, so important that you begin first by interrogating your story. And there's three stories, by the way, that we tend to tell. They're called clever stories. One is the victim's story. And the victim's story is, I have no blame in this. I am a victim. And I always tell people, the only time that's probably true in life is after, you could say that about a mugging and not much else, right? Like, you know what I'm saying? Like, I am always able to find some piece of, when something goes sideways in a relationship, I always got a piece somewhere in there, right? And so, you know, or at least the vast majority of the time. And so the victim's story is one story. The other one is the villain's story, which is this other person is bad. And you overplay your virtue and overplay their...

Speaker 2:
[14:23] Their part is the villain.

Speaker 3:
[14:25] Their part is the villain, right? Then there's a third story that we like, which is called the helpless story. And the helpless story is, you know what, you know, like, for example, you know, this office where I work, it's all politics and there's nothing I can do about it. I'm helpless. I'm in a situa- you know what I mean? Like, and so we have to- those are just three stories, but they're pretty common. We have to look at the story we're telling ourselves about what we're upset about, right? Like, in other words, all right, I'll give you a class, I'll give you an example. So I had a situation with a friend, and my friend was not responding to texts or calls. Now, the story I started to tell myself was, this person did not care about our relationship nearly as much as I did. That I was invested, they were not invested. Now, because I'm a trained therapist and, you know, an Episcopal priest, and I'm so smart, I let this sit in my chest for about a year. Now, by the end of the year...

Speaker 2:
[15:38] What chapter did you get to?

Speaker 3:
[15:39] Okay. Oh, no, brother. It turned into a Russian novel. It was like the Brothers Karamazov. It had sub-themes and plots and characters and 400 pages of story line. Right? Now, what did that story create in me? Resentment, feelings, anger. You know, I want you to suffer as much as you've made me suffer. You know, all the stuff, right? Swirling around. And that was leading to an act. Now, at one point, my action was, well, I'll show you, I won't deal with this. You know, I'll give you the cold shoulder or, you know. Because we all have sort of, you know, these styles of relating as it goes to, you know, hard conversations. There are some people who go on the attack, right? They move toward verbal violence, and then other people move towards silence. And we could break that up by types, right? And I'm a, you know, go silent type, and sort of seethe quietly about it. But the beginning, I eventually did have this conversation based on, and I'll actually use it during this conversation as a model. I had to look at the story I had, before I had that conversation, I had to look at the story I had been telling myself. And I had to realize that at best, whatever story that my little uncertain mind came up with, to feel certain in that moment, was at best incomplete. At best, it was an approximation. It was a guess about what was happening. But the problem is, is if you don't challenge the story, the story will unconsciously turn into a fact in your mind.

Speaker 2:
[17:27] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[17:29] Like, here are the facts.

Speaker 2:
[17:31] I just want to say, yeah, I'm so glad when you came to me with this, and we were able to clear up that I had changed my number, and that's the reason that I hadn't been responding to your text. I was wondering where you were the whole time as well.

Speaker 3:
[17:47] Well, it's the fact that you moved to Nome, Alaska, and you didn't tell me that. I thought that was a little hard on our friendship, but whatever.

Speaker 2:
[17:54] So are there some questions we can ask ourselves when we're facing this?

Speaker 3:
[18:00] Yeah, so there's three. One is, what's my role in this? Right? And in the situation with this friend, I realized that my role in this is, I never raised my hand and said, this doesn't work for me. I went silent. I was more passive aggressive than honest. That maybe I had some expectations that were unreasonable. You know, whatever the case may be, I just, there's something about owning what is yours. Like, a key to having a hard conversation really is kind of a tentativeness and a humility. Like, I don't know the whole story here. There's something that's gone sideways. I don't completely understand it. I'm not going to come in with my guns blazing, thinking I know everything and what, you know, I got to come in also with a kind of humility that says, I probably have a piece here. Here's a couple of, and I need to be open to hearing what that may be. Right? So, what's my role in this? The second one is, why might a reasonable person do what they did?

Speaker 2:
[19:13] So, re-narrating, like, well, there's another side to this possibly.

Speaker 3:
[19:17] Yeah. Why might a reasonable person do what they did?

Speaker 2:
[19:20] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[19:21] Why might a reasonable person not answer my texts? Well, maybe something's going on. Maybe, you know, like, just beginning to loosen your grip on the narrative a little bit.

Speaker 2:
[19:30] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[19:30] And then the third thing is, what do I actually want? Now, this is important. Like, what do I want for me? What do I want for them? And what do I want for the relationship? Right? And this is important, because when you get into a hard conversation, this is what happens. Your amygdala is going to light up. And when you perceive a threat in the environment, even an emotional threat, right? That amygdala lights up, cortisol and adrenaline start to flood the bloodstream. Then your prefrontal cortex loses about 50 percent.

Speaker 2:
[20:08] Right.

Speaker 3:
[20:09] Okay. So now your best thinking just went offline.

Speaker 2:
[20:14] Before I knew it, I'm just all lizard.

Speaker 3:
[20:16] You're just all lizard, man. You're all in the lizard brain. And so that's why the research is so interesting, right? The research says that the harder a conversation is, the less likely you're going to do it well.

Speaker 2:
[20:29] Wow.

Speaker 3:
[20:31] Because your prefrontal cortex is like going offline. You're just flooded. Physiologically, it's stacked against you going well. That's why you need a map.

Speaker 2:
[20:41] Yeah. So you were talking about like a five-step conversation map earlier.

Speaker 3:
[20:46] Yes. Okay. Right from Crucial Conversations, again, the first thing you want to do, so here's the map, people. Get your little notes out and get ready. The first thing you want to do is you want to make a statement of good intention. Start with why you care. So in this particular situation with this friend, I went to them, I said, you know, we've been friends for 25 years. I love you like a brother. We have been through so much together. And because you mean so much to me, I need to talk to you about something that is puzzling to me and is an obstacle to our being great friends.

Speaker 2:
[21:29] So you're sort of building a safe space.

Speaker 3:
[21:31] Yeah, because, thank you for using that word. What is so critical in a crucial conversation, and I'll talk more about this in a minute, is safety. You have to create a sense of psychological safety. The reason people get defensive, and I'll repeat this later, but the reason people get sideways often, the reason conversations go sideways is because people feel unsafe.

Speaker 2:
[21:58] Absolutely.

Speaker 3:
[22:00] Okay? And I'll talk later about what to do when a conversation goes sideways to restore safety to the conversation. But you just want to state the good intention. Now, what's really important here is you have to be sincere. So whatever it is that you say has to be absolutely true, because if it's not, the other person is going to smell that you're not being genuine, and nothing you say after it will be heard.

Speaker 2:
[22:33] Okay, step two.

Speaker 3:
[22:34] Okay. It's really simple. It's called share the facts. Okay. Just the facts. So not your story about the facts, just the facts. Yeah. The reason is the facts are not very controversial, okay? Generally speaking. Now, you may disagree about the facts, but which may lead to a different clarity. But so, for example, in this conversation, I was able to say, hey, Steve, I'll say it's Steve. Over the last six months, I've called and texted you repeatedly and haven't heard back, or rarely do I hear back. That's just the facts. Now, he could go into his phone and see that I'm telling the truth.

Speaker 2:
[23:26] Right, yeah.

Speaker 3:
[23:27] Now, if he comes back to me and says, well, actually, you know, then we can have a different, now the conversation is going to go in a different direction. But I'm just stating the facts as I understand.

Speaker 2:
[23:35] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[23:35] Right? And that could be, let's say, in a work setting, the fact could be this. You know, we have had several meetings recently where you have spoken over me and also not given me credit for work that I did. And, you know, that's just a fact.

Speaker 2:
[23:56] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[23:56] Right? Like...

Speaker 2:
[23:57] Then you just get quiet.

Speaker 3:
[23:59] Just get quiet.

Speaker 2:
[24:00] Right?

Speaker 3:
[24:01] Well, you don't necessarily get quiet. You just state the facts first.

Speaker 2:
[24:04] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[24:05] Okay? Then, right on the heels of it, you want to tell your story.

Speaker 2:
[24:11] Okay.

Speaker 3:
[24:11] And this is the part I love of the formula. So let's say it's this. Steve, I love you. We've been best friends for so long, and you mean so much to me. I need to talk to you about something that has been bothering me. And over the last couple of months, now I'm stating the facts, I've reached out, texted and called a bunch of times, and you just don't seem to respond very often, if at all. The story I'm beginning to tell myself is that our relationship isn't as important to you as it is to me. Now, this is really important. When you start with a sentence like, the story I'm beginning to tell myself, is you are acknowledgingly, implicitly in the conversation that I could be wrong.

Speaker 2:
[25:03] Yeah, owning your interpretation.

Speaker 3:
[25:05] This is my interpretation of it. And what you want to do is when you state the facts and your story, you want Steve to think, oh, well, any reasonable person, given the facts, would come up with that story. So now he has empathy for you. It's like, oh, well, of course, you would feel that way. Right?

Speaker 2:
[25:25] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[25:26] So, you know, just, and you don't have to start with the story I've been starting to tell myself is, although that's what I use a lot. Right? You can start with, you know, I'm beginning to wonder if our relationship is as important to you as it is to me.

Speaker 2:
[25:46] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[25:46] Is that, you know what I mean? So it could just, and again, it's kind of tentative language. It's humble language. It's not you always, you never, you know, it's just, you know, I'm just beginning to wonder this.

Speaker 2:
[26:00] I just saw this social media post of this woman. She's a kind of a comedian, and she's an adult, and she's walking out of her house, and she's crying, and she's like, my mother just told me she doesn't love me, like that. And she's out in the porch, and the mom goes, I did not say that. What I said was you're too old for an Easter basket. She said, that's the same thing.

Speaker 3:
[26:33] Well, here it is. Two people looking at the same screen, watching a different movie.

Speaker 2:
[26:40] Exactly. So, good, step four.

Speaker 3:
[26:50] Yeah, okay. Which is just simply to invite their perspective. So, you've made a statement of good intent.

Speaker 2:
[26:55] You've told them your interpretation, yeah.

Speaker 3:
[26:57] You shared the facts.

Speaker 2:
[26:58] Yep.

Speaker 3:
[26:59] You've told them the story that you've been telling yourself about those facts.

Speaker 2:
[27:02] Yes.

Speaker 3:
[27:03] And now you just basically say, hey, help me understand what's going on.

Speaker 2:
[27:09] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[27:09] Or am I missing something?

Speaker 2:
[27:11] That's good.

Speaker 3:
[27:12] Or tell me how you see it.

Speaker 2:
[27:17] And then those three most important words?

Speaker 3:
[27:19] Always. Tell me more. I'm always doing that with people. It's like they may say, well, yes, I go, oh, good. Tell me more.

Speaker 2:
[27:26] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[27:27] And then sometimes I had a guy I know who's a coaching guru in the business world, and he says, tell me more of the three most important words a boss can know.

Speaker 2:
[27:38] Oh, wow.

Speaker 3:
[27:39] Just tell me more. Tell me more. Tell me more. You can just keep repeating it, right? Just get people to give their perspective. That's good. And then you go into the next step, right? Which is you want to make a clear request. And this is really important, especially for people like me, fours, nines, fives, just different, especially with drawing types. Like, okay, it takes a lot of energy and courage to have a hard conversation for a lot of different people. And they get through the statement of good intent, the facts, stating the facts, the sharing the story, and inviting perspective, right? They get through those four steps, and then they're like, they stop, right? Because it's like, they're just so relieved, because now both people are crying, and I really love you, I didn't, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And, but there's no change. So, you know, in marketing, they call it a call to action, but for our purposes, we could just say, you know, make a clear request, right? You don't, you want a changed behavior.

Speaker 2:
[28:55] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[28:55] You don't want to just have feeling sharing time.

Speaker 2:
[28:58] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[28:59] We want to have a changed behavior. So the fifth step in it is to make a clear request, and you just don't want to skip it. So it could be something like moving forward, when I text or call, could you just kind of in a reasonable amount of time respond?

Speaker 2:
[29:18] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[29:18] Could be a thumbs up. It could be, you know.

Speaker 2:
[29:22] This is hopefully where the conversation turned into change, right?

Speaker 3:
[29:26] Yes. And so it's like, another way to frame this fifth step is to say something like, moving forward, I commit to blank. And I'm hoping that you could commit to X or something else. Tell me. You know what I mean? Like, but you want to get it some new, into a new behavior, into a new way of being with each other in the world.

Speaker 2:
[29:55] So if it goes sideways?

Speaker 3:
[29:59] We'll get to that.

Speaker 2:
[30:00] Okay.

Speaker 3:
[30:01] It's a great question. But let me just say one thing here. So this person, Steve, this is what actually happened. I made a statement of good intent. I said, here are the facts. I call and I text pretty frequently, and I don't hear back from you. Then I shared the story. I'm starting to wonder if you're as invested in this relationship as I am. I asked for his perspective by saying, tell me how you see things. Now, what's interesting is Steve came back and said, you're right, and I've been in a place in my life where I'm really feeling stuck right now, and I've been feeling depressed and anxious, and then I feel guilty because you've been reaching out, and now you've reached out three times, and I'm too embarrassed to come back, and you know what I mean? Blah, blah, blah. But you're not the only person, he said, that's been saying this. I have been not doing a great job. And it's like, well, first of all, he blew the story I had been telling myself in that Russian novel all year right out of the water, because it was like, he just copped to what was going on and said, I'm really struggling in life right now, and I'm having trouble connecting with a lot of people. And then we did, I said, well, okay, well, moving forward, I'm going to have, I'm going to continue to reach out and want to be with you and be connected to you. Should I do that less? Should I do that more? You know what I mean? We began to kind of like talk about it. And he said, I'll make a commitment that I will be better at responding. But it's a relief to know that you know what's going on in my life now. So it was like, I wish I'd had that conversation 12 months earlier.

Speaker 2:
[31:51] Right, yeah.

Speaker 3:
[31:52] Before I started my novel.

Speaker 2:
[31:54] Yeah, totally. Well, so now, what if it goes sideways?

Speaker 3:
[32:01] Yeah, right. Well, sometimes we just mapped out the perfect conversation that I have with Steve. Everything got resolved, everybody hugged, and it was all done. But Steve could easily have said to me at any point in this map of a hard conversation, you're being an idiot, right? Or he could have said, I disagree, and gotten defensive. All right. So back to what I said earlier, when people become defensive or give you a lot of pushback, it's usually because they feel unsafe. What happens is they begin to not question, they're not questioning necessarily what you're saying. They're anxious and defensive because they're wondering why you're saying it, right? It's more like, are you trying to get control? Are you manipulating? What's actually happening here? What's going on behind the scenes that I can't see of this conversation? So when things go sideways, we can come up with what's called a contrasting statement. And I've seen this work beautifully. You could say, a contrasting statement is where you say something like, imagine Steve got hot with me about it. He just disagreed, right? You could say something like, Steve, I don't want you to hear that I don't value you or believe that you care about me. What I do want to say is that I'm feeling unseen and less than worthy of your time.

Speaker 2:
[33:48] So you're still telling the truth, but you're still kind of making sure it's safe again.

Speaker 3:
[33:56] Yeah. And the way you do that is at the first half of that contrasting statement, what you say is, hey man, I'm not saying I don't love you. I'm not saying I don't value you. I'm not saying this. What I am saying is this. And that contrasting statement can kind of restore balance to the conversation. And you may have to do more than once. Right? And so it's, yeah, it's pretty amazing. Sometimes it's just knowing I have a map in my head that I can follow going into a hard conversation, and that I can use to practice the conversation in my mind before I have it. It's just like a comfort to me. It's like I'm not going in winging.

Speaker 2:
[34:46] You're fighting for the relationship, right?

Speaker 3:
[34:48] Yes. I'm just coming in, and I have used this numerous times, and it's actually never not worked. I had to have a conversation with one of my contractors not so long ago, and I had to say, listen, man, I really enjoy working with you. That was true. You're a person of integrity, and I feel like you do good work. Here are the facts, right? I didn't say it that way. But recently, I've noticed that you have not been delivering your work on time. And the story I'm beginning to tell myself is that you have too many clients, and I am getting lower and lower on your priority list. How do you see it?

Speaker 2:
[35:38] Wow, that's good. That's good.

Speaker 3:
[35:40] And they were like, no, no, no, that's not true. And they came back, and I was like, okay. So then I said, moving forward, I'm going to continue to be honest with you when I sense things aren't going well. And how are things going to change on your end so that this conversation just won't be necessary again?

Speaker 2:
[36:02] Oh, it's good. Any other bullet points around wrapping up negotiating?

Speaker 3:
[36:09] Yeah. Well, back to Attiya, right? How does this relate to negotiation conversations? I mean, negotiations aren't just about leverage, they're about relationships. So again, it's like same thing in this mapping of a hard conversation. It's important to regulate your emotions, right? And the way that you, because that's the reason you want to interrogate the story. You're trying to regulate your emotions that have now gotten out of whack because of the story you've been telling yourself.

Speaker 2:
[36:38] Right.

Speaker 3:
[36:39] Then you want to, so you question the story, you create safety, you want to communicate clearly. Because what you're doing in a negotiation isn't just trying to move toward a preferred outcome, you're building trust.

Speaker 2:
[36:54] So, maybe the question for our listeners today is what conversations have you been avoiding?

Speaker 3:
[36:59] Absolutely. And what would it look like to walk into it? Not perfectly, but at least reasonably prepared, right? Because the truth is hard conversations don't ruin relationships, avoiding them does.

Speaker 2:
[37:14] Oh, that's good.

Speaker 3:
[37:18] Avoiding them does, right? And so...

Speaker 2:
[37:20] Yeah, it's avoiding them, not having the hard conversation.

Speaker 3:
[37:24] Yeah, man, you absolutely have to do that. So, anyway, if this episode resonated with you, share it with someone who might need it.

Speaker 2:
[37:32] And maybe have that conversation that you've been putting off.

Speaker 3:
[37:35] Yes, indeed. And tune in next week, my friends. As always, we'll try to have something juicy and good for you. Until next time.