Negotiation with Compassion

<p>Today I have a deep dive conversation with the magnetic Kwame Christian, Director of the American Negotiation Institute and a respected voice in the field of negotiation and conflict resolution. Kwame also hosts one of the world’s most popular negotiation podcasts, Negotiate Anything. Kwame and I dig into how to be confident in the face of conflict: Confident during a difficult conversation, and confident in yourself, before you step into the conversation. As he points out, it doesn't make sense to give recipes to people who are afraid to get in the kitchen! So confidence is critical. </p> <p>This is one of the most fundamental points that many people miss about negotiating - they see it as a series of tips, tricks and tactics, but it’s really about a way of thinking. But before you start any negotiation with another person, you have one with yourself. You convince yourself that you deserve more than you are currently getting, you resolve to speak up. In Negotiation-speak, this is sometimes called the aspiration value - what you aspire to get. But often there’s another part of ourselves that tells us exactly the opposite - we don’t deserve what we want or we shouldn’t bother asking, or that we’ll never get it, no matter how hard we negotiate. These parts need to have a conversation and negotiate an approach that feels right to ourselves.</p> <p>Kwame’s book, <a href= "https://www.amazon.com/Finding-Confidence-Conflict-Negotiate-Anything/dp/0578413736/ref=sr_1_2?dchild=1&keywords=finding+confidence+in+conflict&qid=1595530797&sr=8-2"> Finding Confidence in Conflict: How to Negotiate Anything and Live Your Best Life</a> spends a great deal of time on this inner negotiation and the tools to help you step up, including mindfulness and self-compassion.</p> <p>What I love about Kwame’s approach to negotiation is that the patterns to shift a negotiation with another person are the same tools he suggests to shift a negotiation with yourself: <strong>Compassionate Curiosity.</strong></p> <p>Force and coercion are not ef