--:-- Mel Robbins: Hey, it's your friend Mel, and welcome to the Mel Robbins Podcast. Hey, it's your buddy Mel. I am so excited that you chose to hit play on this episode and that you're here today with me because this is one of those conversations that has a before and an after. After you learn what our expert has to say today, you're going to go about your life differently.
--:-- Mel Robbins: See, right now, there's something that you want and there's something that you need from other people, but you're not asking for it. Maybe you need help at home from your roommate or your spouse, or you wish your siblings would step up and do their part helping out taking care of your aging parents. Life is full of frustrating situations, but oftentimes you think it's just easier to say nothing.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I mean, maybe you have adult kids and you don't mind supporting them by helping them out with rent, but every time you see them, they're in a new outfit. Or you feel overlooked at work, but you don't know how to successfully negotiate a raise. Or there's a conversation you want to have with your partner. Maybe you want them to get a better job, or it's time to get married, or just show more initiative in the relationship. Staying silent isn't working, but how do you bring it up?
--:-- Mel Robbins: Well, our expert today, the founder and CEO of the American Negotiation Institute, Kwame Christian, he is here today in our Boston studios to teach you three simple steps to setting up any difficult conversation you need to have. Now, these three simple steps are going to help you speak up, ask for what you need, diffuse any emotional reactions, and get what you want. Kwame says, the best things in life are on the other side of difficult conversations because it's more important to be respected than liked.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Hey, it's your friend Mel Robbins. Welcome to the Mel Robbins Podcast. I am so excited that you're here. It is always such an honor to spend time with you and to be together. And if you're a new listener, I just want to personally take a moment and welcome you to the Mel Robbins podcast family. I am so happy that you're here.
--:-- Mel Robbins: And because you made the time to listen to this particular episode, here's what I know about you. You're the kind of person who values your time and you invest it in things that can help you improve your life. And you also know that you deserve more respect in your life and you're here to learn how to get it.
--:-- Mel Robbins: And if you're listening to this because someone shared this with you, well, here's what I wanna tell you. I think that's really cool because it means that you have someone in your life that loves you enough to remind you that you deserve to be respected and they wanted you to have this expert advice so that you can start to speak up and ask for what you need and negotiate the things that you want in life.
--:-- Mel Robbins: And that's exactly what today's episode is all about. Learning how to have hard conversations. Because according to our expert today, the best things in life are on the other side of difficult conversations. And you may have good reasons for avoiding conversations that feel like a confrontation. But here's what you're going to learn. Yes, you may want everyone to like you. But in life, it is so much more important to be respected, and that respect begins with you.
--:-- Mel Robbins: See, right now, I just want you to stop and think. There's a situation that's bothering you. There's a conversation that you know you need to have, but you're avoiding it, and you probably have a really good reason for avoiding it. You hate confrontation. You just don't want to deal with the drama. You're frustrated, and you're annoyed, and maybe you're worried that the conversation, it's not only not going to work, it might just make things worse, or maybe you're just the kind of person that cares a lot about what other people think.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Well, here's what I'm gonna tell you. It is time for you to learn a simple three-step approach to having these kinds of conversations because it is true. It's way more important that you learn how to be respected in life and you stop focusing on making sure everybody likes you and that everybody's happy with you.
--:-- Mel Robbins: So here's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna invite you to think about an area of your life where you're tolerating disrespect, or you're not getting what you want, or you're staying silent, or you're just not getting the support that you need and deserve. Well, our guest today is going to walk you through, step by step, these kinds of conversations in your life and how to start the conversation, how to diffuse the emotion, and how to get exactly what you want.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Kwame Christian is recognized as one of the world's top negotiation experts. And he is also one of the most popular expert instructors on LinkedIn Learning. He's had 1.2 million people take his courses. He is the founder and CEO of the American Negotiation Institute. It's an organization that trains Fortune 500 companies on the art of navigating difficult conversations and the science of negotiating for success.
--:-- Mel Robbins: He is also a lawyer, and he is the host of *Negotiate Anything*, which is the world's top podcast on the subject of negotiation. He's also written this awesome book, *Finding Confidence in Conflict*, which is also about how you use the science of negotiation in your life to get what you want.
--:-- Mel Robbins: And one other thing that I love about Kwame is that he's going to take all this information and science and all these strategies and translate it into a three-step formula that you and I can apply in our lives, our relationships. Heck, we can apply it when we negotiate with our landlord over rent. And because he's also married to his college sweetheart for 14 years and is the father of two kids, these are also the exact same strategies that he and his wife use to work through all the difficult conversations that happen between a couple who are living together and raising a family.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Kwame Christian, welcome to the Mel Robbins Podcast.
--:-- Kwame Christian: Thanks for having me.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I am so excited that you're here. And here's how I want to start our conversation. I would love for you to speak directly to the person who is with us right now and tell them exactly what they might experience about their life that's different if they take everything to heart that you're about to share with us and teach us today and they apply it to their life.
--:-- Kwame Christian: Well, the best things in life are on the other side of difficult conversations. And so when you really think about it, and if we're honest with ourselves, most of us spend the majority of our lives avoiding these tough conversations. And I'm speaking from experience here because I'm a recovering people pleaser.
--:-- Kwame Christian: Yes.
--:-- Kwame Christian: And I think it's important to start there too, because people look at me and they see, okay, Kwame is a confident communicator, a negotiation expert and those types of things. But I wasn't born this way. I built myself this way because confidence is a learnable skill. And really, when it comes to the way that I approach these difficult conversations, it's after years of doing it the wrong way.
--:-- Kwame Christian: And so what I recognize is that the first and most important difficult conversation that we have to have is with ourselves. And that's what people miss. They focus on the conversations with other people, but we have to have that internal negotiation to figure out what it is that's holding us back and find our personal pathway to confidence. We have to figure out how to overcome the fear, the anxiety, the self-doubt, and all of the overthinking that can hold us back.
--:-- Kwame Christian: And if people put this into their lives today, one difficult conversation at a time, they're going to improve their relationships, their careers, and they'll put themselves in the best position to live the best version of their lives.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Kwame, there was so much that you just said. I want to make sure that I highlight a couple things because when you said "I wasn't born this way, I built myself into the confident person that you see today." That to me is such an incredible thing that's available to all of us. And, as you're listening, whether you're on your walk right now or you're driving in your car or you've got Kwame and I in your earbuds at work, the idea that you don't have to be born with confidence, but that you can build this skill is incredible.
--:-- Mel Robbins: And I also have to hover on the fact that you called yourself a recovering people pleaser. And not a lot of men say that. So can you take us back in time to when you were a people pleaser and just talk about what you used to be like? Because I think that's really important because I know that by the time we're done with this conversation, it's very clear you're confident. It's very clear you're an incredible communicator. It's very clear that you can probably out-negotiate anybody on the planet and be smiling at the same time. And I have no idea that I just literally gave in everything that you asked for and I didn't even realize it, Kwame. So I would love to start with the moment in your life where it really kind of was that, "I am a people pleaser. I care what people think." What happened?
--:-- Kwame Christian: Yeah. So for me, I'm a first generation Caribbean American. My family's from the Caribbean. My dad's from Dominica, a very small town, small island. And then my mom's from Guyana. And we moved to a small town called Tiffin, Ohio. And most people are saying, "Where is Tiffin?" That's the point.
--:-- Mel Robbins: That is the point.
--:-- Kwame Christian: And so I was the only black kid in my school at the time. I had an accent. I was very different. And so I remember one time on the playground during recess, just going to different groups, trying to get acceptance, trying to play with them. And so I would go up to one group and say, "Hey, can I play with you?" And they would say no. And then I went up to another group and said, "Hey, can I play with you?" Same thing. They said no. And then time was running out and I said, "Oh, hey, can I play with you all?" They said no.
--:-- Kwame Christian: So I was devastated, but I tried to keep it together. But then when I went inside and the teacher saw me, I just burst into tears. And she said, "What's wrong?" I said, "Nobody would play with me." And so I remember at that moment, I made a decision. I said, "I will never, ever feel this way again. No matter what, people are going to like me, people are going to accept me, and I'm going to do whatever it takes to get to that point."
--:-- Kwame Christian: And so when you look at it from the outside, looking in, you can say, "Oh, well, Kwame was a success. Most popular kid in school, captain of the basketball team." Mel, I knew everybody in the school by name, literally by name, but they didn't recognize all the silent compromises I was making. When there was an opportunity to stand up for myself, I wouldn't do it. I would agree when I actually disagreed just to keep the peace.
--:-- Kwame Christian: And so I thought I was doing the right thing in order to collect all of these friends, but I wasn't stepping up and having the tough conversations that I needed because I didn't want to risk the relationship. But for me, when I recognized that standing up for myself was a necessary part of what I wanted to be, my aspirations, I recognized I had to figure out how to get over it. And it was when I learned how to negotiate, that's when I recognized this is a skill, not just a talent. I can actually get better. And so once I recognized that for myself, I wanted to put myself on this journey to help other people with the same thing.
--:-- Mel Robbins: So there's an interesting thing that you said early on, where you said one of the most difficult conversations you need to have is the one that you need to have with yourself. And I think every one of us can relate to the story of just wanting to be liked, of staying silent because you want to keep the peace, of not having the hard conversation because you don't want people to be pissed off or to not be your friend anymore.
--:-- Mel Robbins: And what's interesting is that on the outside, you're the most successful kid in school, but on the inside, as you write in the introduction, that it felt impossible to stand up for myself. This led me to agree when I disagreed and avoid confrontation at all costs. Our greatest weaknesses often lie in the shadows of our greatest strengths. Although I was gregarious, fun-loving, successful, and popular, I was completely lacking in confidence when it came to critical conversations in my life. I hated myself for it.
--:-- Mel Robbins: And I'd love for you to just talk a little bit about that tension, because perhaps the first difficult conversation we're going to talk about is how you're silently giving up on yourself. And if you could just speak directly to the person listening, particularly about that tension about wanting to be liked, and then how that backfires and not liking yourself. And so if you could just kind of talk about what that feels like and what's actually possible if you really take in everything that you're about to teach us.
--:-- Kwame Christian: When you live your life like this, what you're doing is you're putting everybody else in front of yourself. You're putting everybody else above you. And so you say, "It's more important for them to like me than it is for me to like myself." And so you constantly make these compromises and people like you. And so it seems like you're winning. They would say that you're winning. And then you could say, "But this isn't what I wanted."
--:-- Kwame Christian: But then at the same time, you're feeling that dissonance where there's a discrepancy between what it is that you say you want and what it is that you really want. And so a lot of times we don't understand where society begins and we end and vice versa. Because we might say, "Okay, society says have more friends. That's a good thing." But then there's something inside of us that's saying something very, very different. And we don't know how to reconcile those differences.
--:-- Kwame Christian: And so that's why I say the internal negotiation needs to happen. We have to start to honor the emotions that we're feeling because a lot of times in negotiation and difficult conversations and communication in general, we say emotions are the enemy. We have to try to minimize them, get rid of them. But really, emotions in many ways are our mind's way of telling us what really matters the most.
--:-- Mel Robbins: And we're going to unpack this because I think today's conversation is an invitation to really look at where in your life you are putting other people ahead of you, where in your life you are staying silent, where in your life you are wanting to be liked or just wanting everybody to be happy or wanting to keep the peace. And it's actually creating this turmoil inside of you because you silently know that you're giving up on yourself or what you care about or what you value.
--:-- Mel Robbins: And there's one other thing that you write about in the introduction where you say, "All this changed when my mentor told me something I'll never forget. He said, 'Kwame, there is a difference between being liked and being respected. If you want to have personal and professional success, you have to be willing to engage with conflict.'" And I'm presuming that's because your ability to say things that are difficult or to ask for what you need is how you gain respect.
--:-- Kwame Christian: Absolutely. Absolutely. And remember, it's not just the respect of others, but also the respect that you have for yourself. And I remember this was before I had the skills of how to have a difficult conversation, but I took those words to heart and I said, "Okay, I'm going to stand up for myself. I'm not just going to go with the flow anymore."
--:-- Kwame Christian: And so I remember there was one conversation in undergrad. My parents gave me a car. I was very appreciative. And they said, "We have one rule, just one rule with the car. As long as you have friends in the car and for yourself, everybody needs to wear a seatbelt." I thought that was fair. Very reasonable. I thought that was fair.
--:-- Kwame Christian: And so I had my friends in the car and we were going somewhere and they did not want to wear their seatbelts. And I said, "No, this is the rule. We have to wear our seatbelts." And it became the standoff for 15 painful minutes. And they were just saying, "No, we're not wearing our seatbelts. This is silly." And then I wouldn't move the car. And then they said, "Okay, well, I guess Kwame is going to be a baby about this. We're going to go."
--:-- Mel Robbins: Right.
--:-- Kwame Christian: But that wasn't the conversation. So after that happened, I pulled aside one of my friends and I asked him a simple question. I said, "Why is it that you are my best friend, but it seems like you're the one who respects me the least?" I just asked that question and he was silent for a moment, but then he started explaining himself and then eventually apologized. And so I recognize that at that point, a lot of times the conversations are going to be determined not by what it is that you actually say, but the quality of the questions that you ask. That question did all the work.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I love that you asked a question. "Why is it that as my best friend, you respect me the least?" Yeah. It's so sneaky, Kwame. Well, because for me, if I were in that situation where here I am giving friends a lift, they're now arguing about some rule that I have, like put your seatbelt on. It's a reasonable rule. And now they're calling you a baby and you're taking it. And the old Kwame would just take it and not bring it up.
--:-- Mel Robbins: But what's available to us today in terms of what you're going to teach us is in those moments where you feel slighted or disrespected or somebody is treating you in a way that is less than you deserve, how do you collect yourself and respect yourself enough to actually say something in a way that's effective? And asking that question, "Why is it that you're my best friend but you respect me the least?" I could see using that with your partner. I could see using that with your children.
--:-- Kwame Christian: Yeah.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I could see, because I'm realizing as we sit here that my kids use that on me. They're like, "You know, mom, just because you're stressed out at work doesn't mean you should be taking it out on us. I wasn't at work today." And just that kind of question, "Why are you taking it out on me?" All of a sudden shines something on the other person without you engaging in conflict.
--:-- Kwame Christian: Absolutely. And the question does the work. That's the first thing. And then I recognize that these conversations, these conflicts that we are trying to avoid are really relationship tests, right? And so a lot of times we live in fear of the person's reaction, but sometimes the person's reaction is the reason why the relationship needs to fundamentally change or end.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Let's just unpack that right there. So a lot of times the person's reaction, so their emotional immaturity, the name calling, the passive aggressive response, the tantrums, their reaction that we live in fear of, that reaction is actually the reason why the relationship must change or it needs to end. Wow. Unpack that for me.
--:-- Kwame Christian: Yeah. Because the reality is that when we think about this in terms of a relationship test, we are not just standing up for ourselves, but we're giving them an opportunity to let us know exactly where they should be placed in our lives. And so the beautiful thing about the story that I told is that he's my best friend to this day. We respect each other as equals now. And that was a really major fork in the road moment. I don't even think he remembers this, Mel. I really don't. But it was pivotal to me.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Right.
--:-- Kwame Christian: And so a lot of times we hold back in these conversations because we say, "Oh, I don't want them to get mad. I don't want them to guilt me. Oh, they're going to get really upset with me. It's going to hurt their feelings." And we're focusing completely on them and not focusing on the fact that we are hurt. We deserve to be respected and feel good in these relationships just in the same way they do. Because there just might be a compatibility issue. There might be a situation where this person and you just for whatever reason don't mix or they have a lot of growth to do. But whatever it is, we have to have a conversation in order to discover what the truth is.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Well, what I also love about what you're saying is it's very clear that what you're actually going to teach me and the person that's with us today is how to respect yourself and how when you feel that bubbling up inside you, it's not a sign that you should avoid something. It's a sign that you're quietly being disrespected and you need to respect yourself enough to learn how to lean into these situations.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Before we jump in, I want to just give some definitions because you're clearly a super smart guy as the founder and director of the American Negotiation Institute. And this conversation, while it's going to be applicable to your career and it's applicable to like striking a deal, it's actually way more relevant to your relationships. And so I want to really, for my sake, dumb down the terms.
--:-- Mel Robbins: And so even in your book, I'm reading on page 11, you say negotiation is just any conversation where someone in the conversation wants something. That's all that it is.
--:-- Kwame Christian: That's it. That's all that it is.
--:-- Mel Robbins: And in the example that you gave with your buddies, you just want them to respect you and not call you a baby for making a simple request and act like some mature, thankful adults instead of a bunch of dickheads that are trying to get a ride from you. Right? That's not a lot to ask. So when you use the word negotiation, what we're actually talking about is just a conversation where you want something.
--:-- Kwame Christian: That's it.
--:-- Mel Robbins: And as we dig in, I'm going to start to invite you as you're listening and learning from Kwame to think about conversations you're avoiding or to think about things in your life that you want that you're not asking for, because we're just talking today about how to have a conversation when you want something.
--:-- Mel Robbins: And you define conflict. Check this out. Conflict is just any conversation you need to have where you want something and someone has an attitude or you're nervous or there's emotion.
--:-- Kwame Christian: That's it. That's it.
--:-- Mel Robbins: And I love this because this is going to widen out our ability to learn from you. And so, before we jump into the strategies and the tactics and role-playing, Kwame, I want to invite you as you're listening right now to think of a situation in your life right now, or think of a person in your life where there's either tension or there's some conversation you need to have at work, maybe with your boss. Maybe you've been thinking you need a raise or you want to change your schedule, or there's a conversation that you need to have with a friend.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I asked our team this morning before you came in, "Okay, has anybody got anything going on?" And there were a bunch of us in the room. And the amount of stuff that people listed that were either things going on or that had been written in recently from someone listening to this somewhere in the world. Let me just give some examples because I want you to really think about a specific situation in your life because Kwame's going to coach us through this today.
--:-- Mel Robbins: So for example, siblings, asking your siblings to help with aging parents. These are difficult conversations. We're avoiding them. We have a lot of emotion around them. Another one that came up, a friend of mine is seeing somebody and the person they are seeing already has a girlfriend. So they are cheating. And now this is an issue because it's a violation of my values. Do I say something? Bringing up with a significant other the fact that you want to move in or get married or have kids. How you have this and you're nervous about their response. Getting your significant other to move to a different city with you.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Talking to adult children about money. You know, that you're maybe providing support to one of your adult kids by paying for their rent, but as you're giving the money, you constantly see them with a new outfit on. And so now you're starting to get annoyed. Here was another one. Having a roommate that gets up super early and constantly wakes me up because they're loud, I then wake up and I'm burning up in my room. I'm so mad that they have woken me up yet again at 5:30 in the morning and I'm burning up, but I don't want to have the conversation. I hate conflict. I stew about it. But by the time the end of the day rolls around and I see them, I'm not thinking about it. I'm not mad. And so now I'm not going to have the conversation. And then of course, tomorrow morning it happens again.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Maybe it's your mother-in-law and passive aggressive comments. There is some area in your life where you're slowly disrespecting yourself because you are not saying something. Are there other examples before we jump in that come up, Kwame, in your work that you want the person that's with us to also know like this is a really common thing that's actually just a negotiation?
--:-- Kwame Christian: I think one of the biggest ones that we often overlook is the division of domestic responsibilities. Let's start off with this because I don't want to come in here saying, "Oh yeah, I'm perfect at this." I'm not, okay. So I've been married for 14 years. Whitney and I, we got married on graduation day from undergrad. And so we're able to make this work because of all of the difficult conversations that we're able to have. And even just this past weekend, we had that one. And she said, "This is an example of the invisible work that women have to do in relationships." And I was like, "I'm this guy now. I literally wrote this. I wrote about this."
--:-- Mel Robbins: What was the situation?
--:-- Kwame Christian: She was talking about all of the cleaning and domestic work that she was doing or felt that she had to do. And I didn't realize how much she was doing and how difficult it was, especially because I travel a lot for the keynote speeches and whatnot. And so I was thinking that sometimes maybe, hey, there might be something that needs to be done, but maybe we could hold off a couple of days until the cleaners come. And Whitney's like, "I have standards, Kwame. So I'm not going to lower my standards." So it was one of those situations where I recognized, no, this is something that I need to do, something that I need to change, because it is having a significantly disproportionate impact on her than it is on me.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Well, you know what's interesting about these spats that we get into?
--:-- Kwame Christian: Yeah.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Is that if you just take the instance of you're either living with a roommate or you're married like you and I both are, or you have a significant other, and there are things that are not feeling fair. Like for me and my husband, it is always about who's walking the dogs or who is feeding the dogs first thing in the morning. And my husband believes that the burden falls on him. And what happens though, is he keeps waking up and then he keeps doing it. And he is silently resenting me because I am not stepping up. And I am not stepping up because this is not a priority for me. And I figure if the dogs eat at 5 a.m. or they eat at 9 a.m., they are fine. And I do not need to worry about this right now.
--:-- Mel Robbins: But him not telling me, and again, I want to widen this out because this is simply a topic where my husband wants something to change. He is not having the conversation with me because he doesn't want to deal with my attitude or he doesn't think that he is going to get his needs met. And so he says nothing. And then over time, he knows he's disrespecting himself because he's not asking for what he needs, but instead he starts resenting me.
--:-- Mel Robbins: And I've got examples of this too, where I'm holding things against him. Like the thing that I've been holding against him is that I've been working a ton lately because of this book launch. And I'll come walking downstairs at seven o'clock at night and he's in his office doing something and there's no dinner. And I'm mad because I don't want to eat cereal or eggs again tonight for dinner. But I'm not, like I'm realizing I haven't had the negotiation. I just have this expectation. I don't communicate it because I don't want the attitude, right? And then the resentment builds up. And just like the situation with the roommate that wakes you up, now you're pissed off or the boss that hasn't promoted you. Now you're pissed off and you haven't even respected yourself enough to have the conversation.
--:-- Kwame Christian: Right, and think about what happens emotionally. When we have these strong emotions, stress, fear, anxiety, whatever it happens to be, whatever it is that holds you back, it puts us into short-term thinking mode. So we say, "I'm afraid of this conversation. I'm afraid of the person's response. It'll be easier for me to just eat it and not do anything about it." And then we do that the next day and the next week and the next month. And then our resentment builds up because again, emotions make us think in the short term, but we need to be able to have that internal negotiation, calm our emotions down so we can think a little bit more strategically and think about the long-term.
--:-- Kwame Christian: Because it's okay to be afraid. We just need to be afraid of the right thing. And a lot of times we're not. And so what I do is I shift it from the fear of failure to the fear of regret. So I say, "Okay, Kwame in 10 years, would he regret not having this conversation? Hypothetically, if this behavior continues, what does my life look like if I don't have the conversation?" And then I realize, whoa, that outcome.
--:-- Kwame Christian: That outcome is far scarier than a momentary, difficult conversation. I'm just going to go actually to the roommate example. Because the roommate example is something that even if you're not currently living with somebody, you have. And you've been in a situation where your roommate has done something that annoys the hell out of you. They're a slob. They smoke. They don't do their dishes. Their friends come over and party, they don't clean it up, they get up early in the morning, whatever it may be, and you take it. And you're annoyed and it burns you up and you don't say something or when you do say something, you're erupting and it's not actually effective.
--:-- Mel Robbins: If you fast forward 10 years, I think the danger is you go, "Well, I'm not going to be living with this person then, so I don't really care." You're talking about something deeper. By not learning how to say something in these moments where you feel quietly disrespected or there's something that you actually want, you're not respecting yourself. And in 10 years, if you continue to stay silent and not respect yourself, then you are gonna be even more of a people pleaser. And this is how you learn the skill. This is what you're talking about. You weren't born this way. You built this.
--:-- You know, in your book, you have four questions that you can ask yourself. So if you keep in mind this conversation that you know you're avoiding, right? With your partner or your roommate or a friend or something at work. I want you to hear these four questions that Kwame writes about in his book, because I think these questions really help you parse out why you're avoiding it and tap into the courage to actually say something. Because we're so fast to be like, "Oh, no, no, no, I'll do it next week. Oh, no, no, no, I'm not going to say anything to my roommate. I don't want tensions to be even worse." But the tension's inside you.
--:-- So here are the four questions. Number one, what will your life look like if you don't have this conversation? Number two, what will your life look like if you have the conversation and it goes poorly? Would you be able to recover? Number three, what will your life look like if you have this conversation and it goes okay? And number four, what will your life look like if you have this conversation and it goes really well? Why are these questions so powerful?
--:-- Kwame Christian: They're powerful because sometimes our emotions can lead us astray and lead us to focus on only the bad outcomes. We just catastrophize in our minds. And so what we do with these questions, it's part of the internal negotiation. We're changing our focus to something else. And we're recognizing, hey, regardless of how this ends up, I'll still find a way to be okay. And I think that's something that we often miss because when we think about fight, flight, or freeze, these are primal responses. And that's what kept our ancestors alive back in the day. So we can't really distinguish between a physical threat to our lives and just a minor social threat. It feels the same way. And so by asking ourselves these questions, we can get to a point where we can recognize, hey, if I do have the conversation and the worst thing happens, I will still be here. I will still be okay. And I'd respect myself better.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I am loving this conversation. And this feels like a really good point to hit the pause button because I want to give our sponsors a chance to say a few words. And I also want to give you a chance to share this with somebody that you love. But don't go anywhere, because can't you tell Kwame's just getting started? Of course he's just getting started. And we have so much more to teach you when we return. So stay with us.
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--:-- Mel Robbins: Welcome back, it's your friend Mel Robbins. Today you and I are learning from the amazing Kwame Christian. He is the founder and CEO of the American Negotiation Institute and he is here teaching us three simple steps that we can use in our lives, our relationships, we can use them at work in order to negotiate for what we want.
--:-- So Kwame, you know, in your book, you do write about the fight, flight, or freeze response when you get stressed out. And you also write about the amygdala. Can you just explain in terms of your work, how do you describe the amygdala and what role does it play in getting yourself to have a difficult conversation?
--:-- Kwame Christian: Yeah, the amygdala is the epicenter of all emotions. So both positive and negative emotions come from the amygdala. And since it's such a primal part of the brain, it is the fastest to respond. So before we can think logically about something, we will feel something emotionally. And so we want to compare that to the frontal lobe, which is the most evolved part of our brain. So we have logical reasoning, emotion management, executive function, all of that exists in the frontal lobe. And this is why understanding this matters so much. Because there's an antagonistic relationship between the frontal lobe and the amygdala. The more emotional we are, the less clearly we're thinking. The more clearly we're thinking, the less emotional we are. It's an either or proposition.
--:-- And so our goal with this approach, as we negotiate internally and externally using compassionate curiosity, which we'll get to, is to make sure that we ourselves are using the proper part of our brain. So we're actually operating at our best capacity, our highest capacity, and we can get the other person to operate with their best selves as well.
--:-- Mel Robbins: If I'm emotional, how the hell do I start thinking clearly?
--:-- Kwame Christian: And so this is where labeling your emotions comes into play. So what we're going to do is we're going to label all of the emotions that we're feeling. Most likely it's not just one. So for example, if we say, "Oh, I'm angry." Anger is a secondary emotion, not a primary emotion. There's usually something else that makes us feel angry. So I'm angry. What else am I feeling? I'm feeling disrespected. Okay, what else? I'm also feeling disappointed. And so that'll be the first step of internal compassionate curiosity. So we're going to acknowledge and validate our own emotions. And then we're going to get curious with compassion, asking why I feel this way. Well, why do I feel disrespected? Why do I feel disappointed? Well, this person is supposed to be my friend. It doesn't feel like they're treating me as a friend right now. Okay. And then the last step is joint problem solving within ourselves. So I want to figure out what would help me to feel better emotionally, but what should I actually do to solve this problem? And that gives us the clarity to actually have the conversation.
--:-- Mel Robbins: All right. Well, let's take one of these topics because, you know, I think it's when you and I are talking and as you're listening to Kwame right now, it's easy to be less emotional. Because you're not standing in front of your mother-in-law. You're not about to sit down and tell your friend that you have a real problem with the fact that they're actively cheating with somebody and it's bringing up a lot for you. And when you think about it or you're kind of just reflecting on it, you're not actually in the conversation. And I've had so many instances in my life where I've rehearsed it. "Okay, I'm going to go in, I'm going to talk to my boss about this, or I'm going to go in and I'm going to say this to my mom." And then I see them and I'm like, "Not today." And so can you learn to be less emotional? Because I often feel like it's easy to stay calm when I'm preparing for something, but the second it's time to do it and it's time to talk to my boyfriend or talk to my roommate, all reason goes out the window.
--:-- Kwame Christian: Yeah. Emotion management is a skill. And a lot of times we say, "Well, I'm not good at managing my emotions. My emotions are strong." You're probably not going to be good at something that you haven't practiced. So we have to recognize that by just practicing it, we will get better at it. And it's really, truly that simple. Because our emotions will hold us back. We need to find out how to manage our emotions before the conversation by preparing emotionally, but also during the conversation. So I'm going to treat it almost like an athlete, how an athlete would do visualization. I want to think about in the conversation, if they say that thing that triggers me, what am I going to do? How am I going to respond? What am I going to say? If they say that thing that always annoys me, how am I going to approach this? So by the time I actually have the conversation, I've been there before. I've understood it. So it's less triggering in the moment.
--:-- And the same way we described how compassionate curiosity works as we prepare, you can get faster with doing it in the conversation. So I'll give an example. So a lot of times, not with Whitney, this would be weird, but in a business world, when I'm having a difficult conversation, I'll usually have like a pen and paper with me. So let's say somebody says something disrespectful or throws me off or something. I'll just say, "You've brought up a lot of good points. Do you mind if I take a few notes?" and I'll take notes.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Okay, hold on. Everybody get that? So if you're at—this is a good one for at work—because if you're the kind of person that feels nervous talking in a meeting, you're with the majority. Like literally allowing yourself to be seen, allowing your ideas to be heard is a very vulnerable thing for people. And it's very normal to feel that way. So if you're also in a situation where you're dealing with a colleague that takes credit for your work, or you're dealing with a feeling that you're not being fairly compensated compared to your colleagues, which is also very common, your emotions are going to be high. And if Kwame says something that frustrates me, or I don't want to hear, or that's really annoying, you say, you pull out your paper and you say, "Hold on a second. This is very important. Do you mind if I took a couple notes?" That's it. Why do you do that?
--:-- Kwame Christian: Because first of all, I turned it into a bit of a tactile meditation. A lot of times, Mel, I'm not writing anything. I'm just like, "What is happening?" That's the first thing. So the first three to five seconds might be absolutely nothing. And then I say, "Okay, what am I feeling?" I'll list it out. And then I'll say, "All right, why?" I'll go through the same framework. And in my mind, I can do this really quickly in about two to three seconds. And then I'll say, "Okay, how should I respond to this? But how do I also control the conversation?" So I'm not reacting, I'm actually responding. And while they think you're writing down what they're saying, you're basically going, "What the hell is going on? Calm down. Respect yourself." You're literally giving yourself the notes.
--:-- Mel Robbins: And I can see how that's a way to keep you grounded, but what are you gonna cue yourself to do when you're ready to speak?
--:-- Kwame Christian: Simple rule. When you don't know what to say next, the next thing you should say should come in the form of a question. So I'll come back with an open-ended question. And a lot of times you can just come back with clarification. "One of the things that you mentioned was blank. Can you tell me what you meant by blank?" And so you're giving yourself some time and you're also getting some clarity because whenever somebody's talking, there are gonna be some key words that they emphasize and different people have different definitions for different words. And so we don't want to assume that we know what they talk about. Think about things like respect, fairness. What's interesting is you can have an argument where one person is saying, "This is unfair." And then the other person says, "This is unfair" for two different reasons. We need to understand what they're seeing. But we often operate on assumptions versus hypotheses.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Well, let's go a layer deeper. Because one of the things that you write about in your book that I found interesting: negotiation, which is just a conversation where you want something, isn't the art of deal making. It's the art of deal discovery. I love that and understand that in business because you can't just argue against somebody and expect to get your way the whole time. Part of the back and forth of asking for what you need is discovering what's possible. If you take this concept of a conversation where you are going to be asking for something that you need and you're worried about the attitude, if it's not about getting what you want, what is it actually about?
--:-- Kwame Christian: Well, first of all, I think about everything as practice. That's first. So this is me practicing having a difficult conversation. But also I recognize that I can't always force a deal. Like sometimes there is no deal to be had. And sometimes the worst thing that could happen to us is a deal that never should have happened. And so if we say this is the art of deal making, or my goal is to get an agreement, I might force something that is actually inappropriate and then is just doomed to fail later on. And so I say, "Hey, listen, my goal in this conversation is to be as curious as possible, learn as much as possible, and see whether or not there is a deal to be made. And if there is, I trust my skills to find it. And if there isn't, okay, I understand and accept that." And I think that's an important mental shift. Because if you feel like a deal has to happen, a lot of times that means that you are going to bear the entire responsibility of being reasonable in this conversation.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Well, I think for me, what I have learned the hard way by avoiding these conversations. I mean, I wasn't even a people pleaser. I was a chicken shit. I like literally, if I even sniffed a level of attitude or judgment or like anger in you, or if I thought something I was about to say was going to upset you, I would lie, cheat, steal, avoid whatever it takes to not have to experience somebody's negative reaction. And I think what I've learned the hard way by avoiding these conversations is yes, you actually are disrespecting yourself. And yes, you do become a coward. And yes, you do start to resent other people because you think they should read your mind. And then when your roommate's waking up at 5:30 and banging around in the kitchen, or your spouse continues to leave the dishes in the sink as a gift for you in the morning when you wake up, or whatever it may be, or your kids are leaving the nice laptop that you worked very hard to buy them for school open next to the bed where they're going to step on it. These sort of things actually matter because you not only disrespect yourself by not just saying something, but you also start to resent the other person and that's not fair.
--:-- And I have personally created a lot of conflict in my relationships because I wouldn't just lean in and be curious. And I'm gonna share a little bit about something that my mom and I worked through where my cowardice in this area of my life led to a big misunderstanding between us that literally kind of played out for a decade that didn't need to be there. And it was because I was scared of what I perceived to be her judgment. And I write about the story in the *Let Them Theory* book, but I'll just share it very briefly.
--:-- When I first fell in love with my husband, Chris, I was head over heels. And I just figured I found my soulmate. I am so happy. And I remember when we got engaged, my mom was not as happy as I had wanted her to be. Like she was happy and positive, but there was just some underneath the—it's that silent, it's that thing that you pick up on. The eye roll when you order gluten-free, the snide comment from your mother-in-law, the fact that you feel ignored or passed over at work every day. That silent thing. It's like a rock in your shoe that slowly becomes a boulder. There was something that just felt like she wasn't that excited. And I asked her about it. I just said, "You know, you're just not as excited as I thought you would be. What's up?" And she said, "Well, I just, you know, if it was my choice, he's not the person I would have picked for you."
--:-- So I said to her, because I was immediately pissed off and judgy, "Well, I'm asking for my sake that you act as if you picked him for me." And she said, "No, I'm not going to do that because I didn't." And I have to give her props because she said the truth. And I have to give her props because she was not hiding her emotion. She felt conflicted. She felt happy, but also not happy. Now, I literally started judging her and quietly kind of resenting her because I'm like, "Why can't you be more supportive? Why can't you be more effusive?" And so this goes on for years where I just never addressed it, that I just don't feel like you're quite happy that this is the person I married. And I have to say that as we're sitting here thinking, I take full responsibility for this because I'm the one that avoided the conversation. And then of course you create a story about somebody. And then of course there's this kind of invisible distance between the two of you.
--:-- When I finally leaned in, I started to realize it's not that she didn't like him. It's not that she wasn't happy. There was something so much deeper that was going on for her that I never even bothered to be curious about. Like I never actually asked her why. And if you could have picked somebody, who would they have been? And the answer was like so sad when we finally had the conversation. She was just sad that I had fallen in love with somebody who lived so far away. That was it. And I was so afraid of the judgment and pissed off because I thought this person should behave a certain way that I missed out on just being curious. Like, "What is underneath that? Because I know that that's not the kind of person that you are. What's up?"
--:-- And if you look at her and my dad's story, they met in college, just like you and your wife. And they went to college far away from where they both grew up. And once they met and got married, they actually never moved back home. And so they grew up raising my brother and I, and I grew up nowhere near family. And she was afraid because I met somebody that lived far away that it would mean I would never move home again. And I never did. And so, you know, she was right.
--:-- And I think about what's possible because we're all so afraid of each other's emotions. And if you're willing to just give the other person credit for being a human, and you're willing to ask, like, "What's underneath the things that you're feeling? Because I know that you're a good person and that you love me," there's this connection that's available, but we're so afraid of it. So I take full responsibility for it. When I finally leaned in and we talked about it, of course she and Chris have a phenomenal relationship. She always jokes that "You're my favorite son-in-law." And then Chris was like, "I'm your only son-in-law." And then he goes, "Well, you're my favorite mother-in-law." And he's like, "I'm only." But it wasn't anger and judgment. It was actually sadness. And because I disrespected myself and disrespected her by not being curious, I created this kind of weirdness between us. It didn't need to be there.
--:-- Kwame Christian: That's powerful. Thank you for sharing. I mean, it just shows how pivotal these conversations can be, but also how scary it can be. Because here, as we're talking about it, you knew exactly what you wanted to say, but...
--:-- Mel Robbins: I didn't know how to say it.
--:-- Kwame Christian: You didn't know how to say it.
--:-- Mel Robbins: And I didn't know how to feel all of the wave of complicated stuff that was coming up for me. And I didn't know how to handle an answer that I might not like. And that brings me back to those four questions. And one of them goes, "What will your life look like if you have this conversation? It goes poorly. Would you be able to recover?" Of course I would. And the irony is, is that the very thing that I was worried about, which is judgment and distance, is what I created by not having the conversation. And never even imagined what would your life look like if you have the conversation and it goes well.
--:-- Kwame Christian: All righty, this feels like a great moment to hit the pause button. Let everything that you've shared so far, Kwame, which is a lot, just sink in. While you're listening to our amazing sponsors, take a moment and share this with somebody. In fact, sharing this with the person that you need to have the difficult conversation with is probably a fabulous first step to laying the groundwork to making that conversation easy. And don't go anywhere because we still have so much more to get into. So stay with us.
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--:-- Mel Robbins: Welcome back. It's your buddy, Mel Robbins. I'm so thrilled you're still here. Thank you for taking the time to listen to this and to learn about this important topic and to share it with the people that you care about in your life.
--:-- So Kwame, here's the next thing that I wanna talk about. What are the three steps to having a difficult conversation?
--:-- Kwame Christian: So the framework we use is compassionate curiosity. It's a flexible three-part framework where first we're going to acknowledge and validate the emotions if we see emotions from the other side. And then when we manage the emotions and we lower the emotional temperature of the room, then we're gonna move to step two, which is getting curious with compassion, asking open-ended questions with a compassionate tone to gather information, build rapport, and show empathy. And then number three is going to be using joint problem solving, where we're not working against each other, but working with each other to solve the problem together.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I love that. Let's break it down step by step. The three-part compassionate curiosity framework is the three parts I would do with myself, which is what you actually need to be doing, because you're the one holding yourself back from saying something. And you're the one letting your emotions rob you of the opportunity to both respect yourself and have these conversations. And it's also the same three steps you go through once you've done this for yourself to engage with the other person who may or may not be a jerk or emotional or whatever.
--:-- Kwame Christian: Exactly. And that's how you know it's ethical. Because if I'm going to use the same technique on myself as I use on you, then you know there's nothing nefarious behind it.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Oh, that's true. And it's not like a tactic or a trip or manipulation.
--:-- Kwame Christian: Nope.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Which, by the way, I think about the years I spent wanting to be liked and not respected. I think about the years that I was a people pleaser, which basically means what I've come to terms with for myself is when you're a people pleaser, you're manipulative. Because you are behaving in a way that is intended to manipulate whether or not somebody likes you.
--:-- Kwame Christian: You're right.
--:-- Mel Robbins: And when most people use the term people pleaser, you literally are like, "I'm weak, I'm this, I'm a people pleaser. I just want to be liked." No, no, no, no. When I started to go, "Wait a minute, Mel, you're a world-class manipulator because you just want everybody to like you. So you bend and twist and lie and stay silent to manipulate what people think." That's not cool. And when I got the ick factor versus the wimp factor around people pleasing, I was finally like, "I got to change. I cannot have this be the default." And I love what you said, Kwame, about like, do you want to be liked or respected? And if you want to be respected, you better learn how to respect yourself. And I love this framework. How is the compassionate curiosity framework different than the way other people may teach you to kind of get what you want or to, you know, kind of win the battle or deal with people that are difficult?
--:-- Kwame Christian: I think it comes down to the willingness to work with people. So it's not me versus you. It's you and me versus the problem. And it's to improve difficult conversations for everybody. I'm not trying to get some kind of unfair advantage over people. I'm trying to elevate conversation in general. Because me and the other person, we have the same challenges. We're all human. Our amygdala is going to fire up. And so we're not going to be thinking clearly. So I need to make sure that I'm thinking clearly first. And then I'm going to make sure they're thinking clearly as well. So internally, step one, acknowledge and validate emotions. Step two, get curious with self-directed compassion. And step three is using joint problem solving where we reconcile the differences between our hearts and our minds.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Okay, well, let's add one more scenario in. Because I want to make sure we land each step. And let's use the roommate one because I think everybody can put themselves in the place of you live with somebody, they wake up early. They're knocking stuff around, the dogs are up or they're just loud in the room next door, they turn on the lights in the bedroom that you're in. I'm getting triggered thinking about it.
--:-- Kwame Christian: Are you okay?
--:-- Mel Robbins: Good, then we picked a good one. And the roommate then leaves. You're now awake two hours before you wanted to be. You're stewing about it. You like are thinking about the text you want to send, you're thinking about the note you're going to leave, you just are stewing about it. How do you do step one with yourself in that moment?
--:-- Kwame Christian: So let's walk through that the exact same way. So what are you feeling? What's the first thing you feel?
--:-- Mel Robbins: Disrespected, pissed off, annoyed. Just sort of like the, "How could they not know?" Like, "Why do I even need to say something?" The audacity of this act.
--:-- Kwame Christian: Yes. So it's multiple emotions. So the psychology, understanding the psychology helps us to have faith in this process. Because here's the magical part of it. Because with the amygdala, that's what's firing when we're feeling emotional. But as we label it, in psychology, they say we need to name it to tame it. Because the part of the brain that actually accepts or rejects the emotional label is located in the frontal lobe. So by naming it to tame it, we're also switching which part of the brain we're using.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Exactly. Genius.
--:-- Kwame Christian: And that's what helps us to calm down.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Oh, and you also said that the more emotional you are, the less you can think. And the more that you think, the less emotional that you are. So the first step in any moment where you're triggered or you're getting emotional or you're recognizing that you're avoiding something or you're not asking for something or you're going silent, you're people pleasing, all of those things is to name it to tame it because then we are going to switch from emotion to thinking.
--:-- Kwame Christian: Exactly. Okay, great. So now I've named all this stuff, but I'm still stewing.
--:-- Kwame Christian: But you're feeling a little bit better.
--:-- Mel Robbins: A little bit better. And I have not sent the text. And now we get to step two. What's step two?
--:-- Kwame Christian: And so this is where we get curious with compassion. So now we're going to go through those labels and say, "Well, why do I feel that way?" And label all of the reasons why. So why do you feel so upset? Let's actually list all the reasons why.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Oh, it could be. I'm so upset because I work really hard and I have a much bigger job than that person, meaning the stress level. And I've got more bills that I need to pay. And I've asked about this before and I've been told that it wouldn't happen. And why do I need to ask again? And I need my sleep.
--:-- Kwame Christian: Exactly. You see, see how long it took you to get to sleep? So we think it's about the sleep. It is about so much more than the sleep. And as we get clarity and understanding, we're starting to calm down. We're not going to get to a point where it's completely emotionless. But we're getting to a point where the emotions are manageable and at least we get some clarity that makes us feel a little bit more confident. And then the last step is using joint problem solving internally. So we're reconciling the differences between our hearts and our minds.
--:-- Mel Robbins: So what does that mean?
--:-- Kwame Christian: So emotionally, what might make me feel better? I'm going to send the most aggressive text message you have ever seen. Okay, that might make you feel better in the short term, but what would actually solve the problem?
--:-- Mel Robbins: Actually, that might make me feel better, not solve the problem. Let me not do that. Maybe I need to send a text message, but I need to craft it differently.
--:-- Kwame Christian: So you're saying I need to honor my emotions with what I do next, but I also need to engage in long-term thinking to think about what actually solves the problem long-term.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Okay. So I've just done the three steps on me. So I don't become, as my daughter likes to say, a tornado and rage text at somebody. And I've taken a deep breath, but I also now recognize that I'm not going to do what the old me did. I'm not going to just do the "let them" part and not do the "let me" part where I actually say something. I'm not going to do what the old me would do, which would pick sides and pit me against them. I'm now going to do what the new me is learning to do, which is I'm going to respect how I'm feeling. And I'm also going to respect that this is an opportunity to learn this skill that you're talking about of actually having a conversation that feels a little uncomfortable.
--:-- Now it's dinner time. I've calmed down, but not entirely because we know these things kind of like, uh, I'm going to take a with them approach. They walk in the door and now the amygdala spikes a little bit, because it always happens. Now we're in it. You're about to get in the game, coach. What do I do?
--:-- Kwame Christian: So now we start the conversation.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Oh God, no. Okay. Should I have a drink first?
--:-- Mel Robbins: Like, what are we doing? Can I do it from my room while they're in the kitchen? How do we do this? It's tough.
--:-- Kwame Christian: Here's how you don't do it. Don't send a text that says "we need to talk."
--:-- Mel Robbins: Oh God.
--:-- Kwame Christian: You don't want to just trigger them. What I recognize is that sometimes, let's say you're really good at compassionate curiosity, but the thing is you need to start the conversation.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I don't want to start the conversation. That's tough.
--:-- Kwame Christian: It is tough. So I have a framework for starting the conversation because sometimes that's the hardest part.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I think it is the hardest part.
--:-- Kwame Christian: Yeah. So I call it Situation, Impact, Invitation. This is how we tell the person that we have to have a conversation.
--:-- Kwame Christian: Once the conversation starts, we flow with compassionate curiosity.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Got it.
--:-- Kwame Christian: But we have to have some entry point, and this will take like 10 to 15 seconds to say.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Okay, great.
--:-- Kwame Christian: So with Situation, we're going to describe the situation using what I call naked facts.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Naked facts?
--:-- Kwame Christian: Yeah.
--:-- Mel Robbins: That sounds like a conversation you have with your wife, not with a roommate, but okay.
--:-- Kwame Christian: So naked facts — I wanted to call it something that people would remember. These are facts stripped of all interpretation, judgment, or opinion. So no matter what you believe, what side you're on, you can say that is in fact what occurred.
--:-- Mel Robbins: And next is Impact.
--:-- Kwame Christian: Yes. So give me the example with the roommate. "This morning at 5:30 a.m., your alarm went off and it woke me up." That's it.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Oh God, I'm already nervous.
--:-- Kwame Christian: That's it. And then the impact. We're going to personalize the impact. What impact did it have on you? Because if you talk about a general impact or what it means to other people, they could deny that. Now we have an argument. But if we personalize it, they can't say that's not what you felt, because that's not how brains work.
--:-- Mel Robbins: So it'll be a situation: "Hey, this morning at 5:30 a.m., your alarm went off and it woke me up. And that made me feel frustrated because I still wanted to sleep, but now I'm awake and it's really hard for me to get back to sleep after I wake up like that. So I really enjoy living with you and we have a really great relationship, so I just want to make sure that we can have a conversation to figure out how we can make this work for both of us."
--:-- Kwame Christian: And that's it.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Okay. Now, should I be talking about how their day went first, like kind of ease into this?
--:-- Kwame Christian: Oh, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, for sure. I think you don't — as the door opens, you don't read the script.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Not at all.
--:-- Kwame Christian: Not at all. That's a little bit too aggressive. You gotta warm up.
--:-- Mel Robbins: "By the way, this morning at 5:30 a.m., your alarm went off. That's perfect. And it woke me up and I had a hard time going back to sleep. I love living with you, but I would love to have a conversation about this so that we both enjoy it." That's it.
--:-- Kwame Christian: That's it. So now we go through the three steps, and you're now doing this with the other person because we've already named our own feelings.
--:-- Kwame Christian: Which is a way to get us to go from emotion to thinking. We've already gone even deeper as to what is actually causing this.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Right.
--:-- Kwame Christian: And then what was the third step? Joint problem solving. So we're going to work with them, not against them.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I'm going to work with them, not against them. I gotta remind myself: the problem's out there. We're over here. We're going to work on this together.
--:-- Kwame Christian: So now I go with emotion. How do I do this with another person? So let's go ahead and make this real. So you can be the person with the 5:30 AM alarm. And what I'll do is as I'm flowing through the conversation, I'll just say step one, step two, step three. I'll signal with my fingers so people can see, but they'll see how much it flows.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Okay, great.
--:-- Kwame Christian: So I'll just start off with Situation, Impact, Invitation. You just respond as how you would want to, and make it tough, Mel. It's not fun if it's not hard.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Okay. Okay. Here we go.
--:-- [They begin the role play]
--:-- Kwame Christian: So we were chit-chatting, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Great day at work. Great. Awesome. Hey, by the way, at 5:30 in the morning, your alarm went off and it woke me up.
--:-- Mel Robbins: It did?
--:-- Kwame Christian: Yeah.
--:-- Kwame Christian: It went off and then I woke up and it made it really tough for me to start my day. So I just wanted to...
--:-- Mel Robbins: Well, I tried to go back to sleep.
--:-- Kwame Christian: I tried to go back to sleep, but I'm a very light sleeper. And when something wakes me up, it really makes it hard for me to get back down to sleep.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Well, I got to get up early.
--:-- Kwame Christian: Oh, I recognize that. And it sounds like for you, getting up early is a priority because you have to get to work and it's important for you to get to work early.
--:-- Kwame Christian: Right. That's what I'm hearing.
--:-- Kwame Christian: Right. And so what I was wondering is if there is any way that we could work through this together to find a way for it to be livable for both of us, because I want you to be able to get to work early. That's really important to you. And getting to sleep is really important to me. So I don't want to assume anything. So I wanted to just ask, are there any potential other options that you could use?
--:-- Mel Robbins: Like what? Like, what are you talking about? Like, I'm not supposed to use an alarm?
--:-- Kwame Christian: I'm not saying that. Before we move on — I might be wrong, but it seems like you're a little bit maybe frustrated with the conversation.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Well, it seems like you're just attacking me and I'm just trying to get up and go. And I've always been a morning person. I mean, I've been this way since college. And Kwame, I don't like — I'm not frustrated. I'm just trying to have a conversation here. Why does everything always have to be about emotion?
--:-- Kwame Christian: Well, I want to make sure that I'm understanding you well, because maybe you can tell me what it is that I'm sensing. But there's a difference in the way that you're approaching this from when we were just talking pleasantries and now.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Well, I just kind of feel attacked. I mean, I just got home from work.
--:-- Kwame Christian: What is it about the way that I'm approaching this that's making you feel so attacked?
--:-- Mel Robbins: I'm trying to think of how somebody who's got a... I'm just tired. I've had a stressful day at work.
--:-- Kwame Christian: I'm sorry about that.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I'm just like, okay, so what is it you want me to do?
--:-- Kwame Christian: Okay. Well, let me say this, Mel. If you're too tired to have this conversation, maybe this is not the right time to have this conversation. But for the sake of our relationship together, I just want you to know that it's very important for me to have this conversation because you need to get up at 5:30 and I respect that. And I want to make sure that you can get what you need out of this relationship. And I also need to get sleep and I want to make sure that I get what I need out of this relationship. Because it's not fair to you if I don't bring this up — this has been hurting me for a long time.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Why didn't you say something?
--:-- Kwame Christian: Honestly, because I was afraid that you would respond poorly. And so I care about our relationship and I didn't want to lose it. But I recognized that by not having the conversation, I was doing you a disservice. So if now is not a good time...
--:-- Mel Robbins: Now's a good time. Thank you for bringing this up.
--:-- Kwame Christian: Okay. So I want to think about what you can do to get what you need and what I can do to get what I need.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Well, what do you need?
--:-- Kwame Christian: Sleep is what I need. And for me, maybe it'll be helpful if I walk through what I'm experiencing too. Because for me, I have insomnia. So it takes me a long time to get to sleep. And once I'm awake, I'm awake. I can't get back down. And so I want to see if there's any type of adjustment that we can make. Because I want to be really transparent with you: this is not sustainable for me. And if we can't figure this out, then I'm going to have to make a change and find someone else to live with. And I don't want to do that because we're compatible in every other way. It's just this type of thing. So I don't want to come in and just dictate what you should do. That's why I want to have a conversation with you. When it comes to how you wake up, is there a specific need that you have for an alarm that loud? Or are there any types of adjustments that you think you could make to accomplish your same goal in a way that's less destructive for me?
--:-- Mel Robbins: It's interesting because I realize I'm starting to — you just held up two. What's two?
--:-- Kwame Christian: That's two. I'm asking questions.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Asking questions.
--:-- Kwame Christian: So what I'll do is I'll acknowledge and validate the emotions first to try to calm you down. And I'm recognizing, she was not calming down. I'm going to acknowledge and validate that. "Hey, doesn't seem like this is a good time for you." And then back off on the conversation. And then they lean in and go, "No, no, no, we can have it."
--:-- Mel Robbins: Exactly.
--:-- Kwame Christian: And then once I recognize you calm down again, I went to number two where I ask these questions out of curiosity.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Out of curiosity.
--:-- Kwame Christian: So what I'm doing — I'm not trying to grab all of these disparate tactics and piecemeal them together. I'm just making reads based on what I see. So if I see emotion of any kind, I'm going to acknowledge that. And then once I see you calm down, I'm going to get to number two, which is getting curious with compassion. And so first I saw frustration. You said that wasn't it. Then I said, "What are you sensing?" I'm still in step one.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Yeah, because I didn't want to be called out for being frustrated.
--:-- Kwame Christian: And that's fine. And so I'll say, "Okay, it's not frustration. What is it?" And then you said, "I'm tired. I don't want to have this conversation." I said, "Okay, if you don't want to have this conversation right now, then maybe we shouldn't have this conversation right now."
--:-- Mel Robbins: You know what's interesting about this? Even doing a role play in a fake situation actually made me feel those emotions. You said come at me. I didn't even have to try because I already was so reactive emotionally. And I also know that that's why most of us avoid these situations and conversations. Because it's easy to complain to your friends about your disrespectful roommate than to just address it and try to work through it together.
--:-- Kwame Christian: There are so many difficult conversations because they are emotional, whether it's about politics or family matters, especially in today's world with the things going on globally. How can you navigate these conversations without being overwhelmed by your emotions? It's tough. So when we talk about things like politics or religion, there's a reason why these particular conversations have so much more emotionality. It comes down to two things: identity and morality. Identity means who am I and what does it mean to be me and what does a person like me typically do? And morality is what does it mean to be a good or bad person? When we're talking about those core issues, those two issues are going to be triggered in ourselves. And that increases the level of emotionality. So again, we don't need a new technique in order to deal with this. We just recognize that we're going to have to spend more time in part one: acknowledging and validating emotions.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I think a story can help here, too.
--:-- Kwame Christian: There's a classic story called The Blind Men and the Elephant. There are five blind men and there's an elephant in the room, literally. One person touches the ear and says an elephant is like a piece of paper. Another person touches the tail and says an elephant is like a long rope. Another person touches the leg and says an elephant is like a column. And then they start arguing. So who's right and who's wrong? They're all right and they're all wrong at the same time. For me, with these conversations about politics and sensitive issues, a lot of times we approach it in terms of right versus wrong, which will inflame identity and morality. You're saying that it's not right to be me and you're saying that I am a bad person for thinking this. And so we will fight like hell to make sure that you don't have that opinion of me. It's not about right or wrong anymore. It's about me standing my ground and not letting you think that about me. But instead, what I'll do is I'll acknowledge and validate what they're saying. "So it sounds like you believe this because of that reason. Okay." And here's the key: when I'm summarizing this, I'll just say, "So in your perspective, this." So I'm not agreeing. I'm not endorsing. I'm paying them the respect of knowing that I understand where you're coming from, even if I disagree. So when I see them start to calm down, when they start to feel more respected, then when I transition to getting curious with compassion, my goal is to ask a question that helps them to see another side of the elephant.
--:-- Mel Robbins: What is the question?
--:-- Kwame Christian: I'll say this: "Well, have you thought about it from this perspective?" I like to ask hypothetical questions. "Hypothetically, if you lived this type of lifestyle, how would you see this situation?" Or "What if you were in this situation and this program wasn't there? What solution would you have to get out of that situation?" And now they might say, "Oh, I was blaming the victim. I was saying that they weren't working hard enough, for example, but it sounds like they actually didn't have any other options and they're doing the best thing they could." So I can get them to a different perspective, not by saying you're wrong, but by saying you didn't have the full picture.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Beautiful. Wow. So Kwame, I wanted to ask you a couple specific scenarios, and these are where you might feel like you don't have any power. My daughter was recently looking for an apartment in New York City, and the rental market is so flipping competitive. So how do you negotiate rent when you're in a very competitive market?
--:-- Kwame Christian: I think we need to understand what landlords want, because usually we just say money, and that's only part of the answer. Landlords want easy money. They want tenants that are not going to be a problem, who pay on time, who don't destroy the property. So one thing that I like to do in a situation like this is when I'm talking to the landlord, I'd say, "Hey, I have a question. If you could imagine the perfect tenant, what would that perfect tenant look like?" And I bet nobody's ever even asked them.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Right. Never.
--:-- Kwame Christian: Right. They'll list those things out. And I said, "Hey, my goal is to be the perfect tenant for you. And I want to see if this could be a place where I can stay long term. So what would it take for us to lower the rent? And in return, I will be that perfect tenant." And now we start the conversation. Maybe they want a longer lease term. Maybe it's helpful to them to say, "Oh, I don't need to worry about turning this over every 12 months. If you give me 18 months or two years, I'd be willing to lower it." So we figure out what their biggest gripe is, what's their biggest annoyance, and say, "Hey, I'll promise not to do that. I'll be the easiest tenant you've ever had." And even better, bonus points if you can get references from previous landlords who say, "This was the best tenant I've ever had."
--:-- Mel Robbins: So it's not just you blowing smoke. They actually know it's real.
--:-- Kwame Christian: Amazing answer.
--:-- Mel Robbins: All right. Let's say you've landed a new job and you want to negotiate the offer. What is the best way to do that, Kwame?
--:-- Kwame Christian: Number one, do your research. So what I want you to do is figure out what the market price is and find data that could substantiate a higher market price. So let's just use a flat number to make it easy. Let's say the offer they give you is $100,000, you want to get to $110,000. What you want to do is find data where you can say, "Hey, my hope is that we could get to $120,000. What would it take for me to get there?" And now what you've done is you've given yourself a little bit of wiggle room. Now remember, when they are giving you these offers, they're expecting you to negotiate. They build that into the offer.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Wait a minute. Yes. I don't think people believe that.
--:-- Kwame Christian: Yes. So the offer that you get, the employer is expecting that you will come back. Absolutely. And in some cases, depending on what your occupation is, you might actually lose respect by not negotiating. If I'm a lawyer, a consultant, a salesperson, and I don't negotiate, then they're going to say, "If this person doesn't negotiate for themselves, how can I trust them to negotiate on behalf of this company?" And so just have that confidence because this is also a relationship test, just like anything else. Because depending on how they respond to your negotiation, you might recognize, "Oh, this is a little bit toxic. I don't like that." But usually the worst that can happen is no. Remember, you have more leverage at that point than you realize because they're only giving the offer to you. They've told you that you are their best choice right now. And if they give you just a little bit more, then you will actually choose them too.
--:-- Mel Robbins: What about if you want to position yourself and successfully negotiate for a title promotion or a salary promotion where you currently work?
--:-- Kwame Christian: The problem with these negotiations is that they fail because we don't start soon enough. If you want a promotion and you want more money, you need to start that process probably three to six months in advance. So first, you're going to have a meeting with your manager and ask for feedback on your performance. "What am I doing well? What am I doing poorly? How can I improve?" You're going to document that conversation and follow it up so everybody knows what those metrics are. And then you're going to have a conversation a few months later and say, "Hey, thanks for the feedback. You said I should improve in these types of ways. I wanted to let you know that I have improved in these types of ways. And I have a question. My goal is to stay at this company long term. What would it take for me to get a promotion? What more do I need to do?" And then they'll give you those data points. And now three months later, you say, "Hey, I did these things. Now what I'd like is this." And so by laying the foundation months in advance, you're putting yourself in a much better position to succeed.
--:-- Mel Robbins: That's great advice because I think the mistake that I've made in my career and that as an employer, I see people making over and over is just expecting that you're doing a good job in the job is the reason you're getting promoted. And the hard truth that you need to hear is no, that's the reason you're getting paid.
--:-- Kwame Christian: Exactly.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Let's talk about in a relationship: doing the laundry, helping with dishes, not being such a slob. So Kwame, your wife called me and she would like to know, what do you do when you live with somebody who's a slob or they don't do their dishes or you wish they would help with the laundry or just generally help with the kids or around the house? How do you negotiate effectively?
--:-- Kwame Christian: In those situations, you need to share your experience. Because a lot of times, what is obvious to you is not obvious for somebody else. Because they're so focused on other things that they miss some of the things that seem very obvious to you. So you could say, "Hey, just out of curiosity, have you noticed this?" And you might be shocked that the answer might actually be no. And what we have to recognize is that different people feel different things for different reasons. For the relationship with me and Whitney, Whitney is a lot more sensitive to mess than I am. And so once she explained how it makes her feel that I was having these messes or making them, I recognized, "Hey, for the sake of the relationship, I need to start investing in this way." So I was not aware of the level of invisible work that she was doing.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Well, I think the reason why this is so important is that the thing that you don't say in the beginning is a thing that ends your relationship over time. Because what happens when there are fights about dishes or the taking care of kids or how much you're helping out, that we hold that in and we don't have the conversation. And when we do have the conversation, we're so pissed off and tired that it comes out as an attack. And I didn't understand for a long time because I'm the messy one in my relationship that it made my husband feel like a maid. And there's nothing wrong with being a maid unless you feel like the person that you're sleeping with and married to treats you like one.
--:-- Kwame Christian: Absolutely. And I think when it comes to these types of things within relationships, one of the biggest mistakes we can make is framing this through right versus wrong. Because again, that triggers morality. "You're saying I'm a bad person? I'm not a bad person." And now we're having an argument about something that is irrelevant. It's not about right versus wrong. It's about what I personally need.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I think a lot of couples fight about this. Like whether or not you're in a family that grew up cooking dinner and having dinners together, or you're from a background where you're doing more takeout food. And then you get together and you think you're right because you cook. And they think they're right. They're now defending themselves. And they shouldn't have to defend themselves if they've never had skills modeled. And you're now missing this opportunity to actually solve the problem together, which is what do we actually want to create together?
--:-- Kwame Christian: That's it. And in that process, it will take compromise because I don't need to adjust my behavior based on the frame of right versus wrong. Because if I say, "Oh, I'm wrong," then it's going to feel bad even if I'm doing the right thing. But for me, what I had to do — and Whitney, again, love her. She's like, "This is the standard. This is the way it should be done." But in my mind, the way that I can motivate myself to do it is like, "This is me being a real man." My wife has something that I need and those are the dishes. I'm going to do it. If there was a dragon here, I'd slay the dragon. No dragons, but there's dishes. I'm going to do the dishes now. So in my mind, I had to change it so it felt like something that was really chivalrous. Because if it was right versus wrong, now I feel like it's my mother telling me to do something that I'm a bad person. But now it's like, "No, this is what a real man would do. My wife has a challenge and she is being attacked by the stress of these dishes. I'm going to protect my wife from the stress of these dishes." And so when I started to think about it that way, that really motivated me to do it.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I love that. I love that because I do feel that we do reduce each other. And we get into these parent-child dynamics because we go right/wrong. And then we start telling our partner what to do instead of asking them to help us do things.
--:-- Kwame Christian: Beautiful.
--:-- Mel Robbins: So Kwame, if you could speak directly to the person who is listening, and if they just take one action from everything that you shared and taught us today, what should it be?
--:-- Kwame Christian: Have the conversation using compassionate curiosity. Mel, we overthink this. We overthink this. Because you might say, "Well, let me listen to this episode again." Go ahead and listen to it again. That's great. But we're not going to put another barrier between where we are now and what we need to do. After listening to this episode, you know everything you need to know in order to have the conversation. So don't allow your overthinking to hold yourself back. Have the conversation. You have the tool.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Kwame, what are your parting words?
--:-- Kwame Christian: My parting words are this. Again, the best things in life are on the other side of difficult conversations. And if you take what we've learned today and put it into action, you're going to put yourself in a position to live the very best version of your life. One difficult conversation at a time. You're going to improve your relationships. You're going to improve your careers. And as a result, you're going to improve your life too.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Kwame, I cannot thank you enough. Congratulations on everything you're doing out in the world. Thank you for hopping on a plane and coming to Boston. You have made something that has been very hard and difficult for me to do in my life — which is ask for things that I need when I'm worried about somebody's emotions or attitude — very easy. And that's a gift. So thank you.
--:-- Kwame Christian: Thank you.
--:-- Mel Robbins: And I also want to thank you for finding the time and making the time to be with us today and to learn from Kwame. I know that the roadmap that he painted, it is simple, it is memorable, and you have everything that you need to have the conversation. And there's no doubt in my mind that if you do, he's right, your life is going to get easier and it's going to get better. And you know I want that for you. And in case no one else tells you, I wanted to be sure to tell you that I love you. And I love the fact that you spent time listening to this and that you're investing time in improving your life and your relationships. I also believe in your ability to get better. And I believe that because you actually listen to a podcast like this. And I'm also going to be waiting for you in the very next episode. The moment you hit play, I'm going to be there to welcome you in. So I'll see you in a few days. So this was great. You were dynamite. Thank you.
--:-- Kwame Christian: Oh, perfect timing. Yes, thank you. It's very, very hot. That's how I like it. Perfect. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Which one? The one going in?
--:-- Kwame Christian: Yeah, going in.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Wait. Oh, gotcha. Okay. Great. Okay, great. Awesome.
--:-- [Off-mic conversation]
--:-- Mel Robbins: Period. All right, we should pull these off. And that one has lipstick on. Thank, honey. Okay, great. Well done, guys. We're good. That was fun. That was great. Thanks. You did great. Okay. Thank you. Kwame nailed it, everybody.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Oh, and one more thing. And no, this is not a blooper. This is the legal language. You know, what the lawyers write and what I need to read to you. This podcast is presented solely for educational and entertainment purposes. I'm just your friend. I am not a licensed therapist. And this podcast is not intended as a substitute for the advice of a physician, professional coach, psychotherapist, or other qualified professional. Got it? Good. I'll see you in the next episode.
