Hey folks! Thanks for joining us on the NEGOTIATEx podcast! Today, we’re excited to have Damali Peterman join us. Damali is a renowned lawyer, mediator, negotiator, educator, and speaker with an impressive two decades of experience in alternative dispute resolution.
She’s the founder and CEO of Breakthrough ADR and Damali Law, as well as the author of “Negotiating While Black: Be Who You Are to Get What You Want.” Damali has a diverse academic background with a Bachelor’s in English, a Master’s in International Policy Studies focused on conflict resolution and a Juris Doctorate from Howard University School of Law.
Her international experience spans studies in Mexico, Denmark, Japan, and the Netherlands, as well as professional engagements in Costa Rica and various European and American cities. With that said, let’s delve into the insights and experiences that Damali has to share with us today.
Firstly, Damali shares pivotal moments from her 20-year career that have shaped her approach to negotiation. She recounts three significant experiences:
#1 Professional Negotiation
Damali describes a challenging negotiation situation where she was the only black woman among predominantly male negotiators. The negotiation stretched without a lunch break, which was particularly difficult as she was pregnant then.
To manage, she cleverly arranged for a meal to be brought to her the next day, subtly influencing the entire group’s behavior. By the fourth day, the hosts had adjusted their approach and provided meals and snacks, highlighting how personal needs can impact negotiation dynamics.
#2 Family Dynamics
As the oldest of seven children, Damali learned early how to advocate and influence older and younger family members. These experiences taught her practical negotiation skills from a young age, helping her navigate various personalities and situations within her family.
#3 Book Negotiation
Damali discusses negotiating the publication of her book, which went to auction in both the US and the UK. Despite the book’s focus on negotiation strategies, she had to negotiate every aspect of its publication, which she found ironically amusing given the subject matter.
Overall, Damali emphasizes how her diverse roles and identities have intersected and influenced her negotiation tactics, underscoring the multifaceted nature of negotiations in both professional and personal contexts.
Moving on, Damali delves into the origins and evolution of her two companies, Damali Law and Breakthrough ADR. She begins by discussing Damali Law, which she started after working for a big law firm and a client’s office of general counsel. The firm was founded in response to her desire to focus more on conflict de-escalation and mediation, which she felt was needed, particularly during the presidential election year of 2016.
Damali Law began as a boutique firm that offered big law experience at boutique prices and included a consulting arm to resolve conflicts before they escalated to legal disputes.
The training arm of Damali Law eventually grew so significantly that Peterman founded a separate entity, Breakthrough ADR, to handle educational needs. Breakthrough ADR focuses on teaching individuals and organizations how to listen, negotiate, and resolve conflicts effectively in the workplace and beyond.
This shift allowed her to expand globally, implementing training programs internationally and assisting in the development of court-annexed mediation programs.
Next, Damali discusses her roles with Search for Common Ground and JAMS, highlighting her active involvement in global peace efforts and dispute resolution.
#1 Search For Common Ground
Damali explains her participation in the President’s Leadership Council for Search for Common Ground, an international organization dedicated to peacebuilding.
She shares a personal anecdote from her visit to Kigali, Rwanda, during the 30th commemoration of the genocide, where she observed the impactful presence of the organization in transforming the country post-conflict. Her role in the council involves leveraging her expertise and network to support the organization’s global initiatives.
#2 JAMS
JAMS is a private dispute resolution firm that employs neutrals, third-party mediators, arbitrators, and other roles to manage conflicts. Damali has been exclusively mediating and arbitrating for JAMS for about three years. She has been handling a diverse range of cases, including employment, civil rights, commercial contracts, entertainment, and emerging fields like blockchain and cryptocurrency.
Damali expresses enthusiasm for the evolving nature of law in these new areas, noting how they provide opportunities for legal professionals, especially newcomers, to adapt to less established legal landscapes.
Damali also highlights the complexities of negotiation in both nonprofit and for-profit contexts, emphasizing that the skills and judgment required remain consistent across different sectors. She shares a challenging experience from a nonprofit merger and acquisition where the emotional aspects were particularly taxing.
#1 Challenges In Nonprofit Negotiations
Damali explains that while the technical and business aspects of a nonprofit merger might be straightforward, managing the emotional dynamics can be significantly more complex. She cites the case of a family-founded organization that was facing the loss of its corporate identity due to a merger, making the situation emotionally charged for the stakeholders involved.
She highlights the importance of recognizing and addressing these emotions to facilitate a smoother negotiation process. The key was not only to deal with the legal and business requirements but also to help the individuals involved find new roles and purposes within the restructured organization. It was as much about ensuring they felt valued and respected during the transition.
#2 The Role Of Emotion In Negotiation
Following this example, Damali reflects on why negotiators often struggle with emotions, suggesting that cultural factors, upbringing, and industry norms can influence how individuals manage emotional expressions in professional settings.
She mentions the Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument, which outlines five typical responses to conflict: competing, collaborating, avoiding, accommodating, and compromising. Damali advocates for a more empathetic approach, stressing that acknowledging and leaning into emotions can be crucial for advancing negotiations and resolving conflicts effectively.
Aram acknowledges Damali’s extensive global work experience and language skills, asking if she has any tips for working across different cultures. In response, Damali shares her approach to cross-cultural communication, which she summarizes as the “foundational five.”
These are essential elements she believes are present in every negotiation, whether it’s a formal setting or everyday decisions:
Damali highlights the importance of listening and observing as key components of effective cross-cultural negotiation. She advises negotiators to adapt to their environment by observing local customs and participating accordingly, which she does not see as inauthentic or akin to “code-switching.”
Instead, she views these adaptive behaviors as thoughtful ways to respect and engage with different cultures genuinely.
Finally, Damali shares her motivations and goals behind writing her book, Negotiating While Black. Her primary motivation arose from her experiences and observations in the field of negotiation, where she noticed a lack of diversity in perspective and approach in existing literature. She felt a disconnect between conventional negotiation strategies and the challenges faced by individuals who are marginalized.
Her key motivations for writing the book were:
#1 Filling A Void
Damali aimed to address the gap in negotiation literature that fails to account for the unique challenges faced by those who do not fit the traditional profile of a negotiator.
#2 Practical Application
She wanted to provide a practical toolkit for negotiation, moving away from the “copy me” model to a more inclusive, adaptable approach that recognizes the diversity of negotiators.
#3 Empowerment Through Awareness
The book seeks to empower readers by acknowledging and teaching them how to navigate implicit biases and leverage personal identity as a strength in negotiations.
#4 Target Audience
Her target audience includes individuals who feel marginalized or underrepresented in negotiation settings. She intends for her book to resonate with those who seek to see themselves in negotiation literature and learn strategies that are applicable to their unique circumstances and identities.
#5 Contextual Inspiration
The book was also inspired by the socio-political climate around 2020. This included the COVID-19 pandemic and the murder of George Floyd, which highlighted the need for effective negotiation skills in all aspects of life, from personal to professional.
Damali’s book aims to not only improve negotiation techniques but also to inspire readers to apply these skills daily and share their experiences to enhance collective understanding and effectiveness in negotiations. The book includes science-backed strategies and personal anecdotes to provide a comprehensive toolkit for readers to navigate various negotiation scenarios confidently and successfully.
Thank you for your time!
Hello and welcome to the NEGOTIATEx podcast. My name is Nolan Martin, with me as always, Aram Donigian. Aram, you want to kick it off for today?
I will. I can’t tell you how excited I am, Nolan, for today’s guests. This has been in the works for months and her very busy schedule, rightly so is making time for us. We’re very excited to have Damali Peterman on the program today. Damali Peterman is a highly regarded and sought-after lawyer, mediator, negotiator, educator and speaker with 20 years of experience in the field of alternative dispute resolution.
She is the founder and CEO of two successful award winning companies, breakthrough ADR and Damali law, and is the author of Negotiating While Black: Be Who You Are to Get What You Want.
Damali has a bachelor’s in English with a minor in Spanish and a master’s in international policy studies with a focus in conflict resolution. She earned her Juris Doctorate from Howard University School of Law. Damali has also studied in Mexico, Denmark, Japan, and the Netherlands. Prior to attending law school, Damali was the community outreach coordinator and the assistant director of an environmental and community focused nonprofit in Costa Rica.
She also taught international negotiation, economics, and politics during a summer term for the global young leaders program in Austria, Hungary, Czech Republic. Washington, D.C. and New York. Damali is a member of the board of directors of the New York Peace Institute, one of the largest civilian peacekeeping centers in the nation, helping more than 10,000 people resolve their conflicts each year.
When Damali isn’t focused on building a worldwide community of conflict resolvers, she enjoys playing volleyball, reading, traveling, and finding creative ways to make her friends and family laugh. Damali, thank you for joining us today.
Aram, Nolan, it’s a pleasure to be on the show. Thank you so much for having me.
Okay, as a fellow spouse and parent, I have to ask, which do you find more difficult: getting your family members and friends to laugh or handling the very wide range of negotiations that you are regularly involved in?
That’s a great question. I have to say that I studied Improv at the Upright Citizens Brigade. And so because of that, I’ve had some help and training and trying to get my family to laugh. My husband thinks I’m hilarious. My oldest son is a tween. So not much that I say is funny to him. And in fact, he told me the other day, mom, that’s so 2020. And I was like, what? It was just like, so 2020. And my youngest son, he also thinks that I’m hilarious too. Some might say he’s my favorite.
I find that as they get a little older, you got to cherish those younger moments because they take us a little more lightly as they get into those teen years, it gets a little more tricky.
This is so true, but of course, negotiating, it’s an art. Some would say it’s an art and a science. I think it’s an art, more of an art than a science. I’ve had some negotiations that I thought would be extremely challenging that weren’t because I was able to build rapport and trust relatively quickly, or it was already pre-existing. I’ve had some negotiations that had a lot of surprises that I was not anticipating. And so it really depends, but I think I’m equally as funny as I am skilled at negotiating.
Let me know when you write your next book on negotiating with tweens and teens. I want to be the first one to buy that.
I might have to interview you. It sounds like you have some expertise that I need to tap into.
In a week, we’ll have three teens in the house so yeah.
Not me. I don’t even have a teen. I have a tween.
Well, Demali, reflecting on the experiences of the past 20 years, are there any key moments that significantly impacted how you think about your approach to negotiation today? And who are your heroes that have helped pave the path you’re on?
Oh, I love this question so much. There are so many negotiations that I think were key moments. There are three that I would probably share because I think they cover a breadth of the different types of negotiations. One, I will say a professional negotiation that I had, little known fact at the time I was 13 weeks pregnant.
I was abroad in a conference room. I was the only woman, I was the only black woman. I was one of two Americans in the room during that negotiation. They just kept negotiating. I think we got there at 9am and they kept going and going and lunchtime came and lunchtime went. And I literally was sitting there thinking I’m nailing this negotiation, but I think I’m kind of struggling as a soon to be parent because I haven’t had any food and no one, I don’t know if this is a negotiation tactic to starve the negotiators, but it’s working, but I felt like I had, not that I felt, I had a responsibility, of course, to my unborn child to take care of him as well. And so the next day when I ordered breakfast at the hotel, I also asked for lunch to go.
And when I arrived there that day, I asked the assistant who greeted us if she would put my lunch in the refrigerator, and that when I wrote her, if she would, bring it out. So of course, lunchtime comes, no one even talks about lunch. Everyone’s posturing, if you will. Who’s going to show that they’re hungry first?
We are not robots, we are people. People need sustenance. We need to eat. But no one wanted to break the rules. So I sent her an email, and I asked her if she would bring lunch to me. Do you know, she took it to another level. She brought it on a tray, there was a glass of ice and coke and water. She brought everything out there.
And everyone was just like, where did the lunch come from? And where did she get lunch? And I was like, Oh, I’m so sorry, gentlemen. I noticed we didn’t eat lunch yesterday, and I need to have lunch in the middle of the day. I still didn’t tell them that I was pregnant at the time, but I need to have lunch in the middle of the day.
I’m sorry, but I’m happy to share. It was like a chicken salad. I’m happy to share. No one wanted to share. The next day was day three of the negotiations. Everyone brought something. One guy had a tuna packet, the one that you can mix with crackers. Someone else had some chips. And then on the fourth day, the hosts felt so bad that they gave us breakfast, lunch, dinner, there were snacks in between.
And so to me, that was an interesting negotiation because the content of what we’re discussing, it was a cross border transaction. I won’t say too many details to reveal who those not so great hosts were, but it was many negotiations happening at once, right? It was a negotiation that was the reason that we were there for the merger and it’s also an acquisition that was happening. There was a negotiation that I was having with myself, essentially is to say, what is important to me? What, how am I being true to myself and my values as a human who needs to eat?
And also as a person who needs to care for someone who can’t care for themselves at 13 weeks. And then also how I impacted the negotiations, essentially changing the way that. The hosts were hosting us and people recognizing that this tactic of trying to starve us wasn’t going to work. So that one I think is very important because it also shows how our different identities can be in conflict in a negotiation.
Mine as a senior associate and negotiator, mine as a person who needs to eat and also as a future parent. All of those were in conflict at some point, and I found a way to move forward. Another negotiation that was impactful is one that you can relate to, given the fact that we are talking about negotiating with teens or tweens or trying to get our family members to laugh.
I’m the oldest of seven children, gentlemen. The oldest of seven. So I was in the middle of my parents and my siblings. And I learned at an early age that advocacy was about what you shared and how you shared it. And so I could see, I had many opportunities to test and when the stakes were low, if you will, different strategies, even before I had my first negotiations class, because I was trying to influence people who are older and smarter and wiser than me.
And also influence people who are coming after me to help them. I always sometimes help myself too. I was the oldest, right? Some might say I was a little bossy. Some might say that, but that was also a very important, life changing negotiations for me, because if you can imagine eight people with different personalities and trying to see what worked and what didn’t work. And then finally, I think the last negotiation that I would share, which I think encompasses everything, is the negotiations that I encountered for my book.
My book went to auction in the US and the UK. And even though my proposal was for negotiations book, I had to negotiate every aspect of my book, which turned out well, but it just made me laugh because I’m like, wait, I’m not writing a book on my favorite recipes. I’m writing a negotiations book. And then we’re going to engage in negotiations. And I feel like I have somewhat of an unfair advantage, but we’re going to move forward.
I love those three stories. One of the things that I will often ask my students to do is go back at the beginning of the term and just say, what’s my natural approach to negotiation and how did it develop? And you hit on these three things. One very recent with the book, one a little further back in time is the oldest of seven. I have six kids, so I’ll have to see, I’ll have to talk to my oldest Ruth and see if she can identify with the same sort of feeling like she’s in the middle and needing to advocate.
I want to come back at some point too, by the way, Damali and the how, right? Not only what we advocate for, but how we do it. I’m sure we’ll pull that out at some point. This other piece about the professional starvation tactic or whatever it was, but that’s nice. It’s such a nice, rich kind of explanation of how you’ve formed your thinking around this topic we’re discussing today.
You’re involved in so many different organizations and projects. I’m wondering if you can tell us just a little bit about each, especially starting kind of beginning with the work that you do through your two companies, Breakthrough ADR and Damali Law.
I’ll tell you that Damali Law started first. So I worked for a big law firm for many years, a few of their different offices, New York, London, Shanghai, but primarily in New York. That was excellent. I had a wonderful experience there. And then I went to work for one of our clients in the office of general counsel. And I worked there for a few years and something very similar to what’s happening now, what’s going on.
So it was a presidential election year. And I really wanted to, one way to think of it is I wanted to go back to my roots. I wanted to do more conflict de escalation work. I had incorporated the tenets of conflict de escalation and mediation and just dispute resolution in general into my practice as an attorney, but I think that was something very different, if you consider law as many do to be more adversarial, especially because TV popularizes litigation, right?
We have so many court programs and I love all of them, but more of an adversarial view into the legal. And I wanted to just go back to my roots. You mentioned before that I was, my master’s degree is in international policy studies with a focus on conflict resolution. And so I just wanted to do more of that. In fact, that’s why I went to law school. That’s why I went to Howard university school of law. We’re trained to be social engineers, to give back and to help. Damali law was my way at a very similar time as now in 2016 of saying, I think the world’s going to need more conflict resolvers.
Let me focus on that. So I hung my own shingle. Damali Law started as a boutique law firm and I opened the door with clients because people wanted, big law experience and services and boutique law prices, right? And when I started Damali Law, I knew I wanted to do that. And I also wanted to provide a consulting arm because I realized along the way that there are many opportunities for people to have resolved their conflict before they needed to get me involved as an attorney.
And so how could I consult and be more preventative and proactive instead of really being reactive when people would come to me? And then the third part of it was. Going back to my roots in conflict resolution and saying, okay, you know what I’m going to offer mediation and let’s see what happens. And not just mediation, but training. So do more training. So there’s a consulting arm, but then also the training on the educational arm and what ended up happening a couple of years after I started Damali Law was the training arm grew so much that I had to give it its own identity, its own company, and that’s why I started Breakthrough ADR and at Breakthrough ADR, what we do is primarily focus on teaching people how to listen, negotiate, and resolve conflict in the workplace and beyond.
And that was really amazing to see that transformation. And it was really transformational for me because I still see myself as an attorney. Of course, I’m an attorney and practicing attorney. I’m still licensed to practice in the state of New York. And I think I will keep that until I can’t write or read or speak anymore because it’s a part of me. It’s interesting how my roles have shifted, right? Because I was just traveling and everywhere that I went, everyone introduced me as the author of the bestselling book, Negotiating While Black. And that was, I don’t know if it was a culture shock for me, but having most of my career being known as an attorney, And then having the shift, of course, being known as a mediator, arbitrator, and now walk into a room.
And the first thing that people say is the Damali, the author. I think it’s just amazing. So Breakthrough had his own, took on his own life. We were able to go global with our training programs, which is amazing. I do a lot of work now in different countries, working on court annex mediation programs. So helping mediators in various court systems and working with global And building up their conflict de escalation arm and training their ombuds and their mediators.
And as you can probably hear, I love it. I really enjoy having an impact on the way that conflict is resolved and disputes are just seen in general. And that’s also why I teach mediation, which is essentially facilitated negotiations at Howard University School of Law.
You sound very busy, Damali. And I think, kind of building upon that you’re even part of the President’s Leadership Council of Search and Common Ground, and I think you have something there about jams. What are these? And what’s your role with both?
Let me first say that I also noticed that in the intro, you mentioned that I was on the board of the New York Peace Institute. I’m no longer on the board. I did serve for many years. As you stated, I am very busy. I am no longer on the board. I am on the president’s leadership council for the international peace building powerhouse, Search for Common Ground and Search for Common Ground is just an exceptional organization, which really focuses on helping people globally find common ground.
And I was so fortunate to be in Kigali, Rwanda during the week of the 30th commemoration of the unfortunate genocide there and take part in some of the progress and the recognition of where they are today. And while I was there. I was walking through the museum, the genocide museum, and there was an image, a photo of search for common ground being there and helping and working on different aspects of the transformation of the country.
And I see that many places where I travel and so it’s presence is known. And so my work is essentially to listen, to share my network and expertise and to learn. There are so many things that are happening globally and search for common ground is in the room and I’m really fortunate that they asked me to be a part of the president’s leadership council. With respect to JAMS, JAMS is also an exceptional dispute resolution, private firm, imitation only our roster has about 420 or so neutrals. And for anyone who’s listening, who doesn’t know the term, who is unfamiliar with the term neutral, it’s just essentially a third party that’s brought in to help resolve a matter.
It could be a mediator, an arbitrator, a special evaluator, an ombuds, among other ways that we help individuals and organizations navigate and manage their conflict. I started working with JAMS about three years ago. I mediate and arbitrate exclusively for jams. And so essentially taking that arm out of Breakthrough ADR, I now do it exclusively for JAMS. And what I love about my work with JAMS is that it gives me an opportunity to really dive into the areas of law that I’m excited about. And so the types of cases that I handle run the gamut from employment to civil rights, to commercial contract disputes, have entertainment cases, blockchain, how fun is cryptocurrency and blockchain.
So I’m doing it because it’s changing, right? It’s new, it’s constantly changing. And what I love about cryptocurrency and blockchain and all of that is that people who are just entering the legal field have an opportunity to learn and grow and catch up, right? Is that the law isn’t, I would say in some areas, not as developed as some of the other areas of law. And so I really enjoy it.
Recently, I was a part of a panel with two other gentlemen on cryptocurrency and blockchain and some of the new developments in the law. And I was very excited to be, a part of the conversation because I was the person with the least amount of experience, meaning both gentlemen had worked in that area for much longer than me, but I had a lot to contribute to the discussion because I’ve been a player in the game for the last few years.
As you think about all this wide range of contexts that you have both negotiated and advised in corporate to nonprofit, are there any of these contexts? Do you find any of these contexts more challenging than others? And could you share an example of particularly difficult negotiation and what made it so difficult to manage?
You know, it’s the same skillset. So I don’t think that there’s a real difference between whether it’s a nonprofit or for profit because it’s the same judgment, the same experience, the same skillset that you’re bringing to the table as a negotiator, as a mediator, as an advisor, essentially. I think something that is really difficult is of course expectations, which are oftentimes the same, but managing expectations.
Sometimes there may be some budgetary constraints, right? And no one, regardless of whether they’re nonprofit or for profit, want to hear, no one wants to hear bad news, right? And so I think what’s a challenging negotiation that I had was a merger and acquisition, but with a nonprofit, because just imagine, and this could be for any organization, but just imagine that your corporate identity is being absorbed by another company.
We see mergers and acquisitions happen on a regular basis. And sometimes the organization or company gets to keep their own identity and still be known as the name that they have. And sometimes they don’t. And so I think something that’s difficult in a negotiation, it’s not really the information or the knowledge or the skills, but it’s emotions, the people, how people feel and navigating that where I see negotiators make a mistake is having a poker face when someone is sharing something with you that for whatever reason, objectively could be shocking to one’s sensibilities.
To me, that is a mistake. To see someone feeling angst or emotion or whatever fill in the blank it is, and to not say something, to not lean into it, I think it’s a missed opportunity to form a connection, to build trust, and to really move the negotiation forward. A negotiation that was difficult was working with this organization, they were going through, it was a merger, but it was also an acquisition.
They were losing their corporate identity and the organization was started by a family. And so their family’s identity was also wrapped into the organization. And so helping them from a business perspective, everything was easy. We knew what to do. We knew what steps to do. We knew what we had to do in terms of what the state required, what was required by the federal government.
We knew what to do, but it was navigating the people. It was navigating the emotions, the feelings, and trying to find, give them a new way to find purpose in the new structure. So do you want to stay on as a consultant, able to relinquish this power or control to someone else? What is it that you want and what is it that you need so that you feel as though this is successful?
Not the dollars, but the consideration that’s being paid. But what do you need from a personal perspective to feel good about this transaction? And that’s something that I found to be very challenging because there were multiple people at the table and they all had different perspectives and different needs.
Why is it that we have such a hard time leaning into emotions? Why do we put this mask, this poker face on any thoughts about, like, why that happens?
A few things come to mind. One, cross cultural communication. So, oftentimes, the way that we respond to a situation, and I’ve done a lot of research in this area, is influenced by many things. One is it could be influenced by your own education, exposure, environment, upbringing. I’ve had situations with people that say, guys don’t cry. We don’t show emotion. Okay. Like I’ve seen the opposite. I’ve heard the opposite too. I’ve been in situations where I’ve read a lot of studies and also I’ve seen the day.
I believe in several op ed pieces and a few newspapers last year and this year that women shouldn’t apologize, right? It’s showing a sign of weakness or that people in a negotiation shouldn’t apologize, right? And so I think that a lot of it is ingrained either into the individual based on how they were raised.
So what their values are, it could be also the environment in general. So, in this environment, we don’t apologize. We always lead, with an iron fist or whatever the case may be. It could also be the industry. Oftentimes we see every day in the news companies that have to share unfortunate information.
And the question is, what should they do? Should the brand apologize? Should the brand own it? You do see finger pointing. Is the CEO stepping down or the president? What’s happening? So I think there are a lot of things that go into how people communicate and how they communicate when there is a conflict.
I’m sure you’ve tell your students about Thomas Kilman initiative and talk about the five different ways that people respond when there’s a conflict, competing, collaborating, avoiding, accommodating, and compromising. So there’ve been a lot of studies that show that those are the five primary ways that people respond when there’s a conflict. But I think as humans, as human beings, if we go back to what my grandmother would call the golden rule and what many of us are familiar with as being the golden rule, sometimes we try to, I hope, treat people the way we want to be treated. And sometimes what that could mean is I don’t want anyone to lean into, I’m not saying for me personally, but someone could think I don’t want anyone to lean into it if I’m feeling sad or if I’m expressing emotion.
But I think reality and the real world is that something has to, some sort of empathy has to be shown in the moment so that we can move forward. We can help the person who’s showing the emotion move forward. If there’s a heated discussion happening, acknowledging that this is very frustrating, this is, the emotions are running high, leaning into it can also help to move the conversation along, especially if that heated discussion leads to impasse.
So I think that some people are uncomfortable leaning into emotion. I think that some people are uncomfortable with emotion in general. I think that, as I mentioned before, there are a variety of reasons that could impact why one individual may have a specific response, but I think it’s a missed opportunity. It’s definitely a missed opportunity in a negotiation.
Thank you. You mentioned cross cultural communication. You have worked all over the globe. You’re fluent in Spanish. I believe you said you’re conversationally fluent in Japanese. Pretty impressive. As you’ve worked globally across culture, are there lessons or guidelines that you’ve, I don’t know, learned or developed for yourself when going into work outside your normal culture?
Certainly. I think a lot of this, I, sort of, wrapped into something that I call the foundational five, and it’s the five things that I think are essential or elements of every negotiation. And just to take a step back to me, negotiation isn’t just something that you do formally in a boardroom or when the stakes are high.
Negotiation is a discussion that you may have with someone else or even with yourself. If you’re asking yourself whether or not you’re going to go to the gym this morning, like I did, or are you going to get some work done? That’s a negotiation and I won’t tell you what I ended up doing. But I will say that to me, the negotiation, these five elements that I’m talking about, the foundational five are present, even when you’re negotiating with yourself or you’re negotiating with someone else, regardless of the stakes.
And so the foundational five elements are. Five things you need to know. Know what you want, know what you need, know how to actively listen, know how to communicate, and know when to close. The reason that I’m using the foundational five to answer your question is because something that I’ve learned in cross-cultural communications is that it’s important to listen first because if you listen first, before you communicate. And listening isn’t just the auditory approach of listening with your ears, but also taking in the environment, being observant, seeing what’s going on around you and falling into the cultural norm. For example, I’ve been to many countries.
I think the last time I counted was over 50 and every time I go, if I’m going out to eat. I want to see what people are doing. I want to see where, how they’re sitting. I want to observe the norm. I’m just not going to do what I normally do. So I don’t want to stand out even more than I’m already standing out.
And so I want to see, okay, everyone is going to say a prayer first. Okay. I’m going to do that too. Everyone’s going to sit on the floor because that’s what you do. I’m going to do that too. People are eating with their fingers. They’re taking the bread and they’re gathering the food. I’m going to do that too. And so I think with cross-cultural communication, that’s really important. The best thing to do is to observe and to listen and then to figure out how to then adapt your communication style to what’s going on in the broader world around you. And I think the challenge to that is sometimes people say that’s cold switching, or that’s not being authentic.
No, that’s, I don’t agree that’s post switching. I don’t agree that’s not being authentic. Authenticity is not a substitute for being thoughtless. You still have to be thoughtful when you’re presenting your authentic self, right? And everyone does this all the time. Instinctive. It’s something that happens instinctively.
So, if I’m talking to my young child, I’m going to talk to him. I may talk to him differently about a specific topic than I would with an adult, right? Who I’m assuming has more information. Then my kid might have, and so I think that we do this instinctively. I remember when my youngest son was a baby and people would talk to him, like in a baby voice. And I would say, you don’t have to talk to him in a baby voice. You could still talk to him and say something that’s developmentally appropriate, but you don’t have to talk to him in a baby voice. And it would make my mom laugh because she was like, I never thought of my mom had seven children. She’s never thought about it.
And I’m like, look, I’m not trying to teach an OG something new. I’m just saying that. I think it’s important for us to think about, how the communication, he was saying full sentences very early on because I was encouraging people to talk to him in the same way they would talk to an adult, but just be mindful of the language that they were using.
So cross cultural communication to me is something that everyone can learn as long as you are paying attention. As long as you were listening, you can see what people around you are doing and you can mimic that. And then, if you pay attention too, they may also, in many cultures, you’re the guest, they’re going to do what you do.
Meaning, you, they want you to eat first. They’re going to watch you and do what you do. And because I’ve been to six continents now. I feel like I’ve learned a little bit from everyone that I’ve met, which makes it so fun, right? It’s so fun to bring all this back and then think about how to incorporate it into our own discussions, negotiations, and also habits.
Is Antarctica the only continent you haven’t been to yet?
Are you going to go help the penguins negotiate? Let me tell you about a negotiation I lost. I lost a negotiation with my husband. I wanted to go to Antarctica in March. And he said, why? Because we haven’t been to two continents. And I said, yes. And he goes, then let’s go to Australia.
Oh, that’s not a loss. Australia is great. We had a blast. Two weeks wasn’t enough time. Australia is massive. It wasn’t enough time. And so it definitely wasn’t a loss. I just meant I had my heart set on going to Antarctica at this, because there are only a few times of the year that one can go to Antarctica.
That’s what I mean. And so March would have been a good time to go. And then I had some friends who had last year in March, so I had their itinerary. So it was actually going to be play where instead we had to come up with the whole itinerary for Australia, but it was fine. It was beautiful. We went to the great barrier reef. We did a lot of wonderful things there and I had a blast. And then I’m hoping that now that there’s one continent left, that when I bring this up next year, I’m going to win that, in that negotiation .
Absolutely. So now turning to your recently released book, Negotiating While Black, what was your motivation for writing this book and who is your target audience?
I’m so happy you asked that question because I get that question a lot. I think in part because of the title of the book, what I wanna tell you is there was so many things happening in my life. I had taken so many negotiation courses at the highest levels. I was teaching negotiations and I’m a lifelong learner.
And I think that one should always be learning. So I was teaching, I was still continuing to add to my information storage. And I just felt like I was reading the same information in all these negotiation books and the classes that I was taking. And it was this copy me model, right? This model that basically said that I fill in the blank was successful doing it this way.
And if you do what I did, then you will be successful too. And I recognize that I’m in the room with two men. And I’ll tell you that most of the books and negotiations as you know are written by white men. And that’s just a fact. And so I felt like I was always filling in the blanks for myself. I would say, okay, I can see how that will work for you because the way that things still work is still quite a patriarchal society.
And we know that privilege exists among other things. And so how would that work if I walk into a room? I’m the only woman, I’m the only person of color. I’m the youngest person in the room. And there are all these implicit biases associated with those things and more. How do I show up as myself and still be successful? And I knew I could do that because I was doing that every day. I was going into these rooms. I was changing the lunch culture and a negotiation where they tried to starve us out as a tactic. And so I wrote the book because I felt like one, people were asking me for resources. I was teaching courses.
They would say, oh, additional resources because everyone always wants to continue to read. And I would find myself saying you can read a chapter of this, a little bit of that, you can watch this, but I wrote something that I think will help you because I’ve been in this class with you for X number of time, or you have things in common with me, or I would ask the question, what are some pressure points or pain points that you’re filling your negotiations and what are you looking for? How can I help supplement that? And so I wanted more people to see themselves in a negotiations book, especially leaning into intersectionality of the reader.
However, you show up in the world, whatever boxes you check, I wanted people to see themselves in my book, I wanted people to know what to do if implicit bias was present. I felt like there were, if bias was even mentioned in a negotiation book, it was in passing. Bias is something that can really impact the negotiation and the outcome, and so I wanted to take a deeper dive into how it was showing up and give people some tools to help navigate it.
And then at the time that I wrote my proposal, that was in 2020. I started working on that in June, 2020. At that time, a lot of things were happening. If you may recall, May, 2020, that was when the murder of George Floyd happened right around the same time we were seeing the COVID 19 pandemic.
Impact our world in a way that in my lifetime, I’ve never seen any disease virus impact businesses, countries. Actual global shutdowns. In New York, where I lived, we were quarantining. We were on lockdown. We couldn’t leave. In the city that never sleeps. We were forced to shut doors. Then it was also another presidential election coming up, right?
You’re hearing a theme. There’s presidential elections make me like want to do something. Like we have to do something. You have to do something. And so I felt like at the time globally, there was this need where people were seeking more tools to learn how to negotiate in real life, right? Real life was happening and everyone could see it. And I wanted to do something that could help people improve their negotiations techniques and skills because every day we’re negotiating is not again, something that happens just once in a while. Every day I’m negotiating with my kids on for screen time. Every day I’m negotiating with a friend or a colleague.
Every day I’m negotiating on behalf of a client. Every day as a mediator, I’m in the middle, helping people to negotiate. And the altruistic part of me wanted to do my part to help make the world a better place. I told you I went to Howard University School of Law because I wanted to be a social engineer. I wanted to inspire people also to share their gifts and experiences with the world. And I really thought that we needed to move away from this one size fits all negotiation approach. We are not one size fits all people. So instead of having a book that says, do what I did, you’ll be successful. Instead, I tried to put toolkits at the end of each chapter.
So that just like right now, if you have a toolkit in your home, you would say, okay, I need to hang a painting on the wall. You’re not going to go to the toolkit and take out, a monkey wrench or a sledgehammer. You’re going to think about, okay, this has two hooks here. I’m going to take out the appropriate tool and you’re going to use it based on your judgment.
And that’s how I want people to use my book. I want people to think about what the right tool is for the situation that they’re facing and to use their judgment, because the only constant and the negotiation that you are in is you. And so how do we empower people? How do I empower people to pull out? The tools that they have within them already, which I call their superpowers or negotiate superpowers.
How do I help you to reframe things that people may have said were negative about you and show you how those things are actually positive attributes so that you can expand your toolkit. And then how do I give you some tried and true techniques based on that?
Just my experience, because Penguin Random House didn’t want a book. That was just my stories. Neither did Bonnie or Helico. They wanted a book that was also backed by science and research. And so I wanted to put all those things together into a package for people to take away that they can be who they are, get what they want, and they can negotiate from a place of power.
Hey everyone, Nolan here. I have to jump in and end today’s podcast for Part A of the show. Be sure to rate, review, and subscribe to the NEGOTIATEx podcast if you haven’t already. And also join us next week for Part B of this awesome interview.