NegotiateX Podcast | with Caitlin Meredith

HOSTED BY: NOLAN MARTIN & ARAM DONIGIAN

Strategies For Personal Growth & Effective Conflict Resolution

During major transitions, it’s helpful to break tasks into manageable steps, set aside time for reflection, and celebrate small wins to stay motivated and manage emotional challenges.
Effective conflict mediation relies on active listening, allowing individuals to clarify their emotions and thoughts without rushing to solutions, often leading to self-resolution.
If there is perceived bias, personal involvement, or a long-standing unresolved issue, involving a neutral third-party mediator can help ensure a fair and effective resolution.
Openly expressing emotions during conflict resolution is vital for understanding underlying issues. Reflective listening can help individuals articulate their feelings more clearly.
Humor can be a valuable tool in conflict resolution when used appropriately, easing tension and fostering connection among participants.
Simplifying complex subjects can make them more accessible and engaging, as demonstrated by creating relatable and easy-to-understand content on important topics like finance.
Open and honest communication is key to resolving conflicts, and addressing issues directly can lead to better outcomes.

Table Of Content

Executive Summary:
Transcript:

Executive Summary:

Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the NEGOTIATE^x podcast. Today, we’re picking up our discussion with Caitlin Meredith, a seasoned mediator, coach, and trainer.

In Part A, Caitlin drew on her extensive experience across various fields, including her work with Doctors Without Borders, the criminal justice system, and private mediation. She shared her innovative “321 Approach” for handling challenging conversations, focusing on empathy, active listening, and strategic problem-solving.

Additionally, Caitlin emphasized the value of curiosity and the willingness to be vulnerable as fundamental elements in fostering trust and collaborative relationships. She addressed the common challenge of suppressing the urge to provide quick solutions, stressing the importance of effectively adapting communication tactics to suit personal and professional settings.

If you missed Part A, we highly recommend you check it out to fully appreciate the insights Caitlin has to offer. Now, without further ado, let’s dive into the conversation.

Navigating Transitions: Balancing Productivity & Celebrating Small Wins

Nolan asks Caitlin for advice for those undergoing major transitions, such as moving, starting a new job, or ending a relationship.

Caitlin responds by highlighting that people often feel overwhelmed by the need to be constantly productive during transitions, such as moving or changing jobs. She suggests carving out specific times for reflection to manage priorities effectively and break down tasks into manageable steps.

Additionally, Caitlin touches on the emotional challenges of transitions, describing them as isolating experiences where one might feel left behind or unsuccessful compared to others. She urges the listeners to recognize and celebrate small successes along the way, which can be critical in working towards larger goals.

Overall, the discussion highlights the importance of setting realistic short-term goals and celebrating personal achievements to make the process of change more manageable.

Effective Conflict Mediation Through Active Listening & Neutral Support

Next, Caitlin addresses the skills necessary for managers to effectively mediate conflicts within their teams. She emphasizes the importance of active listening, focusing solely on understanding the experiences and emotions of the parties involved without immediately trying to solve the problem. It allows individuals to clarify their thoughts and feelings, which can often lead to self-resolution of issues without further mediation.

Caitlin argues against making mediation training mandatory for managers, suggesting instead the value of a neutral third party in mediation. She notes that while managers can benefit greatly from active listening skills, the perceived or actual biases due to pre-existing relationships can complicate internal mediations.

However, she supports the idea of training in active listening and slower, more deliberate communication as essential skills for managers to help alleviate conflicts before they escalate.

Recognizing When To Involve A Professional Mediator In Workplace Conflicts

Moving on, Caitlin discusses when a manager should consider stepping back from mediating workplace conflicts and involving a professional mediator. She highlights several key signals indicating the need for external intervention:

#1 Perceived Bias

A perception that the manager is biased or cannot remain neutral due to their hierarchical position can hinder open and honest communication. Employees may doubt the confidentiality of the discussions or fear repercussions, which compromises the effectiveness of any mediation attempt.

#2 Personal Impact

If the conflict personally affects the manager, either because it triggers strong emotions or because they have a personal stake in the outcome, it might be beyond the manager’s capacity to mediate effectively. The emotional involvement could cloud judgment or reduce the manager’s ability to facilitate a fair discussion.

#3 Complex History

If the conflict has a long history and the manager has been involved without intervening effectively in the past, there may be a loss of trust among the parties involved. Employees might doubt the manager’s ability or willingness to address the issues impartially or effectively at this point.

Caitlin highlights the importance of self-awareness and recognizing one’s own limits as a manager when dealing with conflicts. In cases where these factors are present, bringing in a neutral third-party mediator can help ensure that the mediation process is effective and that all parties feel heard and respected.

Facilitating Honest Expression For Effective Conflict Resolution

Aram asks Caitlin how to handle intense emotions during a mediation session. He notes that managing feelings such as anger or humiliation can be both difficult and uncomfortable and requests her advice on dealing with these emotions in such settings.

The latter responds by highlighting the importance of not suppressing emotions, as they are crucial to understanding the underlying issues in a conflict. She argues that allowing emotions to be openly expressed helps ensure that any resolution agreed upon aligns with the true feelings and needs of the parties involved.

Caitlin describes her approach to helping participants identify and articulate their feelings. She often uses reflective listening to guess and clarify emotions that participants might struggle to express. This process involves suggesting possible emotions based on the participants’ descriptions of their experiences, which helps them recognize and name their feelings more accurately.

Moreover, Caitlin notes that discussing feelings is not exclusive to therapy but is a fundamental aspect of human interactions across various professions. She highlights the challenges some people face in articulating their feelings and having difficult conversations. Caitlin emphasizes patience and understanding, recognizing that people may need more time to express emotions due to differences in personality, conflict styles, or backgrounds that could influence the way they communicate.

Overall, Caitlin advocates for a mediation approach that prioritizes the honest expression of emotions, helping individuals understand their own reactions and the perspectives of others to foster more effective resolutions.

Using Humor To Ease Tension & Build Connection In Conflict Resolution

Caitlin also discusses the role of humor in conflict resolution. Initially, she was concerned that her inclination to use humor might be a liability in her profession, given the seriousness often associated with mediation contexts such as divorce. However, she has come to recognize humor as an essential part of connecting with people and an intrinsic aspect of her personality that she shouldn’t suppress.

Caitlin explains that while she moderates her personality to some extent in professional settings, she believes it’s important to be authentic. She shares an anecdote about an unintentional humorous moment during a tense divorce mediation on Zoom, triggered by a technical feature, which brought unexpected laughter and relief to the situation.

She concludes that humor, when it arises naturally, can be a valuable tool in mediation as it helps break the tension. Amid sadness and anger, light-hearted moments offer a way for people to connect and move forward, fostering progress in conflict resolution.

The Story Behind ‘Women On The Verge Of A Financial Breakthrough’

Moving on, Caitlin shares the origin story and purpose of her podcast, “Women on the Verge of a Financial Breakthrough.” She mentions that the podcast began somewhat by chance, rooted in her personal need for social interactions after having a newborn.

Living in Austin at the time, Caitlin took advantage of an offer from her neighbors to babysit, which allowed her to attend a class at the University of Texas. The only class available on the night she had free babysitting was on investing for beginners, a subject she initially despised.

Expecting the class to be dull and uninspiring, Caitlin was pleasantly surprised to find it taught by a dynamic and engaging woman who made the subject interesting and approachable. Her perspective on financial education shifted, leading to a friendship with the instructor, who invited her to join an informal women’s investing group, deepening her engagement in finance.

Motivated by her own struggle to remember financial concepts and a desire to make financial topics more accessible, Caitlin and her new friend started the podcast. The show aims to demystify financial topics in a relatable way, discussing complex subjects like annuities, investment strategies, and financial planning through candid, often humorously titled episodes.

Caitlin notes that the podcast helps her learn while also engaging listeners by explaining finance in a simple, relatable way, ultimately guiding them toward better financial planning for their futures.

The Value Of Open Communication In Resolving Conflicts

In the closing moments, Caitlin offers a final thought for listeners dealing with conflicts. She acknowledges the difficulty and discomfort that often accompany conflicts, emphasizing that feeling disoriented and overwhelmed is normal. Caitlin encourages embracing these challenging conversations despite the discomfort, as they can significantly enrich relationships and eliminate the mental burden of avoidance.

She points out that the fear and anticipation of negative outcomes from difficult conversations are often exaggerated in our minds. Caitlin suggests that confronting these issues directly tends to be more beneficial than avoiding them, as the imagined consequences are usually worse than the reality.

She recommends open communication as the key to navigating these situations, urging listeners to verify their assumptions by simply asking others about their perspectives and sharing their own.

Caitlin, Aram, and Nolan discuss more on this episode of the NEGOTIATE^x podcast. Write to us at team@negotiatex.com and share your thoughts on the episode. Also, we’d be thrilled if you could rate us on Apple Podcasts to help us grow and improve.

Thank you for your time!

Transcript

Nolan Martin :

Hey everyone! Thanks for joining us on the NEGOTIATEx podcast. We are continuing our conversation with Caitlin Meredith, mediator, coach and trainer. If you haven’t already checked out Part A of this show, be sure to do that first. Let’s jump into the conversation with Caitlin.

NM:

You coach folks through various transitions, moving, new job, leaving relationships, etc. Transitions are part of everyone’s lives. What key piece of advice would you give to a listener experiencing significant personal or professional change?

Navigating Transitions: The Importance Of Reflection & Prioritization In Times Of Change [01:10]

CM:

When I’m working with people, what I notice for myself is that when we’re going through a transition, there’s a lot of muscling through it, we’re doing. Like every moment, we’re supposed to be active, whether it’s reading a self help book or getting moving boxes or calling the lawyer or whatever. In our minds, it’s like a productivity hotspot. We’re supposed to be producing all the time because this transition is happening and there’s a really big to do list that comes along with most transitions.

And I often find that one as amazing as I am, one of the biggest benefits of a coaching session is the allocated time to think about this and the allocated time to reflect and think about where I am. What is my status? What’s going on for me right now? And of course, therapy is a really great place for that too. But it’s then tagging on where am I right now? What actually is my priority? So that I can make a realistic to-do list around reality right now. What’s actually urgent?

When you’re in a transition time, everything can feel urgent or you’re so overwhelmed you’re paralyzed. So, you know everything’s urgent and you cannot do anything so a lot of it is just like carving things down into just simple steps that you don’t need a rocket scientist to tell you like, let’s just do the three things you can do today. And whatever those like the five, four, three, two, one tool. I’m not going to go into any more of these like number tools. Those just happen to be the tools that I have that are numbers.

But let’s allocate time, and it’s usually not the time before when you’re trying to go to bed. That’s like the really productive, like reflective time. That’s like just getting you on a wired loop that really none of us need and isn’t helpful, but to have conversation that allows you to do the reflection, to have someone reflecting back what they’re seeing from you right now to help you clarify your thoughts so that you can decide what the priorities are for right now and moving forward.

And I think often the transition itself, the movement takes over and you feel secondary to it. I try to switch that around a little bit. So you can, there’s intention around what’s on that to do list right away. I don’t know if that answered your question.

AD:

And then celebrating them

CM:

And celebrating them. Yeah, that’s when a Häagen-Dazs ice cream bar and it’s, oh, you guys don’t have it. It’s a California, maybe just a San Francisco Bay Area thing. I always designate what is the thing? What is that celebration thing going to be? And it can be like for working moms of three, it’s going to be like their own whatever bag of M&M’s in the room after the kids go to sleep like something that it whatever your version is, we need to get that.

AD:

And it’s got to be in the room, so the kids don’t see it, right? You got to have your little secret spot you sneak off to but what you’re saying is so important, right? We need to have those, we need to have those long term goals that we’re trying to aim for and that measure of success so critical and I think sometimes in the midst of that we forget to build those milestone objectives in. And then we forget to congratulate ourselves that little pat on the back of, hey, look where you are now a few weeks.

Now we’re not to the end state yet, but look where we are a few weeks in and the changes we’ve made. This is great. We’re moving. And then I think the celebrations are so important. Now, many of our listeners are mid to senior level managers who frequently find themselves in the midst of disagreements or conflict between team members. Many of them don’t have any formal mediation training and yet they’re being asked to mediate fairly regularly.

Okay, I got, there’s three questions here, Caitlin. But we’ve warmed you up, so I know you’re ready for the three questions.

CM:

I’m ready. I got my pen.

AD:

So, as a professional mediator, what are the most crucial skills or things these managers need to get right? Two, should mediation training be mandatory for all mid managers and higher. And three, when is it time to call in the calvary and get a professional involved?

The Power Of Active Listening: Prioritizing Empathy In Workplace Mediation [08:13]

CM:

Okay, I wrote them down, but you’ll still have to repeat them. The first one, listening, truly being able to do just what you were talking about. The struggle is like listening without problem solving without anything is like slowing down hearing this person is having an experience and it’s intense.

So what can my job be is just to be like, hey, I want to hear about your experience and say, I want to let you know, I’m not going to try to solve any of these problems. This is a part of the faith that, this is a conversation I want to just have so I can really understand what’s going on for you. So you can frame it from the outset. I’m not going to fix this at the end, I just right now want to understand what’s going on. I think if you do nothing else, but that.

I often am hired in workplaces to do like a workplace mediation. And in some cases I’ll talk to people, not always, but, or they’ll say, I think we need a mediation, but we don’t know among who there’s just a team. That’s really unhappy. And so I’ll talk to people, and often, or it happens that just by having a session with me, where they’re able to really clarify their thinking and explain it, they actually figure out a few things for themselves and the dynamic shifts. And so I think it’s very easy to discount, like venting.

We just need people to vent. I, that can I say, pisses me off because when I’m really mad, I don’t think of it as just like venting once in a while, I’ll be like, I just need to vent and I’ll get over it because I know I’m all under-resourced. I’m really tired. I’m hungry. I’m whatever. So this is like serious, I need to process this. But if something’s really upset me about the tone of an email I was in and that’s like the fourth time I’ve gotten that, I don’t just need to vent, I need a thought partner to help me separate the threads in that sort of hierarchy, this is upsetting to me, but I could deal with it. But then when someone else was cc’d from another team, that was humiliating. And that’s where my line was drawn.

So to help me clarify, what are the factors here that if I was going to have a conversation with this person that I’d really want to have had the practice to think through. So, I’m not just like throwing everything out there and then later being like, I actually didn’t really care about that part or I didn’t even mention this other thing, which was actually the thing that really hurt my feelings. So being a thought partner, being the listener and helping someone clarify, I think if you do nothing else, that is more than most managers provide.

It’s a version of working it out among yourself. When my parents would yell that to me and my brother in the backseat just work it out. I’d be like, obviously can’t work it out. We’re just fighting the whole time. Okay. So that’s the first one listening. Second question.

AD:

Should mediation training be mandatory?

CM:

Do I get to make that decision? I think yes, they should have to do it. Actually, no, I don’t think it should because I think there is a huge benefit to having a third party neutral come in and be there for a real mediation. And so I think a facilitated round table conversation where people are able to have a conversation might be the first level before an actual mediation, but I think there’s a lot of value of having a third party neutral that doesn’t have already a previous relationship because those will inevitably be not the same with both people that are there. There could be more of a history, positive or negative with one side or the other.

So even the perception that the manager can’t be neutral fully, I think is really important. So mediation training per se, I would say no, but certainly in active listening, that the value of something I talk about in my trainings a lot is you have to go slow before you can go fast. And I think we all want to go fast. And so it can seem like a waste of time or ineffective to just have a listening session with somebody that works for you that’s having a problem. And I think just training around how important those are alone, you don’t have to even get into developed mediation skills would go a long way.

So mediation per se, not necessarily. If they want it and their company will pay for it, go for it. Because you could do it for another team too. So another idea, like Intel has in house mediators. And so they train a bunch of their staff who then also serve as mediators.

AD:

What would be the signal for when I should as a manager go from a listening session, which I feel very comfortable perhaps leading, to bringing in, whether it’s in house or out of house mediator to say, ah, this is beyond me.

When Managers Should Step Back From Mediating Workplace Conflicts [13:14]

CM:

I think that was so like it depends, I think where, well okay, one I already talked about is if one or both parties in this conflict start to feel like the manager is taking sides or if they like just aren’t able to be unbiased or doesn’t feel safe sharing because they’re their boss and so they’re like, yeah, I get that this is confidential. I get that we can say whatever but is that actually true? So if you’re delving into a place where people actually can’t have open conversations because of your hierarchical position then it’s not serving anyone. So that would be one area.

Another might be where you yourself are, as the manager, are very, your buttons are very much pushed by one or both people or by the conflict itself. And so you really, it’s too much to ask of yourself. You are juggling enough and to ask yourself to take this role in addition to all the other things that you’re doing and to show up in the way that a third party neutral really needs to show up to support both people, that might just not be part of your capability to no fault of your own.

But really to take that seriously, what resources do I have internally right now? What buttons are being pushed by these people? Am I using this as a proxy to not retaliate, but I agree that party A is the problem here. And so am I using this subconsciously to reinforce that’s not going to be a successful mediation if you’re really hoping that a common solution can be fought for and I think another example might be when there’s such a long history and you’ve been present for it but haven’t intervened and now you are, you might have lost some trust about being able to intervene and then it might be good I’m sure there’s a million others, but those are the three that are in the top of my head.

AD:

Well, and as you mentioned trust and going back to before talking about connection building and relationship building and then even as you were using some examples just now around things that would make someone angered or humiliated or whatever the feeling is. Can you talk a little bit about how you navigate emotions and feelings in a mediation session when they’re strong and they’re out there and that is such an uncomfortable thing to lean into. How do you recommend managing emotions and feelings?

The Importance Of Expressing True Emotions In Conflict Resolution [15:48]

CM:

Oh, I don’t manage them. I let them, I want them out. If someone’s on their best behavior and being polite, I’ll have no idea if actually what the resolution we come to, they’re just like phoning it in to get out of the conversation, or if it’s something that they really agree with because if they don’t agree. If it doesn’t make sense to them or if it doesn’t align with what’s important to them, they’re not going to follow it.

So having people muffle emotions or not show up as who they are or what’s important to them, I don’t think serves the mediation process. That said, giving people support and help. I find more often people can’t name a feeling. They don’t know, it’s like a big black bad cloud in stomach. That’s the feeling. And so through talking and attentive listening. I try to help, guess at some feelings and have a real like almost like brainstorming session. And if you say like Nolan, always what do you do all the time, Nolan always interrupts and takes over, we have a guest on our podcast always interrupts and I can never and you didn’t say a feeling in that but when I’m reflecting back I can say, you know, sounds like that experience would be really like frustrating.

And also you said humiliating, maybe humiliating because a guest is there. Am I getting that right? So I might try out a few feelings and you can say no, I’m not humiliated. Like I know he’s not trying to bear it, but we’re going to try to guess and figure that out together. And so that you can start naming some of those feelings. So it’s not that I don’t want the feeling and emotion present, it’s that I want to help you be able to like, know which one it is. There’s a big difference between fear, sadness, fear of losing a job or whatever, let’s tease those out.

So for me, that’s much more important than being like, you’re too upset. We can’t talk like, hey, let’s talk about, I see you’re upset. Can I ask you a few questions about where that’s coming from? And I know people get very worried about therapy. Like you’re not a therapist. I’m not a therapist, but talking about feelings as a human. It’s not just in the realm of therapy, like lawyers have to do it, business people have to do it, journalists definitely have to do it. It’s part of the human condition.

NM:

Sorry, it’s a tropical storm outside, so it’s a thunderstorm.

CM:

Where are you?

NM:

I’m in Florida, so Cooper’s terrified of lightning and thunder, and so he’s gonna hang out for a minute while keep going through this. No, thank you for that. I think, kinda covering and putting labels on feelings. It’s something definitely I struggle with. So whenever we do have a difficult conversation, it’s not anything that I can articulate. And so I think that is something that I can definitely work on.

CM:

Nolan, I’m so glad you brought that up because I think I, when I’m upset, I’m hyper articulate and I can narrate the feeling like it’s the ticker tape. And now I’m pissed and now I’m whatever. And so when you and I are in an argument and you’re not telling me your feelings, I feel like you’re actively withholding that information from me to mess with me and as part of shunning me. And so it can escalate me even more.

I’m like, oh my God, just tell me, okay, what do I need to do? I need to slow down. What I first need to do is understand that you’re, you don’t actually know the reason you’re not sharing it with me and that you might need extra time is so that you can understand yourself better. And then I can calm down. Because it’s not like an act of aggression towards me. You’re not telling me what your actual feeling is. And I see this get played out a lot. We have different personality types. We have different conflict styles. We have different access to our feelings because of family of origin, because of whatever.

So, there’s a lot of variables at play here, and the idea that feelings couldn’t I’m sure when someone would be like, let’s have a conversation, but we’re not gonna let feelings, Nolan’s yes. I won’t have to dig and try to find out my feelings, but I have a feeling. Ahaha, another feeling. I have another feeling that I’m going to tell you about, that whatever resolution we came to, if it didn’t speak to what your underlying feelings were, Nolan, it wouldn’t be a successful one at the end, whatever success means. I know they make people uncomfortable, but we can try we’re just practicing each time, right? It’s not the final. It’s just practice.

NM:

Yeah, that’s right. So this has been a tremendously fun conversation. You obviously have a great sense of humor. Is that intentional and is there a role for humor in conflict resolution?

Leveraging Humor: A Useful Tool In Conflict Resolution [20:58]

CM:

No, but I thought I couldn’t be in conflict resolution because I always want to laugh at stuff. I thought it was a liability. You know, like don’t invite me to your funeral. But I’ve also, you guys know, being in the military, like the more extreme situations you’re in, the more you rely on humor with the people that you’re in it with. So for me, it’s such an essential connector and my favorite people make me laugh.

So I thought I’d have to, like, turn it down. And I have to say as a mediator, I’m at about 40% personality, not without humor, but because it’s not about me, like as a trainer, I have to be about 120 percent personality if I’m going to be there. Podcast is somewhere in between. It’s not that the humor is like this tool that I’m like, ooh, now it’s time for a joke. It’s realizing I have to be my whole self in the room or I’m fake. I’m phony. And so if I can’t make, I have to, if someone’s sad, I’d like to think I don’t have a pathological need to be like a class clown or anything, but that I, it was such a relief to think I don’t have to turn off all of the parts of my personality that make me “me.”

And in fact, it could be actually useful when people there’s tense situations. Although as I’m inadvertent, I just have to, I just was doing a divorce mediation. It was kind of a tense moment on zoom and I have a Mac and they had just instituted like the new, whatever and I did something when someone said something really sad and it made the fireworks go off, we let that oh, did we laugh like it did really like it showed how humor can really cut into a hard moment.

But I would never do that on purpose. I don’t know how I triggered it but to say like no matter what people are going through, there is something very human about that just about sadness and anger, there’s human there, too.

AD:

That’s nice. All right, you mentioned your podcast that you co-host called Women on the Verge of a Financial Breakthrough. I’d love to give our listeners a sense of what you discuss. So let me just read off a few of the titles. There’s, WTF is an annuity. Will the election F up my investment strategy? What should teens know about finance? So just as a side note here Nolan, we’re gonna need to hire Caitlin to come help with some creative titles for some of our sessions. Alright, tell us about this podcast. Why’d you start it? What do you hope it accomplishes?

Embracing Financial Education Through Unexpected Opportunities [23:39]

CM:

I had a newborn baby and I was desperate to get out of the house. And I was 39 at that point. And my neighbors down the street said that they would babysit my daughter. If I wanted to go take a class, I thought like the only justifiable reason to ask for free babysitting once a week was like a class, not just I just need to go out and whatever. So I was like, I’d really like to take an adult education class at UT. I was living in Austin at the time.

And so they said, I said, what night would work for them Tuesdays. So I looked at the schedule for continuing and the only class was investing for beginners. And I was like, what not just like a disinterest, a passionate dislike for the person who would hold that class for the people that would go to it, that it would be even in the universe of like options for adult education.

I was not into it, but I was like weighing like free babies like getting out of that like what I’ll just go I’ll sit there for the first 15 minutes. I’ll go get a drink. Nobody will know like I’ll be doing it but I won’t. So I came in and I thought it would be taught by some like 70-year old man with a tweed coat named Ned, talking about like taxes and something and just be like, oh my god and at the front was this like sparkling woman who was like i’m laughing and excited and I was like am I in the wrong class?

So I was intrigued like she’s somebody I’d want to be friends with. What is she doing here? And she had everyone go around the room and say what are you looking for in this class? And everyone else had really good answers. Well, I’m going to retire in five years and I want to make sure that I know I’ve had a financial advisor or like I have my first job and I want to know how to invest or something good.

And I was so sleep deprived, newborn that I was just like, this was the only night I could get free babysitting, which she was charmed by. And also oh, that’s a first, like someone coming to my class for that. So I stuck it out and through it, like it was like learning a new language and with her, it was so much fun.

And I set my sight on being friends with her. And when I do that, I like, I have a strategy and it worked and we’re friends. So she invited me through that to a group. She had started to call the Austin women’s investing group that had started out as just a bunch of women in the living room talking about what is investing and how do we do it? She is now a financial advisor, investment advisor, and has her own firm. All of our conversations since becoming friends are me calling it and being like, what the F is an arbitrage? What the hell is a Roth? What the hell? Like a very aggressive like I’m just like, oh my God. What more adulting am I going to have to do? Will it ever end? And so during the pandemic, After one of those calls, I’m like, you know what we need to do? Partly because I forget what she tells me. And so I have to re ask and I’m embarrassed about that. So I was like, if we record it, I can re ask her all the questions. I’m always looking for a cover, right?

For the curiosity and for not remembering. And she was game. All of those titles are actual questions when I get on the phone or I text, and I’m like, What is an IPO? Why is Airbnb asking me about an IPO? And it’s been a really fun thing that I’m excited to know more about. And also, my favorite episodes are where she goes into depth about a topic, and I’m like, oh, I don’t have to know any more about that.

That is actually okay. I’ve heard the definition once doesn’t concern me, moving on. I’m not trying to be a stockbroker. I’m just trying to get through and plan a financial future. So it’s been very fun. Yes.

AD:

Very cool. Very fun. Very helpful, too.

NM:

Absolutely we’ll have a link for that in the description if anyone wants to check it out. Really appreciate your time today, Caitlin. We’ve covered a variety of things. Do you have a final thought that you’d like to leave with listeners navigating conflict in their lives?

Navigating Difficult Conversations With Courage & Clarity [27:57]

CM:

Just that it’s really hard and also you can do it. Like I never want to minimize how hard it is and how messy and how in the middle of it, you can feel so disoriented and overwhelmed.

And that’s, I hate saying it’s normal. It sounds like a back to school session about puberty, like it’s normal, but it really is, it’s normal and yet like doing it and doing it again, it’ll bring the connections in your life. Like they’ll make them richer and it’ll get rid of that, like I have to avoid this for two years, three years, that feeling like that takes up our bandwidth. By avoiding these conversations. And that’s what I’m like trying to rescue in people is. Just sometimes the truth and having it happen is much better than all of the things that we’re anticipating might happen.

AD:

Yeah, and I find that those things that we anticipate that they occasionally do.

CM:

Yeah

AD:

So often they don’t they were just stuff that I was making up in my own mind

CM:

Yes, the stories we tell. We are hardwired for stories and it’s no fault of our own, but like the stories we tell ourself are like amazing, make amazing movies, books, but often really interfere with truly understanding what the reality we’re facing is. And the only way to get through that is to ask someone else, hey, what’s going on for you? And this is going on for me and I wanted to talk about it.

AD:

Love it. What a great way to wrap. Caitlin, thanks so much. I’ve really enjoyed this conversation in your time. Appreciate you putting us on the schedule and doing this with us.

CM:

Of course I had fun too. I didn’t get to ask you guys questions. That’s the second hour, right? Or I’m like, so Nolan, what’s going on with you guys? That’s right.

NM:

The next one.

AD:

That’s right.

NM:

Well, that’s it for us on today’s podcast. If you haven’t already, please rate, review, and subscribe to the NEGOTIATEx podcast, and we’ll see you in the next episode.