This is the second in a series of LinkedIn Live talks by Nadine on leadership opportunities. Each session focuses on the difference between two ideas
***The following transcript has been automatically generated and is presented here unchecked***
How to get clarity between compromise and collaboration
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
understand, compromise, listening, person, situation, feel, conversation, win, silence, speaking, linkedin, chris voss, table, hypotheses, regret, work, emotion, words, talk, actively
Very good afternoon. I’m Nadine Powrie. And I am in gelfoam. today and where it is actually very, very sunny. So what I want to do today is I want to share with you the work that I’ve done that I am doing on compromise and collaboration. And the work that I’m doing is all in there.
And the idea of coming coming on online and sharing that work with you is, as come from the work that I’m doing with some of my clients, and actually from a personal experience. So the question I want to ask you to start with is, have you ever been in a situation where you made a compromise, and after that meeting, you actually regretted it. So you go back to your face, and you have that sense of failure, that sense of weakness, that sense of, I’ve lost confidence in myself, because I’ve, you know, I’ve gone there ways, basically.
And also, the sense of setting a precedence. So you know, I’ve done it once, and now everybody’s going to expect me to do that. And so having a regret.
I don’t know about you, but I have been in that situation. And some of my clients have been in that situation. So I thought that perhaps I could share with you some of the work and some of the thinking that I’ve done around compromise and collaboration. So if we look at the word compromise, to start with compromise is the outcome of negotiation where you win, and I lose, that’s what a compromise is. And it’s always in the context of a negotiation.
And I’m sure that you will agree with me that negotiations are very emotionally driven, we go into a conversation and I talk a lot about the choreography of conversations in in in the way that we lead. And we are going into those conversations feeling quite anxious, the feeling quite fearful. And as a result, it affect our emotion, we sometimes can be sad, because we’re not getting what we want in the discussion. Sometimes we can feel quite angry, because the other party don’t want to give in. It’s a little bit like you want red, I want blue. And where are we going to go from from there. So I want to invite you to think differently. And it’s got nothing to do with being rational. It’s got nothing to do with all the books that you have read, where when you have any discussion, you’re trying to think about what did I read? And could that help me and, you know, it’s got nothing to do with that, I want you to step back. And I want you to perhaps think about the psychology between
the difference between a point of view so an opinion, that can lead to a disagreement. And that can lead to a crisis situation. So let’s imagine that you are stepping back. And you are understanding the difference between those three stages where you could find yourself in.
And the first thing is,
abandon the idea of compromising. So you know, I would actually remove that from your vocabulary every every week, I keep saying to people.
And this is not the word that I’ve done. It’s the word from Tony Robbins, who said, you know, we are using between 200 to 300 words a day. That’s our daily vocabulary. And my vocabulary is very different from each one of you that is watching today. Okay, so let’s stop using and let’s stop thinking about using the word compromise. Where
it is you win and I lose. Let’s start thinking about the idea where the mindset focuses on win win. Now, how does that feel straightaway? You’re feeling quite a bit and you want to you want to win win situation. So how do you do that? Now, you might be disappointed if I say to you, well, you need to focus on your listening skills. Because everywhere on LinkedIn, on LinkedIn, we talk about listening skills, and everywhere we talk about active listening, and I think I think that people are getting quite tired with that.
But actually, it is really important to to listen actively, I don’t know how you you do that and how you practice listening actively. But I’ll share with you something that I do, too.
It’s a little bit like to keep me on track with listening actively. So every day, listen to the BBC shipping forecast. And I know maybe that sounds completely enough. But this is my moment where I’m actively listening to everything that the forecaster is saying about the shipping forecast. And that’s really focusing me to the point where I’m not memorizing, but I hear and I could quote back what I have been listening to, because I’m in the moment. So that kind of exercise is
keeping my skills going, I keep practicing it. And I think it’s helping me listening better when I’m working with leaders. So the first thing is to listen, okay, and the second is to focus on the understanding that people
that are involved in the discussions have different needs, you know, we’re all different. We’re all coming to the table with a goals, objectives. And we all, we all have different needs. And I think once you understand that, we are coming to the table with those different needs, then it’s a starting point of having a very different mindset. So you’re not going to go in there to win, you’re going to endeavor to understand the needs of people. So
I’ve done a lot of work on reflecting on the pain that actually compromise is having on leaders and I was one of those before, as I said, you know, a few minutes ago, it’s actually quite painful to regret having compromised in a situation where you didn’t want to compromise. So one of the books that I’ve read, and I will invite you to read that book is from Chris Voss, and the book is called never split the difference. And I want to share with you some of the key points that he’s making in the in his book. So you know, those are these are not from are not mine, my ideas that come from Chris Voss, but you will notice, if you are a coach yourself, you will notice that actually some of the techniques that Chris is using, we use them in in coaching. So, the first point is understanding that
we we have two primal urges, okay? We all want to be understood and accepted. And we all want to feel safe and secure. And we all want to feel in control. And that’s quite hard to to achieve
in situations where you have no control.
So, if you listen intensively to everything that is being said in a conversation, you can get as much information as you can. And this is where the listening actively actually is really important, because you are concentrating on listening to what people are saying. And if you have somebody in front of you, who can see that you are doing that, well, they are going to be feeling more secure and more safe and more understood. Even if maybe you don’t necessarily understand everything that they are saying. However, you are giving them your whole attention and therefore, you are making them feel safe and secure.
And that brings me to the second point that I want to make which is the difference about hypotheses and assumptions because when we are listening to people, if we are not listening to the fool, we are listening to understand
and when we are listening to understand we are starting to make some hypotheses we are starting to make assumptions and we are starting to prepare our response. Now the difference between I policies and assumptions very clear and hypotheses is a prediction of an outcome. So you go through processes of verification and investigation exactly what you do at school. When you have your son science lesson in the lab on an assumption is about taking some information for granted. Before checking that you have the explanation for
Right. So, you you, you need to focus on what people have to say in order to test the hypothesis actually, that you are making, once they have finished speaking, because remember, as they are speaking, you are listening. And then you can use something called silence. But I’m going to come back in a minute. Now one of the one of the things that I have noticed when we are speaking,
we all have a different tone of voice. And you will hear that my tone of voice is very different, different to yours. So in this LinkedIn live, I’m trying to I’m trying to smile. So right now, all I see is a green.on. My screen, so it’s, and myself, I can see myself, in fact, I’ve never seen myself so much when I’ve done LinkedIn live. So it’s quite difficult to smile at yourself. But I just have to imagine that there are millions of people out there watching what I am saying. And therefore I want to smile, because I’m happy to be here.
I think it’s also very important to slow down when you are speaking so that people can have the time to process the information. And that’s something for example, in the past, I’ve not always done, I tend to speak quite quickly, particularly when I’m very enthusiastic about something. So with experience, I have learned to slow down, and also to, to be calm and to be relaxed. And I think that if you are going into a conversation, particularly when you know that, you know, both parties are not going to necessarily agree because you know, from the beginning that the point of views are very different. I think it’s important to remain calm and to remain relaxed, because you achieved nothing by being nervous. At the end of the day, you might even forget to say things, you might say things that you might regret, you might make an offer that you absolutely did not want to make, and you don’t know where this is coming from. But it’s really important to create trust, and to create a safe environment where people feel very comfortable to speak with you.
So one of the technique that Chris Voss is using, that we all the coaches around the world
are using is the mirror technique. Now, the mirror technique is a technique whereby you repeat
critical words, and I would say three, you repeat three critical words that someone else has shared, and has said. And to some extent, this is a little bit like a validation.
You also insinuate similarities, particularly when you agree, and this shows that there is a connection between yourself and the person who is speaking with you. And you’re also using connectives, for example, like, and so once you’ve mirror and you’ve repeated the, you know, three words that the three critical words that the person in front of you has said as, as, as a summary, it’s really important to then be silent.
And I’ve done a couple of posts actually on LinkedIn about silence because silence is about, I think silence is about respect. And it’s about allowing other people or the person, the people around you undertake around the table to actually process the information that you’ve just given them. It’s also a sign of respect, we don’t all think, at the same speed.
And I think it’s a moment for people to think about what they are doing, and what they are going to think about the information that they’ve just given you
that you’ve just given them. So, silence is a mark of respect, and it’s also marking the space and remember last week I did a listen, I did a LinkedIn live actually, where I talked
about space, the space that you can see in the room, but also the space that you can see when everybody and where everybody’s sitting at a table. I often define that space like a bubble. So if you draw a bubble around each person which is sitting at the table, this this is your space.
And this is in a way
the,
the physical space and the invisible space that you can give them through your silence for them to think about and process what you’ve just told them. So being in a conversation with somebody where you don’t necessarily share the same opinion isn’t about you, right. And if you want a win win situation, it isn’t about you, it’s about what is being talked about. So the best thing is to not go into conversations where you are going to take personally what people are saying, you’ve got to extract yourself, and you’ve got to really put yourself in people’s shoes, right? If I was in your shoes, how would I feel? What would I say? How would I sink? And you have to understand they’re feeling an emotion? Do they feel angry? Do they feel sad? Do they feel happy, you know, you need to understand what makes them tick, and what their triggers are through the emotion.
Now, a very famous technique that again, we use as as a coach, and I use as a coach is the technique of labor. So labeling, and that is when you want to validate emotions. But you’re not going to say to somebody, you look surprised.
You need to say, it looks like it seems like it feels like so you need to say expressions like that, when actually, you are being careful about what you are saying, and you’re inviting the person to collaborate with you, because then they’re going to be saying, Yes, that’s how I feel. Yes, you’re, it’s, it’s how I’m perceiving the situation. And then you need to continue to use the silence once you’ve told them, it seems like it sounds like it looks like because remember, silence is enabling the person who is opposite you to think about and to process the information.
So it’s about encouraging positive perception. And it’s about removing certain words in the conversations that may be a trigger for the person who is talking with you. So one of the words that I ban when I when I work with people, and leaders, is the word I understand, because actually, I don’t really think we understand, how can we understand we’re not the other person, we’re not in their brain?
So I don’t use that word. I understand. And Chris Voss maker, gives an advice where he says, You need to use. That’s right. As opposed to, you’re right. And I’ve thought about that, because you might think, well, there isn’t much difference between That’s right. And you’re right. But you will know me, and I love semantics, and I love playing with words.
When we say that’s right, it’s a lot more neutral than when we say you’re right. When we say you’re right, it’s actually implying, maybe I’m wrong. Maybe I didn’t say that. And it’s already and in balancing
the relationship and
the DA, Paul.
And yeah, I’m thinking in French here and the relationship between two people because it’s admitting that actually, maybe, maybe I’m wrong. Maybe I didn’t see things in the way that
I should have seen them. So when you are talking with somebody, it’s always about the balance of that relationship. And if you want a win win relationship and the in and win win situation, you do need to make sure that that balance isn’t going to be unsettled by anything you say. So say, That’s right. As opposed to you are right.
So by achieving listening and active listening, by building trust, by showing empathy by establishing a relationship or rapport, you are working collaboratively with that person or with those group of persons who are sitting around the table and by following those steps, and you will find yourself
In a win win situation, where the best deal has been, in effect, co created throughout the conversation, so something quite organic, something where you will feel that you didn’t have to sweat actually, you didn’t have to work hard, other than actively listen, although the using some coaching skills that you are using as leaders every day, but it’s just about using them correctly to get a win win situation that has been created by all parties around the table. So I hope that’s my
kind of I don’t I don’t even know how long I’ve been speaking to probably about 2020 minutes right now. I hope it has helped you. Think about the difference between compromise and collaboration in a win win situation, you are co constructing. You are co creating. And you are collaborating with people that are around the table. So I hope this has been helpful. If you’ve got any question to ask me, please feel free to DM me or write a comment on the LinkedIn life. And I look forward to seeing you next week. On my next LinkedIn live. Thank you