Ted

I'm a business lawyer and a negotiation consultant so my professional life centers on effective conflict management and today I'm going to tell you the story of one of my most serious conflicts in order for you to wrap your head around the gravity of this situation there's something important you need to know about me I love cinnamon toast crunch so earlier this year after a long day at work all I wanted to do was relax at home with a bowl of my favorite cereal so imagine how I felt when I got home and I saw my lovely wife Whitney sitting on the couch finishing the last bowl of my cereal and she did not even have the decency to use milk so without thinking I marched into the kitchen I took her granola and I ate all of it and and I don't even like granola this is an example of how not to handle conflict so obviously we're having a little bit of fun with that example but the reality is that conflict can be the most challenging part of our personal and professional lives whether it's a business negotiation or a heated political argument these conversations are intimidating and infuriating but why this is your amygdala the amygdala is a temperamental part of the brain that is quick to respond to perceived threats it's part of the limbic system which is one of the most primitive brain structures and is also known as the lizard brain these quick primal responses were critical for survival way back in the day when we were living in caves and death lurked around every corner but the problem is that society evolved faster than our brains and as a result today we struggle in difficult conversations because we're fighting modern-day battles with prehistoric tools have you ever said something in the heat of the moment that you immediately knew was a mistake this is called an amygdala hijack and it can take you from rational to irrational in the blink of an eye these responses are rooted in fear and we only have three fear responses fight/flight and the often overlooked freeze response which is also known as the deer-in-headlights response and your preferred fear response is most likely going to be a product of your lived experience I grew up in Tiffin Ohio and the thing that I really appreciated about Tiffin was its diversity on top of that my family's from the Caribbean so I had a strong Caribbean accent when I was growing up so not only did I look different I also sounded different and not surprisingly this combination made a real tough for the young Y to fit in so because of this I became obsessed with finding ways to gain the acceptance of my peers and eventually I became one of the most popular kids in school but this came with a price I became deathly afraid of singing or doing something that could potentially jeopardize the relationships that I worked so hard to create I became a people pleaser and this made it less likely for me to stand up for myself in difficult conversations in other words I would freeze or flee in the face of conflict this led me to agree when I actually disagree and avoid confrontation at all cost but all this changed when I met my mentor and he told me something that I will never forget he said plumbing there is a big difference between being liked and being respected and if you want to have personal and professional success you need to be willing to engage with conflict so after that meeting I forced myself to have the difficult conversations that I spent my whole life trying to avoid and as I built this new habit I discovered something life-changing conflict is an opportunity conflict provides you with the unique opportunity to either repair and strengthen valuable relationships or identify and remove malignant relationships with minimal damage so how do we actually engage with the conflict at hand you remember fight flight or freeze I suggest that we use a more evolved response to conflict resolution something that I like to call compassionate curiosity now the distinction between curiosity and compassionate curiosity is more than just semantics for example you can start a conversation off like this what the hell is your problem curious yes compassionate know or you could start a conversation like this how do you feel about this situation compassionate curiosity fosters a genuine desire to understand that is tempered with empathy and respect approaching conversations in this way naturally causes you to ask better deeper and more penetrating questions and listen more effectively what makes this so hard is the fact that we need to be vulnerable we need to be willing to suspend judgment and open ourselves up to the scary possibilities of either being wrong or potentially losing a relationship compassionate curiosity is the key to taming the lizard brain slowing down and asking these high-level questions forces you to use the most evolved part of your brain called the prefrontal cortex this is where you find a logical reasoning whenever you get lost confused or scared in these conversations compassionate curiosity will be your North Star you can look to it for guidance when you don't know what to say you can lean on it for support in your most difficult conversations and as you start to build this new habit you'll realize that it actually takes pressure off of you because your goal is to learn not to teach here's an example earlier this year I found myself in a heated contract negotiation the guy on the other side was furious I could actually hear his voice quivering with rage with every word he said and then I felt the sudden rush of emotion from my amygdala and it told me that I could either run away fight back or just sit there and take it but instead of falling victim to these primal impulses I chose to use compassionate curiosity I led with compassion and focused on addressing his acute emotional needs I said listen I can tell you're upset what are your biggest concerns what can we do to help you and as he started to answer these questions he slowly began to calm and by the end of the conversation we were laughing and joking with each other and he gave me everything that I needed effective conflict management is a critical element of negotiation and persuasion this deal would have been impossible if I didn't take the time to suspend my agenda and address the conflict on the front end of the conversation and you don't need to be a professional negotiator to do this it works in your personal life as well but I will be honest with you I am a lot better at doing this in my professional life then I have in my personal life and this is because as the relationships get closer the stakes get higher there's more to lose but you have to remember we don't use compassionate curiosity because it's easy we use it because the relationship is worth it speaking of relationships let's get back to Whitney and cereal gates what does compassionate curiosity look like in this situation well instead of suffering through an ungodly amount of granola to make an ineffective point what I should have done was first lead with compassion and second invited her to problem-solve with me through the use of open-ended questions now this is where it gets really interesting because I actually tried this with Whitney a few weeks later and I learned something fascinating so when I brought this up to her she looked at me with a genuine confusion and said Kwame do I really do that and I was shocked and this was shocking to me for two reasons reason number one was because at this point we'd been married for seven years and I could not believe that she didn't know how much of an issue this was to me reason number two was because as we were having this serious conversation she was literally finishing off another box of my cereal right in front of me this just goes to show that a lot of times the other side is blissfully unaware of the impact that their behavior has on us and this is precisely why it is our responsibility to stand up and say something if we really care about the relationship and we really care about making positive change we're living at a time now where it seems as though we forgotten how to talk to each other embracing and sharing this message of compassionate curiosity maybe the best thing that we can do to counter the animosity that we're seeing in the world today so I'll leave you with this it's a challenge the next time you find yourself in the midst of a conflict remember you have two choices you can either use compassionate curiosity and actually seek to improve the relationship or you can follow them home sneak into their kitchen and eat all of their bunola [Applause] [Music] you