π§ At Negotiation with Goliath, Ben trains sustainability professionals and entrepreneurs to get decision-makers on their side and make your goals their goals.
What we covered:
π± How Sustainability professionals are pushing for change and how the greatest hurdles standing in the way of that change are overwhelmingly powerful individuals and organizations that are change resistant
π How defining people as βevilβ is a major mistake that hinders your chances to convince them, why, and what to do instead
1οΈβ£ The one feature that drives human survival more powerfully than any other one and how you can leverage it for the better
ποΈ How reality is a construct and not an absolute and objective thing and how you need to understand that to succeed in negotiating
π― How being goal driven instead of objective is sadly a much more powerful survival feature and how you need to know that to drive sustainability forward
π₯ How the best way to kill a negotiation is to enter with a sense of moral superiority, why and what to do instead
π How you need to be driven to a clear and well defined strategic goal to succeed in negotiation and how you shall never lose sight of your strategy
πͺ Teaching negotiation, realizing being on the wrong side, having an impact, human psychology, human evolutionβ¦ and much more!
π₯ β¦ and of course, we concluded with the π§ππ₯ππ πππ§π π¦πͺππ¨π©ππ€π£π¨ π₯Β
Resources:
π Send your warmest regards to Ben on LinkedInΒ
π Check out Negotiating with Goliathβs WebsiteΒ
is on Linkedin β‘οΈ
Full Transcript:
These are computer-generated, so expect some typos π
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Antoine Walter: Hi Ben. Welcome to the show.
Ben Kimura Gross: Hi, an thank you for having me.
Antoine Walter: Iβm really excited to have that conversation with you because you are touching on the topic, which we have never discussed on that microphone. I was really impressed by your writing skills. So now Iβm looking forward to discover your talking skills . thank you and weβll dig into that in just a minute. But all that starts with a good tradition I have on that microphone, which is to ask you to send me a postcard.
And actually your postcard today comes from Tokyo. So what can you tell me about Tokyo, which I would ignore by.
Ben Kimura Gross: Well, as you probably know, Tokyo is a, has a greater metropolitan area of like 36 million people. So itβs huge. and then you have to imagine all of these 36 million people are wearing masks all the time, everywhere they go.
Now, thatβs something that surprised me, cuz in Berlin people are like, eh, whatever, you know. But Iβve seen people walking down the streets at night wearing masks where thereβs like 10 meters around them. Nobody. Iβve seen a guy sitting in a car on his own, all alone wearing a mask. Like itβs a total grace, I think, by now.
Antoine Walter: you mentioned Berlin and Tokyo, and if Iβm right youβre traveling a bit between those two cities. So where you feel at home? Is it in both cities?
Ben Kimura Gross: I would have to say both. . Yeah, I grew up in Berlinβs, my hometown, kind of.
But I spent a very significant and important part of my life in Tokyo. and I now have family in Tokyo, so thatβs also home . you know, I feel so guilty every time I fly. Itβs horrible , and I try to do less of it. Thatβs why it makes sense for me to, be spending like, this time weβre in Tokyo for two.
Antoine Walter: you are somehow going into the topic in the sense that you have a strong involvement with Greentech and sustainability, but with very different angle compared to whatever weβve been discussing so far on that microphone maybe to start with, Iβd like to understand from you what is the of
Ben Kimura Gross: conversations. Okay, so first of all, one of the basic tenets of Aikido is to never meet aggression with aggression, Your counterpart might be more powerful than you are, and I think thatβs the case in lots of, you know, letβs say youβre a green tech startup and youβre talking to somebody in the power production industry or something like that.
So, , you are facing stronger counterparts. And how do you meet that overwhelming physical power How do you meet that calmly with smarts and superior techniques? Thatβs aikido. In conversations, it means compassion. It means knowing exactly how to ask questions that steer peopleβs thinking in the direction you want them to go, and it means being absolutely clear on your strategic goals.
Unwaveringly Clear.
Antoine Walter: a good summary. , Iβm wondering how you came up. The concept in the sense, you mentioned Greentech, you mentioned negotiation. I think those will be key words for our conversation today. And Iβm wondering what made you think first you need to do something in that sphere and second, that is really one of the skill which Greentech entrepreneurs shall redevelop.
Ben Kimura Gross: Iβll start with the first part, right? How did I even get into this sphere, right? Which is Iβve been training, you know, as a communications trainer. Iβve been working for over 10 years. Working a lot for Iβd say pharma, it some news media, corporations in the government. And the reason I switched away from those clients is because I had the bullet pulled from my eyes, you know, I always thought I was doing my bit in sustainability.
Not only youβre driving a car not using plastic bags. All those little things that people think are quite important and theyβre, they are important, And I thought that was enough. But the moment I started looking into what my friends were doing , my friends in Green Tech who Iβve been talking to more and more over, letβs say the last 18 months.
And the more I started looking into COP 26 reporting and then the I PCC reports coming out around that time I was just like, know, this is overwhelming. I gotta do more. Those little things that we all do, itβs not enough. know, if we all wanna make it through this, we all have to do more about how and thatβs really what got me into the whole sustainability field is people in green tech making me aware that I need to take a more active part and really saying, I donβt wanna say pointing a gun at my chest, but thatβs what weβre saying in German , you know? But asking very direct questions like, you know, do you really want to work for a news media organization that publicly aggressing against Greater Thunberg? Or do you want to work for people pushing for change thatβs gonna.
ensure the continued wellbeing of human societies. Whatβs it gonna be, And that pushed a button and that kind of got me to realize I canβt just keep going the way Iβm going. I need to refocus.
Antoine Walter: you felt that need to refocus.
Yeah. So that explains the switch to the green tech side of things. Mm-hmm. . . But what Iβd like to understand is what made you think that what they were missing the most and where you could help the better was with this perion and negotiation skills?
Ben Kimura Gross: people in sustainability are pushing for change, right? . And one of the greatest hurdles standing in the way of change is overwhelmingly powerful individuals and organizations that are change resistant. Letβs just call βem that. I sometimes I like to call βem Goliath, right?
And thatβs why I call my whole thing negotiating with Goliath. And when I got more involved in, you know, trying to understand what people in sustainability and green tech were doing I was really shocked when I understood that this balance of negotiating power between the sustainability sector on the one side and the Goliaths on the other, Donβt get me wrong, there are some amazingly capable negotiators in green tech and sustainability, and I know some of them, and I totally respect them. But what you have to understand is that the negotiating power of the Goliath has decades of experience, hundreds of millions of dollars of investment built into it.
So on average, your typical green tech startup is not on equal footing with that. looking at this power disbalance, thatβs where the iqo moves come in.
Antoine Walter: Actually, the reason why I was really excited to have the discussion with you and the reason why that topic matters a lot, I think, is that from the 130 guests I had so far on that microphone, I would say , 75% of them mention how we are living in a conservative industry. We donβt evolve as fast as the world is evolving and we always have. A hard time to put a finger on why change is so slow. Mm-hmm. . And I . thought thatβs, you are bringing here a new angle, which is maybe , weβre not convincing enough and maybe we donβt use the right skillsets to be convincing enough. So what Iβd like to, to get from you is to get some start of directions as to how to.
Better at negotiating, at persuading or interlocutors to do the right move and to probably find win-wins on the way. Mm-hmm. , not , that you can do a masterclass in such a short time, but maybe To start a fire. You, itβs a bit of lightning at the beginning to to start to realize.
you mentioned how youβve seen. Good negotiators in that scene of Greentech. And I was wondering to be very blunt, if you have seen also very terrible and very bad negotiators.
Ben Kimura Gross: not just in Greentech, I mean, in every kind of field and even in extremely successful companies right?
Or other kinds of organizations there are always amazingly good negotiators and thereβs horrible negoti. There are negotiators who achieve great results because of the power of the company behind them, even though they themselves arenβt really good negotiators.
Antoine Walter: and how is that different from sales skills?
Ben Kimura Gross: in sales youβre trying to convince somebody to buy something, and then also often youβre dealing with bargaining, right? And these are two very small components of negotiating skills. . thatβs like a sub skill.
Antoine Walter: what more do you have in negotiations?
Ben Kimura Gross: Itβs such a broad field, you know? But Iβll just give you a few one type of skill that Iβd say is also closely linked to. Conflict resolution is to overcome the hurdles that you face as youβre trying to cooperate.
these may be just because you see the world in different ways or you have different sets of interests that you need to somehow align. overcoming hurdles to cooperation is a huge part of negotiation, I think. Then building coalitions, Stakeholder management.
getting people to even understand the nature of a problem, which has been a real biggie in climate change issues, right? Because scientists think that they can help people and even the powerful people running huge organizations or large corporations scientists have been thinking that they can get people to see this problem.
By talking about facts and figures, and of course they canβt, itβs not the way it works.
Antoine Walter: And is there a, a difference between negotiation and manipulation?
Ben Kimura Gross: Absolutely. Absolutely. First I think we should take apart this word manipulation, right? Because it gets a bad rap, even though, weβre all trying to achieve goals.
Weβre all trying to convince people to do the things that we think are important and stuff like that. And most human beings go through their day manipulating, not negatively, not evenly or something like that. But thatβs just part of who we are. We influence each other. Thisβs part of how human societies work, And so, Is there a difference between negotiating and manipulating? Iβd say that the core of negotiating is that youβve got two people whoβve got a common goal, and sometimes yes, thereβs more parties involved, right? Thereβs multi-party negotiations, but letβs just focus on two people. Youβve got two people whoβve got a shared goal that they want to achieve, and in order to achieve it, they need to cooperate.
And theyβre trying to define how theyβre going to cooperate to achieve that common shared goal. If you donβt have a shared goal, you donβt need to negotiate.
Antoine Walter: how do you figure out if you have a shared goal?
Ben Kimura Gross: shared goals come through desires. for example having a wonderful relationship with my wife, And building that wonderful relationship. Thatβs a shared goal, based on a desire to just live a good life, But shared goals can also come through external forces. obviously at COP 27, There are shared goals there. for example, letβs just take my home country, Germany, Not because Germany says, oh, you know what? Weβve been blowing so much carbon into the air way more than Fiji, and we should support Fiji in facing the increased amounts of climate disasters that theyβre facing right now because the carbon that weβve been blowing into the.
I donβt think that any nation wants to hand out money, but Thereβs an international pressure building and thereβs even societal pressure building from within Germany amongst the people who are aware of the problems that Germanyβs actions and the CO2 that is blown into the air are causing.
Sometimes common goals come about because we have to go somewhere so you have to be able to deal
Antoine Walter: with that. So is it safe to assume that if you are in Greentech and sustainability, there will always be a shared goal unless youβre really negotiating with the devil or someone who wants to destroy the planet on purpose.
Ben Kimura Gross: Can I just pick up on this, you know, devil or wants to destroy the planet on purpose? Sure. Because I think thatβs such a big topic, that some counterparts are really tough and you would think that maybe theyβre bent on destruction. They donβt.
And then you ask yourself, well, but wait, why are they so self-destructive? Because they must see that they are also destroying their own life habitats alongside with the habitat for millions and, billions of people as well as the animals, plants, all life on earth, et cetera, right?
Canβt they see how extremely destructive that is? Canβt they see what theyβre doing? And are they like evil? and, Iβm not into the good and evil thing, Because it doesnβt help us. Because if you start defining people as evil, then youβve now taken away any opportunity you had of changing them. You have to Engage with them forcefully once you define people as being evil, you have to destroy them.
So if you turn that around, if you want to negotiate with somebody and you want to, for example, believe that you can change their mind, then you canβt go around defining them as evil. You canβt do that. But what do you do right? . And this is where I find the topic, and I know this is, very scientific and some people, you know, theyβre like, ah, donβt get into that deep science stuff.
You know, I have to be careful, right? But where I find the topic of behavioral physiology really important. the things that we can say about the nature of how our bodies and brains and nervous systems and our perceptive apparatuses, like sight and hearing, et cetera. How all that is built and what that does to influence our behavior, how we see the world, how we make important decisions, et cetera.
And of course how it influences the behavior of the people in the oil and gas. For example, Who you might think, oh my God, theyβre just hellbent on destruction. But I would argue theyβre not. And to understand why they actually see the world in a way that they presume is constructive and helpful and youβre finding it really difficult to negotiate or to actually get them to see your reality as a sustainability.
why thatβs happening, if you wanna understand that. I donβt know how much time we got, this might be a little bit of a detour, but to understand that you have to get into the topic of extinction, Iβm not talking about the doomist kind of, weβre all gonna die extinction, Iβm talking extinction as a natural process.
As a natural process, Extinction is basically about the power of one species or maybe even a subgroup of species to survive. And by surviving and by getting very good at surviving, they drive other groups into extinction. . And so thatβs just a natural process. It happens all the time. Itβs happening right now.
And as humans, weβre also part of the animal kingdom. So, weβre part of this competition for survival. And lots of people, when I start talking about this, they said, yeah, okay, Darwin I know about this survival of the fittest, right? Whatβs new? And whatβs new is that thereβs thousands different kinds of fitness features, which most of them, most people donβt know.
And thereβs one fitness feature that drives human behavior thatβs only recently really come to light. And itβs crazy because this could be the one feature that drives survival more powerfully than any other fitness feature. And. Itβs certainly the fitness feature thatβs driving the behavior of, that oil and gas ceo, right?
Letβs imagine some person whoβs behaving completely irrationally and youβre thinking, oh my God, this guyβs hellbent on destruction. to understand this fitness feature that drives this guyβs behavior. Makes every discussion and every negotiation, every attempt you have make at, persuading this oil and gas ceo.
It makes every attempt at persuading him to come on board like smacking your face against a brick.
whatβs the feature? Running at a brick wall. Full speed. Unprotected. Trying to break it down with the tip of your nose. And so, exactly right. Now youβre going, okay whatβs this feature? Right? Alright. Have you ever heard of the Australian Jewel Beetle? No. . Okay. Sorry, but you know, to understand the feature, you need to understand this weird thing that the Australian Jewel Beetle does.
Okay. Which itβs in the Outback, right? And it finds itself a beer bottle and it starts humping it as if it was gonna make some babies. Now, why would the Australian jewel beetle hump a beer bottle? So weird, right? And the truth is that thereβs a certain kind of beer bottle that has like a pattern and in the right kinda light with the right kind of reflection, it looks like the rump of a female Australian jewel wheel.
And so the male Australian jewel wheel canβt tell the difference. And now you think, oh, thatβs stupid. I mean, they look nothing alike. But the truth is, the Australian jewel beetle doesnβt see reality as it is. It sees reality through the lens of looking for certain kinds of patterns. So just looking for certain kinds of patterns of light.
Patterns of color. Thatβs all it knows. So itβs reality perception is really limited. And Donald Huffman a really amazing researcher explained in his TED Talk, I think itβs about five years. About the nature that we as humans perceive reality. In fact, all organisms perceive reality we all perceive reality through the lens of certain kinds of patterns that we understand to either help us or hinder us in achieving our goals.
So reality, perception and our whole construct in our brains of how the world works and all that kind of stuff is goal. I understand that this gets a bit abstract, right? But what does this lead to? in everybodyβs mind. Reality is a construct. Itβs not a reflection of the way things are.
Itβs a construct. And the other sad thing about it is, That we, we just have to deal with, right? And that scientists who are trying to convince, for example, people in the oil and gas industry like Peter and other, you know, amazing people who are pushing for this change. Thatβs really necessary.
We have to understand the behavioral realities of whatβs going on there, which is,
organisms that are goal driven, In their behavior and their perception in every single experiment thatβs ever been done drive to extinction the organisms that see reality as itβs because reality is too complex.
So, this explains why CEOs who donβt see reality as it is in all its complexity, but who look like theyβre wearing shutters, theyβre very success. Because theyβre at the top of the fitness game. And I think we have to accept this. We have to accept this because this is a reality of human perception.
I donβt want to accept it. Right. Itβs not fun to say like, oh my God, so many people donβt see the world the way it is, and theyβre powerful and and theyβre maybe diluted and theyβre definitely wearing shutters, But we have to accept. if we wanna move forward,
Antoine Walter: thatβs a bit the root of the psychological bias. If we were to be free of psychological bias, we would have a hard time to process all that amount of information out there. And so the psychological bias is a way our brain have put together to help us mm-hmm. ,, mitigate and navigate a word which is very complex.
So this reality which you define as being too complex to be understood.
Ben Kimura Gross: And the sad thing, and I think this is real point, is that who wins,
right? so how do you deal with that? How do you deal with this huge disadvantage that weβve got? thatβs biased against the scientist, really. I think the only way to deal with that is to say, okay, letβs accept the way that human perception works. Letβs accept that evolution is a powerful thing.
Itβs been created in this way, you know, for millions or maybe even billions of years. Letβs accept that cognition is goal driven and not reality driven. the very way that people perceive reality is
limited in its ability to see reality. for what it is, and itβs ultimately super strong goal driven. If you accept that, then you start handling negotiations in a different way. You start handling that seeming evil destructive person in a completely different way because now youβre not looking at a moral wrong, youβre looking at a natural phenomenon of evolution.
Antoine Walter: All you say makes a ton of sense. Iβm wondering where to start with that because , youβve explained how. You cannot win the argument with facts and figures, which makes sense if youβre now appealing to emotions and patterns and bias. And youβve mentioned how this moral high grounds doesnβt help either, because then youβre not looking at your counterpart as someone, which you have to understand and to accept his reality and to try to then find a common ground with its within that reality, or to open him , to a new reality.
But , if now Iβm one of these. Green tech, sustainable entrepreneurs. And Iβd like to change the word for good. What is the very first step I have to undergo? Where would you advise to start compassion?
Ben Kimura Gross: Yeah. Because thatβs the antidote to write your anger. Itβs the antidote to try to take the moral high ground and about the moral high ground issue.
You actually read my ebook, right? Yes. So do you remember that story about the moral high ground? what is the thing that moral high ground does to your face when you take the moral high ground?
Antoine Walter: You look with disdain. Yeah.
Ben Kimura Gross: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So, actually the facial express.
That people who see others as morally corrupt, the facial expression that appears on their face is the same facial expression as with physical disgust. This has to do with how our brains are wired and how moral disgusted and physical disgust are closely linked. so you know that feeling when you, walked around in the garden when you were a kid with your barefoot and right, and you step on something weird like maybe a slug.
That feeling. when you experience moral disgust towards the person youβre talking to, whatβs showing on your face is that same kind of expression as if you stepped on this slug, And now imagine somebody looking at you like that.
How does that make you.
Antoine Walter: Obviously bad .
Ben Kimura Gross: Horrible. In fact, itβs so horrible that people who look at each other, right, who have in a conversation a certain percentage of these kinds of facial expressions that show disgusted 95% of the time, that leads to irreparable damage to the relationship, meaning they donβt want to have anything to do.
if you wanna kill a negotiation, walk in with a sense of moral superiority, do that, and youβll kill the negotiation because human beings do not function on that purely logical level. We just donβt, the emotional triggers created by, Showing that disgust on your face are just so strong.
Antoine Walter: mentioned it a killer, and in your ebook you have seven of those stories. And mm-hmm. , if I remember right, in the one youβre mentioning, the solution is that the person. It doesnβt correct what she was doing. She just gets a chance to have a new start in a different place, and she does it all better the second time, but mm-hmm. would that mean that really itβs a killer if you enter and you once have this superiority on your face, then itβs done. If you donβt get a chance to restart new somewhere else, then that battle is lost forever.
Ben Kimura Gross: Itβs really difficult to fix that one once. Gone down that route, itβs really difficult to fix and sometimes in some situations there are external factors which push you, that you have to deal with that person and then you can try to fix your relationship.
But again, you have to realize at that point youβre not even talking about trying to have a good negotiation. You have to go back to fixing the relationship. and people underestimate how much it is a killer.
Antoine Walter: You mentioned compassion to be the place to start with, which resonates with personally the story are preferred among your seven stories, which I could rely the most on, which is explaining how listening is the first and best skill. Best is now my personal interpretation, but to me that starts with listening because thatβs the way you understand someone. So that would be, , my favorite one among the seven. I was wondering if you have favorite one as well, or one which you would deem to be more efficient
Ben Kimura Gross: is actually my favorite two.
Listening is, Iβd say the number one skill that is underestimated. And at which people donβt perform very well, especially in negotiations where you go in with a certain set of attitudes, certain set of goals, et cetera, et cetera. You wanna push your points, and if thatβs your attitude, then youβre not gonna get the best out of the
Antoine Walter: negotiation.
Itβs a tough one though, because I remember discussing that with Lea Im Obersteg on that microphone and she demonstrated how listening can be tough in the sense that if you finish your sentence and straight after your sentence, I already have a question that means I have not listened and processed to the end of what you were saying.
And so she demonstrated that by saying, if I really want to process what youβre saying, I need to stop and wait for at least two seconds and then come back with the next thing. But we as Zoomin have really hard time with these two seconds of silence, where in fact mm-hmm. it is listening, but it is also.
very uncomfortable. I could see that as a hard to apply tool. , if you want to put it in practice. .
Ben Kimura Gross: Yeah. I think also the same goes in negotiations, right? I think in negotiations thereβs times when you have to have fast pacing and thereβs times where silence can actually help you slow down the pace.
And Iβd say that, if your counterpart kind of depends on working with you on some level, silence can be totally fine.
I mean, you can even use silence to great effect in situations where you ask a critical question and then you just shut up and you wait for them to answer it.
Antoine Walter: Thatβs your fair story. How to reverse the pressure. By just mirror something you interlocutory is saying, and then just stop talking. Yeah. And wait for him to come back. .
Ben Kimura Gross: Yeah. Yeah. The one where somebodyβs offered a very unfair deal, but the person whoβs offering the deal is saying Iβm just trying to be fair here.
Right. And then what do you say? Well, the best thing you can say is, hang, hang there. Yeah. Just let it hang there. You know, if they resist and they just leave the silence hanging there and you know, they kind of out silence you then you can still always take one further step and say, Got the feeling you were really convinced that this is a really fair deal.
So Iβm sure you got the facts and figures to back it up, or Iβm sure you can explain that to me how itβs fair, and again, itβs so important to not ask that in a kind of aggressive way.
Antoine Walter: you mentioned at the very beginning of that conversation how all of that. Sounds like Aikido is something which I never practiced. Aikido. I had one of my music teacher who was a Nike instructors. Thatβs what I know about Aikido. . So Iβm gonna say things which are more stupid than me, so, please donβt be offended, but I would see that as something you have to practice and repeat repeats.
Β Until you create the patterns we were discussing before. When I read your ebook and when I see your full argumentation. Every time at the end of the story, I was like, oh yes, that makes a lot of sense, and that sounds like really the sensitive way to do it. But then if Iβm honest and Iβm putting myself in the shoes of the person at the beginning of the story, I would never behave that way because it wouldnβt cross my mind or I wouldnβt.
Elaborate enough or be clever enough in the instant to come up with the right tactics. how much do you have to train and practice so that you always come back with, if not the best, at least a good line?
Ben Kimura Gross: first of all, Iβd say that the thing that people need to train most is not actually coming back with good lines. , thatβs kind of the last bit, I think the thing that people need to train most is, first of all, the listening skills. Another really important thing that people have to train as compassion,
not to be triggered into saying things that go against their own strategy, because a good negotiator will. Manipulate you into behaviors that actually
generate good results for them, but results that arenβt beneficial to you. some of the most important reflexes you have to learn to control is the reflexes that are already built in. And then with regard to being able to come. with a good line or something. I always say the best lines are probably not lines, theyβre questions.
Itβs good to have the patience to, endure the silence. And even if it means, like, for example, youβre thinking on what to say next, to create those pauses that allow you to figure out what to say. Thatβs also a little trick. I have one negotiated friend who, everybody was like, like this guy must have like a really small bladder, Whatβs wrong with him? Heβs always going to the toilet. Heβs going to the toilet for a very simple reason because heβs like, oh my God, what do I say next? , you should take a break. I mean, you canβt do that all the time, right? But if you get into really difficult situation, also just to have that natural reflex say like, okay, wait.
I need a strategic moment here and people do that. People whatever they pretend to take some kind of important business call that just cannot be avoided. Or other things like that.
Antoine Walter: But that means you have to be kind of coldblooded. reading an analytic position and to try to overcome your own emotions.
If I now put myself in the shoes of a green tech entrepreneur or a sustainability activist, and I want my interlocutor to change something, to change a behavior. to do what I would estimate to be the right thing. , then that is part of my identity, that is part of what Iβm fighting every day about, so.
, I could imagine itβs being hard to really go down to my analytic brain and to think, letβs try to understand that other person to have compassion. I hear what you explain makes a lot of sense. . . Yeah. But itβs hard to commence to my emotions.
Ben Kimura Gross: , so this is also another really interesting point.
Okay. Because, sorry. But we are going back to the behavioral physiology stuff. , thereβs a huge misunderstanding about what emotions are. First of. . Most people have this dichotomy in their head, right? They say, okay, thereβs logical on the one side, and then thereβs emotions on the other side You know, like you said, analytic brain and the emotional brain. And these two are
Antoine Walter: opponents, right brain, left brain. If I want to trigger everybody by saying something stupid I can say that .
Ben Kimura Gross: And honestly, itβs just not true. Thereβs no logical thinking thatβs independent of emotion. Even logical thinking is driven by emotion.
emotions are like the high speed decision makers that help us figure out where to go, what to move towards, who to interact with, what to avoid, all that kind of stuff. So emotions are really smart and emotions are not the antagonist. Emotions arenβt like the bad component of your behavior in a negoti.
They can be really helpful. So the question isnβt overcoming your emotions. The question is
how to replace negative and angry or fearful emotions with positive ones. And thatβs also something you can train. Thereβs things like compassion training or thereβs things like rebalancing, Actually, the rebalancing takes me to another part of a misunderstanding about emotions that we have.
letβs say, I call you a complete whatever, right? Something really horrible, and you go, ah, and you experience an emotion, Whatβs that emotion? Anger. Okay, so letβs say you experience anger and then when you experience anger, maybe something happens physically too, right?
Antoine Walter: I guess Iβm frowning. Iβm getting red.
Ben Kimura Gross: And anything else in your posture maybe or,
Antoine Walter: Iβm getting more aggressive probably.
Ben Kimura Gross: Something in your posture, right? Changes. The thing is, itβs different for everybody, right? Some people, their head moves forward, or some people scrunch their shoulders, some people puff out their chest.
Whatever it is, is a physical change. And now we think, because maybe thatβs the way we were raised, or something like that. That first we experience the emotion of anger and then something changes in our physiology in our body. But actually itβs the other way around. and it happens so fast that you canβt really tell which way around it is.
But if you ask brain researchers, itβs the other way around. The first thing thatβs happening is that your shoulders or your, something around the back of your neck tightens up and you frown and. Your heartbeat might increase, Your pulse rate. And then thereβs this part of your brain called the anterior insular cortex, which is looking at all that information of whatβs happening inside your body, muscle tension, blood pressure, et cetera, and itβs taking that information and itβs sending it to another part of the brain that says, aha, these changes in posture, blood pressure, et cetera, equal anger.
Iβm gonna tell this person to now consciously experience anger. So the physical change comes first and then the emotion. Thatβs the reality. Which brings us to the point of youβre in a negotiation, right? And somebody says something that really gets your goat. Like whatever climate change is, a hoax or something like that.
Whatβs the first thing you should. try to control your anger or try to kind of rationalize away your anger or try to tell him about this. There was a school of thought for a long time that says, you know, youβve really upset me because blah, blah, and Iβm so angry. No, you need a really quick solution.
You need a solution that will fix the problem in half a second. You know what that solution. Is rebalancing your body because letβs say anger makes your neck go forward. the muscles around your shoulders tighten up. And letβs say your pulse rate go up. Now, you canβt do that much about your pulse rate, maybe through some breathing techniques you can work on that, but you can definitely control the tension in your big skeletal muscles.
You can also control your posture. Now the magical thing is, and itβs so easy, itβs almost stupid, The magical thing is that the moment you reset your posture and you relax your big skeletal muscles, which got tense, and you slow down your breathing, that moment, the anterior insular cortex, which is looking at all that information, is looking at your physical, being and saying what happened?
Wait, I have to tell this guy, heβs not angry anymore. , this is the simplification, right? you have to train it. Thereβs a lot of impulses going this way and that way thereβs continuous amounts of triggers happening from your counterpart so itβs a simplification.
I admit that. But in this simplified way of looking at it, if you can rebalance. Your physical state, your posture, your muscular tension, your breathing, you can change your attitude towards your counterpart and you can overcome the sense of aggression that you might have, or even the sense of disgust you might have, which will kill your negotiation.
to me, thatβs magical. thatβs part of what I call compassionate conflict, training. Thatβs really my way of thinking about how to resolve conflict and also how to deal with difficult negotiation counterparts.
Antoine Walter: So now we have two ways to start, or two first steps, which are you just. Put in our list roadmap towards getting a better negotiator, which is this compassion training and this rebalancing of the body. You know, everything in life goes better with three. So would you have a third one?
Ben Kimura Gross: Yeah. And this is more on the cognitive level.
I think you need to be really clear on your final strategic goals, and you need to have a well laid out. That you keep refocusing during the good negotiation, always with, questioning techniques and other cognitive techniques. Keep refocusing on your strategy. Never lose sight of your strategy.
thereβs that difference between tactic and strategy, be tactically flexible and strategic, unwavering.
Antoine Walter: in your ebook I picked up this 15 minutes a day. Is it like the benchmark of how much you should invest in training those strategies, not tactics, or is it more or less would be a good benchmark?
Ben Kimura Gross: It really depends on what skills you already have, For example, some people have , all the skills in terms of strategy, all the cognitive stuff and then they donβt need to train that, And it depends on what kinds of hurdles or problems youβre. Well, what youβre good at and what youβre not good at.
So itβs very individual. But I would say that within a timeframe of about six weeks, even if youβve got no experience at all in negotiating you. You need a mixture, right? You need some on block learning, which is about theory and some role playing and training, but you also need those little nudges every day, But you donβt need two hours every day, So Iβd say ideally, if youβve got two hours, twice a week plus Five minutes every morning, you can make major changes in six weeks.
Antoine Walter: And how do you support those people their road to getting better negotiator? Is it through coaching? Is it through training, form, oral form, face-to-face, online? Whatβs your approach?
Ben Kimura Gross: before Corona I used to work mainly with small groups of people in a room, Not online or anything like that. And Corona came along and it kind of naturally switched to online. which you can have group sessions with up to 25 people online. I wouldnβt suggest that because negotiating is so personal that youβre probably better off with a group of less than 10 people if itβs online.
Itβs gotta be interactive. You canβt learn negotiating from a book and you canβt learn it from reading a whole bunch of PDFs and stuff like that. Itβs gotta be interactive. You also have to be put into those situations where you can sense the. I think thatβs a large component. I also developed a format which I call embed, which is to give you those small nudges on a daily basis.
Thatβs a really important component of how I train. And so basically when people join my course they get a daily three minute audio. Some of them are only two minutes, roughly three minutes maybe. And they get that daily audio file, which is just, you know, some stories, some insights and a nudge to do one tiny little thing differently that day.
And if youβve got that going on every day for six weeks, you know, thatβs like major change in reflexes, habits, et cetera.
Antoine Walter: If at that depth of the conversation weβre having today , we have decision makers in the water industry, which are listening to that. Would you advise them to reach out to you or to go into that field on an individual basis? Or is it the kind of stuff which companies.
Should enlist their people on too, because thatβs part of the soft skills which will be needed in this climate change adaptation phase. We are facing right now.
Ben Kimura Gross: This is one of the questions that Iβm asking myself too, right? Is how do I increase the impact of what Iβm doing? And there are a lot of people who are doing similar things to what I do, itβs not really directly about negotiating, but itβs also about making change happen. So thereβs a whole bunch of good change facilitators, Iβd say, And.
I think depending on the size of the corporation, And if a large corporation says we want to send 200 people to some training then they probably need to find somebody whoβs got a little bit more capacity than I have . Or they can start with an automated course that people can take.
Thatβs an option too. I like having mixed groups of people like somebody whoβs, letβs say a policy officer at the EU level plus somebody whoβs infrastructure for electric vehicles. maybe even an activist right? Thrown into the mix. , And Iβve trained all these kinds of people and what I see as interesting is when you put them together they create very fascinating roleplaying scenarios and thereβs a lot of opening of minds going on.
Antoine Walter: Well, I think that makes for a good summary . For this deep dive , Iβve mentioned your ebook a couple times in our discussion. Of course the links are in the description, so I enjoyed reading it. I guess, that would be the case for anyone downloading that so, just my very humble personal feedback.
I, I liked it. So I guess I would recommend anyone to, to have a read and reading something is never a commitment to too much more than reading it. So itβs already pretty interesting in itself. But if thatβs right with you, Iβm always running out those conversations with a list of rapid, fair questions and propose you to switch to that last
Ben Kimura Gross: section.
Absolutely. Yeah.
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Rapid fire questions:
Antoine Walter: So here the rule is pretty simple. I try to keep the question short, and you have to try to keep the answers short. Iβm never cutting the microphone and usually Iβm the one side tracking, so, donβt worry. , my first question is, what is the most exciting project youβve been working on and why?
Ben Kimura Gross: Oh my God. Okay. This is a rapid fire question. Yes. I have to say an international collaboration to retrain farmers in Columbia. And what many people donβt know, the good news about Columbia is that they just ended a 15 year civil war and they could become one of the bread baskets of the world. . So you know, whether do they need to make this happen?
Well, they gotta retrain 5.5 million farmers who used to grow coca, right, for making cocaine and who now need to be retrained to grow the veggies, fruits, all that kind of stuff. Hope that was short enough.
Antoine Walter: The temptation to go on sidetrack here is very strong, but I have to resist. So, . Okay. Can you name one thing that youβve learned the hard way?
Negoti. Oh, here, I need to know more. How did you learn the hard way ?
Ben Kimura Gross: I donβt have a natural talent for it at all. I came with all the bad reflexes and I had to train all of them outta myself,
Antoine Walter: which usually makes for good teachers. If I go back to my engineering times engineering school times, usually the ones which were very good at maths were terrible teachers just because to them it was too easy and the one which had struggled with the maths themselves ended up being very much better teachers.
So my 2 cents ,
Ben Kimura Gross: thanks.
Antoine Walter: Is there something youβre doing today in your job that you will not be doing in 10?
Ben Kimura Gross: Online marketing . Oh my God, itβs not my thing. .
Antoine Walter: And still youβre a brilliant copywriter, Interesting. .
Ben Kimura Gross: I mean thatβs content creation for me. You know, thatβs may, maybe itβs part of online marketing, but Yeah, Iβll be glad when Iβve, you know, kind of resettled into this new sector, right?
Because as you know, I started off in a completely different sector and I come to just switch a year ago. So Iβm all new to this, and I have to kind of still create a presence.
Antoine Walter: We have this big un water conference coming up in 2023 and we struggl. As an industry, probably. Because of lack of negotiation skills to put a lot of topics on the agenda. But still, if you had the chance to put one topic on that UN water conference agenda, which is the first in 50 year, what would it be?
Mm-hmm.
Ben Kimura Gross: Could I ask you what you would put on, because like I said, Iβm not a water person. Right. But Iβd be fascinated to hear what you would put on if it was up to you. ,
Antoine Walter: Clara, come back. . I wouldβve a hard time putting just one. When youβre involved with it, when you have to overcome your emotions, and Iβm not overcoming , Iβm trying to relax my body and to be
Ben Kimura Gross: Iβm gonna have to pay attention to that whole topic more cuz I think itβs a really tough one and a fascinating one.
Antoine Walter: , itβs a matter of patterns. We have one pattern in our modern word, which is to open the tap and have water and to flush the toilet and see what it disappear.
And so we donβt look beyond those patterns and still thereβs a fascinating reality beyond those patterns. But, , I have to fight my tendencies to sidetrack and let me bring you back with My last question, which is, would you have someone to recommend me? That should definitely invite as soon as possible on that microphone.
Ben Kimura Gross: ?
Yes, absolutely. Iβm training or coaching a startup, which is revolutionizing water filtration. , and theyβre called Aveor. And the two founders, Ian and Arian, theyβre amazing guys. Iβm not the expert to say this, right, but from what I understand, from what people around them are saying, they have breakthrough technology on the cusp of, mainstream media implementation.
So I think they would be really amazing to talk.
Antoine Walter: Well, thanks a lot for the recommendation and , I can confirm Bern that I had a really good time over the tower with you, and I think we learned some very interesting insights into an overlooked part of the interaction we have with stakeholders fight is probably not the right word, but in this adaptation we have to, the new challenges our word is facing.
So, so thanks a lot. , I mentioned how the link to your ebook is already in the show notes. If people want to follow up with you and to contact you directly, whatβs the best way to speak with you?
Ben Kimura Gross: Just write me an email at ben negotiating hyphen with hyphen goliath.com,
Antoine Walter: and that one is as well now in the show notes.
Well, Ben, itβs been a pleasure. Thanks a lot and talk to you.
Ben Kimura Gross: Thank you too.
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