The Ryan Hanley Show
These Negotiation Hacks Will Get You What You Want, Every Time
Thu, 27 Mar 2025
Why do so many of us dread negotiation? Today, Kwame Christian reveals the secrets to transforming negotiation from a battle into a collaborative solution. He dismantles the myth of innate talent, proving that negotiation is a learnable skill, honed through intentional practice. Kwame Christian is a practicing attorney, CEO, and academic who offers actionable strategies for entrepreneurs. He has developed a framework for negotiating that makes difficult conversations easier and more productive, and his innovative approach to negotiation could change the way your listeners view it. Kwame introduces his powerful "Compassionate Curiosity" framework, teaching you how to: Acknowledge emotions without letting them derail the process. Show empathy to build rapport and trust. Engage in joint problem-solving for mutually beneficial outcomes. Here's why these techniques work: Compassionate communication increases negotiation success rates by 22%. Empathy-driven negotiation leads to a 30% increase in long-term relationship satisfaction. An abundance mindset correlates with a 15% increase in creative problem-solving during negotiations. This episode equips you with the tools to master negotiation in both your personal and professional life, transforming conflict into collaboration. 🎯 Takeaways: • Internalize your boundaries to strengthen negotiations • Develop "Compassionate Curiosity" • Embrace an abundance mindset 💬 Sound Bites: • "And we don't focus on the internal negotiation that we have to have with ourselves, and as a result, we fail in the external negotiation and difficult conversations we have with other people." • "It's about who I am and what a person like me does under these circumstances." • "As much as possible before conversations, try to figure out what boundaries might come into play." 🔗 Connect and Discover: Website: https://www.americannegotiationinstitute.com/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kwamenegotiates/ 📖 Chapters: 00:00 "Mastering Negotiation with Kwame Christian" 00:37 Introduction about Kwame Christian 05:37 Mastering Discipline: Habit Over Willpower 08:58 Identity-Based Habit Formation 11:06 "Living by Principles Over Belief" 15:14 "Mind and Body as Vessels" 19:56 Importance of Boundaries and Counseling 22:36 Preventing People-Pleasing: Strategic Pauses 25:48 Embrace an Abundance Mindset 28:20 "Internal Negotiation and Focused Catastrophizing" 32:52 Embrace Your Unique Communication Style 36:12 Embrace Authentic Negotiation 38:05 Equalizing Conversations: Approaching with Awareness 44:16 Effective Conflict Resolution Strategy 47:36 Understanding Others Through Curiosity 50:54 Nonverbal Cues and Persuasion Strategy 51:53 Influence vs. Mindset Autonomy 54:35 "Let Questions Do the Work" 58:11 Future-Focused Next Steps 📌 𝗙𝗢𝗟𝗟𝗢𝗪 𝗠𝗘 𝗢𝗡: Website: https://go.ryanhanley.com/ Course Page: https://masteroftheclose.com/ Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-ryan-hanley-show/id1480262657 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5AZFuTiQsgS9hMQDDdtlOr?si=98432b7806534486 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ryan_hanley
Chapter 1: What are the key negotiation skills everyone should learn?
Hello everyone and welcome back to the show today we have a tremendous conversation for you with Kwame Christian he is America's number one negotiation coach he has the number one negotiation podcast negotiate anything and if negotiation if tough conversations if getting to an outcome that makes you feel confident.
and satisfied and fulfilled is something that you struggle with, which for so long I did. I'm a people pleaser at heart, and just my default mechanism was to say yes, regardless if whatever that person was asking for was good for me or not. And I've had to develop negotiation skills.
And in this conversation, Kwame breaks down negotiation in such a simple but effective and powerful manner that even if...
you shrink and shrivel and start shaking with terror at the idea of having to negotiate for something like a raise or a tough conversation with a spouse, etc., that he is going to give you a framework today that you can put in place immediately that is easy to understand, easy to remember, and incredibly easy to implement and is ubiquitous, regardless of scenario and type of conversation, personal, business, etc.,
You are gonna love this. There is so much value in this show today. We're gonna get to it right now. I give you Kwame Christian.
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Chapter 2: Why do so many people struggle with negotiation?
In a crude laboratory in the basement of his home.
Dude, super excited to talk to you. So glad you took some time. I want to start maybe at the end, which is why are most people so bad at negotiating?
anything like it just seems like this is a skill that it is literally paramount to almost every conversation we have in our life yet we're never trained on it and when you see people actually have some the pressure of some type they tend to not know what to say not know how to like it it is just a skill that we are not seemingly naturally gifted with so why is this why do so many people struggle with this particular skill of negotiation
This is such a great place to start, man. And especially the way that you framed it, negotiating anything, which is the name of the podcast. This is perfect.
You think I'd done this before?
I know. Great job with research. And here's the thing. I think that a lot of times we just need to break it down to the basics. And if we understand the basics, then understanding how to reverse engineer success becomes very easy. So number one, why are we so bad at this? It's because we have never had the opportunity to meaningfully practice.
You know, if I give you a bow and arrow and ask you to shoot a target, most likely you won't hit it. I know I wouldn't. I just don't have the skills. If you give me enough time and rep and put dedicated, diligent practice to it, then we could do it, right? It's the same with difficult conversations.
And I think what ends up happening is that people overcomplicate the situation and they don't recognize that in order to be successful, you just need a core set of skills. And the thing is that we have had flashes of those skills at different times. But we need to put it together with intentionality. So we'll get to those core skills.
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Chapter 3: How can internal negotiation improve external outcomes?
The other thing, too, is that in the negotiation industry for years, we have been giving recipes to people who are afraid to get in the kitchen. It's not an issue of people not understanding what needs to be done or said in the moment. It's that for whatever reason, they cannot do or say what needs to be done or said in the moment. It is a mental and emotional issue.
Everybody's going to have a unique performance gap that comes from something, right? For me, I'm a recovering people pleaser.
and so that's what i had to overcome some people have maybe childhood trauma and then it triggers that fight flight or freeze response and so whenever they are in a difficult conversation they freeze or they fight back or they're overly combative or they are just they placate the other side and compromise too quickly
And so we all need to understand what's holding us back so we can put ourselves in the best position for success. And we don't focus on the internal negotiation that we have to have with ourselves. And as a result, we fail in the external negotiation and difficult conversations we have with other people.
I love your point about the internal negotiation because you think about all these influencers, not in a bad way, right? Like, like Goggins and even Rogan, all these, you know, say like on that, like workout, get at, like they're trying to teach you Jocko. They're trying to teach you discipline, hard work, which are incredible things that are necessary for success.
And the question always comes like, why is being disciplined so hard? And I would have to imagine it's because we set a goal that, And then we don't, you know, when our mind or our lizard brain or whatever you want to call it starts pushing back on us, we have literally no idea how to negotiate with that thing that's going on up here. And like, that's the first negotiation every day.
Like, should I get out of bed or should I hit the snooze bar? Right?
Absolutely. It's the war within. How do we overcome that? Right. And Goggins does a great job of breaking down how he has just mastered his mind to do just incredible things. And we need to figure out what it is that we need to do internally to get to that point.
And one of the things about discipline that people often overlook is that if we are doing it right, if we're doing it right, we should only be using discipline for a set amount of time until we develop a habit. And then you don't need to have discipline anymore. You know, so for me, when I'm trying to get up and go to the gym at the beginning, it was very hard.
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Chapter 4: What role do boundaries play in successful negotiations?
You just tell it what you are, and over time, it will just start to believe you, and then, again, acting that way, and it can be that simple. I was about to say the other day, it's cliche, but it's also true. Why do sales guys, before they walk in the meeting, have like, mega death or like Wu Tang or whatever on, right?
Like this, let's just like hard, like masculine, let's get after it kind of music. It's the, it's simply just to frame your brain so that when you get out of the car to go walk in that meeting, you're feeling good. Your chest is up, your shoulders are back, right? Like you're just, like you said, you're just programming, intentional programming. It's nothing more than that.
That's it, man. And I think what we have to do is we have to recognize the power of intentional programming, right? We're being programmed all the time. Anytime you're receiving a message, it's an attempt to program you one way or another. So we have to be intentional about reprogramming our minds, right?
And so for me, before negotiation, a big negotiation, before I go on stage to deliver a keynote, I still feel the same nerves and fear that I did before. I just recognize that that's a necessary part of the process and I've learned to enjoy it because it's not going away. I might as well befriend it and recognize it's a signal I'm often on the right track.
And that bass, studies have showed that listening to really aggressive music with a lot of bass gives you a lot more confidence when it comes into a difficult conversation. So blast that music. It is scientifically sound. It works. And when we think about this, what is a belief? A belief is nothing more than a thought that we have thought a number of times and we've absorbed as our own.
And so we still have the power to address those beliefs. So in my first book, when I was talking about finding confidence in conflict and I was walking through how I got confidence, I essentially turned myself into my own experiment. My undergrad degree was in psychology. And so what I said is, let me reverse engineer an approach specifically for difficult conversations.
So I treated it like a phobia. So there's something called cognitive behavioral therapy. And at its roots, what you want to do is you want to identify problematic beliefs and thought patterns and then replace them with more empowering beliefs or thought patterns. So I call these helpful fictions. Whether or not it is true, I will choose to believe it because it's helpful for me.
So I say going into any negotiation or conversation. no matter what the situation is i believe that i have the skills to connect with and persuade anybody no matter what the circumstances are no matter who the other person is i can still do it and is that always true Probably not. But because I believe it, it makes it more likely to be true.
Because when you think about the reality of self-fulfilling prophecies, we don't recognize how frequently our disempowering beliefs that are also untrue guide the outcomes of our interactions. Right. So if I go into this conversation and I say, man, you know, Ryan's a tough one. I don't know. He's not probably not going to agree with me.
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Chapter 5: How does an abundance mindset affect negotiation?
Whatever it is, I'm going to label the emotion because it'll lower the emotional temperature of the room. Then when I see, feel like we've gotten to a point where emotions are manageable, then Then I'm going to get curious with compassion to gather information.
Then when I have enough information and everybody's at a place where emotions are manageable, then we're just going to work together and figure it out. And so sometimes you might be in the problem-solving phase and then somebody gets emotional. Then we just cycle back to number one. So it's a flexible framework that helps you to understand what to say and when to say it for maximum impact.
Wow, I love that. I think, you know, I know for myself, I'm way more willing to give than when I feel like the other person understands, they may not, they don't have to agree, but at least understands where I'm coming from. I know I immediately open up in those scenarios. Yeah. And so that, that part makes complete sense.
You know, that could that also be like, what I'm hearing you say is this, is that accurate? Kind of like a, almost like a reframe and acknowledgement kind of thing. Like this is what I'm getting. And then they can tell you, no, that that's not actually it, but you're at least understanding.
What you're trying, if I'm hearing you correctly, what you're trying to do is just help them feel understood. Yes. Like you know what they're actually about or what they're actually trying to do.
Exactly. Because if you don't make them feel understood, then they're going to spend the rest of the conversation trying to make you feel understood on whatever that point happens to be. So that's why ignoring emotions is so problematic.
If I see that you're struggling emotionally or you're feeling something and I pretend like it's not there, then in your mind, you're going to be like, he doesn't get it. I'm going to turn the volume up. And it makes things worse. So you're just paying the person the respect to say, hey, listen, I see you. And we have to remember, acknowledgement does not mean endorsement.
It's highly likely that you don't agree with what they're saying. And so when you're summarizing, I would just say, hey, so Correct me if I'm wrong, but it sounds like from your perspective, your frustration comes from this and this. So I'll show that I understand. I might not agree. But like you said so many times, just showing that you understand is enough.
And if you're really disciplined with this, Ryan, you can find that a lot of our conflicts are just issues of understanding and respect. Sometimes the person doesn't even want you to do something. They just want to feel heard. And then we try to problem solve or we tell them that they're wrong. And now we get in this unnecessarily unproductive conversation.
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Chapter 6: What strategies can help combat negotiation anxiety?
Chapter 7: How can reframing your identity boost negotiation confidence?
So, for instance, listening can be easy if I agree with everything that you say and you're very complimentary to me. But if I'm in a tough negotiation or a tough conversation, then listening becomes very, very hard.
But I need to utilize discipline in that moment and recognize that everything within me, my emotions will want me to jump in, to interrupt, to defend myself or not listen or just listen to respond, not listen to understand, right? But I need to work through that in the moment. And the first few times I do, it'll be hard. And then it'll slowly start to get easier.
But then if you do this with intentionality, then it just becomes your natural response. Now you have the negotiation habit. So you don't need to rely so much on discipline because it's just part of you at this point. You've intentionally programmed yourself for success.
I love the part about being intentional and how we program ourselves and kind of leading into that is Is part of this, similar to your gym example, kind of reframing how we view ourselves? So you went from being, I'm not a guy that works out, to now, if someone were to ask you, you're like, I work out. I'm a guy that works out. You've reframed kind of who you are.
Is that similar with the negotiation where, you know, I've literally heard people say like, I can't ask for a raise. Like I'm not that kind of person, right? Where it's simply just reframing your brain to go, well, you're just telling yourself that there's literally nothing intrinsic in you that makes you not the type of person that could negotiate something or go into that type of conversation.
So as part of this working to just reframe your own self-perception that you are the type of person who's willing to negotiate and willing to push back and ask questions and going through that.
One hundred percent. When you think about what leads to habit retention, one of the best things you can do is make identity based habits. Right. So, for instance, they did a study where they said, OK, our goal is to try to get people to vote more or get the habit of voting. And so instead of framing it in terms of voting, they said it's more powerful to frame it as the person is a voter, right?
so you ask what does a person like me do under these circumstances well as a voter i vote right and so what does somebody like me do under these circumstances as a negotiator i negotiate right so for me i'm a husband i'm a father and a lot of times like i'm not feeling it i run a business i'm tired right i'm exhausted but i know well what should i do under the circumstances i'm not just going to do what my body naturally leads me to do especially when it's hard i say well what does a good father do right now
A good father will take a deep breath, lock in, and focus on his son as he talks about his hard day at school, even though there are a bunch of emails and a lot of client responses I need to have and my employees are asking for my attention. That's hard to utilize that discipline in the moment. But since I focus on my identity as a father, I'm locked in right now, right?
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