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221. How to Have Difficult Conversations About Race, with Kwame Christian

Sep 9, 2022

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In today's conversation, I am joined by Kwame Christian, who I believe is our first 3-peat guest! (Though Dr. Marco Palma from the Human Behavior Lab at Texas A&M has technically been on the show three times, once was part of a panel when we launched the certificate program so I am going to say that Kwame is in a class all his own (for so many reasons)).

Kwame was also my first guest on the first-ever live show of The Brainy Business on Fireside earlier this week. If you haven't heard of Fireside yet or checked out the show there, and if you don't yet have enough Kwame (I know I never will!) check out the replay within these show notes. Fireside is a new platform co-founded by Mark Cuban where I was recently invited to do a show. It lets the audience come up on stage to participate and ask questions. It is really cool and I’m going to be testing it out for a bit to see if this is a good permanent addition to the content you get from The Brainy Business. So if you want to stay around and have a chance to come behind the scenes and be part of the show, please come join us there. And of course, listen in on this episode as Kwame and I talk all about his new book, How to Have Difficult Conversations about Race.

Show Notes:

[00:40] In today's conversation, I am joined by Kwame Christian, who I believe is the first guest to be here on the show three times AND my first ever guest on the live show on Fireside.
[01:42] Fireside is a new platform co-founded by Mark Cuban where I was recently invited to do a show. It lets the audience come up on stage to participate and ask questions.
[03:20] Today we are talking all about Kwame’s new book, How to Have Difficult Conversations about Race, which officially comes out on September 13th.
[05:18] Kwame shares about himself and his background. Kwame is an attorney, does work in negotiation, and has a background in psychology.
[07:27] Kwame shares his journey in writing his new book. He wants to be where the toughest conversations are.
[08:47] He is not here to teach people how to think about race. He is here to offer guidance on how to talk about race.
[11:11] We are all biased in different types of ways and we need to think more broadly about bias. People need to have a more empowered stance when it comes to bias.
[12:32] Bias is real and it is going to play a role so why don’t we take the time to calibrate and manage the role of bias in our favor? It is a strategic tool we can leverage to our advantage.
[14:22] We are biased against bias.
[15:18] Let’s live with the fact that we have biases and learn to manage them.
[17:22] If we are not making any mistakes that might be an indication of us not interacting with people that see the world differently than us.
[18:11] We have to be outcome-oriented in our conversations. We need to know our goal and then reverse engineer a strategy for that goal.
[20:04] We need to recognize that we need to be aware of the biases but not fear them. Biases make us human.
[23:07] Kwame shares a true story from his book about a man named Daryl that tries to convert KKK members. He has converted over 200 members.
[25:51] We have more persuasive power than we realize.
[28:27] In these conversations we are not going to try to win.
[30:02] His new book can be used by anybody that has any goal in a difficult conversation.
[31:54] Anything that does not violate a physical law is negotiable. We can negotiate anything, we just need the right mindset.
[34:05] Conflict is an opportunity. These difficult conversations provide us with opportunities. We just need to be curious and listen.
[36:26] Melina shares her closing thoughts.
[37:29] Not every battle is yours to fight. Choose where you can have or want impact and go full force, one strategic decision at a time.

Thanks for listening. Don’t forget to subscribe on Apple Podcasts or Android. If you like what you heard, please leave a review on iTunes and share what you liked about the show.

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Get the Books Mentioned on (or related to) this Episode:

Finding Confidence in Conflict, by Kwame Christian
How to Have Difficult Conversations About Race, by Kwame Christian
What Your Employees Need and Can't Tell You, by Melina Palmer
How Minds Change, by David McRaney
What Your Customer Wants and Can't Tell You, by Melina Palmer

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