Navigating Negotiations

Welcome to today’s episode of The Communication Solution podcast with Casey Jackson, John Gilbert and Danielle Cantin. We love talking about Motivational Interviewing, and about improving outcomes for individuals, organizations, and the communities that they serve.Today we explore the application of motivational interviewing in union strike negotiations and emphasize the significance of aligning behavior with values and delve into the challenges of compensation disparities. In this episode, we discuss: Application of motivational interviewing in union strike negotiations Importance of aligning behavior with values Addressing compensation disparities, including CEO salaries Role of empathy in reducing resistance and discord in negotiations Bridging visionary organizations and effective communication through MI Contemplating the impact of AI on negotiations and human connections You don’t want to miss this one! Make sure to rate us or share this podcast. It would mean so much to us! Thank you for listening to the Communication Solution Podcast with Casey Jackson and John Gilbert. As always, this podcast is all about you. If you have questions, thoughts, topic suggestions, or ideas, please send them our way at [email protected]. For more resources, feel free to check out ifioc.com. Join MI PLUS+ Want a transcript? See below! Hello, and welcome to the communication solution podcast with Casey Jackson and John Gilbert. I’m your host, Danielle Canton. We love to talk about communication. We love to talk about solutions, and we love to talk about providing measurable results for individuals, organizations, and the communities they serve. Welcome to the communication solution that will change your world. Hi, I’m Danielle Canton, and I am here with Casey Jackson for the communication solution podcast. Hey, Casey. How are you? Good. Awesome. We are here to talk about everything motivational interviewing and how it applies to the world. And I’m very excited about today’s topic because there are so many union strike negotiations happening. So what comes to mind for me is, obviously Michigan. So that’s my hometown, Detroit. So what happens in the automotive world, what happens is a trickle down effect from that. And then of course, California, the writers. So I think it’s kind of a rich topic to talk about, motivational interviewing. So I think I’ll kick it over to you. It is a fascinating topic. You know, my brain is always trying to run things through the MI lens first. And what I always think of fundamentally is, is your behavior in line with your values. And I think what’s interesting from, you know, not being overly versed, in those two current union strikes that are happening, but I was watching one of the interviews where the CEO makes 29 million and got a substantial bonus. And they’re saying, they’re just talking about what’s a livable wage and how to raise a livable wage and how do you argue against that? And it’s interesting because the CEO wouldn’t really answer that question because. It’s almost impossible to compare apples to apples when you’re talking that kind of dollar amount and different in, in wage, what people are making, but what I always think of is how do we peel back and go, is my behavior in line with my values? And so when I think of union workers. When they look at, you know, espousing family values, like from an organizational perspective or for corporate perspective, you know, we’re into family values and we support our workers. And I think there’s a fundamental push to go, well, then put your money where your mouth is. And, and so I think that generates that is the corporation’s behavior in alignment to what it espouses its values to be. This is something we’ve talked about so many times in motivation going with organizational change. I always think is the organization’s behavior in alignment with its own vision, mission. Value statement or guiding principles and most all talk about, to some extent, not only wanting to improve outcomes or quality of life for people, but many reference their workforce and what they want to do to support their workforce as well, too. You know, we support our families. We support our workforce. We support these things. And I think when that gets repeated or messaged enough times, I think then the workforce genuinely is like, well, wait a second. It seems like you value, you know, people at the top way more than you value people at the bottom. At least the, when we look at our, you know, Living paycheck to paycheck or, you know, busting our bodies up, you know, for the sake of producing something or intellectual rights because of, you know, a writer who’s like, nobody can create this exactly where I can create it. There is innate value to that. So when people feel. Not valued. It starts to feel like is my behavior in line with my values. And then when that starts to percolate, then you want to look at, you know, at leadership and go, well, is your behavior in line with what you espouse to the public? So, so again, it’s for me, it’s not a matter of right or wrong. But when you peel back those layers from motivational interviewing, those are the things that kind of. Percolate my brain in terms of, you know, so many people are scrambling. It goes, is my behavior line with my values. And, and that’s why I think circling back around that, that, CEO salary, that’s, that’s a, that’s a rough one to justify, you know, to, because most people can’t comprehend that dollar amount. I think it was like $29 million. It’s just so hard that an individual can earn that much money for a position that they’re in when somebody else may be making minimum wage or. You know, what looks like fair market wage. And so I think that’s going to generate all sorts of blame outside the self and all sorts of ambivalence. Yeah, it’s fascinating when you, you, I just love the way you look at any topic through the lens. And what struck me about what you just described was. The multitude of conversations happening in people’s heads. So you’ve got the workers, the workforce who are saying, wait a minute, you mentioned the writer, you know, it’s just like, wait a minute. Are my behaviors aligned with my values? And then a conversation with the organization leaders saying, well, we’re touting this. Do we really believe it? Is that all aligned? Do we really want to support the workers? How does this work? And then, I don’t know, I feel like there’s a third of, probably the, the society in general, and how that interplays. And what struck me when you’re describing this is. Who’s facilitating that conversation? Because they’re all having separate conversations! Yes. So how, no wonder it’s such a stressful time and feels like this moment of will we ever get through this because everybody’s in their own head. That’s exactly it. And when you come to a table for negotiation, we can talk about win win as much as we wanted to in terms of negotiation, but there’s always that perception that somebody is going to have to give up or lose something. So I know that the, you know, the art of negotiation is to go in that with a win, win mindset. But when you go into that individual mindset, it’s like, well, so I’m not going to get what I deserve. Or am I going to get what I deserve out of this? And I think it’s that, I mean, in a, we’re in a capitalistic society and a capitalistic society. It’s like, well, where is who’s going to get what dollars for what product? So a writer looks at that and thinks, well, you couldn’t even have these products if I didn’t. Generate a script, especially if I’ve generated a script that’s generated, you know, millions, multi millions of dollars and, and what I got in relationship to that really is not much. And now to have that being taken away, like I know in the, with the, the writer strike and, some of the other strikes going on in Hollywood has to do with the, you know, the proliferation of AI right now, because, well, you’re going to use me once and pay me once and then you’re going to use my likeness. You know, at Infini and it’s just like that, that’s not fair. That’s you’re making money off of me. And that’s a whole mindset of it. It’s profit driven. And, and this is, I know partially where the auto workers were frustrated is because it’s been some of the greatest profit margins in recent history for the automobile industry. And they’re like, well, we’re the ones that are busting our humps every single day. And all of a sudden you’re handing over these massive amounts of bonuses. And we’re the ones that are in the field doing the work. We’re the ones in the factories. We’re the ones doing these things to actually produce. And if we didn’t do it, you’re not going to get those great big. Bonuses, so where is the, where is the equity and sharing, which is just an ironic construct for some things fundamentally in a capitalist society that it’s like, you know, to others, unions, unionization, which is ironic because then some people talk about the whole thing about is a union, more of a socialist perspective or a communist perspective versus, you know, capitalism, which is, you know, we’ll just pay somebody else to do it, which is why there’s so many use union vesting. You know, mindsets out there as well, too. So it’s just fascinating. And then it, for me, the easiest way to start to sort it o...