Kate, thanks for joining us today. Well, thanks for having me. Yes, it is our pleasure. So how would you get it started by telling us a little bit about yourself and what you do? Well, I'm on the faculty at the University of Tennessee, so far, far away from that red stuff. And I noticed you're sporting a little orange there. This must have been really hard for you, Kwamey. Right? But I have to bow down to the Ohio State football team. Y'all

slayed it. But bottom line is I'm on the faculty at the University of Tennessee. I'm in the

College of Business. And within that, I'm in supply chain. And within that, if you continue to layer

down the onion, I specialize in highly collaborative

win-win business relationships.

You have such a unique approach to difficult conversations and negotiations.

And it's a real paradigm shift.

So when it comes to your approach to negotiation, what is your big idea?

Well, actually, if you're collaborating and you've aligned interest, you shouldn't be negotiating at all. Right. So the sign that you have to feel

like you're negotiating means that you aren't on the same page. So stop negotiating,

turn around, and align interest. This is beautiful. And

it's really a record scratch because we always think about negotiation as a battle like a war.

And for us at the American Negotiation Institute, one of the things we've always wanted to do is

redefine negotiation to be more collaborative. And you've taken it to a whole different level by saying we don't even need to negotiate

if we collaborate well. And the thing is, you've done this at the highest levels. So this is just not

some kind of academic exercise. You've done this in the real world with real businesses, and you have, you've produced,

what, eight books now on the topic. So let's talk about first how you came up with this

approach, and then let's tell a story about it, because I think that will really bring it

all together. Awesome. Well, before joining the University of Tennessee in 2003, I was actually a practitioner. So I worked at Microsoft. I worked at Microsoft's largest supplier at the time. So I had been on, you know, in the trenches doing these big negotiations. And so when you have a big deal at stake with, especially with lots of zeros, our egos get involved, right?

We want to win.

And we're taught, you know, we're taught getting to yes.

And so, but the problem is when we get to yes, you're still have one orange, right?

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