Hello, my friends, and welcome to our practice session. In our practice sessions, we invite our featured

guests to show off their negotiation and conflict resolution skills in a realistic scenario.

In this session, I want you to pay attention to what our guest does and not to what I do, because

while they are trying to show off their skills and teach you,

I am trying to frustrate their efforts in different ways through things like

aggression, annoyance, emotionality, or awkwardness.

And then after the practice session, we debrief and talk about what worked, what didn't work,

and what you can use in your next difficult conversation.

All right, everyone. This sparring session is a little bit different than what we usually do,

because this time it is not me versus Jen. It's Jen and I working on a team. And so I'm going

to be in an organization, and I'm trying to push forward a new program and I'm

running into resistance. And Jen is going to coach me through how I can free myself from conflict

in this situation. So Jen, you can start off the conversation how you would typically do it with

a client. Okay. Hi, Kwame, how are you?

Hey, Jen.

I'm doing well.

How are you?

Doing well.

So tell me what's going on.

Yeah, so I've been working in this organization for about 10 years now, and I see a lot of opportunities for us to help the community through the creation of a health policy institute. So we do a lot of

programs that are geared towards educating people, but I think that we can do more. And my vision

for this health policy institute would be a training organization where we empower people

...