Welcome to this week's sparring session. In our sparring sessions, we invite our guests to showcase their skills in a realistic scenario. In these sessions, don't look at what I do. Look at what our guest does and learn from their style. In some of these sessions, I'm pretty easy to deal with. But usually, my goal is to become the embodiment of your worst nightmare, someone

who's unnaturally persistent, unnecessarily difficult, and at times a little bit socially

awkward.

I want these conversations to be more difficult than it would be in real life so that when

you encounter these situations, you'll know exactly how to handle it.

We do the same thing with our trainings and in our one-on-one coaching sessions with clients.

I strongly recommend listening to the accompanying episode with our guest last week.

That'll give you a little bit more context and help you to develop a better understanding for the scenario.

In this sparring session, Danny is trying to get me to implement a new program at a school

that recognizes the teachers who are doing

exceptionally well in order to improve teacher morale. I play the role of a kermudgeon who has been in

the district for a long time and I don't like change at all. My singular goal in this conversation

is to block his efforts at all costs, so Danny needs to use the skills he

discussed in the previous episode to negotiate with me. Here's some things that I want you to look

out for during the conversation. Pay attention to how he takes his time to respond to my

hostility with curiosity and how he seeks to learn before defending himself reflexively.

Pay attention to how he's able to stay positive

and show appreciation for the things that he agrees with, even though he disagrees with the

majority of what I'm saying. And also look out for the way he's able to get to the root of my

objection and dig deeper than my simple blanket rejection. And lastly, notice how he's able to get me to join him in problem

solving. He essentially recruited me to join his team despite my initial objections. And as always, before we

get into this interview, I want to give a shout out to our sponsor FreshBooks, which is a cloud

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