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'm 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.

Hello, everybody, and welcome back to our sparring session.

And if you didn't catch the first episode, make sure you do that. That will offer some really

helpful context. But with us, we have Dr. Melissa Crum. And then what we're going to do is we're

going to have a difficult conversation, a brave conversation,

dare I say, in the workplace. And so here's the scenario. I own a mid-sized company.

He's been growing rapidly, but we're struggling to recruit and retain women and people of color.

Have not been able to do that well. And so for me, as a hardworking person, I believe that the reason why I got to where I am is because I just work really hard and other people need to work really hard.

And if they're not succeeding, it's because they're not working really hard.

And so Melissa is going to come in and talk about the fact that there might be issues related to diversity, equity, and inclusion within their culture.

And somebody in his organization suggested that they have, that Melissa and the leader have a conversation.

And so Melissa's job in this situation is to try to understand what the real problem is and see whether or not there's an opportunity to work together.

But I am reluctant and skeptical.

Melissa, anything to add to that one?

Oh, no, that's good.

I'm ready to jump into it.

...