Jim Tamm (on the #1 teamwork blocker)

Jim Tamm, a former judge, shares his journey from being a judge to becoming a collaboration consultant, author, and founder of Radical Collaboration™️.

He discusses the most common reason why people fight instead of working together. 

He also shares the data from 1000s of organizations that proves an ROI and impact of collaborative skills-- resolving conflicts and improving organizational performance. Jim as identified 5 core skills: collaborative intention, openness, self-accountability, self-awareness, and problem-solving (negotiation). 

Tamm suggests that managing defensiveness and mastering interest-based negotiation are key to making a positive impact in relationships and organizations.

Measurable benefits of collaboration, such as increased trust, reduced conflict, and improved revenue, have been seen across his clients. 

Transcript

Ronen Pessar (00:01.202)
All right. So I am super thrilled, Jim, that you agreed to get on this call because just a few weeks ago, we got to meet in person at the Radical Collaboration Training. As we were schmoozing just a minute before, you started saying, you know, how one of the tougher things you did was leave your job as a judge, you'd loved it so much and started going into this new direction. That might be a nice place to start, which is-

How did you even make that change from being a judge and then now you have this whole legacy behind you?

jim Tamm (00:37.567)
Sure. Well, I was, the jurisdiction that I had when I was a judge was labor management disputes. So it was all employment conflicts, mostly labor management, you know, unions versus managers, managers versus unions, things like that. And I ended up doing a lot of settlement work in that role. And I really enjoyed the settlement work. It was fun for me. I liked being in neutral.

which was difficult for some of the other judges who had been advocates, you know, before they were judges and they liked being advocates for one side or the other. But I came from a neutral point of view. So it was, for me, it was like a dream job. And because of all of the settlement work that I was doing there, I think I've mediated more school labor strikes than anybody else in the United States. So I had a fair amount of

Ronen Pessar (01:29.378)
Wow.

jim Tamm (01:32.303)
I had a lot, not a fair amount, I had a lot of experience working with organizations that were in a lot of conflict. And as a result of that, when the state, the state of California and the Public Employment Relations Board decided to do a pilot project where they were trying to teach collaborative skills to unions and managers, they asked me to be a part of it. So I was one of the design team members and also one of the initial.

Ronen Pessar (01:55.05)
Hmm.

jim Tamm (02:00.491)
faculty members on that for several years. And we just had phenomenal results there. We reduced the amount of measurable conflict, things like number of unfair labor practice charges that were filed by almost 70% in, I mean, this saved the state of California so much money that the state legislature eventually ended up.

Ronen Pessar (02:18.218)
Wow.

jim Tamm (02:25.779)
creating a nonprofit foundation to keep offering the training to other public sector organizations.

Ronen Pessar (02:30.626)
Wow. So you're telling me, Jim, that because of the success that you had seen in the early work that you were doing, the state actually instituted an organization, created a space to continue to fund the work.

jim Tamm (02:44.495)
Yeah, yeah, it was called C-Fire, the California Foundation for the Improvement of Employer-Employee Relations. So a long name, but it was it was very active in the state for a number of years. And I was fortunate enough to the agency that I was working for was allowed me to work on that project part time, actually half time, which was more like three quarter time because I enjoyed it so much.

Ronen Pessar (03:10.446)
Hehehe

jim Tamm (03:12.647)
But we would go out and we would teach organizations how to be more collaborative. And then it came time where I was either going to have to go back and be full time as a judge, or I was getting very close to an early retirement with the state because I'd been a judge for 25 years. And

Ronen Pessar (03:32.858)
Hmm.

jim Tamm (03:34.835)
the state had a nice retirement package because it was under a big budget crunch and they were trying to encourage people to retire at the time. So it worked out perfectly. And so I took an early retirement and then went to work for a fellow named Will Schutz, who you know about, but Will was the creator of Pyro Theory. Ended up being one of the managing directors of his consulting company. So that's how I made the switch from being a judge to being more of a consultant.

Ronen Pessar (03:52.787)
Oh yeah!

jim Tamm (04:04.847)
And then I ended up writing the Radical Collaboration book, which was about the experience that we had teaching these organizations how to be more collaborative and what we learned from that. And when that was published, then that changed everything. It was like my world went from a lot of California work to worldwide and the book got translated into Japanese and Chinese and Dutch and Spanish and Swedish and.

So it's been a fun ride, but not one that I planned, but boy, I'm sure enjoying it.

Ronen Pessar (04:42.982)
I'm happy to hear that. And it certainly has made an impact on me and I know probably thousands of people, if not already tens of thousands. You know, I'm curious because I do want to get into, of course, the impact of radical collaboration. I think one of the things that people always want to know is like, how do you measure this stuff? But if we briefly pause that, I just want to ask a question about, you know, what it was that if you look back at your years as a judge, do you think if you...

Knowing what you know now, you were able to look back. Were there any signs of the parts that you enjoyed the most doing your judge work that might have been an indication that in the future, you would have been doing a lot more of the radical collaboration work in terms of being able to put the work out there, the research and training, the thousands of people who've gone through the program.

jim Tamm (05:31.168)
Yeah, absolutely. I could tell pretty early on in my career as a judge that the part of the work that I enjoyed the most was doing the settlement work, helping the parties find agreement. And we wouldn't let any parties go to a trial unless they went through a settlement process. And we were able to settle probably 80%.

of the cases that we got. And if we had not been good at settling cases, our workload would have been overwhelming just because there were so much to do. So we had a strong incentive to really try and help the parties settle cases. And I found that so much more satisfying than writing a decision, you know, that probably wouldn't please anyone usually because oftentimes people...

don't have a realistic expectation of what can happen in litigation or what they're going to, you know, what a win looks like in litigation. It's really a crap shoot for most parties. So it felt rewarding to me to help the parties come up with a settlement that worked for them. And I always felt that if the parties could work out something to a dispute, it was much better than somebody from the outside coming in and telling them what they needed to do.

Ronen Pessar (06:36.13)
Hmm.

jim Tamm (06:55.183)
So it seemed to be very rewarding for the parties as well. And I think we came up with better solutions that lasted over time, because they were a part of the solution, not just a part of the problem. So it was obvious to me that I really enjoyed that. And there's something called enjoyment theory that if you really enjoy something, you tend to do it more. If you do it more, you tend to get better at it. If you get better at it, you get better feedback.

Ronen Pessar (07:18.155)
Mm-hmm.

jim Tamm (07:23.107)
about it. You enjoy that more and it goes around and around and around, you know. And the opposite is true also. If you don't enjoy something, you don't do it, you don't get better at it, you don't get good feedback. And a number of the judges that had been advocates for, you know, a strong advocate for one side or the other, either unions or managers, some of them had a hard time stepping into that neutral role and they wanted to be advocates. So they didn't enjoy the settlement.

work as much as I did. So they weren't as good at it. They didn't have as much success. You know, so it was a match made in heaven, so to speak. I got to do a lot of settlement work and I really enjoyed that the most.

Ronen Pessar (08:08.002)
that's really makes a lot of sense when you describe it like that. And I wonder if you even went back further, even before your time as a judge, if you had any clues in your memory of, whether it was childhood, adolescence, growing up, that might've also been clues that like, hey, this is the kind of work that, as you had mentioned, the Joyman theory, like I really enjoy it. And I wonder, did anything ever come up in your time thinking about how you got here that could reflect all the way back to just sort of...

who you became and who you were.

jim Tamm (08:38.695)
Well, I do remember as a kid, and I have not thought about this until you just asked this question, I do remember as a kid, I was always pretty good at having a wide diversity of friends. You know, I tended not to get as angry with people. I tended to make a lot of friends.

that wouldn't normally be together. And I'm thinking back when I was in the like the fifth grade or something, and when I, I can think back on that now. And I wasn't paying attention of it at the time, but I think that probably that desire to build those bridges, I think, you know, probably stuck with me. I didn't have that in mind when I went to law school.

Ronen Pessar (09:30.946)
Hmm

jim Tamm (09:37.223)
It wasn't until I actually became a judge that I realized how much I enjoyed the settlement work. But yeah, but there are some, you know, some breadcrumbs back in the distance there.

Ronen Pessar (09:48.398)
Thanks for watching!

It's always interesting to explore that. I know for myself, anytime I've gone deeper into my past to see trends, it helps clarify the future of where I might want to head. And that has always been a successful venture to take time to reflect and analyze. Was there anything in the past that might have been an indication of where I might want to head?

jim Tamm (10:03.164)
Yeah.

jim Tamm (10:11.932)
Yeah, because oftentimes we don't see things in the present. I mean, when it's right before us, we don't see it until we're looking back on it. And oftentimes I find, at least in my life, when I've made big decisions, that's not something that just happened when I made the decision. Something happened several years earlier that allowed me to have the right mindset or have the right set of skills or whatever.

to lead in the direction that particular decision takes me. So oftentimes the big decisions we make, the real point that leads to that decision isn't when you're making the decision, it's several years earlier.

Ronen Pessar (10:59.03)
And you know, that's such a good precursor to some of the core skills that are taught in the RC workshops, especially around the self-awareness. That so much of our decisions are subconscious and operate from history that might no longer be serving us well in our lives, but ways that we might've built up defensiveness to protect ourselves and our feelings. And I'm...

super eager to get into that part of like the core skills with you. But before we do, I know one of the biggest questions and you alluded to this earlier, one of the biggest questions in any shrewd business person's mind, a business owner or a team leader is going to be, all right, this all sounds cool and interesting and lovely, but talk to me dollars and cents. Like what's the bottom line impact here? Why should I focus on collaboration and not innovating?

jim Tamm (11:47.283)
Yeah.

Ronen Pessar (11:52.67)
or creating the next AI blockbuster product or whatever it is. What is the actual difference to a company's bottom line? Can you prove that there's any value, measurable value here?

jim Tamm (12:06.855)
Yeah. There has been an enormous amount of research showing that what we're talking about is not just designed to help you feel better. I mean, that's nice. It's a nice byproduct. But we're not in the feel better business. We're in the business of resolving conflict. And in order to resolve conflict, you need to have some skills.

and other organizations that are not in the conflict resolution business, they're in the business of working together like in a hospital. They can't do it if they can't collaborate. Now, they may not realize that's the skill that they're missing. They just know that it's like they're sand in their gears that are grinding a little bit, and they don't know what's going on. But...

Ronen Pessar (12:59.638)
Right.

jim Tamm (13:03.099)
There's just a lot of research showing that a collaborative environment will outperform a more adversarial or less aware environment over time almost consistently. I mean, we, I mentioned that we reduced the amount of measurable conflict like 70%. Well, that saved the state of California a huge amount of money. We had the...

In one research study done by the University of California, they came in and interviewed all the participants that went through the Radical Collab, it was the precursor to the Radical Collaboration Workshop. People that had gone through for about a year and a half earlier, I guess. Trust went up by almost 60%. Yeah, and when trust goes up, conflicts go down.

Ronen Pessar (13:41.486)
Mm-hmm.

Ronen Pessar (13:53.494)
Wow.

jim Tamm (14:00.059)
because people can work things out. When conflicts go down, profits go up because you can focus your attention more readily on what the task is that you're supposed to be doing rather than all the distractions of the drama that's going on in the work situation. Another great study, which I think is probably one of the more classic studies ever done, it was by Cotter and Heskett. They wrote a book called Corporate Culture and Performance.

Ronen Pessar (14:04.82)
Hmm.

Ronen Pessar (14:27.275)
Mm-hmm.

jim Tamm (14:30.299)
where they looked, they started with over a couple hundred large global companies. They were all listed on the New York Stock Exchange. They were from like 22 different industries. And they went out looking for organizations that had clearly defined cultures throughout the organization. Now, no organization is gonna be pure collaborative or pure adversarial, but anyway, they found some that were primarily this way or primarily that way.

Ronen Pessar (14:43.643)
Hmm.

jim Tamm (14:59.623)
And the ones that were collaborative over time, their revenue went up like 756%. The revenue of the other companies that were much more adversarial went up 1%. A 755% increase in the amount of revenue that they generate. I mean, that was over an 11 year period. Yeah.

Ronen Pessar (15:23.05)
And that was over like an 11 year period or a 10 year period or...

jim Tamm (15:27.739)
That was just, I mean, that's just a stunning piece of research. We've had three international studies that followed up on the radical collaboration workshops that we've been doing all around the world. And they averaged, these were three different studies, but they averaged more than a 33% increase in effectiveness at getting their interests met anytime they were in a conflict situation. Well,

I don't know about you, but if I can get my interest met a third percent or 30% more often than I could before, that's gonna make a qualitative difference in my life. And not just a nicer life for me, but a more productive, a more effective, and for businesses, a more profitable life.

Ronen Pessar (16:15.026)
And you know what, as you're saying that, it makes me really wonder because, sure, you've got the business profit, but you just said something really interesting there about what that does for that person's quality of life at work or in the context of being around others. And it sounds like for the most part, if you're able to reduce the kind of conflict that leads to distress or possibly passive aggressive behaviors and have more collaborative conflict,

jim Tamm (16:27.603)
Yeah.

jim Tamm (16:42.687)
Mm-hmm.

Ronen Pessar (16:45.162)
you're able to actually enjoy work, maybe by a certain amount of percentage as well, more than you did before.

jim Tamm (16:54.379)
Let me tell you that I've been through so many situations where an organization Say they'll go out on strike. There's a labor dispute They go out on strike and they're angry with each other for several years over this. This is a enormously stressful environment to work in and when they can change to a more collaborative environment and start supporting each other in trying to Get their goals met That if you look at a school district

I mean, you look at the difference in the lives of the teachers, you look in the impact that has on the students. The students see how there may be other ways of resolving conflict other than going out and going on strike or doing things that could destroy the community. They see their role models, the principal and the union leader, they see them working together trying to resolve things.

Ronen Pessar (17:29.481)
Mm-hmm.

jim Tamm (17:49.799)
That makes a huge difference in the quality of life of everybody that has an impact, that's impacted by that school system, for example. So yeah, good point.

Ronen Pessar (17:59.134)
And I can tell you firsthand with my own experience with radical collaboration, after I went through the first workshop, I think it was November and then the trainer certification just a month ago, I have been a different partner at home. With my wife, I've been able to better understand what are your interests here? What are my defenses? How am I showing up defensively or with a defensiveness? And what is my underlying fear behind that?

jim Tamm (18:13.287)
Bye.

Ronen Pessar (18:27.422)
And if I can be aware of that, I'm able to actually pay more attention to what her interests are versus mine and then maybe actually exploit the win-win scenarios and come up with some options and solve these problems. In her words, not mine, and this is something I wish I had recorded, she was like, yeah, Ronan's been transforming our family lately. And I mean that. It's been amazing. There's been literal transformation in the last few months alone at home.

jim Tamm (18:39.281)
losing.

jim Tamm (18:44.755)
Ha ha ha.

jim Tamm (18:48.249)
of... You know-

That's great. And that's consistent with what we've experienced over the past 25 years too, because when Ron Luey and I set out starting to do these workshops, we were focusing on business, because we were consultants at the time, and that's where the money is for the most part. But after we were doing workshops, people would come to us and say, you know, I'd like to bring my husband to this next workshop. Is that possible? Or, you know, I've got some teenagers at home. I'd like them to come and experience this.

Ronen Pessar (19:18.456)
Hehehe

jim Tamm (19:22.779)
So we started doing some couples workshops or family workshops. Absolutely everything that we teach in an organizational setting is applicable in the family setting or with your neighbor, or your kids or your parents. So it is, it's, these are skills that can help organizations be much more effective, but it helps people be more effective as well, just personally in everything that they do.

Ronen Pessar (19:34.926)
Oh yeah. I believe it.

jim Tamm (19:52.929)
So these are pretty universal skills.

Ronen Pessar (19:55.886)
And so, okay, talking about skills, which I know recently all the bestsellers that have been hitting the market are things like super communicators, which I do want to ask you about before we end if you've gotten a chance to look at it. But speaking of skills, right, we're talking about emotional intelligence related skills. These are EQ, if you will, not necessarily IQ, traditional book smarts. So what are the core five skills taught in a radical collaboration workshop?

jim Tamm (20:23.003)
Yeah, well they're both, they're a combination of mindset and skill set. Because so much of it has to do with what your attitude is, you know, but a lot of it also has to do with, can you figure things out? Can you, do you have the skill set to solve problems? Because that isn't something that we learn in school most of the time, you know? So what we, in looking back on it, we didn't realize that, you know, there were

jim Tamm (21:22.613)
Are we back? Okay, good.

Ronen Pessar (21:23.374)
Alright, and you're back. That was actually great. You were about to get into what are the five skills and you said yourself and Ron hadn't yet really come up with five when you just started.

jim Tamm (21:30.397)
Yeah.

jim Tamm (21:35.401)
Yeah, in fact, when I was writing the Radical Collaboration book, we would bounce between, you know, seven skills or three skills or whatever. And then we really got down to, well, exactly what makes the difference, you know. So the first one we call collaborative intention, and this is more the mindset. We have a mindset that we call a green zone mindset, which is more collaborative versus a red zone, which is more adversarial or pink zone, which is more.

conflict avoidant, but the red and pink, that's not very effective at collaboration. The green zone is much more effective. So paying attention to your mindset is an important part of the process. The second one is openness, and there's been a lot of research showing that one of the more important things you can do to improve the effectiveness of any organization is generally increase the level of openness within that organization.

Because you can't solve problems if people aren't willing to talk about it. And they need to be willing to share information, you know, like difficult relationships or, you know, a lot of times when, when organizations do not have this, this level of psychological safety that's required, people won't share information, they won't speak up in the middle of a meeting saying, I don't think this is a very good project for us to be working on, you know, they'll just go along, you know, to get along.

and rather than raise some difficult issues. So it's important that people feel psychologically safe enough to raise difficult issues and deal with them directly. Self accountability is one of the five skills and it's paying attention to the choices that you make and being responsible for both the intended and the unintended outcomes of any choices that you make.

Ronen Pessar (23:03.12)
Hmm

jim Tamm (23:29.377)
A lot of times people think we're not making choices when we don't do anything. But to stay in a job that you don't like, that's a choice. And you may have a good reason for doing that, but it's still a choice. And a lot of people think, oh no, I don't have a choice. I have to stay in this job, or I have to stay in this marriage. Well, yeah, you might have some good reasons for doing that, but it is a choice. Another skill is self-awareness.

Ronen Pessar (23:29.482)
Hmm

jim Tamm (23:56.657)
and particularly self-awareness about your own defensiveness. Because nothing screws up collaboration more than people getting defensive. And it makes solving problems significantly more difficult if people get defensive. I would say if you're in a leadership role, probably nothing has undermined more people in leadership roles than them getting defensive. Because when you start getting defensive, if you're trying to either build relationships

or solve conflicts and you start getting defensive. It's like throwing blood in water to a shark, you know, which just can create a feeding frenzy. So that's if you if you can get a better understanding of what defensiveness is about and be able to spot your own defensiveness at an earlier point in the process that will serve you very well. So we that's one of the important skills that we find. And then the you know

Ronen Pessar (24:33.456)
Mmm.

Ronen Pessar (24:52.974)
And Jim, it's something that I think from going through the experience is probably one of the harder ones because there's so much of defensiveness that's subconscious and is also self-preservation based, usually learned through childhood. But before we get to the fifth skill, because I do want to get there, but why do people get defensive? What is underneath defensiveness?

jim Tamm (25:20.077)
Fear, always fear, fear. When we're getting defensive, see a lot of times people think that when we get defensive, somebody has done something to us and so we need to defend ourselves from that other person. That's not what's going on when we're getting defensive in the way we're using the term. Now, you know, there are bad people out in the world and we need to protect ourselves from them sometimes.

That's not getting defensive. That's defending yourself at a time when you legitimately need to defend yourself. And there are times out there like that. But when we're getting defensive, if we're in a conversation with someone else, oftentimes we think that the other person is out to get us, or we think that they're doing something that's gonna harm us in some way. And it's a figment of our imagination. It's a figment of our fear. So what's really happening when we get

defensive is we are defending ourselves from fears inside of us that we don't want to feel.

Ronen Pessar (26:27.779)
Mmm.

jim Tamm (26:28.937)
A good example would be fears about our own significance or our competence or our likeability. You know, now say I have some fear about my own competency for doing this podcast today, you know, and say things aren't going very well, you know, it's like I'm flubbing my answers. Now that can cause me a lot of discomfort because believe me, I don't want to feel incompetent.

Ronen Pessar (26:44.331)
Mm-hmm.

Ronen Pessar (26:47.714)
You're totally messing everything up. Yeah, we don't...

jim Tamm (26:56.969)
I don't like looking stupid, I don't like feeling incompetent, you know. So if I'm feeling that way because of my own worries about my own competency and knowing that I'm doing a bad job, that causes me a lot of discomfort and one of the ways that I could reduce that level of discomfort that I'm feeling is I might start blaming you.

You know, you're asking stupid questions or you didn't give me enough time to think about that. And, you know, you interrupted me and blah, blah. And it's not my fault that I'm doing a bad job. It's your fault. And that's a classic example of me getting defensive. And it looks like I'm defending myself from you. But what I'm really doing is I'm behaving in a way that lets me not feel that fear because people don't want to feel that fear. What that means is that if you want to get

Ronen Pessar (27:41.762)
Hmm totally

jim Tamm (27:48.001)
better at dealing with your own defensiveness, you need to let yourself feel that fear. Because you're not gonna, if you don't let yourself feel that fear, you won't do anything about it. You'll just remain blissfully ignorant and ineffective. So what we try to do is we try to help people spot when they're getting defensive at an earlier point in the process before they're doing the significant damage to the relationship. So,

For example, for me, I might notice that when I'm starting to get defensive, I tend to be breathing faster, I talk faster, I probably start talking louder. So if I'm in a situation where I'm starting to feel uncomfortable and I notice that I'm talking louder and I'm breathing faster and talking faster,

The alarm bells can go off, hey, ding, ding. You know, Jim, pay attention. You're doing that thing again. You're getting fearful. What's that about, you know? And then I can stop and I can think about it. Okay, yeah, it's about the fact that the interview isn't going very well or the speech, I'm not doing a good job in this speech and I don't like feeling that. So, all right, so what can I do about that rather than start blaming someone else? So we try to do people work. Yeah.

Ronen Pessar (29:07.138)
So simply by bringing awareness, simply by bringing awareness to the physiological cues and signals of what might be happening moment to moment means that we can basically create these early warning systems for ourselves to say, oh, hey, hang on, you got something going on here that could cause you to derail whatever you're working on because without acknowledging it, it's going to trigger some sort of fear protection mechanism that we call defensiveness.

I'm sure there's hundreds of versions of what defensiveness looks like once you get that far. But I know for myself, I become that litigator, you know?

jim Tamm (29:43.714)
We have a list of different kinds, yeah. There's a lot of them out there. People behave, their defensiveness shows up in a lot of different ways. There are some common ones, blaming and shaming and being overly sarcastic, or it could be just the opposite. It could be shutting down, getting quiet. So we have, what we try to get participants to do is focus on what are their particular

Ronen Pessar (29:48.897)
Yeah.

Ronen Pessar (29:53.856)
Mm-hmm.

Ronen Pessar (30:03.022)
Hmm.

jim Tamm (30:12.409)
behaviors when they're starting to get defensive and then they create their own early warning system and then they have to be on the lookout for it because if they're not paying attention it you know it isn't going to help them but if they know what their behaviors are when they're starting to get defensive then they can be on the lookout then when they see that behavior then they can take some action you know they can take a few deep breaths they can try to understand what the fear is about they can

calm themselves in different ways. There's a lot of different techniques that we get into for doing that. But it all starts with awareness. And so if you have an organization that has a huge number of blind spots in it, if people don't recognize the impact of their behavior, if they don't recognize what their underlying interests are, if they don't recognize why they're behaving defensively.

Things just go on and it's more like having the sand in the gears again. It just isn't, you know, it's not working smooth. So it takes a lot more effort.

Ronen Pessar (31:15.031)
Mm.

Ronen Pessar (31:22.41)
And I think when we're talking about awareness, you can have this sort of personal awareness to an organizational awareness. And if you have this feeling, anyone who's watching this, if you have this feeling that you've got the sand in the gears that your organization isn't turning and moving as smoothly as they can, and that sand feels like it has to do with people's behaviors with one another, there's likely something beneath that. That's probably just the tip of the iceberg. And beneath that,

jim Tamm (31:37.677)
I don't know.

Ronen Pessar (31:49.314)
There may be some sort of defensiveness, either aggressive or passive aggressive behaviors going on within the culture, either on the team, the department, the organization, that could create that feeling of like, we just, we don't get along. We have so much conflict. It's hard to ever make progress on projects. Everyone's walking on eggshells.

jim Tamm (32:08.661)
Yeah.

jim Tamm (32:12.605)
And a lot of times what organizations will do is they'll start replacing the gears. They'll replace the people thinking that's it. What they need to do is they need to get some motor oil in there. And the collaborative skills are like the motor oil of an organization. It's not like it's dramatic, it doesn't necessarily shows up. It just makes everything run smoother together. So if you can figure out...

Ronen Pessar (32:23.502)
Hmm.

jim Tamm (32:38.321)
you know, where's the sand coming from that's grinding the gears, you know, and maybe you don't have to replace the gears. If you can just get things running smoother, if you can get that motor oil in there, those collaborative skills, that can be enough to turn an organization around.

Ronen Pessar (32:53.546)
Well, almost enough because you've just talked about the first four skills, the intention, which I'm glad you called that one out because intention matters. That's almost like priming the pump, if you will. The openness, the openness is really fascinating and there is tons of research on this too. And I know that some of it you probably learned from Wil Schutz himself. I don't think we're going to have a ton of time to get into FIRO theory and all the research he did. Maybe on another time if we'll have you back. But...

jim Tamm (32:58.483)
Oh yeah.

jim Tamm (33:05.193)
Exactly.

jim Tamm (33:19.317)
Yeah. Sure.

Ronen Pessar (33:22.198)
And then those other two of the self-accountability, taking ownership, or at least understanding that we might have more agency and choice. Choosing to not act is a choice, as well as the self-awareness, especially around defensiveness. But that doesn't quite lead us to resolution because we're missing one ingredient here, which is one of my favorite ingredients. And up until, I'd say what, probably the last 20, 30 years, there was a better way.

negotiate. You know, if you've ever read the book, Getting to Yes, from one of the esteemed, I forget the author's name, but you came from Harvard. That's right. So tell us, tell us about, and you know what I'd actually like to start there, like what was your relationship with him like, and then how did that lead you to this final piece talking about making solutions, progress, and doing something to create change?

jim Tamm (34:00.353)
Roger Fisher, Bill Urie, yeah, Bruce Patton, yeah. I knew them well. Roger was one of my heroes.

jim Tamm (34:19.893)
Yeah, well Roger was instrumental in the success of this pilot project in California and they sent people from Harvard out. And then they invited me back to Harvard and I was a resource person back there for a while. So yeah, it had a big influence on me. I tell everybody that they need to, if they're doing any negotiating at all, and just about all of us are, oftentimes we don't realize how much negotiating we're doing, but I tell everybody.

go out and read the book, Getting to Yes. In fact, I used to say it was the absolute best book on the subject. Now I think it's the second best book on the subject. And I say that only partly in jest, because Getting to Yes focuses primarily on this fifth skill, on the negotiating process. And what we learned over the years was that we could teach people the best negotiating process in the world, interest-based negotiation, which is what we call it.

Ronen Pessar (34:56.918)
Hahaha

jim Tamm (35:19.393)
But if they would come to the table with a bad attitude, or they would get defensive when they're sitting at the negotiating table, they would screw up any system that we could teach them. So one of the mistakes that we made early on, or at least I made early on, is that when we went out to road test this program, we went out looking for the most screwed up, dysfunctional, highly conflicted organizations we could find. And I thought because they had so much conflict,

If we just taught them how to negotiate their way through that conflict, that ought to solve the problem. But obviously it didn't, you know, they could, they could make some gains in the beginning, but they couldn't sustain it because they, they couldn't sustain the relationship stuff. So over the years, we've almost had to reverse the amount of time we spend teaching these first four skills that I talked about, uh, compared to the final skill, which is this negotiating and problem solving. Now that's still.

Ronen Pessar (35:58.979)
Hmm.

jim Tamm (36:14.825)
really important because so much of what can derail collaboration in an organization is the lack of skills at solving problems and negotiating your way through that conflict. Because conflict is inevitable. It's going to happen. It's going to be there no matter what, especially if you're talking about ongoing long-term relationships. If you're in a particularly a working relationship that's lasting long-term and you don't have any conflict,

Ronen Pessar (36:29.717)
Mm-hmm.

jim Tamm (36:44.201)
at all, it's probably not as productive a relationship as it could be, you know, or you're not paying attention or overly medicated or something like that. But oftentimes it's good to have a little strain in there because you can get in and solve problems better, you know. So.

Ronen Pessar (37:02.174)
That makes sense. A little bit of tension is required to have any kind of real depth to a relationship because naturally there's going to be disagreements, misunderstandings, and different intentions about what people want. Yeah.

jim Tamm (37:14.421)
We're human, it happens. So cut yourself a little slack about that. So the first skill is really teaching people how to negotiate their way through any situation where they have any differences that they need to resolve. It doesn't have to be a big fight or a world war or anything like that. It's just anytime you have any differences. It's a process of negotiating your way where

Ronen Pessar (37:20.386)
Hehehehehehe

jim Tamm (37:43.145)
You focus more of your energy in the beginning of the process, trying to understand what the underlying needs are of all the parties. You know, it used to be, when I was in law school, this was back in the early 1970s, 1972. There were a bunch of books that came out at the time about negotiating. And, you know, they would make suggestions like, always put your opponent, and they actually called them your opponent.

Ronen Pessar (37:55.288)
Hmm.

jim Tamm (38:13.097)
put your opponent in a shorter chair where you have the power position, you know, or show that you have more power than they do, you know, or during the negotiations at an important point you slam down information that you have to show that you know more than they do, or you're having your secretary come in and interrupt the negotiations with a phone call for you from the president to show that you're more important than they are, you know, those kinds of tricks. And they were those

Tricks were designed to rattle the other party, you know, confuse them, get them upset, that kind of stuff, and then they would make mistakes. But what we have found over the years is that parties tend to make much better decisions if they're feeling safe, rather than having to defend themselves from attacks like that. So we encourage the parties to let go of all those little tricks, and in fact, try to create the safest environment for both parties, because...

Ronen Pessar (38:57.035)
Mm.

jim Tamm (39:10.101)
That's when you're gonna come up with good solutions. If there's high trust, if there's a lot of psychological safety, if they're not needing to defend themselves, they can be so much more creative. So we try to get people to create what we call this green zone environment, a more collaborative based environment. And then the negotiating process is that they focus energy on trying to understand the real needs of each other.

Ronen Pessar (39:12.622)
Hmm

jim Tamm (39:39.325)
not just what the proposals are, but why are they making these proposals? What's the underlying need that they're trying to meet? And then they look at what they're gonna do if they can't reach an agreement. That's their contingency plan. That's their baton of the best alternative to a negotiated agreement from the book getting to yes. They come up with a lot of possible solutions without evaluating them or judging them.

you know, classic brainstorming rules. So you create a lot of possibilities. And then through a process of focusing on what are the underlying interests, what are your contingency plans or your batonists, you try to narrow down that list to a possible solution that both parties can agree to. And then you need to have clarity and then you need to have commitment. You know, both parties need to know exactly what their agreement is.

And then they have to have some show of commitment if you're going to have a process that's going to stand up over time. But that's their skill.

Ronen Pessar (40:42.826)
And you know, as you kind of get into the interest-based negotiation, I found that so much of it is intuitive, but not necessarily obvious. It makes sense when you hear it, but not necessarily something that we've learned ever in schooling or anywhere else how to actually do this. But one of the things that I found to be so profoundly simple yet powerful is just the beginning of the interest-based negotiation process.

jim Tamm (40:54.253)
Thank you.

Ronen Pessar (41:09.622)
being able to agree on what are we trying to solve here? What is the actual problem? Because so often, I'm sure many people watching this have had the experience where you're sitting in a conference room or you're witnessing some sort of conflict and either witnessing it or experiencing it, you might be working on different problems or addressing different things. And oftentimes with communication, that's one of the biggest areas where a pitfall can take place.

We're having two different conversations. We're talking about solving two different things here. So the first step of it is, well, do we even agree on what the problem statement is? What are we trying to do? What are we trying to achieve? And then what's fascinating about it is it's not like I'm trying to beat my opponent. Rather, I'm trying to exploit areas where they are true real win-wins, where we can both at first have all of our interests met. And it's fascinating because if you think about some of the most global

largest conflicts. I bet there are tons of areas that are unexploited win-win opportunities. Whether it's between countries that end up going to war or things like that, I'm sure ultimately underneath all of it, there are lots of interests that are actually fairly aligned. It makes you wonder that if this was taught on a global level, what impact would that have on things like war and all sorts of other...

jim Tamm (42:16.243)
Absolutely.

Ronen Pessar (42:37.294)
political rivalry and other things that affect people's lives day in and day out.

jim Tamm (42:42.929)
I had one case where the parties had been negotiating for two and a half years, and it finally got into some heavy duty litigation. It was like a $90 million dispute, a big deal. And I was doing the settlement conferences on it, and I met with the two negotiators and I said, you know, I've read a little about this in the newspaper, but explain it to me. You know, and one negotiator went up to a flip chart and she spent, oh, probably 30

doing a very thorough outline of what the problem was. And when she was done, the other negotiator looked at her and said, what in the hell are you talking about? That's not the problem. Now, they had been negotiating for two and a half years and still had not had that discussion about what are we here to solve? And they were using similar language, so they thought they were talking about the same thing, but they were trying to solve two different problems.

Ronen Pessar (43:22.838)
Hahaha

Ronen Pessar (43:38.292)
Hmm.

jim Tamm (43:41.137)
And they were going to be trains like on parallel tracks. I mean, they were never going to meet because they were trying to solve different problems. You know, so when you get together, it is important, like you said, to say, what's the issue here that we need to, you know, to solve? And if we can't agree on that, then we need to have a discussion about that before we are rushing off to solutions, because you're.

Ronen Pessar (44:02.163)
Right.

And it's so funny because that's the intention everyone has without thinking about it, is everyone wants to jump into the solution. Oh, I know what we should do and I know what we should do and all you're talking about is what I think the answer is. This is just my position. I don't actually know what you want or if we're even trying to solve the same problem.

jim Tamm (44:23.869)
Yeah, a lot of times when we're when we're teaching the negotiations, we won't let the parties come to a solution until they come up with like a 10 or a dozen different possible solutions, you know. So even though there might be one right in the beginning that looks like, oh, yeah, this is a good one. But we say, no, come up with 10 more and then we'll talk about it. You know, then we'll decide what's the best there because

If you just rush off to a solution and you come up with one solution, you know, it's not necessarily the best solution, it's just the first solution, or the only solution that you're looking at. So getting people to set that aside is a difficult process because we're all under so much time pressure too. And when we see something that might work, we jump on it. But it's not necessarily the best solution. So it's...

Ronen Pessar (45:08.971)
Yeah.

jim Tamm (45:17.037)
Part of what we're trying to do is slow down the negotiating process to make sure that you really understand what all the underlying needs are and that any solution will meet as many of those needs as possible.

Ronen Pessar (45:19.746)
Hmm

Ronen Pessar (45:29.982)
It's brilliant. And I've seen it work firsthand as I've been using it recently, not just at home with my wife, but also in business, whether I'm talking about a partnership or I'm trying to, I've brought it into my sales process as well with clientele. And it's been fairly eye-opening to see how much clearer the picture is between the person I'm usually communicating with in terms of what they're actually trying to achieve, what are my interests and what I'm trying to achieve.

as opposed to just assuming and being wrong most of the time about what we both want to have happen.

jim Tamm (46:03.925)
You know, if you look at all the good salesmen, salespeople over the years, you know, they're all really good at understanding the underlying needs of the other party and how they can meet those needs, you know. So it seems in that regard, it ought to be second nature, but it isn't because we jump into, well, I want to I want to lower price. Well, why do you want to lower price? What's that about? You know?

Ronen Pessar (46:32.087)
Right?

jim Tamm (46:34.585)
And so if you can dig a little bit deeper ask more why questions well, why do you need that? You know, I want a three-bedroom house Well, why you know well, it's a it's a different solution If you want two bedrooms in an office versus three bedrooms because you've got six kids You know Those are different needs but if you just say yeah what I need is a three-bedroom house You can miss the creative points there

Ronen Pessar (46:52.467)
Exactly.

Ronen Pessar (47:02.258)
the analogy that I've heard the story actually, it's a very simplified version of it, but it's the two sisters and the one orange. You know, they both want the same orange, and if you end up splitting in the half, giving one half to both, neither will be satisfied. But if you ask each sister, hey, what do you want the orange for? What do you want it for? And the first one says, well, I want to make some orange juice. And the other one says, I just need the peel to make some zest so I can flavor my baked goods here that I'm making. You've just solved the problem right there. The most obvious solution comes to the top.

jim Tamm (47:29.313)
See, because, yeah, they were each taking a position. Oh, I want this precious commodity. I want this orange, you know? Their positions were in conflict, but their underlying interests weren't in conflict at all. So oftentimes, we see that if the parties have a better understanding of what everybody's underlying interests are, they can make those bridges. They can see that there's parts there that really can support each other.

rather than be in conflict with each other. And also, if you really understand what the underlying interests are, one of the other big learnings is that there are usually lots of different ways of satisfying an interest. So if you understand what the interest is, then you can be much more creative about how you might get that interest met. There might be 10 different ways of satisfying that interest. And so,

instead of arguing over whether you should get that interest met or not get it met, how can you get it met in a different context is a whole different conversation to have.

Ronen Pessar (48:36.11)
Absolutely. Well, the last thing I want to ask you about is, in your opinion, with all the experience that you have, what do you think is the easiest way to begin to already make a positive difference? The shortest period of time and effort in terms of taking what you know about these five skills, how can people listening to this actually begin to take something away to make an impact?

jim Tamm (49:00.553)
Well, I think if I had to pick two things, one would be do a better job of managing your own defensiveness, and the other would be learning this interest-based approach to negotiations. That'll have the biggest, you'll get the biggest buck for your, you know, the biggest improvement for your dollars in doing that. Yeah, and focusing on those two things,

I mean, what we learned was all five skills are important. But if you can do that, if you can get better at dealing with your own defensiveness, and if you can negotiate more effectively, because you're looking to solve the underlying interests and you create this green zone environment, that'll have a big payback for you, no matter whether you're talking about an organization or a family or, you know, whatever your focus is.

Ronen Pessar (49:50.606)
Hmm.

Ronen Pessar (49:57.514)
That's incredible. Well, Jim, that is just about all the time we have, but hopefully you'll be gracious enough to come back another time. And until then, how can people learn more about what you're up to, or what would you like them to be able to do to learn more about even radical collaboration?

jim Tamm (50:05.493)
We'd love to do that. It's fun talking with you.

jim Tamm (50:16.806)
Sure. Well, we have a website. It's radi They can go there. There is a TED talk about this. They can just, they can look at that. Just Google Jim Tam Defensiveness TED talk and they'll get to the TED talk. And of course, the Radical Collaboration book. It's radical collaboration, five essential skills for overcoming defensiveness.

and building successful relationships. That's available at Amazon or in any bookstores usually too. So those are some good starting points. And if they want to get more information about the training, I would say contact you. Contact you, they can contact me through the website, but we have a lot of really highly skilled trainers out there. We probably trained, oh, I would say,

Around the world, there's probably, we've at least trained a thousand people who are out doing this work in the language, the training materials have been translated into probably 18 languages. So there's a lot of people who are doing this kind of work and creating ripples all over the world. Find people that are like-minded like you are.

Ronen Pessar (51:20.13)
WAH

jim Tamm (51:44.277)
you know, that want to learn more about it, get together, talk about it, get some help.

Ronen Pessar (51:51.638)
Well, Jim, from the bottom of my heart, thank you so much for taking the time to be on here. And for anyone watching, I'll include all the links Jim had mentioned in the show notes. If you're on YouTube, you'll find it in the section here below the video. So you can find, figure out if Radical Collaboration is right for you and also learn more. I also highly recommend checking out the TED Talk. It is fascinating. And that was definitely one of the things that hooked me years ago that eventually led me to go through the course and then the training.

and being one of the newly minted trainers. So with that, thank you so much, Jim.

jim Tamm (52:25.906)
Well, it's been a real pleasure. Been a real pleasure talking with you and I look forward to coming back too.

Ronen Pessar (52:32.479)
All right.