How to Get What You Want Every Time: 3 Steps to Negotiate Anything With Anyone
Kwame Christian (guest), Mel Robbins (host), Narrator
In this episode of The Mel Robbins Podcast, featuring Kwame Christian and Mel Robbins, How to Get What You Want Every Time: 3 Steps to Negotiate Anything With Anyone explores master Difficult Conversations: Three-Step Framework To Confidently Negotiate Anything Mel Robbins interviews negotiation expert Kwame Christian about how the best things in life are on the other side of difficult conversations, especially the one you first have with yourself.
Master Difficult Conversations: Three-Step Framework To Confidently Negotiate Anything
Mel Robbins interviews negotiation expert Kwame Christian about how the best things in life are on the other side of difficult conversations, especially the one you first have with yourself.
Kwame shares his journey from extreme people-pleaser to confident negotiator, emphasizing that confidence and emotional regulation are learnable skills, not fixed traits.
He reframes negotiation as any conversation where someone wants something, and conflict as those conversations with emotional stakes, then introduces his three-step Compassionate Curiosity framework.
Together they apply this framework to real scenarios—roommates, partners, bosses, landlords, and family—to show how to move from people-pleasing and resentment to self-respect, clarity, and better outcomes.
Key Takeaways
Start with the hardest conversation: the one with yourself.
Before confronting others, you need an “internal negotiation” where you name your emotions, understand why you feel them, and decide what action respects both your feelings and your long-term goals.
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Respect yourself more than you need to be liked.
People-pleasing feels safe in the short term but leads to self-disrespect and resentment; standing up for yourself is how you gain both others’ respect and your own.
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Use the Compassionate Curiosity framework in every tough conversation.
First acknowledge and validate emotions, then ask open-ended, compassionate questions to understand the other side, and finally move into joint problem‑solving so it’s you and them versus the problem.
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When triggered, ‘name it to tame it’ before you speak.
Labeling your emotions (e. ...
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Open hard talks with situation–impact–invitation, not blame.
State the naked facts (“This morning at 5:30 your alarm went off”), share your personal impact (“It woke me up and I couldn’t get back to sleep”), and invite collaboration (“Can we talk about how to make this work for both of us?”).
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Treat every negotiation as deal discovery, not winning.
Your goal isn’t to force agreement but to explore whether a fair deal exists; this mindset makes it easier to be curious, accept “no,” and avoid bad agreements that should never happen.
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Prepare and practice like an athlete for emotionally loaded conversations.
Visualize triggers, rehearse how you’ll pause (even pretending to take notes), and decide what questions you’ll ask so that when the moment comes, you’ve “been there before” and can stay grounded.
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Notable Quotes
“The best things in life are on the other side of difficult conversations.”
— Kwame Christian
“There is a difference between being liked and being respected. If you want personal and professional success, you have to be willing to engage with conflict.”
— Kwame Christian (quoting his mentor)
“Confidence is a learnable skill. I wasn’t born this way—I built myself this way.”
— Kwame Christian
“When you live your life like this, you’re saying it’s more important for them to like me than it is for me to like myself.”
— Kwame Christian
“The thing you don’t say in the beginning is the thing that ends your relationship over time.”
— Mel Robbins
Questions Answered in This Episode
Where in my life am I choosing to be liked over being respected, and what conversation am I avoiding because of it?
Mel Robbins interviews negotiation expert Kwame Christian about how the best things in life are on the other side of difficult conversations, especially the one you first have with yourself.
Get the full analysis with uListen AI
If I applied the situation–impact–invitation structure to one relationship today, what exactly would I say?
Kwame shares his journey from extreme people-pleaser to confident negotiator, emphasizing that confidence and emotional regulation are learnable skills, not fixed traits.
Get the full analysis with uListen AI
What emotions most frequently hijack my difficult conversations, and how can I practice ‘naming to tame’ them before I speak?
He reframes negotiation as any conversation where someone wants something, and conflict as those conversations with emotional stakes, then introduces his three-step Compassionate Curiosity framework.
Get the full analysis with uListen AI
In my current job, what would it look like to treat promotion and pay as a long-term negotiation I start months in advance?
Together they apply this framework to real scenarios—roommates, partners, bosses, landlords, and family—to show how to move from people-pleasing and resentment to self-respect, clarity, and better outcomes.
Get the full analysis with uListen AI
Which relationship in my life most needs the Compassionate Curiosity framework, and what joint solution would I like to invite that person to build with me?
Get the full analysis with uListen AI
Transcript Preview
The best things in life are on the other side of difficult conversations. The first and most important difficult conversation that we have to have is with ourselves, and that's what people miss. And if you take what we've learned today and put it into action, you're gonna improve your relationships, you're gonna improve your careers, and you're going to improve your life too.
Think of a situation in your life right now where there's either tension or there's some conversation you need to have at work, maybe with your boss, or there's a conversation that you need to have with a friend.
A lot of times, we hold back in these conversations because we say, "Oh, I don't want them to get mad." We're focusing completely on them and not focusing on the fact that we are hurt. There might be a situation where this person and you just, for whatever reason, don't mix, or they have a lot of growth to do. We have to have a conversation in order to discover what the truth is.
I have personally created a lot of conflict in my relationships because I wouldn't just lean in and be curious. When I first fell in love with my husband, Chris, and I remember when we got engaged, my mom was not as h- happy as I had wanted her to be. There was something so much deeper that was going on for her that I never even bothered to be curious about.
Mm.
She was just sad that I had fallen in love with somebody who lived so far away. You know, we're all so afraid of each other's emotions, and if you're willing to just give the other person credit for being a human, there's this connection that's available, but we're so afraid of it. Hey, it's your friend Mel Robbins. Welcome to the Mel Robbins Podcast. I am so excited that you're here. It is always such an honor to spend time with you and to be together, and if you're a new listener, I just wanna personally take a moment and welcome you to the Mel Robbins Podcast family. I am so happy that you're here. And because you made the time to listen to this particular episode, here's what I know about you. You're the kind of person who values your time and you invest it in things that can help you improve your life, and you also know that you deserve more respect in your life, and you're here to learn how to get it. And if you're listening to this because someone shared this with you, well, here's what I wanna tell you. I think that's really cool because it means that you have someone in your life that loves you enough to remind you that you deserve to be respected and they wanted you to have this expert advice so that you can start to speak up and ask for what you need and negotiate the things that you want in life. And that's exactly what today's episode is all about, learning how to have hard conversations, because according to our expert today, the best things in life are on the other side of difficult conversations. And you may have good reasons for avoiding conversations that feel like a confrontation, but here's what you're gonna learn. Yes, yes, yes, you may want everyone to like you, but in life, it is so much more important to be respected, and that respect begins with you. See, right now, I just want you to stop and think. There's a situation that's bothering you, there's a conversation that you know you need to have, but you're avoiding it, and you probably have a really good reason for avoiding it. You hate confrontation. You just don't wanna deal with the drama. You're frustrated and you're annoyed and maybe you're worried that the conversation is not only not gonna work, it might just make things worse. Or maybe you're just the kinda person that cares a lot about what other people think. Well, here's what I'm gonna tell you. It is time for you to learn a simple three-step approach to having these kinds of conversations, because it is true, it's way more important that you learn how to be respected in life and you stop focusing on making sure everybody likes you and that everybody's happy with you. So here's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna invite you to think about an area of your life where you're tolerating disrespect or you're not getting what you want or you're staying silent or you're just not getting the support that you need and deserve. Well, our guest today is gonna walk you through, step-by-step, these kinds of conversations in your life and how to start the conversation, how to diffuse the emotion, and how to get exactly what you want. Kwame Christian is recognized as one of the world's top negotiation experts, and he is also one of the most popular expert instructors on LinkedIn Learning. He's had 1.2 million people take his courses. He is the founder and CEO of the American Negotiation Institute. It's an organization that trains Fortune 500 companies on the art of navigating difficult conversations and the science of negotiating for success. He is also a lawyer and he is the host of Negotiate Anything, which is the world's top podcast on the subject of negotiation. He's also written this awesome book, Finding Confidence in Conflict, which is also about how you use the science of negotiation in your life to get what you want. And one other thing that I love about Kwame is that he's gonna take all this information and science and all these strategies and translate it into a three-step formula that you and I can apply in our lives, our relationships. Heck, we can apply it when we negotiate with our landlord over rent. And because he's also married to his college sweetheart for 14 years and is the father of two kids, these are also the exact same strategies that he and his wife use to work through all the difficult conversations that happen between a couple who are living together and raising a family. Kwame Christian, welcome to the Mel Robbins Podcast.
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