YANSS 143 – How to Talk to People About Things

In this episode, we sit down with negotiation expert Misha Glouberman who explains how to talk to people about things – that is, how to avoid the pitfalls associated with debate when two or more people attempt to come to an agreement that will be mutually beneficial.

Misha Glouberman teaches negotiation, both in the classroom and within organizations, and he also works as a professional facilitator, which means he helps people design and run conferences and meetings. He also lectures, hosts Trampoline Hall (which has a podcast) – where he interviews the speakers afterfield and fields questions from the audience – and he is the co-author of the book The Chairs Are Where the People Go, a collection of his dictated musings about life recorded and edited by author Sheila Heti.

To put it simply, Misha is an expert on communication, and people pay him to help them communicate better. In our long, wide-ranging conversation, you’ll pick up a zillion nuggets of wisdom that will help you the next time you set out to negotiate, facilitate, or solve shared problems with people through conversation.

Other things: He is a faculty director at the Ivey Academy, the executive education program at the Ivey Business School. His approach to conference design draws on Open Space Technology and UnConference approaches, which are highly effective at getting people talking and sharing ideas in ways that are effective and meaningful. As a keynote speaker, Misha is represented exclusively by The Lavin Agency. For booking information, please visit their Contact Page.

Misha has taught classes in improvised music and theater, worked as a database designer, and has a degree in philosophy from Harvard. His working style combines analytic rigour with a creative, people-centered approach. One+, the magazine of Meeting Professionals International, described his work as “humanizing relationships—one event at a time.” His interest in how people connect extends into his work as a performer and artist. Every month he hosts Trampoline Hall, a barroom lecture series that has been popular with the arts and literary set in Toronto and New York for well over a decade. His instructions on how to ask a good question at a public event were published in the New York Times Magazine. His Terrible Noises for Beautiful People is a series of participatory sound events for non-musicians, which has been presented in partnership with Nuit Blanche Toronto and the Long Now Foundation among others.