I’m a big fan of the Hidden Brain podcast by Shankar Vedantam. Shankar has spent his entire career focused on human behavior, and if you’re interested in organizational behavior or leadership development, his work is essential.
The most recent episode, “Relationships 2.0: Become a Better Negotiator,” instantly became one of my all-time favorites—and it’s a must-listen. In this episode, Shankar speaks with behavioral scientist Max Bazerman about how cognitive biases can quietly undermine our ability to negotiate effectively.
What struck me most was Bazerman’s insight that while we often focus on persuading others in negotiation, we rarely examine our own blind spots. We assume we’re objective, rational, or “right”—but our overconfidence and self-centered thinking can lead to outcomes that are far from optimal.
This article isn’t a negotiation playbook. It’s about something more profound: how emotional and relational intelligence shape the way we communicate, influence, and make decisions, particularly in environments where collaboration and alignment matter.
Because let’s be honest—negotiation doesn’t just show up in boardrooms or contract talks. It’s there when you’re aligning cross-functional teams, giving feedback, proposing new ideas, or trying to secure resources. And often, what gets in the way isn’t the other person. It’s us.
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What We Get Wrong About Negotiation
In the episode, Max Bazerman highlights something most of us miss: our most significant obstacle in negotiation isn’t usually the other party—it’s ourselves. We’re often so focused on persuading or winning that we fail to recognize the hidden cognitive biases shaping our own approach.
Bazerman explores how overconfidence and self-centered thinking consistently derail even the most well-intentioned negotiators. We assume our logic is sound, our goals are fair, and our strategy is smart. But when we neglect to account for how our own blind spots distort reality, we walk away with less-than-ideal outcomes—and sometimes, without even realizing it.
One concept he introduces is the “veil of ignorance”—a powerful mindset shift that asks us to consider decisions as if we didn’t know which side of the outcome we’d be on. It’s a way of neutralizing our self-interest and approaching negotiation from a place of fairness and perspective-taking.
Bazerman backs this up with real-world stories, like Robert Campo’s acquisition of Federated Department Stores and Matthew Harrington’s baseball contract negotiations. In both cases, personal bias and lack of perspective led to missed opportunities or fractured deals, not because the negotiators lacked strategy, but because they lacked self-awareness.
This isn’t just theoretical. Research shows that overconfidence is one of the most pervasive decision-making biases in business. According to a 2012 study published in Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, individuals who are overconfident tend to overlook critical information and underestimate risk, two tendencies that are particularly costly in collaborative environments.
And while these examples come from the world of business and sports, the dynamics are just as present in everyday workplace negotiations:
- A manager pushing for budget approval without understanding competing team needs.
- A team member advocating for their project without listening to leadership’s broader goals.
- Or two departments struggling to align on shared priorities because no one paused to ask: “What assumptions are we making?”
If negotiation is about outcomes, then awareness—of self and others—is the most overlooked advantage.
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Why Self-Awareness Alone Isn’t Enough
The essence of this episode is clear: it takes both self-awareness and other-awareness to increase our capacity for emotional intelligence.
It isn’t enough to simply understand yourself better, which the traditional behavioral assessment market has done an adequate job of in the past. It requires that you understand yourself in the context of the people you are trying to communicate with in order to effectively sell ideas and achieve the desired outcomes.
This is illustrated in the following graphic.
On the left, we see what most traditional learning experiences focus on—solo development. These tools often provide valuable individual insights, but they are static. They lack the dynamic interplay that happens in real relationships. You learn about yourself, but not how your behavior impacts others, or how theirs impacts you.
On the right is the model Cloverleaf was built around:
☘️ A continuous loop of learning about others and growing with others
☘️ Self-awareness that’s active, contextual, and relational
☘️ Growth that happens not in isolation, but in the actual flow of work and interaction
This distinction matters.
As organizational psychologist Tasha Eurich puts it, People who have high internal self-awareness and low external self-awareness can come across as arrogant or oblivious. In other words, knowing yourself isn’t enough if you can’t see how others experience you.
Most development and assessment platforms deliver data and reports, but rarely provide the context needed to act on them in relationships. That’s why even well-intentioned training programs struggle to create lasting behavior change: the learning doesn’t live where the communication happens.
At Cloverleaf, we intentionally designed our experience to go beyond the individual. Not just to teach people about themselves, but to teach people how to interact more effectively with the people they work with every day.
Turning Insight Into Practice: What Teams Need to Reinforce Human Skills
The challenge isn’t understanding the importance of emotional intelligence—it’s consistently applying it in the messy, fast-moving reality of daily work.
Reading an article, listening to a podcast, or attending a workshop can spark awareness. But unless those insights are revisited and reinforced in real interactions, they rarely change how people communicate, collaborate, or lead.
This is the gap Cloverleaf was built to close. It’s not just a reflection tool—it’s a system designed to bring awareness into moments that matter most.
Consider a few everyday scenarios:
- Before a feedback conversation, Cloverleaf reminds you that your teammate tends to process input more slowly and prefers written reflection before discussing live. So, instead of jumping in during a meeting, you follow up with an email and a plan to talk tomorrow, ensuring the conversation lands more effectively.
- During a project kickoff, you scan your team’s Cloverleaf dashboard and notice one colleague thrives on structure, while another gets energized by open brainstorming. You build a hybrid approach that plays to both styles, avoiding tension and building momentum.
- After a tough meeting, a coaching prompt surfaces on your dashboard: a reflection on how your communication style may have been perceived. It doesn’t just call out a blind spot—it invites you to adapt and grow.
These aren’t afterthoughts; they’re embedded into the flow of work. That’s the point. Emotional intelligence doesn’t live in content. It lives in context.
Research backs this up. According to the Ebbinghaus forgetting curve, we forget up to 75% of new information within six days if it’s not reinforced. But when insights are tied to real-time action—and especially when they involve other people—they stick. That’s the power of social and situational learning.
Cloverleaf doesn’t just help individuals learn about themselves—it helps teams learn with and through each other. And that’s how human skills become real habits.
What Talent Development Leaders Are Asking
These insights from Hidden Brain and Max Bazerman aren’t just interesting for individual professionals—they strike at the heart of what HR, Talent Development, and People Leaders are actively trying to solve:
👉 How do we move from individual learning to meaningful team development?
👉 How do we measure growth in emotional intelligence or negotiation skills, especially when outcomes are relational?
👉 How do we make soft skill development stick, beyond a one-time workshop or LMS module?
These aren’t abstract questions. They reflect the real tension between what organizations say they value (collaboration, communication, empathy) and how they actually support people in developing those skills.
These concepts are part of a broader shift—a move away from static content and solo learning experiences toward something more relational, more integrated, and more enduring. A shift from “training” to practice.
If emotional intelligence, bias-awareness, and better negotiation habits are going to become part of your team’s operating system, they need:
- Reflection prompts that appear when needed, not six months later.
- Collaborative learning experiences that reveal not just how I think, but how we interact.
- Tactical ways to practice, like reframing a disagreement using the “veil of ignorance,” or preparing for a conversation by considering how someone else sees the situation.
These moments are small—but they’re how real change happens. And the more intentional we are in designing for them, the more likely our learning programs will actually lead to lasting behavior change.
Because the truth is, no one develops communication skills in isolation. And no one becomes a better negotiator by just learning to win. They grow by seeing more clearly—both themselves and the people they work with.
What Might Change If You Started With Curiosity?
At its core, this episode of Hidden Brain isn’t just about negotiation. It’s about perspective. And the reminder that success in communication—whether in a deal, a team meeting, or a tough conversation—starts not with talking, but with seeing clearly.
That means noticing our own blind spots. It means pausing before we push our agenda to consider how someone else might see the same situation. It means asking better questions, not just having better answers.
So here’s one to sit with:
Where are my blind spots in how I communicate, collaborate, or lead—and who might help me see them?
If that question resonates with you, take 30 minutes to listen to the episode. Then try putting one insight into practice—not in a high-stakes negotiation, but in your next team conversation.
Relational learning isn’t just a theory. It’s a shift in how we show up. The more intentional we are about incorporating it into our everyday work, the more powerful it becomes.
