How to Get What You Want: Negotiation Skills for Real Life | Attia Qureshi | Happiness | E521

How to Get What You Want: Negotiation Skills for Real Life | Attia Qureshi | Happiness | E521

May 7, 2026 · 1h 6m

About this episode

Attia Qureshi discusses practical negotiation skills applicable to everyday life.

Forty Colombian farmers sat looking at her, completely unimpressed, when the cartel boss in the back of the room opened a case and a drone flew up out of it. In this episode, I sit down with Attia Qureshi, the negotiation teacher who learned her craft running State Department conflict-resolution work in cartel-controlled coca regions of Colombia, and who now teaches at the University of Michigan after a stint at MIT Sloan. Her new book Never Settle, with a foreword by Sheila Heen and endorsements from Daniel Pink, Robert Cialdini, and Chris Voss, hits shelves next week. The thing I love about her work is that she does not treat negotiation as a boardroom sport. She treats it as a daily relationship skill, the kind you practice with your barista so it is already in your hands when something hard comes up at home. In This Episode The four-step sequence Attia used to reset a room of 40 unimpressed farmers and a cartel boss with a drone, and how the same four steps work in your kitchen tonight Why "take out the trash" is the position and not the actual ask, and the one-sentence reframe that changes how you fight about household chores The fifth-grade bullying story that produced the…

Explore listener stats, chart rankings, contacts and more on the Love, Happiness and Success with Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby podcast page.