We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Susan Coleman a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Susan, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. How did you come up with the idea for your business?

In response to your question, here is a small segment from my new book, COLLABORATIVE HARDBALL: USING THE POWER OF A NEW NEGOTIATION AS WOMEN TO CHANGE THE WORLD. This is a memory from about 1968.
“My childhood home on Long Island was right next door
to the private and very elite Rockaway Hunting Club (RHC).
RHC didn’t allow either Jews or Black people, and it preferred
its women to be coiffed, blond, and thin. The Jewish club was
a few miles away. The Black country club didn’t even exist,
at least in my awareness.
Like most country clubs, tennis and golf were big features.
My mom played tennis, and so did I.
RHC was the kind of place where everyone had to wear
white, and everyone was White. It had exquisite grass tennis
courts, so nice that the US Open contestants always came to
have a warm- up tournament with us before going on to Forest
Hills for the real deal. I got to be the ball girl at those events,
crouching way behind the back line at the mesh fence, or at
mid -court by the net pole and relaying the balls back to the
players.
My mother and her friends played a lot of doubles, all nice
ladies in their whites , and sometimes it was mixed doubles
(men and women), and often I played too.
I have good memories for the most part.

But over time, my awareness grew about the nature of
the club next door. The fact that it didn’t allow Jews or Black
people began to offend me. During this same time, my aware-
ness grew about the war raging in southeast Asia—the horrors
being regularly broadcast on the nightly news of bodies,
napalm, little kids whose skin had been scorched off. As early
as twelve, I remember sneaking up in the early morning hours
with trepidation to put a peace sign on the RHC front door.”

The focus of my life’s work — anti-imperialism, feminism, social change initiatives that move beyond domination to those of partnership — began about there. Along with a slightly earlier memory of reading All Quiet on the Western Front (a very moving account of the realities of WW1) when I was about 10.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

Again, from Collaborative Hardball, “For over thirty-five years, Susan Coleman
has worked from war zones to board-
rooms teaching people negotiation skills,
mediating conflict, and supporting
clients in collaborative change initiatives
through facilitation and coaching. She
has worked with tens of thousands of people in thirty-four
countries, on just about every continent, and with hundreds of
organizations, governments, teams, and individuals including
the United Nations, NASA, Senior Women Leaders of the
Government of Afghanistan, and Columbia University.
Her initiative with the UN ultimately resulted in over one
hundred thousand professionals being trained in collaborative,
intercultural negotiation, one of the largest peacebuilding
initiatives on the planet. She started her professional journey
as a litigator in New York City but detoured to the negotia-
tion and conflict resolution field after attending the Kennedy
School at Harvard.
Coleman was born into one of the oldest colonial American
families, where she has had a front row seat to the ironies of
privilege, power, and patriarchy. Throughout her life, she has
been an activist for evolutionary social change with a deep
respect for both the diversity of humans and the natural world.”

What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?

Integrity. Walking my talk. Not getting swayed by the part of our culture that celebrates money like a god.

Any advice for managing a team?

Respect and creating a collaborative climate where you can unleash the exponential potential of humans putting their heads together. At the core of high functioning groups, be they families work-place groups, or nation-states is truly understanding collaboration and cooperation. This is not soft, it must be deeply win-win and sometimes collaborative hardball.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.susancoleman.global
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/susanwcoleman/
• Other: https://susancoleman.substack.com