Cultivating LEADERS in Difficult Conversations

At Path To Publishing, our goal is to cultivate LEADERS who excel at difficult conversations because they:

  • Listen to understand the other side’s point of view before responding
  • Empathize with the other persons’ positions, trying to see the world through their eyes
  • Ask relevant questions to help them clarify the other persons’ meanings and intentions
  • Determine the best way to respond based on what is understood about how the other person views things
  • Express their own views with clarity while remaining respectful
  • Respect the other person and their views even when they disagree with them
  • Share a personal story to help illustrate why they believe what they believe with a goal of seeking to serve the other person, not to be served

Toward that end, we are crowdfunding a movement using a novel approach to changing the conversation around race relations in order to generate public awareness and support for our efforts. The money raised will be used to fund PTP Press’s (the traditional publishing imprint of Path To Publishing) upcoming release, The Price We Pay.

As part of that crowdfunding campaign, we are equipping our contributors to be LEADERS by offering four essential resources that will help them step up and make a difference:

  • Magnetic Thought Leadership Training to equip them to lead these conversations in a way that creates an inviting, respectful space where all voices are recognized and seen as being of equal value.
  • Lessons in how to hold difficult conversations that are productive and meaningful where both sides feel respected and heard, yet challenged and encouraged to find room for compromise.
  • A Study Guide to navigating the challenges of discussing sensitive topics in an inter-racial community.
  • A community of like-minded individuals who are ready and willing to lend their support and encouragement along the way.

To discover more about the movement and our efforts to stop the growing divide between the races, visit our crowdfunding campaign page at https://ptppress.com/taking-a-novel-approach-to-change. Sign up to #JoinTheConversation and step up to become one of the LEADERS.

Why Stories Make the Ideal Tool for Initiating Difficult Conversations

The human brain is wired for stories. Research published in 2008 based on fMRI studies of the human brain as it processes stories suggests that the brain remembers and processes a well-told story as if the events in that story happened to the individual reading it in real life. This makes stories an ideal tool for initiating difficult conversations.

One of the things that happens when a person is reading or listening to a story is that the normal belief-based operating system that runs our brains suspends its core beliefs in order to adopt the beliefs of the main character or the primary narrator, at least for the duration of the story. The reader looks at the world through the eyes of the protagonist while experiencing their thoughts and feeling their emotions.

This sets the reader up to be ready to engage in conversation with others about the experiences that took place in the book. Because those experiences are tied to the main character’s life, and not to the reader’s personal experiences, it subtracts some of the emotional baggage normally associated with expressing their thoughts and feelings about situations involving topics like gender, money, race, religion, or sexuality.

When done in a group setting such as a book club, these discussions are based on a shared experience within the book that everyone participating can use as a framework for conversations about those topics. The events, characters, actions, and their outcomes form a common language that they can use to describe how they see and how they feel about things.

We are looking for existing book clubs whose members enjoy a challenge to step up and help us open the door to the difficult conversations by introducing the upcoming novel being published on our traditional publishing imprint, The Price We Pay, to its members.

We’ll offer participating clubs the following resources needed for their members to become LEADERS who reap the benefits of these difficult conversations:

  • Magnetic Thought Leadership Training to equip them to lead these conversations in a way that creates an inviting, respectful space where all voices are recognized and seen as being of equal value.
  • Lessons in how to hold difficult conversations that are productive and meaningful, where both sides feel respected and heard, yet challenged and encouraged to find room for compromise.
  • A Study Guide to navigating the challenges of discussing sensitive topics in an inter-racial community.
  • A community of like-minded individuals who are ready and willing to lend their support and encouragement along the way.

To discover more about the book and the movement behind the book — our novel approach to changing the conversation about race relations — visit our crowdfunding campaign page at https://ptppress.com/taking-a-novel-approach-to-change. #JoinTheConversation

You can also visit www.ptppress.com to learn more about PTP Press, which is Path To Publishing’s traditional publishing imprint.

What Makes Change So Difficult…

…and Why a Novel Approach Is Needed

A study conducted by the University of Scranton on people’s ability to make lasting change, as measured by their ability to stick to a New Year’s Resolution, found that only 19% of people who resolved to change stuck to it after two years.

That study highlights the challenge faced in changing the conversation around race relations: Human beings do not find it easy to make lasting, authentic changes even when we know it is in our best interest to do so.

The odds of people succeeding in making a change are against them because of five main factors:

1) Their inability to see possibilities beyond the current point of view.

It’s hard for people to imagine life any other way than the way they’ve currently experienced it, and that difficulty makes it hard for them to keep making sacrifices for something that they aren’t sure will ever happen or is even possible.

2) Their entrenched beliefs and biases based on past experiences running unchallenged and unchecked.

Most people aren’t even aware of the beliefs and biases they hold that lead to the thoughts, feelings, and decisions they make about how to handle interactions with other people. Many of these beliefs and biases were adopted by them at much younger ages and are not something they are conscious of doing.

3) Their established habits of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors.

Habits are hard to break for a reason: the brain finds this behavior to be the easiest and most efficient method of getting a need met, and the neural pathways of having chosen this behavior repeatedly over a long period of time are deeply entrenched in the brain.

Opening new pathways and doing things in a new way require conscious thought and energy, while doing things the old way doesn’t. The effort and energy required to turn a new habit into a subconscious decision is something the brain resists.

An analogy of this process, something that every sporting coach knows, is the creation of “muscle memory.” It takes ten thousand repetitions before it sinks in and becomes a reflex. This works not just for muscles, but for “learned” behaviors as well.

4) Peer pressure from existing relationships and surrounding communities.

Making a dramatic change in thoughts, feelings, and behaviors is difficult enough, but when the person trying to change meets resistance from the people with whom they have existing relationships, such as family and friends or their surrounding community, that change becomes exponentially more difficult.

The person trying to change is often seen as rejecting those existing relationships or their surrounding community. It takes extraordinary strength to stand up and face down the risks of rejection, judgement, and even potential harm that may come from making a dramatic change.

Consider the public acceptance of smoking. In the fifties and sixties, smoking was more than acceptable — it seemed to be endemic to our society. Then, following public pressure and legislative limitations to where people can smoke in public, active addiction to tobacco dropped from nearly fifty percent in the sixties to under fifteen percent today.

Movies and TV show rating warnings about risk factors now include smoking along with sexual activity, violence, and strong language. In addition, smoking on the screen is either limited to historical films or when it’s in “today’s setting,” it’s almost exclusively limited to “bad guys.” This change took sixty years from the Surgeon General’s first warning, but it has become a society-wide behavior and attitude change.

5) Failure, Frustration, Discouragement, Disappointment, and Impatience.

Human beings would like for change to be a linear progression, going from point A to point Z without any stops in between. However, that’s not how change works. Change requires the development of a new set of habits to be formed and a new set of mental, emotional, and possibly even physical muscles to be developed to support those habits. As with a toddler learning to walk, there is a lot of failure that takes place before the change is successful and the transformation becomes permanent.

Human beings are not patient creatures. They are not patient with each other and certainly not with themselves. The expectation that change should be immediate and a straight line leads to disappointment when that doesn’t pan out in reality. Discouragement over repeated failures at the attempt to change can lead to frustration and, eventually, to the person giving up altogether and abandoning the effort to change as being impossible for them or impossible for the other person.

At Path To Publishing, we recognize that changing the conversation over racial inequity and the impact of that inequity upon children won’t happen overnight. It also won’t help without the support of a community.

That’s why we’ve chosen to crowdfund our movement in order to spread the word and invite public participation in this. We’re also working to develop a supportive community around the vision of creating a more diverse, inclusive, and equitable society for all, one that provides room for people to make these changes and practice new habits in an environment that focuses on progress rather than demanding immediate success.

We’re also going to offer Magnetic Thought Leadership Training to help each person who contributes discover and put to good use their personal power to influence others and enact change. We’ll also be offering a study guide to help our contributors navigate the challenges of holding inter-racial conversations around sensitive topics.

Discover more about our crowdfunding campaign and our efforts to start a movement designed to bridge the gap between the races at https://ptppress.com/taking-a-novel-approach-to-change. #JoinTheConversation, and thank you in advance for supporting the movement.

Complaining and Blaming Is Easy. LEADERS Take Action

It’s a fact that racial divisions are growing in America, with more than 59% of Black Americans expressing a lack of hope that racial relations can ever improve.

There are plenty of reasons to complain about this and more than enough blame to go around, but while those things are easier, they in no way solve the problem.

Path To Publishing and PTP Press are devoted to cultivating bold LEADERS who have the skills, knowledge, and courage it takes to tackle challenges like this head on — not by fighting with their fists but by engaging in the difficult conversations that open the door to lasting change.

Inspired by the way that our team’s relationships changed for the better as we confronted one another about our own internal biases and beliefs while discussing Nikki T. Anthony’s book, The Price We Pay, we knew we had in our hands the kind of book that could spark a movement and begin bridging the gaps between the races.

Respectful conversations like this are not easy to have. It takes the right kind of leadership and guidance, along with the support of a community of like-minded individuals, to succeed in producing authentic, lasting change. Without those, the conversations can break down into accusations and anger, leaving both sides feeling defensive and misunderstood, which ends up causing divisions to grow worse, not better.

That’s why we’re making sure that contributors to our crowdfunding campaign will be given access to specialized Magnetic Thought Leadership Training along with study guides to facilitate inter-racial conversations about sensitive topics, leveraging the book as the starting point. They will also be invited to join the growing LEADERS community we’re building of people committed to helping change the conversation for the better.

Discover more about our new book by visiting our crowdfunding campaign page at https://ptppress.com/taking-a-novel-approach-to-change. Sign up to #JoinTheConversation and support the movement. Change is possible, but only when people commit to taking action.

The Benefits of Engaging in Difficult Conversations

When it comes to difficult conversations, avoiding the five big mistakes most people make is critical. Most people, not knowing how to avoid those mistakes, will simply choose to walk away from the conversation or avoid it.

Unfortunately, that doesn’t resolve the conflict that the difficult conversation is designed to overcome. The hurt feelings, frustrations, and fears that surround these topics remain, and continue to grow, in secret. Like an untreated infection, these negative factors grow into a lethal, toxic poison that, over time, kills the relationship.

It also doesn’t allow either party to grow from experience. Their blind spots remain, and they learn nothing except to become more cautious in who they choose to open up to about their beliefs, ideas, and thoughts.

There are many benefits to engaging in difficult conversations like these, even if they don’t feel comfortable at first.

  1. It forces individuals to re-examine what they believe and why they believe it, allowing them to discard beliefs that no longer serve them and adopt new beliefs that are more functional;
  2. It helps individuals to identify their own internal prejudices and biases, allowing them to see the truth more clearly;
  3. It ensures they are not blindly following the herd and helps to prevent groupthink from taking over;
  4. It will help them to grow in their understanding of why people think, believe, and act as they do, which will improve their ability to persuade others to join their side when the cause is worthy and just;
  5. It will increase their skills in explaining their beliefs to others in a manner that is not confrontational and will help them keep their cool when under pressure.

Path To Publishing doesn’t shy away from difficult conversations like those that center around racial divisions and the current state of race relations. We embrace them despite the difficulties, and we want to encourage others to embrace them, too.

That’s why we’ve chosen to crowdfund the book, The Price We Pay (being published under our traditional publishing imprint, PTP Press), and to equip our contributors to take an active role in leading these kinds of difficult conversations with the following resources:

  1. Magnetic Thought Leadership Training to equip them to lead these conversations in a way that creates an inviting, respectful space where all voices are recognized and seen as being of equal value.
  2. Lessons in how to hold difficult conversations that are productive and meaningful where both sides feel respected and heard, yet challenged and encouraged to find room for compromise.
  3. A Study Guide to navigating the challenges of discussing sensitive topics in an inter-racial community.
  4. A community of like-minded individuals who are ready and willing to lend their support and encouragement along the way.

To discover more about the novel and our approach to opening the doors of communication, visit our crowdfunding campaign page at https://ptppress.com/taking-a-novel-approach-to-change. Sign up to #JoinTheConversation.


Remember, many books and publications tackle subject matters that lead to hard conversations to have. This can often be awkward for some authors during readings and signing, or even during panel discussions and live videos.

To learn more about the training we offer at Path To Publishing to help you navigate your role as an author, thought-leader, or change-agent, which includes having, moderating, and leading tough conversations, email info@pathtopublishing.com.

The Value of Listening to Opposing Viewpoints

Anyone who studies art soon discovers that perspective is not reality. It is a distorted version of reality based on the limitations of human eyesight and the position of the viewer. The only way for artists to draw with accuracy is to forget all the facts they know to be true about an object and draw only what they see. Nothing more and nothing less.

The hardest part about distinguishing between perspective and reality is that there is no way for individuals to know what they do not know unless someone else tells them. That is the value of engaging in conversations with other people. It can help an individual see the areas of their life where they may be overlooking things or missing things due to their own personal limitations.

The natural tendency of every human being is to assume that their personal experiences are universal to everyone. That assumption can lead to people becoming upset or offended when others don’t see things the same way they do. They can’t understand why someone can’t see it the same way without realizing that it is a literal impossibility for anyone to see things exactly the same way they do.

That’s the value of choosing to engage in meaningful dialogue with people of varying — even opposing — viewpoints. By listening to and asking questions about experiences that differ from their own, individuals are given the opportunity to broaden their own perspectives, incorporating things they’ve learned into constructing a new picture that is closer to reality.

The difficulty in engaging in these meaningful conversations comes when the beliefs that form around those viewpoints are tied directly into an individual’s sense of personal identity. That’s why most people advise against discussions about race, religion, money, politics, gender, and sexuality.

If done without great care, those discussions are too often viewed as personal attacks. These can erupt into arguments that leave lasting emotional wounds. However, shutting down these conversations doesn’t create lasting peace, nor does it bridge gaps in understanding.

It can actually foster the divisions between people and lock everyone down in fear driven by misunderstandings and misinterpretations of behavior. Only when the door to these conversations is open can authentic change begin to take place.

That’s why we at Path To Publishing are leading the way by crowdfunding a movement to change. The funds raised for the publication of our upcoming novel, The Price We Pay (being published on our traditional publishing imprint, PTP Press), is just the beginning. Path To Publishing intends to use our book as an instrument to open the door to these important conversations. We’ll also be providing a discussion study guide to engaging in these kinds of sensitive inter-racial conversations.

To discover more about the movement, the book, and our work to open the doors of communication, visit our crowdfunding campaign page at https://ptppress.com/taking-a-novel-approach-to-change. Sign up to #JoinTheConversation and be invited to join the community.

How to Avoid the Top 5 Conversation Mistakes

Many books and publications tackle subject matters that lead to hard conversations to have. This can often be awkward for some authors during readings and signings, or even during panel discussions and live videos.

Difficult conversations are difficult because they are high-stakes conversations. At risk in this moment is the relationship with the other person, the individual’s personal sense of goodness, a need for validation, a sense of identity, and endemic fears of rejection and judgement.

When difficult conversations become productive, they improve relationships and strengthen them. When they go wrong, though, relationships can be permanently damaged.

That’s why it’s important to avoid the top 5 conversational mistakes most people make when trying to engage in difficult conversations:

  1. Seeking to change the other person’s view, rather than to expand their own view.
  2. Assuming their way of seeing things is the only way to see them and that anyone who doesn’t see it their way is wrong.
  3. Listening to respond rather than listening to understand the other person’s viewpoint.
  4. Failing to clarify what the other person means by what they say before responding to them.
  5. Assuming that the other person is driven by bad intentions or a flawed character, rather than by misguidance, misinformation, or lessons learned in childhood and never challenged since.

While easy to make, when these mistakes are made, conversations inevitably break down and become counterproductive. It can even cause the parties involved to further entrench themselves in their beliefs rather than giving them the room they need to think through the new perspectives presented to them and incorporate those into their existing world view.

Avoiding these five mistakes is part of the training Path To Publishing will be offering to contributors as we crowdfund our novel, The Price We Pay. That book, along with the training, is all part of our plan to equip our supporters and contributors with everything required to help open the door to these important conversations in a way that is respectful and productive.

To discover more about our novel approach to changing the conversation around race relations, visit our crowdfunding campaign page at https://ptppress.com/taking-a-novel-approach-to-change. #JoinTheConversation.


To learn more about the training we offer at Path To Publishing to help you navigate your role as an author, thought-leader, or change-agent, which includes having, moderating, and leading tough conversations, email info@pathtopublishing.com.

What Makes Difficult Conversations So Difficult…

..and What We Can Do About It

It’s not hard to have a conversation about which color in a crayon box is the best. That’s because there are no emotional stakes to that conversation. It’s just one person’s opinion versus another’s. What’s being traded is of equal value but offers no emotional attachment.

However, when the topic of conversation is about race, religion, gender, sexuality, or money, how the topic is viewed is not just an opinion. It’s a reflection of the participating individuals’ personal identities, a judgement of their worthiness to be loved. That’s why those conversations become so emotionally charged.

Human beings intuitively understand that in order to be loved, they must be seen as good. That’s what drives the urge to justify and rationalize every negative behavior. Love is not a nicety. It is a necessity.

Although Abraham Maslow posited that love was something that only became a driving need after our basic needs were met, Harry Harlow’s later experiments, presented in “The Nature of Love” in 1958, proved Maslow wrong. Love is such a fundamental need that without it, it doesn’t matter how much food, water, shelter, or reproductive access we have. We will simply lose our will to live.

That’s where suicides and addictions creep in, as people drink or drug themselves to death trying to escape the pain of living without love. This was borne out again in Bruce Alexander’s infamous Rat Park experiments. Rats who were isolated and deprived of the social needs of love and affection would drug themselves to death. Rats re-introduced to the social environment native to them chose life rather than suicide by addiction.

There are many contributing factors to the challenges involved in navigating difficult conversations:

  • Our personal limitations
  • Our need for validation of our personal experiences
  • Our ignorance of other people’s experiences
  • Our challenges in seeing ourselves or our beliefs in an objective light
  • Our personal biases and background/history
  • Our emotional attachment to our own ways of thinking and believing

When all these things are on the line, it’s normal to be defensive and to seek to protect ourselves when we are challenged or feel our beliefs are under attack. That’s because we aren’t just defending our beliefs or opinions. We’re defending our sense of personal goodness and worthiness to be loved.

Overcoming these difficulties requires training. That’s why we’re offering Magnetic Thought Leadership Training so that our contributors are equipped to lead these conversations in a way that creates an inviting, respectful space where all voices are recognized and seen as being of equal value.

We are also offering lessons in how to hold difficult conversations that are productive and meaningful, where both sides can walk away feeling respected and heard, yet challenged and encouraged to find room for compromise. We feel these difficult conversations are necessary to clear the air and create space for positive momentum forward.

Finally, we’re offering a Study Guide that will help people navigate the challenges of discussing sensitive topics in an inter-racial community. We are confident these three factors will open the door and allow everyone a space at the table to make themselves heard.

This is just the first stage of our larger plan at Path To Publishing to take a novel approach to changing the conversation around race relations. Discover more about the movement, and the book at its heart, by visiting our crowdfunding campaign page at https://ptppress.com/taking-a-novel-approach-to-change. #JoinTheConversation.

You can also visit www.ptppress.com to learn more about PTP Press, which is Path To Publishing’s traditional publishing imprint.


Do you need help leveraging your role as a leader, be it as an author, coach, consultant, or in your career or business? Visit https://www.pathtopublishing.com/ptp-certification-verification to learn more about our Magnetic Thought Leadership Training programs.

Why It’s So Hard to Talk to Each Other…

…and How We Can Overcome That

There’s an ancient Indian story about four blind men examining an elephant and attempting to define for each other what an elephant was based on this.

One held the trunk and reported that an elephant was long and tubular with two holes at one end.

One held the tail and disagreed, saying that an elephant was cone shaped and furry at the end.

One held a leg and disagreed with the first two, saying it was a tree trunk.

The fourth one held an ear and disagreed with the other three, saying it was a tent flap.

All four men were convinced they knew the truth and could not be persuaded from it, no matter how ardent the argument.

A fifth man came along and heard the four men arguing. Fortunately for them, he was not blind. He was able to help them see how they were all four correct and all four wrong at the same time. With the seeing man’s help, they were able to get to the bottom of what an elephant was, based on a more complete picture rather than on the limitations of their personal experiences.

This story illustrates why conversations about beliefs are so difficult: they are based on an individual’s lived experiences. They know what they’ve seen, felt, heard, tasted, and touched. Their survival depends on their ability to trust their own experiences, and their brain will go to great lengths to protect them from information that threatens or challenges the beliefs formed based on those experiences.

It also illustrates why beliefs need to be challenged: they aren’t always based on reality, but on the limitations of an individual’s perspective and what can be seen at the time of their experience. The more people that contribute to the conversation, the more perspectives that are available to use in assembling a complete picture.

Path To Publishing is not just an author assistance and literary service provider. And PTP Press is not just another traditional publishing imprint. We are a change agent. Our novel, The Price We Pay, is a vehicle for our plans to open the door to a novel way of engaging in conversations about race relations.

Our goal is to unite people who are willing to do the work required to assemble a more complete picture of one another, one free of the misperceptions that creep in when we view one another through the limitations of our perspectives rather than the realities of our lives.

To discover more about our work to change the way difficult conversations are held, visit https://ptppress.com/taking-a-novel-approach-to-change. If you like what you see, we invite you to #JoinTheConversation.

Do you have a thought, idea, concept, book, story, testimony, or message that you know deserves to have a movement behind it or some type of cause marketing? If you need help fleshing it out and/or building it out, visit https://app.10to8.com/book/gmerivvtrtwgsyuezivgt-free to schedule a paid 30-minute or 60-minute literary consulting call with one of our Verified Literary Consultants.

If you need help building your crowdfunding campaign, email info@pathtopublishing.com and request a quote.

‘The Price We Pay’ Is Where Our Plans to Address the Problems of Racial Divisions in America Begins.

But We’re Not Stopping There.

Path To Publishing has long recognized the power of books to be agents of change. We know that a book can unlock hearts and lead people to question the current culture and their role in it.

Path To Publishing hopes to leverage the book from our traditional publishing imprint, PTP Press, The Price We Pay, as a tool to open the doors to honest, authentic conversations around race relations that will lead to lasting change. However, we recognize that those changes won’t happen overnight. They won’t happen without more than a book to guide them.

That’s why this book is just the first step in our plans. Along with the book, we are offering Magnetic Thought Leadership Training that will help people from all walks of life uncover their power to become the kind of leaders capable of drawing people to them, inspiring them with a vision, and leading them to a positive future.

We are also offering lessons in how to hold difficult conversations that are productive and meaningful, where both sides can walk away feeling respected and heard, yet challenged and encouraged to find room for compromise. We feel these difficult conversations are necessary to clear the air and create space for positive momentum forward.

We intend to establish a publishing brand known for producing conversation starters that challenge the status quo and open the door to productive conversations around the issues that divide people.

To discover more about Path To Publishing and our plans for The Price We Pay, visit our crowdfunding campaign at https://ptppress.com/taking-a-novel-approach-to-change. #JoinTheConversation and support the movement.

You can also visit www.ptppress.com to learn more about Path To Publishing’s traditional publishing imprint.