333. How to never have an argument at work again, with Lawyer turned peacemaker, Doug Noll

0:00Hello and welcome to Truth, Life and Work, the award-winning podcast for Behavioral Science meets workplace culture brought to you by the Hubsbot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. My name is Leanne and I'm a child occupational psychologist. My voice is about an octave lower. Why does it sound so low? Paulie has not been very well recently and I like it. I do like it. I think I prefer. I'd like you to be ill more often. My name is Al. I am Leanne's husband and also a business owner and we are here to help you simplify the science of work. Today's guest is Doug Null. He's a lawyer-turned-piecemaker who's spent 25 years mediating everything from divorced disputes to prison violence. His claim is pretty simple. If you learn his listening technique then you'll never have a fight or an argument at work again. Or anywhere else for that matter. That is a big, big promise. So today we're testing it, not debunking it, not cheerleading it, just genuinely asking,

1:01could this actually work in your office tomorrow? We'll find out after this short break. Does your experience with AI sound a little like this? You prompt for 20 minutes, the output is polished, is confident, and is completely flippin' useless. Well that's what happens when AI doesn't know anything about your business. But do you know what does know something about your business? Hobbsbots. Hobbsbots AI. It works with your actual customer data. Every interaction. Every signal your team has generated over time. So instead of prompting and hoping, you ask once and ship it. Check out Hobbsbots.com, the agentic customer platform for growing businesses. Hey editing, I'll hear. I just want to say that for this one, I don't know what happened, but we had a couple of issues with Doug's audio. So occasionally it kind of dips in and out, but I've done my best to clean it up. Still I thought it was important enough. Story that we needed to bring it to you anyway. My name is Doug Noah. I'm a lawyer, turned piecemaker. Yeah, I've been doing that since 2000 and it's taken me to some pretty wild places.

2:06And we start Doug with those wild places. So your book, which was your previous book, starts off in Valley State Prison. Right. Take us Valley State Prison for women. For women, take us back to that day. Tell us what happened. My colleague, Worlkoff, received a letter from a woman serving a life sentence without the possibility to rule. And she asked if Worl could come in and train the lifers how to become mediators and peace makers to stop prison violence. And eight months later, there we were inside of valleys, state prison for women, which at that time was the largest, most vital women's prison in the world, 15 women ages 65 to late 20s, all lifers or long termers, black, white, Asian, Hispanic, Pacific, angry, skeptical and a little curious. And our job was to teach them how to become peacemakers and mediators to stop prison violence. And we had never been in a maximum

3:10of security prison before. It is intimidating the first time you eventually get used to it. But when those steel doors slam behind you, you know you're in the belly of the beast. It sounds to me like that is a gigantic task that could not end well. But it did end okay, didn't it? It did. Part of the reason for the success was who we were. Worl, responded to Hurricane Katrina by going to Mississippi in the areas affected by the hurricane. And entered its mediation to the communities who were completely devastated. So she had tremendous experience in training large numbers of people in mediation and peace. I had my own training experience as a as a professor and also a trainer. And so we had this unique set of skills that we were able to mel and develop a curriculum for these incarcerated

4:11people. And we didn't know if it was going to work or not. But they did. I mean massively. And we saw for 10 years. We were working every week. Usually three days a week in different prisons in California, in Canada, teaching libraries and long-termers. How did he come these makers and mediators? It was incredible. We're going to go into a methodology in a second. But there is a three word phrase, sorry, four word phrase that I've heard you use quite a lot. And that is feel someone into existence. Talk us through what that actually means. The actual phrase I coined was listening someone into existence. It was actually a phrase that an associate superintendent of the school district said after a listening circle I can duck with teachers and administrators in a school district teaching them a skills. And she said after the circle, that's the first time anyone has listened me into existence. And I said, wow.

5:16So that's where that phrase came from. The idea is this so we are desperate to be heard, validated and listened to. Nobody listens to us. We're all trying to get heard. But we're not taking the top list. And active listening doesn't work because it's all about me. What I hear you saying is act. So that's I statement or it's passive voice. It seems to me that or we ask a question, are you angry? None of it is ever about you. And so we go through life never being heard. Don't be a drama queen. Put in your big girl panties. Rub dirt in it. It doesn't hurt. Oh, there's a silver lining, Deborah. All these same invalidators tell us not to feel not to experience emotion from this time we're two years old.

6:17And it destroys us. And so that's where listening someone into existence came from because it's the antidote to all of us. It was a great example of this with you, emediating a divorce, I believe, two people. They were four they had been divorced. And we're fighting over an $18,000 problem. They'd each spend $50,000 trying to destroy each other. Right. And that's where I got my insight. So I got called into this miniation in Santa Barbara. A couple of been divorced for 20 years. When they were married, the wife had been in an automobile accident and their small children had been in the back seat. They settled with the insurance company. And it California, the insurance proceeds for a settlement for children has to go into what's known as a blind trust. It's a bank account that you can't take the money out of without a court order. And it makes sense, right? You know what,

7:21mom and dad had run off the Las Vegas and blow the money. Well, in this case, many, many years later, mom got laid off, called her adult kids who were all doing fine. And said, can I take that $18,000 to pay my rent and buy groceries? And they could say that. Sure. Go. She did not get a court order. Ex-husband finds out files the lawsuit against her for breach of fiduciary duty fraud theft. I mean, all the usual stuff. They spent $50,000 each in attorney's fees and costs, tried to destroy each other. And then they come to me. I'm sitting there. I talked to them about what mediation and all of a sudden, they stayed up in the conference table and started screaming at each other. And I sit there for a minute and a half. What am I going to do with it? And then inside yet, listen to the emotions.

8:23So I sat them down. I did my Moses, Moses parting the seats, sit down. And I said, Susan, I want you to tell us what John is feeling. Not what he's saying. What he's feeling. I'll help you. Can you do that? And she said, I don't know, I'll try. So John started telling his story. And Susan, all of a sudden, went, yeah, but yeah, but yeah, but yeah, but cat or argument, right? No, tell us what he's feeling. And so she looked at me and said, said, he's really angry. Tell him that. John, you're really angry. And from the next three hours, that we did back and forth. Until finally, they finished their stories. And John looked across the table. It's Susan with tears streaming down his eyes. And he said, that's the first time

9:24you'd listen to me in 25 year dead silence. They settled the case and walked out holding hands. I need to I knew what I'd done, but he didn't know what. So I started playing with it in other mediations. And I got the same result. And then the science came out two years later, 2007. And that's when I had the science that explained what I had observed. And the idea here, when you need what somebody feels, the centers of the brain associated with negative emotion are inhibited. And one part of the brain in the pre-fellow region, the right ventral lateral pre-fellow cortex is activated. And it's that part of the brain that's responsible for emotional self-regulation and awareness. So literally naming what somewhat feels helps people

10:32calm themselves down at a text about 90 seconds. When you and I were talking before, I think we said that if you use the techniques in both of your books, then you can you can basically go through the rest of your life without having a fight or an argument ever again. And that's what bold claim. Back that up for me. Tell me how do we do that? So the promise that I make to my clients is that if you learn these skills, you'll never have a fight or argument again in your life. But you have to practice. It's like learning how to ride a bicycle. You just can't read my book or my books, or watch my YouTube's or my TEDx. And know how to do this. It takes some practice. But when you learn how to do it and you see the results, your life transforms forever. Because what you learn is a very profound idea. And that is there's no such thing as rationality.

11:32We are emotional being. And when you start seeing us, human beings, as emotional not rational, everything makes sense. And then the idea of naming emotion makes perfect sense. And so you start saying stuff like you're angry, you're frustrated, you feel disrespected, and then you watch the brain palm down. And it happens every single time without failure. Because that's how we're hard word. I can imagine that same in a situation with I'm at work. There's another department head who comes in. They're angry because I've done something at work that they're not happy with. So they come in and they go, what the hell do you do that for? That's just is ruined everything. You turn that server off. And I specifically said never turn it off. And I turn round to this guy, or woman, and I say, you're angry. I in my head, I imagine the next phrase, come out of that person's

12:32mouth is, you're damn right. I'm angry and escalating it. Why am I wrong? Oh, no, that's perfect. If he says damn right, I am angry. Pat yourself on the back. That's exactly what you want. Because he just got hurt. He just felt validated. Now he's still escalated and you got more work to do. But that's a major breakthrough. So yeah, not only angry, I like you feel really disrespected and ignored and unimportant. And nobody cares about what you're doing. And you feel unappreciated and unsupported. And you're really anxious because of shutdown, really set you back. And you're really upset and frustrated and pissed off. Oh, why does it not work? If I just add the word A-R-E in front of it. So why if why instead of me saying you're angry, me saying, are you angry? Why does that not work? Because when people are upset, they're in threat status. The prefrontal cortex, which does all the processing,

13:39is now inaccessible. When you ask a question, you're asking them to do something that's physiologically impossible. So they get really frustrated. And they just get angry because they can't answer the question. Because physiologically, the prefrontal cortex is offline, which is why we don't ask questions. At least emotional questions. We can ask questions later when they're calm down. But now initially, so Doug, let's go back to this example of the IT Director coming in, shouting at me. And so what happened? They've come in and gone, what the hell have you done this for? I've said, you're angry, Arnold, you're angry, Arnold. And he says, damn right, I'm angry. I've specifically put a note on that laptop saying, do not turn this off or the entire world will blow up. Someone has turned it off and I think it's you. At that point, what do I say next, Doug? Arnold, you're really pissed off. You're frustrated. You did everything you thought you could do

14:42to protect the system. And it didn't work. And you feel really deeply betrayed and rejected. And it's just really frustrated. You feel completely disrespected like you were ignored. Your instructions were ignored. And it cost a lot of chaos. And you're telling your hair out in frustration because you didn't know what else you could do. And so what are we hoping is going to happen after we've said those things? Arnold is going to say, yeah, exactly. And he's going to nod his head. His shoulders are going to drop. He's going to sigh. Like that and say, okay, we're going to solve this problem. How do we prevent this from having again? If I did it to somebody else is going to do it, there has to be a better way. Let's figure it out. Or Arnold, how do we make things right here? You're right. It was a big mistake.

15:43How do we make it right? Now you're in the conversation and your problem solving out of the appropriate time when Arnold is calmed down. If you try to ask those questions, when he was totally escalated, he's just going to get angry. Then you're going to go nowhere. So Doug, the signs he just said there were that shoulders drop. The actual level of voice drops a little bit. What else? So there are four autonomic body responses. Notting it ahead. Some kind of verbal response. Like, yeah, damn right, I'm angry. A dropping of the shoulders and a sigh relief. Showing the body's yes. I've been heard. I'm relaxed now. That's what you're looking for. I think there'd be some people who've never come across your work before who would be concerned that by naming the emotion, you're almost feeding it. Well, in a way, it is. You're landing.

16:45Your pre-final cortex to this angry person for the 90 seconds it takes for their pre-final court cortex to come back online. So you are feeding it in a way and there's nothing wrong with that. It costs people down and that's what we want. No more fights and arguments. People just heard. They feel validated. They're happy. They thank you. Thanks for listening to me. You mentioned in, I think you just talked to your book. I can't remember which one it was that in some of these prisons you're dealing with, sort of like gang members and people who are, I just can't get my head round. A gang member coming up to me in prison and me just going you're angry and that working. But have you actually seen this work in real life? Oh, yeah. Tell me about it. So we ended up in Quarker State, prison, and here in California, which is what a California is, super maxed. And we were given the challenge to work with men

17:46coming out of violent gangs. And for three years, I taught a hundred feet away from Charles Manson's cell. And these were guys that were pretty rough and they got it. It was amazing. The stories were just incredible. In fact, we've got a couple of, we've got one guy now, who has been, he said another prison, which is a downgraded security. So, showing that he is no longer a security risk. And he's leading prison at peace and that and that prison. You know, he's trained over a thousand people in prison. How to be peacemaker's mediators? How did you feel when you, one of the first few times you actually saw that happen in that quite hostile, like a tinderbox environment? Well, by then, we do what we were doing. So, we just smiled. Yep, working again. Just like clockwork. And there are any days we weren't so sure.

18:48But by this time we got to that prison, another maximum security prisons, we do what we were doing. And we do what the effect went through. And we would get pushed back from the, from the men in the gang. And we said, nah, trust us. We know what we're doing here. Just get a try and see what happened. And that would and to come back and say, very sheepishly, you were right. We were wrong. This is amazing. You mentioned there the neuroscience caught up with your technique a couple of years down the line. Now, I think you mentioned a guy Lieberman, if I remember. Matthew Lieberman taught me through that. How, what's the neuroscience behind it? So Lieberman and his colleagues at UCLA study a field called social neuropsychology. And they're looking at how our social literations work in the brain. The guys are friggin genius. That is wife Naomi Eisenberg, another genius. I mean, these people are giants. And in 2007, he and his colleagues set up an

19:56experiment. They put people into a scanning machine. And they showed them evocative pictures, pictures that evoked emotion. They watched what happens to the brains. And they saw the emotional centers explode. And the prefrontal cortex quiet down. Then what they did is have their subjects named their emotion. And when they did that, it reversed the effect. The amygdala and all the limbic regions associated with negative motions deactivated. And the right ventral lateral prefrontal cortex activated. And they calm down. There is the hard science. I'm going to ask you a question, Doug, that you may not want to or be able to answer. But I'm interested to see. So if someone is perhaps sociopathic or psychopathic, where they may not be able to recognize emotions, how does that work?

20:58That is a great question. And I'm thinking because of the thousands of people that we train for over 10 years, we only kicked one part out of the program. And you can imagine a prison. There are a lot of maladaptive people. And there's just one guy that, yep, so our experiences that if you've got a functioning brain, whether you're sociopathic, psychopathic, or a maladaptive narcissist, this will work. Maybe not permanently, but in the moment, it will work. The one guy that we kicked out was a maladaptive overt narcissist. And we just couldn't penetrate him. So we found the LLMGO. But that was after two years of trying. Do you ever feel any fear in these prisons? Fear? Fear, yeah. Not want. Why not? These people were so thrilled with what they were learning from them, that they became dedicated

22:05loyal students. And they would protect us against anything. We were in class plenty of times when there were riots going out on the yard. And they said, stay here. Don't worry about it. We got you covered. Not once did we have a problem. And we brought in trainers, both men and women, none of us ever had a problem. Not once. Not even close. Surprise the heck out of us. But eventually, we got used to. They were so happy to be given tools that really worked and changed their lives. They would do anything for it. And this happened in prison after prison after prison, 20 or 30 prisons. Welcome to the break. Yes, my favorite part of the show. These two idiots have stopped talking. Yes, I want to tell you about my new favorite podcast. No, that's a lie. It's my old favorite podcast. I don't know where that was going. Didn't know where that was going. It is called Eye Dye Grass. It is hosted by Troy Sandage. And it is brought to you

23:07by the Hubsbot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Yes, it's got shows that are under 30 minutes. And Eye Dye Grass helps eliminate complexity, complications, and confusion in your business with framework strategies that achieve scalable and sustainable success. At least that's what it says here. And if you do want to hear a really personal story, go to episode 1, 3, 6. This is Troy's honest account of fatherhood, killing, hustle, culture, and what really matters when you stop performing and start living with intention. Listen to Eye Dye Grass wherever you get your podcasts. That concludes the break. Let's return to the scheduled programming. Back to the studio. Now let's move a bit more into perhaps a less high stakes environment. Going back into the work place. Have you done any work with organizations around this? Have you ever been in Utah? Yeah, tell me about that. So in workplace settings, it's hierarchical mostly. And people have very low

24:07skill levels. So conflict is predictable and fixable. However, people don't have a skill set. And so it just gets worse. And our experience has been when you teach these basic skills to leaders. So they learn what I call nervous system leadership through dynamic change dramatically. And so leadership failure is not due to a personality defect or ignorance or being stupid or not having skills. It's not recognizing that you're dealing with nervous systems. And when people in a threat response, they cannot function. And when you get a consistent threat response, that's when people shut down quite quit, leave, or in the worst case, sabotage, passive aggressively.

25:07Because their nervous systems are not being attended to. And once a leader gets the insight, they're like, got to manage these nervous system. I've got to take a dysregulated nervous system and and regulate, calm it down. That's when the transformation occur. And we've seen it over and over again. So when you do go into organizations to teach this nervous system leadership, what are the common pushbacks from people in your class? What are they saying? Soft skills, yaku, empathy. Oh, emotion. Yaku, this is irrational. I'm going to look like a fool doing that. But what if I get over, I'll lose all my authority. Same old crap, Eric, every single time. We'll, we always say the same for rejections. They're all wrong. And the only way you overcome them is to go out and experiment and try it for yourself and see that your objections are baseless. Bill, you just hit something there,

26:10I think a lot of people are going to be worried about. You said I'd be losing my authority. So big boss walks into a room and someone's angry. Then it feels like the big boss should come in there and go, shut up, sit down, get on with your work. But instead, you're suggesting big boss comes in and says, you feel really frustrated. I suspect there are some people in the world who are managers who'd like, no, no, I'm losing my authority. I look soft and wrong. Well, that's what they're feeling and thinking, but they're not thinking it through carefully. The reason they say sit down, shut up, do your work. Is there unconsciously seizing their own anxiety over the upset of their team? So their brain is recognized the upset and gets anxious over it and then tells the boss tell them to shut up and not feel this. But wait, don't reveal because if you don't feel this way, I won't feel anxious and everything will be good.

27:17Doesn't work. So if you take the time instead to listen to the emotions and name them while remaining calm and compassionate, everything changes. Yeah, about 1% of the time. Because if you walk into a meeting and tell people to shut up, sit down, feel your work, those people are going to be resentful. They're going to feel like they can't trust you. They're not going to feel safe. And they're going to start looking for another job as soon as they can. And that's what they do. That's what quiet quitting is all of it. So instead of worrying about a thorn, worrying about nervous systems, are these nervous systems feeling safe? Can they trust me? Do I matter to them? Do they matter to me? Because that's what the nervous systems are asking in every second. Can I trust you? Am I safe? Do I matter to you? And if the answer is no, you've got checkout and conflict. And your job as a leader is to make sure

28:26that it's yes to every question in every moment. What were those three questions, Doug? Am I safe? Can I trust you? Do I matter to you? That's what our nervous systems are asking in every micro-second. It's not just work. It's in every social environment. It has leverment is pointed out. Our brains cannot distinguish between a social threat and a saber-toothed tiger launching itself. The brain is going to react the same way. So a little insult, sarcasm, being ignored, being dismissed. That's a saber-toothed tiger as far as the brain is concerned. And we just don't get over. And we talk about someone who might be like this. So let's talk about, I think most people in the world have had a bad boss. Everybody's had a bad boss. Exactly. I mean, they made movies about it. So everyone in the world has had a bad boss. What is going on in their

29:32head do you think? What makes them so angry or appearing to hate you or me? You're talking about the superheroes in the bar. They're frustrated. And they're angry because they don't have the skill set to manage the deal. Let's take the difficult situation. You've got to, which is making it hard. Who's really good at making weird? That's what you make in the world. Get the promote to the supervisor. With the assumption that you're great. Which made her the audience fantastic supervisor. And what people realize is the leading is very different than they're doing. And there's no training given. So the supervisor who got a huge double-edged domain release by being the best widget maker is now in a position where there's no dopamine.

30:37Because there's no way of measuring how good you are. And that leads to frustration and anger, anxiety, upset, depression. And so they take it out on their subordinates because they don't know what else to do with it. Happens over and over and over again. In fact, there's a book in the 1960s called the Peter Principle that still holds true today. And that's a dynamic that's going on. Just made me think then that applies to those teachers we were scared of at school. Does it not? Is that the same thing? Absolutely. Same. And here's the thing, Al. Once you see the pattern, you see it everywhere. We have a really small repertoire of behaviors and words and emotions that repeat themselves over and over and over again. And when you learn these skills, you see the patterns and they're no longer upsetting. And you know what to do. That's why you'll never

31:40have a fight or argument again. Because you see the pattern and you can fix it. Bosses, teachers, law enforcement, parents, brothers and sisters, spouses, it's all the same. You just made me think that there's probably a lot of movies where the bad guy is the person who is exhibiting all the things you've just said there and the way the resolution is to understand the bad guy, is that too simplistic? That's exactly right. You can look at a movie and watch somebody do bad stuff and look at what are the emotions going on with this person. The example I like to do, and I'm really dating myself, when I was a kid, Popeye the Sailor, did you ever see any of those cartoons? All right, here's the theme. Popeye's walking down his street, three with olive oil. They're having a great time. Bluto shows up and he

32:40obsconds with olive oil. Popeye is left there as a weakling. He goes after Bluto. Bluto beats the crap out of him and in extremists until finally the spinach pops out with the magic elixir. Popeye inhales it, beats the crap out of Bluto, rescues olive oil and they walk into the sunset, happily ever after. Week after, after week after week. Go look at the die hard move. Bruce Willis, same thing. Almost every, every movie follows his formula. That's the formula and what's going on emotionally? Why doesn't somebody talk to Bluto and calm him down so he doesn't have to feel like he's got a abuse, olive oil and Popeye. Why doesn't Popeye take his spinach when he sees Bluto in the beginning? And why isn't olive oil empowered to protect herself? We don't ask those questions.

33:43I have heard that some people use a technique of deliberately escalating their own voice in a disagreement so that they can then de-escalate the voice and hopefully the person follows. That doesn't sound like it's going to work. That comes from MLP, neurolinguously programming. There's a certain truth to it but it's got to be applied carefully. So somebody is at this level up here, do you want to come in right underneath them? They're going to escalate up. You come up underneath them. One more time they go up, you come underneath them and then they drop and you come underneath them. So you want to follow them with your intensity but not the more intense and that takes practice. What's up talking of practice? You must have seen thousands, if not tens of thousands of people practicing this in front of you.

34:48What is the number one mistake that most people struggle to overcome when they're trying to bring out this technique? They're really afraid to say you or you feel they want to go to I or they want to go to pass a voice and the reason is we are culturally trained and socially trained that if we say you and are very direct it's too intimate. We don't know what's going to happen. So we're told that this distance ourselves, right? By using an i-step what I think your feeling is that that creates distance. It's supposed to be calming and amounting your faith. The problem is it doesn't work. i-statement never work in this situation. So that's the hardest thing for people to get over. I have to get over it. I keep slipping into i-statement until I finally program myself not to and then I got much better results. It's scary in the beginning until it's not. So you're telling us we should say you and then insert emotion. Why don't we get

35:54the wrong emotion there? There you go. This is the number one question. What if I'm wrong? It doesn't matter. It just does not matter. As long as you get used to it, the speaker will feel like you're trying to listen to them and rather than feeling offended, they'll feel grateful. They'll correct you. I'm not angry. I'm frustrated. Oh, you're really frustrated. Yeah, I'm really frustrated. That you feel really disrespected. Yeah, and I appreciate it and I'm supported. Yeah, and you feel invisible. Nobody's listening to you. Yeah, and you're really pissed off. Yeah, I'm really pissed off. That's how it goes every time. It's the spec that once you go past the first level of emotion, then really we're getting down to one of a handful of human emotions here. You are frightened, you are threatened, you are what you know, is that right? Is they like just basically a

36:56whole? Good observation. Good observation. Seven layers. The seven layers of emotion that we use in this work are anger, disrespect, fear, disgust, shame, sadness, and abandonment. So we work through the layers and when you get to discuss and the four layers below, you've got to use discernment. The cassis are intimate emotions. For somebody who feel, for you to say you feel a bit in the matrix is deeply intimate and you want to be careful about that. In workplace that you're good with anger, disrespect, and fear. Once you get below that, you got to be careful. And that takes training. Excellent. So these are literally not literally figuratively layers of an onion that you and once you get down past the past, what was the one

37:58that we have to be careful underneath? From disgust below. Disgust, disgust, shame, sadness, and abandonment. Or call emotions there I think, aren't they? That's right. And almost all anger comes from things of abandonment, betrayal, and rejection. So whenever we have an emotion, we're not just having one emotion, we're having four or five, all at once. But we're only aware of what. And part of the beauty of the ethic labeling or listening to emotions is we're helping the people unpack all of the unseen emotions that they're experiencing, but are not aware of. I think I would be tempted in this situation. Maybe that's just my Britishness is to put some kind of rising intonation at the end to say, well, that's the question. Yeah. That's still a question. Let's have no no. You're doing that to soothe your own anxiety. You don't want to be wrong. You don't want to look like you're being impute, impudent, or patronizing. And so you ask the

38:58questions, just soften it. But like I said, we found the cortex is offline. It can't answer the question. So frustration builds, and anger increases. No rising inflection. So Doug, I believe your fifth book, Empathy Leadership is out in September, which is about right. This is going to be released. Tell me more about the book. Who's it for and what does it say? So this book is a leadership book. Everybody in Iraq, all rights, leadership books. Why another leadership leadership book? And why a book on Empathy? Market is flooded, and most of it's all wrong. So what prompted this was the conversation between Elon Musk and Joe Rogan on Joe Rogan's podcast. And Musk said, essentially, Empathy will destroy Western civilization. That pissed me off. So I started looking at the literature around leadership empathy. And I found something really

40:01interesting, what I call the Empathy paradox. One study shows that 80% of leaders think empathy will make them weak. That same study shows that 79% of all employees will work harder for a leader who knows empathy. There's another study of 15,000 emerging leaders that show that empathy was the crucial determinant of leadership success. So we have this paradigm. The one thing that will give leaders what they need and want they reject. Why? It turns out it's good reason because people who teach emotional intelligence or talk about empathy have never studied an aerosine and they don't get it. So they teach this fluffy soft, cum-by-tree-hugging idea, telling people what to do but not how to do it and certainly not based on hard science. So I thought

41:07we need a corrective here. So that's how empathy leadership came about. And it's basically blowing up a whole bunch of ideas around leadership. Number one, no such thing as rationality. Human beings are not rash. When you use rationality or a reason, or logic, or persuasion to calm an angry person, you're lost. You're done. You can't reason somebody out of pain. You can't logic them out of anger. They're nervous systems are just regulated and you've got to work at that level. And then I provide the specific tools on how to do that. Basic affect labeling, listening to emotions. And the book spends four chapters or five chapters looking at the science, blowing up the old ideas, showing these ideas were, and then the rest of the book is application. I'd be less dog. Thank you so much. If people want to learn more about you, where's the best place

42:07for them to go? Dugnole to eougnol.com. And you can go to the book section and find empathy leadership. And order it or pre-order it. You can go to my YouTube channel, Douglas Noel or Douglas Noel. You can find me online again. And I have a sub-step which I put law on form articles every week about all of this. So Leanne, that was dog Noel verdict. Well, dog says naming someone's immersion instead of arguing back just something to the nervous system. And that part is grounded in the neuroscience evidence that he cited. Whether you can pull that off may argue it with your CFO is a different question. Yeah. And that's the bit. I'm not sure I'm quite sold on yet. Not saying dogs wrong. It just feels, it's a very different culture with American, Americans than British, I think. And I think that American just saying, hey, you're

43:08angry as a terrible American accent. But someone saying that in America seems kind of like, okay, yeah, that could get away with that in the UK saying you're angry. People go, uh, what you're doing. I'm great. I'll show you. But I supposed to be fair, right? Saying you're angry to someone screaming at you does take a level of composure that genuinely most of us, and particularly because Brits don't have in the moment. But dog gives plenty of evidence that it does work. So I'm just want to reiterate, I'm not saying it doesn't work. I'm just saying it's so alien to my British brain, but I don't know. I'm just like on the fence. Quick story time. And you can cut this out of if you don't have time to put it in. I was walking around my style park once and the dog did some business. So I was a good citizen picked it up and put it in the bin. And then the park guardian chef person, not saying you're not, you can't straight to the N word. Um, he started shouting at me saying I'd put it in the wrong bin. Um, so I and told me to pick it out. So I did. And I went to

44:09put it in another bin that I thought was a correct bin. And it came chasing after me saying, shouting again saying that's the wrong bin. I told him, and I said, okay, but why are you shouting at me? I just tell me where I need to put it. Why are you shouting at me? And he did calm down. So there you go. Proof proof. And it does show. And it does prove that this does work. Now dog does it does keep saying that it takes practice. And so we are going to try this genuinely. Leanne's obviously inadvertently tried this. But next time either of us is in one of these tense conversations, we are, we will try it and we will report back. We will. If you want to try it yourself before we do dogs at dog, no, that's do you G N O L L dot com. And his new book is empathy leadership. And it's out now. You should definitely go and check it out. This is truth, lies of work. We will see you next week where we're back to regular scheduling. So it's back to this week in work. But we've learned some lessons over the summer. People have liked what we've done. So we'll be mixing it up up between now and Christmas. And Thursdays they're going to change.

45:14You will see. So we'll see you all next week. Say goodbye, Leanne. Happy September. Tell us on LinkedIn if you prefer Horskilyan or normal Leanne. Bye bye.