Latest / Workplace Confessions: Behind Closed Doors / What If Conflict Is An Invitation To Truth

Transcript

What If Conflict Is An Invitation To Truth · Workplace Confessions: Behind Closed Doors

• 0:02
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome to Workplace Confessions Behind Closed Doors.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_01: I'm Elsa Barbie.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm Don Andrews.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_01: We have been friends since sixth grade.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_01: Somewhere between a car wash job, a few questionable boy choices, and 40 years of friendship, we became the kind of people who always want to know what was really going on, including at work.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: Don spent 25 years as an employment lawyer, digging into workplace drama from the inside out.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_00: I built a long career in the beauty industry as a brand educator with a few TV cameos sprinkled in for fun.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_01: We came up in very different industries, but we have the same passion, meeting new people and asking how they got their jobs, what they love, what they can't stand, and what happens behind closed doors.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: Every episode we talk to a new guest about their lived experience in the world of work.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: And because our guest day anonymous, they can spill the truth without the fallout.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_01: We get into the choices they made, the tiny cruelties, the surprise kindnesses, and some of the moments that never make it into human resources reports.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_00: Equal Parks informative and titillating.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: This show serves up all the tea while honoring the incredible, complicated, often messy work people are doing across the industries and across the map.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to Workplace Confessions Behind Closed Doors.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: Let's get into it.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: Hey everyone, thank you so much today for joining another special episode of Workplace Confessions Behind Closed Doors.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: Let's go ahead and start our first question, as we always do.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: What was your first paying job?
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_02: Oh my gosh, I was quite as a teenager, maybe not even 21.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_02: And I lived in Spain with my mom and I coached basketball.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_02: I coached young kids in basketball.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_02: So I was a basketball player and a soccer player.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_02: In fact, my desire at the time was to be a professional soccer player.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_00: What would you say?
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: What is your current job?
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_02: My current career is my background is I studied psychotherapy, but my job is conflict resolution.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_02: I am a professional corporate and family mediator.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, and now the next question is always how do we get from coaching soccer to what you're doing now?
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_00: Give us the whole journey.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_02: When I was at San Diego State University, I met this incredible human being named Dr.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_02: Norm Chambers.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_02: And Norm worked with Carl Rogers, the father of humanistic psychotherapy.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_02: And in meeting Dr.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_02: Chambers, took me under his wings, mentored me, and for a number of years, while we had studied Lange and study, spent a lot of time studying humanistic psychotherapy, person-centered psychotherapy, and started doing some work along those lines.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_02: And one day, a dear friend of mine, I just randomly in conversation with Need for Kofi all the time, and she said, I'm going to this San Diego Mediation Center has this thing where they're training mediators.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_02: And I said, What's that?
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_02: She goes, Are you going and you help people get along and if they're in conflict, you help them navigate the way from conflict to resolution?
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_02: I said, Oh, that sounds interesting.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_02: She said, But I've got to promise you, I've got to tell you, they invite 250 people, and each day they send 25 people away.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_02: And so at the end of it, you only have 25.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_02: So just come with me.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_02: So I went, not knowing anything about mediation, and then I made the cut, then I made the next cut, and then there were 50 of us left.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_02: And then I panicked and I thought, my God, this woman invited me to come to this thing.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_02: Suppose they select me and they don't select her.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_02: I'm going to feel awful.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_02: Now that's the mediation right there, right?
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_02: Fortunately, they selected both of us.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_02: And that was my entry into understanding mediation as a profession.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_02: And so we went from the San Diego Mediation Center, then went to Harvard University and studied conflict resolution at Harvard University and decided at that point to become a professional mediator.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_02: One of the things I did after leaving, I went to Grenada.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_02: And a dear friend of mine was a senator in the House of Parliament.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_02: And she worked with Gren Save, Save the Children International.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_02: They were having major issues.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_02: And she said, You just studied conflict resolution at Harvard.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_02: Why don't you come and mediate at all?
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_02: Sure.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, sure.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_02: No pressure at all.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_02: So most of the people working there were women.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_02: So my intuition was right in having a female counterpart who was trained by Virginia Satyr.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_02: And so navigating the landscape of culture and work and values and what it means to be a woman and give up your time and your energy to a greater cause, a cause greater than yourself, was quite wonderful.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_02: And so after about six months of intensive work, we transformed the organization.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_02: And that was my first job as a mediator.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_02: And I think that's where I fell in love with the work because the issues were great.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_02: The complexity of what everyone was feeling was enormous.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_02: It was the enormity of what does it mean to give of yourself in collaboration with others and have conflict in trying to do good for the world, right?
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_02: And so you had to take people with these big hearts who meant well and who gave up their time and their energy and find ways for them to find each other.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_02: So the quality of their giving matched the enormity of their commitment to what they were giving for.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_00: Growing up, did you know this type of career was even out there?
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_02: I didn't.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_02: It's so interesting because my father was a very high conflict person.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_02: I tell my friends if I said good morning to my dad, I'd have to justify why it was a good morning.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_02: So I would just have to say morning.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_02: I would have to leave out the adjective or the descriptive part of the morning.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_02: But no, I came from a high conflict relationship with a dad who was quite powerful and quite strong.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_02: My father was the first prime minister of Grenada.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_02: The Queen of England imprisoned him when he demanded independence for Grenada.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_02: And then later on, she knighted him.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_02: So she expand the entire band from imprisonment to knighthood.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_02: And my friends who know my father and know me say on the opposite side of the coin, that my father was very high conflict, and I'm the one who comes back on the other side of the coin and rounds the edges.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_02: So no, I had no idea.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_02: I always knew I had a sense of wanting to understand human nature.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_02: And I think that might have been born out of not just the fact that my father was a high conflict person everywhere he went in his life, right?
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_02: Whether it's friends or family or work or politics.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_02: Grenada is 12 by 21 miles.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_02: And the man who brought independence to Grenada stood up to the British Empire.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_02: If you are born on an island and you're defending an island and you're standing up to the British Empire, you've got some cojones.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_02: But can I say cojones?
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_00: He's can't think.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so he was just not fierce, but there was a wonderful complexity to his fierceness.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_02: As I got older, I began to appreciate the veneer of this fierceness that actually protected a very sensitive man who oftentimes probably was lost, probably didn't have a North Star always, probably had an enormous sense of loneliness.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_02: And I think a lot of conversations in his head regarding am I doing the right thing?
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_02: I know I want this tiny country to be independent of British sovereignty, but do the people want it?
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_02: Can we survive if we got our independence?
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_02: And also had a tremendous empathy when I got older, I wish I'd had it younger, for the loneliness, those nights when this solitary individual had a vision that nobody else could see.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_02: We always talk about visionaries, and one of the things I've witnessed in my father is that oftentimes being a visionary is a very much a process of aloneness.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know if it's lonely, but it's definitely a process of aloneness.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_00: So we covered your father, but tell me about your mother.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_02: What kind of yeah.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_02: So I always say this is interesting when they say opposite attracts.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_02: If my father had a meeting at nine o'clock in the morning, he arrives at your office at one in the afternoon, right?
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_03: If my mother had a meeting with you at one in the morning, she arrived at your office at nine in the morning, right?
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_02: My mother was born to a black and Indian mother and a Scottish father.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_02: I come from a multiracial family.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_02: My grandfather was a tall white Scotsman.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_02: He owned land, he was a planter in Grenada.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_02: He exported nutmegs and at the time maybe cacao, but nutmegs and produce into the global market, more so nutmegs than anything else.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_02: And my mother, from what I was told, got a lot of spankings when she was very young.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_02: And so there was an element of perfectionistic perfectionism about how she moved and breathed in the world.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_02: She eventually got a PhD, was always the top of her class.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_02: A perfectionist, I wish I'd seen her happy more.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_02: She was always driven.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_02: A great writer, lovely person, everyone loved her, an astonishing cook.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_02: Again, perfection.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_02: I remember one day she made a dish.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_02: She had some friends coming over, and she made a dish, and she said to me, Son, do you remember if I had washed my hands before I made this dish?
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_02: And I said, I think you did, but I don't remember.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_02: And she tossed the dish out and made it all over again.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_02: So what I studied nursing in England and eventually got a PhD in health science.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_02: And she was very beautiful, very beautiful, very smart, and had a strength and a vulnerability that, and a sense of resilience and purpose that was really admirable.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_02: Very admirable.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_02: So she was quite a force.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_00: So talk to us now about what you do on a the daily.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_00: What does a day in the life look like for you?
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, in terms of conflict resolution, I do a lot of corporate work.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_02: I do divorce mediation.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_02: I volunteer my time.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_02: I did some volunteer work with the monarch school.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_02: I volunteered some time with some of the nonprofits where you go in and you actually train kids on the anatomy of conflict.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_02: What does it mean to be angry with another person?
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_02: What does it mean to even have conflict within the domain of your own psychology?
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_02: When you're angry with yourself, when you're frustrated, what's the signature of that?
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_02: What do you do with that?
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_02: What's the invitation?
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_02: And that's the word I use.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_02: Conflict as an invitation to self-reflection, right?
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_02: Conflict as an invitation to me, not just to always weaponize my anger, but how do I dance with conflict within my own domain and within relationship with others, right?
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_02: Because you can't say humanity, you can't say existence without the word conflict being embedded in that.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_02: You cannot separate those two things.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_02: So a day on the life, if I'm working with a large corporate team, I usually go in, meet with them one-on-one, get to know what the issues are, work with the executive leadership team, and just really spend time doing something that's very odd, listening.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_02: Listening.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I do something very odd when I work with you, listen.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_02: And in a society that's driven by excellence and driven by accomplishments, we at least to me, I have found that we now live in a society where listening feels like an intrusion.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_02: What we have to do.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_02: We're so defined by the mission and the goal and the objectives that to take time to listen feels like a waste of time.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_02: And as we know, listening requires time.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_02: And if time is a form of patience, and so listening and patience has become a cultural inconvenience as well.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_02: So what I try to do when I work with corporations is do really tremendous listening to the stories that people tell themselves about their workplace.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_02: A lot of people, I've had employees tell me when they go to work, Sunday night, they start getting the hippie jeebies.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_02: Their stomach is upset, they don't want to go, they have to put the mental armor on Sunday to go into work on Monday, and they think, my gosh, what's the cost to the company?
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_02: When an employee has to mentally prepare on Sunday to come into work.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_02: Yikes! And if that's cultural, how much money are we losing?
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_02: How much creativity are we losing?
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_02: How much opportunities to be curious and to participate in leadership are we losing?
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_02: I think that's an unquantifiable cause.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_02: So the day in the life for me is really going to cooperation and finding, I don't normally say that, but finding the humanity in the organization in a way that everybody can participate in it in a way that drives the mission forward.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_02: When people go to work, they want to have a sense of pride, right?
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_02: If you tell someone I'll pay you 40 cents, 50 cents,$100 a day to lane bricks, they'll go, okay.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_02: But if you say I'll pay you$150 a day or$75 a day to help me build the Taj Mahal, that person now has a different story to tell, right?
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_02: And so once I can participate in the vision, once you invite me to participate in the vision, and I see that the invitation is authentic, right?
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_02: So first is will you come to work here?
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, we price everything you have, your experiences and everything.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_02: Now that I'm here, can I fully participate?
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_02: Is invitation an authentic invitation?
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_02: And once you say yes, then if it's true that I have the freedom to participate in not only in my work, but in also curating the vision, and then now I have something that's bigger than myself.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_00: What would you say is the best part about your job?
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_02: I think witnessing the plasticity of the human spirit, seeing going into environments, going into just where people are really upset and angry with each other, and after doing something really strange and foreign, sitting and listening to each other again.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_02: Something magical happens.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_02: You see this thing about authentically listening to defend versus listening to understand.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_02: If I'm listening to defend, you are an object that I need to defend myself from.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_02: If I'm listening to understand, there's the collapse of the egoic boundaries.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_02: There is no you and there is no me.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_02: So in listening to defend, there is you, there is me, and you better agree with me.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_02: To understand, there's no weaponization.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_02: It's almost like in a keto.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_02: I am you.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_02: In that moment when I'm listening to understand, I dissolve myself and I become one with you.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_02: That sounds like woo language, and it really isn't.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_02: But when you sit and you're wholly vulnerable where you are sitting, in the truth of listening to understand, the problem that eclipses the ability to listen to understand is the idea that we need to be agreed with.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_02: If you don't agree with me, then I feel I need to defend myself.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_02: So there is the idea of this is not, I don't only have a thought, I am my thought.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_02: And so to disagree with my thought is to fundamentally threaten who I am.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_02: Then listening to understand, I'm not my thought.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_02: There is no I am.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_02: There is this wholeness, this full integration.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_02: So my body becomes a tool of listening, not to agree.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_02: And I really want to make that distinction, not to agree, but to understand.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_02: And so when we talk about forgiveness, for example, somebody can do something really awful to you, and the person comes and says, you know, I'm really sorry.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_02: Here's what I did, here's why I did it.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_02: And you can say two things.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_02: You've done it, and I don't want to see you again, you've hurt me, you did it deliberately, and I'm done with you.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_02: And there may be places for that.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_02: I'm not going to judge that as good or bad.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_02: That's one way.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_02: And somebody could hurt you pretty badly and come to say to you, I'm ashamed.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_02: I've hurt you.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_02: I know I did.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_02: Here's why I did it.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_02: I'm sorry I did it.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_02: Is there a place we can sit and talk about this?
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_02: So I become a better person, but I need you to help me with that.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_02: There's some need I have of you to listen to my story.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_02: And that kind of conversation is actually a portal, it's a bridge to our collective humanity.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_02: Not that I agree, you should have hurt me.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_02: I really want to emphasize that.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_02: I don't agree, you should have hurt me.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_02: But can we live in a place of our storytelling and our wholeness and find the portal through our collective humanity?
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_02: And that's a lot of work because we're not trained, we're not trained to be that way.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_02: We're trained to talk, but we're not trained to listen.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_02: We're not trained to communicate.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_02: And so our language reflects that.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_02: We say things like, talk to the hand.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_02: That's shorthand for don't come close.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_02: But have the physical gesture of putting the hand up.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_02: And the moment we do that is the moment that we close the door to our collective humanity.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_02: Let me just say, in places where there's violence and someone is really trying to hurt you, that's the proper thing to do.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_02: So I'm not inviting anyone to walk into a situation and harm themselves by someone who is deliberately and intentionally trying to harm them.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_02: I think of Azim Kamisa, whose son was murdered by Tony Hicks.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_02: Tony Hicks was 14 when he murdered Azim's son.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_02: And Azim forgave him, his only son.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_02: Now, speaking of forgiveness and the level of heavy lifting, how do you forgive a boy at 14 who was a gang, writes a passage, a gang thing?
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_02: And Azim's son worked at San Diego State University.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_02: And someone called for a pizza, his son went to deliver the pizza.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_02: And long story very short, a 14-year-old boy shot his son.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_02: And Azim, I'm condensing the story quite a bit.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_02: Azim forgave him.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_02: And I remember one night I was with Azim and we're talking having dinner.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_02: And I said, Really honestly, how did you forgive Tony?
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_02: He goes, I don't agree he should have killed my son.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_02: I love the language.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_02: The language is so elegant and so Azim has a word called solar.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_02: That's his word.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_02: It comes from the soul.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_02: I don't agree he should.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_02: This is the father of the boy who was murdered, talking about the boy who murdered his son.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_02: I don't believe he should have murdered my son.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_02: Every night I go to bed, I cry for my son.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_02: Every night I go to bed, I cry for my son.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_02: I won't be a grandfather.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_02: I won't see him have children.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_02: I won't argue with him about school.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_02: I won't meet his first girlfriend.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_02: I won't see his wife.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_02: I won't see the grandkids.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_02: He said, but I also cry for Tony.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_02: What a life.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_02: What does it take for a young boy to get to the place where he'd want to kill someone?
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_02: And he said, it's so interesting.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_02: This language is this is the language of the soul.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_02: And he said to me, My question is, how do we?
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_02: I love that.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_02: This is so beautiful.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_02: How do we create a world where little boys grow up and want to kill other little boys?
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_02: How do we?
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_02: And so the language of the soul, the language of the spirit is radically different than the language of the ego, right?
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_02: Had he said, let's do three strikes, you're out.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_02: Had he said, I hated all little black boys because Tony was a boy with black skin, we would have understood that.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_02: This little boy took the son, his son's life, and he's angry.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_02: And boy, God, what greater sin can you have?
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_02: So the language of forgiveness is a language that belongs to all of us.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_02: Is it heavy lifting?
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_02: It is.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_02: Does it require empathy?
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_02: Empathy is a verb.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_02: Everybody wants to talk about empathy.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_02: Empathy is a verb, it's a behavior, it's an offering.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_02: And he, along with other people, there's a woman whose son was killed by the Palestinian, a Palestinian soldier.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_02: He was his last day, I believe, on duty as required by the Israeli government.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_02: I think you have to do two years.
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_02: And it was his last day.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_02: He was a school teacher, and a Palestinian boy shot him.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_02: And the mother created an organization for Palestinian mothers and Israeli mothers to join together whose son have been killed by the other and formed a relationship with them.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_02: So we had the capacity, we have the capacity to have that kind of what I call wholeness, not perfection, but wholeness, where I hold the complexity of life.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_02: What is my relationship with existence?
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_02: Do I love?
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_02: Do I love conditionally or do I love unconditionally?
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_02: And life will break your heart, but we will also break the hearts of existence itself.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_02: And as Azim Kame says, a broken heart is an open heart.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_02: It opens it.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_02: Will it be broken?
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_02: Will life disappoint you?
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_02: It damn sure will.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_02: Will you disappoint life?
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_02: You damn sure will.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_02: But if our hearts are open, we have that portal.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_02: An open heart is a portal to our belonging to each other.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_02: It's a portal to our wholeness.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_02: And that's the space we have to live in.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_02: But we're not trained that way.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_02: And we're valued and we live in a culture of rugged individualism.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_02: I've got mine, you've got yours.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_02: I am me.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_02: My definition of myself stops at the boundaries of my skin.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_02: And anything outside the boundaries of my skin is not myself.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_02: It's somebody else.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_02: What about if we had a new definition of myself?
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_02: And the new definition of myself is all that I see and all that I do and all that I feel.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_02: So when I say I love myself.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_02: Myself, it includes all of you.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_02: It includes the oceans and the rivers and the moon, people I know, people I don't know, but I share this planet with.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_02: And so when I love myself and I care for myself, who is the myself I'm talking about?
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_01: You mentioned earlier that defensiveness is part of what gets in the way, it sounds like.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm curious, when you're mediating a conflict, do you find that one or both sides are trying to get you to agree with them and buy into their defense against the other party?
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_01: And if so, what do you do about that?
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I always say that the bedrock of mediation for the mediator is neutrality.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_02: You're not there to take sides.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_02: You're not there to tell people what to do or advocate.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_02: You are really there to bring objectivity to both parties so that they both can be heard.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_02: The most talented mediators are almost, I'm gonna use really clunky language.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_02: It'd be interesting to see the comments I get from this.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_02: I think the most effective mediators are the ones who are somewhat an invisible force in the room.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_02: And what that means is you're there.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_02: When I was a young mediator, it was really important for me to go in and have resolution.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_02: I'm gonna go in, then I'm gonna solve this problem.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_02: They're gonna see the light because I'm so talented.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_02: There's something to that.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_02: There definitely is.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_02: There is something about resolution, so I'm not gonna proof of that.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_02: There's also something about people who are in conflict coming together and putting resolution aside for a moment and really sitting in the storytelling of the other.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_02: One of the techniques we use in mediation is before it starts, is tell me a little story about yourself.
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_02: How did you get here?
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_02: How are you living here?
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_02: Where did you come from?
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_02: Nothing that you don't want to share too intimate, but just tell a story.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_02: And what that does is as the person is sitting, and they say to the other person, after this person is finished, I'll let you have your turn.
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_02: Andor I may ask you to tell the person what you heard them say.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_02: I can't tell you how many times by starting the mediation process that way, that the two people almost instantaneously recognize they were raised the same way, the similarities in their background and things that have happened to them, and how they got to San Diego or got to the Middle East or got to Paris or New York, the intersection that happens within the storytelling, they find themselves in the storytelling of the other.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_02: So, in that process, throughout that process, they get to meet each other.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_02: And as mediator, what I try to do is to allow that little flame.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_02: It's like making a campfire.
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_02: You like that little cinder thing and it's very small.
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_02: There's a word for it.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_02: I don't have the and then you blow very gently.
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_02: And that's right, kindling.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_02: If you blow too hard, you'll blow it out.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_02: So you have to blow it gently enough to light the flame for both parties to be lighted enough to have the conversation as much as possible without you.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_02: So as a mediator, I always say, I don't own the content.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know why you're angry.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_02: You didn't come to me because you guys are so in love.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_02: You wanted a mediator to tell you how much in love you are.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_02: You came because you're angered.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_02: So I allow a healthy amount of anger to happen.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_02: And then I create, I invite both parties into a space through reframing, right?
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_02: Through I've heard things like, I freaking hate you, and I'm sorry I ever brought you into my business with me.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_02: And if I'd known this, I would have and that's how it starts off.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_02: And my response to that is I'm so glad you're here.
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_02: So you can both hear how angry you are with each other, so you can have a sense of what the beginning of the relationship is like that brought you here.
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_02: So that's my role to redefine the anger, not to get rid of the anger.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_02: But the thing is not to get rid of anger or to get rid of conflict, the thing is to see conflict as a port, a little self-reflection.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_02: What am I angry about?
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_02: I remember the person who said that to this particular guy, he was Filipino.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_02: And he says, I know you're angry with me, but I just want to tell you, I grew up in a culture as an Asian where I was supposed to be invisible.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_02: Don't rock the boat, go along, be quiet, get all Asian math, and do all the science thing that a good Asians, we're the model, we're the model uh minority.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_02: So you're asking me to go out there and be loud.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_02: That's not natural for me.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_02: And through that storytelling, we talked a lot about, we always say, how do we agree with each other?
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, let's agree with.
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_02: We never talk about when we're angry with each other, how do we want to be angry with each other?
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_02: When I'm angry with you, how do you want me to be angry with you?
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_02: Do I call you a name?
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_02: Do I do that three times?
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_02: Do I do 10 push-ups?
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_02: How do we get angry with each other?
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_02: And that's really important conversation to have with your family and your friends and in the workplace.
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_02: When we disagree and don't see eye to eye, when I touch a different part of the elephant than you, how do we want to reconcile those differences?
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_02: Because I have a truth that you don't, and you have a truth that I don't.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_02: And if we fight to the death because you have a truth that I can't see, and I have a truth, we both lose, right?
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_02: And there's a rippling effect of that.
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_02: So to come back to your actual question, because there's so much to it, the role of the mediator is to be the neutral.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_02: And there are times something touches you and you think, ah, let me breathe through this.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_02: But the mediator, if he is or she is effective, in order for he or she to be effective, has to be a neutral part, a party in terms of what's happening, so that the two people can find themselves.
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_01: My question is, why are people so uncomfortable with conflict?
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_01: I have yet to meet somebody who is not uncomfortable with conflict.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_02: I think there's a fragility of loss.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_02: I think we don't know how to do it.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_02: I want we so A, we're not trained to navigate it.
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_02: B, we're trained to be polite.
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_02: There's an element of that.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_02: I think C, it's for the greater good.
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_02: I'd rather not.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_02: The number one way that most people deal with conflict is what?
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_02: Avoidance.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_02: We avoid it at all costs because we may lose our place in the society, in the community.
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_02: We may hurt our husbands or children's feelings.
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_02: So we take a lot of things into consideration.
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_02: And what we weigh is it best to just keep the peace, which is what people say, and or go into the conflict and have something blow up.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_02: So I think a lot of it is that we're not trained to understand that conflict is the norm.
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_02: And if I see conflict, that I don't have to weaponize it.
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_02: I think it's oftentimes we don't have the tools to not weaponize it.
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_02: And yeah, and the other part of it is just we want to keep the peace.
• 29:04
  SPEAKER_02: We don't want to lose our relationship with the other person.
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_00: Was there ever a situation where you walked out of there going, I there's nothing more I could do?
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_00: Did you ever feel defeated in any situation?
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_02: Any mediator who tells you they haven't had that feeling as a mediator.
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_02: There are times when not so much now.
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_02: I think when I was younger, early in my mediation training, and I was determined for resolution, I would work very hard for that.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_02: And oftentimes you walk out sometimes with somebody agreeing to something that you think that was not in their best favor.
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_02: And so you can't go to advocate.
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_02: So sometimes you walk out thinking, okay.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_02: And in those situations, you say, can we meet 30 days from now?
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_02: So you would say to them before they leave, look, once you guys agree to this, we'll meet 30 days from now and then reassess if that works.
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_02: But there are moments you do.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_02: I think now that I am not so hell-belt on resolution, and I am more what I look for now when I do the work is can I bring these people into a space where no matter what hits the fan, they will remain in communication with each other with respect.
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_02: And that's huge.
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_02: They want to weaponize their anger, and that requires a long time, a lot of listening, a lot of caucus with individual people to get there.
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_02: But yeah, I think over your career, over the life of a media, their moments circle when you walk out of there thinking, let's and my thing is let's meet in 30 days.
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_00: Let's pause.
• 30:47
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, let's pause.
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_02: Let's describe this.
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_02: And the thing about mediation, the other part of that is a mediate, you should never be in the meat, in a mediation where the media mediator tells you or make suggestions on what to do, because that's not the role of the mediator.
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_02: The mediator is to bring, invite people into a space where they collaboratively make a decision about how they want to move forward.
• 31:10
  SPEAKER_02: But the mediator has no role in advocacy in any of that at all.
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_02: So that should never happen.
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_02: In fact, people say, What do you think?
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_02: And I will say to them, Where are we right now?
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_02: And what are you thinking?
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_02: There's something you're thinking because you're asking me, What do I think?
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_02: And so they cannot, oftentimes it's easier for you to make the decision than for them, right?
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_02: So you have to, and then sometimes you just take a break and you say, Let's just take a break.
• 31:36
  SPEAKER_02: And then you caucus, you meet with them one-on-one, and then check in.
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_02: But the role of the mediator is to not be advocate, not to be an advocate by the point.
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_02: I have found that in divorce mediation, people who get divorced have the exact same problems as people who stay together.
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_02: The difference, most of the time, the difference between those two get divorced and those who stay together is that both parties have agreed to work on it together, and they quantifiably do that.
• 32:10
  SPEAKER_02: One party can say, Yeah, I see my husband working to make the relationship work.
• 32:15
  SPEAKER_02: And the other party will say, Yeah, I see my wife.
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_02: So it's a team sport.
• 32:19
  SPEAKER_02: Relationships are not a spectator sport.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_02: If I'm in a relationship with you as a friend, as a husband, son, and daughter, if I'm spectating, I'm not in the relationship.
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_02: So anytime you recognize that you're in a relationship where somebody's playing the role of spectator and you're carrying the relationship, there's uh there's some reasons to investigate what's going on.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_00: What's the wildest, weirdest, or most unforgettable thing that you've ever witnessed in any of your mediations?
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_02: Oh my God.
• 32:49
  SPEAKER_02: What can I say, Holmes?
• 32:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, you can.
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I'm sure, I'm sure.
• 32:55
  SPEAKER_02: I think something whimsical is I was working with a couple of executives, very powerful executives, and it was second hour, we were in the second hour of the process, and there's something called a circular conversation where it's just going around and you're not making progress.
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_02: And it's usually a hint that either one or both parties are withholding.
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_02: And so they were in a very heated mediation that involved a lot of money and things like that.
• 33:21
  SPEAKER_02: And so after another half an hour of a circular conversation, I said, Why don't you take a break?
• 33:27
  SPEAKER_02: I'd like to meet with each of you individually.
• 33:29
  SPEAKER_02: So I met with the with one of them first, and I said, Is there anything you need to say that you don't want to say in my community and things like that?
• 33:36
  SPEAKER_02: And he said, Yes, duh.
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_02: And I said, Is that it?
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_02: And he said yes.
• 33:40
  SPEAKER_02: And he goes, I know when you meet with her, she's gonna tell you we had an affair.
• 33:46
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, and I said, Okay, that's where it is, right?
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_03: Nobody wants to say that.
• 33:51
  SPEAKER_03: And so I met with the other party and I said, Is there anything?
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_02: It's a circular comment.
• 33:55
  SPEAKER_02: She said, da-da.
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_02: And then I said, Is that it?
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_02: And then the person said, Then he's probably told you we had an affair, right?
• 34:01
  SPEAKER_02: And so once that came out, we were able to move forward because the cat was out of the bag, so to speak, and we were able to navigate the concerns about them saying it and how that intruded itself in the ability to have objectivity, which and the anger that came with that, that was something that was something that was funny.
• 34:23
  SPEAKER_02: And at the end of it all, we did have resolution because that came out, we were able to navigate that as well.
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_02: And again, it goes back to the plasticity of the human spirit where we can be very angry with someone, and then through storytelling and through really listening, and I can't emphasize enough what it means to listen.
• 34:45
  SPEAKER_02: I really can't.
• 34:46
  SPEAKER_02: If you take anything away from this, listening is huge.
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_02: The problem is when we listen for points of agree or to be agreed with, and this idea of just listening to understand, listening, I don't agree with 85, 90, but that's that person's point of view.
• 35:05
  SPEAKER_02: And if you ask them, I was working, may I just say this?
• 35:08
  SPEAKER_02: I was working with a friend years ago, and he was telling me that he went on holiday with his wife, and she got very upset with him on vacation holiday.
• 35:18
  SPEAKER_02: And so I don't know what made him do that.
• 35:20
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe he had too many cocktails or not enough.
• 35:23
  SPEAKER_02: But he said to his wife, I just want because she was quite upset, and he said, I want you to tell me everything that I've ever done to hurt you.
• 35:32
  SPEAKER_02: And she said, Okay, pull up a chair, and I hope you've got a couple of days because it's gonna take some time.
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_03: I've got a couple of volumes here, and he said, you know.
• 35:45
  SPEAKER_03: Which year?
• 35:46
  SPEAKER_03: Which yeah, in the beginning.
• 35:51
  SPEAKER_03: It was a dark and strong.
• 35:55
  SPEAKER_02: And he said, he just sat there and she just told him every single thing that he had done to hurt her.
• 36:03
  SPEAKER_02: And he said he didn't argue, he didn't deny, he didn't defend some of the things he knew, some was surprising, some of the things he just never thought that.
• 36:13
  SPEAKER_02: And for whatever reason, he wasn't trained at all, he's an artist.
• 36:17
  SPEAKER_02: And he said, for whatever reason, I just listened for hours.
• 36:21
  SPEAKER_02: And she cried and I cried, never interrupted her once, never disagreed, never justified.
• 36:28
  SPEAKER_02: And after it was over, it was like a couple of hours.
• 36:31
  SPEAKER_02: He said, I just said to her, I love you, and I'm so sorry.
• 36:33
  SPEAKER_02: I'm so sorry I've heard you like this.
• 36:36
  SPEAKER_02: Some of it I knew, some of it I didn't, some of it for the first time and had not a clue.
• 36:42
  SPEAKER_02: And he said that was a moment of transformation for him and his wife, and not because he agreed, but he took the time to really listen to how the love, the object of his love, experienced him in his ability or inability to love her.
• 36:58
  SPEAKER_02: And that was the point of real transformation.
• 37:00
  SPEAKER_02: And so they made an agreement about how when one is hurt and the other one doesn't know, how will we talk to each other about how we love each other?
• 37:12
  SPEAKER_02: So yeah.
• 37:13
  SPEAKER_01: That's beautiful.
• 37:14
  SPEAKER_01: I'm always telling my sons who are teenagers that they need to learn to let people be wrong about them.
• 37:19
  SPEAKER_01: Wrong is in quotes, right?
• 37:21
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm wondering if if you agree with that, and if so, if you have any advice for helping people sit with the idea that somebody believes or says something that they don't think is true about them.
• 37:33
  SPEAKER_02: I'm in a group with I'm in a group that meets every Wednesday, it's uh eight or ten men, all of whom are mostly psychotherapists, and if not, have studied psychotherapy.
• 37:43
  SPEAKER_02: And one of the one of the guys, and these are wonderful men, one of the guys said the other day, about a month ago, my biggest fear is being misunderstood.
• 37:54
  SPEAKER_02: My biggest fear is being misunderstood that I could do something with the best of intentions and somebody comes back to me.
• 38:00
  SPEAKER_02: And that is not what animated me.
• 38:03
  SPEAKER_02: That's not what I thought that was.
• 38:05
  SPEAKER_02: If you were to cut me open, you would see none of that narrative inside of me.
• 38:09
  SPEAKER_02: The idea of being misunderstood is so painful.
• 38:14
  SPEAKER_02: It's this thing where am I invisible?
• 38:18
  SPEAKER_02: Oftentimes, when we're misunderstood, people weaponize their emotion against us as a price to pay for being misunderstood, and it's usually a harsh penalty.
• 38:29
  SPEAKER_02: I think what you can tell them, if I had two little boys here, is to tell me a time when you were misunderstood and how did it make you feel?
• 38:40
  SPEAKER_02: And when you felt that way, what did you want to do?
• 38:44
  SPEAKER_02: And since you didn't do that, which might have been an awful thing to either hurt himself or hurt the other person, or whatever it could be, break things, all that, what would you want that person to know about you?
• 38:55
  SPEAKER_02: And I think the last question is from that experience, what are you learning about yourself?
• 39:02
  SPEAKER_02: Because as painful as that was, here you are.
• 39:07
  SPEAKER_02: Here you are sitting in front of me, and we're talking about it.
• 39:11
  SPEAKER_02: To have a relationship with experience.
• 39:14
  SPEAKER_02: There's a guy named Scott Peck, and he wrote a book, The Roadless Traveled.
• 39:18
  SPEAKER_02: It's an old book.
• 39:20
  SPEAKER_02: And the very he wrote two books, one on evil in psychotherapy called People of the Lie.
• 39:25
  SPEAKER_02: That book did not do well at all.
• 39:27
  SPEAKER_02: I don't, it's a brilliant book.
• 39:29
  SPEAKER_02: I've referred lots of people to it.
• 39:31
  SPEAKER_02: It's like, I cannot read that.
• 39:33
  SPEAKER_02: That's too dark.
• 39:34
  SPEAKER_02: But he went from then, he actually blends Christianity with psychotherapy.
• 39:40
  SPEAKER_02: And the very first line of his book is life is difficult.
• 39:43
  SPEAKER_02: And I think that's one of the things we have to teach kids.
• 39:46
  SPEAKER_02: We have to say life is difficult.
• 39:48
  SPEAKER_02: The idea of to be engaged in life is to be engaged in a narrative of a broken heart.
• 39:56
  SPEAKER_02: Life will break your heart.
• 39:58
  SPEAKER_02: Beyoncé has a broken heart.
• 40:00
  SPEAKER_02: Her husband, JC, had an affair.
• 40:03
  SPEAKER_02: I could only imagine what went through her mind.
• 40:05
  SPEAKER_02: Do I need to be more beautiful?
• 40:06
  SPEAKER_02: Do I need to be more rich?
• 40:08
  SPEAKER_02: Do I need to be more glamorous?
• 40:09
  SPEAKER_02: Do I need to be more successful?
• 40:11
  SPEAKER_02: Because the object of my love has broken my heart.
• 40:15
  SPEAKER_02: And so that's part of the narrative.
• 40:16
  SPEAKER_02: And the question is, how do we navigate a broken heart when your heart is broken?
• 40:22
  SPEAKER_02: I'm trying to my Angelou tells the story of being remarried to a gentleman and raising her 10-year-old son.
• 40:30
  SPEAKER_02: And he was very harsh with her 10-year-old son.
• 40:34
  SPEAKER_02: And she said one day she went to him and she said, I don't think you understood.
• 40:38
  SPEAKER_02: Before you came into our lives, I raised my son to know that there's a part of him internally that does not belong to his mother, his lover, his brother, his sister, anyone in the world.
• 40:52
  SPEAKER_02: There's a part of him that exclusively belongs to him.
• 40:56
  SPEAKER_02: And he is the only one that has access to that part of him.
• 40:59
  SPEAKER_02: Not me, not anyone else.
• 41:01
  SPEAKER_02: And that's his garden where he goes to be whole with himself.
• 41:06
  SPEAKER_02: And I think you have to offer kids that.
• 41:08
  SPEAKER_02: Where do you go to be whole with yourself?
• 41:11
  SPEAKER_02: Where do you go to sit with yourself?
• 41:13
  SPEAKER_02: Not in perfection, but in your humanity, in your faults, in your goodness, in your times when you are ashamed of yourself, in the times when you are vexed with yourself, and the times when you compare yourself to others and don't quite measure up.
• 41:27
  SPEAKER_02: Where do you go to heal?
• 41:28
  SPEAKER_02: It can't be the internet, it can't be social media, right?
• 41:32
  SPEAKER_02: So I think talking with your kids about cultivating that interior within themselves that's always with them, right?
• 41:40
  SPEAKER_02: You're with yourself, you're not alone.
• 41:42
  SPEAKER_02: Do you have a relationship with yourself?
• 41:44
  SPEAKER_02: People say, I'm by myself.
• 41:46
  SPEAKER_02: And I said, No, you're with yourself, you're in relationship with your humanity.
• 41:51
  SPEAKER_02: That's portable.
• 41:52
  SPEAKER_02: So I think we have to teach kids that.
• 41:54
  SPEAKER_02: I think for you as a parent, I'm trying to think of the other writer's name.
• 41:59
  SPEAKER_02: I'll tell she has a gray hair, African-American woman with gray hair and the dreadlocks.
• 42:04
  SPEAKER_02: Tony Morrison.
• 42:05
  SPEAKER_02: Tony Morrison tells the story of one day recognizing after, I think after her children had grown, that when they walked into the room, her eyes said to them, Have you done your homework?
• 42:17
  SPEAKER_02: Did you clean up your room?
• 42:19
  SPEAKER_02: Have you done all the things I've told you should do?
• 42:21
  SPEAKER_02: Have you, have you, have you?
• 42:23
  SPEAKER_02: And she said it wasn't until they got older that she realized when they walk into her presence.
• 42:29
  SPEAKER_02: Her eyes unequivocally should have always been, I love you.
• 42:35
  SPEAKER_02: That's the first engagement with the eyes.
• 42:38
  SPEAKER_02: And so I think that's another offering that when they walk into your presence, they walk into a presence with eyes that says, unconditionally, I love you.
• 42:48
  SPEAKER_02: And so I think that's the beginning of a conversation.
• 42:52
  SPEAKER_02: I think that's a great question because I think our kids are so invited to look for themselves in social media.
• 42:59
  SPEAKER_02: Look for yourself in clothes, look for yourself in wealth, look for yourself in being a social media work.
• 43:06
  SPEAKER_02: Work, followers, always external, always external.
• 43:11
  SPEAKER_02: Look for yourself everywhere except where you are, right?
• 43:16
  SPEAKER_02: And what you find, what you want to do is invite them to look inside themselves to have a relationship.
• 43:23
  SPEAKER_02: What's your relationship with yourself when your heart is broken?
• 43:26
  SPEAKER_02: What is that like?
• 43:27
  SPEAKER_02: What does that feel like?
• 43:28
  SPEAKER_02: What part of your body hurts?
• 43:30
  SPEAKER_02: What do you want to say to you?
• 43:34
  SPEAKER_02: What do you need when you ache?
• 43:35
  SPEAKER_02: Because the world has broken your heart.
• 43:37
  SPEAKER_02: And it will and the beauty of the elegance of that is it breaks all our hearts.
• 43:43
  SPEAKER_02: So you're not alone in the narrative of a broken heart.
• 43:46
  SPEAKER_02: So when your heart is broken, what conversation do you want to have with your heart?
• 43:50
  SPEAKER_02: Hi, heart.
• 43:51
  SPEAKER_02: I see that you're broken.
• 43:53
  SPEAKER_02: I see that you feel lonely.
• 43:54
  SPEAKER_02: I see that you don't feel as cool as the other kids.
• 43:58
  SPEAKER_02: That the other kids make fun of you.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_02: Because you're not tall enough or cool enough or smart enough or anything enough.
• 44:04
  SPEAKER_02: And so I'd like to sit down with my broken heart and have a conversation.
• 44:09
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I'm in relationship with my broken heart.
• 44:11
  SPEAKER_02: I'm in relationship with my shame.
• 44:13
  SPEAKER_02: I'm in relationship with my humanity and all other humanity.
• 44:18
  SPEAKER_02: So when someone tells me that it's sad, I know what that's like.
• 44:22
  SPEAKER_02: I know what that's like.
• 44:24
  SPEAKER_02: I know what it's like to have a broken heart.
• 44:26
  SPEAKER_02: I know what it's like to be misunderstood.
• 44:28
  SPEAKER_02: Like to be misunderstood.
• 44:30
  SPEAKER_02: It sucks.
• 44:32
  SPEAKER_02: I feel invisible.
• 44:33
  SPEAKER_02: I feel like I want to die.
• 44:36
  SPEAKER_02: I feel like I don't know what to do.
• 44:38
  SPEAKER_02: I have no answers.
• 44:39
  SPEAKER_02: I'm without capacity when that happens today.
• 44:43
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it feels like death, doesn't it?
• 44:45
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it feels like death.
• 44:47
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that sucks.
• 44:48
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it does.
• 44:50
  SPEAKER_02: I've been there too.
• 44:52
  SPEAKER_02: And here we are talking to each other and loving each other through it all.
• 44:56
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 44:57
  SPEAKER_02: And I don't think you always have to have an answer.
• 45:00
  SPEAKER_02: I think it's quite powerful for your children to come to you and you do nothing other than say, thank you for trusting me enough to share that with me.
• 45:12
  SPEAKER_02: Because oftentimes if you have an immediate answer, it puts the kids off.
• 45:17
  SPEAKER_02: Sometimes kids just want to be able to come and say, I'm feeling sad, mom.
• 45:21
  SPEAKER_02: And you say, Thank you for trusting me enough to say that with me.
• 45:25
  SPEAKER_02: And if you need me, if you need anything from me, let me know.
• 45:28
  SPEAKER_02: I'm here for you.
• 45:29
  SPEAKER_02: So always having an answer, it's like being in a mediation and always looking for a solution.
• 45:35
  SPEAKER_02: Sometimes just the fact that the kid comes and tells you and you receive it wholly with those eyes that says, I love you, is powerful.
• 45:45
  SPEAKER_02: So you don't have to be the oracle of Delphi.
• 45:48
  SPEAKER_02: You don't have to have all the answers.
• 45:50
  SPEAKER_02: Kurt Vonnegut says we miss, we shouldn't die.
• 45:54
  SPEAKER_02: He had a cousin, an uncle, a friend who would come over and they'd have tea, iced tea, or whatever.
• 45:59
  SPEAKER_02: And at some point, this relative or friend would inevitably stand up and say, How beautiful it is to be in this very moment.
• 46:10
  SPEAKER_02: This moment is quite lovely, right?
• 46:13
  SPEAKER_02: So we have moments of loveliness eclipsed by a lot of anger, a lot of hurt, a lot of pain.
• 46:19
  SPEAKER_02: I think the witnessing, I think the way I'll answer that is the way Norm Chambers, who worked with Carl Rogers, has shared with me, said there are two ways to live.
• 46:28
  SPEAKER_02: You can live an evaluative life where you look at what's good, what's bad, what's right, what's wrong.
• 46:34
  SPEAKER_02: And there are times we need to do that.
• 46:36
  SPEAKER_02: And he said, or you can live a life of just witnessing your life, witnessing your existence.
• 46:42
  SPEAKER_02: And where there's no evaluation.
• 46:44
  SPEAKER_02: As we sit here, I'm witnessing that I'm with two people who, if I trace the line all the way back from you and all the way back from you, the fact that we're here given where we came from and the history of our family, there's an elegance to this.
• 47:00
  SPEAKER_02: There's a quiet sweetness to this moment.
• 47:03
  SPEAKER_02: And because it's quiet, we miss it.
• 47:06
  SPEAKER_02: So if I had anything to say about conflict and the worst part of it, sometimes it's just witnessing the moments we spend fighting with each other and hating each other and missing the elegance of the moment and the beauty of each other.
• 47:20
  SPEAKER_02: I think one of the worst things I always say if you want to hate someone, you don't have to cuss them out, you don't have to beat them up, you don't have to raise your voice.
• 47:30
  SPEAKER_02: All you have to tell them is, I will love you as long as you're perfect.
• 47:35
  SPEAKER_02: And the moment you're no longer perfect, sorry, I can't love you because you're not perfect.
• 47:40
  SPEAKER_02: And we do that to each other.
• 47:41
  SPEAKER_02: We hold each other and ourselves.
• 47:43
  SPEAKER_02: We hold ourselves not to wholeness and not to an ability to dance with humanity, but we hold ourselves and each other to a level of perfection.
• 47:56
  SPEAKER_02: And if you love me as long as I'm perfect, it'd be a very short love affair.
• 48:04
  SPEAKER_02: And so, yeah, if there was a downside, it would be sometimes just witnessing the moments lost, and yet at the same time, simultaneously, seeing people who have come in that really hated each other walk out with an understanding of each other's humanity and seeing the plasticity of the human spirit, the ability to hate someone and sit with them and listen long enough with that judgment to discover who they are, and then have something called resolution or have something called friendship.
• 48:37
  SPEAKER_02: And so it's a mixed bag.
• 48:39
  SPEAKER_01: When you're helping mediate conflicts in the corporate environment, what are the outcomes?
• 48:45
  SPEAKER_01: What is a resolution?
• 48:48
  SPEAKER_02: That's always a good question.
• 48:49
  SPEAKER_02: It's different for different corporations.
• 48:51
  SPEAKER_02: Everything is about getting the mission done.
• 48:55
  SPEAKER_02: The word I'm looking for isn't coming to me, but every everything is about outcomes.
• 49:00
  SPEAKER_02: And people go into corporations to make business, to do business and to make a profit.
• 49:03
  SPEAKER_02: It's a very transactional environment.
• 49:06
  SPEAKER_02: In fact, years ago, they used to tell people, leave your emotions at home, but don't bring your emotions and feelings into the workplace.
• 49:12
  SPEAKER_02: Well, that invited the only feelings that were in the workplace was what?
• 49:15
  SPEAKER_02: Fear.
• 49:17
  SPEAKER_02: Everybody was afraid to say the wrong thing, do the wrong thing because I can't show that I'm human.
• 49:22
  SPEAKER_02: And we went from fear involves blame.
• 49:26
  SPEAKER_02: If something goes wrong, it's not your fault.
• 49:27
  SPEAKER_02: So I'll either shame you or blame you, but it's not my fault.
• 49:30
  SPEAKER_02: And so in the workplace, depending upon everybody says if you want to know what a cooperation is like, just meet the CEO.
• 49:39
  SPEAKER_02: And the CEO defines the culture.
• 49:41
  SPEAKER_02: Neil deGrasse Tyson says the reason we don't have a whole lot of books on gravity is because we know what it is.
• 49:47
  SPEAKER_02: If you go into Barnes and Noble and you look, I don't know if anybody goes into bookstores anymore, but I do.
• 49:54
  SPEAKER_03: There's the Barnes and Noble in Hazard Center.
• 49:57
  SPEAKER_03: Go to that place, it's a great place.
• 49:59
  SPEAKER_02: If you go into the Barnes and Noble in Hazard Center, there's a whole series of shells on leadership.
• 50:05
  SPEAKER_02: That's because we're still fumbling through it.
• 50:08
  SPEAKER_02: And then when you meet great leaders, they recognize that they show up.
• 50:11
  SPEAKER_02: You cannot be a bad person and be a good leader.
• 50:14
  SPEAKER_02: A good leader requires your whole humanity, not perfection.
• 50:20
  SPEAKER_02: A good leader will mess up, will make mistakes, will be, but you see the signature of the leader's ability to self-reflect.
• 50:28
  SPEAKER_02: And when you meet leaders who don't have the capacity to self-reflect, you have a different kind of organization.
• 50:35
  SPEAKER_02: It's a very mechanized organization.
• 50:37
  SPEAKER_02: There's a lot of blame and shame.
• 50:38
  SPEAKER_02: They may get things done, but at the expense of a lot of talent.
• 50:42
  SPEAKER_02: There are a lot of people who, and what kills most corporations is not what people say, it's what they don't say because they're afraid to say it.
• 50:50
  SPEAKER_02: And the Exxon Valdez, and we have lots of lots of examples publicly where employees did not say things because it was a safe to say it, and we collectively have paid the price for that.
• 51:03
  SPEAKER_02: So it's different for different organizations.
• 51:05
  SPEAKER_02: But if I had one thing for most corporations, is again, patience has become an inconvenience in a world that demands constant action.
• 51:17
  SPEAKER_02: Meeting the objective is God, and anything else is expendable in that process.
• 51:22
  SPEAKER_02: So there's a certain amount of a humanity that we have to withhold when we go into the corporate culture in order to survive and be successful, be successful as defined by the external world.
• 51:37
  SPEAKER_02: What is success?
• 51:38
  SPEAKER_02: It's a nice car, it's a big house, it's a lot of money, it's fame, it's getting your name on magazines.
• 51:44
  SPEAKER_02: And then you ask the question, what price are you willing to pay for that?
• 51:47
  SPEAKER_02: And it's a trade-off sometimes.
• 51:49
  SPEAKER_02: And so it's different for different corporations.
• 51:51
  SPEAKER_02: But if you have a company where most of the people love working there, it's because the leadership has invited that authenticity to fully participate and show up as a whole person.
• 52:03
  SPEAKER_02: So I make the distinction between perfection and wholeness involves mistakes.
• 52:10
  SPEAKER_02: We will make a mistake.
• 52:11
  SPEAKER_02: And the question is all the things that you know.
• 52:13
  SPEAKER_02: How do we navigate mistakes?
• 52:15
  SPEAKER_02: How do we talk about them?
• 52:17
  SPEAKER_02: Is there space to admit that I made a mistake and learn from the mistake?
• 52:21
  SPEAKER_02: Very quickly, I did a project some years ago called Art Conflict Resolution and Community Engagement.
• 52:27
  SPEAKER_02: And we took junior high school kids that were going to college, they were pretty academically inclined.
• 52:33
  SPEAKER_02: And we taught them art.
• 52:35
  SPEAKER_02: So we got money and we bought easels and paints and smocks and everything.
• 52:39
  SPEAKER_02: And we got the local restaurant to get food because they came in after class.
• 52:43
  SPEAKER_02: And the artist I was working with at the time played classical music for all these little kids and said you can bring your music in, which they never did.
• 52:50
  SPEAKER_02: They love the classical music, much to our surprise.
• 52:53
  SPEAKER_02: But after about six weeks, they kept asking, can we bring friends?
• 52:57
  SPEAKER_02: Can we invite other people?
• 52:58
  SPEAKER_02: And we only had a limited amount of money.
• 53:01
  SPEAKER_02: I still have the interview actually, so I got a camera, I interviewed them and I said, What do you like about this project?
• 53:06
  SPEAKER_02: You keep coming and we're happy.
• 53:08
  SPEAKER_02: We don't want you to stop.
• 53:10
  SPEAKER_02: And they all had all gotten together and we were told and talked about the project.
• 53:15
  SPEAKER_02: And the one girl, very bright, they were all deliciously brilliant, said we got together, and what we figured out was what we were talking about is everywhere, and these are junior high school kids, very bright.
• 53:28
  SPEAKER_02: They said, everywhere we go, we're expected to be perfect.
• 53:31
  SPEAKER_02: But when we came into this art class, you told us it was okay to make mistakes.
• 53:36
  SPEAKER_02: Because it taught, it told you, it informed you guys what we needed to learn as we did our art.
• 53:42
  SPEAKER_02: And she said, that's the first, this is the first time we've ever been told we didn't have to be perfect.
• 53:48
  SPEAKER_02: And there's something about that, right?
• 53:50
  SPEAKER_02: There's something about little kids thinking, well, they didn't say was, because if we're not perfect, then there's a consequence for that.
• 53:58
  SPEAKER_02: Like love, access to mom or dad, or to the teacher, or to my friends, or are we inviting, when we talk about perfection, are we inviting people, our kids, to perform and not be whole and not be real and authentic?
• 54:12
  SPEAKER_02: Can I come to you and say, Mom, I made a mistake, dad?
• 54:14
  SPEAKER_02: I made a mistake, boss, I made a mistake.
• 54:17
  SPEAKER_02: Can we say that and navigate our way to it?
• 54:19
  SPEAKER_02: Or do we have to perform as if we're perfect all the time?
• 54:23
  SPEAKER_02: And so, yeah, so for different corporations, different outcomes, but mostly it's uh listening.
• 54:30
  SPEAKER_02: And what is the role and what is the capacity to listen in a world that's changing very quickly?
• 54:38
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody, thank you again for joining us on such a delightful episode today of Workplace Confessions Behind Closed Doors.
• 54:46
  SPEAKER_00: And with that, thank you for sharing your story with us.
• 54:48
  SPEAKER_00: You've officially joined the ranks of the brave and the bold.
• 54:52
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much for joining.
• 54:54
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you.
• 54:54
  SPEAKER_02: It was a pleasure.
• 54:55
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you for having me.
• 54:57
  SPEAKER_00: That's it for this week's confession.
• 55:00
  SPEAKER_01: We've laughed, cringed, and maybe questioned our own career choices.
• 55:04
  SPEAKER_00: Big thanks to our anonymous guests for keeping it real and reminding us that behind every job title is a story worth telling.
• 55:10
  SPEAKER_00: If you've got a workplace confession of your own for all ears, hit us up at our email address.
• 55:16
  SPEAKER_00: And don't forget to subscribe, rate, and share.
• 55:19
  SPEAKER_00: Your support helps us keep the secrets flowing.
• 55:22
  SPEAKER_01: Until next time, keep your badge clipped, your coffee strong, and your stories wild.
• 55:26
  SPEAKER_01: This is Workplace Confessions Behind Closed Doors.