The Bosshole® Chronicles

Dr. Jeremy Pollack - "I Care ... You Control"

August 20, 2024

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Unlock the secrets to effective conflict resolution and discover transformative strategies for managing workplace dynamics in this captivating episode with a returning Subject Matter Expert, Dr. Jeremy Pollack.

Click HERE to purchase Dr. Pollack's new book Peaceful Leadership
Click HERE to access Dr. Pollack's LinkedIn profile
Click HERE for the Pollack Peacebuilding Systems
Click HERE to purchase Dr. Pollack's book Conflict Resolution Playbook

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John Broer:

Welcome everybody out there in the Bossh ole Transformation Nation. It is good to have you back at another installment of the Boss ole Chronicles. This is your co-host, john Brewer, and joining me after four years, celebrating four years at Real Good Ventures. Yeah, my business partner and friend, wonderful person, Sara, what's going on? How are you doing?

Sara Best:

Hey John, this has been an awesome four years. I think the best of my career for sure, and we get to do this. We get to hang out, have important conversations, help clients and talk to these incredible subject matter experts about Boss hole prevention.

John Broer:

Yeah, and we've got a return guest today that you've invited back to the Bossh ole Chronicles. So tell us who we're talking to today.

Sara Best:

I'm happy to do so. We are talking to Dr. Jeremy Pollack. He's a social psychologist and a conflict resolution expert, but he's created this whole like institute and system around conflict resolution and de-escalation and I know those words might sound, you know, like all formal and whatever it's really. He and his team help companies develop the capacity to get along together.

John Broer:

You know, peaceful workplace.

Sara Best:

Can you just imagine where there's not a bunch of tension? He's been at this for quite a while, and what I love about Dr. Pollack is the way that he can help us understand the psychology of how we operate as humans, the psychology of conflict, but put it in language that we can understand. So he was with us in February of 2023. He wrote a book called the "Conflict Resolution Playbook. He's since written another book. We'll talk about that in the podcast as well, but, john, I can't wait, let's dig in.

John Broer:

The Bossh ole Chronicles are brought to you by Real Good Ventures, a talent optimization firm helping organizations diagnose their most critical people and execution issues with world-class analytics. Make sure to check out all the resources in the show notes and be sure to follow us and share your feedback. Enjoy today's episode.

Sara Best:

Wow, Dr. Jeremy Pollack of Pollack Peacebuilding, welcome back to the Bossh ole Chronicles.

Jeremy Pollack:

Thanks for having me. Good to be here.

Sara Best:

The work you do is so important and, as our listeners know, you joined us a year and a half ago. We wanted to reconnect with you especially. You know the dynamics in the workplace have changed maybe not for the better, but we wanted to give you a platform to share what's happening, what's the state of conflict, conflict resolution and, in particular, we'll talk about conflict de-escalation in a moment. But just tell us, what have you been seeing in the last year and a half?

Jeremy Pollack:

I don't know that I've seen a dramatic change in terms of, you know, sort of trends in the workplace. We are starting to get a lot more of our people, our agencies, departments, companies focused on improving relationships with customers, especially sort of de-escalating customers. There's a lot of really heated customer-facing interactions now. So that's what we've seen in terms of a trend upwards In terms of the internal cultures. I think I'm always learning. I think I'm always learning.

Jeremy Pollack:

One of the things that I'm very clear on I was I guess I was somewhat clear on it, but now now I'm very clear on it is nothing changes from a cultural perspective without, without the folks who are in a leadership or authority position that can actually make decisions about change.

Jeremy Pollack:

We've done a number of interventions where we're working with sort of mid-level managers, or even some call them the executive director or something, but they're kind of pseudo executive directors because the board makes all the decisions.

Jeremy Pollack:

And so, working with people that are motivated to make changes, want to make changes, but they just don't have the power to do it. They have to run everything by a board or run everything by a committee or something like that, it gets really frustrating. They waste a lot of time and money. It's frustrating for us because, you know, I don't want people to spend time, resources et cetera with us and we're not able to be effective because no one can make decisions. So we've transformed a little bit into, you know, making it very clear like if we're going to work on structural issues and not just sort of acute conflicts between individuals, but we want to work on structural issues, we need to be working with whoever the senior leaders are that can actually make decisions. And that's been very helpful to filter that out and get people on board that are actually decision makers, not just folks that are motivated at lower levels, but folks that are hopefully motivated at the highest level.

Sara Best:

And would you add, Dr. Pollack, it's also about they have to buy into it so they can authorize it. But are you speaking about? The senior leadership has to get behind and actually practice the methodologies that you're training and teaching.

Jeremy Pollack:

No, no, it's not just buy-in, it's-t hey have to be involved intimately in the process of change. Yeah, in the process of change.

Sara Best:

Yeah.

Jeremy Pollack:

If they want to change culture, if they want to change department. If we don't have whoever the head of that sort of system is, whether it's a department or a team or the whole organization we don't have the head of that system that can make decisions on board getting coaching, getting training, wanting to improve, working with a coach on a regular basis. If we don't have that, it's just a waste. We a regular basis. If we don't have that, it's just a waste. We are really looking at this point. If people come to us and say, hey, we want to make changes, like, okay, well, who do we get to work with? Is the senior leader or senior leader committee or whomever? Are they all on board to make real changes? And the ones that are, it's great, it's like it's super effective, it's amazing, it's it's fun to work with them. We get to influence culture in a positive way. Otherwise it's just frustrating. So we just don't do it anymore.

Sara Best:

Well, and I hope our listeners appreciate, you don't want to waste a company's money, their time, for something that is filed away as, oh yeah, we did that thing once and it didn't do any good, for sure, you know.

John Broer:

I appreciate that.

Sara Best:

So tell us de-escalation training. I want to just hear a little bit more about it's a customer focus. I know during the pandemic, like even in healthcare, you'd go to the hospital and there'd be a sign that said please use a kind tone of voice, please do not yell at our workers. You know, are we seeing a continued rise in the frustration of customer behavior?

Jeremy Pollack:

I mean I don't know if it's a rise since COVID, but certainly it rose during COVID and it seems like it's been consistent.

Jeremy Pollack:

I mean, the story that we get from company after company is since COVID happened and we came back on, you know, into in-person stuff.

Jeremy Pollack:

I don't know what happened in the general public, in customers or clients, but if it's a sense of entitlement or a sense of aggression or anger or frustration, just socially, culturally, but yeah, there's a lot of poor interactions and people and you know it might be also a lot of people experiencing more mental health, more depression, more anxiety on that, and that's sort of translating into a poor interactions with strangers, including people that they perceive to need to have to serve them in some way.

Jeremy Pollack:

So I've gotten really interested in the sort of neuropsychology of peace and conflict, because de-escalation is really all about emotionally, ie physiologically, escalated nervous systems situation. So people, when they're in an escalated state, it's not just a psychological state, it's a psychobiological state, it's a physiological state as well, and so we have to learn how to both calm our own nervous systems in order to have an effective communication, but also to help other people calm their nervous systems, and so that's like the key in de-escalation is how do we get other people's nervous systems to calm down in an interaction when they're starting to get riled up? What is the thing we need to give them?

John Broer:

Before we get into that, Dr. Pollack, it's so interesting because the word that comes to mind for me is incivility.

John Broer:

Somewhere I don't know what happened, we seem to have lost a degree of civility and I don't know if COVID and the impact of it had precipitated more of that.

John Broer:

What I think is so interesting to your point and Sara, like when you go into a hospital check-in or something like that I've seen it an awful lot in restaurants or in hospitality just a sign to say we always strive to do the best we can and we appreciate your patience. Should something go on with your yeah, if you have to wait or your order is delayed or something like that. We've seen this and I was talking to a business owner that I know well and I said what's going on? He said two things. He said first of all, since COVID, it has been really hard to hold onto workers. It is a competitive labor market. It's hard to hold onto people and when you get customers coming in there that are losing their minds over the staff, he said we can't have that element create a deterrent for people wanting to come work here or even stay here. And he said and it has become a real problem in the last couple of years, so I'm sure anybody that's in that world could attest to that.

Jeremy Pollack:

Yeah, there's a lot of downstream effects to having poor interactions. There's a lot of burnout on the employee side. There's a lot of bad sort of reputational effects on the customer side where they're leaving bad reviews and that sort of thing. So there's a lot of downstream effects. I guess it's hard to blame one side or the other, because we have two things going on. We have the customers who are in a somewhat activated state, a sympathetic, neural activated state, and then we have customer service who are also in that state and, by the way, a lot of customer service agents don't get trained very well on customer service or de-escalation or conflict resolution techniques, and so you get a lot of frustrated customer service people who are also you or who are sort of lower wage and they're like well, what do I need this for? What do I need to be nice to people for? And so they a defensive state.

Jeremy Pollack:

And so what is making them defensive? It's, it's there's a level of anxiety, level of depression. There's something going on in their lives, or at least something they're perceiving happening in the world, that's making them in a defensive state. And so people are walking around on edge, on guard, hypervigilant, and they get into these interactions. If you're in a good space, if you're in a healthy, rounded state, you feel content in life. You're not going to get into these kinds of interactions. So there's something underneath the surface happening.

Sara Best:

That's a great way to paint the picture. We all got to remember that, this biological response, which is very normal for human beings, it's your classic fight or flight, compounded by lots of stress and anxiety, all the great things that you mentioned. You're describing what we like to call. It's Jim Dethmer's book, "The 15 Principles of Conscious Leadership. It's below the line versus being above the line, and we're kind of hardwired to fall below the line into that triggered, defensive, closed off, fearful, angry posture, Whereas being above the line, which takes a little bit of effort and work, it's a shift toward openness, curiosity, receptivity and also responsibility. So in that state you described the sympathetic state, that sort of automatic state we do not have access to radical responsibility for our behavior. There's something we have to do. So tell us, how do you help people gain power over or get together that ability to shift out of that triggered state?

Jeremy Pollack:

It's not easy. First, on the intrapsychic or interpersonal level, when people are working on de-escalation techniques, for instance, one of the major factors is self-regulation Learning what it feels like to get into a triggered state or to an emotional defensive state. What kind of techniques can you use that will work for you to calm yourself down? We give people different techniques and so they can practice and try different things and see what works for them. But really trying to figure out in terms of practice, how do you get yourself into a heightened state, that like sort of trigger yourself in some way, and then use techniques to calm yourself back down? It's similar to like stress inoculation training that you know military folks go through. So it's like like how do we get you up and then be able to bring you down so you have more control over your physiological and psychological state in a given situation? So that's an important piece. And then in terms of deescalating someone else, if you study like attachment theory and you're looking at like how people are dysregulated versus and then they can co-regulate or self-regulate, and so deescalation is kind of like co-regulation. It's kind of like how do I get my nervous system to calm down and then get this other person's nervous system to actually sort of be aligned with the mind so we can both stay in a calm state and then in that state we can get to some actual conflict resolution, some actual greater problem solving. How do I do that? So I mean, we tend to focus on a couple of sort of foundational principles, making some assumptions about the things that people are experiencing that get them into a heightened state, and one of the major things is this sense of being cared for, especially in a customer interaction.

Jeremy Pollack:

A lot of folks that are getting triggered in customer interactions it's not necessarily because of the interaction something else is going on but this particular interaction, for some reason, is triggering something deeper and it's usually in our sort of philosophy. It's usually this perception of, like, a lack of care, of being cared for. And so how do we get someone to feel actually cared for, like I care about your needs, I care about your experience, I care about what you want, your goals, and I'm here and I'm on your team. I'm here to support you. I'm not just commanding you, telling you what our policy is, or telling you what to do, or hey, you got our process, or you know, I'm on your team here we're together in this. I care about what's going on for you. I'm going to take a moment and actually care for you.

Jeremy Pollack:

That's ideal and I think, unfortunately a lot of customer service folks because they have to deal with a lot of, you know, interactions like this they can get into compassion fatigue and it's hard for them to get into that state. So there's a lot of work to be done here on self-care, self-regulation and then eventually de-escalation and helping people feel cared for so that they don't Because if you feel cared for by me like you actually perceive that you are being cared for by me, you're probably not going to be insulting me and yelling at me. You're insulting me and yelling at me because you perceive me as some sort of opposition or some symbol of opposition that your sort of defensiveness is reacting to. So I'm trying to get you to look at me differently.

John Broer:

Can we back up? What did you call it? They're giving fatigue. What was that? Compassion fatigue? I'm intrigued by compassion fatigue. It probably seems more obvious just by what it is. Can you speak to that a little bit more? People, just I have no more to give, I have no more compassion to give. Is that essentially what it is?

Jeremy Pollack:

Yeah, it's like burnout, it's like you know, if I have to deal with three or four different heightened customer interactions within the period of like three hours or something. Boy, at the end of that three hours, like I don't have much more to give, I can't keep being compassionate to people. All I'm doing is I'm going to let you yell at me for a moment and then I'm going to stay calm and show you how I care about you and then hopefully that de-escalates the situation. I'm going to do that over and over and at some point I'm going to be like I can't keep doing it. I need a break, I need to relax, or something like that.

John Broer:

My compassion tank is completely empty. I have nothing left, okay.

Sara Best:

It reminds me that not everybody is cut out for those kind of interactions or for that role. There are some people that are just private. They sort of naturally have less empathy or they're just not as tuned into reading the other person. They can develop those skills, but, wow, I hope that when people struggle in that customer service environment, they could recognize too that if I can't naturally develop a capacity to care about the other person, this probably isn't the right job for me. The same would be true for bosses, by the way.

Jeremy Pollack:

Bosses for sure.

Sara Best:

Bosses for sure. You talked about I care, I care about you, you control. Can you tell us the second half of that approach?

Jeremy Pollack:

Yeah, I mean I think those two elements are. I try my best when I'm working with different folks I'm trying to learn what I can and simplify it into very kind of practical little formulas, so creating acronyms and little steps and stuff. So one of the things I notice is there's two things that really help conflict resolution processes along. One of them is this perception of being cared for by the person you're in a conflict with, whether it's in a sort of momentary interaction or an ongoing thing. So if I start to perceive that you actually care about me, that can really lower my guard a lot. So that's number one. The other thing is the sense of agency that I have in this situation, how much control I feel like I have. If I feel like I have no control, the other person has all the control in resolving this issue, then I feel very frustrated. And that's part of the reason too.

Jeremy Pollack:

Customers and people in workplaces when they're dealing with someone who has a power, dynamic, you know, authority over them if they have no control at all. But if the moment that the boss or the customer service says I'm going to give you some control here, in other words, I'm going to make you, let you make this decision or I'm going to give you some agency in how this goes. What do you think about this? How do you want to proceed? I'm going to go with you. I'm on your team. They start feeling control. That starts again to lower that guard. And anytime we lower the guard, that lower that defensiveness, we can actually get to a problem-solving state. Like you said, sarah, in the beginning, we really can't solve problems when we're in an escalated state, when we're in fight-flight, when we're in defense, when we perceive someone as an enemy or an opposition. It's very tough to resolve things with them. So how do I get out of that? How do I resolve?

Sara Best:

And I got to feel like I have some control and I got to feel like the other person actually cares about my needs, goals or values. I hope people can tune into the idea that many of us, unbeknownst to ourselves, are in a heightened state often like so much so we.

Sara Best:

We see things like adrenal fatigue and we see diagnoses now popping up around, the impact of, of this consistent state of stress on our bodies. But to your point, we have agency. There are tools and things that people can do to regulate that dysregulation. The dysregulation is becoming more the norm, would you agree?

Jeremy Pollack:

It's hard to say that it's more the norm than it ever was before, because I'm sure throughout history people have always had dysregulated states. I got to think, I mean just looking at how the world is, but it certainly seems that way because we're I mean maybe because we're measuring it more now, or we're seeing it more through video that we didn't have access to, you know, 20 years ago or something. But bottom line is, whether it's more or less now, there's a lot of people experiencing anxiety like a lot. I mean a lot of people on anti-anxiety medication and stuff like that. I mean a lot of people experiencing some level of, maybe depression. It's an absolute epidemic of anxiety. Yeah.

Sara Best:

And I'm convinced that, even though these are the sort of dynamics that we're facing today, there are things that organizations and leaders can do, which is why I reached out to you directly and said we need to talk to you again. We want to help our listeners know and understand there is agency that you have to create safer and better environments and equip people. So you help organizations, you do the equipping. How do you work with the clients so people can be assessing? Could I sign on for this? What are the ways in which they can engage with you and your organization and your team to get some of this equipping?

Jeremy Pollack:

A couple of my colleagues and I wrote a book called, "Peaceful Leadership, which we published this year, and my take on it is this we all have the ability to be leaders in our lives. We certainly lead our own lives and we can practice what I would call peaceful leadership skills, which are ways of creating psychological safety, collaborative and inclusive decision-making, creating trust. And we can do that internally, intra-psychically, with ourselves. So if we lead ourself, if we're self-led, that's really important in creating a safe place. In other words, how do I talk to myself? How do I make decisions? Am I constantly harping on myself and getting on myself and focusing on what I regret and what I'm afraid of in the future, or do I have a different approach to the way that I handle myself? Am I more gentle with structure? Am I disciplined but also compassionate to myself? So we can be self-led and that's important. And then, where else do we lead in our lives? Do we have a family that we're the sort of you know, head of the family or leader of the family? We can create a very psychologically safe and trusting and collaborative and loving environment at home, and that's important. We can do the same thing in organizations If we have a leadership position there, if we have some authority there, so anywhere that we have leadership and this is what I this is like my challenge and call to all leaders at organizations they have so much ability to really positively affect the people's lives that work for them. They really do.

Jeremy Pollack:

If you're in a leadership position and you have the ability to make changes in your culture or to create new processes and that sort of thing, you have such an ability to impact people's lives and it really affects their lives. If they have a good work culture, if they like coming to work and they feel like this is a great place to work, they're in such a better state than if they don't. You know, just in life in general, I think you know we can look at these sort of larger problems. I think you know we can look at these sort of larger problems Like there's politicians certainly need to be trained on better leadership skills they're not great and certainly the media doesn't help and so we have these larger sociocultural issues that create all kinds of nervous system activity in people.

Jeremy Pollack:

So we can't really control a lot of that stuff. What we can control is maybe not tuning into it and not paying so much attention to it. And what can we pay attention to? The things that are more close to our lives, our local communities, our organizations, our businesses, our families and ourself, those things that we have more control over. That we can actually help in leadership skills. I think that's where we need to focus and that can actually help to lower sort of anxiety levels if we're focused on the things that we can control.

John Broer:

As you were going into that, I was thinking you know, if somebody is looking to improve their health and lose weight which I am always doing I mean you have to think about what you're consuming. So the fact that I love the bread that my wife bakes, but I have to either show restraint or ask her to stop baking. What goes in, what the input will affect the output and the result. And I think about what you say in terms of what's happening in the world and what are people consuming in terms of social media and news and the vitriol that is out there on all sides. I'm not, I mean, I'm not picking a particular side, but I think that speaks a lot to what's activating, what's happening in our brains and what's happening in our heart.

John Broer:

I've had some people say I have had to stop reading the news. It's like they were consuming it every single day and it's not being unaware of what's happening, but it's realizing that this is influencing how I am showing up to my family, to my friends and at work, and not all in a very favorable way, because, if you think about it, it's really created, especially you brought up. Politicians totally agree with that, but it's created, it's generated or it's it's made to create division and argument and stress, and that can help but spill over to everything else. So I just was drawing that parallel because I think you're right what we're consuming is influencing us.

Jeremy Pollack:

You're a hundred percent right. I mean, I think one of the best endeavors anyone can take on is learning what makes them anxious. So what are the sorts of things in my life that make me anxious? I have a guy that if he eats like bread or pizza or something like that, he feels depressed for like a day. Right, and I don't know you know he doesn't, maybe not. I could dive into that. Why does that happen? But he just knows that when he eats that he doesn't feel good and he feels depressed for a day. Okay, stop eating that.

Jeremy Pollack:

Learning the things that that you are either consuming or creating in your life that create sympathetic nervous system arousal in a way that is not effective. I mean, we'd like to be excited sometimes. Sure, that's sympathetic state arousal, but sympathetic state arousal in a direction that is not in line with what we want, in other words, anxiety, nervousness, things that just don't make us feel good, distress, that sort of thing. What are the things that I consume or create you sort of create that state and what can I do to mitigate those practices? For me, if I watch the news, I start getting activated and I'm like that's not healthy for me, it's not healthy for my clients. I don't show up the way I want to show up, I feel anxious, et cetera. I don't want it. So I just stopped watching it. So I don't watch it.

Jeremy Pollack:

And my deal with my wife is because my wife can watch it and she doesn't get activated the way that I do. She doesn't. She can turn it off and go about her day and feel all good and happy, and I can't. So I make a deal. Here's the deal you tell me if there's anything I need to know because it's going to affect our lives. Other than that I don't want to know. I don't want all the drama, blah, blah, blah. Cool, that's it. And so I hardly hear about anything because there's really not much that's going to really affect our sort of day-to-day lives, at least on the day-to-day.

Jeremy Pollack:

So I would say anybody's endeavor, figure out what is going to create nervous system activity in a way that you don't want it to. Stop with those things. Create a system for yourself that makes sense, so that like, yeah, I don't want to be completely uninformed, I don't want to be blindsided by something that you know might affect me. So I've got someone who's willing to tell me if there's going to be something that's going to affect me. Find a system and process that works for you that doesn't activate your nervous system.

John Broer:

That's awesome.

Sara Best:

I knew this would come up in here somewhere. I was thinking about change, but before I mentioned something about that, it's a dopamine hit. I have, on and off throughout the years, decided not to watch the news, so I'd not watch it for a while. But I recognize there was this thing that happened when I could flip on the TV and get some information. I mean, I go all the way back to 9-11 and how we were glued to the TV for a week straight and just needed to know and understand.

Sara Best:

That might be not the best example, but eating bread, in my case it's drinking coffee I turn into something, a different human being. But not other forms of caffeine, but, yeah, I have to make the decision not to drink that so I don't get the fallout, but it's that dopamine hit that. So I don't get the fallout, but it's that dopamine hit. You know and I think self-leadership requires that we recognize these patterns that some of them are addictions. Some people are addicted to the news. They are addicted to that thought process. It's a deep groove in the brain. You know we just slide right into automatic mode.

Sara Best:

It's not easy but it's essential. And people, I mean we can choose. We can choose, and I hear you saying that people have agency.

John Broer:

That's the agency you're talking about.

Jeremy Pollack:

If I were to think about this, maybe analyze it a little bit. When you watch the news or you watch things that you feel like you're saying that I feel that dopamine. In other words, I'm looking forward to it, I feel something satisfying when I'm watching it, even though I know that it's not great, and then it's making me more anxious when I don't all that stuff. I think what the news and politicians, what they're playing on, is something deeper, psychologically in all of us, which is the need to feel part of an in-group and the need to look at an out-group in a particular way. And so what you'll notice is sure you get a dopamine hit when you get to look at an out group in a particular way. And so what you'll notice is you sure you get a dopamine hit when you get to look at your news station with the kinds of news you like to listen to and telling you that your side's doing well and winning. But the moment you turn on the other news station that doesn't give you that kind of stuff, you're going to get cortisol and adrenaline dump. You're not going to feel the, you're going to feel disgust and you're going to turn it off Right. So it's all about the in-group and against the out-group and the moment you start hearing about the out-group or any opposition creates all that, all that anxiety, that sort of intergroup conflict anxiety. So I don't want to be involved in intergroup anxiety. I really don't want it.

Jeremy Pollack:

And if I turn off the news, I'm not involved in it. In my day-to-day I don't know who believes what. When I'm walking around on the street I don't need to know what they believe. All I need to know is we're kind to each other, we're cool. You say hello, I say hello. How's it going? That's it, you know. It's like I don't need to know what your politics are, what your religion are.

John Broer:

I just don't need to know it, so forget it. I took a trip internationally. I never traveled to Europe before, but one of the things that was really awesome is really kind of a disconnect from sort of core technology. I still had my phone, but we were very intentional about sort of a break from technology. You know, Sara, I know sometimes when you travel north you're not able to take a call or get access, and there's something very freeing and refreshing about that and how the realization that we don't need that tether all the time it is that control, it is that agency. And, by the way, I just want to remind our listeners as we start to wrap things up, go to the show notes. You will see Dr Pollack's LinkedIn profile, a link to the Pollack Peace Building Systems website, a link to the Conflict Resolution Playbook and also the new book, "peaceful Leadership.

Jeremy Pollack:

So we'll make sure which I just ordered.

John Broer:

Yeah, I'll make sure that all of those links are in there, so I just wanted to point people to those show notes.

Sara Best:

Yeah, shame on me. I didn't realize you had published another book. We should have been talking about your book too Powerful stuff. I just ordered a copy.

Jeremy Pollack:

Awesome, yeah, I'm happy to- love to hear what you think about it. I was curious, so like when you go so, cause I had that same experience when I went out overseas, for instance, and I don't have as much access, and what I find is the first couple of days or so there's definitely like a detachment anxiety. Yeah, like there's any like. There's a detachment anxiety from like not like the separation anxiety was from like the normal thing that I'm used to, right, but then I started really liking it and I'm like I don't want to go back on it. So it was. Then it's a transition to get back on it once I'm back in the States. So I don't know, that was. That was interesting. I think the same thing is like with sugar. Like if I get really used to sugar, I don't want to eat sugar. It takes a couple of days to get off it and then, once I'm off it, I have no craving for it, or at least very little craving for it.

Sara Best:

So yeah, that's what I was referring to when I said change earlier. It's what we call the change curve. You know there's a disruption, it's a letting go, or, you know, moving away from something that we know or that we used to do. And then there's that liminal space as we start to adjust to the new thing. Liminal space, by the way, is just that weird kind of space between things. But, all that to say, we slide down the change curve. Our vitality, our focus, our capability does, I think, experience a little bit of a hit, even if it's a good change. And then reality sets in like oh my God, I have to not do this. I don't like that. The little discomfort, frustration, angst, even a little resentment, or it's so natural that's where most of us go. Forget that. I'm just going to have this today, I'll be fine.

Sara Best:

I'll just have the sugar today and we'll start over tomorrow. It's a big deal, and when it comes to changing behavior, self-leadership, I hope people could recognize. There's that moment where you could either move forward, hang on, say no one more time and get over that hump that gets you to the other side of the change curve where you're like, hey, I can do this, this isn't so bad. Like actually, I feel good, I actually can feel, you know, there's less inflammation in my knees, or whatever the result would be. But we see it all the time with our clients. Sounds really good that they would like to do this thing, but once it requires them to change how they walk and talk every day, you know then all kinds of weird things start happening.

Jeremy Pollack:

I think it helps solidify new practices when it's not just like it sounds good, but when they actually experience a real psycho-emotional benefit from the change. It motivates them further to go. Oh okay, so if I don't eat that piece of bread, I actually really feel a lot better. Or if I do work out, or if I do get into, if I do have a conversation that feels a little difficult, in the end it actually is way better, and I feel it. Once you feel it, you can start to delay gratification a little bit easier. Yeah, for sure.

Sara Best:

I do think this is so perfect. Conflict is a result of many different things, but at our core there's a lot to manage. I always think about it on my side of the street. I got a lot of work to do, so I should not be so overly concerned about what's happening on your side of the street. But what's so great about you, Dr. Pollack, is you put psychological terms in a way that we can understand them, and I know in your writing you do that too. I just really strongly encourage our listeners to pick up your playbook, look at your new book about peaceful leadership and, for gosh sakes, give your people some tools, get some training. I think people are hungry. They want to be able to interface and have difficult conversations and address the things that drive them crazy, but a lot of people just don't know how to do that. So you equip people to do that.

Jeremy Pollack:

Yeah, exactly, and listen, it's super stressful to have conflict at work, even as a leader. I mean, some leaders can check out a little bit, but it's stressful for them too. So if you want less stress, you're going to have to do a little bit of uncomfortable stuff now to have difficult conversations and get to a place that's more trusting and better relationships, but it will be better for you in the end. It will be less stress. Imagine waking up, going to work and not feeling the stress of conflict when you get up in the morning and go oh, I got to deal with this again, right, so it's so much better.

Sara Best:

And it's available, good stuff.

Jeremy Pollack:

We thank you.

Sara Best:

I'm sure we'll get to talk to you again sometime in the near future. We'll always want to stay connected to your work, but keep up the great work and we'll see everybody next time on the Bossh ole Chronicles.

John Broer:

We'd like to thank our guests today on the Bossh ole Chronicles and if you have a Bossh ole Chronicles story of your own, please email us at mystory@thebossholechronicles. com. Once again, mystory@thebossholechronicles. com, we'll see you again soon.