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Transcript:

The following is a full transcript of this episode. This transcript was produced by an automated system and may contain some typos.

Henry Lopez  00:14

Welcome to this episode of The How of Business. This is Henry Lopez. My guest today is Jeremy Pollack. Jeremy, welcome to the show. Thanks, Henry. Happy to be here. This is a very interesting topic. You know, the question is, why? Why do most people, and great teams, really high-functioning teams, still nonetheless struggle with conflict, all types of different conflict. And so, in this episode, Doctor Jeremy Pollack explains the surprising neuroscience behind conflict and shares practical tools to help business owners turn tension into trust and collaboration and stronger leadership. He’s written a book about this. You can find all of the Howard Business resources, including everything we talk about on this episode, as well as information on my one on one and group coaching program at the Howard Business com. Also, invite you to consider supporting the show by joining the Howard Business community on Patreon and subscribe wherever you might be listening, so you don’t miss any new episodes. Let me tell you a little bit more about Jeremy. Jeremy Pollack, PhD, is a social organizational psychologist. I think I know what that means, but you’ll explain it to us. And the leader in the field of workplace conflict resolution and peace building, he is the founder of Pollock Peace Building Systems, an international conflict resolution consulting firm. He also co is a co-founder and chairman of the Peaceful Leadership Institute. It’s a nonprofit dedicated to promoting the model and theory of peaceful leadership. Jeremy is a coach, a trainer, a mediator, and an author. He coaches and trains executives, employees at a variety of levels and industries, from Fortune 100 companies to major nonprofits, and he’s with us here today to interpret this for very small business owners, and his latest book that we’re going to touch on is titled Wired for Peace: Using Seven Neuroscience-Based Principles to Resolve Conflicts. Jeremy lives down I 95 from me, or the Turnpike, in South Florida. And so, once again, Jeremy Pollock, welcome to the show.

 

Jeremy Pollack  02:19

Thanks so much. Great intro.

 

Henry Lopez  02:22

Thank you. I appreciate it. You’ve got a lot to speak to. The book I always like to start on this is that’s really the focus of the conversation. I’m always asking authors, why did you write the book, and who is it for, ideally?

 

Jeremy Pollack  02:35

Yeah, so this is my third book, and this book really focuses on an area that I thought was missing in the conflict resolution field. Typically, you know, when you study conflict resolution at an academic level, and then even get into it as a practitioner in the field, we’re looking at conflict from two different angles. We’re looking at conflict as an acute situation, sort of like what is actually happening, what can we resolve, who are the identifiable parties, etc. And that’s conflict resolution. And then there’s also this sort of framework called conflict transformation, which includes looking at the larger system or structure. So we really have these two angles, looking at how to communicate better interpersonally, behave differently interpersonally, and also what are the systems, structures, processes surrounding the conflict that are affecting it in some way that we can then sort of pull some levers on and either mitigate some of the more exacerbating factors or create some more opportunities there, but one area was really missing, which was the internal dimension, the sort of nervous systems of the people involved in conflict. It really hasn’t been talked about a whole lot in the conflict resolution space, there’s one angle that has been talked about, which is kind of the escalation piece, the arousal piece, but there’s other, there’s so many other things happening in the brain and the nervous system when we’re in processes trying to build peace with each other, whether it’s with employees or with a co-owner or a business partner, or or just with family, friends, etcetera,

 

Henry Lopez  04:03

right? Right. And so, ideally, who, who did you have in mind when you wrote this? Who’s the ideal audience for this?

 

Jeremy Pollack  04:11

Yeah, I mean, I was trying to keep it pretty general, because there’s aspects that are very useful for anyone that’s dealing with conflict right now. I wanted to, I wanted to make sure that anybody dealing with conflict, or in a conflict, or even witnessing conflict in their workplace, when their family can use some of the techniques, but it’s also designed a little bit – I’ve got some, a little bit of more an academic approach, some science in there that helps practitioners, even academics that are studying this sort of thing, that haven’t looked at it deeply. So I was, I was trying to make it as broad as possible.

 

Henry Lopez  04:41

Yeah, no, and I definitely saw this. I was reviewing the book, of course. What would appeal to me, and was interesting to me, is looking at it from the lens of a small business owner and dealing with conflict within our organizations. As you mentioned, yeah, you know, I’ve read about, read other books about conflict, but those are not usually in our work environment. Is those are not the conflicts that a leader is dealing with. There are other types of conflicts that are nonetheless important and need to be resolved, so that a business can be productive, so that a team can continue to get along. So, it was really from that lens that I found it so fascinating. Right? Yeah, and now that’s part of what you were studying here as well. True.

 

Jeremy Pollack  05:20

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, my company, we only deal with business, like that’s where my work in peace building is. I’m not doing family stuff, community stuff, international stuff. We’re only working at organizations, so all the examples in the book essentially are from my experiences working with employee, you know, leaders, employees, etc. at organizations. Yeah,

 

Henry Lopez  05:39

that’s why I thought it was such a great topic. I wrote down here a thing that stood out to me, which was, wow, interesting. You say, why it’s so important to clarify that conflict is often a nervous system problem, not a communication problem. So, all of the learning I’ve ever done is, well, we just gotta learn to communicate better to avoid these conflicts, but there’s much more to it than that, isn’t there?

 

Jeremy Pollack  06:03

Well, yeah, I mean, learning, so learning techniques around effective communication during what we would call difficult or critical or crucial conversations, those types of conversations where, like, there’s some attention or emotional charge, etc. That’s really important. We having techniques around that, very important, very helpful, however, if we don’t learn to regulate our nervous systems, and we don’t understand what’s happening at a neurobiological level, and we don’t understand how to essentially co-regulate with other people with that means. I think communication is an uphill battle, because if we’re not regulated, or if our counterpart, our business, whoever we’re in conflict with, that there’s tension with, if they’re not regulated, all of the communication stuff we practice, it’s not going to be super effective. We really need to figure out how do we get our nervous systems to calm down, how do we get that what we call sympathetic arousal, sympathetic up regulation to down regulate, get back to a homeostasis or a baseline in some level, so that we can get the parts of our brain that are more, more available for creative problem solving, for collaboration, for curiosity. Those parts of the brain need to be more available, so that communication techniques can actually work. If those parts of the brain are shut down, we have these emotional defensive charges only available. It’s really going to block communication from having an effect, so I think, yeah, that’s it’s that’s that’s a major impetus for me. Writing this book is really, really important. This is a a priority. We need to do this first before we even think about effective communication.

 

Henry Lopez  07:35

So, when that brain threat response kicks in, then that’s what you mean by we’ve got to regulate that first before communication is going to get through. Am I following correctly?

 

Jeremy Pollack  07:46

Exactly, exactly. I mean, so that, like, so principle one in the book is solutions and stress don’t mix. We have to de-escalate first. This is the area that’s been talked about the most in the conflict resolution space. It’s why it’s the longest chapter in the book, there’s the most research around it. Everything else falls apart if this part isn’t done correctly. If we are not regulated, after that we can start looking at different ways of approaching conflict and curiosity, and looking at conflict in a new way through brain science. But none of that stuff really matters that much unless we are regulated in some way.

 

Henry Lopez  08:19

Just, just dive into that for a second, de-escalation, because that can be such a tricky thing, right?

 

Jeremy Pollack  08:24

Yeah,

 

Henry Lopez  08:24

what have you seen? One or two things, if we’re talking about it, like I said, like you’ve been giving examples, a typical workplace conflict. Let’s take the example that I’ve gotten into a conflict, I’m the owner, my manager and I are just not seeing eye to eye on something, and we are, you know it’s getting heated, right? We’re just not communicating anymore. It’s breaking down. He’s feeling threatened. I’m in, I’m in it as well, right. So, what, what, what are some of those techniques or tips that I could use to deescalate, I guess, both of us in those, in that situation, right?

 

Jeremy Pollack  08:57

Yeah, good question. So, there, so first of all, before we even think about de-escalation, we have to remember that all of this stuff is a – it should be a strategic choice. So, you have to make a choice. In other words, you have to be motivated to change the dynamic, because it’s going to take some effort. So, the first thing is, I would – I would ask you, like, I was coaching you, I would say, are you – do you want to change this relationship or the way that you’re interacting. If the answer is yes, I’m motivated, I’m willing to do what it takes to figure this out. Great, let’s implement sick techniques and create some discipline around using those techniques in the heat of the moment, and we can practice those outside of the heat, so that you get good at them, so they become kind of second nature, they become, you have muscle memory around them, and then you can use them in the moment, so for instance, on the self-regulation piece, if we want to practice this, there’s a, there’s a lot of different self-regulation techniques that are really important, and you can YouTube them, or Google, or AI, or whatever, there’s a ton of them, you can practice them, but I tend to focus on a couple that are really, really just fundamental, and they’re, they’re important, so number one is you. Doing long exhale breathing, and you can do this right in the heat of the moment, but I also suggest practicing outside of the heat, and so you’re inhaling and then slow exhaling, and as you’re doing this, you’re also relaxing your body, you’re trying to relax your shoulders and your face, especially, but if you notice other places in your body, tense, like your chest or your stomach, or something like that, try to relax that stuff, so you practice relaxing the body as you’re doing long exhales and noticing how that feels, and I suggest you do this outside of the heat, so you just get a little practice around this. I also like to pair this, I call this like a little six, like a little brain hat, you pair this kind of thing with something that you can do physically that’s kind of unnoticeable. So, for instance, for me, I practice this with touching my thumb and finger to my thumb and middle finger together, and if I do that under the table, no one notices, but I just, I practice, so I pair this, I condition myself at the at the touch, I start to go a long exhale, relaxing the face and the shoulders, and when I’m doing this, the next thing I’m looking at this from a physiological lens, I’m using, I’m using physiology to calm my brain down. I’ve got to get my brain a message that I’m safe. That’s the only thing that’s happening right now, is my brain’s going on, I’m in defense, I’m under threat, I need to defend myself. That narrows everything. So, what I’m trying to do is, I’m trying to get my brain to notice, hey, we’re actually okay, we’re safe, we can calm down, so that we can communicate. So, if I’m doing these techniques, long exhale, relaxing the face, and then I use a cognitive technique. In addition, I’m again pairing all this, so I don’t have to remember all of it. I’m trying to pair it with these sort of physical techniques. So, the cognitive technique is I want to directly address some message, some story of threat that I’m experiencing. Now, it could be something as simple as I’m okay, I’m safe, I can handle this, I know what to do here, whatever it is that resonates with me, that I know, especially in this particular conflict book, if I analyze, like, what do I, what am I feeling, what’s emotionally charging me right now, I feel controlled or trapped, do I feel like they’re threatening to leave me, or do I feel like they’re threatening my business, and all those kinds of things. I need to figure out what that is, and then use the kind of counter message consciously. I’m okay, I’m going to be okay, I’m safe. And I do that while I’m pairing this up. The final thing is, behaviorally, I need to slow down my behavior, I need to slow down my speech, articulate my words.

 

Jeremy Pollack  12:18

I also need to make sure my tone of voice is somewhat low. I don’t want to raise my voice, and so I, these five things: exhale, relax the body and face, tell myself a cognitive message of reassurance. Number four is slow my speech, and number five is lower my tone of voice. Those five things, if I pair that with my physical technique, this can be over and over. I do that over and over and over. Eventually, this becomes a little hack, whereas the moment I start to feel that heat, I put my thumb and finger together, and it tells my brain it’s time to do my protocol. Relaxing, I’m okay, we’re going to slow down, we’re safe, you know. And then I need to practice this over and over, so that’s the self-regulation piece that I will work on over and over, so that I know that when I can use that in the heat of the moment. This is

 

I might then hoping or expecting, and that the other person will, I will be mirroring for them, and it helps them deescalate a little bit, or is that not? Yeah, and if that doesn’t happen, if that, that, if that person doesn’t, yeah, I may have controlled myself, so now where do I go now? If this person is still not, they’re still at that flight point, they’re still,

 

Jeremy Pollack  14:48

yeah,

 

Henry Lopez  14:48

I’ve been calmed down.

 

Jeremy Pollack  14:50

Yeah, good question. So this, so this is the beginning of co-regulation. Co-regulation essentially is what you’re talking about, mirroring, so that someone can sense that you. Are safe, so that their defenses can start to lower. Now, it doesn’t always work like that. Doesn’t always work. Yeah,

 

Jeremy Pollack  15:06

yeah, people can, people can perceive threat in all kinds of ways, even when you’re caught. Maybe even you calming is a perceived threat, right? Correct, or piss

 

Henry Lopez  15:14

them off even more. They might say, insulting, whatever, you’re not taking me seriously, all kinds of ways. Exactly. Red,

 

Jeremy Pollack  15:20

yeah, yeah, and so, so what I would say at this point, when you’re self-regulated, I use this word called teamship, and when, when I am on someone’s team, there’s, if you look at it, you know, if I’m on someone’s team, there’s no winning the game if we don’t both win, if I’m on your team and I win, it means automatically that you win, and vice versa. So I can’t be here to make sure I win, or to make sure that I, you know, I’m the right one, or I’m the moral one, or I’m.. I have to make sure we both are. I have to come through this lens of teamship. What, what would I do? How would I behave if I were truly on your team? If I were truly here to support you, and know that you’re even if you’re in a defensive position right now. I need to, I need to be able to support you, and if I come with that lens, it makes it a little easier to just figure out, how do I, how do I communicate, what can I say to help this person feel reassured, to help this person feel I am not a threat to them. I want to make sure I’m here to, they know I’m here to support them, I’m here to make them win, whatever that is, and each situation is a little bit different, but I would suggest, like, the same sort of thing, like, what is a message of safety I could say to them, right? You know, and so may, and maybe, by the way, maybe they need to see me get a little bit more excited with them, maybe they don’t want to see me calm, be so calm, right? What would it, what would it look like to be on their team right now? If they’re pissed off, do I need to show that? Hey, I get it, man, I’m a little pissed off too, not at you, but just at the situation, you know. So, like, reading that is going to be important. Yeah, so

 

Henry Lopez  16:52

that is a powerful thing. I know I’ve done that before. Not, I’m not going to get mad at you, but you’re right, we should be pissed that that’s not working right, or that that ball got dropped, or whatever the case might be, right?

 

Jeremy Pollack  17:02

Yeah, yeah. Because now I’m connecting

 

Henry Lopez  17:03

with him, okay? He’s on my side, he understands. And then we can begin to deescalate things, right?

 

Jeremy Pollack  17:09

Exactly. Well, and also, you know, if someone’s – if someone’s really escalated and they’re still seeing you as a threat, and it’s like nothing you’re doing is kind of getting through, you know? Just even if it, even if it ends up like, hey, we need to pause right now, because it’s not nothing’s happening. Let’s pause, take a break, let’s come back to this, you know, tomorrow or something. But just you expressing as if you’re on their team, you expressing to them, hey, the bottom line is, I don’t, I don’t want to argue with you, I want a better relationship with you, I want to make sure that you know I’m on your team, man, like, like, whatever happens here, whatever we decide here, at the end of the day, I want us to be in a better place. That’s my priority. You are my priority. So, if we can pause right now, we can, we can talk about this later. We’ll have to talk about this now, but I just want you to know that, like, I’m on your side, I’m on your team. Just communicating that sort of thing helps to lower someone’s defense,

 

Henry Lopez  18:01

and more likely that when we come back to discuss it again, we’re in a better position, but it does confirm that one of the techniques I often use, because you know I can be a hot head, is this: you know what, let’s not have this conversation now, let’s just walk away.

 

Jeremy Pollack  18:16

Yeah,

 

Henry Lopez  18:16

that’s okay, if that’s the only thing I can do at that point in time. Yes,

 

Jeremy Pollack  18:20

it’s, it’s way better than you continuing the conversation in an escalated state, right. It’s way better. And what I would suggest is, you know, even if you say, even if you just say, this is a, this conversation is really important to me, but I can tell that I’m not in a great space to discuss it right now. Could we talk about it tomorrow? I’ve got time at noon, or can we get lunch on Friday, and talk about it, like, like having a little bit of a plan, so they know you’re not just dismissing it, is good, but also letting them know it’s important for me, and I do want to talk about it.

 

Henry Lopez  18:51

So, you’ve done a lot of research on this, you see this, and the impact it has an organization. What is it? What is typically this costing organizations? I mean, not $1 amount, but what are you seeing? This, I see this. I’ve observed this, obviously, as a business over many

 

Jeremy Pollack  19:07

years. Yeah,

 

Henry Lopez  19:08

for this in teams or in me, and leading people, the disruption that this can cause is significant, right?

 

Jeremy Pollack  19:15

Significant. Yeah, I mean, every.. there’s so many people that deal with conflict at work, and what, what conflict is not necessarily a negative thing. I mean, it’s typically it can be a very opportunistic thing, because conflict, tension, friction leads to innovation, it leads to new solutions for things, if it’s done, if it’s managed properly. The problem with conflict is the tension that it creates in people’s nervous systems, and those nervous systems, then interacting with other tense nervous systems, like I said, when we’re escalated, everything shuts down, our curiosity shuts down, our creative brain shuts, or shuts down, our ability to collaborate and stay, remain open to new ideas shuts down, all of these things narrow because we go to defensive state, so there’s lots of on. Fortunately, lots of limits placed upon us, and then downstream to the organization, and to the ability, the organization to grow, or to change, or to innovate in all kinds of ways, and of course, productivity, morale. People are stressed out, you know. No one, a, no one’s going to want to be at work. You’re going to get more sick days, you’re going to get more people looking elsewhere to leave, you might even get some people you know having to separate, and then there’s like legal issues or financial issues, and so there’s all kinds of issues when people’s nervous systems are dysregulated in a workplace.

 

Speaker 3  20:33

Yeah, it’s

 

Jeremy Pollack  20:34

so that’s why I say it’s like it’s not necessarily conflict that’s bad. Conflict is fine if it’s managed correctly, it’s the nervous systems dysregulated going to work, that’s not – we do not want to live in a chronically dysregulated state, no matter whether it’s a fan in a family at work, wherever, we cannot exist like that and be healthy at the same time.

 

Henry Lopez  20:53

And what I observe sometimes in small businesses, it’s the owner that’s kind of the cause of that, because that’s the way they’ve just always managed, as if you want to call it as a tyrant, or that that type of approach. I’m always right, and you just will do it the way I say it’s done. We often are the source of a lot of that conflict as businesses. We never learned how to do it any other way but to dictate.

 

Jeremy Pollack  21:19

Yeah, and it’s that’s really, I mean, culture. What I have found is culture really is directed downstream from the top, and it’s supported from the folks that are working on the ground, and certainly they need to support it once it’s set. But if the, if the leadership, especially this sort of senior leadership, CEO, business owner, etc. if that business owner is well, for certainly, if they’re dysregulated, it’s going to, it’s going to affect downstream, but if they’re acting in a way where, like, they’re not giving people room to explore, room to make mistakes without the fear of humiliation or shame, it’s going to be, it’s going to be very tough to work for that individual.

 

Henry Lopez  22:00

Yeah, and now those organizations will not produce great things, at least not consistently, and that’s that’s, or it’ll be

 

Jeremy Pollack  22:07

miserable, it’ll be just miserable, yeah, yeah. And

 

Henry Lopez  22:10

what happens is, you, you might have gotten lucky and gotten a talented person or two, they’ll do some good work, and then they will go elsewhere, because talented people will not support that for very long. Yeah,

 

Jeremy Pollack  22:22

absolutely. You know, I’ve seen it gone the other way too, because a lot of times, also, what I’ve seen is business owners who are like the instead of being tyrants, they’re the perpetual, you know, quote unquote nice guy or nice woman, where they are not willing to hold anyone accountable because they don’t want to be looked at as a tyrant, they’re so afraid of not being liked or being looked at as bullying or something, so they’re just everything goes, and the problem again is you’ve got high performers that see people that don’t perform well and they’re not being held accountable, or they don’t behave well and they’re not being held accountable. Those people are going to leave too. Like, I’m not going to stick around where I’m performing or behaving at a certain standard and no one else is and no one’s getting held accountable. So that’s that’s the opposite side of the problem.

 

Henry Lopez  23:02

Good point. Yeah, absolutely. I see that all the time. You say in the book something that stood out as me, a quote here, we are wired for peace, not for war, and that makes so much sense. But, but just tell me what that means.

 

Jeremy Pollack  23:14

Well, yeah, I mean, if you look, I mean, just if you look just at our biology, like what what sorts of things are happening in the brain and in our neurochemistry when we are collaborating and cooperating and in relationship and connecting, we’re getting hits of oxytocin, of dopamine, of serotonin, all the, all the sort of like quote unquote good, good chemicals, the things that make us feel really good, and when we’re in conflict that is escalated, that’s tense, or in defense, all the opposite, sort of all the other things are happening. We’re getting adrenaline and cortisol, where amygdala is hyperactive, and looking at everything as a deep, as a threat, and it doesn’t feel good. It doesn’t feel good to feel constantly tense and stressed, so if you just look at our biology, it’s like our brains are, and our nervous systems are telling us it’s better to cooperate. It’s the.. and so I think if we clear.. my hope is my goal is like if we just learn to clear away sort of the cobwebs of defense, we can get to the underlying true kind of authentic self, which is a cooperative, collaborative being. I mean, we are the most cooperative, collaborative social animal, mammal on the planet. We, we can collaborate with, we can essentially cooperate with 1000s of people, you know, in a nonviolent way. So, it’s like it, and that’s very different than any other social species, so you know it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s very clear from a behavioral perspective and a neurobiological perspective that we are really meant to cooperate and collaborate. It makes us feel good. Let’s, let’s let our brains point us in that direction and just learn, like, okay, so what. Is my brain telling me that I’m under threat? How do I, how do I start to clear that up a little bit? If, if it’s, if it’s not true, I mean, a lot of times it’s not true, maybe 10% of the time we’re actually under threat, and that’s important that we defend ourselves. But if we’re not under threat, which is probably 90% of the time, especially in a workplace, we’re perceiving threats where they’re not, or we’re exacerbating, we’re just, you know, we’re disasterizing them, we’re making them much bigger than they really are, and there’s probably clear ways to lower that threat perception. How do I do that? How do I get back to my normal, natural state of just being a collaborative, cooperative person?

 

Henry Lopez  25:33

Yeah, brilliant, brilliant. Yeah, it makes so much sense, and when I made a note of it, it also struck me as to one of the reasons why I believe in my observation that technology has exacerbated this situation we have now, call it ghosting, calling avoiding conflict. It’s in our nature really to avoid conflict, and so that’s why it’s easy just not to show up for that interview, because I’m afraid of the questions going to be asked, or or not asked for feedback, or not, you know, whatever the case, or just to disappear. Instead of, do you see that, that is some of the reasons why we’re seeing that in our culture, and amongst many other reasons. But do you understand what I’m trying to get at? It seems to me like those two things are correlated, people more and more, and now technology allows us to avoid the conflict or a conversation that might be, you know, less than you know, somewhat tense.

 

Jeremy Pollack  26:31

Yeah, yeah, this is a, this is actually an interesting topic, and it’s something I talk about in the book, in principle too. It’s about, like, looking at conflict differently. I actually don’t think that we’re naturally, I mean, it’s hard. It’s.. let me.. I’ll clarify this. I don’t think that we’re naturally trying to avoid conflicts. What I think we’re naturally trying to do is avoid threats, and unfortunately, our brain has paired threats with conflict, and if we learn to look at conflict not as a threat but as an opportunity, an opportunity for growth, for innovation, for changing the dynamic and the relationship from growing in a positive way. If we look at it that way, if it’s an opportunity, if we look at with some optimism, we actually might go towards conflict in a healthy way, in an approach way where we can communicate. Hey, how do I communicate with this person to actually grow from this to learn from this? If we look at conflict as a threat or the person we’re in conflict with as a threat, then certainly we’re going to either want to just eliminate the threat by destroying it or something, or by just avoiding

 

Henry Lopez  27:36

it, by just avoiding. So

 

Jeremy Pollack  27:37

we have to try to, we have to try to figure out how do we start to unpair that, because if we unpair that and go, you know what, it’s not a threat, I can actually regulate around this conflict, around this, like I have a different idea or a different perception or a different vision than you do, but that’s a good thing, man. Let’s, let’s have a conversation, let’s figure this, maybe there’s a middle ground, a creative way of, of exploring this or creating something that neither of us thought of. This is cool. Let’s talk about this. If we can approach conflict in that way, rather than that’s a threat to me. Those people are threats to me. Their ideas are threats to me and my group, or me and my people. Like that, that makes a world of difference in how we approach or avoid things.

 

Henry Lopez  28:19

No doubt, Jeremy, but boy, you’re asking a lot there, right? Because

 

Jeremy Pollack  28:22

it is,

 

Henry Lopez  28:23

because it, and again, I’m going to generalize here at my risk, but especially when you look at, I’m thinking about this now, of course, as an employer in this scenario, yeah, and hiring, especially younger people who tend to more so do this, generalizing, but I think that’s part of it, and we’ll, we, we’re not going to get into this deeper conversation if you haven’t learned how to separate those two things. That me giving you feedback on your performance doesn’t mean that I’m calling you a bad person, and that you can’t handle that well. That’s how what I gotta think when you, when you’re telling me this, is I gotta think about as an employer, how do I get better at having those conversations, so that they’re not perceived as much of a threat, maybe by that person. Yeah,

 

Jeremy Pollack  29:07

yep. And the re, and the way to do that is to be the model. So, as a leader, your job, before you give other people feedback, is to request and invite feedback, and not only invite feedback, ask for hard to hear feedback, and then regulate yourself, and show people that it’s psychologically safe to tell you what they think, and you’re not going to blow up on them, or abandon them, or get rid of them, or humiliate them, or retaliate. You show them, hey, I can hear hard stuff, and I can stay calm, and I can learn from it, and I can appreciate you telling me this. Show them that if you show them that consistently, they’ll learn that this is a psychologically safe environment, and that when I give you hard stuff, it’s not because I’m trying to, you know, get you in trouble or badger you or something, it’s because I’m here to make you win, I’m here to support you and help you improve. And I’m going to show you that I’m willing to improve and and be supported as well,

 

Henry Lopez  30:04

I like that, I, you know, I think I can work with that, because I think if I apply that consistently in my work environment and I consistently model that, like you said, where people feel, well, you know, Henry listens to the input and the criticism and the problems and he doesn’t get defensive about it. He doesn’t take it as a personal attack, so that might be more likely that I can have this conversation and listen to the feedback that he has to give me, instead of just running away from it. There’s so many arenas that this applies to in business. I think of sales opportunities, why sometimes a sales prospect will will ghost you, and I’ve come to believe that it’s just that those people, for whatever reason, they don’t want to be sold. In other words, they don’t want to be convinced. They’ve decided on something else, they don’t want to have that conversation that’s awkward, where I might try to convince them otherwise, and I think that’s an avoidance of conflict, there.

 

Jeremy Pollack  31:03

Yeah, yeah, I think so. I think I mean, and it’s curious, because, like, it could be a number of different things happening for that person. They might just be generally conflict avoidant, i.e. they feel conflict is threatening, and it’s very uncomfortable. They don’t know how to say no to people, and that’s very uncomfortable for them, for whatever reason, their history, etc. You know, they have, they might have a perception of sales in general. So, yeah, but again, I think it’s all like someone, you know, we are all conditioned to perceive different scenarios in different ways based on our history, based on our personal experiences, and if we thought, hey, you know what? Again, I think motivation is the key to start with. It’s like, hey, I actually want to hear some sales pitches. I think there’s some things out there that I could benefit from, but I really hate sales calls. I, I’m, but I’m motivated to get on some sales. Like, I need to learn how to look at sales calls differently. I need to, I need to learn that I can. It’s okay for me to say no.

 

Henry Lopez  32:04

Correct. Yeah, you’ve been studying this for some time now. Is has this whole thing changed, gotten worse, the same? What have you observed over the years? Are people dealing with, or not dealing with, conflict about the same? Has it gotten worse? Has it gotten better?

 

Jeremy Pollack  32:19

Well, okay. So, the way that people deal with conflict, I think, is sort of the same. I mean, you know, human beings aren’t going to change too much in a short period of time, but I think, you know, I think we.. I didn’t, I didn’t touch on this, which you asked earlier about social media and stuff like that. I do think that there’s an element that’s been.. it’s different now, it’s.. it’s maybe exacerbated. It’s certainly easier for people to dehumanize each other when they’re just messaging or texting or on social media with each other, especially if, like, your coworkers or you’re in a big, you know, you’re in a company and you’re just texting and messaging, and you don’t see tones and you don’t see body language, and you just get the message, and there’s all kinds of ways to interpret the message, because you’re because all we have is the content now, which is like a very small piece of communication, so there’s all kinds of new from technology, there’s all kinds of new ways of creating tension around conflicts or perceived conflict that I think needs to be looked at, and one of the main things that we talk, we tell people is like, listen, if I, if I can give you no other tips around technology, don’t ever have or start or respond to a quote unquote difficult conversation via text or message. Always have at least a phone call, if not a video call or an in-person meeting. If there’s something that could create some emotional charge, emails, texts, you know, messaging all that should only be logistical, like just pure operational.

 

Henry Lopez  33:45

Agreed, agreed. Okay, excellent. Thanks for touching that. We can talk about that further, because I think, like, you know, reviews are the end result of an unresolved conflict, right? And, and people can just easily just blast it, because it just never got resolved at the restaurant or at the point of business. But let’s go back to the seven principles we’ve touched on, a couple of them. I’d like you to just go through them at a high level, just, just, we’ll just rattle them off. Uh, we talked about the first one, which, which you gave me some examples of solutions and stress, don’t mix, always de-escalate. First, learn to look at conflict as an opportunity, you just gave me some great examples of that. Three is certainty is an illusion. Remain curious.

 

Jeremy Pollack  34:26

Yeah, yeah, that’s an interesting one. I mean, that so that chapter of that principle deals with perception and all the interesting things that are happening neurobiologically when we perceive the world, and if you, if you, if you kind of look at what’s happening and how we are our sensory neurons, the things that are picking, or sensory receptors, things that are picking up light waves and sound waves and pressure waves from the outside world, transducing those into electrical chemical signals, and all the things happening inside the body and the brain that’s happening, it should give us a picture of, like, wow. The way that I’m perceiving and remembering and experiencing the world is so unique to me that I should really remember this, so that I can, I can stay a little open to other people’s experiences. Certainty is the opposite of curiosity, and if we’re, if we’re so, if we’re certain we’re not curious, we’re curious, we’re not certain, and curiosity is so important for resolving, especially complex or escalated conflicts. I need to be open to other people’s perspectives and experiences to hear what’s going on for them. If I’m certain that I’m right, or I’m the most moral, or I’m the most ethical, or I know what happened, they don’t know what happened, or I have the right version of events. If I’m certain of all that, I’m basically shutting down the resolution process.

 

Henry Lopez  35:48

Right, right, right. That makes perfect sense. Okay. Four is peace starts in small ways, so is that like when you were talking earlier about related to de-escalation, that it could be a small thing I say, absolutely. Words that I say, is that what you mean by a small piece?

 

Jeremy Pollack  36:09

Yeah, so I start, I start looking at this from a group perspective. So sometimes you have tension in the team, let’s say, you know, maybe between two teams, or among the whole team, whatever. We’re saying between

 

Henry Lopez  36:21

sales and marketing, or sales and production, let’s say it

 

Jeremy Pollack  36:23

happens all the time. Absolutely, and these departments perceive certain things about each other. It’s going to be very tough to mediate a conflict between groups of people. We have to break it down into smaller, and what I would say is, who are who is the sort of trusted leader of each team? Who are the people looking to on those teams, like, hey, if they’re okay with the other person, it might be, but we have to kind of break the process down, so a looking at that from just a behavioral kind of mediation perspective. How do we have smaller groups, smaller conversations, one on ones, etc. But also, if we’re looking at this neurobiologically, there’s so many interesting little nuances happening during communication, all the things that I’m saying and doing, and the way that it’s being interpreted and received, and then the way that it’s being responded to, there’s so many little parts of that, and all I need to do to start changing the dynamic with someone is to start changing little parts, just my tone of voice, just the way that I say something, just the way that my facial expression is. Just focus on one thing at a time, and change a lot of things. We’re like, we need to change it’s never going to work. Where I’m looking at the mountain of the conflict and go, like, I need to like either fix it or like just be done with it. It’s that’s tough. If it’s a long-standing complex conflict, that’s a tough thing to do. How do I just change one little thing tomorrow and work on that this week, and then next week I’ll add to it and change another little thing, and over time the relationship starts to change. That’s how I got to look at resolving long-term conflicts, not just, hey, it’s going to either be overnight or I got to be done with

 

Henry Lopez  38:00

1. Yeah, brilliant. Could talk about that forever as well, but let’s move on. Number five, resolution requires care. I think we’ve touched on that to some extent, but and then the second part of this transformation requires trust. So explain that briefly.

 

Jeremy Pollack  38:15

Yeah, I mean, these are two different areas. This is again different kinds of mechanisms happening in our biology, when we’re talking about what it takes to trust someone and what it takes to care for someone, care is a faster pathway. Trust takes long-term trust building, and it can be broken very quickly. So, the good thing about so what, so what I have found in my work is, if we want to transform a relationship, we really need to build trust, and that takes time, it takes consistency, predictability, etc. If we want to resolve acute conflicts, like, hey, there’s a particular direction that we’re not agreeing on, or a particular issue we’re not agreeing on, we want to resolve this, and it’s creating some emotional charge that really doesn’t require us doing a long-term trust-building process. It requires care, though it requires perceived care. So, and the good thing about care is, I can choose to care about anyone at any time, for any length of time. I don’t have to even know you to care about you, right? If you are in pain, in need, right now, I can drop everything, I can make the choice, drop everything, and just care for you. Just make sure it could be

 

Henry Lopez  39:18

simple as asking me a question, you know

 

Jeremy Pollack  39:21

exactly right, yeah,

 

Henry Lopez  39:22

showing empathy that’s caring. Yes,

 

Jeremy Pollack  39:25

yeah. So, if you’re like, so exactly, so if we’re looking at two people in a quote unquote conflict, and we, and it’s around a particular issue, and that issue is creating threat, and those people are escalated, or whatever. The way that I can start to get out of that is to make sure that you know that I actually care about you, i.e. I care about your needs, your goals, and your concerns. So, Henry, I know that this issue we don’t see eye to eye on. I’d love to figure out a way that we can solve this, but I want you to know, besides put that aside for a second, I want you to know I will not do anything that’s. To put you into jeopardy, I will not, whatever the solution is, I won’t go along with it. If it’s going to put you in jeopardy, because I care about you and I care about your needs and your goals.

 

Henry Lopez  40:09

It could also be that, that what.. let’s see, what Joe is upset about is something that has to happen, you know, processes, but.. but it impacted him. I could say, Joe, regardless, here I care about how this has impacted you, and I want to hear how it impacted you.

 

Jeremy Pollack  40:25

Yes, and and I want to hear how it impacted you, and you know, maybe there’s a way that we can soften that impact. Maybe there’s something we can do here, because I do care about that absolutely. And he, Joe, doesn’t have to trust me. There might be a lot of broken trust between us over years, but if he registers that I actually care about this particular issue, we can resolve this issue, and over time, if we do that enough, if he sees enough care, maybe over time, and enough consistency, then we start to build trust, and transforms, yeah, exactly,

 

Henry Lopez  40:58

all right, six, we’re built to collaborate, we, we’ve talked about that, so that you know that, like, you just expressed in, as I believe, with that’s our tribal nature, right? We are mostly built to collaborate to either survive in the wilderness or now even to survive in small groups, communities, families, whatever you want to call groups at work, where we most of us want to collaborate, right? We do, though. I have often found I’m curious, as your observation is one of the things that we do have to look for as leaders, is there are people who just don’t fit into that team, and they’re the problem is that fair, that sometimes we have to get people out of it because they’re not allowing the team to collaborate as well as it could.

 

Jeremy Pollack  41:43

Yeah, and I think, I think, I think that’s absolutely correct. I think when we’re especially when we’re intentional around the kind of culture we’re creating, we have a good rapport, a good team, and there just seems to be maybe one or two people that they’re just not a good culture fit, their their needs, their goals, their concerns, they’re just, they’re just, they would be better served in another team, you know. And we have to be honest about that sometimes. Now, it doesn’t mean like immediately, hey, there’s this person’s creating conflict, so it just means they’re a bad culture fit. We want to do a little work to discover what’s really happening, but if it, but if we discover that, it’s like, you know, what, this person’s just not going to be a great fit here. I think that’s important to figure out, and at the end of the day, if we separate in a caring way, you know, they still might not be happy, but if we do that in a way where it’s clear, like it’s not that something’s wrong or bad about you, it’s just that we’re not a, it’s not a great fit.

 

Henry Lopez  42:39

Yeah,

 

Jeremy Pollack  42:40

maybe we can be, yeah,

 

Henry Lopez  42:42

alright. Number seven is new solutions lie outside of structure, and I think you’ve touched on this already, but let me see if I, if I am getting it. I think what that tells me is that sometimes I have to think outside of the rules of that we have in place, or the structure of how we typically deal with this, that I have to be curious for other ways to possibly to solve this. Is that what this is about, in part, or am I missing? Yeah,

 

Jeremy Pollack  43:08

yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, that, that’s yeah, that’s part of it. So, this last principle here is all about the neurobiology of creativity, of creative problem solving, what’s going on in the brain and the body during creativity, and how do we start thinking of conflict in a more creative way, and solutions a more creative way. So, when I call, when you know it’s like thinking outside the box, but I like to call it a structure, because it’s a little more dynamic. Every conflict is essentially a mental concept for us, we’re holding that conflict as a concept in our minds, and every concept has a structure to it. It has a history, it has constraints, it has boundaries, it has our expectations. And if I can start to think differently, like what are my current constraints and expectations and concerns and potential solutions? What have I already thought about? How do I start thinking of new stuff outside of that typical structure that I’ve been thinking about? How do I start thinking about new creative solutions that I haven’t thought about before? Maybe this takes a brainstorming creative session with the person I’m feeling tension with, or the group, or something like that. But yeah, we have to start thinking about the concept of this conflict differently, and the concept of the solutions we’ve already tried differently.

 

Henry Lopez  44:25

Excellent, excellent. Alright, obviously you gotta read the book. We could spend hours and hours talking about those were the seven principles to resolve conflict. We’ve been talking with Jeremy Pollock about his book, Wired for Peace, using seven neuroscience-based principles to resolve conflicts. So, tell me a little bit, you know, with the Peace Leaders Academy and the other work that you do. How is it that you help this happen in organizations and your team? What is it that you do? How do you do it?

 

Jeremy Pollack  44:54

Yeah, well, we do a lot of different things. So, we have different.. my main company is called Pollock Peace Building System. And through that company we also have an online academy called Peace for Leaders Academy, we also have an online community where people come and they do self regulation and conflict resolution techniques, so we do it in a lot of different ways, mainly through a training teams in conflict resolution practices, neurobiological practices, et cetera, to resolve conflicts, and then also through intervention and coaching work, so when people are actually experiencing conflicts with each other, or teams with each other, or leaders with employees, etc. we come in and we do actual intervention work, where we’re doing coaching and dialogs, etc. and sort of teaching people on the ground in the conflict as we help them facilitate, have we facilitate that conflict through.

 

Henry Lopez  45:43

For a small business owner like myself, I think the best place to start is to read the book.

 

Jeremy Pollack  45:49

Yeah, reading the book. And also, if you go to Peaceful Leaders academy.com that’s all of my online courses. They’re really inexpensive, you pay once, you get lifetime access. That’s where a lot of small business owners start it. I have all kinds of different courses on there, and you can also join our free community. We have daily free classes for anybody that wants to come in and learn how to self, self-regulate, co-regulate, and resolve conflict, etc.

 

Henry Lopez  46:14

Okay. Excellent, that’s always what I want to know. Where should we start? All right, we’ll start to wrap it up here. What’s one thing you want us to take away? Obviously, the focus here, as you understand so well, is this whole topic within a small business environment, but what’s what’s one key takeaway from the conversation that we had?

 

Jeremy Pollack  46:32

I think one key takeaway is remember to look at yourself as a nervous system that’s interacting with other nervous systems. We often see like someone has an enemy or an opponent or a threat, but remember we’re all just nervous systems, and a nervous system a lot of times is is in survival mode, in threat mode, and so if you’re feeling tense, it’s because your brain’s saying there’s a threat, if someone else is feeling tense, it’s because their brain’s saying there’s a threat. How do we start to help each other and ourselves perceive less threat, calm down, perceive safety, calm those nervous systems. That’s really just start thinking of ourselves in that framework, and it can help.

 

Henry Lopez  47:12

Yeah, and applying that, if you, if you, if it’s not what you’ve been doing, applying that more and more into your managerial leadership style. Yes, immediately, as we’ve been talking through this, as I see, as in, it’s not me. Fortunately, I don’t manage that way, although I’m sure I have in the past. If you’re that type of business owner, that it’s your way or the highway always, and I understand why that happens, Jeremy. You know, when we first go into business ownership, it is all on us. We have to make all the decisions. It happens because of us, right? Maybe us and our partners, but then when we shift to having teams, when having people, we have to shift that approach. And I think that’s sometimes people get stuck there.

 

Jeremy Pollack  47:57

Yeah. Well, I think also, depending on how long you’ve been working for yourself, you can forget what it’s like to work for someone, and to work for someone if they’re not someone who feels safe to you or feels supportive to you. It’s so stressful, it’s so dysregulating. So just put yourself in their shoes. Remember how the power dynamic of being a person who depends on someone else to make sure they like you, and they feel like you’re a good fit, that they’re not going to fire you. That’s it’s a really touchy, it’s a touchy area to be involved in. If you’re feeling like, boy, I could get fired any day, or if they, if I don’t do the right thing, or if they don’t like me anymore, like they could separate. Like, that’s really, really difficult to exist in. Try to put yourself in their shoes, and remember,

 

Henry Lopez  48:41

yeah. No, that’s a great, great piece of advice. And I think it’s one of the reasons. Also, I always advise business owners. Advice I gave to myself as well is that often what happens to small business environments is the boss is only ever seen calling out what’s wrong, what’s not working. We gotta do this. We need more sales,

 

Jeremy Pollack  48:58

exactly.

 

Henry Lopez  48:59

And I always remind people, make sure to acknowledge the wins, and to, and to acknowledge them with individuals. People need that, I think, in part to your point that I’m not always feeling like, oh my gosh, what are we going to do wrong next, and that’s an important shift to make in that environment.

 

Jeremy Pollack  49:17

There’s so many times where I feel nervous or dysregulated or concerned, and I really, really want to just email my team and be like, Where are we at with the sale, or where are we at with the revenue, or where we, you know, that kind of thing, and I just, and I go, Jeremy, don’t do it, don’t do it. Instead, send a positive message, send, hey everybody, great Friday, you know, happy to, you know, great job on that last whatever it is, right? If I want to address something that’s difficult, do it on a conversation, do it in a different way, have a really strategic plan around it. Don’t just fire off an email there, and we do like we, we have the opportunity to really ruin people’s days, weeks, etc. by just firing off an email.

 

Henry Lopez  50:00

Great point, great takeaway. Where do you want us to go again to find out more?

 

Jeremy Pollack  50:05

This place, I think, for small business owners is Peaceful Leaders academy.com You can find all our online courses, our free online community, etc.

 

Henry Lopez  50:13

Again, the book, which is available everywhere, Wired for Peace, using seven neuroscience-based principles to resolve conflicts. I think a must read for small business owners. Jeremy Pollack, thank you so much for taking the time, indulging all of my questions, and, and sharing with us today.

 

Jeremy Pollack  50:29

Thank you so much, Henry. I appreciate it.

 

Henry Lopez  50:30

This is Henry Lopez, and thanks for joining us for this episode of The How of Business. My guest today, again, Jeremy Pollock, I release new episodes every Monday morning. You can find the show anywhere you listen to podcasts, including the Howard Business YouTube channel and my website, the How of business.com Thanks again for listening.