What Leaders Get Wrong About Conflict at Work

Stephanie Chung: The best conversations don't give you answers. They challenge how you think. I'm your host, Stephanie Chung. And as a keynote speaker and the author of Allied Leadership, I get a rare kind of access to the real conversations with the people worth listening to. And this show is me bringing that access to you. So pull up a chair and let's dive into our next conversation with someone not like me. Welcome back to the show. Today I am joined by my new friend Annie Lala, a philosopher, conflict resolution expert, and certified coach whose work sits at the intersection of neuroscience, psychology, emotional intelligence, and human development. See, Annie teaches the art of fighting. She claims that conflict is a skill that needs to be cultivated. Yet most of us tend to avoid it. But today, Today we're going to talk about how to get good at it. We're going to explore what actually happens neurologically when tension rises in your body, why smart leaders oftentimes regret some of the things that they say, and how effective communicators can walk headfirst into hard but important conversations. So let's get into it. So Annie, listen. Now you talk about the art of fighting, which I love that title, by the way. And so can you tell me what does that actually mean in the context of the workplace? Well, listen, if there's two people in an interaction, there is necessarily going to be conflict at some point because these two people come from different realities, different philosophies, different backgrounds, but more importantly, different value sets. And tension and conflict arise because two different values are vying and they're both sacred to each person. And so all conflicts are really values conflicts. And so the art of fighting is really the art of acknowledging and becoming conscious of what is your value that you're standing for in the space and what is the other person's value. And can you co-create a win-win, which is really what, you know, great ⁓ great leaders learn how to do. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. And what's really interesting is, you know, I love what you're saying because when I think of leadership. That is that's the n that is the new norm right now is leaders must figure out how to co-create an environment that, you know, everybody wins, right? So leadership back in the day used to be where, you know, leaders just kind of shot out some orders and managed some task and all that stuff and then hired people who looked and thought and worked exactly like them. And that's no longer the case these days, right? And so when we think about the art of fighting, that's why I was so intrigued and so excited to have you on on on the call or on the podcast. Because this is a subject that most leaders just want to avoid it and act like there's nothing to see here. And it's like, no, no, in the workplace, there's a lot to see here. And so we can't run away from it. We've got to kind of hit it head on. And so I love everything that you're saying. And then the question I have for you is when we think about, you know, because of your background, help the help us all understand what is happening neurologically in the brain when we are triggered at work, let's say. Okay. Well, first of all, let's just define what a trigger is. A trigger is when your nervous system is overwhelmed. And actually what I see trigger as time travel. So you're in the moment, in a situation, and you're an adult self, and then suddenly you get triggered. And what happens when you get triggered is your nervous system time travels back to a younger version of yourself, usually under 10 years old, four or five years old. So you're a grown-up on the outside, but on the inside, you're a four-year-old and you only have access to four-year-old files. So You know, tantrum, stonewalling, arguing, hiding, running away, these are the normal responses of a child who doesn't know how cope. And if a trigger is time travel to a past moment when you had a situation arise that you didn't know how to cope with, and basically when you have a situation arise in your childhood when you don't know how to cope with it, a trauma, a bookmark goes into that book and it closes. And everywhere in your life you keep developing, but in that one area, you have arrested development. Arrested emotional development. So every time you're in a boardroom in a meeting and that's that feeling or that trigger comes up again, your nervous system goes back in time and opens the book to that bookmark in hopes of finally this time, maybe we can breathe through and integrate that feeling that was left orphaned and abandoned. So what's happening neurologically is an amygdala hijack. A trigger is you're flooded with k a chem chemistry that indicates you're in danger. Now You're not actually in danger. You're just having a conversation with a colleague at work, but your nervous system codes it that way. And so the only answer to solve a trigger is to learn how to time travel from the past back to the present moment. And that's called self-regulation. Wow. Learning to breathe, regulate your nervous system, mindfulness practice, meditation, all of these tools that allow you to come into your body into the present moment is basically a form of time travel. Wow. Evolving with a partner. Yeah, go ahead. Yeah, no, I love okay, so I wrote that down because by the way, I've never ever ever heard somebody explained it that way that trigger is a form of time travel. And it makes complete sense, right? And so I know that there's probably a lot of coaches that listen that will be listening to this. And I know for me, like when I used to coach, I obviously I don't coach anymore ⁓ just for scheduling reasons, but when I used to coach executives, everything you're saying is so spot on. When I would if there was an area that I knew that they struggled in. It inevitably we could always trace it back to a moment in time when they were younger that something happened that made them feel a certain way. And so whenever that feeling came up again, i.e. a trigger, it would they would revert back to that child and therefore respond in s in a childlike way, which threw off the adult employees, right? You know? And so I love how you've just worded that, especially with about the bookmark and going back in time and opening the book to that particular spot. Because you're right. I I've never forget there was an executive that I was going through this kind of exercise with him. And I asked him, you know, tell me about a time that you felt inadequate. You know, and he could take me back to a very specific moment with a fourth grade math teacher and how he was embarrassed. And so as he's telling me the story, he started to tear up again. And here's a grown man tell me this story. But what would happen is whenever that particular trigger would hit at work. He would revert back to that particular moment and respond like a fourth grader, which threw the entire environment off. So I love what you're saying. And I mean, I almost want you to say it again because we all have those moments and we all have something that triggers us. But the way that you've just articulated it was like Chef's kiss. That was perfect. I really appreciate that. I've never heard it explained explained that way. Yeah. So then let me say a slightly different way. So that please when you get hurt or triggered or traumatized when you were young. And that little feeling of terror doesn't get worked through, assimilated, integrated. That part of our young self is orphaned, it's hijacked and stuck in that moment in kindergarten. And until as an adult self, you learn how to go back in time and reclaim and hold and love and be with that young self that no one else was with. And no one's coming to save them. No one on the planet knows that there's a little boy that was scared when he was in grade four. Only you. And so part of my work is to help my clients learn how to tune into that young part, honor and dignify the fear, the insecurity, the embarrassment, and hold them, be with them, breathe with that moment. It's only a few moments. A feeling is literally seven seconds long. So if you could hold space for someone or yourself to be with that discomfort and breathe into it. What happens is you reclaim that orphaned part. You scoop it under your arm and you bring it with you back to the present moment and it grows up into your adult self instead of staying a four-year-old. Wow. I love that. I love that. And you know, and it's making me think about something just me personally, ⁓ you know, I'll be vulnerable here for a minute. There was a situation where I when I was younger, how I would, you know, there's different things that have nothing super traumatic, but anyways, how I soothed myself was through food. Right. And so and so whether that was something that happened to me, it's like, okay, or even my, you know, back in the day, your parents, right? Well, here's a here, here's a cookie, you know, if you behave or if you, you know, do good in school, or if you don't cry at the dentist, or, you know, whatever, right? Here's a dessert, here's a here's a sweet, here's a something. So that was the compensation. And so I remember ⁓ fast forward as I became an adult, s food was my comfort, right? Whenever something you know was super stressful, whatever, I would revert to food. And so ⁓ so when talking to someone You were using the food to regulate, soothe, and calm your nervous system because you didn't yet have other tools to cope. A hundred percent, hundred percent. And so then what caused that caused me to be incredibly overweight at one point. And so I remember talking to a doctor, ⁓ psychologist, psychiatrist, you know, about this. And one of the things that she said was very similar to what you're saying, which was You need to go back and visit that little girl. She did the best she could with the situation she was hand you know, dealt with, right? But go back to her and let her know you've got it from here. And so I had to go back, you know, do a whole series of of of ⁓ of sessions, but to go back and comfort that little girl and literally take it back like, okay, now I've got it and you've done great. And it was super emotional, but You know, now I won't say that's what caused me to lose ninety pounds, but it certainly got me on that road, right? And so, anyways, I'm so excited of what you just said because I think that's gonna bless so many people with they think about it's not just why can't I control this? It's like, no, no, there's something that happened back way back when that you may or may not even realize, but that needs to be addressed and you need to go back and visit and spend the time there. ⁓ and you know, like you said, then self regulate so you can move forward. So I love it. Yeah. Well, you can't self-regulate a child through thoughts and words and explanations. A child, literally a baby, you can't talk it out of a ⁓ tantrum. You have to hold it, soothe it, be present with it, and basically honor its experience. And so that's what we learn to do with our younger selves that are stuck in that moment. And I want to just head nod because we're l we're speaking to a lot of leaders and executives who manage people. Yeah. And I want to remind people that. In this current day and age, management actually means coaching. Yeah. Coaching. And coaching, a coach is a visionary leader that sees a future that others cannot. We hire someone to lead us into a future that's better for them and better for us and better for the world. And so as a manager, becoming a visionary leader and a relationship leader that sees ways to take the current dynamic into a better future, not waiting for the other person to say or do something. So that we can have a breakthrough, but you appointing yourself as the leader. Because one thing I've learned is the most flexible, agile, and conscious component in any system is the de facto leader of the system. So if you're rigid and contracted or fundamentalist or polarized in your perspective, and you're not agile and fluid, you cannot lead the system into a new reality. I love that. So learning how to keep your system in flow. And not stuck in a rigid response, which is all of the things I teach around emotional intelligence and regulating your nervous system, it allows you to move through reality and not be stuck. Yeah. So the most fluid part. I wanna, I wanna ⁓ I wanna deviate for just a second because something that you said that I think will be really, really important for the listeners is, you know, as you know, my work is all about how do you, you know, work with, lead, you know, sell to anything, people who are not like you. Now. Take what you just said, because to your point, you're a coach and you're trying to help people if you're a leader to help them navigate, right? If you're now adding the the we'll say the complexity of putting in the equation of a team that may not be like you or just a person, forget the team, right? Just a person who's nothing like you. You may have no shared, you know, backgrounds, no you may not share the same generation, gender, communication style, thought process, nothing. And today's modern workforce has so many different differences within it. So if you were speaking to leaderslash coaching, right? Going with your philosophy there, what would you encourage or suggest or ⁓ just give some advice towards when they're doing everything that you just said, or maybe how does what you said apply to someone that you're coaching that is nothing like you? Totally. Well let me start with a tiny little story. My daughter, when she was seven years old, found a baby snail and she brought it home and put it in the kitchen and loved this snail. And every time we're going to bed at night, I would tell her to take off the kitchen lights before she came in from getting her glass of water. She would never remember to take off the lights. And no matter what we told her about saving the environment, saving electricity, she did not care about those values. Yeah. However, once I explained to her that this snail is nocturnal and this poor little snail can't know it's time to eat until she turns the kitchen light off. Suddenly, overnight, the lights were off every single time. And I'm telling you this story because what I realized is that every communication is a piece of marketing. And when you're trying to enroll someone into a new reality, you have to create a custom crafted marketing campaign using their keywords, their values, and their incentives. And you have to become a researcher. What would motivate them? Because people don't do things for your reasons, no matter how big boss man you are, they do it for their reasons. So you have to find out what is motivating to them and use those in your enrollment strategy. And shaming, blaming, threatening. Forcing punishment, you can get someone to do it short term, but at a very high cost. Resent, trust is broken, it erodes the foundation of the relationship. And ultimately, it doesn't stay long term. If you want someone to do something and you want to lead them in a new direction, you have to find what they are attracted to, their carrots, what are they trying to avoid? What is their stick? And line them up. What do they want to achieve? What do they want to avoid? And when you line those two vectors up, You create a machine that literally propels them in the direction. Yeah. But you can't tell them to do it for your reason. So you have to become a researcher to figure out what is your client, your colleague or your team is a client that you're trying to market to and you want them to click on the button and take the action. And so you can't skip steps. You you have to enroll them. Yeah. You can't force them. And I think that's where a lot of leaders take shortcuts that later on has very high cost. Yeah. Yeah. It's it's interesting because ⁓ it's funny, it it makes me think of a story as well when I used to lead sales teams. And ⁓ you know, with sales teams they have a quota, they've got to hit the quota, and but you've got to get creative about how exactly they do it. To your point, you can threaten them, right? You know, but that's not effective and that's not a good strategy, and that and certainly that's not good leadership. But one of the things that I used to do when leading sales teams is I would ask them, so of course we know what the quota is and we know what needs to be hit. But then I would go and ask them now. I I I'll give you a specific example. I remember I had one team member, he was an amazing gentleman. And I asked him, what is it that you want to do when you hit this quota and you make X amount of dollars because you would have, you know, maxed out your commission? What is it that you want to actually buy with that? Right. And so he said he was really into Harleys. And so there is a particular Harley that he wanted. And, you know, he's describing this Harley, and you could just Like his whole face is lighting up talking to me about this particular bike and what it meant and how when it was built and just all the history about it and so on and so forth. So he's that's what he wanted to buy with his, you know, Q1 commission. So I was like, ⁓ great. I said, so here's what I want you to do. I mean, and I'm sitting there, of course, listening like I'm fascinated. I was fascinated, but I just what made me more fascinated was how excited he was, right? So I told him I said, Go to the Harley dealer, test drive it, take some pictures, get an invoice so we know exactly how much this costs. And bring it back to me. Tell me about your experience, show me the invoice, and then you know, f tell me what your plan's gonna be so you can max out your commission so that you can get this Harley. And every single week when we would do our one on ones, Annie, to your point, I never talked to him about the quota. I talked about how much closer are we to the Harley. Right. And so just absolutely, I could not agree more with what you're saying is that as leaders, we do every single person. I love that. It's like it's the marketing campaign, right? What's gonna what's gonna be the call to action for that person that's gonna actually get them to, you know, make actually take action on something, right? So that's so good. Now let me ask you this. When we think about going back to triggers, right? Since we all have them, how can we expand them? And and I'm talking about the workplace, but I'll Personally, I'm also talking and asking about for myself on just road rage, right? So how do you take a trigger and expand it so you're not so quick to respond? Well, first of all, it's important to know that when you're triggered, you're not in the highest cutting edge of your consciousness. You're you do you may be quite energized, but you've been hijacked by a younger version of yourself because you've time traveled. So you're not at your cutting edge. So any decision you make. From a triggered state is almost always going to be less trustable, yes, less effective and useful in the long run. So that's just something to notice and be aware of. And honestly, I don't think you can stop a trigger mid-trigger. There's a learning curve. Yeah. Kind of like, you know, I went to learn snowboarding and take they said it takes three days to learn snowboarding. Nobody expects to get on a snowboard and learn it right away. So the way a trigger, the way you elongate that pause is counterintuitive. You have to notice that you were triggered. Yesterday, this morning, see the cost of the trigger, the suboptimal impact on yourself, on the other person. Go and clean up the trigger. Hey, I didn't like how I handled that this morning. ⁓ I want to take responsibility for the impact. You clean it up, which means you have to breathe through some shame because you realize you had trespassed your own dignity, your own values. And in order to own and apologize and clean it up, you have to actually breathe through that shame. But in breathing through that, not shame, but your conscience, saying, Hey, that doesn't line up with your actual values. When you recognize that there's a gap between your conscience, your values, and your actual behavior, you want to bridge the gap. And so the feedback, five minutes after, an hour after, allows you to notice that that's not who I want to be. So you'll catch your trigger a day after, clean it up and apologize. You can't skip that step. Then you'll catch it half a day after, clean it up, apologize. Then you'll catch it an hour after, then 10 minutes after, then five minutes after. And then eventually you'll be catching it in the middle of the trigger, but you won't be able to stop. But then you'll get it, you know, then you'll catch it right when you're about to. I have a choice. I could go down the road of trigger and I know where that road takes me, or I could take a breath, or I could leave the room, or I could pause. And because you've seen all the ways it goes wrong and you've owned the cost, your system goes, we don't want to play this game anymore. We want to play a new game. And so there's a learning curve where you catch it further and further upstream until you've trained yourself to catch it before the trigger is online. Because here's the deal: once the trigger comes up, it comes up really fast. And it's almost like the lizard brain comes online instantly. By the time you're like four, five out of ten upset, it goes straight to eight, nine really quick. So what I do with triggers is when I start to feel the calibrated trigger around three, four, as soon as my trigger is four out of ten intensity. I take a breath, I take a pause, I don't wait till I'm eight or nine because I know once I'm eight or nine, the lizard has already abducted abducted my steering wheel of my life and is already taking us somewhere suboptimal. So all I can do is clean up the damage, apologize, and try better for next time. So counterintuitively, I'd love to say take a deep breath and meditate. But that's ultimately what you're gonna learn to do out of desperation, out of desperation because you don't want to keep doing that pattern. Yeah. So What I do in a trigger moment is I take a breath. I I know it sounds so simple, but a breath is what mediates between the mind and the body. And a trigger means you've left your body and you've gone up into your mind, into a memory from your childhood that was traumatizing and never integrated. And so to get you out of the narrative, that whirling, paranoid, upset terror that has never been resolved. You have to bring your consciousness back down into your body. And breathing is the fastest way to do that. I mean, you could run around and do some exercise or go to the gym or run around, but breathing is the fastest way. So three deep breaths, deep breath with an exhale twice as long as the inhale. If you can elongate the inhale so that it's longer than the the exhale, so it's longer than the inhale, that is an instant regulating tool. It's the simplest one. I have many other tools for regulation. I mean, we can talk about them, but breathing's the fastest and the easiest, and it's the most sophisticated. Can you imagine if when someone was yelling at you at work or in your childhood, if in the middle of their grumble they stopped, they took a deep breath, found their center, came back to the present moment, and then responded, just imagine how impressive that would be. It is the mark of an adult. Yes. Yes. Adult is someone who takes radical responsibility for their emotional state. And is not puppeted by their childhood trauma. They've owned their state and they're like, I'm gonna take responsibility for creating a state that is calm and regulated and produces the optimal outcomes. But that takes practice. Yeah. And so what I do, I just practice all the time now. I love that's right. There's a there's a lot of there's a lot of ⁓ there's a lot of ways to practice, right? But ⁓ or a lot of reasons I should say to practice. You know, it's really interesting as you were talking, I was thinking about different ways that I may label a leader. And so as I'm listening to you, part of me was thinking, you know, I always say ⁓ you know, professional maturity, right? And you're right, there are times because the because the way that you just explained it made sense, especially if you're the person who's triggered. But As I was listening to you, I thought, ⁓ actually, if you're the person who is about to get triggered as well, right? So let's say you're in a workplace environment, maybe it's a meeting, something's going on, and you can feel you're getting ready to get triggered, or you can already feel to your point you're like at number three or four. You haven't quite gotten to eight or nine, but you're trying ⁓ to control so you don't get to eight or nine. And so that to me is a really interesting journey because when that happens, You know, as I was listening to you, it made me think of there are times and meetings that I've been in or I remember, and once upon a time, especially when I was a younger leader, still growing and moving in my own professional maturity, my response would be to match the energy, right? So if you come at me, you know, guns blazing, I'm coming right back at you the same way. But as I grew, as I matured, as I got better, you know, in this thing called leadership, then I would know to take a breath. Count to 10, do something so that I'm di I didn't match the energy or I didn't respond that way. And I'll never forget there was a situation that we were all in an executive meeting. Me and one of the executives started going to town back and forth, you know, badgering, back and forth. And I remember in this meeting in the middle of it, Annie, you'd have been proud of me. I actually took a deep breath and I guess, I guess I started to mouth out my numbers, right? So the so people could see me going one. To like I'm counting to 10. And so one of my colleagues goes, I have never seen somebody get so mad and literally watched them count to 10. He goes, We could all watch, like you were trying so hard to control. Because I knew if I but you were conscious, I was conscious 100%. I knew if I did not grab control of myself at this point. It was gonna be, you know, game over in that meeting. And so I think what you're saying is really interesting because it's both whether you're the giver or the receiver, right? To your point, a trigger is a trigger. And how do you get better? Like to spot it, notice it, and then deep breathing. I'm a big fan and a big believer as well. ⁓ and yeah, I think it's awesome. And I just want to head note to the idea of power because a lot of leaders are dancing with power. Power is the ability to direct attention. Whose attention? Anyone's attention. If you can direct someone else's attention to get a job done, to allocate resources, you win. If you can direct your own attention to complete a task, you win. Power is the ability to direct attention. What I'm teaching here, what I'm suggesting, is when a human being learns to direct their attention to their own nervous system, to their own breath, you become an extraordinary leader because you are then occupying the only place where the party is happening in this universe, which is the present moment in your body right here, right now, not from a triggered, regressed state. So everything, every great teacher and leader is teaching the same thing. They're selling now for sale. How do you occupy the present moment? Because from the present moment, you are armed with maximal intelligence, consciousness, technology. You're not operating from stale has been pain points from the past. Yeah. So you're learning to direct attention. And as a leader, as a visionary leader, you're learning to direct your employees, your colleagues' attention towards a vision. And you talked about definitions of leaders. My husband has a really great one. He says, the quality of a leader is determined by how many people they have hoisted up beyond them towards envision. That's right. That's right. Yeah. Yep. I always say leaders produce leaders, right? That's that's the distinction that the they don't produce managers and VPs, nothing wrong with that. Or followers. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. They produce leaders. I love that. Hey, so now you some of your work talks about. using competitive energy and not suppressing it, but actually using it to your ⁓ advantage. So tell me a little bit about that from your perspective when it comes to the workplace. Because there's a lot of big boss energy, competitive energy, jealousy energy. And so how do you utilize that in a good way versus suppressing it if you're ⁓ a leader? Well, before I speak about how I use it for competitive energy you know, co-opt the competition, I just want to highlight that when you wanna influence someone, whether it's personal or professional, you want to do it in a way that has maximal efficacy. And I recommend you use a technique I call WTF to MLK. So WTF is right. It's got shame, blame, make wrong. It's accusatory and judgmental. And that's often the underpinning of when you're complaining to someone or criticizing. So my suggestion is you take your WTF complaint, scrape off the shame, blame, and make wrong, which is not easy, but ego di developmental. And then you invite you you turn it into what I call an MLK, which stands for Martin Luther King. If there was anybody who had every right to be what the fuck? Yeah. It was him, but he didn't. He you he used his ⁓ words to create an inspirational invitation for entire nation to go to their next level of greatness. And so if I want my husband to, you know, put the dishes straight in the dishwasher, I could complain about it with WTF, or I could say, Hey husband, I know you love supporting this family system. I know you would never want to give your wife more work. And I have a vision, I have a dream that when you come into the kitchen you put your dishes directly into the dishwasher. I know you're capable of that. Now I'm being a little yeah cheesy here. But if you're going to enroll someone Into a new behavior. You want to use their values, as I did, but also do it without shame, blame, and make wrong. Okay. And so this leads into what I call co-opting the competition. So when you're in a fight with someone, there is a part of you that wants to win. It's part of the big part of it. Yeah. Yeah. And so I have that part. I'll just give you an example, whether it's with a client or a colleague or my husband. There's a part of me that wants to win, but what's the game I want to win? Do I want to win the I'm right, I feel good, you're wrong, you feel bad? Is that the game I want to win? Or do I want to win another game called who comes back to the present moment, to the truth, to the sacred connection of our relationship first? So when I'm in a fight, for example, with my husband, he gets angry, I get angry, we go and do our little thing. I go and regulate, take a walk. Go to the gym, do whatever I need to do to regulate, put my attention on my nervous system, come back to the present moment where I'm resourced, not operating for my four-year-old. And when I've come back and I'm calmer, I'll go in and I'll say to him, I remembered. And I remembered his code for. I just remembered that our love and our relationship is vaster and stronger than any issue, any argument. Now, when I'm saying it, there's a little bit of aggression. There's a little bit of, hey, fucker. I came back to the truth. Where are you? Are you still grumbling? Are you still holding your grudge? Because I, as in terms of badassery, I'm winning the game. If there was an audience watching our interaction, and I think all leaders and executives should imagine that they're on a reality TV show and there's an audience watching them in the boardroom. Just imagine it's an invisible audience. What would you have to say or do right now to have the audience clap for you? Why? Not boo you. And what would you have to be do what would you have to be saying or doing so that all your future selves, should they be in the audience, would be clapping for you? And so the co-opting is I am co-opting the competitive part of me that wants to win the argument. But instead of winning the argument, I win the game called remembering that this relationship is sacred or remembering that our, you know, this team that we're working on at the company, our vision is more important than this niggly little issue. It's whoever's got their eye on the ball. And so it's okay to have aggression, but use the aggression in a way that does not reduce anybody's self-esteem. So when I say husband, I remembered, I remembered that we're in love. Where are you at? I'm not reducing his self-esteem. I'm inviting him up to another level. Right. Mm-hmm. And if you can if you can scrape off your shame and blame and actually be an inspirational invitation with whatever you say, whether it's competitive or not, I think. You'll be more effective. And in terms of jealousy and envy, and that happens in the workplace a lot a lot. I want to distinguish between jealousy and envy. Envy involves two people. She has long hair, I don't have long hair, I'm envious of her long hair. Okay. Two people. Jealousy involves three people. You, Stephanie, are hanging out with my friend Margaret, and you didn't invite me. And I am jealous that you're hanging out with Margaret. It doesn't even involve sexuality. It's just attention. There's three people, and I'm coveting that attention. And so in the workplace, I think it's really important as a leader. Especially if the definition of a leader is someone who creates more leaders, you are going to have to deal with people that you have helped going beyond you. Every parent has to deal with it. The mark of a great leader and parent is how quickly someone you've worked with goes, moves beyond you. So learning to preemptively work with your own envy and recognize that it's a natural human response to feel envy, to feel jealousy. And actually, envy is admiration with your heart closed. So, whatever you're envious of is something you actually admire, but you've collapsed around it instead of letting it inspire you. And so I watched my husband, you know, train people who've gone on to make way 10 times more money than he has. And I watch him going, Wow, they were they were nobody. And I taught them this. And then he he just looks at himself and he goes, Wow, I'm practicing feeling the envy, honoring it, opening my heart, because as a father, His daughter's gonna go beyond him, hopefully very soon. And so I think learning to notice when you have envy, jealousy, or shame by tracking that these feelings are always masqueraded as aggression. So envy, jealousy, and shame are feelings that reduce your status. And in corporate environments, nobody wants to reduce their stats. Humans do not want to reduce their stats. So we never want to admit envy or jealousy or shame. So they go underground and they come out in masquerade in disguise as aggression. So often when someone in work is aggressive towards you, try looking for could there be any envy, jealousy, or shame lurking underneath, unavailable to their consciousness, that is causing this angry judgmental reaction from them. And you'll often find that that is the case. Now they don't know that. Yeah. They don't know that. Mm-hmm. And I think it's it's it's the higher you go, the more it happens. Like as I'm listening to you, and now I'm starting to kind of re- think about my own career journey, if you will, the higher you go, the more it does start to happen because you are starting to surpass people that perhaps were your mentors once upon a time or people that grew groomed you or what have you. So I think that's really interesting. And as you were talking about one thing about that, can you Preemptively mitigate the envy that your mentor might have. And you what's yes, exactly. I was just you great minds think alike, girl. I was literally just going to say that, which is the way that you can honor them still, because without without their, you know, mentorship, coaching, ⁓ sponsorship, what have you, you wouldn't be where you are, or at least on the journey. And so to your point, you should always make sure that you're whenever you have an opportunity talking about. You know, that person, how they ⁓ groomed you, how they grew you, you know, whatever, right? So just giving them their flowers, if you will, whenever you can. And that would be a way that they are always they that that hopefully it suppresses the envy or jealousy or something like that. And this works for parents, by the way. This is a hack I teach all my clients. Uh-huh. Your parents are human beings. And even though they love you and support you, they are humans that feel envious when you have more money, more success, more fame. And then they have suppressed it because they're ashamed of their envy. Yeah. Because no one taught them that it's normal. And so what you can do is consciously footnote your parents to your success. Mom, I was able to talk to a stranger at this party because you taught me how to start conversations. And if you can footnote your parents in your mind and to them, yeah, preemptively towards your success, then whenever you win and you footnote them, they're like, they don't have to compete with you. So they don't end up having as much aggression and criticism towards their kids. Often parental criticism is envy in disguise. Wow. Wow. That is good. That is whoo! I hope everybody, especially the people in the back, heard that one. That is really good because that's not a subject that we tend to talk about. And yet you're right. I mean, in just human nature, there's gonna be that that ⁓ those feelings. And and I've never heard somebody actually put language to it. That yeah, they could be, you know, envious and and though they love you and they're happy for you and they're they're cheering you on to your success, but it can both are true. Yeah, but interrupt intergenerational envy. And I've been studying it for a long time and parents don't know they have it, but kids just feel criticized and the kids are looking for their parents to give them approval. Yeah. But actually the parents are now acting like teenagers who are no longer relevant and they're looking to their kids for approval. But the kids now thinking, but I'm the kid. Actually, by the time you're 25, 30, you should have surpassed your parents if they're any good. And so what you want to consciously do is look for opportunities to acknowledge them as if they are needy teenagers needing approval. And you'll notice that the aggression and the criticism will decrease in proportion. You need to write a book on that. That is really, really good. That's really good. Like all jokes aside, that's very, very good. And and teach that in some schools too, just so that the kids are aware, you know, because the you know, it's funny, one of the things that's str that ⁓ in at least in corporate. One of the main subjects that everybody's talking about, I'm going off script here for just a second in the sense of I off subject, I should say. But one of the subjects that's really just got leaders scratching their head is how to lead and manage all these different generations because they they literally all have a different perspective and expectation and how they see work. And so it it's a lot when you've got six generations at work and none of them think the same, right? ⁓ or even think of work. the same way. And so it's just really challenging for leaders, especially the leaders that are a little bit older. So the boomers, the silent generation, you know, trying to lead the Gen ⁓ Gen Z or the alphas who are now entering the workforce. It's just, it's an interesting ⁓ dynamic that's happening. But I really like what you were talking about, though you're talking family, but the family dynamics, you know, also kind of bleed over into work, if you will. So that's really interesting. So Here's a my last question for you because I'm enjoying this conversation. I've taken I could take us in all different kinds of directions, but let me stay focused on corporate. what would you say, Annie, is some advice for leaders listening out there? We hear the word psychological safety all the time. Like it's almost like the new buzzword that everybody's talking about. And psychological safety is so incredibly important. And what advice would you give to leaders on how they can create A psychologically safe environment for their workforce. Well, let's look at what does psychological safety feel like to the other person? And I've been studying this for a while. I'm a coach. I work with very delicate interpersonal dynamics. And I have to bring psychological safety very quickly in a very short period of time with the client. And here's what I've reduced it down to. Psychological safety comes from you as a leader being able to honor, dignify, and appreciate, validate. And welcome any feeling that is arising in the other person without making it wrong. Now, it doesn't mean their behavior can be anything, but if they're angry or they're sad or they're scared or they're nervous, that every feeling in that other person's being can feel that it's welcomed and safe. Now, most people they can be with your happy, but they can't be with your angry. They can be with your joyful, but they can't be with your sad because they don't know how to be with their own sad or their own angry. You can only be present to an emotion in another person to the extent to which you are able to honor it in yourself. And this is why being a leader requires you to constantly expand your capacity as a human. What does that mean to be a human? It means to think, but also to feel. Because right now we have AI that's actually better at thinking than us. So, really, what being a human is is to be able to be present with the full spectrum of the human emotional experience, from joy and ecstasy to jealousy, rage, shame. ⁓ anguish, despair, hopelessness, the full range. And so to be ⁓ this is what emotional intelligence is. So if you want someone to feel psychologically safe, this is counterintuitive, is you have to cultivate your own psychological safety. It's an inside job. You can't pretend it. And so what does that mean? That means when you're feeling insecure, you have to learn how to breathe and Tune into where that insecurity is in your body, not get distracted by the story, but the actual sensation in your body, be with it, integrate it, assimilate it so that it's not arresting and monopolizing your consciousness and your development. Now, most leaders did not realize that in order to become a better leader and help create psychological safety for others, they would have to do their own personal growth and shadow work. They didn't realize that. But that's exactly what. Leaders need to do. You can only lead to the level that your consciousness has integrated. And so if you want to get to the next level of leadership, you want to look at this. Where do I, secretly, when no one's looking feel psychologically unsafe? What feelings are banished? What feelings are not allowed a seat at the table in my own mind? And then learn how to see them as intelligent. Every single feeling is a messenger sent from the beyond with a gift of wisdom. And if you don't, Open the door when that feeling knocks, even if it's shame, even if it's envy, if you don't open the door and see what that feeling has come to deliver, the feeling doesn't stop. It keeps knocking on the door like Terminator. And if you don't open it, it will go underground through the floorboards and come up through your life in insidious ways like OCDs, neuroses, addictions, chronic pain, disease. What do you think all those things are? Unfelt feelings. And so learning to be psychologically safe is really about taking. The practice that we're talking about earlier to notice and direct your attention to your nervous system, what's happening in your body, breathing, sitting with the feeling, so that the feeling feels like, ⁓ I'm allowed to be here. And when a feeling is allowed to be in you as a leader, then that feeling is allowed to be here in the person that you're leading. And that's when you start to feel psychologically safe. So well said. And Annie, Annie, round of applause. That was so good. That was so good. We are going to end it on that because I can't think of any better way to end it than that statement. And here's what I would say, you know, and Annie, I'm sure you agree with me. Conversations are hard. And what we hope that everybody got out of this c this meeting today is not to avoid the tough conversations, but to meet those conversations head on. And so what I'm going to encourage my listeners to do is absolutely this week. Figure out what's that conversation you've not had, the one you've been putting off. Have it. Don't have it next week, next quarter, next year, or go thinking about it. Go have it today. So good conversations, and every conversation really can be a good conversation, I think Annie, is what we're really trying to communicate with people is it may feel tough, but you can get good at them. And tough conversations, listen, tough times don't last, tough people do. Any tough conversation that we have been avoiding. What your message is, don't avoid it. Just walk right into it because that's that's where the promised land is, right? Is meeting it head on. And so I just want everybody to think of we all have a tough conversation that we need to have that we've not had and go have it today. And use your tips to do it, you know. Yes. And the reason it's difficult is because you've never had it before. So you're rendering off the edge of your map, which means you are trying something new. And that's how you expand as a human. Yeah. Right. Having that conversation is actually making you smarter, more resilient, and a better leader in the future. Exactly. So Annie, tell everybody, tell me where, because we'll post everything that people can find you, right? So you're more than welcome just to quickly tell us where people can find you. But what I really want people to know is what are you up to these days? What are you up I mean, you can find me on my website. I have a lot of free resources on my website. It's just my name, Annilala.com. Annie with two L N's. Lala with two L's. So A N N I E L A L L A. And I also have my Instagram. It's at LalaBird, L A L L A B-I-R-B. And I'm always posting reels and tools for effective communication and relationship leadership. But what I'm up to right now is I ⁓ well, I teach my own relationship coaching school and relationship leadership. Like I teach people the technology for appointing yourself leader of an interaction so that it goes the way you want. Basically, how to have power. interactions with other humans. ⁓ but I've just started a six month ⁓ mastermind for people who want to upgrade their technology in their romantic life, their personal life, but also their professional life. So it's like love and money. We handle both. And when I noticed when you work on your love game and your money game at the same time, they have an exponential impact and you get much faster uptake. So That's what I'm up to. That's starting in the next few weeks, June, July. I'm starting a new cohort. And ⁓ excited. I'm really excited. Yeah, that you should be. You should be. Well, this was amazing. It was it was such I knew it was gonna be an interesting conversation. I'm so glad that you agreed to come on because this is something that n it's not the norm that's being discussed. And so I know that you were a blessing, not just to me, I learned a lot, but also to my audience. So thank you so much, Annie, for taking the time. You are the best girl, the best. Take care now. I love. So let me leave you with this. Conflict is not the enemy of great leadership. Conflict avoidance is. See, the best leaders that I have watched performed under pressure, they don't run from hard conversations. They simply get better at having them. So today, today, I want you to go have a conversation that you've been putting off. Not next week, not next quarter, today. And then let me know how that this episode helped you have it. And I can't wait to see you next time. Thank you so much for tuning in to Not Like Me. Listen, if this conversation made you think, do not keep it to yourself. Share it with a colleague or send it to a friend or a loved one. Bring someone else into the conversation. Because growth doesn't happen in isolation. It happens when when we learn from others, even when they're not like you. I'm Stephanie Chung, and I look forward to seeing you next time.