Secret Service Agent: Never Label Someone A Narcissist! This Habit Makes People Hate Talking To You!

0:00:04 I’ve just got back from a few weeks away on my speaking tour in Asia with my team and it was
0:00:08 absolutely incredible. Thank you to everybody that came. We traveled to new cities, we did live shows
0:00:12 in places I’d never been to before and during our downtime talking about what’s coming for each of
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0:00:59 I’ve got a difficult conversation I want to have with someone and they might be a narcissist.
0:01:04 So let’s stop there because if you just blatantly label somebody as being a narcissist, you’re not
0:01:09 going to be able to really understand who this person is and why they are the way they are. But when you
0:01:14 need to go into a dark conversation to make things simple, there are four things that you can do because
0:01:19 we all have those conversations. We have a supervisor who we feel is overlooking us in a promotion. Maybe our
0:01:23 spouse we got in a fight with. Your friend who’s betrayed us. And they’re cloaked in so much emotion or so
0:01:27 much tension that you don’t know how to handle that. But there’s also three things that you should
0:01:31 stop doing, such as stop telling people you understand. Telling them you understand. Yep. Yep.
0:01:36 Why? This is what we’re going to talk about. For over 30 years, former Secret Service agent Desmond
0:01:40 O’Neill has used science-backed interrogation techniques against some of the world’s biggest
0:01:45 liars. He’s trained elite teams from the FBI to the CIA. And now, in his first public conversation,
0:01:50 he’s laying out the frameworks you need to communicate effectively how to lead. And how to get anyone to open up.
0:01:55 When it comes to being able to communicate with somebody, the victory lies in the little things
0:02:00 that you do. So you need to have a plan. P is for purpose. So why are you there? What is the goal
0:02:04 of the conversation? Because especially in emotional conversations, it becomes really easy to get
0:02:10 distracted. And if you lose your cool, you lose control. And then there’s the A’s ask. Because most
0:02:13 of us think we know what our partner is thinking, right? But the research shows we’re only accurate
0:02:19 about 40% of the time. And if that conversation gets emotional, that 40% can go down as low as 15.
0:02:25 It’s called empathy accuracy. And so the power of asking questions is important. But when you fail
0:02:29 to do that, you are going to have a really hard time having a deep, honest relationship with somebody.
0:02:32 And then there’s the L and the N, which most people do wrong. And we’ll go into that.
0:02:36 And then what about body language? Can you tell if I’m being deceptive by how much I look at someone?
0:02:40 So there’s a few indicators of somebody telling the truth. And we’ll talk about them.
0:02:41 And what about leadership principles?
0:02:46 So I learned the true essence of leadership when I was on a SWAT team from situations like when you’re
0:02:50 hunting someone and they’re hunting you as well. So let’s get into the details.
0:02:57 Just give me 30 seconds of your time. Two things I wanted to say. The first thing is a huge thank you
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0:03:05 really is a dream that we absolutely never had and couldn’t have imagined getting to this place.
0:03:09 But secondly, it’s a dream where we feel like we’re only just getting started.
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0:03:29 guests that you want me to speak to. And we’re going to continue to keep doing all of the things
0:03:32 you love about this show. Thank you.
0:03:37 Desmond O’Neill.
0:03:42 For those people that have just clicked onto this conversation, what are they going to walk
0:03:44 away from our discussion with?
0:03:51 So I’ve been a law enforcement for 30 years and I’ve served a lot of different roles in that.
0:04:01 And above everything else, one thing that I’ve learned is when stress is high, when emotions
0:04:06 are strong, when it matters, how do you authentically connect and communicate with somebody else?
0:04:12 There’s something to be said about when a conversation is easy, right? When it’s fun,
0:04:18 when everybody wants to be there. You can focus on your handshake. You can focus on the eye contact,
0:04:23 how great your posture is. What about the dark conversations? What about those conversations
0:04:28 that kind of live in the shadows of your mind because you don’t want to face them? You don’t
0:04:33 want to have those, right? They’re cloaked in so much emotion or so much tension that you
0:04:38 just don’t know how to handle that. We all have that, right? We have a supervisor who we feel
0:04:44 is overlooking us in a promotion. We have a family member who we feel that we’re just no longer getting
0:04:50 along with. Maybe our spouse we got in a fight with. Maybe a friend who’s betrayed us. So how do
0:04:56 you have that conversation? Like, what does that look like? Because it comes from, you know, for the 30
0:05:02 years that I’ve been doing this, most of the people that I talked to didn’t want to talk to me. And my job
0:05:10 was to connect with them, to find a way to get them to open up, to find a way to have some type of
0:05:14 understanding and get the information that I needed. So this is not about interviewing or
0:05:22 interrogation. This is human connection. If your audience cares to understand how to have a dark
0:05:30 conversation where you can deepen that relationship or at least come to some type of understanding or
0:05:38 at the very least, not walk away ruminating on everything you said, trying to figure out what went
0:05:42 wrong. What could you have done different? If you’ve had that and you’re interested in knowing,
0:05:44 then this is, this is where we’re going to talk about that.
0:05:50 And to summarize in, I guess, 30 seconds, why you’re the guy that is best placed to deliver this
0:05:55 information. What is, what are the reference points, the experiences, the variety of experience
0:06:00 you’ve had that feeds into the answers and the actionable advice you’re going to give my audience?
0:06:06 My initial career started as a corrections officer. I became a police officer and I was a SWAT
0:06:09 officer as well. From there, I went to the federal government. So I went to the secret service.
0:06:16 With the secret service, I also started a polygraph career. So now I have people that are giving me
0:06:17 their deepest, darkest secrets.
0:06:21 And just for context, polygraphing is a lie detection test.
0:06:27 Polygraph is a lie detection test. So it gives you a psychological or a physiological response
0:06:30 in terms of how somebody answers a particular question.
0:06:32 Where else did your career take you after that point?
0:06:40 I went into internal affairs. And so that is now policing the people within our organization.
0:06:44 So now I’m talking to men and women who have had some of my interrogation training.
0:06:48 They kind of know the questioning going on. They know the interaction. They’ve done themselves
0:06:50 interviews and interrogations.
0:06:57 Oh, okay. So this is law enforcement officers who have committed a crime or some kind of
0:07:01 misconduct issue or been reported for something. And your job is to investigate them.
0:07:06 Yes. But think about that for a minute. Like you are now talking to somebody else who,
0:07:11 you know, maybe a year ago you were out in the street doing work with. And now you’re asking them
0:07:16 these questions or these for clarification on some type of allegation.
0:07:20 You got to be, you got to be mindful with that. Like that’s a big deal.
0:07:26 And the, the interview methods that were prevalent at that time, you felt were outdated.
0:07:33 They were. So there is in the U S there’s a very historical evolution of interview and interrogation.
0:07:39 You know, it started in the 1900s when policing came in, in that circumstance, it was physical abuse.
0:07:43 They called it the third degree where you would go in and, you know, people would grind down your
0:07:45 teeth or they would cause pain for you to talk to them.
0:07:53 As we’ve evolved as a society that started to go away in lieu of psychological manipulation.
0:07:59 So it was less about hands-on and more about trying to get people to talk to you from a psychological
0:08:08 perspective. And right about 2014, when I went into internal affairs, I was like, Stephen, I was like,
0:08:13 I just, there’s gotta be something different. Like we’ve had to evolve in some way in terms of what that
0:08:20 is. And so, you know, you have my thesis there, right? Right about that time, I was accepted into
0:08:27 the Naval postgraduate school to pursue a master’s. And because I was looking for a better way to
0:08:33 interview, one of my thesis advisors said, Hey, have you ever heard of the high value detainee
0:08:38 interrogation group, which the acronym is HIG? Had never heard of it, but the HIG when it was created
0:08:46 was, was three-pronged, meaning that it had a, a research department, right? It had a practitioner
0:08:51 department. So the people that would do the, the, the interrogations, and then it had a trainer
0:08:56 department. Now the trainer department, we would do interviews, interrogations, but we also understood
0:09:01 the science behind that. The reason that’s important is because you could be a really good
0:09:08 practitioner and not understand why something is or isn’t working. And so being able to cross the bridge
0:09:15 between the science and understanding that and being able to apply it in the room, that hybrid, that
0:09:22 connection, that sweet spot, that is what I did. So you did research and you continue to do research on
0:09:28 how to get people to give information, how to get information from people, how to get them to offer up
0:09:33 information. Is that the crux of it? Yeah. So if I’m, you know, I’ve got a difficult conversation I
0:09:39 want to have with someone, this person is antagonistic. They often gaslight me. They might
0:09:43 be a narcissist and I’m walking into that conversation or I’m, you know, I’m overthinking it. I’m thinking,
0:09:48 God, I need to have this conversation. Where’s the first place to start? So the first place that I
0:09:53 would start is don’t label the people how you just label them. Okay. And that’s a problem. So you just
0:09:58 label somebody a narcissist. Why does that matter to you? I think it allows me to blame them, I guess.
0:10:02 It allows you to blame them. But, but tell me, tell me in your perspective, what’s a narcissist?
0:10:07 That they are, they are low empathy. They are self-centered. They are a little bit aggressive,
0:10:14 maybe. Okay. So let’s stop there. Do you think personally that there are times in your life where
0:10:21 you lack empathy? Yeah. Okay. So empathy is very situationally based. So meaning that it’s also
0:10:28 subjective, meaning if you feel this person is not giving you certain empathy, okay, maybe a bit
0:10:33 self-centered, a bit aggressive. You, the reason I ask you these things is because if you just blatantly
0:10:37 label somebody as being like, this person’s a narcissist, you’ve just, you’ve just made it easy
0:10:42 for yourself. You’ve just put blame on them and you’re not going to be able to really understand
0:10:47 who this person is and why they are the way they are. So the first thing that I would do is I would take
0:10:52 away the labels as a, how you define them as you’re going into that. What was the other thing you said
0:10:57 in terms of what they were? They were narcissists. They were something else. Um, they gaslight.
0:11:02 So second thing, uh, which is interesting because we actually, within our training, uh, program, we just
0:11:09 did a big class on gaslighting because it’s important to understand what is gaslighting and what,
0:11:14 when is it not gaslighting? So for you, cause you’ve said this person gaslights you, what is,
0:11:21 what are they gaslighting you about? Um, when I bring something up, they make me feel like
0:11:26 I’m to blame when I, when I bring up how I feel, maybe they make me feel like I’m to blame. Like
0:11:32 I did something wrong. Okay. Does that always happen? More often than not. Okay. No, more often than not.
0:11:37 So it’s something that it sounds like that when you go in and you’re talking to this different person,
0:11:42 whatever the circumstances is, they are, they’re trying to discredit you or make you feel like maybe
0:11:45 you don’t know really what happened. They’re not listening. They’re just always throwing it back
0:11:49 on me saying that I did something to deserve it. And what was the third thing you said?
0:11:54 It’s a little bit like aggressive antagonistic. So. Okay. Their, their, their emotions go up and it
0:11:59 kind of makes me shut down. Okay. They kind of flood the zone. So when you need to go into a dark
0:12:06 conversation, here are the four things that you can do to stay engaged and involved in, in, in what’s
0:12:12 about to happen, right? And, in, in how this is going to hopefully go through. And what we say is
0:12:19 you need to have a plan. And there’s the acronym about that P right. L a N. So the P is for purpose.
0:12:27 And the purpose is why are you there? What’s the reason? What’s the mission? You have to understand
0:12:31 your mission because your mission is going to drive your tactics. Your mission is going to determine
0:12:36 if things get off track, if this person becomes aggressive, this person starts to be insulting.
0:12:42 If my mission at that moment is to deepen my conversation with them, deepen my relationship
0:12:46 in some way, and this starts to get ugly in the middle, your mission should keep you on track
0:12:51 because you can get pulled from that very quickly. There’s something called multiple goals theory
0:12:58 and multiple goals theory is the understanding that at any given time we will pursue simultaneous
0:13:04 goals. And typically those goals would be something task oriented. You know, I want to, I want to finish
0:13:09 a tasking. I want to get something done. There’s going to be a component of identity in there, meaning
0:13:13 that how do I feel and what are my emotions going on during the course of this? And then there’s going
0:13:19 to be relational. So it’s going to be my relationship with this person at the time. Now, a lot of times
0:13:25 within multiple goals theory, those things can align. So, and I’ll give you an example. Like if you’re
0:13:30 playing a sport, you’re on a team, uh, the team goal, your goal within that team, the task is to
0:13:36 win, to put on more points than the other person. That’s the task. The identity aspect of that is,
0:13:42 am I a good player? Do, do I want the ball? Do I get the ball? Am I contributing? Am I the superstar?
0:13:48 Is there some type of identity and how this makes me feel about myself being, being a sports star in
0:13:55 some capacity? And the relationship part of that is how do my teammates feel about me? Am I,
0:13:59 am I a good teammate in terms of what that was? Those things can align. You can see when that
0:14:03 is misaligned when all of a sudden somebody, what they would call a ball hog, somebody takes the shot
0:14:08 all the time and they won’t pass it around. And you’re like, what are you doing? Right. And it’s
0:14:12 one of these things where like, you are more concerned about your identity than you are about the team
0:14:16 winning. That’s a problem. That’s when you can see there’s a misalignment of goals or something
0:14:23 that’s even more simple would be, let’s say you’re in a meeting with a boss or a colleague,
0:14:28 and it’s a pretty important meeting. You’re, you’re trying to close a deal and your boss says something
0:14:37 that’s wrong. Now you have to make a decision. You could either correct your boss in front of
0:14:43 everybody, or you could preserve his or her dignity and address them at a later time. You have to decide
0:14:48 which one of those is most important. You have to understand your purpose of being in that meeting
0:14:53 because maybe I could let this go. It’s not that big of a deal because if I correct my boss, this may affect
0:14:59 my relationship with them at a later time. This could ruin my career in terms of being transferred or not
0:15:05 being on a project. So when you’re looking at goals, you have to understand what the overall
0:15:10 objective is. It becomes, Stephen, it becomes, especially in emotional conversations, it becomes
0:15:13 really easy to, to get distracted. Really easy.
0:15:18 So I go into that conversation with my colleague who is problematic. My goal with them, let’s say,
0:15:22 is to get them to stop. I’m actually thinking about earlier in my career when I used to work in call
0:15:29 centers on the phone. And, um, there was one particular lady that sat next to me that was always a little
0:15:34 bit rude and always put me down a little bit, a bit patronizing. So I, in hindsight, wish I could
0:15:39 have, you know, taken her aside and had a conversation with her and said, listen, the way you’re speaking
0:15:43 to me is very disrespectful or you’re putting me down or patronizing me. Please, can you stop doing
0:15:45 that? My goal would have been to, to get her to stop.
0:15:50 It is to get her to do that. But the crux of that is to understand why she’s doing it, because that’s
0:15:55 going to allow me to fix this in some way. If it, if it’s fixable, I’ll share the story with you.
0:16:04 In 1991, an 11 year old girl named J.C. Dugard was kidnapped by a man named Philip Garrido and his
0:16:12 wife, Nancy. And Philip and Nancy kept J.C. Dugard for 18 years. He fathered two children with her,
0:16:19 one when she was 14 and one when she was 17. And in 2009, they found her and him at Berkeley.
0:16:26 They arrested him, arrested his wife. 2011, he was, you know, tried, convicted. Three years prior to
0:16:35 that, there was a young girl named Michaela Garrett who had gone missing, never been found in a county
0:16:41 over in west, west of El Dorado in a county named Alameda County. There was a lot of suspicion that
0:16:47 Philip was the one who did this as well. And one of my, one of my colleagues was the prosecuting attorney
0:16:53 for El Dorado County, California. His name is Vern Pearson. And Vern said, I’d like to close this or
0:17:00 get some type of understanding. Can you go and interview Philip? So I looked at all the information
0:17:05 on Philip. He had written a manifesto in terms of how to cure pedophilia. And I went to Vern. I said,
0:17:10 all right, I’m, let’s go do this. And he goes, what do you need? Like a day, a couple of hours? And I
0:17:16 said, I need four days. And my goal was to do a deep dive into the things that he had done. He was
0:17:23 a serial rapist, a serial kidnapper, and to understand his life in the timeframe by which
0:17:28 Michaela Garrett went missing. And so this was the evolution of what I was trying to do. So I show up,
0:17:34 he walks in, says, who are you? I said, well, I’m Special Agent O’Neill. I’d like to talk to you
0:17:41 about your history. I read your manifesto and I had some questions. And he said, you know,
0:17:45 when they told me I had a visitor, he goes, I wasn’t going to come in. He goes, but the angels
0:17:50 on my shoulder tell me that this would be a good, good talk. So he said, let’s do it. We talked in
0:17:55 detail every day for probably eight to nine hours. They brought him food. And the end of each day,
0:18:01 I would say, Philip, I will be here tomorrow. If the, if the angels on your shoulder tell you to show
0:18:05 up, please do. If not, then it was nice to meet you. And every day he showed up. Why did you say
0:18:10 that? There’s a, there’s a depth of understanding in terms of the headspace that he is in.
0:18:16 And so when you can connect, like genuinely connect with that, you truly try to understand
0:18:24 another person. And there’s power with that. In the course of those 36 hours, multiple times,
0:18:31 he was very aggressive. He was very condescending. He called me a liar. Things he accused me of,
0:18:34 you know, I don’t believe you are who you say you are. I don’t believe you’re here for the things
0:18:38 you’re saying you’re here for. I don’t even know if you work for the federal government.
0:18:46 And he’s essentially questioned my integrity. Now, my purpose is not to make him feel that I’m
0:18:54 smarter than him, is not to belittle or berate him or, or, or have a question of, you know,
0:18:59 integrity. Cause I could have said, you kidnapped an 11 year old girl and kept her captive for 18 years,
0:19:04 father, two children with her, the first one at the age of 14. And your question of my integrity,
0:19:11 I didn’t do that because that’s not why I was there. And so despite the fact that he got upset,
0:19:14 despite the fact that he called me and accused me of all these different things, I stayed on my
0:19:19 purpose. I stayed on my mission. And when we were done, when we finished, I went back to the
0:19:24 prosecuting attorney and said, he’s not your guy. And he said, are you sure? And I said, I bet my career
0:19:26 career on it. How did you know?
0:19:32 There’s a lot of things in regards to when you’re looking at people from the perspective of
0:19:38 telling the truth in terms of the way that they, they talk and engage with you, our conversation on
0:19:43 Tuesday and our conversation on Wednesday and our conversation on Thursday and our conversation on
0:19:47 Friday all stayed very consistent. And if I’m asking him for further clarification, he’s providing
0:19:53 further clarification. If I’m talking to him about, you know, something and there’s some type of
0:19:58 spontaneous correction where he’s like, wait a minute, this happened before this, those are,
0:20:06 those are indicators of truth. And if there are things that, you know, he, he talks about in terms
0:20:12 of like things that are of complication, nobody’s day goes perfect. And, you know, there were many times
0:20:18 when he was telling me about the things he had done because, you know, he was a serial rapist,
0:20:23 you know, and a serial, you know, kidnapper, and he would drive around and pick up women and
0:20:27 hitchhiking and he would, you know, rape them and let them go. Oftentimes we would get into the details
0:20:32 of like when those didn’t go well, right. And when all of a sudden the girl would, would fight him off
0:20:35 and run away. And so there was all these different complications and different things that he would
0:20:36 talk about.
0:20:39 He handled the complications consistently is what you’re saying.
0:20:45 When complications are introduced to a story, right? People who lie, don’t do that, right?
0:20:48 It’s truth tellers will often do that because it’s just like, this is just what happened.
0:20:52 Like, these are the things that happened. This is my life in terms of where things were going to go
0:20:58 overall, in terms of how that conversation went, there are those types of indicators that just made
0:21:04 it trend more truthful than not. Like there wasn’t this big gap or this big weird moment when we’re
0:21:08 talking about Michaela Garrett to where all of a sudden it’s like missing pieces that I have to put in.
0:21:13 There are no cues to deception. There are things that all of a sudden seem different and require you
0:21:20 to do more questions, more asking, but that didn’t occur around the time that we were looking for with
0:21:20 that.
0:21:21 Okay.
0:21:26 So we finally, when we finished and then they went back and they looked at the evidence, they found
0:21:34 a new fingerprint and were able to charge and convict the person who did that. The reason I bring all of
0:21:41 that up is because for the purpose aspects of what we’re talking about, not losing sight of what your
0:21:48 mission is being focused in terms of what that is, the power of communication and staying online as it relates to
0:21:56 what you want to accomplish is really powerful because it keeps you on track and it keeps you engaged and
0:22:01 reminds you of why you’re there. Not every relationship deserves that. Like there’s just some relationships
0:22:06 you’re like, this just isn’t worth it for me. If it matters to you, that mattered to me. It mattered to me not because for me,
0:22:12 it mattered to me before that family. And there is a difference between having a profession and being a
0:22:17 professional. Having a profession is what you do. Being a professional is the culmination of everything
0:22:22 that you’ve done at that moment, at that time for a specific purpose. And that’s what I had to bring
0:22:25 in with that because that was what was at stake with this.
0:22:32 So you have this, these four cards in front of you. We’ve done the P, which is staying focused on your
0:22:36 purpose when you go into conversation to fend off the emotion, which might distort you and take you off.
0:22:40 And I’m so guilty of that. You know, everybody is so guilty of that with, especially with like,
0:22:46 you know, conversations with, with my partner where there’s emotion involved in this areas where,
0:22:51 you know, blame might be prevalent. So the L that you have there.
0:23:03 So the L is, listen, this becomes the thing that people are worst at because it’s a lot to do.
0:23:07 Think about right now. Think about my conversation with you at this moment.
0:23:13 I’m speaking. So internally, my internal vocabulary and the conversation that I’m having in my head
0:23:20 is running about 800 to a thousand words a minute. I’m speaking to you in about 120 to 150 words a
0:23:24 minute. There’s a lot that’s being edited. There’s a lot of things that I think that I’m saying or I want
0:23:29 to say. I’m trying to engage with you. There’s also something called theory of mind,
0:23:37 which is me watching you and trying to understand is what I’m saying on point with what Stephen wants
0:23:42 to hear or wants to hear for his audience. Do I need to change anything? Is this landing on him?
0:23:47 And then if you’re nonverbals changing, your verbals changed, then I have to readjust maybe what I’m
0:23:51 editing. And my theory of mind will readjust too, because I’m like, Ooh, I just lost him here.
0:24:00 I have to readjust simultaneously. You are listening to me and you’re listening to the 120 to 150 words
0:24:06 I’m giving you, but your brain can process this at like four to 600 words per minute. So you have too
0:24:11 much cognitive bandwidth. You have the ability to listen to me and then do multiple other things,
0:24:15 which is oftentimes why people will drift out or you’ll start thinking of something else. Or you’ll
0:24:19 think of your, your notepad because you got it, you got it figured out. And this is when it becomes
0:24:24 really easy to be convinced and not curious because you’re like, I kind of know where this is going.
0:24:29 And so you check out. So you actually have to do something called cognitive inhibition. You have to
0:24:34 kind of narrow that bandwidth to stay fully engaged with me. That’s why when you hear people say like
0:24:40 active listening, it’s hard. It’s hard to do because you have to be attentive to the other person.
0:24:45 You have to listen. You have to look, you have to pick up their verbal and their nonverbal behavior.
0:24:52 And you, then you have to do something with that. Stephen Covey says, most people don’t listen with
0:25:01 the intent to understand. They listen with the intent to reply. And if you are simply just waiting for
0:25:07 your turn to talk, then you and I are not, are not connecting. Controlling conversation comes from
0:25:12 listening, not talking. So if I’m trying to, if I’m trying to get some information out of someone,
0:25:19 I should have a bias towards just letting them speak at me. You should, you know, you hear about
0:25:22 this, like always let the other person talk more. That’s great. But if both people are doing that,
0:25:28 then the conversation is not progressing. The conversation is an extension of what you and I
0:25:32 are speaking with. And when we’ve gone from listening in terms of what that looks like, the next thing you
0:25:41 have to do, which gets into this is the A, which is, which is ask, right? So the A being this, if you
0:25:47 are paying attention to me and you’re picking up on things that I’m saying, the changes in my body
0:25:54 language, and there’s something you don’t understand, you need to ask. This is where you’re going to deepen
0:25:58 the conversation. This is where you show somebody that you’re active listening. You’re curious and you’re
0:26:05 open and you’re trying to understand them. If you look at empathy research, we typically think
0:26:10 that we can understand our significant other or different people at a much higher level than we
0:26:17 actually do. For a stranger, it’s called, it’s called empathy accuracy. For a stranger, your ability to
0:26:25 understand their headspace is like 20%. For a friend, somebody close to you, it’s like 30. For your
0:26:32 significant other, it’s no higher than 40%, which means that despite you thinking that you know what
0:26:39 she’s thinking, you got a four out of 10 chance of being right. And if that conversation gets emotional,
0:26:46 that 40% can go down as low as 15 because you start to pull in to be like, I’m guarding myself here. I’m
0:26:51 guarding my ego. When your ego is on the line, your ears go offline because you stop hearing what she’s
0:26:56 having to say and you start protecting yourself in terms of what you’re trying to do. So your ability
0:27:03 to be empathetic when things are hard becomes harder and you have to be very mindful of that. Let’s say
0:27:10 you come home from early morning workout and your spouse says, Hey Steven, how was it? And you say,
0:27:14 that’s pretty tough. It’s a lot that you can do with that. This is what she could do. She could say
0:27:18 nothing. So now maybe you understand that maybe she doesn’t want to talk about this or she’s not
0:27:22 interested in it. That’s one. The second thing she could say to you would be like, well,
0:27:29 sweetheart, that’s why you look the way you do. She has now made the assumption, right? Her empathy
0:27:34 accuracy that she knows what you meant by the word tough. And so if she says to you, well, that’s how
0:27:38 you look and that’s not what you meant. Now you feel that there’s a separation between what you’re
0:27:42 hoping she would pick up on and what she actually said. The third thing she could say would be like,
0:27:48 what do you mean by tough? Because the ambiguity of that is the word tough. Who knows what that means?
0:27:52 It could be a lot of different things. She’s now showing you, I’m into you. I’m tuning in. In the
0:27:58 power of something like that, when you talk about deepening relationships and increasing that connection,
0:28:03 that’s how it happens. The same thing with your nonverbal behavior, right? You look at nonverbal
0:28:09 behavior, 66% of what we give is nonverbal. And so if I, through the course of my conversation with you,
0:28:15 if all of a sudden we’re talking and you’re just like, folding my arms. So folding your arms could
0:28:21 be a sign of just your folding your arms. It could be a sign of you not liking my question if you roll
0:28:27 your eyes. So if I see that and it matters to me, then I need to say something to the effect of,
0:28:32 it seems like versus I think, because I think is the pronoun saying it’s about me. And it’s just like,
0:28:38 I don’t care what you think. It seems like what you just did maybe was because you didn’t like what I
0:28:44 had to say, because I saw you cross your arms and roll your eyes. Do I have that right? So now you
0:28:50 have a choice where you can either say, yes, you got that right for these reasons, or no, I just
0:28:54 followed them because I was comfortable and, you know, whatever the case may be. But it is a matter
0:29:00 if I see you and it’s in harmony with the conversation that we were having that seems like
0:29:07 it’s, you know, something that shows that it could be potentially a problem. I need to ask about it.
0:29:11 You and I having a conversation right now and you folding your arms isn’t going to be like a red flag
0:29:15 that I’m like, oh, I just saw you folded your arms when I said that. But if it’s something that there’s
0:29:20 some emotion laid around that and it’s important and I’m trying to express something to you when I see
0:29:25 you roll your eyes or cross your arms. Hey, Steven, I noticed when I brought up this thing about our
0:29:29 family, um, you kind of leaned back and crossed your arms and rolled your eyes. It seems like
0:29:34 you didn’t approve of that. Is that, do I have that right? So now it’s on you to explain that or not.
0:29:40 On this point of body language, um, as someone that sits here and I guess interviews people for like,
0:29:46 you know, four or five hours at a time, sometimes over the last five years, I have come to learn
0:29:53 certain body language, um, patterns in my guests. Okay. One of the most obvious ones is when I ask
0:29:57 the guest a question that is causing them some potential discomfort in some way.
0:30:04 And when I say discomfort, I should probably define that as maybe it’s a difficult question
0:30:10 for whatever reason. Sure. What I tend to see is I tend to see them cross their arms. Okay. That’s
0:30:13 like a really consistent pattern. It’s almost like a, it’s almost as if they’re telling me that this is
0:30:18 a little bit difficult and it’s, it holds to be true. Do you ask them? I noticed when you crossed your
0:30:22 arms, you know, when I asked you that question, is it something with this question that bothered you
0:30:27 or do you just let it go? I let it go, but, but it’s, they’ve already told me. Okay. So I’ve
0:30:31 really, I don’t need to ask them because I know, I now know that there’s something there where
0:30:36 there’s emotion. Sure. It’s kind of the way that I see it. It’s what it is more than likely. It’s
0:30:41 what it is. And I think there’s power to that because your perception, right? So it’s, you bring
0:30:47 this back, like your pattern recognition of all the guests that you’ve done and the association or the,
0:30:51 the connection of that in terms of the question that you ask and they cross her arms, like that’s
0:30:54 where that comes from. That’s where that all of a sudden, that thing where you’re just like,
0:30:57 I feel it, but I don’t really know it. It’s just like, you don’t know that to be the case
0:31:01 because it could be a number of different things, but because of the pattern recognition you’ve seen
0:31:05 all the time, that gives you the chance of saying this is, there’s some emotion here. So either
0:31:08 engage it or tread lightly depending on which way you want to go.
0:31:09 Both. Yeah.
0:31:12 And that’s what happens. So instead of saying like, you know, why, why did you cross your arms?
0:31:17 I will ask them potentially how, how that memory makes them feel. What do they feel about that? And
0:31:21 and that tends to be, it’s just, it’s so, you know, cause people always talk, you know, they say,
0:31:26 does body language matter? Does it count for anything? Can you interpret someone’s body language to
0:31:30 understand if they’re telling you the truth? Is any of this stuff true in your, in your view?
0:31:37 No, you should, you should look at body language because it, it, it, it is a language in terms of
0:31:43 what somebody is, is showing you, you look at body language. And if you see something that is a change,
0:31:46 just like the cross in your arms, then you need to be curious about it.
0:31:49 So it’s really about a change in state.
0:31:52 It’s a change of, it’s a change of what somebody is doing and the timing of that.
0:31:57 So you just said, like, when I ask something that is personal or emotional, they’ll talk about it.
0:32:01 They’ll cross their arms because maybe it’s just now like the psychological thing where I want to
0:32:06 guard myself a little bit. Maybe I want to kind of close up a little bit. Who knows? But if it’s
0:32:11 something where you’re just like, I noticed it and you don’t need to use it, like you could ask them
0:32:14 if you wanted to, but you’re just like, oh, they already, they already told me, so I don’t need it.
0:32:18 But for anybody else, if you see that and you’re talking and somebody crosses their arms,
0:32:23 don’t just assume that’s what it is. Because if you assume and you’re wrong,
0:32:24 you’re going down the wrong track.
0:32:31 And so throughout this framework for having hard conversations, we’ve covered the P,
0:32:37 which is stick to your purpose, the L, which is listen, the A, which is to ask.
0:32:40 Is there anything else in the framework?
0:32:50 The N, which is the next steps. So to have a plan means to understand all of these different things
0:32:54 and the way that you approach that. And the next steps is, how do you want to resolve this? Like,
0:33:01 what’s the end goal with this? Is there anything that I can do that we can, you know, further our
0:33:04 relationship where both you and I can, can be in alignment?
0:33:05 Do you ask them or do you propose?
0:33:11 I would always ask them. If I’m engaged, right? So perhaps let’s go back to the conversation that you
0:33:15 may have with, you know, this, this individual, you’re just like, this person’s a narcissist and so
0:33:20 forth. If you’re engaging them and you’re the one who wants to really have this conversation
0:33:25 and you’re hoping that you can find some type of resolution, you have to ask if there’s resolution
0:33:30 with that. So something to the effect of, do you think that you and I can find an amicable way
0:33:34 forward where when I, when you and I engage, you know, we can really enjoy each other’s time and
0:33:39 this thing not go bad. Like, do you see that in our future at all? Yes or no? And then it’s either
0:33:44 yes. Okay. What does that look like for us? Like, how do we have that? Because I am, I’m having this
0:33:48 conversation with you because my relationship with you matters, but there are things that happen within
0:33:54 that are, that are frustrating and that caused me not to really want to engage. I do want to find a
0:33:59 way to do that because that is most important to me. How best do we do that? There is no magic bullet
0:34:04 by which makes everything, every conversation go perfect. There’s none. You are, you are part of
0:34:09 that conversation. The other person is part of that conversation. You have your perspective. They have
0:34:16 their perspective. You have what you think is right or think is fair. Fairness is subjective because
0:34:23 what you think is fair is just means what you think is fair. And so the hardest part is to walk away and
0:34:28 feeling like you should, there should have done more you can do. The power becomes knowing how to
0:34:32 address that. And if it doesn’t go right, then you walk away and be like, you know what? It just didn’t
0:34:38 go right. And I’m okay with that. What if they start insulting you in the conversation? Okay. What’s your
0:34:43 purpose of being in the conversation? I’m trying to get them to stop being so rude to me when we’re
0:34:51 on the same bank of telephones at the call center. So it is a matter of if she’s being rude to you, it’s
0:34:55 addressing that at the moment, right? You know, I noticed that we’re having this conversation that you’re
0:35:02 being really aggressive, really rude and really condescending. So you call it out. Yeah. Be very specific in
0:35:07 terms of what it is. Like, you know, if she, if she calls you and she uses, you know, she calls you a name or
0:35:10 whatever the case may be and like, you know what, you’re being rude. And she’s just like, what did I do? And
0:35:14 you’re like, you’re just being rude. That’s unhelpful. Like give her the context by which you
0:35:19 feel that she’s being rude because maybe she does something outside of a name where you’re like,
0:35:24 you’re being rude. And maybe to her, that’s not rudeness. Maybe it’s her directness. Right. But if
0:35:28 she’s like, you know what, you’re Steven, you’re just an asshole or whatever the case may be. And I would
0:35:32 say, Hey, it seems like at the right now, like, you know, you’re very condescending. You’ve called me a
0:35:38 name to include an asshole. Can you explain to me specifically right now why that is and make her
0:35:43 back it up, make her explain to you what it is that, is there something about, is there something
0:35:47 about me you don’t like? Is there something about my, my work ethic that you don’t like, or maybe the
0:35:51 way that I’m doing this, you’ve been here longer than me. So as perhaps there’s something else that
0:35:56 I’m doing or not doing that you think is wrong, because I am not understanding
0:36:03 your anger and your venom and your need to insult me. And I would really try to understand what that
0:36:07 is. So you’re having a very direct conversation with her, very specific to what she’s saying.
0:36:14 It does not mean that that’s going to fix it. She could just be an asshole. And it’s one of those
0:36:19 things where you have to be like, I am going to address this. I’m not going to return in kind.
0:36:24 I don’t have to turn into that person as well. I can walk away from that conversation and be like,
0:36:27 you know what? I handled that the best I could. It doesn’t mean it’s going to fix it.
0:36:32 Are there any tactics that interrogators are taught or that you teach interrogators
0:36:38 for keeping your emotions in check? Because, you know, we, we go into those conversations. Someone
0:36:43 calls you an asshole. Your cortisol starts spiking. You get into your amygdala. You get stressed. You
0:36:46 get emotional. You end up calling them an asshole back. But is there, I don’t know, is there breath
0:36:52 work? What did interrogators get taught? In the heat of the moment at the, at that time,
0:36:57 you have no time to do breath work. This is real time stuff in terms of what you’re trying to do.
0:37:00 If you go in and you understand your purpose, and again, I don’t mean to go back to the plan,
0:37:05 but what happens is you become, you can be pulled out very quickly. And all of a sudden,
0:37:12 if you are trying to get information from somebody and one of their strategies, because they maybe don’t
0:37:16 want to give you information, one of their strategies is to insult you. And now you’re insulting
0:37:22 them back. One, you’re not going to get anything. Two, you fell into their strategy. So what you have
0:37:27 to do is you have to address that. I am something to the effect of, I see that when I asked you that,
0:37:30 or now all of a sudden, like, it seems like there’s a change in our relationship to where now you’re being
0:37:32 really aggressive. Why is that?
0:37:42 Yes, because I am asking you to back up your emotions. Because if it’s, if it’s BS, if you’re
0:37:46 just doing that, because you’re trying to hide the ball someplace else, I’m going to call you out on
0:37:52 it. It’s also showing me that I am not afraid to confront this type of behavior. And I’m seeing it
0:37:58 and I am, I am really trying to engage with you in a very amicable, genuine way. And if you are going
0:38:02 to treat me a certain way, I am going to understand what that is. You’re also showing that you’re not
0:38:03 doing it in a kind.
0:38:05 Is part of this showing that you’re strong?
0:38:13 It’s less about being strong and more about being competent and confident in what you’re doing.
0:38:20 Because if you allow in anybody, not just an interrogation room, in any, in any conversation,
0:38:27 if you lose your cool, you lose control. You have to be mindful of that. I was overseeing an
0:38:32 internal affairs interview and I was going to go in and talk to this person at the end. I was thinking
0:38:37 about doing a polygraph with them. But before that was going to happen, the case agent, the person who
0:38:45 had the investigation was talking to the subject. It was a road rage incident where this agent had been
0:38:50 accused of road rage and pulling his gun out on a civilian. So this was the conversation.
0:38:55 They were, that they were having. And I’m listening to this in an interview room, right? And in terms
0:39:03 of like a two-way, two-way mirror. And the subject is very aggressive. He’s very angry. And he’s very
0:39:08 angry to the point of like, he’s like, I don’t know why you don’t believe me with this. I keep telling
0:39:12 you these things and you keep asking me the same questions. I think this is a bunch of BS.
0:39:18 The investigator comes back and he’s just like, because I think you’re a liar and you’re not
0:39:23 telling me the truth in terms of what it is. And you’re causing us to be in this room a lot longer.
0:39:29 And this is a problem. So now they’re both yelling at each other, like yelling at each other. And it was
0:39:37 one of these things where I’m watching this unfold and it wasn’t the subject’s job to maintain his
0:39:42 composure. It was the investigators because his goal is not to belittle this other agent.
0:39:48 His goal was to find out, did this or did this not happen? And he lost sight of that. And he came out
0:39:52 of the room to me and he’s like, what do you think? And I’m like, well, I’m not going to polygraph him.
0:39:55 I mean, this guy’s so emotional right now. Like that’s not going to happen. And he goes, you know
0:39:59 what? This guy’s just an asshole anyway. And I’m like, I don’t think he’s the asshole in the room.
0:40:04 The other guy was the asshole in the room because he allowed himself to get pulled out of what he
0:40:09 should have been doing because now he wanted to have the game of who’s the bigger, who’s the bigger
0:40:17 jerk in the room. You can do it. And again, if you want to burn that bridge, burn it. But if you want
0:40:22 to maintain a relationship or you want to maintain your profession or you are trying to get to some
0:40:27 resolution, you cannot lose your cool. I guess that’s what it comes down to is most of the time,
0:40:32 we’re not clear on the goal going into the conversation. So we have nothing to be anchored
0:40:37 to. So it’s just like getting into the washing machine. Absolutely what it is. We just spin
0:40:42 around and around and around and walk away with a nice relationship. And the power really comes from
0:40:47 if this person is insulting you and they’re angry and they’re doing these things and you’re sitting
0:40:51 there and you’re asking good questions, you’re keeping your composure. There is a lot of power with
0:40:57 that. And I mean power in a way that shows like I’m in control of myself. I am,
0:41:05 well aware of what’s going on as this relationship and this conversation is happening. I am not going
0:41:08 to fall into this because this matters to me in terms of this other thing.
0:41:14 I’ve heard you say that you think people suffer from me, me, me syndrome. What does that mean?
0:41:23 So the me, me, me syndrome is everything, everything is about me, right? I mean, it seems obvious with
0:41:28 that, but like, you can even look at things from like a cultural perspective. You can look at like
0:41:33 here, you know, in the, in the U S and Western civilizations, like we are primarily like a dignity
0:41:38 culture where we are. It’s all about us, right? It’s all about that internal, that internal feeling
0:41:44 that we have. And so everything is predicated on our job, our success, the things that we do,
0:41:51 the external world doesn’t really matter in terms of our success or failure. So a lot of it is what is
0:41:59 in your headspace and how do you manage that? Because the problem that I see and what I think
0:42:10 comes with in communication is we do a lot of self-reflection. We rarely do a lot of outward
0:42:14 reflection on the other person. Some of the best negotiators there will spend more than half of their
0:42:23 time thinking about somebody else. So a very personal story. When I was 21, my father passed away and he had
0:42:29 been battling cancer for, for three years. And so when he passed away, I have four siblings and my mom was
0:42:36 there. So when he passed away, he passed away at home and all five of us were there. Several years later, I’m
0:42:42 having this conversation on the day that my dad died about the day that my dad died. I’m having this with my, my
0:42:48 sister and my three younger brothers. And we’re talking about where we were and so forth. And my sister says, yeah, I
0:42:55 I can’t watch the Simpsons without thinking of, of dad. And I said, what do you, what do you mean?
0:42:58 She’s like, well, the, the, the TV was there and the Simpsons were on. And she’s like, I always just
0:43:04 remember that. And I was like, there’s a, there’s a TV in the room. She’s like, you don’t remember a TV
0:43:08 being in the room? And I’m like, I have absolutely not. I have no idea that there was a TV in the room.
0:43:14 I didn’t code it. That wasn’t the thing that was important. Her perspective and the way that she saw
0:43:20 that moment affected her differently than everybody else in that room. And so to go back to the me,
0:43:26 me, me, when you fail to take in consideration that other people have other experiences based on
0:43:34 how they pick up the world, how they do things in the world, and you think that it’s just about you,
0:43:41 you’re, you are going to have a really hard time having a deep, honest, connective relationship with
0:43:45 somebody. If it’s just about you, you can do it. And a lot of people do it. You know,
0:43:50 they’re looking for that, that way to, you know, make people drawn to them and make people connect
0:43:58 to them. And that’s fine. But if you are trying to, I guess, Stephen, if you just want to be like a
0:44:02 genuine person and you want to have a relationship, don’t make it about you.
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0:45:07 one better than the rest. I was thinking this earlier, I was thinking one of the things in the
0:45:12 podcast, this podcast that I’ve learned is, if I, if I want to increase the probability that someone
0:45:17 opens up and tells me something, one of the things I do is I share myself. Yeah. So you know,
0:45:21 I might be asking someone about their childhood and it’s quite clear to me now that one of the ways,
0:45:25 especially if they end up crossing their arms and get up uncomfortable. Yeah. It’s just a pause for a
0:45:29 second and share my own childhood. Yeah. So if I’ve identified that one of your values is, I don’t
0:45:34 know, you want to be a good family man. Might you mention that you’re a family man yourself as a way to
0:45:40 build a bridge? So if it’s honest, so, so that’s a great question, but this becomes a thing where you
0:45:44 have to look at things if you were trying to influence or manipulate somebody, if it’s honest
0:45:49 and it fits within that conversation at that moment, because this is what I based on our
0:45:56 conversation, I think this person needs to hear then sure. If it’s real, if it’s not, if I’m lying
0:46:00 to him because I’m trying to say, well, I’m a family man, you’re a family man. Like we’re, we’re good.
0:46:06 Now you’re, now you’re manipulating the person and that’s a whole different conversation. So to go back
0:46:11 back to what you said, if, if I understand this guy’s values and I understand that there is a sense
0:46:19 of, let’s say a sense of honesty, maybe if there’s a part of this person, that’s also honest, or there’s
0:46:26 also a sense of, he wants to be, I don’t know. He wants his kids to see him as a, as a, as a man of
0:46:32 integrity, right? Let’s just say that. So maybe, maybe that starts to become a conversation that
0:46:37 we have as it relates to, um, you know, I can only imagine, you know, the difficulty that this has
0:46:41 with you is as you’ve told me, you know, you’re a family man. I’m not going to say you’re a family
0:46:45 man. I’m going to say, as you told me, you’re a family man. And one of the things that you said
0:46:50 about being a family man was how important is your kids to, to kind of like lead by your,
0:46:57 your model, like your role model aspects of that by honesty and openness and those types of things.
0:47:01 So do you hear where I’m going? So I’m trending in the direction by which that I am trying to bring
0:47:06 online, still his father, but a different value under what it means to be a father. Cause I don’t
0:47:11 want to talk about being present because that’s probably going to go away. But if he is trying to
0:47:17 teach his kids to own your mistakes, then maybe that’s the direction I go. But how am I going to
0:47:21 get that? I’m going to get that because I’m going to start off my conversation with him in a very honest,
0:47:27 genuine way that I’m going to try to understand who is this person across from me. And what’s the
0:47:35 difference between manipulation and influence? Influence is about nudging a person in a certain
0:47:41 direction at a certain time that’s beneficial for both you and them. That’s influence.
0:47:47 Got it. Manipulation is you nudging a person in a specific direction
0:47:54 because it’s good for you. It’s not good for them. And so you’ll lie, you’ll, you’ll do whatever you
0:47:58 need to do to, to close the deal, to get them to do something, to give them, to give you something
0:48:04 that’s manipulation because it’s often one of those things that it has negative consequences to it in
0:48:07 terms of the person who did it. You know, maybe they never know, but you manipulated them.
0:48:12 Which is interrogations, no? Because this guy’s going to go, he’s going to get life in jail if
0:48:18 he admits that he killed this child. So I’m, that’s not in his interests, but it’s in mine. So I’m going
0:48:21 to manipulate him to give me the secrets. If that’s what you want to do, and that’s the direction you
0:48:27 think you need to do, then by all means, you can do it. And here in the U.S., it is legal that you can
0:48:33 lie to subjects, but- So you’re saying lying is the moment where it becomes manipulation?
0:48:38 Yes. That becomes the shortcut. And that becomes a way, not just within the interrogation room. Like,
0:48:42 I think what becomes important, and I’ve seen this come up a lot, people are all about like influence.
0:48:46 Like you hear that come up quite a bit. If you want to influence somebody, this is how you do it.
0:48:52 You’re honest with them. You’re clear and you’re transparent because influence is about how do I feel
0:48:56 about you? Not about all the things that you’re doing at that moment. Because if I don’t, if trust
0:49:01 isn’t even on the table, if I don’t trust you to begin with, or I think that to go back to what you
0:49:04 had said, there’s this pattern of recognition where I’m like, I just think there’s something wrong with
0:49:10 this. You’re not going to be able to influence me. If I am honest with you in everything that I do,
0:49:14 because that’s how I carry myself, not only does it lower your cognitive load because you’re not
0:49:19 lying to somebody else, but it underscores who you stand for and who you are as a person.
0:49:24 And with that, people are going to see that and say, you know what? Stephen’s very transparent.
0:49:30 He said this was a good deal. And I believe that for these reasons, it’s a matter of you being honest
0:49:35 with that. I, I always question now, like, cause I see it a lot and it came up in the questions that
0:49:40 I was talking to your team about. It’s like, why does everybody want to influence somebody? Like why,
0:49:47 why do they, what is that? Do you know? Like, why does it come up all the time? Because what are people
0:49:52 trying to accomplish? They want to accomplish something. They have a goal for who? For
0:49:54 themselves. Right. So is that, is that influence?
0:50:01 But it gets the job done for some, for some people. Sure. It does.
0:50:05 I can think about that. Was it Carnegie? What’s that book? But it’s probably behind me somewhere
0:50:10 called Influence. And it talks about the, this five pillars of influence, things like scarcity.
0:50:16 Yeah. So it’s Robert Cialdini. We teach that, right? It’s one of those where you can understand
0:50:21 why influence works, the different strategies of influence, like what they all stand for and when
0:50:27 they fit within the, within the conversation. You can do it. I do it. But I can, I can tell you,
0:50:34 Stephen, being a, being a communication specialist, I don’t spend my day walking around trying to influence
0:50:39 people. I will be honest with people. I will be transparent. I will answer their questions with
0:50:45 the best information that I have. And if people are inspired by that, and, and, and that causes
0:50:51 somebody to be influenced by the things that I said, that’s, that’s what I want. Right. And I brought
0:50:56 this up earlier, but the, the training academy that, that, you know, that I instruct with, it is all
0:51:02 about openness. It’s all about honesty. It’s all about trying to help people based on why they’ve come to
0:51:09 us. And it’s not about manipulating people to, to come in and be a member. It’s about why are you
0:51:14 here and how can we help you? And this is the best way we can do that. And that influences people.
0:51:20 And that inspires people to, to listen to what you have to say. Why, why is your podcast this
0:51:26 successful? The first time you and I met, you said something that I disagreed with. And it was,
0:51:29 you were talking about flight story and you’re talking about the different things you, you, you know,
0:51:33 with flight story and the success of the podcast. And you said, it’s not because I’m a good
0:51:38 interviewer. It’s because they’re really good at marketing. You’re a good interviewer because of
0:51:44 the vulnerabilities that you do. Every time I’ve been surprised on how vulnerable and open you are
0:51:49 in terms of sharing with yourself, like there’s that story arc in terms of how that connection is
0:51:55 because of that, you influence me, not because you’re trying to, not because your team reached out,
0:52:00 but because of the way you carried yourself in your podcast and the questions that you ask and the
0:52:06 vulnerability that you’re showing, there is a level of trust that comes with that. And so you in,
0:52:11 you weren’t trying to influence, you were being you. And there’s a part of your self-congruence,
0:52:16 who you are, your ideal self, which is just like, this is just what I do. And my life’s not perfect.
0:52:21 And I’ll share the parts that are messy. And I’m trying to use this as a platform to help
0:52:27 millions of people. That’s a big deal. And is this how you build trust with people?
0:52:30 Or is trust a different or adjacent point?
0:52:40 So trust is about being vulnerable. Trust is about being open and sharing a little bit about
0:52:46 yourself. So truly, Stephen, the question becomes, is what I’ve shared with you in good hands?
0:52:53 Because if it’s not, that’s a problem, right? Let me ask you a question. Do you have a secret
0:52:57 secret that maybe you’ve never told anybody or you’ve told just one or two people?
0:52:57 Yeah.
0:52:58 You do. You got one in mind?
0:52:59 Yeah.
0:52:59 What is it?
0:53:03 I can’t. There’s millions of people listening.
0:53:06 Okay. But, but if these millions of people weren’t watching, would you tell me?
0:53:09 Yeah.
0:53:15 Okay. So the reason that you’re not telling me or in front of these millions of people is why?
0:53:18 Why are you not, why are you not telling us your secret?
0:53:21 Um, because of consequence.
0:53:22 Okay.
0:53:26 Someone’s going to clip it. Someone’s going to put it on the internet. Someone’s going to fuck me up.
0:53:30 There’s a reason for it, right? There’s a reason that you’re not trusting in terms of what it was.
0:53:34 Maybe you trust me just because of the relationship that we’ve built at this point.
0:53:39 But there’s probably other things that you wouldn’t trust me with. When you talk about trust,
0:53:45 if you look at concentric rings, you know, in terms of the trust around you, the center ring
0:53:50 should be self-trust. It should be you. You should be able to trust yourself more than you trust anybody
0:53:54 else. If you don’t, you probably need to do a little bit of work, right?
0:53:56 What does that mean in reality of me trusting myself?
0:54:03 Do you trust that you will do the things that you want to do or you ought to do? Or do you keep
0:54:07 yourself in that direction? Do you keep yourself accountable, right? That becomes this thing where
0:54:11 can you make decisions? Are you a person like, I don’t make any decisions. I let somebody else make
0:54:15 decisions or I run everything by everybody else because I don’t trust myself to make the right
0:54:19 decision. Then you have to work on your decision-making because you have to find a way to build
0:54:27 your trust up outside of that initial ring. It’s, it should be a ring of a handful of people that
0:54:32 have unconditional trust, right? And these are the people that no matter what, like you’ve given them
0:54:38 that trust, you, you believe in them and it should be a small circle. And this is where I think people
0:54:43 go wrong. They’re like, ah, you know, I, I, I share everything with people. Then they, then they’re
0:54:49 crushed when one of those people that they’ve given unconditional trust with break it. That’s a
0:54:55 problem. I have probably, you know, my siblings are all really close to me. So I have them, there’s four of
0:55:01 them. Um, outside of that, I have my, you know, I have my wife and a select few friends, you know,
0:55:08 that I know that if I call, they’re like, but we’re good. Um, outside of that, you should, everybody else
0:55:14 should be conditional trust. People should earn your trust, right? They should be honored to have it.
0:55:19 Like don’t give it away for free. And if you have somebody’s trust, you should respect that if they’ve
0:55:24 given that to you. But I think, and I’ve seen it, I, people give away trust way too much because the
0:55:29 person will be amazing in this one spot. And all of a sudden they get the halo effect and they’re like,
0:55:34 well, they’re great here. They must be great here. It’s this, it’s this arc of they’re awesome
0:55:42 everywhere. And so I’m going to trust them with these other things. Then when, again, they break it,
0:55:50 they violate it. The way you feel is just this, this, this violation of, you know, somebody took
0:55:55 what you gave them and just destroyed it. It’s hard to come back from that. It’s hard to, once you read,
0:55:59 once you lose trust, like if you lose somebody’s trust, it’s really, really hard to get back.
0:56:02 Is there anything you can do to get back? Do you think?
0:56:08 What I know that you can do, it doesn’t always work. You have to be accountable for why you lost
0:56:17 it. Whatever that is, very specific. It’s going to take time and a lot of consistency. To consistency
0:56:23 meaning that you show them consistently time and time again, that you are a person that, you know,
0:56:23 can be trusted.
0:56:31 On leadership principles, something I’ve heard you talk about as well. What do you think are the
0:56:34 most important principles as it relates to leadership? Because we’ve talked about trust there
0:56:38 and other things around communication and all these things. Is there, is there anything we haven’t
0:56:41 covered as it relates to being a great leader in your perspective?
0:56:49 Somebody who’s calm under chaos, that would be my definition of a leader. However, and I say that
0:56:55 because leadership is a feeling, Stephen. How do you make these people feel as it relates to
0:57:01 my qualities as a leader? Do I do the things that register with you as leadership? Because I can tell
0:57:06 you when I was on a SWAT team, which is the Special Weapons and Tactics, this is where I learned
0:57:14 the true essence of leadership because I had some amazing commanders and team leaders on that team
0:57:21 where under high stress, under a stress like that, if you have people around you that are keeping their
0:57:22 composure, that’s leadership.
0:57:28 One of the elements there, I guess, as when you’re in the SWAT as well as dealing with huge amounts of
0:57:30 uncertainty when pressure’s on.
0:57:31 Sure.
0:57:36 When your life’s at risk. I was reading about a study, which I think you mentioned some time ago,
0:57:41 where they look at three groups of people doing the same exam and were sort of trying to ascertain
0:57:46 how people make decisions with different degrees of certainty and information.
0:57:53 Yeah. What the study showed was there were a group of students that were taking a test in college
0:58:00 and they were told that they had either passed or failed or they had no idea whether they passed or
0:58:05 failed. But prior to that, they were asked if they would take a vacation. And the people who passed
0:58:11 and the people who failed, there was a higher percentage of them who chose to take a vacation after getting
0:58:17 news that they had either passed college or failed college. The group that didn’t know, there was a third
0:58:23 group that was just like, I’m unsure, weren’t able to really make a decision. And so what the-
0:58:27 So just to be clear then, on that third group, they didn’t have their exam results back.
0:58:29 So they didn’t take the action to book the vacation?
0:58:35 They were told that there was some malfunction in ability to score their test and they would get
0:58:41 their results at a later time. And so then they were asked to, you know, if they would also buy a
0:58:46 vacation and a farther, fewer percentage, I don’t remember what it was, but a farther, a much less
0:58:51 percentage of them would take it than the people who both passed. Because I think there was like half the
0:58:57 people who passed or were told they passed, like took the, bought the vacation package. It was like
0:59:03 a vacation trip to Hawaii around the same percentage, I believe, who failed the exam, bought the vacation
0:59:08 trip. But the people who couldn’t decide just, they didn’t have the cognitive bandwidth to really make a
0:59:16 decision. So the ambiguity of not knowing really lessens our cognitive ability to go in a certain
0:59:20 direction. And so when we don’t know where to go, we often don’t go anywhere.
0:59:26 That is a hallmark of great leaders that they’re able to decide even when there’s very low certainty.
0:59:32 Sure. I would think that would come with, you know, the territory. I think if you’re, if you’re only a leader
0:59:38 when it’s calm, then you’re not really a leader. You’re somebody with a higher salary and a title. Like leadership
0:59:45 really shows up in those type of circumstances when, when things are uncertain. And so, you know, having the
0:59:54 ability to manage things when not all the information’s there and doing the best you can with it. Because, you know,
1:00:01 oftentimes the best decision to make is the right one and the worst one is to not make a decision at all. And so if you have
1:00:05 those type of leaders who just can’t think through that problem, then that’s not a leader.
1:00:09 I remember when I spoke in Sao Paulo many years ago, Barack Obama was on stage and he said that
1:00:15 as president, like when he went and got bin Laden in that compound in Pakistan, that they didn’t know if
1:00:19 bin Laden was there. They’d never visually properly ID’d him. So he had to make that decision to risk
1:00:25 American lives with, as he said, 51% certainty. Yeah. Or a very low certainty. And he says, that’s the thing
1:00:30 about being the president of the United States. You make huge calls with very little certainty. Yeah.
1:00:35 And I’ve always thought about that in terms of my day-to-day life. And it all has made me conclude
1:00:41 that the most successful people that I’ve met do have that ability to be low certainty and make big
1:00:46 calls with the peace of mind that they’ve made that call with the best available information. And then
1:00:53 the sort of inverse of that is some people listening right now with even small decisions are trying to
1:00:58 get to 100% certainty when obviously 100% certainty only exists in hindsight. You know, and that’s,
1:01:02 that’s a really good, that’s a really good point. I think that’s a lot of people struggle with that
1:01:08 when it comes to just, just to own your decision, like, like own it, like whatever you choose to do.
1:01:15 If you, if you make it not under high emotion and you do the best you can with the information that
1:01:19 you have at that time, make a decision. Like, you know, as they say, it’s, you know, if you make the
1:01:22 wrong decision, then it’s experience. If you make the right decision, then it’s confirmation.
1:01:28 I think about this a lot. I think about how maybe everyone listening could have a conversation with
1:01:32 themselves about their own relationship with uncertainty. Like how good are you dealing with
1:01:37 situations where you don’t have much information? Are you the type of person that’s able to make a
1:01:42 decision and not like sit in paralysis? And many people that come up to me in the street and say
1:01:48 they want a new life or a new this or a new that are choosing like the certain misery of their
1:01:54 current life versus the uncertainty they see as they look out into the void of like quitting the job and
1:02:01 going and playing violin in Peru or something. And, um, you know, you, you, you bring up, you bring up
1:02:06 something that, um, so in one of our, one of our recent classes that we taught this month, we talked
1:02:11 about owning decision. Right. And I shared the story with the community and it had a pretty profound
1:02:19 effect. And so I was, uh, as a police officer, I was on patrol. It was late at night. I’m driving down
1:02:25 just this two lane road, kind of in the middle of nowhere. And I pull over to the side and I’m just
1:02:31 kind of like watching from a, from an angle, just people driving up and down this road. This car flies
1:02:37 by, goes through a stop sign, doesn’t stop. It’s a very nice luxury sedan. So I turn on my lights,
1:02:42 pull them over. And I said, how you doing? And he’s like, I’m all right. I can tell this guy’s just
1:02:48 like, he’s flat drunk. And I shine my light into his passenger. Uh, and he’s just like, he’s passed
1:02:53 out. Like he has, he has, he’s not even coherent that I’m probably standing there. So I get his driver’s
1:02:57 license and I’m like, look, man, you’re, you’re pretty bad off. And he’s like, are you going to call
1:03:01 my dad? And I said, why would I do that? He goes, man, he goes, this is his car. He’s like,
1:03:08 he’s going to be upset. I said, all right. So I go back to my patrol car. And I, I look at this kid
1:03:13 in terms of, he’s had no priors. He’s 16. He has no prior driving record. So I’m making, so what’s my
1:03:20 decision now? I can call for a DWI unit to come and give this guy a field sobriety test. And he’s going
1:03:26 to fail just because I could tell how drunk he was, or I could call his dad. Now I have to make
1:03:31 a decision because I have that type of discretion. So I have to think, do I take this kid? Do I have
1:03:38 this kid go to jail and tow his dad’s car? Or do I call his dad and hope that’s the right decision
1:03:44 because his dad will find a way to make sure this doesn’t happen again. So I had our dispatch, give me
1:03:49 his phone, his parents’ phone number. And I called his dad. It’s 11 o’clock at night and mom answers.
1:03:56 And I’m like, you know, you know, Mrs. Smith, this is, you know, Deputy O’Neill. I’m out here
1:04:01 with your son, Jacob. Oh my God, how is he? I’m like, he’s fine. And I’m like, I think he’s been
1:04:06 drinking too much. And I want to know if you want to come get him. She’s like, can you talk to my
1:04:11 husband? I said, sure. He gets on the phone, same thing. And he’s like, thank you. I will make sure
1:04:15 this doesn’t happen again. I will be there in five minutes. I have no idea what happens at the end of
1:04:20 this, but I made that decision at that time. The reason I’m sharing this is because when I told that
1:04:25 story in our community, I asked everybody on the platform because it’s very engaging. And I said,
1:04:29 and Evie asked this question actually. And she said, how many of you would do the same thing Desmond did?
1:04:32 Probably should give context there that Evie is your wife.
1:04:33 Evie’s my wife.
1:04:34 Evie Pompouris?
1:04:37 Yes. A lot of people put it in the comments. Like I would do the same thing. Good for him. The kids
1:04:43 shouldn’t go to jail. And Evie was just like, I would do the exact opposite thing. I would have taken
1:04:50 him to jail. I would have towed the car because I don’t know if the consequences of what his dad would
1:04:54 do is, is it going to outweigh the fact that he’s going to go to jail? And she’s like, what if I let
1:04:59 him go? And he does the same thing next week because he’s not, you know, he doesn’t care what
1:05:04 his father thinks. And she’s like, that to me was a decision that I would have made. So I bring that up
1:05:11 for this purpose. We both made a completely different decision. I made it for the reasons I did. She made
1:05:15 it for the reasons that she did. Metaphorically, mine was true. This is just what she said she would
1:05:23 have done. The point was, is that we both owned it. And a lot of times I think what happens going back
1:05:29 to what you just said is people are so afraid to make a decision for a number of different reasons.
1:05:34 And so they just choose not to. Now, again, people could look at this, you know, your audience could
1:05:38 look at this and be like, he should have taken him to jail. I understand all of that. I had the
1:05:42 discretion and that’s the decision I made. And I would make that decision every time. But it’s, it’s,
1:05:48 it’s less about that story and more about when you decide on something with the information you have
1:05:52 at the moment, do you own it? Or do you, as you said, do you look back later and have hindsight
1:05:57 bias and be like, Oh, I should have known. You can’t do that. So many people try to live their
1:06:03 life in reverse like that. And looking back, it’s impossible. It’s impossible to know. So I do think
1:06:08 in kind of a, to expand on what you said, I do think when it talks about owning your decisions and,
1:06:17 and being, being thoughtful as it relates to why you’re doing and what you’re doing and taking
1:06:23 command of yourself and being, being a self leader decisions is making that is what it is to go back
1:06:26 to the uncertainty aspects.
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1:08:47 talked about today that really surprised you in the research that really caused a paradigm shift in what
1:08:54 you thought communication was and now what you think it is? Yeah. The research showed that your ability to
1:09:02 build rapport with a person is what gives you the most power in terms of that connection. And different
1:09:07 people, you know, how do you build rapport? Most people think that this is one of those
1:09:12 things where you’re just, you’re just, you’re overly kind. You’re very complimentary.
1:09:17 You’re talking about the weather and now we’ve built rapport and then we’re good. It’s not how you build
1:09:21 rapport. We’re built, we’re building rapport is understanding values in terms of a person.
1:09:25 Rapport is understanding, you know, a person’s presence and what they’re needing from you.
1:09:32 If I’m paying attention to you and I’m engaged with you and I’m making you feel seen and heard
1:09:39 and understood and by proxy, by the reciprocity of doing that, you do the same thing for me,
1:09:49 that’s rapport. When it comes into building rapport with somebody, read the room. If I came in and I have
1:09:55 a list of questions and I see you that you’re, there’s some emotional state that you’re showing.
1:10:01 If I want to connect with you, I ask about that. I need to put my stuff aside before I can have the
1:10:05 conversation I want to have. I probably have to have the conversation you want to have. And at that
1:10:10 moment, it may be understanding what is going on in your headspace. I can say, Hey, Steven, you know,
1:10:15 I’m Desmond O’Neill. You know, I know you’re brought in this morning for, for these reasons.
1:10:20 It’s obvious to me right now that you seem really upset. Can you tell me what’s going on right now?
1:10:26 And you could say, you know, I don’t know what’s going on. I’m super scared. I’ve never been in jail
1:10:30 before. My mom’s sick at home and I don’t know if there’s anybody that take it to her. Now, how much
1:10:35 information now do I have by the way that I can connect with you? Because if you tell me I am
1:10:39 freaked out, I don’t know what’s going on. What do I now do? Do I go back to be like, well, that sucks
1:10:44 and go back to my list of questions? Or do I say, how best can I help you with that?
1:10:45 And this builds rapport.
1:10:51 Yes. Because what I’m doing is I’m showing empathy. I’m listening to you. I’m giving you
1:10:56 what you want. I’m lessening your ambiguity. I’m orienting you in terms of the direction that you’re
1:11:00 asking me to take you. You’re asking me for clarity in terms of what’s going to happen. I’m going to
1:11:04 answer that. I’m showing them that I am paying attention to them. I’m being authentic. I’m going
1:11:07 to follow up with the things that I do because I’m going to come back later and be like, Hey,
1:11:11 we checked on your mom. She was good. We pulled your aunt in. Your aunt came and took care of her.
1:11:15 If anything else comes up, let me know. I do have some questions that I need to get to. This is
1:11:20 important part of the investigation, but I can only imagine that there’s a lot on your mind. And if
1:11:24 things come up through our conversation, please, please ask me. And that’s rapport.
1:11:28 In those situations, I’m hearing many of the things that I read in that book, Influence by Robert
1:11:33 Cialdini. Cialdini. I’m hearing reciprocity. Yep. You’ve done them a favor. So now they’re more likely
1:11:44 to answer your questions. Reciprocity is giving somebody something with the expectation that somewhere
1:11:48 in the future, they will give you something else. It’s not a transactional thing. It’s not like the only
1:11:56 reason I’m doing this is because I want something from you in exchange. That’s transaction.
1:12:00 So when you checked on that person’s mom, that was reciprocity.
1:12:05 That was me following up with a commitment of saying that this is what I’m going to do for you.
1:12:07 You can do with it what you want.
1:12:10 But you know that doing that is going to increase the probability that they
1:12:11 answer your questions.
1:12:17 No, I do that regardless. He could have said, you know what? I appreciate you. Thank you for
1:12:23 checking on my mom. I want a lawyer. I don’t want to talk to you. You know what I’m going to do? I’m
1:12:26 going to check on his mom. You know why? Because that’s what I said I was going to do. You know why?
1:12:31 Because that’s my self-congruence. That’s what I do as a person. When I give somebody my word,
1:12:35 I’m going to follow up with it. So in a situation like that, I will do those things because that’s
1:12:37 what I’ve told him I’m going to do.
1:12:42 Is there anything else on the point of having difficult conversations that we haven’t
1:12:47 covered in your mind? Because I know there’s loads of people that they want to get better at having
1:12:52 those tricky conversations and also just dealing with, I think we see a lot is like people very keen
1:12:56 to deal with difficult people. Is there anything there that we haven’t touched on? We’ve got the
1:12:59 plan framework, but just want to check if there’s nothing we’ve missed.
1:13:05 No, I just think it was a plan framework and it’s not about making things complicated. It’s actually
1:13:10 about, you know, there’s, there’s things that you should take out, you know, when it comes to
1:13:16 communication, as opposed to always adding things in, you know, it really becomes like extinction before
1:13:21 acquisition. So I can, I can tell you when it comes to better communication, there are three things that
1:13:28 you should stop doing right now. One of them is to stop trying to be right. One of them is to stop
1:13:33 telling people you understand. And the third one is stop giving people your unsolicited opinion.
1:13:39 Now to break those down, stop, stop trying to be right. And we talked about that one a little bit.
1:13:45 The second one is stop telling people that you understand. This is what I mean by that. You can
1:13:50 understand, you can understand a person’s words. You will never understand their headspace in terms of
1:13:57 the specificity of that. And so what you will see is if you’re sharing a story, like if you shared a
1:14:02 personal story with me, let’s say, let’s say your father had passed away and I’m like, you know what,
1:14:07 Steven, I completely understand. Um, my dad passed away too when I was young. So now we’re connected.
1:14:16 I have just, I’ve just taken away a moment for you because I made it about me. Cause I, I thought
1:14:22 that I understood something that you had experienced. In fact, your experience of a death or your experience
1:14:26 your father at that moment is going to be completely different than mine. But for me to tell you that I
1:14:33 understand is, is short-sighted. My girlfriend tells me sometimes that she wants me to say that I
1:14:41 understand. And I think what she’s saying is that maybe she wants to feel understood. And so she might
1:14:46 be explaining how she feels. And then if I said, you know, I, I, I do understand.
1:14:51 But do you, sometimes I get to the point where I do understand what she’s saying.
1:14:54 You understand what she’s saying, but do you understand how she truly feels?
1:14:58 No. Okay. But that becomes, cause I don’t feel that you don’t feel it, but she just wants me to
1:15:02 acknowledge. She wants you to acknowledge it. So the difference is in terms of it was being genuine,
1:15:05 where you’re like, look, I really understand how you feel. You probably don’t.
1:15:09 How do I make her feel understood in that regard then without telling her I understand?
1:15:16 To feel understood is to, is to listen to her, to be like, look, you know, I, I, it sounds,
1:15:20 sounds tough. Sounds, you know, like this is something really on your mind. Like,
1:15:23 and it kind of goes into our other thing where like, stop giving people your opinion.
1:15:26 You know, if she’s, if she’s expressing things to you and she’s sharing how she wants to feel,
1:15:30 she’s probably not looking for you to tell her what to do, unless she’s asked you for that.
1:15:33 The first thing that we always do, and it happens all the time is like,
1:15:37 let me tell you what I think. Try to fix it. Try to fix it without having all of the,
1:15:44 the emotions and the complexities of why it’s not being done. And so to go back to with your
1:15:47 girlfriend, it really is just a matter of trying to understand, seeing where she’s going with it,
1:15:52 asking her, you know, if there are ways that, that, you know, we can, we can work to make it
1:15:56 better or help you with this. But as Steven, if she’s just like, I want you to understand,
1:16:00 I would just tell her I understand just because that’s what she’s looking for. You’re not going to have
1:16:05 it in there. But if you generally went to somebody and you’re like, oh, I understand. That’s what I’m
1:16:09 asking you not to do. That’s what you shouldn’t do. You shouldn’t generally think that you truly
1:16:12 understand another person because then you’re going like, you’re convinced that, you know,
1:16:15 and you’re no longer curious in terms of how they actually feel.
1:16:22 And on that last point about giving the opinion, a lot of time people, you know, when they’re
1:16:29 sharing something, they just want you to create the space. Simon Sinek said to me, because most of the
1:16:33 time people just want you to sit in the mud with them. And like, I naturally show up with like my
1:16:36 toolbox to try and fix the situation. But a lot of the time, especially with my, my girlfriend,
1:16:38 maybe she just wants me to listen.
1:16:43 Most people do, right? It becomes like this identity headspace where people just are looking
1:16:47 for the sounding board for you, for your girlfriend. Like you’re the, you’re the guy, you’re the person.
1:16:51 And that’s what she comes to you for. That’s your job in a lot of ways. And I don’t mean that in a
1:16:55 negative thing, but it’s just one of those things where if that’s what she needs from you, then that’s
1:16:59 what you give her. And a lot of people just want, as Simon Sinek said, where you said it, like just sit
1:17:02 in the mud with them. And that’s what they’re asking you. If she turns to you and say, Stephen,
1:17:09 what would you do here? Then she’s asking you, but if not, then don’t give it something I need to
1:17:15 work on. Yeah, we all do. Yeah. Cause you, cause you, I don’t know, something about maybe the male
1:17:20 brain, but it’s probably not just men. Can I talk real quick just about our training community before
1:17:26 we go? Is that okay with you? Yeah. Because it is one of those where like now, uh, what I spend all
1:17:31 my time with is, is I’m an instructor for beyond Bulletproof, which is a training platform that,
1:17:38 that Evie and I, that Evie and I host. And it really comes down to three prongs of how do people
1:17:43 helping people think, helping people act and helping people leave with purpose. And I know we talked about
1:17:47 those things, but the reason I bring that up is because there are so many people, Stephen, that
1:17:51 just as you had talked about, they’re, they’re looking for, they’re looking for some help. They’re
1:17:56 looking for some clarity. They’re looking for somebody to influence them in some way because they
1:18:00 don’t have good emotional regulation and they’re trying to get better in their relationships.
1:18:05 We’ve been fortunate to have that. And that’s kind of where, you know, I don’t, I don’t do a lot of
1:18:10 social media. You know, I don’t do a lot of other, other things because I spend my time here.
1:18:14 And as you know, we have a closing tradition on the podcast where the last guest leaves a question for
1:18:22 the next. And the question that’s been left for you is what decision do you most regret? And would
1:18:29 things have turned out better if you had made it differently? Ouch, that’s a spicy one.
1:18:40 So I, as much as this wants to be a spicy one, I can, I can categorically tell you that there’s not
1:18:45 a decision that I’ve made that I wish I would have made different. And I say that because it kind of
1:18:50 goes back to, I own my decisions in terms of the things that I’ve done. I, even when the story that
1:18:54 I shared about, you know, when I was a police officer with the kid who was drinking, like I own those
1:19:01 decisions and in truth, like all of those decisions have manifested itself for me to sit down here with
1:19:05 you today and have this conversation. And so I can’t tell you that there’s something that I look
1:19:09 back to that I regret because I think that there’s things we learn from, but I think for the most part,
1:19:13 I don’t use hindsight bias. I don’t look back to say, I wish there was something else. I use those
1:19:18 things to, uh, to grow and to learn and be better. And, you know, had I made a different decision,
1:19:23 maybe you and I wouldn’t be sitting here. So none. But you still, I mean, if someone asked me that,
1:19:28 I’d have loads of answers. Like what? Just like the ways that I handled situations in my life as
1:19:31 an employer. I got, you know, I shouldn’t, I shouldn’t have said that. I shouldn’t have done
1:19:35 that. I, you know, when my girlfriend said that, you know, I should have just listened and I wish I
1:19:41 had, because I think our relationship would be better or, you know, some grudge I held or whatever,
1:19:48 you know, like the messiness of being a emotional human. So let me, let me ask this. And I think,
1:19:56 you know, I do question at times that that type of, I wish and I regret, I think that also changes
1:20:01 who you are as a person. If you’re like, I would have gone back and done, we, we can all do that in
1:20:06 some, and I don’t mean that’s petty, but an awesome petty way. When I was writing my thesis, I would
1:20:10 always come to my thesis advisor and she’d be like, nope, this isn’t good. This isn’t good. This isn’t
1:20:15 good. And so when I was done, there was like, I had like 30, she’s like, just put this in the parking
1:20:19 lot. Like maybe we’ll look at this. Maybe we won’t. So when I was done with my thesis, I had 30 pages
1:20:24 that were in the parking lot and I went to her and I feel like this is a lot of mistakes. And she goes,
1:20:31 you had to have this to have this. And so when, when I hear that, when it’s just like, oh, I wish I
1:20:34 would have done these things different. You would be a different person, right? It’s all those
1:20:38 perspectives. It’s all those little things that you code and become a different person. You would be a
1:20:42 different person if you had done those things differently. I’m not saying better or worse, but I’m saying,
1:20:45 I don’t, I don’t think that’s a reason to look back and regret things.
1:20:49 Yeah. I probably would still have those mistakes in my future if I hadn’t made them in the past as
1:20:54 well. So maybe, maybe the very fact that I can identify them means that my self-awareness
1:20:58 grew based on them. I like, I’m never going to treat someone like that again, or I’m never going
1:21:04 to say that thing again because I learned the lesson. So I’m a better person today because of that.
1:21:04 Yeah.
1:21:06 Desmond, thank you.
1:21:06 Thank you.
1:21:10 Thank you so much for doing what you do. And this is your, you said this is your first podcast,
1:21:12 which is exciting.
1:21:12 It’s my first podcast.
1:21:13 Thank you so much.
1:21:14 Thank you.
1:21:22 If there’s anything we need, it is connection, especially in the world we’re living in today.
1:21:27 And that is exactly why we created these conversation cards, because on this show,
1:21:30 when I sit here with my guests and have those deep, intimate conversations,
1:21:36 this remarkable thing happens time and time again. We feel deeply connected to each other.
1:21:40 At the end of every episode, the guest I’m interviewing leaves a question for the next guest,
1:21:45 and we’ve turned them into these conversation cards. And we’ve added these twist cards to make
1:21:50 your conversations even more interesting. And there are so many more twists along the way with
1:21:54 the conversation cards. This is the brand new edition. And for the first time ever, I’ve added to
1:22:00 the pack this gold card, which is an exclusive question from me, but I’m only putting the gold cards in
1:22:06 the first run of conversation cards. So get yours now before the limited edition gold cards are all
1:22:08 gone. Head to the link in the description below.
1:22:37 I’ve just got back from a few weeks away on my speaking tour in Asia with my team. And it was
1:22:41 absolutely incredible. Thank you to everybody that came. We traveled to new cities. We did live shows
1:22:45 in places I’d never been to before. And during our downtime, talking about what’s coming for each of us.
1:22:49 And now that we’re back, my team has started planning their time off over the holiday period.
1:22:54 Some are heading home, some are going traveling, and one or two of them have decided to host their
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