The PERColator Podcast
The PERColator Podcast
Episode 47: Managing Emotions in Collective Bargaining
Chris and Loyd discuss managing emotions in collective bargaining and share insights from Ethan Kross' Shift: Managing Your Emotions- So They Don't Manage You.
References:
Ethan Kross' Shift: Managing Your Emotions- So They Don't Manage You
In this episode of the Percolator Podcast, Chris Casillas and Lloyd Williford discuss managing emotions and collective bargaining and share insights from Ethan Cross's
"Shift:Managing Your Emotions So They Don't Manage You." We hope you enjoy the episode.
Chris Casillas:Hello Percolators! Welcome to the Percolator Podcast. My name is Chris Casillas, one of the co-founders of the negotiation project at PERC and one of the hosts of the Perccalator. And I'm joined today by my colleague and good friend Lloyd Williford. Lloyd, how you doing?
Loyd Willaford:I'm great.
Chris Casillas:You know, we got another good topic today, one that we've actually explored a bit in the past. That topic being kind of this idea of the impact of our kind of emotional state on the bargaining process; how that affects us as negotiators in those environments; and we've talked about some different strategies and tools and techniques around that. But recently, I came across a book that's titled"Shift," written by a professor at the University of Michigan by the name of Ethan Cross. It was really compelling to me for a number of reasons, one being it kind of fit within a number of themes that I have talked about in someof my trainings in the past on kind of conflict resolution and kind of managing the negotiation process. And so it was kind of reinforcing some ideas and strategies that I had heard about before, but it also kind of just stitched everything together in a nice way. And so, that was kind of the impetus for inviting you to join in here and talk about it. But before we get into the specifics of the book, this has always been a topic of interest to me because- maybe because of my own personal experience as a negotiator and despite my general kind of calm, collected demeanor, I can assure you, as I'm sure some members of our audience could attest to, you know, as a negotiator, definitely had my moments of kind of being overwhelmed by some kind of emotional state and that impacting the process in some very significant ways. And I think we definitely see that as mediators as well, where, you know, maybe it's not, you know, throwing something and storming out of a room, but you know, people getting frustrated and upset or sad, kind of overwhelmed by those moments in the bargaining process; and I think that can have some real significant impacts on the process, and so thinking about how we can kind of better manage those emotions in those moments, I think, is really important to thinking about how to be more successful in that process. And so for me, especially, kind of, particularly in my mediator state, I can see various reasons and situations where impasses between parties result. And I think this is one area that can be a cause for some of that impasse, where parties kind of are overwhelmed by the emotions of a particular moment, and that's understandable, right? I mean, we've- we're dealing with really significant issues that are really weighty topics. They're complex. Sometimes these negotiations can drag on for months, if not years. There's a lot that we invest into this process, and so it means a lot to a lot of people. And so it's understandable that sometimes we can kind of lose control of our emotional state in particular moments. But when that happens, it can have real significant impacts on the negotiation process. And in some ways, it can kind of result in this kind of downward spiral where, you know, my frustration in the moment and how I'm responding to that and reacting to that causes kind of an equal reaction on your part is kind of the Newtonian law of of negotiations, right? There's for every action, there's an equal reaction kind of situation. And so we can kind of go down these cycles, these negative cycles, and, you know, situations can really blow up. And we know from research and experience, I think, as well that when we get stuck in these really tough cycles of negative emotions, you know, it can impair our ability to be creative and, you know, problem solve and discourages collaboration. It can inhibit or impair trust, a topic that you and I have talked about before, Lloyd. It can reduce communication. You know, we want, if somebody is mad, you know, a lot of us want to kind of get out of that situation, avoid it, and that can kind of shut down communications. And we know all of these things, individually or in combination, can make it harder to reach a resolution. And so thinking about ways in which we can manage or control those emotions so that we don't get kind of sucked into this downward spiral and that we can kind of keep moving forward in the negotiation process and not get stuck in these situations, I think, is a really important topic, and that's where this book comes into play. But before I pivot into that, any thoughts on all of that, Lloyd?
Loyd Willaford:Yeah, I 100%, you know, agree with you, Chris. These emotions absolutely can be one of the things that leads into kind of an impasse where you kind of get into this cycle of response. You know, somebody acts out, understandably, they're frustrated. They walk out and/or they do something, and the other party reacts to that, and then, all of a sudden, you're no longer really in the negotiation process. You're in this kind of cycle. And I like, you know, the analogy of physics and Newtonian mechanics. I often think of this stuff as like psychic inertia. We kind of keep doing the things that we've been doing. Once you're in this emotional state in which it leads to, you know, the title here, I think, is good; it's"Shift," right? It's a different force. You're bringing some force that disrupts that inertia and maybe get you into going in a different direction. I also like the subtitle "Managing," because this is not eliminate emotion. Sometimes I think we think, "Oh, we just need to be rational. We need to get to our real nature, which is rational calculating machines. If we could just sit down and talk to each other and educate each other, we would get to an agreement." That's not the real world. We're driven by our emotions, and so there's no getting out of it, right? We have emotions. What we do with those, we have some measure. And you know, when I say some I mean, not always, right, we just get overwhelmed, and then we react, and then we have to deal with the consequences. So I really like this book in the sense that I think it really kind of gets at the core of what the negotiation project, generally is about, which is about taking, you know, research and insights from scholars and, you know, psychologists and all this, and saying, "Okay, how do we then take that and put it into use, practically?" This is a very practical book, probably one of the more practical books that we talked about in the show, and really pragmatic. And it makes this point that not all tools are going to work for all people. We've talked about that before, too. Like, okay, we're going to talk about some things that are going to be useful but remember, they're tools. It's like a hammer. You can use a hammer to build a house, or you can use a hammer to beat somebody over the head. You know, you get to choose how you're going to use it, and also how, you know, some people are more skilled at one thing or another, and do what works. That was kind of the message that I took here, is that here's the things, things to be aware of. Pick something that works, and if it works, it's great. There's no universal fix-it. And Cross talks about this, like there is no universal shifter. There are a bunch of different kinds of shifters that are going to be helpful, depending on your background or the circumstance that you find yourself in, but to be aware that this is a tool. These are tools that are available, that your emotional states will come and go, and that your emotional states actually impact the negotiation. And again, when I was reading this, I kept thinking about our episode about Kahneman and thinking fast, thinking slow, and the Cialdini episode on influence, that basically that we need to really be thinking about how do we take in information and know that there's an emotional response to that, and then having that knowledge? And I really appreciate there was a consistent message like, knowledge is not going to save you. You have to be able to take some kind of action, and how are we going to do that and some real practical ways to get to taking a different action, because, you know, again, knowing is not the same as doing. And I certainly have a lot of experience in that in my life, like knowing that I should be getting to the gym more the so practical, but it regularly does not lead me to getting to the gym more regularly always.
Chris Casillas:condoning or promoting using a hammer to hit anyone at any point in time. Just to be clear on that acknowledges the reality, the truth that none of us can deny, that emotions are central to our lives. The point here is not to banish emotions, or, you know, ignore them, or, you know, smush them down so we don't, we try not to experience them in these kind of more professional settings. That's ludicrous, you know, until the AI bots, you know, take over the whole process, perhaps sooner than we might think. You know, for the time being, that's, you know, central to our humanity. And as he points out, it's a critical trait that we've evolved over the millennia to get to where we are as a species. You know, emotions are, as I think you mentioned, kind of important pieces of information for us. If we're feeling scared or anxious or nervous, you know, it's not that we're just kind of stuck in this weird emotional space; it's telling us something about our environment, and that's so important. And so, you know, Cross, Ethan Cross kind of talks about the fact that the point here is not to try and stop these emotions from happening, but to recognize going to happen. You know, you watch a sad movie, you're going to start crying, or, you know, feel that sadness. That's an automated response. But we're not powerless to then prevent ourselves from change or shift the direction from going from sad to despondent. can manage it in a way to allow us to be, you know, continuously moving forward. And beyond that, he cites quite a bit of research talking about the fact that there's a- I don't know if you remember reading this part, but he references this big study out of New Zealand that started many, many years ago, tracking children from a very young age, and as they grew up into adults, and demonstrating through that data how the ability of some to more successfully, kind of manage their emotions over the course of their development and into their adult lives was directly correlated with more, you know, success in life, more productivity, better relationship building, better mental health reports. And so we know that, you know, people who are more successful at managing these emotions, have- it's correlated with positive outcomes in a number of different ways. you said, kind of a number of different kind of tools that are available to all of us to use at any given time, and some in a particular moment may be more useful than others, or certain things may resonate more with you than than they do with me. And so the point isn't to just kind of have like this one kind of go to trick that's gonna, you know, snap you out of whatever state you're in every time, but to think of this kind of repertoire of tools that we can utilize in different situations and different circumstances. So, maybe we can, if you'll bear the pun here, maybe we can shift our conversation, Lloyd, to kind of talking about some of those, those specific ideas.
Loyd Willaford:When you're talking about, you know, these emotions are just sort of automatic. I think that's a real important point, that they're triggered by environment, which may have to do with people's past experiences. One of the most famous examples of this, descriptions of this phenomena is from Proust, real famous French novelist. This is a story about, you know, take a bite of a madaline, a little French cookie, and then I'm transported into this world of, you know, my childhood and life experiences. And just, it's like, you know, Proust is writing this stuff in his bed as an invalid and all of a sudden, you know, just the taste of the cookie or the touch is transporting, and that happens to us all the time. And I can think of examples of in my own life like the smell, for example, of like wildfires. Brings me back to the start of school. I grew up in eastern Washington, and they used to burn the fields in the fall right before school. So every time I smell kind of burning, you know, grass, or anything like that, I'm like instantly transported to, "Oh, yes, this." And so those sensory experiences, so things like, for that example, smell or taste of a cookie, or a particular sound, what kind of triggers a emotional response. And so one of the shifts that Cross talks about is knowing that, though that will happen, is there- can we have things in place so that when we have an emotional response that- maybe, you know, is causing us difficulty, like we're angry or frustrated or whatever- can we have a sensory experience that will sort of shift us in a different perspective? And sometimes that's something you just get shifted automatically. He gives the example of having a difficult conversation with his daughter, and all of a sudden, this, you know, song comes on the radio, and all of a sudden they're singing the song. And now they shifted their perspective from the difficult thing that they were doing that was making everybody sad, and now we're all happy. And you see this all the time, and this is something you can actually do this deliberately. You don't have to wait for it to just automatically happen. And so Cross gives examples of things like, you know, having a picture of somebody that you can look at, or, you know, having a, you know, a piece of chocolate, or something that will, you know, gives you this different experience as a kind of shift in perspective, which I thought, you know, and it does go on to say, "Okay, yeah, that's great. You can have all this stuff. Are you going to remember to use it?" We'll talk about that a little bit later, because it kind of gets to that toward the end, but, that's just a small example of how these shifts happen. And then we have some- can have some agency in actually kind of creating those shifts. And again, the first example that Cross talks about is the sort of sensory experiences.
Chris Casillas:Right? And how we can deliberately kind of trigger those experiences to move us from one state to another, or to take us from a 10 on the emotional Richter scale, so to speak, you know, back down to a seven or a six or a five. You know, those, those kind of things are, they're the tools that are available to us. So I can think of in the context of like, you know, in a bargain, like you're getting, you know, really frustrated or, you know, upset by something that somebody said. And you you can kind of think ahead of time, "Okay," you know, "I know that there's a trigger here, kind of, what can I do to get myself out of that?" Whether it be, you know, you mentioned, like a picture or some food or something. It could be taking a walk. I remember myself, this was many, many years ago, but there was a negotiation that I was in, and I won't, you know, provide any details or names or anything of that nature, but the negotiator on the other side would have this habit of kind of saying a particular thing that was just an irritant to me. It would just annoy me every time I heard it. And it came up, kind of time and time again. And it became a little bit of a internal joke among my team, like, you know, every time that thing got said, you know, people would kind of, like, look at me and smile a little bit. But it was irritating to me. And I remember one of the people on my team, like, they kind of sense that from me, and they knew it. And so they developed this little thing, like when it happened, and they could see me getting a little frustrated, they'd slide me a note that said, "Knock, knock." And it was like, you know, it was like we're gonna start like a stupid little knock, knock joke, you know. But it was like a little thing for me to like, you know, I'd always like, every time I'd see it, it was like, "Oh, okay. Like, I gotta calm down." But it was also like a nice little like, to transport me out of the that moment, you know. So that's, I think, kind of what he's talking about, a little bit about where we can have some of these- we can deliberately call upon some of these different sensory experiences, just external things that we can kind of pull into our environment at a particular moment to take us out of a state of mind that might not be helpful in the long run.
Loyd Willaford:Yeah, that's a great example of the, you know, just a physical sensation of somebody getting something in a note and then reading it, okay, visually, "Okay, yeah. Oh, okay, yeah, that's okay. I now have my perspective" and, you know, and that kind of stuff, those little inside processes that we can use to sort of deal with a frustrating topic, you know. On the topic of people doing the same thing over and over again, or multiple things, you know, I've heard stories of people that will, they'll have bingo cards, for example. They will, ahead of time, are going "Okay, I'm gonna hear all these things, and every time I hear that, I'm gonna put a big stamp on the bingo cards so that I," you know, "Know that this was coming." And Cross talks about this later, about, you know, how do you, you know, develop a plan for and really is, it is about planning ahead, kind of we've talked before about, you know, this stuff is really, it's nice to hear about. We talk about it, it sounds really simple, but it turns out it is difficult to do in practice, and it takes some prior planning and practice and even implementing some of these things in other areas of your life so that you develop this sort of auto- you know, relatively automatic response, or at least open the space up. And what I was reminded of during is some of the the other, you know, Cross talks a little bit about some of the neuroscience research about, you know, when these emotions come up. The purpose of the emotion is to kind of connect things. But what happens is, there is a part of our brain that actually connects things and makes logical conclusions, the frontal cortex, but when the emotional response basically overrides that, it shuts it down. You cannot do logical processing of information. So it's a physical, there's a physical piece here.
Chris Casillas:Yeah, and I think it's what we call the- we've talked about it before, kind of that amygdala hijack, where that part of your brain just, you know, becomes- it just overwhelms, and it like short circuits our ability to be logical at that point, which is challenging in a complex situation like a negotiation, right?
Loyd Willaford:And there's a reason for that, because you don't want to be- if you're, you know, need to get away from the sabertooth tiger, you do not want to be contemplating all your options. You just want to be getting away, right? So, so we don't want to, you know; there's a reason to shut that down. Of course, in our modern world, you know, we don't have too many of these situations where we never want to be contemplating our, you know, different options, and negotiations is one of them. In fact, ideally negotiations you do want to be, you know, contemplating your options. And so to know that, hey, yeah, you can have that amygdala hijack. And then, so this kind of idea of shifting is really a way of using that and saying, "Well, let's shift away from this," and then we open up some space. Maybe where we kind of reconnect with our frontal cortex so we can make different sorts of decisions.
Chris Casillas:Yeah. What else? What else stood out to you in terms of some of the other tools?
Loyd Willaford:so things like the- you know, so Cross breaks these things down into sort of the two kind of general categories, sort of, an inside-out shifter, and that sensory, is one of those examples of changes in sensory, is another example of the inside out. The other example are shifts in attention. So, you know, the distraction, and you mentioned this, okay, we we can, we can try to avoid and distract. And then we kind of naturally sometimes do that. And that's natural. Sometimes we go,"Well, that's bad," right? We need to feel this stuff. We need to process it. We need to take it in. And his point is sometimes, you know, avoiding, a total avoidance is not going to work because it's going to come out in other places. Like you're angry, and so I'm angry at something, maybe I feel like I can't really express that. So rather than expressing that anger, I'm just going to, you know, put back a proposal that, for example, a proposal that expresses my anger indirectly. Like, for example, you know, this might be a situation where we might get into a regressive bargaining situation. Well, I'm going to punish you for you not doing what I want. And even so, I'm not expressing that directly, but I'm going to do it in this other forum, which has consequences. In case of regressive bargaining, it can actually have legal consequences, but to sort of have a different way of shifting that, knowing we need to shift the attention. So sometimes it can be something simple as taking a break or, you know, in some cases, that could be lengthy breaks, right? The example of distraction I really liked here is, so Cross compares his, I don't know if this is really a fair comparison, but I like this, this contrast here. Part of what drove this this book was Cross's experiences with his grandmother, who was a Holocaust survivor, who saw some really horrific stuff and never wanted to talk about it with with Cross. And so well, she's got all this emotional stuff, and so the grandma had other ways of dealing with this stuff; she needs to kind of get into, you know, taking care of her family and all of this, and are sort of distractions. And Cross compares this to Dennis Rodman disappearing for four days before the NBA finals and saying, you know, that seems like really odd behavior, like you think you'd want to be able to, you know, deal with this. But that was Rodman, that four day thing was what he needed to do to be productive when it came to game time. And so the grandmother's experience of being distracted, that's what she had to do to deal with this. And that distraction can be a positive thing if it accomplishes the goal of being able to sort of exist in the world. And, you know, that's why I say I'm not sure this is the greatest example of comparing. I think the contrast is interesting ways of finding a particularly sort of the kind of rooted stuff we may need to just completely shift things. And that can be things like in negotiations, that might be choosing a different location to negotiate in, or, you know, just something that sort of changes things up, so that your perspective starts to shift a little bit.
Chris Casillas:I think that gets into a little bit too, you talked about kind of these space shifters, like kind of changing our external environment to also kind of move out of a particularly kind of negative space and help kind of moderate that. And that could be, you know, in our world of bargaining, that could be, you know, just getting into a new location, or maybe asking your counterpart on the other side of the table, "Hey, let's, you know, let's maybe we could talk about this topic. You know, just walk around the block a couple times and discuss what's going on," and kind of getting into that, just getting outside of the room, the physical room, interacting a little bit more with nature, just seeing some trees or some other, you know. Changing that environment can have a good way of helping us kind of moderate some of those intense feelings in a particular moment. As you say, it's not necessarily addressing- allowing us to kind of address the underlying emotional state, but it does allow us to kind of moderate in that moment to stay productive and healthy in other ways. And so, you know, if those feelings are really so strong that, you know, they continue to kind of reside in us, and we can't kind of get past them, you know, ultimately, I think he would say you're going to have to find some different ways to kind of really meaningfully address why you're feeling that way. But in the moment, it's not, it's a little bit counterintuitive to, I think what we hear a lot from therapists and other, you know, kind of some of the approaches in that way, where, you know, it's like we got to really confront everything in the moment. And he's saying, "No," you know, "It's okay to distract ourselves, to shift our attention for a little bit," to find, you know, move us to a different space, to kind of change our environment, to help us moderate those feelings in the moment so that we don't, in our case, you know, completely derail a negotiation because we're trying to stay kind of present with that particular emotional state. But that's really not conducive to us solving whatever particular problem is in front of us, if that makes sense.
Loyd Willaford:Yeah, it makes total sense. And, you know, there's the kind of, again, those kind of external things that you can do. And one of the other things in terms of changing a perspective, like thought processes around things. Cross gives some specific examples of one specific tool that sort of, it's a sort of an acronym, A, B, C, right? So we have this adverse event that we've experienced. Somebody's done something that makes us angry. And then we have a belief
about that event:"Okay, they're doing it because they're just being difficult, or that's just who they are." And then there's a consequence to that. The consequence is then I'm going to respond in time. You can't change the adverse event that's already happened. The thing you might be able to change is your belief about that event. And if you change the belief, that's going to change the consequence. And this is a really, kind of powerful idea you know about sort of language. We see the world with language. It frames up how we exist in the world, and then we react. So if we're going to change that reaction, it's this kind of reframing, we're going to change our belief. And again, that's all easier said than done. It's often, "Oh, we should focus on the-" you sometimes see this,"Oh, focus on the positive or find the positive." And that's a kind of simplistic way of looking at it. You know, the famous books on always on the sunny side right of life. That's, that's an example of this. That's a really, you know, to really look at what's our belief, and is that really kind of a pause, and because it's difficult to do that in the moment. So sometimes you might have to do these things in tandem, right? I change my perspective, and then I think,"Oh, it's my belief about this thing, what's driving this," you know, and to really get that, you know, little bit of distance between my reaction and I'm thinking thatif I have a different belief, I may get a different consequence. And other examples are like self talk, you know, these are all kind of always seem literally hokey, you know, affirmations. And interestingly, I didn't realize this. This is something I had not ever heard before. But like affirmations with using the third person as opposed to the first person. You can do it, as opposed to I can do it, is apparently much more effective because it's, and this Cross explanation made sense to me, like because it's sort of depersonalizing. It's like creating more distance. It's another one of these shifting from perspective, from me to a third party on the outside saying that. Because if somebody on the outside says you can do it, I'm gonna feel better about that than if I'm feeling like I'm frustrated and I can't do anything. That sort of self talk is another tool. Again, different things work for different people. That always seemed hokey to me, but apparently it does work for other people.
Chris Casillas:Yeah, yeah. Very powerful. He had a very powerful story there with one of those famous tennis players kind of having a meltdown in a match and taking a timeout and looking himself in the mirror and saying, "You've got this, you know, you're the champion," and then. it.
Loyd Willaford:It just seems to resonate more, so.
Chris Casillas:Yeah, real interesting stuff. You mentioned earlier, Lloyd, about, he kind of finishes the book talking about how, you know, a lot of this, you know, easier said than done. You know, we can be aware of these tools. I think they're very kind of, they very much kind of make sense on a very practical way. Many of us probably have done some of these things at different times, but when you're in these kind of intense moments, you know, easier said than done, right? And so I think at the end, he kind of talks about some strategies to actually kind of implement these different tools and have them at the ready, so to speak, so that when we're in these moments, we have these kind of go-to things that are almost like habitual or automated, so we don't have to put a lot of work into thinking about them. And I found that a nice way to kind of wrap this up because it's a lot of times you get all these things like, "Oh, just do this, and just do that," and then it's like, yeah, those are great ideas. But am I really going to do them in the moment? I don't know what you thought about that at the end.
Loyd Willaford:Yeah, I also thought that was great. And in particular, the biggest example, and it's kind of an all encompassing, I think Cross actually calls this the sort of universal shifter culture, like we've created an environment where we have, you know, norms, practices, things that we've already planned ahead of time, and we've already maybe anticipated some things, and we have a process to deal with those. So we know these things are going to happen. When they happen, here's how we plan to deal with them. It gives us an example of another acronym,"WHOOP." And again, kind of, there's a lot of kind of a little bit of cheesy stuff. And, you know, there's a reason why this stuff seems cheesy and trite. You know, trite doesn't mean not true. It just means, well, of course, that seems obvious, but it's not so obvious. And if it works, just the fact that it seems kind of trite and crazy, or not crazy, but trite and simplistic is not a reason not to use the tool. It's like a hammer. A Hammer is not a particularly sophisticated looking tool, like it's not as cool as you know, I'm trying to think of a good example. I was thinking like, Erector Sets or really fancy, complicated tools.
Chris Casillas:It's simple.
Loyd Willaford:It's simple, it's a tool. And this example is another one of those, and it's this acronym, "WHOOP," which is, you have a wish, something you'd like to have happen. What is the outcome that you want? What's an obstacle that might get in front of that? And then a plan for dealing with an obstacle and to do all to think about that ahead of time. And Cross gives the example of Navy SEALs, who do basically a bunch of disaster planning. Like, they go through every single scenario that they can think of that is going to cause a problem in whatever rate, and they do it over and over and over again, so that when they actually go out and do the thing, they've most of the things they've anticipated, and when they get something that hasn't been anticipated, they have a response to that. Like they don't just- it's like an automated, kind of positive, like a thoughtful, like, kind of building up this practice. And to actually have that institutionalized like this is the process that we use. In terms of labor relations, one of the things I thought about with the culture was interest based bargaining or IBB process. That's a culture, right? Everybody buys in to a set of norms, expectations, and practices, and that IBB process can be a way of managing these emotional things. And you know, you can have whatever institutional norms that you have, but to have a way of- that cultural things as a way of disrupting or shifting the emotional response to a particular event. So that, you know, Cross gives a bunch of different examples, but the one that he spends the most time on is Alcoholics Anonymous as a sort of culture of dealing with emotional responses. And so there's a whole bunch of things. Again, we don't have time to get into all of the details about this. Anticipating we're going to have an issue, what do we do in that situation, when? And this might be a thing seeing where you meet with a bargaining team. Okay, we're going to have a bargaining. We've dealt with this person before. We kind of know we can have an expectation. What do we expect to see. When, if we see these things happen, what is going to be our response? And so that you're not blindsided, I sometimes use a similar idea in mediation. I will try to prepare people for particular response, like, "Hey, just so you know, I would think that this is likely going to be the response. So you may want to think ahead a little bit." I may be wrong. Most of the time I'm not, but even if I'm wrong about this, this exercise of thinking ahead, like not just what's your immediate response, but what's got a response if they do this, if then, and this is that Navy SEAL thing: "If this happens, then we do this. If this happens, then we do this." So we've laid this stuff out ahead of time so that when we get this, we don't trigger that emotion. Okay, yeah, we anticipated this. We knew this was coming. Maybe we're frustrated, but here's the next check down the line, which I thought was that- using the Navy SEAL example, I thought was interesting. And again, the examples from AA, I thought, are also sort of telling about how you deal with a system or a culture that's set up ahead of time, and also, Cross talks about religions, religious examples, right? I think is also, I think I've mentioned this before, like, you know, having a community that you can be involved in that lets you deal with the emotions of life. And people have rituals. They have norms to practice. People go to church every week, or they brand or they meditate, or this culture that you just live in. And Cross talks about this, the air we breathe, that cultural kind of milieu. And we have these in workplaces, like PERC has a culture, right? We do certain things in a particular way. And that's a real powerful way of managing individual, you know, the emotions of any individual environment. So, I know that was a great way to end the book.
Chris Casillas:Yeah, and a fun acronym too, "WHOOP." I always think, you know, this is like, now I'm thinking of all these, you know, every time I hear it, it's like, "WHOOP, there it is." Like the song comes in my head, you know, and I kind of start to think about, okay, like, as you say, how can we- we know there's going to be these certain kind of triggers or irritants or frustration points for us, and we can think about how to respond to them ahead of time, so that we have these kind of automated things that we do. Maybe it's, you know, you're in a bargain, and you know the negotiator on the other side, you know, is kind of condescending, or some regularly kind of condescending toward you or something, and you know that's coming. So maybe your WHOOP strategy is to, you know, part of the plan there is that, you know, after each kind of joint session, you just walk around the block before you come back into, you know, a caucus, so you can just kind of get some of that energy out and frustration and take in a little bit of nature there for a sec. Or, you know, just to reset yourself. Or, I remember, I'd never done this, but I remember somebody telling me they were in a the pretty adversarial negotiations, tough thing. And, you know, there would always be a lot of back and forth, and at the beginning of each time they caucused, they put out a stopwatch or something, and they gave themselves two minutes to just kind of vent. And then when the watch, you know, the beeper went off. It was, you know, done. And then it was like, Okay, let's get to work, you know, thinking. So it was, like, this kind of cathartic, you know, just anybody could say what they want for two minutes and then it was done, you know. And not that there wouldn't be things that come up again, or somebody would express some frustration, but it was like, way to, like, blow off a little bit of steam, but don't let it go too far. Don't spend, you know, the next 45 minutes in caucus just ranting about how terrible the other side is, you know, it's contained, free for all. But then, you know, then we'll say, okay, you know, that beeper was the trigger to be like, "Okay, let's start thinking about our next proposal," or whatever it may be. So, I think that was a real helpful way to end the book, and appreciated him kind of taking some time to think about, Okay, we have these tools, implementing them, and we can understand them and think about them and be aware of them, but implementation is a whole nother story, so. So go out there and WHOOP it away, everybody, I'd say, and check it out. So anyway, great talking to you today, Lloyd. I appreciate all your insight. As always, hopefully this will provide some practical tools for everyone to kind of think about these situations. And as always, you know more to learn in the book itself. I think I really enjoyed. It sounded like you did as well. So appreciate the conversation today.
Loyd Willaford:Yeah. You too, Chris, thanks. Thanks all.
