Dr. Jeremy Pollack - The Peacebuilding Leader

This episode helps us understand the powerful nature of "Peacebuilding" and how it should be a foundational element of a leader's development.  Managers in The Bosshole® Zone would be well-served to embrace the lessons from Dr. Pollack and this episode is the perfect place to start.

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

Listen to these related TBC episodes:

• Dr. Amy Edmondson - The Fearless Organization
• Sara and John - Above the Line, Below the Line
• Ben Snyder - A Less Bosshole® Way to Live

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Transcript

0:00:05 - John
The Bosshole Chronicles are brought to you by Real Good Ventures, a talent optimization firm helping organizations diagnose their most critical people and execution issues with world-class analytics. Make sure to check out all the resources in the show notes and be sure to follow us and share your feedback. Enjoy today's episode. 

John
Welcome back to the Bosshole Chronicles, everyone. It is good to have you here. Everybody out there in the Bosshole Transformation Nation. This is John Broer, your co-host, and joined again by my wonderful friend and colleague, Sara Best. Sara, so good to see you. How are you? 

0:00:46 - Sara
Good John. Thank you you too. It's so good to just be in these conversations Another really powerful one today. 

0:00:53 - John
It is. It is. I have great information. This is a subject matter expert episode and already in starting out 2023, we've had some remarkable subject matter experts joining us. Today is no exception, and so let's not waste any more time, Sara, I'm going to pitch it over to you and you can introduce today's guest. 

0:01:12 - Sara
I'd be happy to John, thank you. I just want to start by saying, in the climate that we live in today and in the workplace which would indicate that conflict is important that teams who are highly productive and highly successful have this concentrated way of duking it out so they arrive at the best answer. And that probably is true. And we also know that in order to have innovation and change, we also have to have differences of opinions and ideas. But what we often encounter, john, is that while organizations or leaders might embrace the idea that conflict needs to happen, they don't necessarily know how to do it, and how to do it very well, and they also have had such challenging experiences with it that it's overwhelming and scary. And what do we really mean by conflict? Anyways, I'd like to introduce our subject matter expert today, who, in fact, is the designer of a proactive approach to dealing with conflict. So let me first start by saying welcome to the podcast, Dr Jeremy Pollack. 

0:02:20 - Jeremy Pollack
Thanks for having me, Sara. Appreciate it, hi, john. 

0:02:23 - Sara
Jeremy, let me tell our audience a little bit about you, and I think I'll just share, too. How I came across you is through LinkedIn, and some of the information you posted really grabbed my attention because it was focused more on peace building, and peace is something I think we need a lot of in the world right now. So as I researched you, I found that you are an incredible author and you've built this whole entire system. Let me tell our audience about you. You're a social psychologist and a leader in the field of workplace conflict resolution and peace building. I love that word peace building. You're the founder of Pollack peace building systems, and that is, in fact, the largest workplace conflict resolution consulting firm in North America. You're a co-founder and a chairman of the Peaceful Leadership Institute, which hopefully we'll get to hear a little bit more about today, and the developer of the style and theory of peaceful leadership, and I know there are a lot of models out there. 

This happens to be one that I think will resonate quite a bit with our listeners. You're a coach, trainer, gear mediator and author, and you work with executives, employees from Fortune 500 companies and nonprofits and scope and size you get around. You're working with a lot of clients and you have authored, most recently, the conflict resolution playbook, which, by the way, I picked up a couple months back and highly recommend to our listeners. When you hear the word playbook, you think about okay, these are things I can look at, remember, memorize. These are absolutely actionable ideas and hopefully we'll unpack some of those today as well. But you're a PhD. You hold a PhD in psychology from Grand Canyon University, a master's degree in negotiation, conflict resolution and peace building. I love that. There's a master's in peace building from California State University and a master's degree in evolutionary anthropology that is fascinating from California State University, Fullerton. With that, Jeremy gosh, thank you so much for joining us today and for being willing to share some of this peace building with us today. 

0:04:33 - Jeremy Pollack
Yeah, happy to be here, Happy to have these conversations, love to have these conversations. 

0:04:38 - Sara
Well, and since we started off by talking about conflict and this idea that everyone kind of understands that we have to have it, but how do you do it without pain? I think even in the beginning of your book you talk about hey, this is for anyone who's ever experienced the pain of conflict. Two questions for you there. One can we do conflict without pain, and have you personally experienced something in the way of dealing with conflict that inspired you to move in the direction of peace building? 

0:05:08 - Jeremy Pollack
Yes and yes. I think the first question, I guess, depends on the way we define conflict. I think a lot of people, when we talk about conflict, what most people are talking about is what I might call or what we might call in the field, protracted conflict or escalated conflict, conflict that's been going on for a long time. It hasn't been resolved. So now there's a lot of emotions tied up with it and you start to take sides and feel like this person is sort of being hostile or this group is hostile and they're sort of your opponent and that sort of thing. And sometimes it's the case, it's true, and then sometimes it's a lot of perception. But I think that's what most people think of when they think about conflict. 

The truth is is that we're always coming up to challenges every single day of our lives. We have each of us has a particular perspective or method or approach to doing things and achieving our goals and communicating, and we're going to bump up against other people's perspectives or a little bit of friction or tension in this and that here and there. It's just going to happen on a daily basis and that's fine. It's just called like meeting challenges or being, I guess, confronted in some way with different perspectives and really now it's a matter of OK, how do I handle those situations? If I can handle those situations with honesty and clarity and transparency and calmness and understanding and compassion, if I can use some of those traits and methods to deal with friction, then I don't have to get into escalated or protracted conflict, then I can just get into these really momentary little conflicts and then resolve them quickly. And then if we discover, oh there's something actually there's sort of like a deal here, there's an impasse or something where I have a particular approach and you have another one and we're not seeing eye to eye, well then we can have a conversation, we communicate, we can talk about it. We try to think outside the box and get creative. 

But a lot of people aren't doing those sorts of things, unfortunately. They get very stuck in their own ways or in their own perceptions. They start to feel offended by other people's perceptions or approaches, if it goes sort of contradicts their own, and that's what leads to what a lot of people would think of as conflict. So I do think that there's a way to deal with friction, tension, ie conflict, without pain, but unfortunately a lot of people are not. They don't have the skills, they haven't learned the skills to do it, which is unfortunate. I think one of our main subjects in school, in addition to like math and reading and writing, ought to be communication skills, your conflict management, which is conflict management. 

0:07:37 - Sara
One of the things that really struck me right out in the book was what you describe as the fundamental yet challenging truth of conflict and peace psychology for that matter is just simply that two people can have a completely different understanding of the same event or same experience or two different ideas, so naturally they might conflict. You also talk about the friction as an incredible opportunity. So this is where skill building and our ability to develop some muscle to respond in a different way makes sense, and I thank you for the distinction. That's our first takeaway for today is prolonged. What was that other word you used? 

0:08:19 - Jeremy Pollack
Escalated and protracted conflict. 

0:08:22 - Sara
Protracted and escalated conflict, which I think is what most of us are probably always reacting to because we've experienced it somewhere. 

0:08:30 - John
We're talking about and it's painful. 

0:08:32 - Jeremy Pollack
Yeah. 

0:08:33 - Sara
Yeah. 

0:08:34 - Jeremy Pollack
And it does have protracted, escalated conflict. It's a conflict that goes on resolved for long periods of time. It builds stress in the nervous system, it builds stress in the body, builds stress in the relationship and the environment. I mean there's all kinds of stress related to it and that stress is very painful. So the more skills we learn to understand how to communicate ourselves out of tension, friction et cetera, or at least communicate around friction in a healthy way or creative way, the better. And that's one of the main things that I mean. 

I feel privileged to have gone to school learning conflict resolution and I think a lot of the people that are, that are in the field of peace building or conflict management, I think a lot of people were privileged to have a perspective on conflict which sounds like conflict is not a problem, it's actually an opportunity. 

It's an opportunity for growth, an opportunity for creativity and innovation, kind of like what you mentioned in the beginning. That's the way I think about it. So when something comes up, when a conflict comes up, my goal is at least immediately to not look at it go. I hate this, I don't wanna deal with this, I wanna get away from this, I wanna avoid it, I wanna just get rid of it, push it down. I don't wanna do. Instead, my natural inclination if I train myself enough is to go ah, look at this opportunity that arises. How great, because now it gives me the opportunity to, whatever the situation is, to grow in this relationship I have with this person, to figure out some of the nuances about the relationship, or to grow in this company or with this particular project. It's obviously like bumping up against something for a reason. So that's the kind of perspective that I think is important as a foundation when we're training people to how to deal with conflict better. 

0:10:16 - Sara
What I love in your book. In the first portion of your book you actually detail communication skills that directly help in the way you're describing, that equip people. Do you wanna say a quick word on maybe a summary of a couple of those skills? 

0:10:34 - Jeremy Pollack
There's a number of different communication sequences that I and my team teach relative to the type of problem people are dealing with. So like if we're giving feedback to someone or if we're de-escalating an emotional customer or an emotional coworker or self-regulating. I mean there's different types of sequences that we use, but as a general rule, across all the sequences or across all the techniques, what I'll say is that I look at conflict resolution or peacemaking in two major buckets the first bucket I would call care and the second bucket I call solution, and so I have to be both care focused and solution focused when I'm trying to deal with conflict. So I almost never wanna skip care and go straight to solution. If someone comes to me with a problem, like hey, they come to me and they're saying I've got an issue with this team member over here, I've got an issue with what you just did or what you just said, if I go straight to trying to solve their problem, a lot of times they won't feel like they're being listened to, like they're being heard, and maybe I'll get to like a quote, unquote solution of the problem. Really, there's an underlying, deeper need there that needs to get filled and I'm skipping over that, and so the first thing I have to do is I have to really care for the person. I listen, empathize, have compassion and understanding if I can, and there's some techniques around that. Yeah, a really simple technique is listen and repeat. It's also called validating or acknowledging. 

Reflective listening is a lot of ways, of a lot of names that we call that, but it's a really simple technique. It's like I listen to someone before I respond or defend or reject what they're saying. I repeat back, I paraphrase back what they're saying, and just that little bit lets people feel heard, like I'm actually getting heard here, and I use that as an opening to start caring for someone in that moment and I put solution aside for just a moment and then, when I feel like they've said what they needed to say, they feel heard. I'm really there for them. They can feel that I'm being present with them. Then I move into. 

Okay, so do you wanna talk about a solution? Maybe they don't. Maybe they're not ready to talk about a solution. Maybe they just wanna feel heard or something. Maybe they don't need my advice or my opinion or anything like that. They just wanna feel heard. But so, secondarily is the solution. That's in the most case when we're talking about conflict that is potentially emotional or has something to do with the relationship, or that could potentially damage the relationship, whether it's a work relationship or a personal relationship. Sometimes people have a problem that's really easy to solve. You solve right away. 

0:13:04 - John
Well, but, if I may, Jeremy, I think our listeners and I would say our potential Bossholes out there and when you think about the discipline, you're talking about a discipline of well, first of all, changing the mindset that just because I'm maybe in a leadership or a management role doesn't mean I have to solve this moment. 

It is an adaptation or a discipline to be able to say I'm gonna take the solution and I'm not gonna be solutions focused. I really want to hear this person, I want to actively listen and truly try to internalize and understand this. For some of us I'm including myself in this group that is really hard to do. I am a horrible active listener. It's something I've had to work on all my career to really steal myself against jumping to a solution. I can fix this and stepping back because and I think to extrapolate but you all just by listening and walking somebody through that sometimes they resolve it on their own or it comes to a resolution. But I think that's really critical takeaway for our listeners out there that the discipline of pausing and focusing on caring is a huge first step but can be very challenging for some of us. 

0:14:17 - Jeremy Pollack
I think it's challenging for a lot of us. I think most of us don't learn that sort of communication approach. That's true, and especially for A-type personalities, that people that are really used to getting things done I'm included in that. I had to really practice and learn it and I still make mistakes for sure. So I do my best, but it's not easy. So it is discipline for sure. 

0:14:41 - Sara
Well, we can't overlook the fact that a lot of people didn't receive that kind of care and listening when they were growing up Exactly, they didn't receive it themselves, so it's not in their cells. You talk in your book about mental maps and I think it behooves all of us in our adulthood, especially those who are responsible for the lives of others, to kind of get in touch with. What are those mental maps, what are those things that are kind of blindly running the show? And that could be one of them. 

0:15:08 - Jeremy Pollack
But I don't need that, you don't need that, just do your job I talk in the book and this is a framework I use throughout my work is looking at the basic psychological needs of human beings, universal, irreducible needs, and unfortunately a lot of us grow up and those needs are not necessarily met by the people that are supposed to meet them, which are our primary caretakers, and so when they're not met we look for other ways of getting them met, and unfortunately those a lot of times become destructive and unhealthy and then we don't know how to properly meet them and other people either, and so we have to learn that sort of thing when we grow up and we become adults and hopefully do some therapy or some self-interspection or something like that. 

0:15:47 - Sara
Yeah, I do think you do a nice job in the book too, in a simple way of spelling out those needs, defining those needs identity, safety, care, autonomy, growth, stimulation. But for somebody who maybe doesn't want to dip their toe in the water of therapy just yet, I mean all of us as adults need to become better acquainted with these core constructs, and so I think you do a nice job of laying that out in the book. And since you talked about care, that's such a nice segue into what I imagine is a building block for your peaceful leadership model and framework. Could we understand a little bit more about that? 

0:16:25 - Jeremy Pollack
Yeah, so one thing. So my company, we deal with a lot of, we do a lot of interventions in other companies. We solely work in the workplace in organizations that are dealing with conflict and we do a lot of training and coaching and different types of interventions. And one of the main things that we see in terms of just a theme across companies that are having problems is they have leaders that are not well-trained in conflict management skills or communication skills. I mean, when conflicts are allowed to emerge in companies or in teams of any sort and they're allowed to just persist and no one takes care of them, typically that's a leadership issue and so we find that it's a. 

So we developed this model called peaceful leadership, which builds on some of the more sort of traditional models of sort of leadership, coaching leadership, transformative, transformational leadership, but we really focused it through some of the critical skills that we saw were important, that we've done a lot of training for leaders on when it comes to conflict management and communication skills related to conflict management. So peaceful leadership I mean. So the way that we frame it is we we want to meet the basic psychological needs of our workforce, of our teams. We want to get those needs met. How do we do that? The three, we established three or pillars, and we call these pillars psychological safety, employee trust and inclusion. And so those three, those three pillars, are talked about a lot there. There's there's a lot of research into those three Psycho-cultural structures. 

But how do we, how do we create a company where it's psychologically safe? I eat, people can make mistakes, they can be themselves, all without the fear of being humiliated and shame and stuff like that? How do we create an environment that where people feel included in decisions that are going to affect them, included in and and feel like it's Transparent when companies are making decisions that are affecting them? And how do we, how do we create environments where people feel like they can trust each other, they can trust their bosses, the bosses can trust this, the, their, their teams and Co-workers can trust each other. How do we, how do we foster those types of Relationships and that type of dynamic in an organizational system? And so that's that was the question that we started with in terms of building a model, and we came up with this acronym that uses peace as an acronym. So it's patients, engagement, curiosity I'm sorry, patients engagement, appreciation, curiosity and empowerment, and those five competencies are the things that we use to build the model around in terms of Getting leaders to feel competent in those areas, giving them practical skills to empower people, to stay curious, to appreciate people, to do all those things that really establish those core psychological pillars which ultimately serve the psychological needs of their workforce. 

I hope I explain that and some way that makes sense. But but yeah, so that the model is these three pillars with these five competencies around it, and then skills that that support that gosh, you know, my only hope would be that you know all leaders, who who grow and develop themselves and go through training. 

0:19:34 - Sara
You know that this, this kind of development, this skill development, as as essential is reading a spreadsheet and you know understanding financial projections and all the other things that are core to you know running a successful business. This part is as important, if not more. 

0:19:51 - Jeremy Pollack
Yeah, it's one of the major issues we see when we come into companies is people are either hired or promoted into leadership positions and no one trains them how to be a leader. They think that because they're technically good at their jobs, they could be promoted. And you know. 

Yes but, but. But now they don't realize. Okay, now you're in leadership is that you're not an individual contributor anymore. Now you're managing a team or leading a team. 50% of your role is no longer what used to do. It's now Supporting and managing and serving a team, and you need to have the skills to do that, and they're just not trained in it. You know so I'm not, and that's one of the major reasons we developed a leadership development training program because they need to get trained and how to properly lead people in ways that are productive but also where they can manage conflict effectively. 

0:20:37 - John
We we started out 2022 with a very specific theme, and that was reinventing the role of the manager. For that very reason, I mean, we spent the better part of a century Codifying a really bad management framework. We really have and, and that's why we get boss holes and, as we say, boss holes beget boss holes. But our listeners, Jeremy, will will hear what you're saying about the, the challenge of taking a great individual contributor and the assumption, the fallacy, that somehow, magically, this person is going to be able to develop other people. It just doesn't happen. Yeah, so the organizations have to commit to that, but what I hear you also saying and I would imagine this is part of what happens in the peaceful leaders Academy is you are giving them a different way to enter into or completely Change the way they think about what it means to be a leader and the tools that they should be applying. 

0:21:32 - Jeremy Pollack
Yeah, absolutely yeah. I mean, I don't think when they get promoted, if they know, in a lot of companies no one emphasizes how important it is that they have to shift their framework now in terms of what their role is with their job is right You're here now to, and a lot of people don't understand. I mean, you know there's like listen, there's, there's different approaches to leadership. My particular paradigm, I'm sure I share with you two, is I'm here to serve my team, I'm here to support my team. That's my major role. Like I've got, I've got my list of tasks that I'm going through every day as a CEO of my company. I'm trying to get things done, but when I deal with my team, I, I give them the vision and I trust them to carry it out, and I have to, and my whole job Then is to support them in doing that and if they need something for some here, but otherwise I'm just here to serve support. 

How can I help you? I, I, I'm constantly trying to ask what can I do for you? Where can I, where can I improve? Is there anything you need from me? Is there anything different that I should be doing as your, as your leader? And I and I almost, you know, even though there is a hierarchy in my company and other companies, I almost think of it like a lateral company, like I really think of everybody that I work with as a colleague. You know, I don't think of means like the boss, you know. So I'm just in my major roles, like I, I'm the I'm basically instead of CEO, maybe I'm like the chief wellness officer. 

0:22:56 - Sara
I'm just here to make sure everybody's doing well, you know, yeah man, you're like the opposite of a boss hole, the absolute opposite, it's really refreshing to hear you say all that, so we'll be the opposite of it, yeah that's the opposite word. 

0:23:10 - John
We gotta figure out what that is. Yeah, and we haven't, we haven't figured that out. Yeah yeah, and we will be right back. 

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0:24:29 - John
Okay, let's get back to the program just really quick on the on the peaceful leaders academy. What does that look like? I'm just kind of curious about that is that, would you? Is it an in-person sort of thing? Is it virtual? Is it both? How does how does somebody get by the way to all of our listeners? Check out the show notes. You are going to find all of Jeremy's information and resources in there. Just want to make sure that they have all the resources. But tell us a little bit about the academy itself. 

0:24:55 - Jeremy Pollack
Yes, so well. So Pollock peace building systems is our parent company and we do a lot of in-person and virtual Custom instructor led training. Through that, what we realized was there's some companies that really want to scale with us and want to Do it on an ongoing basis, and so we, what we did was we put together our, based on our model of leadership, a Bunch of critical skills there's something like 20 different modules within each of the confidence, within across six competencies and we put together a whole learning management system. So it is an asynchronous, free, recorded training program with Live coach led coaching sessions. So we reinforce them with coaches. 

So when someone comes in the Peaceful Years Academy, they get access to their portal, they go into their training program, they go through their modules. There's all kinds of activities that they need to fill out in order to go to the next module and those are like sort of implementation, like hey, go do this in your organization this week, come back right about how this went. And then we have coaching sessions every week and they get to do an unlimited coaching. So they can come to two, three coaching sessions a week if they want and it reinforces all the training. So we really like to do this combination of training with coaching and so we can reinforce some of those skills. So everything's done virtually in the Peaceful Years Academy. 

0:26:14 - John
Oh, okay, okay, no, that sounds like what a? I mean you're hitting all the key points, the key channels for learning and interaction and connection. That's awesome. 

0:26:24 - Sara
I'm just curious too if you have maybe not from the virtual learning, but I'm sure you've you continue to do extensive work inside organizations with chief leaders. Maybe a story comes to mind where you know a leader had an epiphany and was able to demonstrate some new skill and help resolve conflict. 

0:26:45 - Jeremy Pollack
That's kind of putting you on the spot there, but yeah, and I mean the epiphanies are, I guess, few and far between. I mean, sometimes it seems like they have an epiphany, but you know, it's hard to change behavior overnight. So people, sometimes they will have an epiphany but it will take some time and practice and discipline to change behavior. You know one story that I like to refer to because I just remember it was a moment like that. It was one of my first jobs as a peace builder, when I was working with these two executives, and they're both female and one was, I think, the CEO and the other one was the sort of second and command, like vice president, and they just they weren't talking much anymore because they had been going through so many conflicts and tensions. And I talked to both of them and what it turned out to and this is, this, is the, this kind of situation was Ideal, because what they both said were was I really respect the other person and I do really care about them and I think they're really good at their jobs, like those, those three things I care about them, I respect them, I they're really good at their jobs. If I, if that's true, a lot. Sometimes it's not. Sometimes people are saying I don't think they're good at their jobs or I don't. I just don't respect them or something like that, and that's a that's that's a tougher thing. But when they're, when they're both saying that, I know I can get them into a room and it just takes them to bring down their walls a little bit. And so we, we came into the room and I asked each of them to tell the other person, you know, basically tell them, tell the other person what you think about them, that that you care about them, what you admire about them, those kinds of questions. And when, when the CEO did that and the other person, the vice president, heard it heard, you could see her guard just come down and she, all of a sudden and these were two like very A type kind of personalities, they were at it for at least a year with each other, like really not communicating she just broke down crying in the session, just hearing that her boss actually thinks this about her, that she actually thinks that she's great at her job and that she really does care about her and she misses talking to her and those sorts of things. And I'm like, well, you know, and as soon as that happened, her guard came down, her wall came down and she was able to say the same thing to the other. Now that that doesn't always happen, that's. That's kind of a rare case in my experience, but it was such a great moment because it really showed the power of care. It showed the power of I get into this situation. 

So many people are in conflict over time because because, and as a result of, they have this perception that the other person or group really doesn't care about them. And when they get to know whoa, they really do care about me, their guard comes down and they get to a place where they can stop being defensive and they can get to a place where they can actually start talking creatively about solutions and you, you can take this out of the workplace. I mean, this is true in personal life, this is true in social life. If you look at groups you know talk about, you know conservative versus liberal, whatever you know these types of groups, one group perceives the other to either not care about them at all or their needs at all, and or actually are actively trying to suppress, threaten, impede my needs from being met. That's the perception. 

And if you were to actually realize whoa, if you were to talk to someone on the other side and actually realize whoa I actually. They actually really do care about me. We have totally different perspectives that they really do care about me. The guard would drop and you'd be able to actually have a creative conversation at that point. So the care thing is huge. 

0:30:22 - Sara
I was just going to say. It seems like it's very much at the center of all of this yeah, think about it. 

0:30:28 - Jeremy Pollack
If you think about it for yourself, if you think about if there's whatever your ideological persuasions are, whether from a religious perspective, a social, social justice, whatever they are if you have a particular idea and you think that other group over there they're crazy, they're ignorant, they're evil, whatever you think about them. And if you have sat down in a room with one of those people with that pre-judgment and that person was to say to you I'll be honest with you, I really care about you and I really care about you being happy and being healthy and I want what's best for you. I really do, and you believed it and they were being honest and you believed it, the whole perception of that person with the pre-judgment, based on what group they are, would just go out the window. Right, I mean, you would be able to say that probably the same thing to them. So it's care is a really big opener. 

0:31:20 - Sara
What's so cool is, as you described, that happening. I was thinking of the person who would be sitting across the table from me and I was imagining them saying that to me and I was like, wow just kind of felt myself release and breathe. 

0:31:34 - Jeremy Pollack
There's a very interesting cognitive bias called hostile attribution error and it's a really well studied bias and basically you get into conflict with someone or you have some tension, or you have even one really negative experience with someone or someone who represents a group to you and you will start attributing hostility to their behaviors. 

You will start thinking that their intentions are hostile, even though they might not be, and you will think that until somehow it's broken. So if you got into a situation where you can have a conversation with them and they could actually really convince you that, hey, I am the opposite, I care about you, I actually want what's best for you. I just have a particular perspective that to you it seems like that's not going to get you what's best for you, but I think that what my perspective and my approach? I think that is what's best for you. But we just have different opinions. So let's talk about it, let's figure out, because I really do care about you. I mean it would totally change your perception of the person from hostile to actually caring, and that's what we want to get to. 

0:32:33 - Sara
Yeah, that sure makes a ton of sense as we kind of near the end of our time together. I was really struck by your thoughts about resentment and how to let go of resentment. I heard the definition of resentment some time ago. As you know, it's like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die. 

Yeah, resentment is the only thing yeah that hurts you and maybe inconsequential for the other person. It's a lot of ugliness, but you do have some thoughts in the book about you know ways to let go of resentment. Would you mind expounding on those a little bit for our listeners? 

0:33:08 - Jeremy Pollack
Yeah, there's a couple of techniques in there, but what you know, what I think as a foundation for in terms of resentment, the idea of resentment, one common theme that I've when I've worked with people who hold on to resentment grudges. They're keeping someone on the hook and they're and it stresses them out and makes them angry the other person. Who knows if the other person even cares at all? 

you know in some cases it's a person that's no longer with us, so it doesn't matter at all to them, it's just to this person. And I and I asked them what would be scary about letting go of resentment, what's scary about that? And their fear is well then it's something along the lines of well, then they get to win, like it's like letting them off the hook, then I'm no longer punishing them, I'm they get to win, or something like that. And in the meantime it's like that's okay, if we can look at this realistically, it has nothing to do with them, like that's right. Sometimes that person's not even with us anymore, like that person's gone, like there's no way for them to win or lose or anything you know, so it's just this perception. So what would it take to? You know, what would it take to stop resenting? And if we talk about change at any level, change at the individual level, change at the organizational level it's really about how do we get someone motivated to change. It's hard to change. So what would be motivating? What would? What would be the catalyst? 

A lot of times, if we wouldn't bring it back, someone say, hey, how does resentment make you feel? Well, I feel stressed out, I feel the hatred in me is just burning me up. I don't want to feel it really, but how would I let it go? They're gonna. I'm going to let them off the hook. They're going to win. If I let it go, it's okay. 

But forget them for a second. You're telling me that this is burning you up inside, that you're stressed out. Aren't you worth it, aren't you? Isn't it worth you winning? Isn't it worth you letting, letting yourself off the hook I mean, that's really what we're talking about here and trying to get them to understand that is is a is, I think, a first step in terms, in terms of getting motivated. Otherwise techniques and all methods, they're not going to work. The person has to be motivated to say you know what I realize? Resentment is getting me nowhere. What I need to do for myself is learn from whatever that situation is. Maybe I write down my my lessons that I learned from it, so I don't forget. 

0:35:21 - Sara
Right. 

0:35:21 - Jeremy Pollack
And now it's time to let go, really. I mean, it's time to let go finally, and then, if you're ready to do that, then we can do some, some techniques. 

0:35:30 - Sara
Well, I think for anybody who's a human being, there's, there's got to be, resentment somewhere in your life and if there is and you would like to explore a way to release it, there are a couple really easy Okay, easy, I probably shouldn't use that word, but there are. There are some techniques that I think are user friendly and the direction is very clear and it doesn't even need to involve the other person. One does the other, one doesn't at all. 

0:35:55 - John
Yeah, the grip that it has on people and they harbor that for so long. It's it's sad to see, but but I think to your point, Jeremy. It's in our world. We, you know, we talk about behavioral DNA and how people are wired, and and that doesn't mean you can't adapt. The word we use a lot is adaptation or or learning skills or techniques, or seeking help to be able to reconcile and understanding. 

Why am I harboring this resentment, whatever it is? Life is just way too short to be fuming and fomenting about that for a long time. But there are people that do harbor that and it just seems like to your point, Jeremy, where you were talking about if, if there is a, if I see a person and I know they're associated with another group of people or another ideology or whatever it is, it's, so it seems easier today to automatically throw that barrier or throw up that wall and we create, we manifest this conflict, having never had a conversation with another person or a group of people. But once you do, you realize, oh my gosh, we are actually a lot closer in the way we think about things or care about things just by having that conversation. But so much time and relationship is wasted because we don't. 

0:37:21 - Jeremy Pollack
At even a deeper level. We talk about letting go of resentment, letting go of hostility, letting go of those kinds of perceptions of other people. There's a lot of people, unfortunately, that, on a very deep level, don't feel that they themselves deserve to feel joy, deserve to feel peace, deserve to be in a good world and have a good life, Like there's some fundamental part of them that doesn't feel they deserve that and that you know. Peace external, interpersonal peace it has to start internally. It has to start with a person who works on being at peace with themselves, and a lot of people just are at peace with themselves and they don't think they deserve to be at peace with themselves. So that has to be worked on too, I think. 

0:38:08 - John
That's true. 

0:38:08 - Sara
What a powerful point. I hope people kind of stop and have a moment of reflection on that, because that's not something that's easy to get conscious to or conscious of? 

0:38:17 - Jeremy Pollack
No, it's not, but. 

0:38:18 - Sara
I think it does affect a lot of us. I'm a persuader by design, so I like to sell people on things, but I really think your book is a great leadership book. It outlines and I think anything related to peace building in a peaceful leadership framework is something any aspiring manager or leader or supervisor should seek to learn about, Because I think this is. I'm looking at just even the chapter titles in your book. These are the questions. If you flipped them around, they're the challenges and the questions that people come to us and say I don't know how to do that. 

I remember reading a story in the book. Somebody was overlooked for a promotion and they're dealing now with the person who got the promotion over them. I see that we hear about that all the time and nobody will come right out and say, gosh, the person who got overlooked is kind of having an attitude about it and they're being difficult and they're resentful. But these are things that people deal with every single day and I just think it's a great, straightforward, user-friendly guide for anybody who now finds himself in a position of responsibility over the performance and the well-being of others. 

0:39:33 - Jeremy Pollack
Yeah, even for people that are family members, I mean the leader of a family, the head of household or the two parents in a household, anybody who wants to have better interpersonal relationships, even intrapersonal relationships, with themselves. I think you could use some of these techniques for yourself. 

0:39:54 - Sara
Such good stuff so our listeners can find you. There's a number of websites www.coachjeremypollack.com, Pollack, Peace Building. So John mentioned that we'll place all those things as links in our show notes, along with a link to the purchase of the book. Can you share with us what's coming up next for you and your company? What's on the horizon for you? 

0:40:16 - Jeremy Pollack
Yeah, I'm excited we just launched a new subsidiary called the Fractional Chief Wellness Officer, and so we are now offering clients that we work with part-time chief well-being officer that's kind of embedded into their culture on an ongoing basis so that not only do we want to train their leaders, but we can have an expert come in and kind of work with a company now to help establish some of the some of the sociocultural pillars that are important for wellness and engagement at a company. 

0:40:47 - John
So that's something I'm excited about. 

0:40:49 - Sara
I think there's a strong demand for that, and we have fractional CFOs CEOs. Why not Chief Wellness Officers? 

0:40:56 - Jeremy Pollack
What a great investment. Yeah, so that's something I'm excited about. That's great, well, and where my colleagues and I who co-developed a peaceful leadership model, were coming out with a book. Hopefully by March it should be published, so it's called Peaceful Leadership. It's a book on on peaceful leadership theory. 

0:41:14 - Sara
Wonderful. 

0:41:15 - John
And maybe you'll come back and we'll showcase the book. That'd be awesome. 

0:41:19 - Jeremy Pollack
Yeah, I'd be great. Maybe I can bring my co-authors on with me. Perfect. 

0:41:23 - Sara
Well, Jeremy, Dr Pollack, if I may, you are a treat. You, I think, offer something very, very needed and very powerful. Appreciate your time today. 

0:41:33 - John
Sara John thanks so much for having me Appreciate it. All right, everybody Check those show notes and we'll see you next time on the Boss Hole Chronicles. We'd like to thank our guests today on the Boss Hole Chronicles and if you have a Boss Hole Chronicles story of your own, please email us at mystory@thebossholechronicles.com. Once again, mystory@thebossholechronicles.com, we'll see you again soon.