>> Desmond O'Neal. For those people that have just clicked onto this conversation, what are they going to walk away from our discussion with? So I've been in law enforcement for 30 years and I've served a lot of different roles in that. And above everything else, the one thing that I've learned is when stress is high, when emotions are strong, when it matters, how do you authentically connect and communicate with somebody else? There's something to be said about when a conversation is easy, right? When it's fun, when everybody wants to be there, you can focus on your handshake. You can focus on the eye contact, how great your posture is. What about the dark conversations? What about those conversations that kind of they live in the shadows of your mind because you don't want to face them. You don't want to have those, right? They're they're cloaked in so much emotion or so much tension that you just you don't know how to handle that. We all have that, right? We have a supervisor who we feel is overlooking us in a promotion. We have, you know, a family member who we feel that we're just no longer getting along with. Maybe our spouse we got in a fight with. Maybe a friend who's betrayed us. So, how do you have that conversation? Like, what does that look like? Because it comes from, you know, for the 30 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 was to connect with them, to find a way to get them to open up, to find a way to have some type of understanding and get the information that I needed. So, this is not about interview or interrogation. This is this is human connection. If your audience cares to understand how to have a dark conversation where you can deepen that relationship or at least come to some type of understanding or at the very least not walk away ruminating on everything you said trying to figure out what went wrong, what could you have done different? If you've had that and you're interested in knowing, then this is this is where we're going to talk about that.

>> And to summarize in I guess 30 seconds why you're the guy that is best placed to deliver this information, what is what are the reference points, the experiences, the the variety of experience you've had that feeds into the answers and the actionable advice you want to give my audience? My initial career started as a corrections officer, became a police officer and I was a SWAT officer as well. From there I went to the federal government. So I went to the secret service. Uh with the secret service I also started a polygraph career. So now I have people that are giving me their deepest, darkest secrets.

>> And just for context, polygraphing is a lie detection test.

>> Polygraph is a lie detection test. So it gives you a psychological or a physiological response in terms of how somebody answers a particular question.

>> Where else did your career take you after that point?

>> I went into internal affairs and so that is now policing the people within our organization. So now I'm talking to men and women who have had some of my interrogation training. They kind of know the questioning going on. They know the interaction. They've done themselves interviews and interrogations.

>> Oh, okay. So this is law enforcement officers who have committed a crime or some kind of mis issue or been reported for something and your job is to investigate them.

>> Yes. But think about that for a minute. like you're now talking to somebody else who, you know, maybe a year ago you were out in the street doing work with and now you're asking them these questions or these for clarification on some type of allegation. You got to be you got to be mindful with that. Like that's a big deal.

>> And the the interview methods that were prevalent at that time you felt were outdated.

>> They were. So there is in the US there's a very historical evolution of interview and interrogation. You know, it started in the 1900s when policing came in. In that circumstance, it was physical abuse. They called it the third degree where you would go in and, you know, people would grind down your teeth or they would cause pain for you to talk to them. As we've evolved as a society, that started to go away in lie of psychological manipulation. So, it was less about hands-on and more about trying to get people to talk to you from a psychological perspective. And right about 2014 when I went into internal affairs, I was like, Stephen, I was like, I just there's got to be something different. Like, we've had to evolved in some way in terms of what that is. And so, you know, you have my thesis there, right? Right about that time, I was accepted into the Naval Postgraduate School to pursue a masters. And because I was looking for a better way to interview, one of my thesis advisors said, "Hey, have you ever heard of the highvalue detainee interrogation group, which the acronym is HIG?" Had never heard of it, but the HIG when it was created was was three-prong, meaning that it had a a research department, right? And it had a practitioner department, so the people that would do the the the interrogations. And then it had a trainer department. Now the trainer department, we would do interviews, interrogations, but we also understood the science behind that. The reason that's important is because you could be a really good practitioner and not understand why something is or isn't working. And so being able to cross the bridge between the the science and understanding that and being able to apply it in the room, that hybrid, that connection, that sweet spot, that is what I did.

>> So, if I'm, you know, I've got a difficult conversation I want to have with someone, this person is antagonistic, they often gaslight me, they might be a narcissist, and I'm walking into that conversation or, you know, I'm overthinking it. I'm thinking, "God, I need to have this conversation." Where's the first place to start? So the first place that I would start is don't label the people how you just label them.

>> Okay.

>> And that's a problem. So you just labeled somebody a narcissist. Why does that matter to you?

>> I think it allows me to blame them. I guess

>> allows you to blame but but tell me tell me in your perspective what's a narcissist?

>> That they are they are low empathy. They are self-centered. They are a little bit aggressive maybe.

>> Okay. So let's stop there. Do you think personally that there are times in your life where you lack empathy?

>> Yeah.

>> Okay. So empathy is very situationally based. So meaning that it's also subjective. Meaning if you feel this person is not giving you certain empathy, okay, maybe um a bit self-centered, a bit aggressive, you the reason I ask you these things is because if you just blatantly label somebody as being like this person's a narcissist, you've just you've just made it easy for yourself. You've just put blame on them and you're not going to be able to really understand who this person is and and why they are the way they are. So the first thing that I would do is I would take away the labels as how you define them as you're going into that.

>> So, when you need to go into a dark conversation, here are the four things that you can do to stay engaged and involved in in in what's about to happen, right? And in how this is going to hopefully go through. And what we say is you need to have a plan. And there's the acronym about that, P, right? L A N.

So, the P is for purpose. And the purpose is why are you there? What's the reason? What's the mission? You have to understand your mission because your mission is going to drive your tactics. Your mission is going to determine if things get off track. If this person becomes aggressive, this person starts to be insulting. If my mission at that moment is to deepen my conversation with them and deepen my relationship in some way, and this starts to get ugly in the middle, your mission should keep you on track because you can get pulled from that very quickly. There's something called multiple goals theory. And multiple goals theory is the understanding that at any given time we will pursue simultaneous goals. And typically those goals would be something task oriented. You know I want to I want to finish a tasking. I want to get something done. There's going to be a component of identity in there meaning that how do I feel? What are my emotions going on during the course of this? And then there's going to be relational. So it's going to be my relationship with this person at the time. Now, a lot of times within multiple goals theory, those things can align. So, and I'll give you example like if you're playing a sport, you're on a team. Uh the team goal, your goal within that team, the task is to win, to put on more points than the other person. That's the task. The identity aspect of that is am I a good player? Do do I want the ball? Do I get the ball? Am I contributing? Am I the superstar? Is there some type of identity and how this makes me feel about myself being being a sports star in some capacity? And the relationship part of that is how do my teammates feel about me? Am I inter am I a good teammate in terms of what that was? Those things can align. You can see when that is misaligned when all of a sudden somebody what they would call a ball hog, somebody takes the shot all the time or they won't pass it around and you're like what are you doing? Right? And it's one of these things where like you are more concerned about your identity than you are about the team winning. That's a problem. That's when you can see there's a misalignment of goals. Or something that's even more simple would be let's say you're in a meeting with uh a boss or a colleague and it's a pretty important meeting. You're you're trying to close a deal and your boss says something that's wrong. Now you have to make a decision. You could either correct your boss in front of everybody or you could preserve his or her dignity and address them at a later time. You have to decide which one of those is most important. You have to understand your purpose of being in that meeting because maybe I could let this go. It's not that big of a deal because if I correct my boss, this may affect my relationship with them at a later time. This could ruin my career in terms of being transferred or or not being on a project. So when you're looking at goals, you have to understand what the overall objective is. It becomes Stephen, it becomes, especially in emotional conversations, it becomes really easy to to get distracted. Really easy.

I'll share the story with you. In 1991, an 11-year-old girl named JC Duggard was kidnapped by a man named Philip Gerrio and his wife Nancy. And Philip and Nancy kept JC Duggard for 18 years. He fathered two children with her. In 2009, they found her and him at Berkeley. They arrested him, arrested his wife. Three years prior to that, there was a young girl named Michaela Garrett who had gone missing, never been found in a county over. There was a lot of suspicion that Philillip was the one who did this as well. And one of my one of my colleagues was the prosecuting attorney. His name is Vern Pearson. And Vern said, I'd like to close this or get some type of understanding. Can you go and interview Philip? So I looked at all the information on Philip. He had written a manifesto in terms of how to cure pedophilia. And I went to Vern. I said, "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 said, "I need four days." And my goal was to do a deep dive into the things that he had done. He was a a serial rapist, uh, a serial kidnapper, and to understand his life in the time frame by which Michaela Garrett went missing. So I show up, he walks in, says, "Who are you?" I said, "Well, I'm special agent O'Neal. I'd like to talk to you about um your history. I read your manifesto and I had some questions. And he said, you know, uh, when they told me I had a visitor, he goes, I wasn't going to come in. He goes, but the angels on my shoulder tell me that this would be a good good talk. So he said, let's do it. We talked in detail every day for probably 8 to nine hours. In the course of those 36 hours. Multiple times he was very aggressive. He was very condescending. He called me a liar. Things he accused me of you. I don't believe you are who you say you are. I don't believe you're here for the things you're saying you're here for. Um I don't even know if he worked for the federal government. And he's essentially questioned my integrity. Now, my purpose is not to make him feel that I'm smarter than him. Is not to belittle or berate him or or have a a question of, you know, integrity. Cuz I could have said, "You kidnapped an 11-year-old girl and kept her captive for 18 years, fathered two children with her, the first one at the age of 14." and your question of my integrity. I didn't do that because that's not why I was there. And so despite the fact that he got upset, despite the fact that he called me and accused me of all these different things, I stayed on my purpose. I stayed on my mission. And when we were done, when we finished, I went back to the prosecuting attorney and said, "He's not your guy." And he said, "Are you sure?" And I said, "I bet my career on it."

>> How did you know?

There's a lot of things in regards to when you're looking at people from the perspective of telling the truth in terms of the way that they they talk and engage with you. Our conversation on Tuesday and our conversation on Wednesday and our conversation on Thursday and our conversation on Friday all stayed very consistent. If I'm asking him for further clarification, he's providing for further clarification. If I'm talking to him about, you know, something and there's some type of spontaneous correction where he's like, "Wait a minute. This happened uh before this, those are those are indicators of of truth. And if there are things that you know, he he talks about in terms of like things that are of complication. Nobody's day goes perfect." When complications are introduced to a story, right, people who lie don't do that, right? It's truth tellers will often do that because it's just like this is just what happened. Overall, in terms of how that conversation went, there were those type of indicators that just made it trend more truthful than not. like there wasn't this big gap or this big weird moment when we're talking about Michaela Garrett to where all of a sudden it's like missing pieces that I have to put in there. There are no cues to deception. They found a new fingerprint and were able to um charge and convict uh the person who did that. The reason I bring all of that up is because for the purpose aspects of what we're talking about, not losing sight of what your mission is, being focused in terms of what that is. The power of communication and staying online as it relates to what you want to accomplish is really powerful because it keeps you on track and it keeps you engaged and reminds you of why you're there.

So the L is listen this becomes the thing that people are worst at because it's a lot to do. Think about right now think about my conversation with you at this moment. I'm speaking so internally my internal vocabulary and the conversation that I'm having in my head is running about 800 to a,000 words a minute. I'm speaking to you in about 120 to 150 words a minute. There's a lot that's being edited. There's also something called theory of mind, which is me watching you and trying to understand is what I'm saying on point with what Stephen wants to hear or wants to hear for his audience. Do I need to change anything? Simultaneously, you are listening to me and you're listening to the 120 to 150 words I'm giving you, but your brain can process this at like 4 to 600 words per minute. So, you have too much cognitive bandwidth. you have the ability to listen to me and then do multiple other things which is oftentimes why people will drift out or you'll start thinking of something else. so you actually have to do something called cognitive inhibition you have to kind of narrow that bandwidth to stay fully engaged with me that's why when you hear people say like active listening it's hard it's hard to do because you have to be attentive to the other person. You have to listen. You have to look. You have to pick up their verbal and their non-verbal behavior. And you then you have to do something with that. Steven CVY says most people don't listen with the intent to understand. They listen with the intent to reply. And if you are simply just waiting for your turn to talk, then you and I are not are not connecting. Controlling conversation comes from listening, not talking.

The next thing you have to do which gets into this is the A which is which is ask. Right? If you are paying attention to me and you're picking up on things that I'm saying, the changes in my body language, and there's something you don't understand, you need to ask. This is where you're going to deepen the conversation. This is where you show somebody that you're active listening. you're curious and you're open and you're trying to understand them. If you look at empathy research, we typically think that we can understand our significant other or different people at a much higher level than we actually do. For a stranger, it's called it's called empathy accuracy. For a stranger, your ability to understand their headsp space is like 20%. For a friend, somebody close to you, it's like 30. For your significant other, it's no higher than 40%. Which means that despite you thinking that you know what she's thinking, you got a four out of 10 chance of being right. And if that conversation gets emotional, that 40% can go down as low as 15 because you start to pull in to be like, I I'm I'm guarding myself here. I'm guarding my ego. When your ego is on the line, your ears go offline because you stop hearing what she's having to say and you start protecting yourself in terms of what you're trying to do. Let's say you come home from early morning workout and your spouse says, "Hey Stephen, uh, how was it?" And you say, "That's pretty tough." The third thing she could say would be like, "What do you mean by tough?" Because the ambiguity of that is the word tough. She's now showing you, "I'm into you. I'm tuning in." In the power of something like that, when you talk about deepening relationships and increasing that connection, that's how it happens. The same thing with your non-verbal behavior, right? You look at non-verbal behavior, 66% of of what we give is non-verbal. And so if I see that and it matters to me, then I need to say something to the effect of it seems like versus I think because I think is the pronoun saying it's about me. It seems like what you just did maybe was because you didn't like what I had to say because I saw you cross your arms and roll your eyes. Do I have that right? So now you have a choice where you can either say you yes you got that right for these reasons or no.

The N which is the next steps. So to have a plan means to understand all of these different things and the way that you approach that. And the next steps is how do you want to resolve this? Like what's the end goal with this? Is there anything that I can do that we can you know further our relationship where both you and I can can be in alignment. I would always ask them if I'm engaged. Right. So perhaps let's go back to the the conversation that you may have with you know this this individual. or you're just like this person's a narcissist and so forth. If you're engaging them and you're the one who wants to really have this conversation and you're hoping that you can find some type of resolution, you have to ask if there's resolution with that. So something to the effect of, do you think that you and I can find an amicical way forward where when I when you and I engage, you know, we can really enjoy each other's time and and this thing not go bad. Like do you see that in our future at all? Yes or no? And then it's either yes. Okay. What does that look like for us? Like how do we have that? because I am I'm having this conversation with you because my relationship with you matters, but there are things that happen within that are that are frustrating and that cause me not to really want to engage. I do want to find a way to do that because that is most important to me. How best do we do that? There is no magic bullet by which makes everything every conversation go perfect. There's none. You are you are part of that conversation. The other person is part of that conversation. You have your perspective. They have their perspective. The hardest part is to walk away and feeling like you should there should have done more you can do. The power becomes knowing how to address that. And if it doesn't go right then you walk away and be like you know what it just didn't go right and I'm okay with that.

>> What if they start insulting you in the conversation? Okay. What's your purpose of being in the conversation?

I'm trying to get them to stop being so rude to me when we're 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 it's addressing that at the moment, right? You know, I I noticed that we're having this conversation that you're being really aggressive, really rude, and really condescending. Yeah. Be very specific in 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 whatever the case may be, like, you know what, you're being rude. and she's just like, "What did I do?" And you're like, "You're just being rude." That's unhelpful. Like, give her the context by which you feel that she's being rude. And I would say, "Hey, it seems like as of right now, like, you know, you're very condescending. You've called me a name to include an Can you explain to me specifically right now why that is?" and make her back it up. Make her explain to you what it is that is there something about is there something about me you don't like? Is there something about my my work ethic that you don't like or maybe the way that I'm doing this? You've been here longer than me. So is perhaps there's something else that I'm doing or not doing that you think is wrong because I am not understanding your anger and your venom and your need to insult me and I would really try to understand what that is. So, you're having a very direct conversation with her, very specific to what she's saying. It does not mean that that's going to fix it. She could just be an And it's one of those things where you have to be like, I am going to address this. I'm not going to return in kind. I don't have to turn into that person as well. I can walk away from that conversation and be like, you know what, I handled that the best I could.

>> Are there any tactics that interrogators are taught or that you teach interrogators for keeping your emotions in check?

>> in the heat of the moment? At the at that time, you have no time to do breath work. This is real time stuff in terms of what you're trying to do. If you go in and you understand your purpose and again I don't mean to go back to the plan but what happens is you become you can be pulled out very quickly and all of a sudden if you are trying to get information from somebody and one of their strategies because they maybe don't want to give you information one of their strategies is to insult you and now you're insulting them back one you're not going to get anything two you fell under their strategy so what you have to do is you have to address that I am something to the effect of I see that when I asked you matter and all of a sudden like it seems like there's a change in our relationship to where now you're being really aggressive. Why is that?

>> So, you're continually calling it out.

>> Yes. Because I am asking you to back up your emotions. If if because if it's if it's BS, if you're just doing that because you're trying to hide the ball someplace else, I'm going to call you out on it. It's also showing me that I am not afraid to confront this type of behavior. It's less about being strong and more about being competent and confident in what you're doing. Because if you allow in anybody, not just an interrogation room, in in any in any conversation, if you lose your cool, you lose control. You have to be mindful of that.

>> I've heard you say that you think people suffer from me me syndrome. What does that mean? So the me me syndrome is everything everything is about me right I mean it seems obvious with that but like you can even look at things from like a cultural perspective you can look at like here you know in in the US in western civilizations like we are primarily like a dignity culture where we are it's all about us right it's all about that internal that internal feeling that that we have and so everything is predicated on our job our success the things that we do. The problem that I see and what I think comes with in communication is we do a lot of self-reflection. We rarely do a lot of outward reflection on the other person. Some of the best negotiators there will spend more than half of their time thinking about somebody else. So, a very personal story. Um, when I was 21, my father passed away. Several years later, uh, I'm having this conversation on the day that my dad died about the day that my dad died. I'm having this with my my sister and my three younger brothers and we're talking about where we were and so forth. And my sister says, "Yeah, I I can't watch the Simpsons without thinking of of dad." And I said, "What do you what do you mean?" She's like, "Well, the the the TV was there and the Simpsons were on." And she's like, "I always just 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 being in the room?" And I'm like, "I have absolutely not. I have no idea that there's a TV in the room. I didn't code it. that wasn't the thing that was important. Her perspective and the way that she saw that moment affected her differently than everybody else in that room. And so to go back to the me me, when you fail to take in consideration that other people have other experiences based on how they pick up the world, how they do things in the world, and you think that it's just about you, you're you are going to have a really hard time having a deep, honest, connective relationship with somebody if it's just about you.

>> And what's the difference between manipulation and influence? Influence is about nudging a person in a certain direction at a certain time that's beneficial for both you and them. That's influence.

>> Manipulation is you nudging a person in a specific direction because it's good for you. It's not good for them. And so you'll lie. You'll you'll do whatever you need to do to to close a deal to get them to do something to give them to give you something. That's manipulation because it's often one of those things that it has negative consequences to it in terms of the person who did it.

>> so you're saying lying is the the the moment where it becomes manipulation.

>> Yes. that becomes the shortcut and that becomes a way not just within the interrogation room like I think what becomes important and I've seen this come up a lot people are all about like influence like you hear that come up quite a bit if you want to influence somebody this is how you do it you're honest with them you're clear and you're transparent because influence is about how do I feel about you not about all the things that you're doing at that moment because if I don't if trusted is 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 had said there's this pattern recognition where I'm like I just think there's something wrong with this. You're not going to be able to influence me if I am honest with you in everything that I do because that's how I carry myself. Not only does it lower your cognitive load because you're not lying to somebody else, but it underscores who you stand for and who you are as a person. And with that, people are going to see that and say, you know what, Stephen's very transparent. He said this was a good deal and I believe that for these reasons. It's a matter of you being honest with that.

>> So trust is about being vulnerable. Trust is about being open and sharing a little bit about yourself. When you talk about trust, I if you look at concentric rings, you know, in terms of the the trust around you, the the center ring should be selfrust. It should be you. You should be able to trust yourself more than you trust anybody else. If you don't, you probably need to do a little bit of work, right? What does that mean in reality of me trusting myself? Do you trust that you will do the things that you want to do or you ought to do or do do you keep yourself in that direction? Do you keep yourself accountable?

>> Outside of that initial ring, it's it should be a ring of a handful of people that have unconditional trust, right? And these are the people that no matter what, like you've given them that trust. You you believe in them. And it should be a small circle. And this is where I think people go wrong. They're like, "Ah, you know, I I I share everything with people." Then they then they're crushed when one of those people that they've given unconditional trust with break it. That's a problem. Outside of that, you should, everybody else should be conditional trust. People should earn your trust, right? They should be honored to have it. Like, don't give it away for free. And if you have somebody's trust, you should respect that. but I think and I've seen it I people give away trust way too much because the person will be amazing in this one spot and all of a sudden they get the halo effect and they're like well they're great here they must be great here it's this it's this arc of they're awesome everywhere and so I'm going to trust them with these other things then when again they break it they violate it the way you feel is just the this this violation of you know somebody took what you gave them and just destroyed it. It's hard to come back from that. It's hard to once you re once you lose trust like if you lose somebody's trust it's really really hard to get back.

>> On um on leadership principles, something I've heard you talk about as well. Um what what do you think are the most important principles as it relates to leadership? Somebody who's calm under chaos. That would be my definition of a leader. However, and I say that because leadership is a feeling, Stephen, how do you make these people feel as it relates to my qualities as a leader? Do I do the things that register with you as leadership? As I can tell you when I was on a a SWAT team, which is the special weapons and tactics, this is where I learned the true essence of leadership because I had some amazing commanders and and team leaders on that team were under high stress, under a stress like that. If you have people around you that are keeping their composure, that's leadership.

>> I was reading about a study, which I think you mentioned some time ago, where they look at three groups of people doing the same exam and would were sort of trying to ascertain how people make decisions with different degrees of certainty and information. Yeah. What the the study showed was there were a group of students that you know were taking a test in college and they were told that you know they had either passed or failed or they had no idea whether they passed or failed. But prior to that they were asked if they would you know take a vacation and the people who passed and the people who failed there was a higher percentage of them who chose to take a vacation after getting news that they had either passed college or failed college. the group that didn't know, there was a third group that was just like, I'm un I'm unsure. Weren't able to really make a decision and and so what the what So, the ambiguity of not knowing really lessens our cognitive ability to to go in a certain direction. And so when we don't know where to go, we often don't go anywhere.

>> That is a hallmark of great leaders that they're able to decide even when there's very low certainty.

>> Sure. I would think that would come with, you know, the territory. I think if you're if you're only a leader when it's calm, then you're not really a leader. You're somebody with a higher salary and a title. Like leadership really shows up in those type of circumstances when when things are uncertain. And so, you know, often times the the best decision to make is the right one and the worst one is to not make a decision at all.

>> Is there anything we haven't talked about today that really surprised you in the research that really caused a paradigm shift in what you thought communication was and now what you think it is? Yeah, the research showed that your ability to build rapport with a person is what gives you the most power in terms of that connection. And how do you build rapport? Most people think that this is one of those things where you're just you're just you're overly kind, you're very complimentary, uh you're talking about the weather, and now we've built rapport and then we're good. It's not how you build rapport. re building rapport is understanding values in terms of a person. Rapport is understanding, you know, a person's presence and what they're needing from you. If I'm paying attention to you and I'm engaged with you and I'm making you feel seen and heard and understood and by proxy, by the reciprocity of doing that, you do the same thing for me. That's rapport. When it comes into building rapport with somebody, read the room. If I came in and I have a list of questions and I see you that you're there's some emotional state that you're showing. If I want to connect with you, I ask about that. I need to put my stuff aside before I can have the conversation I want to have. I probably have to have the conversation you want to have. And at that moment, it may be understanding what is going on in your headsp space. I can say, "Hey, Stephen, you know, I'm Desmond O'Neal. You know, I know you were brought in this morning for for these reasons. It's obvious to me right now that you seem really upset. Can you tell me what's going on right now?" And you could say, you know, I don't know what's going on. I'm super scared. I've never been in jail before. My mom's sick at home and I don't know if there's anybody to take her to her. Now, how much information now do I have, by the way, that I can connect with you? Because if you tell me, I am 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." And go back to my list of questions. Or do I say, "How best can I help you with that?"

>> And this builds rapport.

>> Yes. Because what I'm doing is I'm showing empathy. I'm listening to you. I'm I'm giving you what you want. I'm lessening your ambiguity. I'm orienting you in terms of the direction that you're asking me to take you. I'm showing them that I am paying attention to them. I'm being authentic. I'm going to follow up with the things that I do cuz I'm going to come back later and be like, "Hey, we checked on your mom. She was good. We pulled your aunt in. Your aunt came and took care of her. That's rapport.

>> No, I just think it was I just think it was a plan framework. And it's not about making things complicated. It's actually about, you know, there's there's things that you should take out, you know, when it comes to communication as opposed to always adding things in. You know, it really becomes like extinction before acquisition. So, I can I can tell you when it comes to better communication, there are three things that you should stop doing right now. One of them is to stop trying to be right. One of them is to stop telling people you understand. And the third one is stop giving people your unsolicited opinion. Now to break those down, stop stop trying to be right. And we talked about that one a little bit. The the second one is stop telling people that you understand. This is what I mean by that. You can understand you can understand a person's words. You will never understand their headsp space in terms of the the specificity of that. And so what you will see is I if if you're sharing a story like if you shared a personal story with me let's say you let's say your father had passed away and I'm like you know what Stephen I completely understand um my dad passed away too when I was young so now we're connected I have just I've just taken away that moment for you because I made it about me because I I thought that I understood something that you had experienced in fact your experience of a death or your experience of your father at the moment is going to be completely different than mine. But for me to tell you that I understand is is shortsighted. The first thing that we always do, and it happens all the time, is like, "Let me tell you what I think. Try to fix it without having all of the the emotions and the complexities of of why it's not being done."

>> Simon Synynic said to me, he goes, "Most of the time people just want you to sit in the mud with them."

Most people do, right? It becomes like this identity headsp space where people just are looking for the sounding board for you, for your girlfriend. Like you're the you're the guy, you're the person, 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 a negative thing, but it's just one of those things where if that's what she needs from you, then that's what you give her. And a lot of people just want as as as Simon Senk said where you said it like just sit in the mud with them and that's what they're asking you. If she turns to you and say Stephen what would you do here then she's asking you but if not then don't give it