333. How to never have an argument at work again, with Lawyer turned peacemaker, Doug Noll

0:02Hello and welcome to Truth, Lives and Work, the award-winning podcast where behavioural science meets workplace culture, brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. My name is Leanne, I'm a choice to occupational psychologist. My voice is about an octave lower. Why does it sound so low? Poor Leanne's not been very well recently, but I like it. I do like it. I think I prefer I'd like you to be ill more often. My name is Al. I am Leanne's husband and also a business owner, and we are here to help you simplify the science of work. Today's guest is Doug Knoll.

0:36He's a lawyer turned peacemaker who spent 25 years mediating everything from divorce disputes to prison violence. His claim is pretty simple. If you learn his listening technique, then you'll never have a fight or an argument at work again, or anywhere else for that matter. That is a big, big promise. So today we're testing it, not debunking it, not cheerleading it, just genuinely asking, could this actually work in your office tomorrow? We'll find out after this short break. Does your experience with AI sound a little like this? You prompt for 20 minutes, the output is polished, is confident, and is completely flipping useless.

1:15Well, that's what happens when AI doesn't know anything about your business. But you know what does know something about your business? HubSpot. HubSpot's AI. it works with your actual customer data every interaction every signal your team has generated over time so instead of prompting and hoping you ask once and ship it check out hubspot.com the agentic customer platform for growing businesses

1:43hey editing al here just want to say that uh for this one i don't know what happened but we had a couple of uh issues with doug's audio so occasionally it kind of dips in and out but I've done my best to clean it up. Still, I thought it was an important enough story that we needed to bring it to you anyway.

1:57Doug Noll:My name is Doug Knoll. I'm a lawyer turned peacemaker. And I've been doing that since 2000. And it's taken me to some pretty wild places. And we start, Doug, with those wild places. So your book, which was your previous book, starts off in Valley State Prison. Right. It was Valley State Prison for women. For women. Take us back to that day. Tell us what happened. My colleague, Laurel Coffer, received a letter from a woman serving a life sentence without the possibility to rule. And she was asked if Laurel could come in and train the lifers how to become mediators and peacemakers to stop prison violence.

2:36Doug Noll:And eight months later, there we were. Inside the Valley State Prison for Women, which at that time was the largest, most violent women's prison in the world. 15 women, ages 65 to late 20s, all lifers or long-termers, black, white, Asian, Hispanic, Pacific, angry, skeptical, and a little curious. And our job was to teach them how to become peacemakers and mediators to stop prison violence. And we had never been in a maximum security prison before. It is intimidating the first time. Eventually, you get used to it. But when those steel doors slam behind you, you know you're in the belly of the beast.

3:21It sounds to me like that is a gigantic task that could not end well. But it did end okay, didn't it?

3:30Doug Noll:It did. Part of the reason for the success was who we were. Laurel responded to Hurricane Katrina by going to Mississippi. in the areas affected by the hurricane and introduced mediation to the communities who were completely devastated. So she had tremendous experience in training large numbers of people in mediation that impeach me. I had my own training experience as a professor and also a trainer. And so we had this unique set of skills that we were able to meld and develop a curriculum for these incarcerated people. And we didn't know if it was going to work or not. But they did. I mean, massively.

4:19And so for 10 years.

4:21Doug Noll:We were working every week, usually three days a week, in different prisons in California and Connecticut, teaching lifers and long-termers how to become peacemakers and mediators. It was incredible. We're going to go into your methodology in a second. but there is a three-word phrase, sorry, four-word phrase that I've heard you use quite a lot, and that is feel someone into existence. Talk us through what that actually means. The actual phrase I coined was listening someone into existence. It was actually a phrase that an associate superintendent of a school district said after a listening circle I conducted with teachers and administrators in a school district, teaching them these skills.

5:08Doug Noll:And she said, after the circle, that's the first time anyone has listened to me into existence. And I said, wow. So that's where that phrase came from. The idea is this, though, we are desperate to be heard, validated, and listened to. Nobody listens to us. We're all trying to get heard, but we're not taking the time to listen. And active listening doesn't work because it's all about me. What I hear you saying is act. So that's I statement. Or it's passive voice. It seems to me that, or we ask a question, are you angry? None of it is ever about you. And so we go through a life never being heard.

5:56Doug Noll:Don't be a drama queen. Put on your big girl panties. Rub dirt in it. It doesn't hurt. Oh, there's a silver lining to every client. All these sayings invalidate us, tell us not to feel, not to experience emotion from the time we're two years old. And it destroys us. And so that's where listening someone into existence came from, because it is the antidote to all of this. I think there's a great example of this with you were mediating a divorce, I believe, to people. They had been divorced and were fighting over an$18 ,000 problem. They'd each spent$50 ,000 trying to destroy each other. Right. And that's where I got my insight.

6:46Doug Noll:So I got called into this miniation in Santa Barbara. A couple had been divorced for 20 years. When they were married, the wife had been in an automobile accident and their small children had been in the backseat. They settled with the insurance company. And in California, the insurance proceeds for a settlement for children has to go into what's known as a blind trust. It's a bank account that you can't take the money out of without a court order. And it makes sense, right? you know what, mom and dad, they'll run off to Las Vegas and blow the money. Well, in this case, many, many years later, mom got laid off, called her adult kids who were all doing fine, and said, can I take that$18 ,000 to pay my rent and buy groceries?

7:37Doug Noll:And they could say, sure, go. She did not get a court order. Ex-husband finds out, files a lawsuit against her for breach of fiduciary duty, fraud, theft. I mean, all the usual stuff. They spent$50 ,000 each in attorney's fees and costs trying to destroy each other. And then they come to me. I'm sitting there. I talk to them about what mediation is. And all of a sudden, they stand up at the conference table and start screaming at each other. And I sit there for a minute and a half. What am I going to do with this? And then the insight hit. Listen to the emotions. So I sat him down. I did my Moses parting the seats.

8:28Doug Noll:Stay down. And I said, Susan, I want you to tell us what John is feeling. Not what he's saying, what he's feeling. I'll help you. Can you do that? And she said, I don't know, I'll try. So John started telling his story. And Susan all of a sudden went, yeah, but yeah, but yeah, but yeah, but yeah. Cat her argument, right? I said, no, tell us what he's feeling. And so she looked at me and said, he's really angry. Tell him that. John, you're really angry. And for the next three hours that we did, back and forth, until finally they finished their stories and John looked across the table at Susan with tears streaming down his eyes.

9:22Doug Noll:And he said, that's the first time you've listened to me in 25 years. Dead silence. They settled the case and walk out holding hands. I knew what I'd done, but I didn't know why. So I started playing with it in other mediations and I got the same result. And then the science came out two years later, 2007. And that's when I had the science that explained what I had observed. And the idea here, when you need what somebody feels, the centers of the brain associated with negative emotion are inhibited. And one part of the brain in the prefrontal region the right ventral lateral prefrontal cortex is activated.

10:15Doug Noll:And it's that part of the brain that's responsible for emotional self-regulation and awareness. So literally, naming what somewhat feels helps people calm themselves down. And it takes about 90 seconds. When you and I were talking before, I think we said that if you use the techniques in both of your books, then you can basically go through the rest of your life without having a fight or an argument ever again. And that's a bold claim. Back that up for me. Tell me, how do we do that? So the promise that I make to my clients is that if you learn these skills, you'll never have a fight or argument again in your life.

11:03Doug Noll:But you have to practice. is like learning how to ride a bicycle. You just can't read my book or my books or watch my YouTubes or my TEDx and know how to do this. It takes some practice. But when you learn how to do it and you see the results, your life transforms forever. Because what you learn is a very profound idea. And that is there's no such thing as rationality. We are emotional being. And when you start seeing us, human beings, as emotional, not rational, everything makes sense. And then the idea of naming emotion makes perfect sense. And so you start saying stuff like, you're angry, you're frustrated, you feel disrespected.

11:55Doug Noll:And then you watch the brain calm down. and it happens every single time without failure because that's how our heart works. I can imagine, let's say I'm in a situation with, I'm at work, there's another department head who comes in, they're angry because I've done something at work that they're not happy with. So they come in and they go, what the hell did you do that for? That's just, it's ruined everything. You turned that server off and I specifically said, never turn it off. And I turn around to this guy or woman and I say, you're angry. In my head, I imagine the next phrase to come out that person's mouth is, you're damn right I'm angry and escalating it.

12:36Why am I wrong?

12:37Doug Noll:Oh, no, that's perfect. If he says, damn right I'm angry, pat yourself on the back. That's exactly what you want because he just got hurt. He just felt validated. Now he's still escalated and you've got more work to do, but that's a major breakthrough. So yeah, not only are you angry, Al, you feel really disrespected and ignored and unimportant and nobody cares about what you're doing and you feel unappreciated and unsupported and you're really anxious because the shutdown really set you back and you're really upset and frustrated and pissed off. Why does it not work if I just add the word ARE in front of it?

13:25So why, instead of me saying you're angry, me saying, are you angry? Why does that not work?

13:30Doug Noll:because when people are upset, they're in threat status. The prefrontal cortex, which does all the processing, is now inaccessible. When you ask a question, you're asking them to do something that's physiologically impossible. So they get really frustrated and they just get angrier because they can't answer the question. Because physiologically, their prefrontal cortex is offline, which is why we don't ask questions. At least... emotional questions. We can ask questions later when they're calling down, but not initially. So Doug, let's go back to this example of the IT director coming in, shouting at me.

14:12And so what's happened? They've come in and gone, what the hell have you done this for? I've said, you're angry, Arnold. You're angry, Arnold. And he says, damn right, I'm angry. I've specifically put a note on that laptop saying, do not turn this off or the entire world will blow up. and someone has turned it off and I think it's you. At that point, what do I say next, Doug?

14:35Doug Noll:Arnold, you're really pissed off. You're frustrated. You did everything you thought you could do to protect the system and it didn't work and you feel really deeply betrayed and rejected. It's just really frustrated. You feel completely disrespected like you were ignored. Your instructions were ignored. And it caused a lot of chaos. And you're tearing your hair out in frustration because you didn't know what else you could do. And so what are we hoping is going to happen after we've said those things? Arnold is going to say, yeah, exactly. And he's going to nod his head. His shoulders are going to drop.

15:24Doug Noll:He's going to sigh. like that and say, look, how are we going to solve this problem? How do we prevent this from happening again? If I did it, somebody else is going to do it. There has to be a better way. Let's figure it out. Or Arnold, how do we make things right here? You're right. It was a big mistake. How do we make it right? Now you're in the conversation and you're problem solving at an appropriate time when Arnold is calmed down. If you try to ask those questions when he was totally escalated he's just going to get angrier then you're going to go nowhere so doug the signs you just said there were that shoulders drop the the actual level of voice drops a little bit what else so there are four autonomic body responses nodding of the head some kind of verbal response like yeah damn right i'm angry uh a dropping of the shoulders and a sigh of relief showing the body's yes i've been heard i'm relaxed now that's what you're looking for i think there'll be some people who've never come across your work before who would be concerned that by naming the emotion you're almost feeding it well in a way it is you're landing your prefrontal cortex to this angry person for the 90 seconds it takes for their prefrontal cortex to come back online.

16:54Doug Noll:So you are feeding it in a way, and there's nothing wrong with that. It coughs people down, and that's what we want. No more fights and arguments. People just heard. They feel validated. They're happy. They thank you. Thanks for listening to me. You mention in, I think it was your TED Talk or your book, I can't remember which one it was, that in some of these prisons you're dealing with sort of like gang members and people who are, I just can't get my head around a gang member coming up to me in prison and me just going, you're angry and that working. But have you actually seen this work in real life?

17:31Doug Noll:Oh yeah. Tell me about it. So we ended up in Corcoran State Prison and here in California, which is one of California's supermaxs. and we were given the challenge to work with men coming out of violent gangs. And for three years, I taught 100 feet away from Charles Manson's cell. And these were guys that were pretty rough, and they got it. It was amazing. The stories were just incredible. In fact, we've got a couple of—we've got one guy now who has been— he's at another prison which is a downgraded security so showing that he is no longer a security risk and he's leading prison of peace in that and that prison you know he's trained over a thousand people in prison how to be peacemakers mediators how did you feel when you one of the first few times you actually saw that happen in that quite hostile like tinderbox environment Well, by then, we knew what we were doing.

18:38Doug Noll:So we just smiled. Yep, working again, just like clockwork. In the early days, we weren't so sure. But by the time we got to that prison and other maximum security prisons, we knew what we were doing. And we knew what the effect went through. and we would get pushed back from the men in the beginning, and we said, no, trust us. We know what we're doing here. Just give it a try and see what happens. And they would, and they'd come back and say, very sheepishly, you were right. We were wrong. This is amazing. You mentioned that the neuroscience caught up with your technique a couple of years down the line.

19:21Now, I think you mentioned a guy, Lieberman, if I remember.

19:24Doug Noll:Matthew Lieberman. Talk me through that. What's the neuroscience behind it? So Lieberman and his colleagues at UCLA study a field called social neuropsychology. And they're looking at how our social interactions work in the brain. The guy's a frigging genius. And his wife, Naomi Eisenberg, another genius. I mean, these people are giants. And in 2007, he and his colleagues set up an experiment. They put people into a scanning machine, and they showed them evocative pictures that evoked emotion. And watch what happens to the brains. And they saw the emotional centers explode and the prefrontal cortex quiet down.

20:16Doug Noll:Then what they did is have their subjects name their emotion. And when they did that, it reversed the effect. The amygdala and all the limbic regions associated with negative emotions deactivated. And the right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex activated. And they calmed down. There's the hard science. I'm going to ask you a question, Doug, that you may not want to or be able to answer. but I'm interested to see. So if someone is perhaps sociopathic or psychopathic where they may not be able to recognize emotions, how does that work? That is a great question. And I'm thinking because of the thousands of people that we train over 10 years, we only kicked one person out of the program.

21:09Doug Noll:And you can imagine in prison, there are a lot of maladaptive people. And there's just one guy that, yeah, So our experience is that if you've got a functioning brain, whether you're sociopathic, psychopathic, or an overt maladaptive narcissist, this will work. Maybe not permanently, but in the moment, it will work. The one guy that we kicked out was a maladaptive overt narcissist, and we just couldn't penetrate him. So we finally let him go. but that was after two years of trying do you ever feel any fear in these prisons fear fear yeah not want why not these people were so thrilled with what they were learning from us that they became dedicated loyal students and they would protect us against anything we were in class plenty of times when there are riots going out on the yard.

22:17Doug Noll:And they said, stay here. Don't worry about it. We got you covered. Not once did we have a problem. And we brought in trainers, both men and women. None of us ever had a problem. Not once. Not even close. Surprised the heck out of us. But eventually it got used to. They were so happy to be given tools that really worked and changed their lives. they would do anything for it. And this happened in prison after prison after prison. You know, 20 or 30 prisons. Welcome to the break. Yes, my favourite part of the show. These two idiots have stopped talking. Yes, I want to tell you about my new favourite podcast.

22:56No, that's a lie. It's my old favourite podcast. I've been on this one for a while. Didn't know where that was going. It is called I Digress. It is hosted by Troy Sandage and it is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Yes, it's got shows that are under 30 minutes and I Digress helps eliminate complexity, complications and confusion in your business with frameworks and strategies that achieve scalable and sustainable success. At least that's what it says here. And if you do want to hear a really personal story, go to episode 136. This is Troy's honest account of fatherhood, killing hustle culture and what really matters when you stop performing and start living with intention.

23:34Listen to I Digress wherever you get your podcasts. That concludes the break. Let's return to the scheduled programming. Back to the studio.

23:46So let's move a bit more into perhaps a less high stakes environment, going back into the workplace. Have you done any work with organizations around this? Have you ever been in at all? Yeah. Tell me about that. So in workplace settings, it's hierarchical mostly.

24:04Doug Noll:and people have very low skill levels. So conflict is predictable and fixable. However, people don't have a skill set and so it just gets worse. And our experience has been when you teach these basic skills to leaders so they learn what I call nervous system leadership, the dynamics change dramatically. And so leadership failure is not due to a personality defect or ignorance or being stupid or not having skill. It's not recognizing that you're dealing with nervous systems. And when people are in a threat response, they cannot function. And when you get a consistent threat response, that's when people shut down, quiet quit, leave, or in the worst case, sabotage passive aggressively because their nervous systems are not being attended to.

25:10And once a leader gets the insight that I've got to manage these nervous systems, I've got to take a dysregulated nervous system and regulate, calm it down.

25:22Doug Noll:That's when the transformation occurs. And we've seen it over and over again. So when you do go into organizations to teach this nervous system leadership, what are the common pushbacks from people in your class? What are they saying? Soft skills. Yucco. Empathy. Ooh, emotion. Oh, this is irrational. I'm going to look like a fool doing this. But what if I get a report? I'll lose all my authority. Same old crap every single time. We always have the same three objections. They're all wrong. And the only way you overcome them is to go out and experiment and try it for yourself and see that your objections are baseless.