High Performance Mindset | Learn from World-Class Leaders, Consultants, Athletes & Coaches about Mindset - 752: Leading Under Pressure: High Stakes Teamwork and Communication with Drew Moldenhauer

Episode Date: May 21, 2026

In this episode of The High Performance Mindset, Dr. Cindra Kamphoff sits down with Drew Moldenhauer, an international speaker, leadership trainer, and founder of Blue Ethos Specialized Training, to explore what it takes to communicate, lead, and perform effectively when the pressure is highest. Drawing from nearly two decades in law enforcement, higher education, and leadership development, Drew shares how high-performing teams build trust, navigate conflict, and stay composed in high-stress situations. He explains why communication can either escalate or de-escalate tension within seconds and why emotional control is often the foundation of effective leadership. Throughout the conversation, Drew discusses the concept of "high stakes teamwork" and why psychological safety, empathy, and accountability must coexist for teams to thrive. He also shares practical strategies leaders can use immediately to strengthen communication, build trust, and help teams stay calm and focused under pressure. Drew's message is especially relevant in today's world, where stress, conflict, and uncertainty can easily pull teams apart instead of bringing them together. His approach reminds us that leadership is not just about authority—it's about human connection, self-regulation, and creating environments where people feel seen, heard, and supported. This episode is a powerful reminder that the best leaders are not those who avoid pressure, but those who learn to lead themselves and others effectively through it.     You'll Learn: • What "high stakes teamwork" really means and why it matters • Common communication mistakes people make under stress • Why emotional control is critical for leadership and performance • How empathy and accountability work together in strong teams • Practical ways to stay calm and think clearly under pressure • How leaders can build trust and psychological safety immediately • Why resilience and self-awareness shape effective leadership     Episode Resources & Links Learn more about Drew Moldenhauer: https://drewthespeaker.com/ Learn more about the Mentally Strong Institute: https://mentallystronginstitute.com/ Register for the Mental Performance Summit: https://mentalperformancesummit.org/ Request a Free Mental Breakthrough Call with Dr. Cindra or her team: https://freementalbreakthroughcall.com/ Download the Confidence Research Study: https://confidencestudy.com/  

Are you a coach or business leader who wants to help others build confidence, overcome obstacles, and perform at their best? Become a mentally strong certified coach and learn the proven system that I have personally used with Olympians, professional athletes, and Fortune 500 leaders. In this 15-hour certification, you'll gain science-backed tools to help people strengthen confidence, reduce self-doubt, improve emotional control, and perform consistently under pressure. You'll also learn practical frameworks you can immediately apply with clients, teams, athletes, and leaders. Whether you want to start or grow your coaching business, increase your impact as a leader,

or create a stronger culture within your organization. This certification gives you the tools to help others thrive. Applications are now open for the next cohort beginning June 1st. You can learn more or apply today at Mentally Strong Institute.com slash certification. Welcome to the high performance mindset podcast. I'm so excited today to welcome Drew Moldenhauer. He is an international speaker, leadership expert, and owner of Blue Ethos Specialized Training. Drawing from over 17 years in law enforcement, Drew helps leaders and teams communicate clearly, build trust, and perform under pressure. His work focuses on high-stakes teamwork, situational awareness, and leading with clarity when the pressure is the highest.

And today, Drew and I are going to discuss what it really takes to communicate effectively and lead in high-pressure environments. We're going to talk about emotional control, psychological safety, resilience, empathy-driven leadership, and practical ways teams can build trust and de-escalate conflict before it escalates. So whether you're leading a team or coaching others or simply trying to communicate more effectively, under stress, this conversation is packed with practical tools and powerful insights you can apply immediately. So Drew, thank you so much for being on the high performance mindset podcast. I'm so excited to talk to you about all the things I just mentioned. Fantastic. Thank you for having me, Sandra, and I'm a big fan year, so I'm honored to be here. Amazing.

Well, we got to know each other through the speaking circuit, which is really. really fun. And I think what I'm really looking forward to today is to talking about like this idea of conflict management and how can you build trust and psychological safety, right, when it really matters because the leaders I know, all of those things are essential for them. So Drew, why should people listen to us today? I think why people should listen to us today is exactly what you just talked about is, you know, in today's world, I don't think we have enough psychological safety in our teams. and if you look at different aspects of that, it can be from all the way from manufacturing to public safety,

whatever it is. It's looking at that. And do you, as a leader, do you provide an environment where people are able to speak up? Are they able to take some calculated risks? Are they not afraid to make some mistakes? And I think we're seeing too much of that. We're seeing some burnout.

We're seeing people leave, you know, their job to go somewhere else because they don't feel psychologically safe in these environments. Also, I think people should listen today because communication is huge. You know, when we're talking about this, in everyday life that we have with our spouse, with our kids, with people at work, sometimes we get emotionally wrapped up in things and we don't communicate that well. Or we're trying to deliver a message, but when we're doing that, we're coming off really brash or we're not showing enough empathy to people when we should. So I think just demonstrating and talking about how we can control ourselves emotionally and then have good effective communication within our relationships with both people at work and people in our everyday life. And drawing on my experience of 17 years in law enforcement having to deal in these very difficult high stress situations every day, I can provide some pretty good insight on that.

Yeah, that's awesome and super helpful. And when I think about psychological safety and resilience, I think a little bit about our confidence. study we just conducted Drew. So we did this national research study where, and I have a book coming out September 1 called The Confidence Habit. And so we really wanted to see like what helps grow confidence and what leaders can do to decrease confidence. And some of the things that we're going to talk about today, we found decreases confidence or increases confidence. But we also found like one third of people have quit a job because it was hurting their confidence. Right. And people would rather work for a boss that builds their confidence. They would take less money. They would,

you know, by working with, they would choose a boss that builds their confidence, even if it mean making less money. And I think about these topics of psychological safety and resilience, how they're so connected to confidence. So Drew, you just mentioned you've spent years in law enforcement, higher education, leadership training. Like, tell us a bit about your story and what led you to kind of focus on this high-stakes teamwork and de-escalation. Yeah, absolutely. So kind of going all the way back, I graduated college with my degree in law enforcement. And my goal always in life was to be the chief of the city that I grew up in, right outside Manoa, Minnesota city called Ramsey. And that was my goal. 100%. That's what I,

that's what I was set out to do that. I was, you know, laser focused. That's what I was going to do. Well, as time went on, I put in for Sergeant twice, didn't get it. And it was devastating to me because it was, you know, you're in a smaller department. There's only a few spots for that. And two of them came up. I didn't get it. So I decided I want to go back and get a master's degree in my field to better my chances. And when I did, I went and got a public safety executive leadership master's degree.

And with that during that time, a teaching job opened up. And when that teaching job opened up, it just started driving. me away from more the law enforcement side of things, more into the teaching and speaking world. And when I got into that, I really started developing communication strategies that I noticed a lot of people didn't know about. And some of them that I explained to my students and helped them with is like the 73855 model. Now, a lot of people haven't heard of this, but... I am not heard of this. 73558 model. Okay, tell us about this. Yeah, 73855. So It can be used all over the place, but what I really liked it is it's a theory, Mulherin's

theory, and a lot of people look at it and say, you know, it's a theory. I don't know if it's 100% correct, but I think it's pretty accurate. So what it means is 7% of communication is just the words that are coming out of my mouth. So 7% is just the words. 38% is the tone I use with those words. So if I were going to give you an example right now, I can say the exact same word, but I can change my meaning by it by my tone. So here's an example.

If I said to you, seriously versus I go, seriously, I just changed the whole meaning of how that is. Or really? Really? I changed the entire meaning of that, right? And same with if I, like I was tell the story about my ex-wife, if I said, hey, could I go fishing? And she would lean back and she'd go, fine. Well, she really, she doesn't want me to go fishing, right? because the way she said fine, all right?

But 55% of the communications are body language. So there's so much to do with that that when you're talking to people, it's how are you approaching your employees? So for an example, one of your employees, your leader, they show up late to work. And they're already probably having a sense of urgency. They're trying to get into work. And the first thing they see is you standing at the door and you're pointing at your watch and you're doing one of these and you're like, you're late, you're late.

that is horrible buying language that you're just kind of shoving in their face and the impact that you have on that person coming in they haven't even found out what's going on about why they are late to work you might have had a death in the family you know there might have been bad things going on but your first approach in that first six to eight seconds

is so important and we got to realize that 73855 us ourselves how are we projecting ourselves and when we use words like calm down when we do that we actually use a strong tone that really upsets people, calm down, or come here, I'm talking to you, or that's none of your business. So we don't even realize sometimes that we're using those bad tones. And I had to do some research

on this because in law enforcement, this is all I dealt with. People were very irrational during these times. And, you know, how was I projecting myself? Because I'm already an authority figure. I'm showing up. So I knew that I had to have a calm presence. The way that my body language was, if I was dealing with someone that maybe just had a death in the family, I wasn't going to cross my arms with my full uniform and duty belt on like this, I was actually going to sit down with them like on a couch and talk to them in empathetic voice to have that communication with them and spread that message. So I started crafting this and then I came up with Blue Ethos with me and another founder and we started teaching leaders about this. Like how are you approaching your people on, you know,

the out in the field or manufacturing floor? How are you regulating yourself? How are you talking to these people? What's your 73855? What's that looking like? And then also just from the perspective of we do de-escalation and active threat preparedness training. And just for your own safety and situational awareness, paying attention to people's body language is so key. Because I can lie to you all day here with my mouth, but I can't lie to you with my body. So I always give the demonstration. People always laugh. You know, where I just say, officer, I'm not leaving the screen.

I'm not leaving the screen. I'm not leaving the screen. What am I doing? I'm leaving the screen because I'm telling you that I'm not, but my body language is telling you something different. So always paying attention to people's body language is such a big thing, both in communication and situational awareness. I love that. 73855.

I think that's sticky. And it's easy to remember, you know, you're right. Like people notice your body language and your tone way more than they notice like what you said. And so tell us a bit about what does high stakes teamwork actually mean to you. And why do you think it's really important for leaders today, no matter what? role they might be in. 100%. So that's the name of my keynote speech. I'm very passionate about it. And I'll just kind of give you a backstory of where I came up with that. When I was a police officer

in the city that I used to work for, and I had about three years on, I was in the middle of roll call one time. And I had vital safety information that I wanted to pass on to people in our roll call. And for us, that's the time where officers meet twice a day in our ship just to pass on vital safety information. And while I was in that roll call, I was giving out some vital safety information. And one of the senior officers in that group said, shut up, rookie, shut up, you're to be seen, not heard. Stop talking. Wow. Yes.

So the impact, I never realized the impact that would have on me. Because when you look at it, according to the Washington Post, they did a survey and they've done several of these, but fear surveys. And I saw this fear survey that they said the number one fear that people have in the United States of America. is the fear of public speaking, what you and I do, right? So that was from that. And on that list, number four was dying. Isn't that crazy? It's so crazy.

That's irrational, right? But then I started thinking back to that. And I thought, okay, when that happened, I no longer spoke up at roll call. So I just quit talking, right? I no longer got on the radio when this officer was around to call out my traffic stops. I went on calls and didn't ask for backup. So essentially what I was doing is I was putting that fear of speaking up and in that fear of public speaking.

That started raised to number one. My fear of dying started dropping down. Oh, wow. Like literally, because you could die, you know. I could die. I was putting my own safety online because I had more of a fear of being embarrassed and ridiculed and judgment and all that in front of a group of people than I did my own death.

And when I start telling people that message, their eyes just kind of go, oh my God, I do the same thing. Like I would speak up in front of these people because I'm afraid of what this will have. That's how powerful that fear is right there of the fear of speaking up. So if we're in this environment where it's bad psychological safety, we won't speak up even though people could get hurt. And that was the first like to experience that. So the whole part of psychological safety and what I talk about in high stakes teamwork is that

is the foundation. You have to have an environment where you feel that you can challenge ideas respectfully, but you can challenge ideas and say, I don't think that this is right and this is why and that everyone can have a voice. And to do that in, you know, making sure that, because other teams I was around during roll call, I felt free I could say anything I wanted to. But when that officer was in the room, I didn't feel that way. So then that was the part of that. Yeah. And then the other part about high stakes teamwork that I really enjoyed was our own emotional control. So there's times in our life that we're in our teams and whether that's in the corporate world or public safety, whatever that is, that we can get a little bit irrational. It happens. It's biologically set up in us that we can get upset. You know, as a police officer, I would go on calls. I get upset. And so one of the things that we can do is we can start to box breathe. And when we start to box breathe, that's where we engage our parasympathetic nervous system instead of our sympathetic nervous system and start to regulate ourselves. Because we're no good to anyone when we, are not in check ourselves.

So just making sure that we control ourselves in that moment. And other ways that we can make sure that we self-regulate are just going for a walk. We can box breathe, calling a loved one. And one of the things I always tell people about this, and this is just a good thing that I think all your listeners would really like is when we call a loved one when we're really upset, we really want to be sued before our issues are solved. And that's what we really want. We want soothe before we solve.

So I always give the example, like if my girlfriend were to call me right now, she's having a bad day and 30 seconds in the conversation, I said, why don't you just stop just for a second? I think you need some therapy, some counseling, and some medication. That's not going to go good, right? It's just not going to work. Why? Because I'm just trying to solve her issue.

That's not going to work good. But if you soothe, you let people get it off their chest. That feels really good. So I always say, if you get that call from someone, let it get it off their chest, soothe it and invite that conversation for people to feel safe in an environment where they can do that. Help me understand this, Drew, or just ways that we can do that. And then the last part about that is getting out in nature. And those are ways that we can self-regulate. The next part to high-stakes teamwork is the ability to communicate with others or de-escalate others in certain situations.

So there's times where, you know, maybe you have to hit your sales goal at the end of the month, or you have to come out with your marketing ad at the end of the month or whatever it might be. and there's times where people in our team can get pretty emotional. So we got to understand like, okay, biologically, they're going to be upset. And we're upset in that window. We're starting to become irrational. It actually shuts off the process to our prefrontal cortex, which is right here. And when that gets shut off, we're irrational for approximately 20 minutes.

So we will say and do some things that we regret. So if you can think of the last time, maybe you had an argument with your significant other, your child, a boss, you might have said some things you regret and you come back later and go, oh my gosh, I can't believe I did that. Or you got a really bad email and you just replied to it right away and you said some things that you regret. That's because biologically that part is shut off. So I talk about ways in which how can we communicate effectively or de-escalated situation and what we can do is we can actively listen to people. And how we do that is a couple of the steps I talk about. One is paraphrasing.

So if I were, Sandra, just to say that you came into work one day and you're a very happy person. I can tell that about you. And you came in and you just had this look that was not normal. And I said, Sandra, what's going on? And you just, all of a sudden, you just unloaded on me. You got it all off your chest. You dumped out this big bucket of sand. And you gave me this 300-page story. What I can do is, in a paraphrase, I actively listen to you. And then I just repeat back to just some of the parts of the story that you just gave me. So I can just say, Sandra, sounds like you had a tough weekend with your job, your boss, and your in-laws more in time. I can't imagine what you're going through.

That's a really effective way. And then I can attach an emotional label onto it. You seem upset by this. Tell me more about that. And as I'm doing that, I'm showing you that I'm paying attention to you. And then as I'm paying attention to you, I give you some minimal encouragers. Go on, Cinderra. Tell me more about this.

That's just more getting that whole bucket of sand out. I'm soothing before I solve. And then here's the most important part that I think people should realize a little bit more as well. an effective pause is probably the biggest part of communication and de-escalation. Because I will tell you this, the last time you probably had an argument with someone or you became irrational, the first words out of your mouth were probably not good. They either fired yourself up or they fired someone else up and escalated conflict. What I want people to think of metaphorically is someone just threw you a ball.

Now that ball is yours. Hold on to it. You're not throwing it back. and when you do that the first things that should come out of your mouth when you're escalated is your own breath and you should hear your own breath either through your nose or through your mouth and when you take that effective pause you're starting to get that rational thinking back online and then when you do that then you can communicate really well but too many people just jump to conclusions or they just throw stuff out of their mouth instead of taking that effective pause

and then just the other parts of this are eye messages and open end messages with that 73855 this is a very non-aggressive way to have a conversation with you. Sandra, I can't imagine what you're going through right now, but I'm here to listen to you. What usually helps you in this situation? When I'm doing that and I'm opening up my palms to you, that goes all the way back to caveman and cave woman times. If I'm coming into your cave and I'm doing this, I'm showing I'm not a threat. This is very non-threaty.

Or am I poems down like this? And so when we do that with that good communication and we de-escalate people in our teams, we can really help to get them back online to rational thinking again. and then we can achieve those goals of our sales goals, of our marketing ad, whatever that is, we can help with that. And the last part that I say is just having a duty to intercede. So as a police officer, I have to have a duty to intervene or intercede.

If one of my police officers is too emotionally attached to a call, and it happens because we're dealing with high stress constantly, five different domestics in a row, whatever it is, I have to either verbally or physically remove that person from the situation because they're authorized to carry a weapon. It can get out of control. So I try to relate that back to what if we did that in corporate world, where maybe you have an employee that says,

that's it. I've had enough of our boss, Kelly. I'm going right into her office right now, and I'm going to let her know how I feel. When you have a duty intercede, what if you were to stop that person and say, no, let's go for a walk really quick, bent it out to me.

Yeah. How many losses could we avoid? How many different things, our psychological safety in our teams? How many different ways could we do that? if we had a duty to intercede and stop people from our team, or maybe it's the entire team's around and we're having this big argument. And we all say, let's just take a break, reset for about 30 minutes.

And when we come back, we're talking about positive things only. No more finger pointing. How are we getting through this? And that's that duty to intercede to stop everything from happening right there so we can effectively achieve our goal in high-stakes situations. So that's what high-stakes teamwork is about for me. Awesome, Drew. I really appreciate all that.

and I was thinking about a couple of things. You know, the term psychological safety comes from Amy Edmondson, which if I could summarize it, it means like your ability to speak up and you're not going to be shamed or ridiculed. And I would love for you to, what does psychological safety mean to you? First question.

And the second question is, what would you have done differently with that officer if you could go back, you know? Yes. That's a great, great deal. So talking about that what it means to me, as being effective in your team that you have this ability where in everyone's experience this is maybe think of the best boss you've ever had and I bet you that best boss you've ever had

created an environment where you were so fired up to get to work and you were happy with what you were doing and they appreciated you so to me that yeah that coming into that situation is a psychologically safe environment is where you go around the table everyone can share their ideas in a good way and Maybe people have debates about it and you talk about it, but no one puts you down. They don't say that's a stupid idea. Then you take some calculated risks. It's a good thing to take calculated risks because that's where you learn. Again, it's not like you're just taking this huge risk and you're gambling it all away.

No, but you're taking a calculated risk and you'll learn from that. And I always go back to Project Aristotle that Google did. And I thought that that was so important where basically a recap of that was they had 180,000 employees. They tried to figure out where they're going to. highest performing teams were in Google. So they interviewed over 200 people. They looked at 250 different attributes over a two-year study. And what they found was the number one attribute in these teams was good psychological safety. And what they found out was the leaders would take the rap for certain things if it went wrong. But then what they noticed is these leaders were so good in these

teams that then other people started owning situations for them. And it created this great bond. and everyone felt like they had a voice, regardless of age, or how big the team was, and it worked really effectively. So that part of just, you know, for psychological safety, for me, is being in that environment where it's just so safe to share your ideas, to challenge ideas, but you still have a good, healthy debate. Like, I think we should do this. Well, let's talk about this.

How can we see and make sure that we really strengthen this before we go? But no one's putting each other down. And now that second part of your question, how would I have done differently with that employee that said that to me. And I'm so glad you asked me that because I've never been asked that. But it does remind me of a really good diffusion strategy that I do teach people. And I think what I would have said is this is a great diffusion strategy,

especially when someone puts you down, is it's called the question of intent. Okay. And what you can say to people when they do stuff like this is just say, hey, so-and-so, was it your intent to make me feel really bad and small right there when you just said that? and what you're effectively doing is you're just taking the spotlight and you're turning it right back on that person. Okay. And when you do that, it's surprising how they will answer because now you just called them out basically on doing something very rude. And we've had situations like this that some leaders, some people don't even realize they're saying the mean words.

But when you put it back on them, then what are they going to say? If they go, yeah, I am trying to put you down, then all you have to say is, okay, that's what I thought. and it really makes them look bad in that situation and makes them check they're going to be thinking about that later otherwise if they are a pretty decent person they'll be like you know no I didn't mean to do that I just and they're going to start backtracking but again it's one of those things you're kind of calling out the behavior right there so I think I would have done that and I would have talked to him personally and then probably talked to one of my leaders and just said hey you know these are the issues that I'm having in here and I'm starting to realize that I'm not even valuing my own

safety anymore because of the judgment, the ridicule of this happening in this environment. Yeah. And Drew, what I appreciate about that story is like how raw and real you were about like the consequences of that one comment and then how that impacted you. And I appreciated that because I could think about everyone who's listening could think, yeah, there are times where I do that too, you know. And I like this idea of the question of intent because it's like you're standing up for yourself in the moment. That also takes a lot of like emotional. control because I think of times where people have said something rude to me and I'm like, what?

You know? And then, and then like you walk away and you're like, wow, that was really weird. And then you start kind of questioning it, you know, and then you're feeling bad about your decisions or what you chose. Do you know what I mean instead of standing up for yourself in that moment? What would you tell people to do to like, is it a deep breath to like, you know, be able to just pause a second and then ask that question of intent. Like what do you think the, the, um, the intellectual process of actually being able to do that in the moment is. Yeah, for sure. And you have a

sports background working with the Minnesota Vikings. So this is why I like to use kind of as a metaphor for this is when another team is starting to gain a lot of momentum, what is the other team supposed to do? And that is calling a timeout, right? So what you're supposed to do is just stop that momentum. Like you're icing the kicker. You ice the kicker before they kick that game winning field goal. you in basketball all of a sudden you're down by 10 points call a time out do that you're stopping the momentum so what i want you to think about is two things that question of intent when that does come up is you are stopping the momentum right there that person might be going off on they're gaining this momentum and they're being very rude they're being very inappropriate at that time and so when you

ask that question of intent that can really help or let's just say that you have a client or someone that comes into your workspace or a friend and they're just going off and they're starting to yell. One of the things that you can do too to stop that momentum that I think works really well is you ask them almost a complicated question something like this where they have to think about it.

Is it unreasonable for me to ask you to just lower your voice a little bit? When you say something like that, they have to think about what they're saying. So they actually have to stop and they're like, is it unreasonable? No, it's not unreasonable for you to ask me that. Okay, because right now

I just feel like you are yelling at me. And you know, you know that at me. And I feel when you do this, I feel. And as you're doing that, it's less intrusive. It's less abrasive. And you're basically putting it back on yourself because I feel like you're attacking me right now. I feel when you do this. So as you do that, as you're taking that deep breath, just know that you have these

kind of things that you can stop that momentum, that question of intent, that other one where you can just say, is it unreasonable for me to ask this? As you're doing that, you're stopping the momentum. You're calling a timeout, and that can really help in those situations. That's wonderful. I think about times actually probably more, this happens with my husband. You know, and we have an awesome marriage and amazing relationship, but there are times where, like, we can maybe just say something to each other in the wrong tone, right?

And it's like, whoa, you know, where we have to kind of check ourselves. So you often say that communication can either escalate or deescalate a situation, right, within these seconds that we're talking about. What are some of the biggest communication mistakes that people make under stress? Yeah, great question. And I think one of the biggest ones, and I'll start this off, is that people in that first six to eight seconds, first six to eight seconds of how you approach a conversation is the most important.

And what I want you to think about like that is metaphorically, think of a dog when you're going to go meet a dog that you don't know for the first time. The dog will just show you how it's feeling. The tail will wague right away or you might see a growl right away. And you know I'm not approaching that dog because that dog's growling at me right away. It's showing you right away. I'm not comfortable with this. Versus the dog that has the happy kind of tail wag with the ears back.

They're coming up to you, everything. They're really happy. You can tell how that is right away. That's setting the tone for the entire conversation. So when you come in like that dog that's growling right away, right away, you're setting up that entire conversation to fail. So I'll give you an example of what I'm talking about with this. I was really sick one time three days in a row.

I came into work. One of my partners was standing there. And when they were standing there, they're like, hey, sickie, how you doing? Are you done screwing your partners over now because you've been sick for the past couple weeks? When that person said that, that was the first six to eight seconds of that conversation, that already made me feel really bad and already set the tone that I was upset about that situation. And even if they thought that they were joking, it didn't sit. Right.

It didn't, especially because you were, you're still showing up at work sick. Yes. Yes. So it was just one of those. It's so hard to gain that rapport, that connection, that trust back after you, in that first six to eight seconds when you do that. So I like to tell people and we do this role play with people where if we do boss A and Boss B.

So when I kind of talked about this a little bit earlier, people are showing up late to work and you're standing there pointing at your watch. Again, you're already setting that tone for that person that they're very upset. and you don't know their story versus Boss B, if that person came in, you still have to hold them accountable. But one of the things you can say is, hey, Sandra, I just noticed that you were late this morning. I'm not too worried about that right now, but I'm worried about you.

I just want to check in. Is everything okay? Because when you do that in that first six to eight seconds, now I'm opening the door to say, I care about you. I want to know what's going on in your life right now. And I want to make sure you're okay. And you might say, well, Drew, actually, you know, my brother-in-law, whatever, just passed away this weekend.

and it's been really tough on me. Oh, my gosh. See, now, but now I've opened that door up that I'm showing that I care about you. I'm showing some empathy. So when you're having these conversations with people in difficult conversations, always remember that first six to eight seconds is huge. Another thing that I would say, too, and this is just personal advice. Again, I don't have any research to back this up,

but a great way to have a serious conversation, too, that works pretty well from what I've seen, is if you're in the car with somebody, and it's just you and them and you're both facing forward, that is sometimes the best time to have those conversations because there's no distractions. You're just both facing forward. You can have good conversations where it's not awkward sometimes

where you're just face-to-face doing that kind of deal or you're at home and the phone's ringing all this. But when you're in a car and you're maybe on a road trip, that's a good time that you can talk about those things. And remember just that first six to eight seconds is what you're trying to do is get your message across, but always having people have their chance to speak is huge. Instead of just coming across and being like, you do this and you really upset me.

You can say something like, help me understand. I just want to make sure, could you tell me about this? And you're always giving them, letting them tell their side of the story. I give the other example of you're a boss and you come in and let's just say something happened that a machine got left on and it cost $10,000 to the company, whatever it is. And you get this email about it or you get this other thing about it. Instead of just going down and accusing that person, it's just saying, hey, I got this information. I want to get your side of story.

Could you tell me what happened last night? Because you might come to conclusions and really upset the person. Another bad thing that sometimes we do too is we send an email. Don't send an email on something like that. Go and actually physically talk to the person because I don't know about you, Cindera, but if you get a text message or an email, you're going to read that in the worst possible tone ever. You will. Probably at 10 p.m. at night.

Yes. Something like that. And then you're going to stew on it. Yes. Like, hey, you left a machine on last night. It cost the company $10,000. What's going on with this? That's how you're going to read it. And you're going to be like, oh, my gosh, my boss is just, uh, you know, versus you wait the next day. You cool it off. You give them a chance to tell their side of the story. Let them own it. And you can work through that situation. So those are some things that we can do to have better communication with each other in the workplace, also in our relationship.

Drew, I'm thinking about this study also conducted by Google called Project Oxygen. And I just recently read about this and then watched this video of two Google managers talking about it. And it was really fascinating. And they looked at high performing managers compared to low performing managers. And one of the number one trait of high performing managers is they were great coaches. Oh, man. Yeah. So good, right? Yes, absolutely. And I think like what you're talking about of like active listening and paraphrasing and attaching an emotional label and like, you know, not sending emails, you know, accusing people and learning more about their perspective, help me understand.

That's great coaching. And leaders need great coaching skills. 100%. And you just think about that is people are always wanting to tell their side of the story, right? So that's where you can do that and you can let people do that and you can let them have their chance and they can get it off their chest. That's huge. Those are the people as you're doing that, you start to mirror their emotions. You're starting to build that oxytocin, that trust hormone with them. But you build that by letting people talk about their deal. And they might own the situation, say, that is my fault, 100%. Thank you for being a decent human being about this though and approaching me the right way. So I could have my say as to what happened here. And having that open door policy, I think the other parts of what you're saying with their great coaches is actually practicing what you preach. If you have an open door policy, yeah, then go visit your people. Because if you say, I have an open door policy, but you don't go visit your people,

they're not going to come see you. Actually, go out and see them. If you're backing up and saying, I want you to speak up if things aren't right, then when they do, just say, you know what, I really commend that. Good job. I like that. Good job that you did that. Don't put people down when you say, I want you to speak up.

Now you call them out. Again, there has to be a level of respect here, right? The timing has to be good, everything. We have to honor that. But if you're encouraging your people to speak up, we do it respectfully, but say, I just don't think that this is the best idea. And I believe that's what a good coach does, is they have that. And it's kind of the name of my podcast, too, is that iron and empathy, where they're

holding you accountable. They are saying, you know, I want the best out of you. These are my standards. Like, this is what we agreed on. This is what we're doing. But also we're humanizing it. We're having a humanized approach that we are going to go through some stuff in life. And you can have that human insight.

the entire time you're doing it. You know, when I think about Drew, like the people that I coach that have a harder time with conflict and emotional control, they usually have very high standards for themselves and others, you know, and so I'm kind of curious about this idea of like emotional control and self-regulation, which you teach as part of de-escalation. Why do you think it's harder to manage ourselves than it actually is many times to manage the conflict itself? You know, that's a great question. And I think one of the things is, a lot of people don't know, I think, how to control themselves first off,

and they don't understand biologically what's happening to them in that moment. And I think if you can start to understand that, you know, I didn't know this for a long time as a police officer. I had to research it on my own. I didn't realize that biologically, when I was dealing with these people, that their mind is not in the right spot. When they have this amygdala hijack or they're in this conflict that they're having, their brain is wired for survival, adrenaline, cortisol, all these things are starting to flow through

their veins, and their prefrontal cortex is shut off. So I think the first part about that why it's so difficult is people don't realize what's going on. So first understanding that this is a biological situation. And it's innate within you. Yes, it is. It's within you. And all of us are different, right? We're all wired different. You've met people too that they run a little bit hotter. That fuse can go pretty quick. And there's other ones that are a little bit longer, but knowing kind of when that's starting to happen. And I always tell people, think about when you get cut off in traffic, that feeling you get. Like, that's what I'm talking about. Can you control that? Some people are like, oh, no big deal. They'll just kind of wave and other people will follow that person out in her house.

And it's just like, holy cow, right? So, but they don't even realize what's going on. So I think the first part is just educating people on, this is what's going on, the anatomy of the brain with your amygdala, without getting way deep into the weeds, but like this is what's happening. So let's understand that too. How can we control this? What are some things that we can do? And again, if I can give anything just for people to really benefit them, like something very elementary, it's just that effect of pause.

Like when you start to feel that, you get that bad email. It's the fourth one of the day from your boss and you're like, I've had it. Pause. Just pause. Take a breath. Go for a quick walk, whatever that is. and understanding that when you're doing that, you're going to start getting those chemicals out of your body.

And if you start box breathing, then you're basically telling your brain to let your body know, like, I don't need these chemicals right now. I'm not, you know, I don't need to survive right now. I'm okay. And, you know, push that meeting back, whatever you got to do. But as you start to pause,

that's when you get your rational brain thinking back online. So I think first understanding what's happened to you and then knowing, okay, I have it happening right now. These are some things that I got to do before I reply to this conversation. And maybe if it's something that, is really heated, you just say, you know, can we table this? Because I just, I don't want to say something that I regret. Having the actual knowledge to say, this is just not the best time, because I don't think, you know, I'm pretty highly emotional right now, and I don't want to

ruin this relationship or this conversation. I need some time to think on it. To me, that's perfectly okay, because I, again, being a police officer of 18 years, I wish more people would do that, because they will just try to hash it out right there. And if people aren't ready, it can lead to disaster. So those are the biggest thing is educating yourself and understanding when that's happening and then being able to catch up having a good effect of pause and then when the timing's right, you can have those conversations that are crucial. Excellent. And I appreciate the cutting off in traffic idea because people can all relate to that. Right? When you've seen people cut, cut each other off or whatever. I'm curious about, you know, your podcast, iron and empathy is

kind of the idea is like, you know, you talk about having empathy but accountable. And so why do those two things need to coexist in strong leadership and in, you know, conflict management? Yeah, 100%. So with that, I will say, too, I, you know, as a teacher of, you know, six, seven years now coming on to that, one of the things I see just with accountability is if you're a teacher or you're a boss or whatever in that kind of leadership role and you don't have that iron, people are going to walk all over you. If you're a coach of a sports team and you have no control of your team, they're going to walk all over you. There's no discipline. There's no accountability. There's nothing that way.

It's disastrous because we all want to be held accountable. We might not think we do, but we truly do. I want someone to tell me like, hey, you need to be better at this spot or this is where your weakness is or your blind spot. I need to do this because I'm your coach. I want you to be better. I care about you. That's why that's so important is that part of things. But at the same time, I'll switch it over to the empathy is we can't be, like I said, with the

73855, just screaming at people the whole time, like get over here, shut up, you know, that way. When you do that too much, now you're not humanizing the thing. People will start drifting away from you because now you're showing that you're not caring for that person. So there's this fine balance of iron of holding people accountable, but also having that humanized approach. And so I'd like to kind of go back to that example I told you about it, almost as

the boss that has when you're coming in late to work and maybe it's the third time and they say hey I noticed that you were late today not to worry about that what's going on and then you tell them you know these are you know I've had a lot of stuff going on a lot of times that employee will come up to you later and say I know you got to probably write me up for this and you can't show favoritism but thank you for being a decent human being about it that's what I'm talking about is in the moment there's times where you don't have to like when that person's late you don't have to discipline right there you can just say you know what we'll talk about this later i'm not too worried about that right now but we will discuss that later i'm worried about you that's showing that that's

that perfect balance of i'm holding you accountable but at the same time i want to make sure you're good because you are my person you're on my team and i want to make sure that we're jiving together here but at the same time you know you were late to practice and i got to make sure that i'm holding you accountable for that, but I can be a decent human being about it and find out what's going on. Instead of just jumping to conclusions with way too much iron and you're just yelling at people or way too much empathy that you're just letting everyone show up late all the time and you're just passing everyone in your class or you're doing all that, we have to have that fine balance and it's very tough to do. And I think the greatest leaders out there have that. They have both

iron and empathy. Excellent, Drew. I could learn from you all day. It was really fun to I'm going to do my best to summarize the things I got from today. I love this 738-55 model. 7% is your communication, your verbal. 38 is your tone. 55% is your body language. I appreciate just the examples you gave us of fear and how that really holds people back

and like the honesty of how that one comment held you back. Sooth before we solve. And that's true. That's why I call my sister, my dad, or whatever. right? Because like I know they're just going to listen. Pay attention to the first six to eight seconds of how you approach this situation and be a good, a great coach, right? Someone who has active listening, who paraphrases, who attaches an emotional label. And, you know, I also love, by the way, the question of intent to wait to diffuse it. You know, and you said, like, was that your intent to make me feel small there? I'm going to use that. So, Drew, so wonderful to talk to. you. We're going to have to have you back just so you can teach us more. But tell us how people can learn more about you and follow along your podcast, learn more about your speaking and things like that. Yeah, fantastic. Thank you. And my website is Drew. It's more, I'm sorry,

that was my email, but my, my website is blue dash ethos.com. So B-L-U-E-T-H-O-S.com. That's blue ethos.com or my speaking website is just drew the speaker.com and you can go on either of those and you'll find out information about me. I also have a book called How Smart Police Officers Use Situation Awareness to Improve Safety. I'm working on my second one right now that will be coming out soon. But either of those you can get a hold of me. My podcast is Iron and Empathy. It's on all platforms. I had you on the other week, which is fantastic. Yeah, it's fun. That'll be releasing here soon. And so either of those you can get a hold of me. Also, it's just on Twin Cities Live a couple times these past times, too, so you can YouTube that. And I talk a lot about this emotional regulation

and also de-escalation in there, too. So several ways. Awesome. I love it, Drew. Thank you so much for joining us on the High Performance Mindset Podcast. Keep crushing it. You too. Thank you, Cindra. And again, an honor. I'm a huge fan of yours. So thank you for having me on. Thank you so much for being here. You bet. Way to go for finishing another episode of the High performance mindset. I'm giving you a virtual fist pump. Holy cow, did that go by way too fast for anyone else? If you want more, remember to subscribe. And you can head over to Dr. Sindra for show notes and enjoy my exclusive community for high performers, where you get access to videos about mindset each week. So again, you can add over to Dr. Cyndra.com. See you next week.