The Ryan Leak Podcast - Holding the Calm with Hesha Abrams

Episode Date: July 26, 2022

Ryan Leak sat down with Hesha Abrams for this latest episode of Followership with Ryan Leak to discuss conflict resolution. Hesha is an internationally acclaimed master attorney mediator, known for crafting highly creative settlements and resolutions in very difficult matters. She has the unique talent to manage big egos and strong personalities with a keen ability to create synergy amongst the most diverse personality types, driving them toward agreement. By Holding the Calm, she has created settlements worth billions of dollars and saved clients billions more using her innovative approaches to deal making. She now specializes in crafting innovative solutions for complex or difficult matters and has resolved thousands of cases, both large and small, in every conceivable area during her career. You can purchase Holding the Calm at Amazon today here.

Welcome to followership with Ryan Leake, a podcast designed to talk about the other side of leadership. And that is following. Today, we're going to be having a conversation with my good friend Hesha Abrams, who has just written a brand new book called Holding the Calm, the Secret to Resoling Conflict and Diffusing Tension. And so if you are a follower in organization, you're a part of a team and you've ever had conflict, which means you're human and you're alive, Today's episode, I believe, is going to add value to your life. Hesha Abrams is one of the lead mediators in the world. Okay, so she is top shelf.

She works with several Fortune 500 companies whenever they need a mediator. Whenever someone's either being sued, someone is trying to get a patent, someone is trying to sue somebody else. She is the lead mediator. She helps people hold the client. And so we're going to dive into a fantastic conversation that we just had, my friend, Hesha. So welcome to followership with Lion Lee. Ladies and gentlemen, I have my friend here.

And how we met is so, it was so fun. We met on an airplane. Now, I don't know for those of you that don't travel that much. And I realize that's most people in the world. They don't travel a whole lot. But when you get on the airplane, you have, you have that decision, right? Like, is this a person I'm willing to spend the next three hours with and have a conversation with? How much is too much?

Do we talk for 10 minutes? We do the pleasantries. We do that. But for some odd reason, I just, I felt like it was like a divine appointment. Okay. Like, when I, when I'm sitting next to Hesha, I'm going, I just feel like I'm going to end up talking to her for the rest of this. And we did. All right.

Like she has such a fascinating life and she is such a great person. As I've just gotten to know her over the past couple of months, we've become great friends. And she has a new book that is coming out called Holding the Calm. And I just thought, everybody I know needs to read this book. And I need to know more about holding the calm and just learning about her life. So, actually, I want you to explain to people what exactly it is that you do, because I don't want to mess it up. Okay? I want to know what your elevator speech is when people ask you what you do because you have one of the most intriguing jobs of anybody that I know.

And I thought, I got to have you on the podcast. We got to talk about your book. So welcome to followership with Ryan League. Let's tell all of our listeners what it is. that you do for a living? Well, with that introduction, goodness gracious, I'm smiling already. Well, I am, and first of all,

I echo everything we did on the plane. It was definitely divine and marvelous. And it's wonderful when you have a conversation that you feel richer. Yeah. That's just magnificent, right? Yes. So I am a professional peacemaker,

which means that I toil in the trenches of human conflict. and the companions are anger, greed, resentment, pride, arrogance of righteousness, hurt, pain, woundedness. That's in the trenches that I suffer through and I try literally to lift up. And I've done every kind of case. I've been doing this three decades. So I've done from car accidents to wrongful death or someone's been killed to big corporate

things to the secret recipe for Pepsi Cola, you know, arguing over that one was holding it my hot little hands was really pretty interesting on how that one worked. So my case is now start out with somebody saying, I want $100 million. And the other side saying, here's 10,000, go pound sand. And so you play the middle woman. Correct. So you're the lead mitigator. Is that the correct term? Mediator. Mediator. The lead. You're the lead mediator for massive and some small cases, and you have to sit in the middle and get people to calm down. Well, and what's interesting is that never in the history of calming down,

has anyone ever calmed down by being told to calm down. Now, that's good, right? Never, never. And sometimes a firefighter has to set a fire to put out of fire. So there's times I had one case where this person was so angry and the lawyer just couldn't handle him. So he's yelling. So I started yelling and I'm matching him. But he wasn't in control of himself, but I was in control of myself.

So I could start lowering my voice and he's matching me and he's matching me until finally I get us calmed by matching him. And at the end, he's and he's breathing heavy and he just looked at me and he mouth. thank you. And so what happens is that when people are having big emotions, I don't care what those emotions are, they're out of control. They're overwhelmed. It literally overwhelms our circuit.

And so what they don't need is judgment, self-righteousness, condensation, argument, persuasion, that stuff. What they need is to be seen and heard. And then that's what helps bring them back down to where the amygdala, which is the reptilian part of our brain, is no longer activating. And the rational, civilized part of our mind can re-engage. But trying to talk rational, civilized, you know, talk to somebody whose emotions are big

is just not only foolish and ineffective. It's actually really disrespectful. Don't tell me how I feel. Don't tell me not to feel what I'm feeling. Right. It's completely disrespectful. And that's the world we live in and whether you're talking about, you know, whose roommates cat peed on the rug all the way up to, you know, hundreds of billion dollar cases that I do for the Googles and the Amazon's and the Verizon's and, you know, the IBMs and those big huge company. It's all exactly the same.

Yeah. Because it's human beings who have egos who I want to win. Yeah. I want to not lose. I want to be right. I want to impose my will on you. I don't want you to impose your will on me. Everything else is just literally just details.

So for a lot of our listeners, you know, they work in an organization. They obviously, they're not exempt from living in the polarizing world that we all live in. Everything is either politicized or is somehow a celebrating Fourth of July is polarizing. Juneteenth is polarizing Roby Wade obviously is polarizing you cannot escape polarization in 2022 so if

you don't have power in a room that's what I think about when I think about a lot of followers or a lot of team members are sitting on a team and they don't have a high level of influence in the organization or they don't have a whole lot of authority yet they're still trying to

have a decent conversation. What advice would you give to them as a professional peacemaker that would help them thrive in that conversation to maybe calm parties down? Because I think a lot of people

want to be able to have a civil conversation and you're, well, you're the expert on getting people to have civil conversation. So what are maybe some tips that you would even outline in your book that you would say would help a person have more civil conversations? So that, first of all, is the number one thing to make

us to civilized people, right? You know, in many parts of the world, conflict is resolved really easily. You know, I kidnap your kid, I burned down your store, I break your legs. No conflict, right? That's pretty easy. Right. You know, here, it's more complicated and we have to use words, which means we have to actually listen to the other side. So I've got a couple of stories I want to share. So first of all, the reason I wrote the book is that I've made a lot of speeches, like you. I've made a lot of speeches. And people are always saying to me, you got to write a book, you got to write a book. Well, I was too busy.

I was just working all the time. Who had time to write a book? And then a couple of years ago, I had a hysterectomy. I was grounded for six weeks. I went, well, finally, I can write my book. And when I wrote it, I thought about, I've had a laboratory for 30 years of what actually works, not theory, not what should work, not what I want it to work, but what actually works with real live human beings. And you're not limited by what the outside of a person is. So race,

ethnicity, religion, socioeconomic, gender, all that stuff doesn't really matter. It's all ego. It's all human beings, the DNA below. I don't want to feel powerless, which is the question that you started with. So when I wrote it and I thought, how can I make this immediately, accessible where you don't need to take a class, you don't need to get a certification, you don't need to read like 10 books, how can you get something today that can help me today with the problem? So what I did in the book is I wrote 20 tools in 20 chapters. Each chapter has the tool, a bunch of anecdotes, a bunch stories, how to use it, why, blah, blah, blah. So let me just give you a quick example right now for the one you just meant. Yeah. For followership,

It's such a beautiful concept, by the way. I just thought it was absolutely brilliant to focus on that because almost all of us, all of us, even those who are, you know, the head of IBM or the head of Amazon, have to follow something somewhere. So learning how to either lead, follow, or get out of the way. It's really important for learning how to function in your life, right? For sure. So when there's conflict, it's almost always a feeling of power.

or powerlessness. Either I'm trying to get you to do something that you don't want to do, or you're trying to get me to do something. I don't want to do. And if it's like the Roe v. Wade issue, it's, I want you to believe like I believe. No, I refuse. I don't want to believe like you believe.

So the conflict is really pretty easily identifiable. It's power. And so when you feel powerless, that's when it's really stressful and miserable and horrible. And then you grab for power however you can. You scream, you cry, you yell, you withdraw, you attack, your passive aggressive, all of these things that honestly are short-term gratification, you know, I'm going to eat my candy and not my vegetable kind of stuff.

And they don't work. And they actually just make everything worse. So with that sort of as an introduction, let me give you one that you could use actually in a meeting or in a conversation about anything, about work, about Roevy Wade, about voting, about anything you want. So let's say the other person is hot. That's just usually why I describe it. They're just hot.

Something's happened. Never in the history of the world does it ever work to out-argue somebody out of their position. It just does never, ever, ever going to work. And all you do is exhaust yourself and frustrate yourself. And as you said, frustration is just basically using a nice pick to your gas tank and just draining your energy out, which is ridiculous. Yeah. So the first thing you want to do is I have a technique I call V-U-C-S.

And I like it. V-U-C-S. Okay. Validate, understand, clarify, summarize. So V for validate, you for understand, C for clarify, S for summarize. And Vox makes it funny because it sounds a little bit like a curse word, which means you're going to remember it. Right. I was going to say, listeners, listen, when you use VU-S-R-S-R-M-A-R-R-R-R-S-W.

V-vux, make sure you emphasize that V. Otherwise, you're going to escalate the situation. All right, I'm with you. And I do that on purpose because our brain, when I was in law school, I had to read, you know, when I took the bar exam, you have to remember, like, in a name, a number of just incredibly stupid things you'll never use again.

So what everybody does is you make up little sexy acronyms because the brain, for some reason, hold on to that. You didn't remember it. So I was trying to do that. So the part of validate is this. It's very hard to validate somebody that I don't agree with. You know, because if you're saying something and I don't agree with it, my first reptilian brain amygdala reaction is you're an idiot.

Obviously, you don't know better. So I should explain away your ignorance and your stupidity, right? And then you'll listen to me. Yeah. That's most people's plans, right? Exactly right. It's like, yeah, that's not going to work. But it's hard to validate unless you're really skilled,

and not triggered. It's really hard to say, oh, I see your perspective. I understand where you're coming from. Okay, 10% of the time, we can all do that, right? What about the other 90%? Right. So what you do, this is the number one trick.

You name the emotion. So if I see you and you're hot, or you're crying, or you're withdrawing, or you're being stubborn, or you're being passive-aggressive, or whatever other label I want to give you, I look at you, which means I have to,

stop with the drama in my own head. I have to see you. And I say, wow, you seem really angry. Or, wow, you seem really frustrated. Now, the angry person will usually go, I'm not angry. Okay. So you're frustrated then? I mean, you're going to get it within two, right?

And then they go, yes, I'm really frustrated. Okay, explain that to me. So I can understand. What does that immediately do? for the angry hot person. I'm seen, I'm heard, I'm valued,

I'm not being dismissed. You will drain out 25% of the hot emotion just for that. Now, 25%, so we have some more work to do. But it depends on how triggered you are. So if you can hold the calm,

and the reason we have that title is it's like a mantra. Because I'm human, I get triggered too, and I'm a professional. I do this all day. But I find, that if I feel I'm getting triggered,

I say to myself, I'm holding the calm, I'm holding the calm, I'm holding the calm, I'm holding the calm, I'm holding the calm. And it may take... You've got to talk to yourself a little bit. Indeed. And let's say it takes 10 seconds.

Okay. Okay. Now I, and this is the beauty part of what it does, is it doesn't just calm me down. It makes me not feel powerless. And remember, we talked about that at the very beginning. That's the problem with all conflict. you feel powerless. So now I'm powerless. I'm holding the calm. I'm holding the calm. I'm holding the calm. I'm holding the calm. I now take back power. Even in a situation where a followership is under a

terrible leader or in a nasty meeting or things are really bad. You're feeling really powerless, right? Big time. So you have to get some power back. Now, you may not be able to get it externally. That's just sort of the reality of the situation. Get it internally. I'm holding the calm. And then what I did in my book is I've got like these 20 tools, you think, okay, what can I use right now? What can I do? And I have one in there that is just designed for you, for internal. You've probably heard this where people are nervous about making speeches and they say, just imagine everyone, the audience in their underwear. Yeah. I don't want to imagine some people in their underwear. Yeah. Yeah. I've never done that one personally. But yeah. It's like, no, thank you. I'm not interested in that.

But let's say I'm at a meeting and I'm powerless. First thing I do is get back some sense of power. I'm holding the calm. I'm holding the calm. I'm holding the calm. I've got choices here. I can do vux. I can do any one of these other tools. But the zoo animal one is really interesting.

Because let's say I'm really powerless. Or I'm afraid. Or I don't know what to do. I'm confused. So what I need to do is get back more of my own sense of power. So I'm looking at you and you're the one who's demanding, arguing, complaining, whining, let's say somebody's crying. I mean, any of those things that you don't know how to handle what to do.

In your own mind, as you're listening to them and they're talking, imagine them as a zoo animal. So if somebody's passive aggressive, I think of them as a skunk. And they're like, they're misdirecting by squirting something out of it. I see somebody who is clueless and just not paying attention. They're an ostrich shutting their head in the sand. If it's somebody rumming around, I just think of some giant rhinoceros with a big old horn just stomping, you know, through the bushes. If I see somebody who's just throwing their power around, I think of some giant elephant with a trunk just waving around, like, look at me, I'm somebody.

And all of a sudden, what it does is it makes them pathetic. It makes them no longer so powerful because I've chosen the power. of how I choose to think about you. Yeah. And you'll find that when you feel really powerless, it's kind of hard to grab onto the animal. Make yourself do it. And then all of a sudden, in your head, you're laughing.

Now I'm not so powerless anymore. When I'm not powerless, I got choices, don't I? I got things I can do. I can handle the situation better and more differently. Yeah. I'm a dad. So you got me with Zoom animals. Okay.

So we're always, we're always, we're always, we're playing lots of animal games at our house. One of the things that that stood out to me in your book, you give sort of, you know, 20 lessons that you've learned from 30 years being elite mediator. Chapter 8 is something that I tell people all the time. You got to be the adult in the room. You got to be the adults in the room. What would you say to followers in terms of when they find themselves in personal circles or professional circles, how to be the adult in the room? Isn't that marvelous? If we had more adults, wouldn't we have less problems?

Right? That's really difficult. And I think about all these, you know, they're murderers going around shooting people up, but they're all terribly lost souls that did not have good parenting, that didn't have the correct kind of loving. and guidance. Otherwise, they wouldn't have gotten so bent and filled with so much hate and rage and anger that they would then express it in this really terrible, horrible way. So, you know, the whole, there's an African saying about it takes a village to raise a child. I absolutely believe that. And I am now, you know, 63 years old. I'm a grandmother. I parent everybody. And my kids will say, mom, you can't. I mean, a stranger. You can't say, oh, yes, I can. Oh, yes, I can. And I do.

I'm someplace and some kids misbehaving. I'll turn and look at them and I'll say, shh, bite down. And they just immediately freak out because some stranger is saying that to them. And I look at the parents and nod and they usually are like, thank you. So we all need to help each other. And that's how we can be more adults. But then in a given situation where people are behaving badly. I have a story in the book that if I may indulge me to let me tell this about the rain.

Yeah, for sure. Yeah, go for it. I love that story. I read a lot. So I look and I hear and see a lot of things. National Geographic did a really cool study about the giant big horn sheep, you know, the kind that have those huge, giant brown, gorgeous horns. And they live way, way, way, way high up in the mountains.

And the paths up these really steep mountains are literally a hoof width apart. And so they hid cameras under rocks with, you know, two-week batteries and they came back and got all the footage. And they would see one ram going up. and one ram coming down and they were really curious would they butt heads because they'd fight to the death right?

One or both of them would fall off the side of the mountain. What would they do? And one of them would bow down and the other one would leap over. Now the researchers were very curious.

How do they know which one to bow down? Is it the uphill sheet? Is it the downhill sheet? I mean, how did they figure this out? And they went through hours and hours and hours of footage. And you know what they found out? In every single case, the one who bowed down was the more mature sheep.

Wow. Every single time. And so what I say, if I'm in a conflict situation, and I give this story to my readers, like take these stories, they're battle tested, they work, take them, use them, retell them, because think about the Bible tells them stories. The Bhagavagita tells them stories, the Old Testament. I mean, everything tells us in stories because that, That's how our brains are wired to receive information and to retain it and to hold on to it.

So you tell a story like that and then you say to them, I'm telling you this story, not the other guy, because you are the more mature ram. And they look at you in this shock look of, but I don't want to be the mature ram, but I am. So, all right, how am I going to bend or move or something to help this young buck, not kill us both. It is a miraculous thing to do. And again, what it does is that if you're telling the story, who's got the power?

Who doesn't feel powerless anymore? Who is holding the calm? And that's why you can do this. One of the things in the chapter in the book is called Small Winnable Victories. Yeah. Advocate of you don't fix things big. I'm going to save the world.

I'm in a, you know, everything's big and huge. It never works and it doesn't last. Small winnable victories are like stringing pearls on a necklace. And that's how you actually get somewhere. So if you're in a big situation, don't tackle it as a big situation. It's too big. It's too big. I don't even do that.

You look at where can I win? Where can I have an impact? Where can I affect change? in this small little corner over here, what can I do? And then can I do another? Then can I do another? And all of a sudden, it literally erodes the outside edges of a conflict or a situation or a problem. And I like to always talk about, the reason I named the book,

The Secret to Resolving Conflict and Diffusing Tension is because all tension left unresolved becomes Bada boom, batta bang, conflict. And we don't resolve tension because we don't have,

we don't know how, we don't want to, we don't want to get involved, it's stressful, I'm not sure you'll receive what I have to say correctly. Well, that thing becomes moldy

and sticky and gross. And it's like spaghetti sauce. If you drop it on the counter, you wipe it up with a sponge. You leave it overnight. You're scraping that sucker off of the spatula of the next day.

So with having, these tools when you see tension, if you can deal with it then it doesn't evolve or de-evolve into conflict. How much in your experience is conflict management have to do with the other person versus me managing my own emotions? Isn't that a great and insightful question? It is probably 75% managing your own and 25% listening, well, I shouldn't even say it that way because it's really listening. It's like 100% of both of them is really what I would say. It's 100% of listening to managing my own and 100% of listening to the other person. Because if I'm not managing my own emotions, I'm not listening to you. I may be polite and I may be waiting my turn to

talk, which means I'm arguing in my head about how wrong you are. And what I try to tell people is, when you're in conflict, do you want to be right or do you want to win? And that's really an important thing to look at is, do you want to be right? Then it doesn't matter if you win or not. It doesn't matter if you persuade the other person. You're venting. You're angry. You don't care about the consequences. Okay. That's a choice. All right? There's times for that choice. Or do you want to win. You want to create something out of this. You want to resolve something. You want to fix something about getting to the win as opposed to just, well, I want to be right. Well, you can be right in, you know, in your own little corner over there because you're not getting anyone to join

you. So I have two final questions for you. One is I'm thinking about somebody listening right now who is diametrically opposed to their leader. And they just feel stuck. You know, there's great resignation, but they don't really have that many options. You know, but they either the way that leader leads, the values that that leader has, isn't congruent with their values.

And yes, it would be ideal if we share the same values. But again, you can't wait for, ideal for you to, you know, start moving on with your life and making good decisions and bringing your best self to work. So if someone has a massive incongruence on a values level between them and their leader, what advice would you give them? So you've excluded the option of leaving, right? So I'm assuming that would be the first option. They're stuck. They're stuck. Some people can leave, yes, obviously. But I want to talk to that person that is truly stuck.

So if you're stuck, rather than thinking about all the things that are wrong with your leader, find something that's right with him or her. It will, if the glass is half empty or the glass is half full, it's exact same volume of liquid. So start looking at the leader and seeing what is good about them, what benefit do they have, And just thinking like that literally shifts and changes your view and how you see things. And there's neuroscience behind this to prove it.

When you are pregnant or your wife or girlfriend whoever is pregnant, all you see are pregnant people everywhere. When they're not, you don't notice pregnant people. We notice what we're looking for. So if you're looking for the bad, you're going to find it. So if you change your perspective and you only look for the good, you will find it. Now, it doesn't mean you don't agree with them on their values. You still dislike them.

But what's interesting is that, and I say this in like sort of the Roe v. Wade article, which is a nice place for us to circle back to is, let's say I think so differently from you. And I am angry about it because what you're doing is harmful to me on either side of that debate and that argument. that's one single issue. You may still pull my kid out of a burning car and get him to the hospital. Now do I think differently about you? I bet I do. So if you look at the situation as, no, let's say somebody's just pure evil.

I mean, I'm sorry, Vladimir Putin is like a Hitler. He's pure evil. That's a hard one. That's a challenge. Sure. But we throw around labels like narcissists. psychopath, selfish, we throw on those labels really easily. Everybody has good and bad.

And there's a Native American saying that I love that you have two wolves on your shoulder, a good wolf and a bad wolf. The one that it controls is the one that you feed. So if you're stuck, feed the good wolf. Look at what is good there, what can be good, and feed that. It will at least be tolerable.

for you if you're stuck. That was very, very helpful. Thank you so much for sharing that. The last question is, how can people get in contact with you? Where can they buy the book? Tell us, tell us how we can learn more about holding the call. Thank you for that.

And thank you for anybody that wants to sort of help promote this idea that we can be less acrimonious and more harmonious. For sure. That's why I wrote this book, because it's like we need help. There's got to be ways we can do this and get this out there. So it's on Amazon. It's in Barnes & Noble, Walmart,

anywhere where books are sold. And the web page is holding thecom. com. And I've got all kinds of cool, juicy stuff on the website. And I have a little thing you can sign up for that I only, because I'm still am a working mediator. So I'm busy all the time. So once a month, I will send out sort of a little.

tip or little insight or one of these little stories about something and it's free. You can just sign up for it and once a month I'll send out something that is hopefully interesting and I'll leave you with when you're trying to solve a problem, you can solve it by adding to it or taking away from it. And it's completely shifting and changing a perspective. So there was a big couch company that was selling very expensive custom couches, you know, like $20,000 a couch kind of stuff. And you go online and you pick out the shape and the arms and the fabric and all of this stuff. And people would go through the process and then at point of sale, they wouldn't complete. And the company was so frustrated.

So they added more. They did more advertising, more marketing, more stuff. Didn't change anything. So finally, I hired a consultant who actually went and interviewed people who went to the point of sale and didn't complete and just made it a nice little chat and found out. and these are obviously very wealthy people who could afford a $20,000 couch, right? Sure. Do you know the number one reason why people didn't complete the sale?

They didn't know what to do with their old couch. Wow. So the solution was easy. The company says, you buy a new couch, we take away your old couch for you, and we donate it to charity for you. Boom, sales skyrocketed. Wow.

So when you're facing a problem or a conflict, smashing your forehead against the wall to make it flatter is not an option. So here can you see the good, where can you see a benefit, how can you twist it around to incentivize the behavior that you want, the same way we train dolphins to balance balls on their nose, and in a circus they trained elephants to ride tricycles. Small windable victories, little bits of the time. That's awesome.

Well, thank you so much for being on followers. with Ryan Lee. And everybody, we need to go get holding the column on Amazon or wherever books or so. Hasha, thank you so much for taking some time out of your busy schedule to be on the podcast today. It's my pleasure to support your listeners, but more importantly, Ryan, but a joy to get to hang out with you. Absolutely.