Episode 40

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Published on:

28th Nov 2023

Doug Noll | From Conflict to Connection - The Art of Labeling Emotions for Effective Communication

Welcome to another illuminating episode of "The Last 10%". Today, we have the pleasure of welcoming esteemed guest Doug Noll, an expert in conflict resolution and emotional intelligence. In this episode, Doug shares his unique insights and groundbreaking techniques that can help us navigate conflicts, validate emotions, and tap into our hidden genius.

Drawing from his years of experience, Doug emphasizes the importance of labeling emotions and empathizing with others in conflict situations. He explains how this approach has the power to de-escalate tensions and create emotional safety, ultimately leading to more harmonious resolutions. However, Doug's expertise extends beyond conflict resolution. He also sheds light on the commercial concept of emotional intelligence, offering a fresh perspective on how we can develop true emotional competency.

Prepare to be inspired as Doug takes us on a captivating journey through his own experiences. From his involvement in the Prison of Peace Project, where he teaches peacemaking and mediation skills to incarcerated individuals, to his profound insights on embracing emotions as a hidden superpower, Doug's story will leave you with a deeper understanding of the human psyche. Stay tuned as we dive into the world of emotional intelligence and discover the profound impact it can have on our lives.

Get ready to transform the way you perceive and navigate conflicts as we delve into the riveting conversation between our host, Dallas Burnett, and the remarkable Doug Noll. This episode of "The Last 10%" is sure to empower and enlighten you. Let's dive in!

Find more information on Doug and his books and training by visiting: www.dougnoll.com

Transcript
Dallas Burnett:

Hey, everybody.

Dallas Burnett:

We're talking to Doug Knoll today.

Dallas Burnett:

What an amazing guy.

Dallas Burnett:

He is a former trial lawyer, has some incredible stories around teaching

Dallas Burnett:

leaders, how to use their emotions as part of their hidden genius.

Dallas Burnett:

He's a great new friend of mine.

Dallas Burnett:

You don't want to miss this incredible conversation.

Dallas Burnett:

Welcome, welcome, welcome.

Dallas Burnett:

I am Dallas Burnett in Thrive Studios sitting in my 1905 Coke Brothers

Dallas Burnett:

barber chair, but more importantly, we have a great guest today.

Dallas Burnett:

We are in the middle of the holiday season, and I can't think of a

Dallas Burnett:

better show than one that deals with conflict and listening.

Dallas Burnett:

Well, so we have an expert on the topic.

Dallas Burnett:

Welcome to the show, Doug.

Doug Noll:

Hey, Dallas.

Doug Noll:

Thanks for having me.

Dallas Burnett:

I am, I'm excited to have you on the show because like I

Dallas Burnett:

said, you're an expert in training leaders on listening and using emotions

Dallas Burnett:

and all these things that we're going to talk about, but I just thought.

Dallas Burnett:

As leaders, we like to stay in the last 10%, but you know what?

Dallas Burnett:

Everybody's going to be sitting around the kitchen table over the holidays.

Dallas Burnett:

And sometimes that can be a little stressful.

Dallas Burnett:

So I figured this would be a good

Dallas Burnett:

episode for everybody.

Doug Noll:

Yeah, it's really tough.

Doug Noll:

We've got the Middle East crisis in Israel.

Doug Noll:

We've got the war in Ukraine, tensions with China, the political

Doug Noll:

craziness going on in this country.

Doug Noll:

It's inevitable that when people gather around the dining room table with

Doug Noll:

Thanksgiving or Christmas, that they're going to be different opinions and

Doug Noll:

people are going to get a little hot, especially when they've been drinking a

Dallas Burnett:

Yeah, it's a bad, it's a bad cocktail of all those things for sure,

Dallas Burnett:

but we've got some great news for people.

Dallas Burnett:

You're going to have some tools that you can use to navigate that

Dallas Burnett:

a little bit better, as we go through the conversation today.

Dallas Burnett:

So Doug, I want to talk to you a little bit about your story because it's very

Dallas Burnett:

unique, your path to where you are today.

Dallas Burnett:

Did not start as this leadership communication expert.

Dallas Burnett:

You were a trial lawyer.

Dallas Burnett:

Tell us a little bit about your journey.

Doug Noll:

When my journey started in Southern California I was, grew up in

Doug Noll:

affluence and, but unfortunately, I was born with a lot of disabilities.

Doug Noll:

I was partially blind, partially deaf, bad teeth, left handed, two club feet.

Doug Noll:

Couldn't walk until I was four years old after multiple surgeries

Dallas Burnett:

Good gracious

Doug Noll:

in the 1950s, I was born in 1950, in the 1950s, I wasn't so disabled

Doug Noll:

that they would put me away somewhere.

Doug Noll:

But nobody had either the patience nor the knowledge of

Doug Noll:

how to deal with a kid like me.

Doug Noll:

The one thing I was I was smart, but people couldn't figure out why I was

Doug Noll:

not doing well in school until in the fourth grade, a school nurse got the

Doug Noll:

broad idea to test my eyesight and found out that my vision was 2400.

Doug Noll:

And so I had been struggling in school for six years and they got glasses on

Doug Noll:

me and that summer I advanced three grade levels in one summer in my

Doug Noll:

reading ability just because I see.

Doug Noll:

it Anyways, was a tough childhood, and I didn't get a lot of emotional support,

Doug Noll:

so I picked up a lot of really bad emotional habits, that, were adaptive

Doug Noll:

allow me to survive, but coming, going into adulthood became really maladaptive.

Doug Noll:

I was super smart, got accepted to Dartmouth, went to Dartmouth College,

Doug Noll:

Ivy League for four years, came back to California, went to law school, did

Doug Noll:

really well in law school, and didn't know if I wanted to be a lawyer or not, but.

Doug Noll:

In those days, if you didn't go to med school out of Ivy

Doug Noll:

League, you went to law school.

Doug Noll:

So that's what I did and decided to move to central California because

Doug Noll:

I love being in the mountains.

Doug Noll:

Clerked for an appellate judge for a year, and then went into private practice

Doug Noll:

as a young associate in a firm in Fresno, California in September of 1978.

Doug Noll:

And two months later I was trying my first jury trial,

Dallas Burnett:

Oh

Doug Noll:

that's how my career And for the next 22 years, I was, I

Doug Noll:

became a really hardcore trial lawyer.

Doug Noll:

The story gets interesting because in the 1980s, my mid thirties, I picked up the

Doug Noll:

martial arts and during my second degree black belt right around my 40th birthday.

Doug Noll:

In 1990.

Doug Noll:

And at that time, my teacher said, go learn Tai Chi.

Doug Noll:

right.

Dallas Burnett:

is you're doing this, but you were telling us

Dallas Burnett:

earlier about all these disabilities.

Dallas Burnett:

So you're doing this

Doug Noll:

it was a real struggle, but I

Dallas Burnett:

my

Doug Noll:

learned the one thing I've learned through all of

Doug Noll:

this, getting through all these disabilities is I know how I learn.

Doug Noll:

I know that I can learn anything.

Doug Noll:

I'm extremely patient with myself and I'm persistent and I'm really disciplined.

Doug Noll:

And I can do anything.

Doug Noll:

Anything I put my mind to doing, I can do.

Doug Noll:

There's nothing in the world that I couldn't do, at least if it's not

Doug Noll:

age dependent, that I cannot do.

Doug Noll:

I can do anything if I want to.

Doug Noll:

It's just a question of how much time and effort am I willing

Doug Noll:

to put into it to master it.

Doug Noll:

So, Tai Chi is very interesting.

Doug Noll:

It's the oldest of all martial arts.

Doug Noll:

It's also extremely deadly when practiced as a martial art.

Doug Noll:

Every move is a killing blow.

Doug Noll:

And in Tai Chi, there are two paradoxes.

Doug Noll:

The first paradox is the softer you are, the stronger you are.

Doug Noll:

The second paradox is the more vulnerable the more powerful you are.

Doug Noll:

Softly.

Dallas Burnett:

you are, the

Doug Noll:

Stronger you are, to be strong, soft to be strong, vulnerable to be

Dallas Burnett:

Okay.

Dallas Burnett:

Okay.

Dallas Burnett:

All right.

Doug Noll:

Did not compute.

Doug Noll:

Hardcore trailer, secondary black belt, 6'1 215 pounds, big man,

Doug Noll:

arrogant as you can possibly imagine.

Doug Noll:

But the paradoxes began to seep into me.

Doug Noll:

And so finally in the late 90s, I was in a courtroom trying a

Doug Noll:

case and the thought came to me, What the hell am I doing in here?

Doug Noll:

And after that trip, we had a, I went with a bunch of friends, amongst

Doug Noll:

many other things that I do, I've done whitewater for many years,

Doug Noll:

both as a kayaker and a rafter.

Doug Noll:

So we had a rafting trip planned up on the main salmon in Idaho.

Doug Noll:

And I spent 10 days up there running the canyons in the whitewater,

Doug Noll:

thinking about how many people I served as a trial lawyer.

Doug Noll:

And I came to the conclusion that I only served five people in 20

Doug Noll:

plus years as a trial lawyer.

Doug Noll:

And I said, I'm not gonna, that people who went into the system

Doug Noll:

better, that people went into the system and came out better off.

Doug Noll:

Then they went in.

Dallas Burnett:

what you mean when

Dallas Burnett:

you say served people, you mean that the people that you're interacting

Dallas Burnett:

with that you feel like came

Doug Noll:

That doesn't, I won a lot of trials.

Doug Noll:

I only lost two trials in my whole career.

Doug Noll:

But how many people had I really served?

Doug Noll:

And not many.

Doug Noll:

And so I decided I'm not going to do this anymore.

Doug Noll:

So I didn't know what I was going to do.

Doug Noll:

And I came back to central California, driving out of, down out of the

Doug Noll:

mountains to my office in town and heard, a public service announcement

Doug Noll:

for a new master's degree in peacemaking and conflict studies being offered

Doug Noll:

at President Pacific University.

Doug Noll:

Now I got my attention.

Doug Noll:

Ultimately, I signed up, they accepted me I enrolled, and for three

Doug Noll:

years I was a full time graduate student, a three quarters time law

Doug Noll:

professor, and a full time trial And that was a pretty crazy time.

Doug Noll:

And then, my partners and I couldn't come to an agreement about what I wanted to do.

Doug Noll:

They saw me as the goose that was laying the golden eggs.

Doug Noll:

I was the second highest earner in the firm.

Doug Noll:

The last thing that they wanted me to do was stop trying cases and earning

Dallas Burnett:

right.

Doug Noll:

do Can't that anymore.

Doug Noll:

So I gave him a week's notice and walked out.

Doug Noll:

Left ten million dollars on the table and opened up my own peacemaking

Doug Noll:

mediation practice on November 1st, 2000 and never looked back.

Doug Noll:

And I'll tell you Dallas, that was the best decision I've ever made in my life.

Doug Noll:

I don't make nearly as much money as I made in those days, but I have helped tens

Doug Noll:

of thousands of people live better lives.

Doug Noll:

And that is so much more than having a big bank account to drive in a fancy car.

Dallas Burnett:

Right,

Doug Noll:

that's how it all started.

Doug Noll:

And the, the next big pivotal thing that happened to me is in 2005, I discovered in

Doug Noll:

a very difficult conflict I was mediating, the power of listening to emotions.

Doug Noll:

And I was able to get this divorce couple who would rather kill each

Doug Noll:

other than listen to each other.

Doug Noll:

I got them, when it was all over with.

Doug Noll:

They walked out holding hands and to go to lunch with each other

Doug Noll:

and four hours before they were screaming vile insults at each other.

Doug Noll:

And I

Dallas Burnett:

after you, you engage with them.

Dallas Burnett:

They come in for a session with you on mediating and they're

Dallas Burnett:

mediating their divorce.

Doug Noll:

know they're mediating a very money.

Doug Noll:

It's been each spent 50, 000 in attorney's fees on an 18, 000

Doug Noll:

problem and it is kind of classic.

Doug Noll:

Really, that's how much they hated each other.

Doug Noll:

And yet, in four hours, I completely turned it around.

Doug Noll:

And my jaw dropped.

Doug Noll:

I couldn't believe the results.

Doug Noll:

And it turns

Dallas Burnett:

You were

Dallas Burnett:

shocked at your own success.

Doug Noll:

It was amazing.

Doug Noll:

I knew what I'd done.

Doug Noll:

And I said, this is crazy.

Doug Noll:

This makes no sense whatsoever.

Doug Noll:

So,

Dallas Burnett:

And was this, you were adapted what you had learned in

Dallas Burnett:

your graduate studies and all that, or you had, was it an amalgamation

Dallas Burnett:

of all the

Doug Noll:

that's what I think it was.

Doug Noll:

I think it was, I studying neuroscience.

Doug Noll:

I started studying neuroscience in my graduate studies.

Doug Noll:

And back then, nobody knew what neuroscience was.

Doug Noll:

And I wrote the very first published academic article on the

Doug Noll:

neuropsychology of peace and conflict.

Doug Noll:

And, and I had studied all this stuff and here I was confronted with this

Doug Noll:

situation that I had no training to deal with because no one ever taught

Doug Noll:

me how to deal with intense conflict.

Doug Noll:

And I just had an epiphany, just that moment where all this knowledge

Doug Noll:

concatenates into one idea.

Doug Noll:

And listen to the listen to what they're feeling.

Doug Noll:

And ignore everything else.

Doug Noll:

That's what happened.

Doug Noll:

And that was the beginning of a whole new trajectory for me.

Doug Noll:

And that led to, five years later, the I'll say in 2007, a seminal

Doug Noll:

brain scanning study came out of UCLA, Matthew Lieberman's lab, and

Doug Noll:

that, that showed why this technique called Affect labeling worked.

Doug Noll:

It showed exactly what was happening in the brain.

Doug Noll:

And so now I had hard science to support the practice that was so

Dallas Burnett:

Ah, huh.

Dallas Burnett:

So you actually figured out what worked before it

Dallas Burnett:

was actually supported by, research.

Dallas Burnett:

And then it was like, Oh, now we've

Dallas Burnett:

got, we've caught up to

Doug Noll:

Exactly.

Doug Noll:

That's

Dallas Burnett:

ourselves now a

Doug Noll:

Now I could teach it, because it wasn't pop psychology,

Doug Noll:

and it wasn't just Doug Noll, espousing some Doug Noll BS.

Doug Noll:

Here's the practice, and here's why it works.

Doug Noll:

And this is what's going on in the brain when you engage in this practice.

Dallas Burnett:

Let's talk about that a little bit, because now you've

Dallas Burnett:

got, you've piqued my interest.

Dallas Burnett:

So we've talked about divorced couple coming in, meet for mediating a 50, 000

Dallas Burnett:

each on mediating an 18, 000 problem, leaving, going to lunch together.

Dallas Burnett:

And you used a term called

Dallas Burnett:

affect labeling there.

Dallas Burnett:

So I want to talk about maybe unpacking that term and also understanding when you

Dallas Burnett:

say this process that you're engaging in, tell the listeners a little bit about the

Dallas Burnett:

labeling of

Doug Noll:

Sure.

Dallas Burnett:

emotions.

Doug Noll:

okay.

Doug Noll:

This is a Okay.

Dallas Burnett:

move, thrive, can handle it.

Dallas Burnett:

These

Dallas Burnett:

are legit

Doug Noll:

all right.

Doug Noll:

All So, first of all, let me first talk about Lieberman study.

Doug Noll:

What he showed was that when we get into an intense emotional condition

Doug Noll:

in the brain, the emotional centers of the brain, which are dominate

Doug Noll:

this whole central part of the brain.

Doug Noll:

In the limbic system completely overwhelmed the prefrontal cortex

Doug Noll:

and caused a complete shutdown of the prefrontal cortex.

Doug Noll:

Daniel Goleman calls it the amygdolic hijack.

Doug Noll:

And we've all been there, we get super angry, we get that tunnel vision, we can't

Doug Noll:

think anymore, all we can do is just focus on lashing out energy going out of us.

Dallas Burnett:

Yes.

Dallas Burnett:

Anybody that is, anybody that has that, you just start feeling it

Dallas Burnett:

rising up through your neck and you're just

Dallas Burnett:

like, Oh, here we go.

Dallas Burnett:

you just,

Doug Noll:

flushed face, There that you're indicators getting

Doug Noll:

into this physiological condition.

Doug Noll:

what this there, there isn't any real science yet, there's some hints at this,

Doug Noll:

but what I hypothesize is that when the prefrontal cortex is overwhelmed, it can

Doug Noll:

no longer access some cognitive structures that we have in our brain, we think of it

Doug Noll:

as an emotional database, and we no longer have access to that database, and so now

Doug Noll:

we can't process we can only react to it.

Doug Noll:

When we affect label Which, or call it emotional listening, affect

Doug Noll:

labeling, it's a technical term, but call it emotional listening.

Doug Noll:

When I'm telling you, Dallas, what you're experiencing, what you're

Doug Noll:

feeling, I'm literally lending you my prefrontal cortex for the 90 seconds

Doug Noll:

it takes for you to get back online and start processing stuff yourself.

Doug Noll:

And that's why using affect labeling, you can call me any

Doug Noll:

angry person in 90 seconds or less.

Doug Noll:

And it works on every single human brain on the planet.

Doug Noll:

You cannot help yourself.

Doug Noll:

I can't, you cannot remain angry at me when I start labeling your emotions.

Dallas Burnett:

So what you're saying is if I am, if we're engaging in this

Dallas Burnett:

conflict and I'm coming into the conflict and I say, Hey, I'm really upset and you

Dallas Burnett:

just stop and you start labeling what you,

Doug Noll:

Here's how it goes.

Doug Noll:

Here's how it goes.

Doug Noll:

You say, Dallas man, you're pissed off.

Doug Noll:

You're really frustrated.

Doug Noll:

really upset.

Doug Noll:

You feel completely disrespected.

Doug Noll:

Nobody's listening to you and you completely feel, you feel completely

Doug Noll:

unsupported and unappreciated and you're worried and anxious and nervous

Doug Noll:

And you're sad because you're looking for connection and

Doug Noll:

support and it's just not there.

Doug Noll:

And so you feel hopeless.

Doug Noll:

And down at the, beneath it all, you feel like you've been completely abandoned

Doug Noll:

and betrayed and rejected and it's making you feel just completely worthless.

Doug Noll:

And the whole thing is just really frustrating and making you angry.

Dallas Burnett:

Wow, that's, when you say it, you just,

Doug Noll:

you, felt it didn't you?

Dallas Burnett:

lands, yeah, you do, you really do

Dallas Burnett:

actually, and I'm not even mad, so

Dallas Burnett:

that's,

Dallas Burnett:

uh,

Doug Noll:

to

Doug Noll:

You have you

Doug Noll:

your brain, brain down automatically.

Doug Noll:

Automatically,

Dallas Burnett:

incredible.

Dallas Burnett:

So, so.

Dallas Burnett:

So when we do that, you're giving your, it's almost like you're

Dallas Burnett:

giving your brain time and space

Dallas Burnett:

to reset so that you can

Dallas Burnett:

Get back.

Dallas Burnett:

And I guess, that's interesting that you would put it that way because if

Dallas Burnett:

you're in this emotional state where you're reacting, it's almost like

Dallas Burnett:

fight or flight in a way, I'm in this mode and then to get out of it,

Dallas Burnett:

you have to get into this almost like safe, it's almost like you're putting

Dallas Burnett:

them at ease if they know that you're.

Dallas Burnett:

If you're speaking what they're feeling, then there's like this understanding.

Dallas Burnett:

Is that part

Dallas Burnett:

of

Doug Noll:

a

Dallas Burnett:

where you understand they feel safe?

Doug Noll:

validation of your

Dallas Burnett:

A validation.

Doug Noll:

It's a deep validation of your emotional that has a very

Doug Noll:

deep calming effect on people.

Dallas Burnett:

oh

Dallas Burnett:

Um,

Doug Noll:

can stop any of emotional upset in literally 90 seconds or less.

Dallas Burnett:

that's, that's incredible.

Dallas Burnett:

So the trick with that is, is like, when we get into a conflict is to be aware.

Dallas Burnett:

That we're in the conflict to begin with so that we can do that, because if

Dallas Burnett:

we react with our own emotions, then we've lost it.

Dallas Burnett:

We're done.

Dallas Burnett:

We're done.

Doug Noll:

thing that's really cool Dallas.

Doug Noll:

I teach and coach.

Doug Noll:

I teach people how to do this.

Doug Noll:

I coach people how to do this.

Doug Noll:

I teach everything from maximum security prisons all the way up to

Doug Noll:

the Congressional Budget Office, how to deescalate members of Congress.

Doug Noll:

The when you learn this skill, it becomes so habituated that you no longer look

Doug Noll:

at emotion as being something chaotic and difficult and anxiety producing.

Doug Noll:

Instead, it's more like you're looking at somebody, it's like holding a little

Doug Noll:

baby, an infant, and the baby poops in the diapers and you smell it and say, oh baby.

Doug Noll:

You just pooped in your diapers.

Doug Noll:

Let me clean you up.

Doug Noll:

A lot of compassion.

Doug Noll:

You get pissed off.

Doug Noll:

And I said, Oh, Dallas, you poor little baby.

Doug Noll:

You're just pissed off and angry.

Doug Noll:

You're just having an emotional moment.

Doug Noll:

And I know exactly what to say how to say it and when to say it.

Doug Noll:

In a way that calms you down almost instantly with pure compassion and

Doug Noll:

certitude that this problem is going to go is going to be solved very quickly.

Dallas Burnett:

What I love about that is you're not really taking away

Dallas Burnett:

anything from the person in terms of

Dallas Burnett:

you're not manipulating them.

Dallas Burnett:

Into believing what you believe or thinking what you think all you're doing

Dallas Burnett:

is really, like you said, labeling their emotion and showing, I would think what

Doug Noll:

that's exactly

Dallas Burnett:

uh,

Dallas Burnett:

towards the person.

Dallas Burnett:

And that just brings them to a place where you can

Dallas Burnett:

then communicate again on

Dallas Burnett:

A level playing

Doug Noll:

That's right.

Dallas Burnett:

So then you still may disagree, but you can disagree

Dallas Burnett:

with the logic and reason instead of just, fire and brimstone,

Doug Noll:

is This called cognitive empathy.

Doug Noll:

It's a form of cognitive empathy, and you're right when you calm people down.

Doug Noll:

Your emotional experiences is true and authentic and there and is and now the

Doug Noll:

reasons for the emotions might not be so legitimate, but the fact that you're

Doug Noll:

having an emotional experience itself is those are legitimate and we can validate

Doug Noll:

people's emotions without agreeing about the reasons for the emotions.

Doug Noll:

And then what we learn is I teach is you deescalate, then you problem solve.

Doug Noll:

And what people tend to do too much is they tend to jump to early problem

Doug Noll:

solving, which only pisses people off and makes the problem even worse.

Doug Noll:

So you've got to calm people down before actually engage them, as you said, in

Doug Noll:

some sort of problem solving process to figure out, okay, what's going on here?

Dallas Burnett:

Now, do you quantify that as that feels like what we would

Dallas Burnett:

call like emotional intelligence?

Dallas Burnett:

Would you quantify what you just said as having greater

Dallas Burnett:

emotional intelligence?

Doug Noll:

Yes, I actually don't like the word emotional intelligence.

Dallas Burnett:

Ooh, this is great.

Doug Noll:

Emotional intelligence was a term that was coined in the

Doug Noll:

late, early 1990s by John Meier and Peter Salovey, , Salovey, I think

Doug Noll:

now is the Dean of Yale University.

Doug Noll:

And they were looking at, they're psychologists and they were studying

Doug Noll:

different kinds of social intelligences.

Doug Noll:

And one of the intelligences they identified was emotional intelligence.

Doug Noll:

And they developed an assessment called the Meier Salovey Caruso

Doug Noll:

emotional intelligence test, the.

Doug Noll:

MSET, which is the.

Doug Noll:

Gold standard for this.

Doug Noll:

This new, this guy's got a PhD, but he was a New York Times science writer

Doug Noll:

by the name of Daniel Goleman stumbled on their research and wrote this book

Doug Noll:

called EQ, why it's more important than EQ that came out in I think 1995

Doug Noll:

was a fabulous runaway bestseller.

Doug Noll:

He's made millions, hundreds of millions of dollars on this.

Doug Noll:

But the problem is the commercial concept of emotional intelligence is

Doug Noll:

completely different than the academic.

Doug Noll:

The academics will tell you that the commercial site is mostly all bullshit.

Doug Noll:

And people make claims for which there's absolutely no supporting science.

Doug Noll:

So here are a couple of things to think about.

Doug Noll:

Number one, you cannot learn emotional intelligence.

Doug Noll:

You just simply can't learn it.

Doug Noll:

And the reason you can't learn it is because it's an intelligence.

Doug Noll:

It's like an IQ test.

Doug Noll:

Can I teach you iq?

Dallas Burnett:

Oh no.

Dallas Burnett:

you, you

Doug Noll:

Well, you, you can develop, Can skills that lead to

Doug Noll:

higher iq, but I can't teach you iq.

Dallas Burnett:

Yes.

Dallas Burnett:

you learn a formula, all of a sudden

Dallas Burnett:

you wake up and I'm,

Doug Noll:

That's right.

Doug Noll:

But what I can teach is emotional competency.

Doug Noll:

And there are three emotional competencies.

Doug Noll:

Emotional self awareness, emotional self regulation, and cognitive empathy.

Doug Noll:

And here's the thing that I've discovered that is so cool.

Doug Noll:

You learn cognitive empathy through ethic labeling.

Doug Noll:

And as you practice ethic labeling on yourself and other

Doug Noll:

people, you automatically...

Doug Noll:

Develop emotional self awareness and emotional self regulation.

Doug Noll:

You don't have to do anything.

Doug Noll:

It just happens.

Doug Noll:

You just, you reprogram your brain and your emotional intelligence

Doug Noll:

starts to go through the roof.

Doug Noll:

And guess what?

Doug Noll:

It takes less than eight weeks for it to happen.

Dallas Burnett:

Oh man, that's pretty, that's pretty incredible

Doug Noll:

It's amazing.

Doug Noll:

And the reason that I can say this with so much certainty is because

Doug Noll:

of the Prisoner of Peace Project.

Doug Noll:

Where for...

Dallas Burnett:

Okay.

Dallas Burnett:

Let's talk about that.

Dallas Burnett:

Cause this is, let's tell the listeners, prison of peace project.

Dallas Burnett:

You're a co founder of this work, this organization.

Dallas Burnett:

Tell us a little bit about the organization and then I want you to

Dallas Burnett:

share, cause we were talking before the show, I want you to share this.

Dallas Burnett:

Amazing story.

Dallas Burnett:

that you had this experience

Doug Noll:

very first story.

Dallas Burnett:

Yes.

Dallas Burnett:

The very first one.

Doug Noll:

I had developed these deep listening skills and I was teaching them

Doug Noll:

to lawyers and judges and mediators.

Doug Noll:

And then in, in August of 2010, I received a phone call from a dear friend

Doug Noll:

and colleague, Laurel Coffer, who is a, lawyer in mediator in Los Angeles.

Doug Noll:

And she called me to read me a letter from a woman by the name of Susan Russo.

Doug Noll:

And Ms.

Doug Noll:

Russo was serving a life sentence without possibility of parole in the largest,

Doug Noll:

most violent women's prison in the world.

Doug Noll:

Which at that time was Valley State Prison for Women in Chowchilla, California, about

Doug Noll:

an hour and 20 minutes from where I live.

Doug Noll:

And Ms.

Doug Noll:

Russo had sent a letter to Laurel asking if Laurel would come in and train the,

Doug Noll:

what they call the networking group, which is a group of about 150 lifers and

Doug Noll:

long termers, women, serving life and long term sentences in the prison because

Doug Noll:

they were tired of the prison violence.

Doug Noll:

And Laurel read me the letter and said, what do you think?

Doug Noll:

And I thought for about a nanosecond.

Doug Noll:

I said, if this is legitimate, I think we should do this.

Doug Noll:

And so to make a long story short, it took us eight months to

Doug Noll:

finally get permission to begin.

Doug Noll:

And we started in April of 2010 with 15 women.

Dallas Burnett:

And this is you going

Dallas Burnett:

and

Doug Noll:

we went in once a week.

Doug Noll:

In those days, we went in once a week for eight hours for 16 weeks in a row.

Doug Noll:

And trained these women very rigorous curriculum on how to become peacemakers

Doug Noll:

and mediators to stop prison violence.

Doug Noll:

And the very first skill we taught them.

Doug Noll:

Was affidavit labeling because that's the foundation of everything

Dallas Burnett:

So you're, going into the prison, you're meeting with these

Dallas Burnett:

women and your goal is ultimately just to give them some tools and

Dallas Burnett:

reprogramming essentially to help them.

Dallas Burnett:

Lower the violence where they're living, like just stay alive,

Dallas Burnett:

So they don't kill each other, in

Doug Noll:

what they

Dallas Burnett:

know, and,

Doug Noll:

did.

Dallas Burnett:

and

Doug Noll:

to

Dallas Burnett:

And so they, they, left that and you had really

Dallas Burnett:

success with that program.

Doug Noll:

We're in 15 California prisons today.

Doug Noll:

A prison in Connecticut, 15 prisons in Greece and a prison in northern Italy.

Dallas Burnett:

Oh, wow.

Dallas Burnett:

That's incredible.

Dallas Burnett:

Oh, that's awesome.

Dallas Burnett:

It's so awesome.

Doug Noll:

And, you know, we've had 700 of our students

Doug Noll:

released in California on parole.

Doug Noll:

We have not had 1 of them reoffend 0 recidivism for our students.

Dallas Burnett:

really, Oh, that's an, that's incredible.

Dallas Burnett:

That's awesome.

Doug Noll:

Powerful life

Dallas Burnett:

so powerful.

Dallas Burnett:

Yes, absolutely.

Dallas Burnett:

It makes sense though.

Dallas Burnett:

It does make sense.

Dallas Burnett:

And the fact that it's something I love how you put that when you talk about

Dallas Burnett:

emotional intelligence as related to IQ, you, it, there's no, it's not a formula.

Dallas Burnett:

You can't just be like, read a book and Ooh, I've got higher IQ.

Dallas Burnett:

But what you're saying you can do.

Dallas Burnett:

With the cognitive empathy and, the affect labeling is if you can

Dallas Burnett:

participate in that, and it is a learn skill that you can learn.

Dallas Burnett:

It's almost it's almost like one of those like Keystone

Dallas Burnett:

habits.

Dallas Burnett:

Like it, there's a, it's, it trickles

Dallas Burnett:

out to everything else.

Dallas Burnett:

So if we can learn this, it

Doug Noll:

in my opinion, this is foundational skill of life.

Doug Noll:

It should be taught to every single child , starting at age four.

Dallas Burnett:

That would be an awesome

Doug Noll:

show?

Dallas Burnett:

it would probably make every elementary school

Dallas Burnett:

teacher would be so much happier.

Doug Noll:

the studies show that if you affect, start affecting children

Doug Noll:

at between three and four by the time they're 12, they're usually

Doug Noll:

two grade levels ahead of their peers, and they've got the emotional

Doug Noll:

maturity of a typical 21 year old.

Dallas Burnett:

That's, just, that's incredible, but that makes,

Dallas Burnett:

again, it makes sense because there's so much less friction in

Dallas Burnett:

your own, if you're just tamping

Dallas Burnett:

down the fires that's coming up and just, you just give them so much more space to.

Dallas Burnett:

To grow instead of, act out.

Dallas Burnett:

That's

Doug Noll:

and most children are emotionally invalidated.

Doug Noll:

So, and what happens is they shut down, their emotional growth

Doug Noll:

shuts down between years old.

Doug Noll:

It becomes stunted.

Doug Noll:

So they grow up with cognitively developed, but they don't

Doug Noll:

grow up emotionally developed.

Doug Noll:

they And so by the, when get into adulthood, they've got this

Doug Noll:

big veneer around them, right?

Doug Noll:

But when they get under stress or emotionality, they just revert

Doug Noll:

back to where they were at six years old because they've never

Doug Noll:

developed emotional maturity.

Dallas Burnett:

Yeah.

Doug Noll:

And, I suffered from that, and, but the beauty of it is it's

Doug Noll:

all reversible, if you just learn the

Dallas Burnett:

Uh,

Dallas Burnett:

Well, this is awesome.

Dallas Burnett:

I just, there's so many things that we could talk about with this.

Dallas Burnett:

I, and I appreciate you going in and really exposing a little bit about

Dallas Burnett:

some misconceptions about emotional intelligence, because you're right.

Dallas Burnett:

It's a big topic, but I could totally see how there's pieces of

Dallas Burnett:

it that are not really, that are more fluff and, or I don't know.

Dallas Burnett:

Maybe narratives

Doug Noll:

There are a lot of people, right, there are a lot people who claim

Doug Noll:

a lot about emotional intelligence, but first of all, where's their science?

Doug Noll:

Second, can they demonstrate the skills, can they demonstrate emotional self

Doug Noll:

regulation, emotional self awareness regulation, but can they demonstrate it?

Doug Noll:

And then, can they show you that it's a teachable skill?

Doug Noll:

And the answer is almost always no.

Dallas Burnett:

that'S true.

Dallas Burnett:

Tell us a little bit about the story of the young lady that

Dallas Burnett:

story, because I

Doug Noll:

A the lot of stories out of prison project, but the first story that

Doug Noll:

really struck me was we were five weeks into the training of these first 15 women.

Doug Noll:

And let me tell you something, the training in prisons is not like

Doug Noll:

anything you've ever done before.

Doug Noll:

There is no technology.

Doug Noll:

It's all, we take in flip pads and it's all old school because there's

Doug Noll:

no technology allowed in the prisons.

Doug Noll:

We are typically working in very dingy, dark rooms that are about as.

Doug Noll:

Aesthetically pleasing as well.

Doug Noll:

We won't go there.

Doug Noll:

Really dingy, dark and it's a very different, is not a corporate

Doug Noll:

learning environment at all.

Doug Noll:

we walk into this

Dallas Burnett:

chairs, PowerPoint

Doug Noll:

Yeah, we walk into this dingy room with half the

Doug Noll:

fluorescent lights aren't working and the others are flickering.

Doug Noll:

And it just, it's awful.

Doug Noll:

But that's where we're teaching, and we come in early, and one of

Doug Noll:

our students, Sarah, is sitting way out over in the corner, and she's

Doug Noll:

quietly sobbing, and we noticed that.

Doug Noll:

This is unusual behavior.

Doug Noll:

So we walk over to her, and Laurel knelt down next to her,

Doug Noll:

and said, Sarah, what's going on?

Doug Noll:

And Sarah told us this story.

Doug Noll:

We never ask our students why they're in prison that they want to volunteer,

Doug Noll:

that's fine, but we never ask.

Doug Noll:

But she volunteered, and she's told us this story.

Doug Noll:

I've been in prison for 18 years because...

Doug Noll:

As a drunk driver, I killed a family of four in an automobile accident, and I came

Doug Noll:

out of the accident completely unscathed.

Doug Noll:

I was sentenced to 25 to life, and when I had to go to prison, I had to give up

Doug Noll:

my 3 year old boy to my sister to raise.

Doug Noll:

And I have been writing him every week for the last 18 years.

Doug Noll:

He never talks to me on the phone.

Doug Noll:

He's never come for a visit.

Doug Noll:

The only way I know how he's doing is when I talk to his sister once a week.

Doug Noll:

And then she said, last week...

Doug Noll:

I decided to write a letter about him, not about me.

Doug Noll:

I decided, I thought about all the emotions he must feel about a mother

Doug Noll:

who's abandoned him, and who humiliated him, and hasn't been able to love him,

Doug Noll:

and how, and the hatred he must feel, and the loneliness, and abandonment, and

Doug Noll:

all these horrible emotions that he felt.

Doug Noll:

And I wrote him that letter.

Doug Noll:

And today, for the first time in 18 years, I received a letter back from him.

Doug Noll:

Now the letter was really, angry, and he was really angry, and he had

Doug Noll:

every right to And at the bottom of the letter it said, I love you mom,

Doug Noll:

I'm bringing my girlfriend, and I'm going to come visit you in three weeks.

Dallas Burnett:

Good

Doug Noll:

started crying And I heard that, I didn't say a

Doug Noll:

word, I was just, I was stunned.

Doug Noll:

And I said, holy crap, what do we have here?

Doug Noll:

that And was when I realized that we had something extremely powerful and precious

Doug Noll:

that we were doing in the prisons.

Dallas Burnett:

It's gotta be a rewarding.

Dallas Burnett:

It's very interesting that you're, Original kind of first career led you

Dallas Burnett:

to a place of financial success, but for you, the measurement in you, we

Dallas Burnett:

talk about living in the last 10%, you were obviously living in the

Dallas Burnett:

last 10%, but then you just radically transitioned to a different measurement

Dallas Burnett:

of what the last 10 percent was.

Dallas Burnett:

And I think that, I don't know if you realized it at the time,

Dallas Burnett:

but Did that moment have anything that feel or did it over time?

Dallas Burnett:

Have you looked at that and said, man, that was a real milestone moment in the

Dallas Burnett:

transition over to this new thing, because man, when you hear a story like that, and

Dallas Burnett:

you've made that much difference in this young lady's life and you're doing it now

Dallas Burnett:

in all these prisons all over the world, to me, that would be, that's winning the

Dallas Burnett:

national championship in, in, in terms

Doug Noll:

yeah, I didn't know in 2000 that any of this would come down.

Doug Noll:

I had no clue.

Doug Noll:

I had an intuition or a belief that I was a peacemaker and a

Doug Noll:

mediator and not a trial lawyer.

Doug Noll:

And so that's what I was going to follow.

Doug Noll:

And so I ended up getting into work shortly after that, gave

Doug Noll:

up my big car, my fancy car.

Doug Noll:

Four thousand square foot home and all trappings and I ended up where I am today,

Doug Noll:

which is on 10 acres and 1100 square foot home, mile and a half up a dirt road.

Doug Noll:

And I've never been happier.

Doug Noll:

It's been amazing.

Doug Noll:

And I help people in a week than I helped in 22 years as a trial lawyer.

Dallas Burnett:

Oh, wow.

Dallas Burnett:

That's awesome.

Dallas Burnett:

Well, I want to talk to you about, and turn this to, we have

Dallas Burnett:

a lot of leaders on the podcast.

Dallas Burnett:

That's listeners of the podcast.

Dallas Burnett:

We have a lot of coaches.

Dallas Burnett:

We have a lot of business owners and organizational leaders, whether that's,

Dallas Burnett:

for profit or not for profit and so , we've talked a little bit about kind

Dallas Burnett:

of the affect labeling, how does, how can leaders use this and, in leading

Dallas Burnett:

teams and organizations as developing them, the kind of understanding, because

Dallas Burnett:

I think that if I was listening to this, I may hear the stories that you

Dallas Burnett:

tell and just go, that's incredible.

Dallas Burnett:

But not really understand how to connect the dots in a lot of ways.

Dallas Burnett:

So

Doug Noll:

So I do teach a lot of leaders these skills and I

Doug Noll:

do teach leadership development.

Doug Noll:

I'm a senior.

Doug Noll:

Consultant with Mobius Executive leadership out of Massachusetts.

Doug Noll:

The what I have learned is counterintuitive and counter

Doug Noll:

normative to everything we think we know about human nature.

Doug Noll:

And that is that there, put one, number one, and you push back if

Doug Noll:

you want, but I'm ready for it.

Doug Noll:

Number one, there's no such thing as rationality.

Doug Noll:

There is no such thing as rationality.

Doug Noll:

This whole myth of rationality has been perpetrated on us.

Doug Noll:

By philosophers and theologians for 4000 years.

Doug Noll:

And they have made a fundamental assumption that what separates humans

Doug Noll:

from other species of animals is that we're reason we can reason and we have

Doug Noll:

rationality and neuroscience says.

Doug Noll:

Bullshit to that, there is no such thing as rationality.

Doug Noll:

Every single decision we make is an emotional decision.

Dallas Burnett:

Yes.

Dallas Burnett:

I had a neuro

Dallas Burnett:

strategist, the neuro strategist on the show before said, we're people want

Dallas Burnett:

to think that, humans are logical.

Dallas Burnett:

They're not logical.

Dallas Burnett:

They're psycho psychological.

Doug Noll:

we're emotional.

Doug Noll:

All of our are emotional.

Doug Noll:

We are emotional beings.

Doug Noll:

What separates humans from other species of animals is our emotions.

Doug Noll:

We're the only species that have emotions.

Doug Noll:

And what, the other, the second point that people don't realize is

Doug Noll:

that we are not born with emotion.

Doug Noll:

We have to, we literally create emotions at about 18 months of age.

Doug Noll:

We are born with something called affect, which is essentially The feeling of

Doug Noll:

pleasantness around pleasantness that we experienced about today, but what

Doug Noll:

we have to do as we begin to verbalize is take all these affective experiences

Doug Noll:

and categorize them into emotions.

Doug Noll:

So we have nine basic affect three pleasant one neutral and

Doug Noll:

six negative affect and we take.

Doug Noll:

It's like an artist palette.

Doug Noll:

We can take these affect and combine them in various different ways

Doug Noll:

and intensities and come up with an infinite number of emotions.

Doug Noll:

And so we have words that we create as cognitive constructs that describe

Doug Noll:

all of these affective experiences.

Doug Noll:

And these emotions vary from culture to culture.

Doug Noll:

The Finnish language, for example, has certain words, emotional words

Doug Noll:

that don't exist in North America.

Doug Noll:

So that's the second thing we have realize is that we are not born with emotion.

Doug Noll:

We have to create them.

Doug Noll:

The third thing we have to realize is that as a society, we, diminish emotions.

Doug Noll:

Emotions are weak.

Doug Noll:

They're irrational.

Doug Noll:

They make you vulnerable.

Doug Noll:

It's not manly to be emotional.

Dallas Burnett:

that's

Doug Noll:

Or you can only display anger, for example, in corporate America.

Doug Noll:

All, total All these myths are are created to protect, to soothe our

Doug Noll:

own anxiety around emotions because we don't, we've never been taught

Doug Noll:

how to be emotionally competent.

Dallas Burnett:

Do you think that, do you think this is a good question on that?

Dallas Burnett:

Do you feel like, cause I feel like there's a stigma too around masculinity

Dallas Burnett:

that, there's a lot, I think there's a lot of men that would struggle

Dallas Burnett:

with even the idea of approaching, like talking about emotions cause

Dallas Burnett:

they may feel so uncomfortable.

Dallas Burnett:

Because they don't even, they wouldn't even know how to express it to begin with.

Dallas Burnett:

Do you see that in a lot of

Doug Noll:

exactly.

Dallas Burnett:

your

Doug Noll:

Absolutely.

Doug Noll:

And I and you can't blame men for that because they've

Doug Noll:

never been trained properly.

Doug Noll:

How, what emotions are, how they function, how we use them, how they

Doug Noll:

are hidden, genius and superpower.

Doug Noll:

They were taught by their parents and their grandparents.

Doug Noll:

And emotions are bad.

Doug Noll:

Emotions make you weak.

Doug Noll:

If you, when you're a three year old and you're out running around and

Doug Noll:

you fall down and skin your knee.

Doug Noll:

You're told to suck it up, don't cry, rub dirt in it, it doesn't hurt.

Doug Noll:

You are absolutely told not to feel emotions.

Doug Noll:

Because when you're emotional as a little boy, you're creating anxiety

Doug Noll:

in your parents, because they don't know how to deal with you.

Doug Noll:

And so what their brains are saying is, shut this kid up so I don't feel

Doug Noll:

nervous about his emotions anymore.

Doug Noll:

Because that's the way they were raised.

Doug Noll:

Emotions are to be avoided at all costs, because we're uncomfortable

Doug Noll:

with And what we know now, in the last 20 years, is that there are skills.

Doug Noll:

That teach us how to be with our emotions, and when we learn those skills, we unleash

Doug Noll:

a hidden genius that makes us 50 times more powerful than anybody around us.

Doug Noll:

And we unlock that hidden genius by learning how to affect label.

Doug Noll:

So you, as a leader, once you have this skill, which you can learn

Doug Noll:

in eight weeks, it does not take long to, you have to practice it.

Doug Noll:

But it only takes eight weeks for the average person to master this skill.

Doug Noll:

You can walk into any room, any meeting, immediately assess what's

Doug Noll:

going on emotionally, know exactly what to say and how to say it, and

Doug Noll:

remain perfectly calm inside yourself no matter what somebody says.

Doug Noll:

I've been reading, I'm sure you've been following this whole Sam Altman

Doug Noll:

thing with OpenAI and how it screwed what a screwed up mess that was.

Doug Noll:

I can guarantee you...

Doug Noll:

That board of directors was, had to be incredibly dysfunctional

Doug Noll:

in the way they handled that.

Doug Noll:

That would never happen to one of my Either one of my, any of my boards that

Doug Noll:

I train or any of my CEOs, that would never happen, not in a million years.

Doug Noll:

and and that was just, that was a pure display of emotional incompetence.

Dallas Burnett:

it really is bizarre.

Dallas Burnett:

I think when you're,

Doug Noll:

It's emotionally incompetent.

Doug Noll:

It's We're going to see this kind of behavior over and over again

Doug Noll:

because leaders are not trained to be emotionally competent.

Doug Noll:

And that's the problem.

Doug Noll:

And it's sad because it's so easy to become emotionally competent.

Doug Noll:

And when you do, everything changes.

Doug Noll:

You never have a fighter argument again in your life.

Doug Noll:

Not at work, not with your peers, not with your colleagues, not with

Doug Noll:

your board, not with your investors.

Doug Noll:

And you do not have a fighter argument ever again at home.

Doug Noll:

With your partner, your kids ever fight.

Doug Noll:

Some arguments go away.

Dallas Burnett:

And that is simply because you understand how to.

Dallas Burnett:

Bring the level of emotions back down to where you can engage in a

Dallas Burnett:

conversation or a debate, but not an

Doug Noll:

You, you can calm people down to a point where now you can

Doug Noll:

engage in some kind of problem solving process and get things straightened out.

Doug Noll:

Yeah, And

Dallas Burnett:

that is that kind of what you mean?

Dallas Burnett:

You've used the term listening others into existence.

Dallas Burnett:

Is that concept in a nutshell or how would you, yeah.

Doug Noll:

the Fresno Unified School District training

Doug Noll:

teachers how to use these skills.

Doug Noll:

And I was doing some advanced training in a peace circle and in our talking circles.

Doug Noll:

You practice the skill of listening and validating.

Doug Noll:

And when we were all done, I was doing a debrief.

Doug Noll:

And one of the people in the circle, one of the participants, was an administrator,

Doug Noll:

superintendent, assistant superintendent.

Doug Noll:

And she started to cry.

Doug Noll:

And she says, That's the first time I've ever been heard before in my life.

Doug Noll:

I've always been invisible.

Doug Noll:

I've never been heard.

Doug Noll:

I felt like you people listened to me into existence for the first time in my life.

Doug Noll:

Put together, late thirties, early forties, professional woman, educated,

Doug Noll:

and was that her experience.

Doug Noll:

And she said, I felt listened into existence.

Doug Noll:

I said, Oh, okay.

Doug Noll:

That's exactly what's going on here.

Dallas Burnett:

That's incredible that was the way she framed her emotions in that.

Dallas Burnett:

That's a very vivid description.

Dallas Burnett:

I love that.

Dallas Burnett:

And I think it's true because this desire to be known, I think

Doug Noll:

To be heard, just to be heard.

Doug Noll:

have How many people really been heard in their lives?

Doug Noll:

Almost nobody.

Dallas Burnett:

there's so much

Dallas Burnett:

static and noise anyway, there's so much coming at us, even if it's not, you're

Dallas Burnett:

fighting with somebody, if it's just like you're driving down the road and there's

Dallas Burnett:

a billion billboards in the radio or the, the Spotify or whatever's going, you just,

Dallas Burnett:

there's so much static, thousand emails and then,

Doug Noll:

And, you just and you can, with these skills, you cut through all of that.

Doug Noll:

And the beauty of it is, it's a priceless gift to give, and it

Doug Noll:

costs you nothing to give it.

Doug Noll:

Nothing.

Doug Noll:

And you, and when you listen to somebody at this very deep

Doug Noll:

level, they are so grateful.

Doug Noll:

You get this immediate positive affirmation coming back to you, their

Doug Noll:

gratitude for you for taking the time to listen to them, that it becomes

Doug Noll:

a self fulfilling practice until you get to the point in eight weeks where

Doug Noll:

this is all you want to do is out that label because it feels so good to

Doug Noll:

do it and to get the gratitude back.

Doug Noll:

It's

Dallas Burnett:

interesting.

Dallas Burnett:

That's very interesting.

Dallas Burnett:

How does this relate to the idea of active listening,

Doug Noll:

Now, take away that word.

Doug Noll:

Get rid of that word.

Doug Noll:

Active listing.

Doug Noll:

The term was coined by Thomas Gordon, who was a psychologist.

Doug Noll:

got his PhD out of University of Wisconsin Madison.

Doug Noll:

He was a student of the great humanist psychologist, Carl Rogers.

Doug Noll:

And he was the one that coined the term, active listing in

Doug Noll:

Carl Rogers last book 1956.

Dallas Burnett:

Yes.

Doug Noll:

are in arguments, They do a lot of shaming and blaming by saying you,

Doug Noll:

and what he taught, which was correct, was that when you were talking about your

Doug Noll:

own emotions, rather than blame somebody else, assert your own emotional experience

Doug Noll:

and then request a change in behavior.

Doug Noll:

So, for example, when you leave your socks on the floor, I get really frustrated

Doug Noll:

because I feel like I'm your mother and I have to keep cleaning up after you.

Doug Noll:

Would you be willing to clean up after yourself every now and then so that.

Doug Noll:

So that I don't feel so frustrated.

Doug Noll:

That's the formulation.

Doug Noll:

Totally accurate.

Doug Noll:

And he went around teaching people how to do eye listening.

Doug Noll:

Then what happened was, the Human Potential Movement of the late 50s

Doug Noll:

and early 60s and then the Therapeutic Movement picked up this, picked this

Doug Noll:

thing up as active listening and they turned it into this perverse, ridiculous

Doug Noll:

formulation that goes something like this.

Doug Noll:

Dallas, what I think you're really feeling is anger.

Doug Noll:

Dallas, what I hear you is X.

Doug Noll:

Dallas what I hear you, what I see you feeling is anger.

Doug Noll:

It's all about the I statement again.

Doug Noll:

And the reason that people use the I statement is because It's self soothing

Doug Noll:

because when I say I, I am now withdrawing into a third person passive voice and

Doug Noll:

I'm pulling away from and I'm soothing my own anxiety around your emotion.

Doug Noll:

And how do you feel?

Doug Noll:

You don't feel heard.

Doug Noll:

You feel pissed off because now the whole process is about me, the listener.

Doug Noll:

It's I, I.

Doug Noll:

Forget active listening.

Doug Noll:

The right term, the correct term reflective listening

Doug Noll:

using a you statement.

Doug Noll:

You're angry.

Doug Noll:

You're frustrated.

Doug Noll:

You're pissed off.

Doug Noll:

You don't feel heard.

Doug Noll:

You're really scared and terrified.

Dallas Burnett:

Yeah, I think that's, yes.

Dallas Burnett:

I think I can totally agree with that.

Dallas Burnett:

And, reflective listening makes sense.

Dallas Burnett:

And that practice that, a good coach would be doing that, whether they

Dallas Burnett:

understand that they're doing active listening or reflective listening.

Dallas Burnett:

Hopefully they're practicing reflective listening where they say active or not.

Dallas Burnett:

But I love your, I love the way that you've broken down the history of that,

Dallas Burnett:

and you obviously have a great command of these terms and psychology behind them.

Dallas Burnett:

So, I think that's good and reflective listing is fantastic.

Dallas Burnett:

If you were going to offer advice to someone that's engaging in.

Dallas Burnett:

They're a leader, but they're also engaging in developing their team members.

Dallas Burnett:

So maybe I'm a project manager.

Dallas Burnett:

And I'm engaging in developing my people.

Dallas Burnett:

What advice would you give to a coach?

Dallas Burnett:

Cause we have a lot of coaches listening.

Dallas Burnett:

What advice would you give to a coach engaging in that process of

Doug Noll:

First of all, I think the number one duty of any leader

Doug Noll:

is to develop leaders in their direct reports, and actually they

Doug Noll:

should be working two levels down.

Doug Noll:

If you're not working on developing leaders below you,

Doug Noll:

you are failing as a leader.

Doug Noll:

That's your number one job.

Doug Noll:

You're trying to train people to take your job over.

Doug Noll:

And if you don't like that, if you got, if you're too ego involved to do that,

Doug Noll:

then you don't belong in leadership.

Doug Noll:

You belong doing something else.

Doug Noll:

Become a trial lawyer.

Dallas Burnett:

right.

Doug Noll:

Ego works as a trial lawyer.

Doug Noll:

does not work in leadership.

Doug Noll:

I can speak from personal experience on that.

Doug Noll:

do So how you develop leaders?

Doug Noll:

The first thing you do is you model leadership behaviors.

Doug Noll:

That means you've got to have Really strong emotional competency.

Doug Noll:

You've got to demonstrate emotional self regulation, emotional, emotional

Doug Noll:

self awareness, emotional self regulation, cognitive empathy.

Doug Noll:

You've got to be able to listen to people at a very deep level, using both type

Doug Noll:

1 and type 2 listening as appropriate.

Doug Noll:

You've got to, you've got to take the time to really understand your people.

Doug Noll:

And then you have to teach them how to understand the people below them.

Doug Noll:

What is it that makes them tick?

Doug Noll:

What motivates people?

Doug Noll:

What gets them excited?

Doug Noll:

What turns them off?

Doug Noll:

What do they really like about what they do?

Doug Noll:

What do they hate about what they do?

Doug Noll:

If they didn't have to work, what would they do?

Doug Noll:

All these questions, so that you can understand a little bit

Doug Noll:

better what makes them work.

Doug Noll:

Instead of telling people to park their emotions at the door,

Doug Noll:

say, bring in all your emotional, bring everything you've got.

Doug Noll:

I want everything here at the table.

Doug Noll:

I want you to bring your whole self onto my team.

Doug Noll:

And we're going to work with it.

Doug Noll:

Create, learn how to create emotional safety on the team by ethic labeling.

Doug Noll:

And getting rid of gossip and getting rid of judgment and getting rid of

Doug Noll:

criticism and learning different ways of coaching people for improvement rather

Doug Noll:

than criticizing and giving feedback.

Doug Noll:

Feedback is You've just got, you've got to give people coaching

Doug Noll:

instructions every single day.

Doug Noll:

You coach for incremental improvement.

Doug Noll:

You're not looking for gigantic

Dallas Burnett:

That's

Doug Noll:

And you just make this a practice.

Doug Noll:

high And that's how you're going to get a performing

Dallas Burnett:

I love it.

Dallas Burnett:

And I love how you've phrased that where you bring your whole self,

Dallas Burnett:

and we definitely preach that a lot in our one on one coaching system.

Dallas Burnett:

And I do think it's interesting because a lot of people feel very

Dallas Burnett:

uncomfortable with that idea.

Dallas Burnett:

They're like, look, I want to engage you as it relates to

Dallas Burnett:

your roles and responsibilities.

Dallas Burnett:

I need this report on Friday.

Dallas Burnett:

I need you to show up on Monday.

Dallas Burnett:

I need this and this, and it's

Dallas Burnett:

very transactional.

Dallas Burnett:

And I just find that people, Lose so much more of the value, and performance

Dallas Burnett:

when you operate in that space, because you're not, you're never going to get

Dallas Burnett:

the a hundred percent unless you take a

Dallas Burnett:

hundred percent of them, and, so I think That's really, I think it's really

Doug Noll:

exactly right.

Doug Noll:

That's exactly right.

Doug Noll:

You can take a couple of minutes and I, so, so, hey Dallas man, tell me

Doug Noll:

what's going on in your life right now.

Doug Noll:

And you start telling me what's going on in your life.

Doug Noll:

I ethically label you, you feel deeply heard and validated.

Doug Noll:

I say, cool, hey, the report's due on Monday.

Doug Noll:

You going to be able to get it in on time or do you need some help?

Doug Noll:

What do you think that person's going to

Dallas Burnett:

Oh, so they're going to

Dallas Burnett:

probably

Doug Noll:

That's right.

Doug Noll:

And they're going to bust their

Dallas Burnett:

saying

Doug Noll:

to get the report done.

Doug Noll:

And they can't get it done on Monday, they're going to be

Doug Noll:

honest with you and say, honestly.

Doug Noll:

I don't think I can.

Doug Noll:

I got too many.

Doug Noll:

I've got here all the other things that I've got going and maybe I need some

Doug Noll:

help from prioritize stuff so that I have I get some help so they feel safe.

Doug Noll:

They can ask for help rather than they just feel like they've all

Doug Noll:

themselves and be the macho guy and kill themselves from stress.

Dallas Burnett:

That's love that.

Dallas Burnett:

That's great.

Dallas Burnett:

That's,

Dallas Burnett:

that's leadership.

Dallas Burnett:

That's down the middle.

Dallas Burnett:

That is down the middle leadership

Dallas Burnett:

right there.

Dallas Burnett:

I love that.

Dallas Burnett:

And I love,

Doug Noll:

it.

Dallas Burnett:

yeah, but yeah.

Dallas Burnett:

There's so few, everybody that knows someone that is practicing that.

Dallas Burnett:

It's just like, oh my goodness, , but based on your techniques here

Dallas Burnett:

that you've been able to share.

Dallas Burnett:

If we can learn how to affect labor, it's not as much, it's

Doug Noll:

it's No, simple.

Doug Noll:

It just takes practice.

Doug Noll:

You just got to have the knowledge, you got to know how to do the skills, and

Doug Noll:

then you got to practice the skills.

Doug Noll:

It's like riding a

Dallas Burnett:

It'd be consistent.

Doug Noll:

be consistent

Doug Noll:

over eight weeks, and you can learn how to do this, and it changes everything.

Dallas Burnett:

That's awesome.

Dallas Burnett:

Let's talk about this.

Dallas Burnett:

You've got, you teach it at graduate level at college at Pepperdine, you're

Dallas Burnett:

an author, speaking, you offer courses, you do all these things.

Dallas Burnett:

Tell our listeners how they can find your material, your books, your

Dallas Burnett:

courses, and that, where can they

Doug Noll:

Go to my website, Doug Noll, O U G N O L dot com, and on the homepage,

Doug Noll:

there are a whole bunch of questions.

Doug Noll:

What brings you here?

Doug Noll:

And they're all hyperlinked, so just click on whatever question you answered.

Doug Noll:

I've got courses on deescalating people and on developing emotional

Doug Noll:

competency that are quite sophisticated in terms of how they work.

Doug Noll:

I've written four books, the last one, Deescalate, How to Call Me an Angry Person

Doug Noll:

in 90 Seconds or Less, came out Atria, Simon Schuster, Beyond Words in 2017,

Doug Noll:

and is doing very well commercially.

Doug Noll:

I'm quite pleased with that.

Doug Noll:

And

Dallas Burnett:

It's much much needed these days,

Doug Noll:

I can be engaged and train and coach individuals,

Doug Noll:

teams, and organizations in these skills, and that's what I do.

Doug Noll:

So the, I will not mention who it is, but I will say there is a religious

Doug Noll:

group in North Carolina that's engaging me to train their teams in these

Doug Noll:

skills for the work, the outreach they're doing in their ministry.

Doug Noll:

So I'll be working with them in next year.

Doug Noll:

So that's a typical engagement where can come in and teach teams and

Doug Noll:

groups of people how to do this.

Doug Noll:

Or individual leaders can come in and say, I want to learn these skills.

Doug Noll:

And so we do a very intense 8 to 12 weeks of training, depending on how

Doug Noll:

long you want to learn these skills.

Doug Noll:

And I, of course, I speak workshops and that sort of stuff too.

Dallas Burnett:

we can find, we can, the listeners can

Dallas Burnett:

find All that on your

Doug Noll:

All my website, you can find me on LinkedIn.

Doug Noll:

If you don't want to go to my website, you can find me on LinkedIn.

Doug Noll:

I'm a very prolific poster on LinkedIn.

Doug Noll:

So go there and I just, today I posted on a Thanksgiving dinner that almost

Doug Noll:

went sideways until one of the family members knew how to affect label and save

Dallas Burnett:

so if you want, some help for your Christmas dinner,

Dallas Burnett:

this is to check him out on LinkedIn cause he's posting on that already.

Dallas Burnett:

So this has been great.

Dallas Burnett:

Now we always in the show asking our guests who they would like to

Dallas Burnett:

hear be a guest on the last 10%.

Dallas Burnett:

So, Doug, who would you like to hear as a

Dallas Burnett:

guest on the last

Doug Noll:

I think you should have my wife.

Doug Noll:

As a complete contrast to who I am, my wife is a spiritual teacher and

Doug Noll:

counselor, but with deep wisdom.

Doug Noll:

And she works with she works with a lot of corporate.

Doug Noll:

People, a lot of corporate leaders, mostly women, teaching them deep, deep

Doug Noll:

inner skills to get rid of anxiety, get rid of imposter syndrome, and really

Doug Noll:

tuck into their divine self and see themselves as divine beings And from

Doug Noll:

that perspective, navigate the world.

Doug Noll:

So

Dallas Burnett:

Wow.

Dallas Burnett:

That sounds like a very,

Doug Noll:

very,

Dallas Burnett:

guest a

Doug Noll:

we are bonded together.

Doug Noll:

I've never been happier since being married to her and we

Doug Noll:

just have an amazing life.

Dallas Burnett:

Wonderful.

Dallas Burnett:

We'll have to reach out and, and see if we can have

Dallas Burnett:

a, get her on the show.

Dallas Burnett:

We appreciate your time and sharing your wisdom.

Dallas Burnett:

You had so many things to, to discuss and unpack around.

Dallas Burnett:

Affect labeling and validating emotions and how to manage conflict.

Dallas Burnett:

I know the listeners got a lot out of this today, so we just appreciate your time

Dallas Burnett:

and sharing your wisdom with us, Doug.

Dallas Burnett:

I appreciate you

Dallas Burnett:

being on the last 10%.

Doug Noll:

Thank you, Dallas.

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About the Podcast

The Last 10%
Inspiring People, Coaching Teams, and Improving Cultures
Join The Last 10% for incredible conversations that help uncover the secrets of what it takes to finish well and finish strong. Our guests share their journeys, hardships, and valuable advice. We release new episodes every other Tuesday. If you are a leader, a coach, a business owner, or someone looking to level up, you are in the right place!

You can give 90% effort and make it a long way. But it’s the finding out how to unlock the last 10% that makes all the difference in your life, your relationships, and your work.

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Dallas Burnett