Anna Lecat: Intimacy is about being real with yourself and with the other person to see and to be seen in your full truth. And we spend so much time at work. Best is to bring our full self to work and acknowledge the authenticity of everybody else there. We have so much conversation about self-reliance, self-work, selfhealing. And the older I get, the the more experienced I get, the more I understand that I don’t have to do anything alone. be nice to each other. That’s the conditioning we all get. But it’s actually in those conflicts that the deepest connections lie.
Jason Marc Campbell: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the show. I’m very excited about the conversation that we’re going to go into today because for those of you who are maybe people pleasers, maybe some of you who might label themselves as conflict avoidant. No, we’re not going to go into a full personal type of episode because we’re going to speak about where this applies mostly in the workplace. But what happens in the workplace also happens in our personal lives. And if we are avoiding conflict, maybe we’re missing out on a lot of great opportunities both in our personal and professional lives to truly live life fully. and have more success, more abundance in every area. And the guest that I’m bringing today is Anna Luca, who is an author, TEDex speaker, intimacy, and conflict consultant, who’s going to be here to share more about why conflict can sometimes be a great thing. Why intimacy? We will set boundaries, but we will speak about how this can actually help with the way that you are operating in the workplace. Where are the times to use it? And mostly we’re going to use a framework that’s going to allow you to be more collaborative with your peers and allow you to connect with others in a way that will make you more abundant in the process. I’m so excited as she has my god she has been working in blending practice storytelling cross-cultural insights to make intimacy and conflict practical skills in leadership in life. The woman has been CEO in multiple organizations and she teaches these frameworks around the world with over 25 years of experience. has lived in China, US and now France, hailing from Ukraine and here on the podcast with me now. Anna, welcome. It’s a pleasure to have you.
Anna Lecat: So wonderful to be here. Thank you so much for having me.
Jason Marc Campbell: Okay, I I use the word the I word intimacy. And I think we should probably just put a box on that one because that’s probably the the the spiciest of words that I would use in the workplace. But I’d love for you to start with unpacking the concept of intimacy conflict in the workplace and how can this actually be a good thing.
Anna Lecat: Thank you. Thank you so much for starting right there. Uh intimacy is about being real with yourself and with the other person. We all want intimacy. Actually that’s what we are all craving for because uh being intimate with yourself means to really truly see yourself authentically who you are where you’re at what you are feeling what you are experiencing why you are here what is your purpose uh how you contributing and then also allowing giving permission to others to be to also be truthful with you. So intimacy is to see and to be seen in your full truth. And we spend so much time at work. It’s in in my mind best is to bring our full self to work and acknowledge the authenticity of everybody else there.
Jason Marc Campbell: You know, the first thing that came to mind when you started speaking about showing your true self is that I feel when I show up at work, I don’t show up fully as myself, but I show up as the work version of myself. Are there advantages to that? Or maybe this is where I need to be educated a little more.
Anna Lecat: It’s interesting you say that. um speaking to you and watching your videos and um experiencing you from the outside. So my parasocial relationship with you uh this is who you are. I feel that you are very authentic. So I would love to know more how how much difference there is between Jason at work and Jason when you think that you are being authentic self. I think that successful people truly successful people uh are authentic are showing up authentically because that’s how other people connect with us and especially now in the age where we are we are all craving authentic connections. So I would say the more authent the more um the more connection you feel from your audience that tells me that you are being authentic.
Jason Marc Campbell: Well, I’ll say this. I always present maybe a more polished version of myself in a professional setting, but it’s not always been such a light coat of paint, you could say. Cuz I would say mostly in my 20s, like I would have a vast different way of showing up in the workplace versus how I would act outside of it. And that would cause a bit of a cognitive dissonance in my own psyche, right? And then there’s some people that would truly be repulsed by me because they’d be like, “Wow, this guy is fake.” like this guy’s putting on a show or I’m acting too much like a salesman and that would be me in an overly polished way. And so I’ve toned that down a lot, but there’s still a part of me that wants to keep a little safe. So I always bring in a I’d say a polished version of myself or a professional version of myself, which is maybe where I come with this quote.
Anna Lecat: Yeah, it’s interesting, you know. Uh so as you as you mentioned in your introduction, so I’m from Ukraine originally. I moved to China when I was 17. Lived there for 15 years. Run several businesses there. Then moved to the United States, my second immigration, San Francisco, had a big business there. And then now I’ve been in France for 5 years. So if I tried to be polished and to fit in in the c in each culture, who would I be then? So I think that I learned early on to stay myself because I had to uh survive and thrive in all these different cultures in very different professional environments. And so I quickly understood, okay, I cannot be Chinese. I can’t be American fully and I can’t be fully French. So I might as well just stay myself and be respectful to others to allow them to be fully themselves. And it it worked beautifully for me. And so instead of adapting to a culture, to professional culture, to street culture, I adapted that culture to myself. And so it’s just being honest and just being honest and being so the way it it looks practically. When I come to a meeting, I will say how I feel. And then when I ask you at a meeting, how do you feel? I really mean it. And so there is always my clients, my um my business partners tell me it’s amazing with you. It feels like you will not judge me. You will not judge me. I will I can tell you about my personal life. I can tell you what matters to me in this business deal and there is not going to be judgment. And that comes from the fact that I am not judging myself because I’m showing up fully there authentically.
Jason Marc Campbell: I feel like the best example of contrast that I can bring forward and the fact that you did leave in north of California is there’s something that I would stereotype from a Californian culture which is just like oh my god how are you doing I miss you so much oh my god like there’s that personality that you can put on that’s quite annoying when you see that it’s like not authentic at all but people are really in your face and I feel like we’ve all had possibly a coworker like that And would that be kind of the polar opposite of what you’re speaking about?
Anna Lecat: It is. And having spent 12 years in San Francisco and worked and we had um I was a CEO of a fashion brand when we had retail stores, online presence, we were producing in China, in Shanghai, designing our products in France, in Paris and then selling in in all over United States. So I had many co-workers, many employees from San Francisco. It takes a minute to take that off. I believe uh you know how um you know I’m also a tango dancer and tango is very big part of my framework. In tango you know how we often say it takes two to tango
Jason Marc Campbell: And usually people think that it’s about two people. It takes two people to tango.
Anna Lecat: Well actually I think it’s a misunderstanding. It’s it takes two connections. one with yourself and the other one with the other person. So whatever the other person does, however they behave, as long as I am fully present and connected with myself, what I want, what I’m experiencing, what I’m feeling, where my alignment is, and I am listening carefully to them without judgment, tango is going to happen. As such, connection is going to happen. So even if they show up scared, anxious and so they have to put on a mask and behave how they think they should be behaving in the situation, as long as I am truly focused and present on myself and I’m full and I’m fully energized, right? And I’m listening to them, they’ll take it off and they’ll behave authentically with me.
Jason Marc Campbell: Is there a sort of test or a way of kind of seeing where you stand in your own intimacy with yourself and how centered you are with yourself?
Anna Lecat: Again, back to tango. I actually this is what I that’s why I’m so obsessed about it because um you know in tango I lead and follow. I dance both roles and I’m doing it well first of all because I am I want to be fully free and I don’t want to be stuck in roles. I want to go outside of the roles. I don’t want to be men should be doing this and women should be doing this. I am everything. So I I do everything and I explore everything in tango uh as a lead or a follower it doesn’t matter to know that we are fully present we need to go back to our access we need to be fully standing on our two feet and feel our center so like in chigong for example there is also that practice of feeling our center in pilates and yoga I think your audience probably is uh um has has explored many many of some of those modalities so it’s going back to your center to your breathing. I also I’m a vipasa practitioner. So um uh I know how to scan my body. So when I’m feeling anxious, when I feel that I am not completely present, I scan my body from the top to bottom and then back up. Making sure that I feel my hips. I have connection with the floor and I know how I’m breathing. Am I do I have shallow breathing or is it deep? Then I know I’m aligned.
Jason Marc Campbell: Well, I’ve been through those 10 days of vipasa. So, yes, I know exactly what you’re talking about. And one thing you might not be aware is I’m currently general manager at a breath works company. So what you’re speaking right now is resonating perfectly. So we’re talking about checking in with yourself, seeing how centered we are. Finding that kind of inner peace is probably the first call it litmus test and being centered. Um and then from there, if you’re feeling that you’re a little off, what are some of the practices or things that we could do that would allow us to be better at reconnecting with the self? I mean, I think you’ve already led into some of the practices that seem to be the best for centering, but I’d let you elaborate.
Anna Lecat: If we are already at the business meeting, if we are already in front of a business partner or in front of a client, um if I feel misaligned, if I feel anxious, scared, confused, I will just say that, you know, I’m so much um I the the older I get, the the more experience I get, the more I understand that I don’t have to do anything alone. And I think we have so much conversation about self-reliance, self-work, self-healing. And I I don’t think we we we need to do it. Well, I haven’t needed to to to be ever to be self-reliant. So if I am with my with if I have a partner or an employee with me, I will tell them I will share, hey, I’m feeling this. And if I have enough awareness, I I can make a request. So if it’s in a personal situation, if it’s not in business, I ask for hugs all the time. I will ask, you know, if I have a friend before a big workshop or before a keynote and I’m feeling too jittery and I can’t calm down myself, I will go and ask a friend for a deep strong hug and that calms me down. If I don’t have anybody who it would be appropriate to ask for a hug, but maybe I can have somebody to hold my hand strongly. So, I like some kind of a strong h hold. And if everything fails, I’ll go on the stage and I’ll say this is how I’m feeling right now and I will make a request from the stage. And you know since my talks are about conflict and intimacy, it works really well because I’ll say uh I will show so I’ll say this is how I’m feeling right now. I’m all jittery and can’t can’t calm down. My breathing is shallow. I can’t find my words. Um what I would like right now if you if it feels right to you is this. So, can please can everybody please make take a deep breath with me? And we all do it. And I say, “Thank you.” And then I say, “This this was intimacy. I told you. I showed to you what’s going on with me. You listened to me and you gave me what I requested.”
Jason Marc Campbell: I find that so interesting because Anna, I went to a speaker training and one of the first things they said is when you jump on stage, never tell them that you’re nervous. Have you ever heard that advice? And when you approach it, how do you how do you counter it? Because what you just said makes a lot of sense.
Anna Lecat: Um, yeah. I say, okay, that’s I’m sure it work. I’m sure they’re right and I’m sure it worked for them. I think Right? Like we all have different topics, different personalities and different comfort with our intimacy and with showing up uh telling other people about our emotions also because we have different nervous systems. For me, it’s calming to tell people how I’m feeling and there are plenty of people for whom it would be awful and who wouldn’t be able to continue with their keynote if they told other people they were nervous. Right? So, it’s about it’s going back to where’s my access? Who am I? How is my nervous system working when I’m on the stage? Maybe for some people they need to pretend to look confident and not to have anxiety and then they calm down, right? It’s not it’s not the case for me. I like to show up fully because I feel so supported that connection that happens with the audience and I speak in front of 300 500 people. uh pretty big audiences that feeling uh of being almost naked in front of people and saying this is how it is. You know, I talk about conflicts. So I tell them I’m Ukrainian. There is a war in my country. I’m Jewish. There is a conflict in Middle East. I have a business between China and the United States. And there trade works war. So and then even France where there are it’s not calm. And so I’m in the middle of conflicts all the time and I te talk about it on the stage and uh when I show my emotions and I tell them honestly this is how it feels in my body. This is what my day looks like every day. Seeing those eyes getting the the resonance in the room seeing people nodding crying um I feel so supported. It’s like almost the feeling of if I fall into the audience, they’re going to hold me. That holding up is really I I feel it in my body. And so the same happens uh in business negotiations or in business meetings like to the office. It’s like the feeling the more I have experience that the more honest I am about who I am and how I experience things and what I’m thinking, the more I feel held by others. And then people then have permission to show up like that in return with me. So they will tell me, they’ll tell me, you know, when I have price negotiations, they’ll tell me what prices they need because we are being honest. So the the the selling process becomes such a beautiful conversation back and forth. How can we together achieve something where both of us win? because we started with I feel like this now today this is who I am you can trust me now tell me about yourself
Jason Marc Campbell: I think that’s beautiful I’d add that given how everything looks so polished particularly with the rise of AI where everything looks flawless with AI and people are looking for the real so even if I speak of that polish don’t show any weakness on stage like people are like we’re tired because it creates almost that separation between the speaker, right? And what you’re saying is you’re melting the actual walls between the audience and as a speaker and it just makes it something that people really have been craving. It seems so more than ever uh in today’s age. Um, you’ve already hinted towards the whole idea of conflict and I know that’s the other big topic you speak about and I kind of want to dive into that because uh I feel like being able to lean into conflict is a muscle I had to develop as someone who is by nature very conflict averse. I want to be liked by everybody. So when I see conflict I feel like did I just fail? And so I’d love to hear what are the major views you see on conflict and how it can be actually one of the greatest tools.
Anna Lecat: Thank you for saying that. Uh I think that the first step is to say I am conflict averse and I’m scared to be in conflict because I’m afraid not to be loved. This is the first the gigantic step there. Right from there, it’s just skills and just practice because as soon as you know, as soon as I know that I’m afraid of conflict and I do everything possible to avoid it, I start jumping into it and it right now like I’ve been doing it for so many years and at the beginning I was definitely like you. Um I want to be loved. I want to be accepted. Especially being an immigrant so many times and always speaking with an accent like I rarely speak with people in my mother tongue. So I wanted to be seen as one of them and to fit in and bringing out up conflict definitely is not the best way I thought to get there. Now I know that it’s not true. Actually bringing up the conflict, the difficult conversation is the best way to connect with the other person. But it takes the courage to try many many times and to prove to ourselves because we grow up being taught that conflict is bad. We grow up been taught avoid it, be nice to each other. That’s just that’s in all the cultures I’ve been in from Eastern Europe to Europe to Western Europe, Asia, the United States. That’s the conditioning we all get. Be nice to each other. But it’s actually in those conflicts that the deepest connections lie because in the conflict we bring up the difficult the difficult conversations where we are misaligned and we have either we have a chance to either get to alignment and to full collaboration or we get the chance to understand early on where we can never be aligned and we still can stay friends. So maybe if you talk to your early business partner and bring up all the difficult conversations, maybe you will understand that this business venture is never going to work, but you know it early and you still can maintain your friendship and your love and your trust and then go on different ways instead of going for years and years and I’ve done that for years of working with someone and then having a major conflict and being like, “Oh my god, how did I ever thought that I can work with this person?” So bet better to find out early.
Jason Marc Campbell: I have to make the parallel around a sales call, right? Because often times you think that the success of a sales call is how you can continue the conversation without any conflict all the way to the end. And you get surprised if they don’t buy because you didn’t go into all the topics you needed to go and unearth the uncomfort talking about the pricing, the timing, the investment. And it’s like, oh, if I if I avoid all the tough topics and just make sure we go and talk about all the fun and they become my friend, I’m sure they’ll buy and then the person disappears. Well, conflict might have been the thing you needed the most.
Anna Lecat: Exactly. You know, I am now nowadays since I’ve been so I’ve been in conflicts myself many many times and also now I’m a conflict consultant. So I’ve been hired by companies when they have a highstake conflict and they can’t resolve it by themselves. So within the board between business partners, I work a lot in Asia with family businesses where they have a usually a father who started the company who made it really successful and then a son or a daughter who’s been sent to Harvard or Yale to study. They come back with all these new ideas and then there’s a major conflict. How are they going to work together because they come now from different worlds and so I’m invited to sit with them and teach them. So I do not coach. I tell them what to say and what to do and then we we figure it out together. Um and so now having having done all all this I can say that um this first the first time we feel in a business call in sales call for example something is not right when I feel something is not quite right there is this intuition there’s like not in my stomach discomfort or I get nauseous there is something it’s and I think it’s very important to know the body signs of discomfort of misalignment that’s how we No conflict is there. It’s brewing. So it’s so uh what I recommend to my clients is to focus to first learn the first signs of misalignment in your body. And whenever you start feeling it anywhere in a casual conversation or in business, you stop everything, you slow down and you say something doesn’t feel aligned here. Can we talk about it? do it as or the moment you get nauseous feeling on the moment what some people feel like their hairs are going to to get to stand up or or they get sweaty palms it it right it depends so or tight stomach okay stop everything breathe and say oh something I don’t know what it is you might not know what it is you just be very honest with the other person something doesn’t feel aligned can we please talk about it did you you said uh maybe it was in your voice, maybe it was in can can we just slow down what just happened here and being it’s like go in in this investigation together because I bet if you tell the partner or the client something doesn’t feel aligned, they will also slow down and then slowly unpack it. And that’s how we become friends. We become friends by slowly unpacking misalignment much faster because that’s where trust grows because the other person sees real you. That’s the mechanism of friending. I don’t know if that’s the ver verb but it should be you know that’s the process how do we actually connect and grow attachment right because going to attachment theory I use a lot of attachment theory in my work right how when we sell when we say we want to be friends with our client what we want is to grow attachment between us and attachment comes through trust and shared experience what better experience to share than unpacking something that I just felt with your help.
Jason Marc Campbell: You spoke about how over time you were able to develop the skill of being more comfortable leaning into the conflict. And I do think that it takes some practice and for someone who is like, “Wow, I want to unlock this superpower because I see how much more effective it would make me.” Are there ways to lean into it so it can come to you quicker?
Anna Lecat: You know the answer nothing comes quickly. It’s the the truth is every it’s like when somebody’s when a a trainer is asked how to lose a belly fat, right? Uh and you know something else I wanted to mention about it. So I live with my parents. I’ve always lived with my parents. And uh this is the hardest conflict to ever have is with your parents. You know how Ramdas uh said once that if you think you’re enlightened, go spend a week with your family and I love this uh this quote and so many people try at home. They first practice at home and then they think okay now I have a skill now I’m strong enough or I am skilled enough to conflict now I’m going to try it at work. I say do the opposite. Try at work first. at work with your neighbors in the coffee shop because the there are small conflicts too. There are also conflicts with ourselves. We want to ask something. We want to ask for a raise. We want to ask for high prices and we are conflicted to do that to go ahead and ask what we want. That’s a conflict. It’s a conflict with yourself. Should I do it? Will they not like me? Am I going to upset someone? So those are the places to start speaking fully. I feel misaligned here. I would like u more salt in this dish. Asking waiter um for what you really want. You know sending that dish back and also um it’s also I think uh that’s here. It’s also about um how we do it. You know the reason why I started for me it was really easy to start conflicting practicing conflicting because I was living in China. In China there is this idea of saving face of people saving your face and saving somebody else’s face. So when we are having a difficult conversation with my Chinese suppliers or Chinese partners, I am confident they’re not going to say anything that will hurt me and I’m doing everything possible to not say anything that’s going to hurt them. So I in China I’ve learned that we are actually taking care of each other’s hearts all the time. We’re not mean. And I think that’s something that we are missing in the West. Conflict doesn’t have to be mean. We don’t need to hurt anyone. Truth doesn’t have to hurt. The words that we use do not have to hurt, right? And that’s that’s just uh paying attention to that. And so because in China that’s just it’s just it’s in the design, right, of the culture. So I I know that whatever my business partner is going to tell me when I bring up a hard topic, it’s not going to break my heart. is not going to even hurt my pride. Because you know how when we feel proud, we start getting defensive and and we say things that could be mean, right? Because our our heart is is is broken. It just doesn’t happen there. And so as a result, I I was I kept bringing up difficult topics because I knew it’s safe. So bringing that safety into conversations and practicing with it, it’s like having this safety net. You know, your heart is going to be safe because you’re also taking care of theirs.
Jason Marc Campbell: That’s such a powerful way of seeing the cultural differences of saving face in in a light that it makes it I’m like oh that’s how it’s effective because I think we demonize it in education systems in the west
Anna Lecat: That oh yeah this is so hard but it’s just we don’t really know how to approach conflict and it doesn’t need to be mean but you can bring forward the points that are not in alignment and that’ll get you to the deal.
Jason Marc Campbell: That’s it.
Anna Lecat: Or it will get you to stop this deal and go and spend your time somewhere else where it’s where there are higher chances of success while keeping this person on your side. I think that’s what’s important to me. I would rather get a know early on in the selling process and then keep this person as my friend because they will bring me in some later at some later time when the situation is better when it’s a no. Okay, great. Now we can spend let’s say an hour of selling sales call five first minutes we got to know this deal is not working I have all this time to build attachment and trust with them and what’s next for us right okay and then I can make requests okay well this is this is what I need I need to grow my business can you please help me and what is it that you need how can I support you right then 55 minutes of amazing information about each other how can my business then grow from there from having this person on my side and vice versa for them as well.
Jason Marc Campbell: Anna, I am happy that we’re bringing forward these topics that will get us to be a little bit more of ourselves in the workplace and in our personal lives. And it sounds like with the fact that you’ve gotten a chance to go to all the major continents and be able to put this into practice with all the different cultures that you’ve been able to take the best of each into a framework that gets people to be able to lean into the conflict in a beautiful way to get objectives and results in a faster, more aligned way and realizing that we need to connect with ourselves to be able to unlock a bit of that power. I’d be curious to know if you had a chance to shake up the world to a key realization of what you teach right now. What would you want most of the world to know as a truth that most people have are completely blind to right now?
Anna Lecat: I think that loving conflict is the truth. It’s loving the difficulty conversations and that loving conflict means practicing it more. Practicing more means we get better at it. And I just want to be honest with you, Jason, what’s behind it for me? because it’s really I feel very much aligned and on purpose doing this work. I deeply believe that when we are truly intimate with each other, when we have more deep intimacy in our lives, deeper friendships, deeper romantic relationships, deeper closer relationships with our parents, with our children, when we are fully seen for who we are, we don’t need to then wage wars. And since there is a horrible war in my home country right now, I am doing everything possible to talk to as many people as possible to teach them the skills of connection and intimacy so that hopefully it gets to the people who are making decisions about the war. I want them to be loved and intimate so that they would, you know, spend their time on that. It’s much more fun than waging wars.
Jason Marc Campbell: Anna, how can people discover more and share more of your work if they’re looking to go into it themselves or want to bring your work in front of their peers?
Anna Lecat: Uh, well, my work is your work. So, I think that we are very aligned. Every time I see what you what you are producing, what you’re saying, I know that you you’re on the same road. So, supporting you, I think it’s a great idea. Um, my book is coming out end of March, Love and Conflict. So, I will be very grateful for support with the book Clench.
Jason Marc Campbell: And we’re going to put a link into the show notes for people to go deeper into that book that’s coming up or it’s already out by the time you’re listening to this episode. We shall see. But it’s been an absolute joy to have you on the show. It’s getting me to want to lean more into conflict in the potential that it brings, the love that it brings, the intimacy that it grows both in my professional life and in my personal life. I’ve also I feel good having this conversation because I know this was something I had to work a lot on and being able to openly talk about this with you and for everybody else listening. It does get easier. It does become more effective and leaning into it. It’s not as scary as how I think we make it up to be and I’m hoping that the conversation has lowered the guards for people to be able to lean in, love the conflict as well and see how it makes them grow in the process. Anna, again, thank you so much for coming on the show, sharing your wisdom, sharing your time. I’m going to have an interesting invitation, which I think there’s a stage you should speak on, and I’ll tell you all about it after the show. For everybody else tuning in, again, the link to the book is going to be in the show notes. Go grab a copy, pre-order it if you’re listening to it before it’s released, and if it’s already out, we’ll go and add it to your bookshelf. I think it’s going to be a powerful way for you to lean in, love the conflicts, and make the world better in the process.
Anna Lecat: Thank you so much, Jason.
Jason Marc Campbell: Thank you for listening to the Jason Mark Campbell Business Podcast. If you enjoyed that episode and you want to dig deeper into other topics, we have some more episodes that we’ve linked here. Some of them are related to sales, other on business, and even some on being more productive at work. Whatever it is you’re interested in, we have so many episodes that are being listed on this channel. So, please dig in, enjoy, and of course, keep selling with love.
You can find out more on Anna’s website at annalecat.com.