Michael Hartmann: Hello, everyone. Welcome to another episode of OpsCast, brought to you by MarketingOps.com and powered by all the MoPros out there. I am your host, Michael Hartmann. Today we are going a bit outside of the typical playbook for our show, but in a way, I think it will resonate with everyone who has been listening, or at least anyone who is working in operations, especially marketing ops. As you know, if you are in marketing ops, rev ops, or really any kind of ops role, you are constantly operating in the middle: between marketing and sales, leadership and execution, strategy and reality. And with that comes something we do not often talk enough about, which is conflict. Not just difficult conversations, but real tension, misaligned incentives, different languages across teams, competing priorities, especially if you are working internationally, and moments where it feels like you are stuck in the middle of it all. So my guest today is Anna Lecat, CEO and founder of Bridging Global and author of the soon-to-be-released book Loving Conflict. By the time this goes out, I think it will be published, so we will share a link to that. Anna has spent over 25 years leading multicultural teams and working across global organizations, and her work focuses on how we can move from avoiding conflict to actually using it to build trust, alignment, and better outcomes. Today’s conversation is about a skill that might be more important than any tool, system, or framework: learning how to navigate conflict in a way that makes you a more effective operator and leader. Anna, welcome to the show.
Anna Lecat: Thank you so much for having me.
Michael Hartmann: We always love having international guests, and I think your story is an interesting one. You are in France now, in Paris, right? But you are Ukrainian and lived in China. Did I get all that right?
Anna Lecat: I was born in Ukraine, and I left for China at 17. Then I moved to the United States. I lived in San Francisco for 12 years, and now this is my third immigration, to Paris, France.
Michael Hartmann: Nice. I have worked with people globally, but I have not lived in all those places, so it is always interesting for me to get that perspective. Your book is called Loving Conflict, and this is an idea that resonates with me a lot. People who listen to me know that I think that is a big part of being in leadership roles, where you have to deal with conflict and competing priorities. But your core idea, loving conflict, is an interesting one. For a lot of people, especially in operations roles, conflict is something they try to avoid. So when you say loving conflict, what do you mean by that? And why do you think most people try to avoid it and get that wrong from your perspective?
Anna Lecat: First of all, I think conflict is a feature of any relationship, personal or business. If we are not clear that there is a conflict, it means we are avoiding it and trying not to notice it. There is always going to be conflict because we are different. We have different beliefs, different brilliance, different cultures. Even if we come from the same city and were born on the same street, we are different because of how our parents brought us up and what experiences we encountered. We avoid conflict because we are brought up that way. We are all told that loving someone means keeping the peace. We are told early on to avoid it and be nice to each other. And we are not taught how to do it well. So when we do end up in conflict with someone, we do it badly because we do not have the skills, and then we lose the relationship. So we learn, “If I bring up a conflict with my best friend when I am six or ten years old and they leave me, they break up with me, I will never do it again.” We decide it was because we brought up the conflict, and we never do it again. Instead, I say, let’s learn how to conflict better. Let’s work on those skills so that we can bring it up. All of us intuitively know that if we bring it up well and resolve the conflict, or even just talk about it, it builds trust, it builds connection, and then collaboration and continued attachment become possible in those relationships, business or personal.
Michael Hartmann: That is interesting. I cannot remember where I saw this, maybe a silly Instagram reel, but someone was being asked, maybe a grandchild asking grandparents, “How have you been married so long?” And the answer was that it was not just one long relationship. It was multiple relationships because people were changing and evolving. It feels like conflict is going to be natural if you are not evolving at the same pace. Is that also part of it? Does it set you up to navigate those changes as your relationship changes?
Anna Lecat: It sets us up to have the right communication, open communication, sincere communication, so that when the relationship changes, when we change, because we change every day, we can keep updating each other. Every morning I wake up and I am a different person. So are you. We change every day. We need to update each other on our changes every day. That is why it is important to know ourselves, check in with ourselves, scan our bodies, and know where our bodies are and what we are feeling and experiencing today, at every moment. Then we can translate ourselves to other people and update them on our changes so they do not need to guess, because people do not read our minds. We would love them to, and it is so romantic. We are told so many stories: “Oh, he is reading my mind.” No, it is just a coincidence.
Michael Hartmann: Broken clocks are right twice a day.
Anna Lecat: Exactly. Especially when our life changes, when we grow out of something and go into a different life stage, or in a company, when the company gets bigger, goes through a merger, has a major client onboarded or offboarded, or changes the team. These are all changes that impact us, and as such, might lead to conflicts unless we spell ourselves out clearly to others.
Michael Hartmann: That is good. As organizations grow and change, I think that does inevitably lead to changes, even if you had a good relationship. People handle stress and risk and all those things differently. One of the things that was interesting to me when we first connected is that I believe this is an important skill to learn too. A lot of people would call it a soft skill, and I really try to avoid that because it is just a skill in my mind. It is like anything else. It can be learned, and you can become competent in it. For people in our audience, they are in operations roles. Especially in marketing ops and revenue ops, we sit between lots of different teams that may have competing priorities. We have marketing, sales, finance, leadership, legal, compliance, privacy, all these tensions, different goals and perspectives. Beyond the obvious, what do you think are some of the drivers that lead to conflict instead of alignment in those scenarios?
Anna Lecat: It is wonderful that you listed the different roles or departments that the audience communicates with. If we look at those, and if we go to stereotypes, we can say there are different cultures, different languages, and different personality types on average in each of those teams. Already, you have different cultures communicating. Somebody in sales is very different from somebody in finance or legal. They have different education, different slang, they speak differently. They have internal jokes. They have a culture within their department. Then it depends on individuals, who the leader is in that organization, where they go out together, how they socialize, and what common jokes they have. We forget that when we speak the same language in the organization, we assume we are very much the same. Very few people remember, when they speak to a different person, that this person might be living in a totally different world. Plus, if we add that we are all living in an information bubble because of our social media algorithms, which bring us information that confirms our biases, and if many of us work from home and have probably never met that person from a different department, with a different role, different priorities, and different culture, then we have not built that friendship net, that connection net. It can be the same as talking to someone from a different country you have never been to.
Michael Hartmann: Right. You do not know their norms and things like that. So many things are flooding into my head right now. I remember the first time I went to Asia. What I thought it was going to be like was marginally accurate, but the reality was quite different. My perception was one thing, and going over there and spending time with those people completely changed the relationship we had. I think some of that can be accomplished now through virtual things, but it requires work.
Anna Lecat: Exactly. It requires work, attention, and remembering that we are different. When you go to Asia, you know it is going to be different. People look different, so you pay more attention to those details. You notice more. But if you are in the U.S. and speaking with somebody from the U.S., you assume, “We just get each other. We understand each other.” You assume they watched the same news you watched in the morning. Probably not.
Michael Hartmann: No, these days that is absolutely not true. I have become a big believer that a lot of what is driving what seems to be such a divide in the world is that people are literally seeing completely different things. It used to be that everybody saw the same three or four broadcast news channels, and that was it. Now there are hundreds and hundreds, and to your point, they reinforce your own biases. But that is a whole other topic. It is interesting that you talk about language because I have talked a lot about having been in a sales role for a brief period of time. I often tell marketers that part of the challenge they are having in their relationship with sales is that sales simply speaks a different language. So I encourage a lot of people to go spend time with them, sit down and watch what they go through, what they do, how they talk to customers, clients, and prospects. I do not know how much people think that way, because I think they immediately get to, “They do not understand what we do,” which may or may not be true, but you probably do not understand them either.
Anna Lecat: Exactly. I love that you recommend that people go and sit at the same table. In the framework that I have developed, the Loving Conflict framework, one of the steps is being on the same team, always remembering that we are on the same team in personal and professional relationships. Because I use a lot of somatic therapy guidelines in my work, I always bring the body in. I think it is important to remember the body. When I talk to someone where there is a potential conflict, or at least where it is difficult to communicate, I sit next to them and not across the table from them.
Michael Hartmann: Interesting.
Anna Lecat: Even when I go out with my husband and I know there is something tough to discuss, when the discussion comes, I will climb into the seat next to him and say, “Okay, we are together. We are a team. And the problem is in front of both of us.”
Michael Hartmann: That is a really interesting frame because I would have naturally assumed that being face to face would be better, because you can see body language. It feels like you might miss some of the body language components. But you are saying next to each other. Is there research that backs that up too?
Anna Lecat: To me, this is intuitive. If we are next to each other, we feel each other. We are closer to each other, so we can feel more. We can also co-regulate each other better. There is research about co-regulation. The closer we are, the higher the chances are that we co-regulate. So if you are nervous and I am calm, or I can calm down because I meditate and I know how to do it, and I sit next to you, you get affected by my state. There is a higher chance that I can calm you down. Yes, I can do it across the table, but I will do it even better if I am next to you. We can still look at each other, so we are not completely missing body language. But there is this idea of: the problem is there. You are not my problem. I am not your problem. We together have a problem that we will now solve. Anything we can do body-wise, or if it is virtual, in conversation, that puts us on the same team is useful. There was a couples therapist we went to with my husband who told us that before every difficult conversation, say, “I love you, and we are going to be okay.” Then go into it. There is a version of that that we can say when we talk to somebody who potentially has a different language, like someone from sales versus marketing ops.
Michael Hartmann: This is really interesting. In a leadership role, I have had to help team members get through conflict, where I might have to broker the conversation and be in the conversation with them. How do you recommend leaders handle that? If they have people on their team who are in conflict, assuming I would always try to push them to resolve it themselves and maybe give them tools, guidance, or suggestions, but if you have to step in, how would you do that? Do you still want them to sit next to each other? Is there a physical orientation that makes sense for that kind of conversation?
Anna Lecat: First, Michael, I would say that in the teams I work with, I facilitate those conversations. I do not ask them to resolve it with each other. I actually disagree with that, even in parenting. In the parenting world, when schools say to kids, “Go resolve it by yourself. Do not come to the adult. Go resolve it between yourselves,” they assume the kids will learn the skills by trying. I do not think they will. I think we need to teach our kids how to resolve it. And if there are two team members who are in conflict, it means they have not been able to resolve it by themselves. That is why they are looking for their manager or for somebody on the team who is more aware, more experienced. So I would facilitate the conversation to make sure that they take turns, that they speak from I-statements, and that they do not put the other person on the defensive. All the nonviolent communication skills should be facilitated. One person speaks, the other only listens, and there is no immediate response. We wait until this person finishes. We focus on the emotions: how it makes me feel, what happened to me, where I might have been triggered, what story I made up based on what happened, and what my request is. I will have them go one by one. Then I will ask, “What exactly is your request?” The more we do this with our team members, the more they learn those skills, and then they can go ahead and do it on their own. If I am facilitating, then I will ask them to sit next to each other in a way that they can see each other and feel each other, but they are not completely against each other. I also love talking without tables. I am always a bother when I come work at organizations because I ask for the tables to be removed, or for a room without tables. We are so protected by tables.
Michael Hartmann: It feels like a wall. That makes sense. You said something that is consistent with the version of this that really changed how I handled things, from a book called Crucial Confrontations, which I have talked about here before. You talked about using I-statements, and I do not want to skip over that because I think it is really important. I was talking to one of my children last night about this because he has a friend who has written a book and asked him for feedback, and my son was concerned about how to communicate lots of issues. I said, “He asked for help. You are helping him. You need to change your mindset a little bit. It does not mean you get to be a jerk about it, and I do not think you will because you are worried about it.” This is one of the things I learned. A lot of times when I would get into conflict, I would say, “That person did this,” or, “They did not do that.” Then I learned that I was making assumptions about their intent. When I realized that I could say the same thing differently, and that the way I said it mattered a lot, it changed things. When you say use I-statements, I know what you mean, but could you describe that for people who are not familiar with it?
Anna Lecat: Absolutely. Let’s go one step before that. Step number one is assuming nothing. Before we start speaking, we need to research. Is my opinion actually about them? Is my judgment actually about them? What judgment do I have about them? What story did I make up about this? What story did I make up about them and how they feel about me? What is my upset? Usually there is going to be upset, otherwise we would not be calling it conflict. What is my part of this? When we look at our part of it, it is actually pretty deep. Not only the surface of what upset me and what my role is in this whole scenario, but even deeper: what do I think about this person, and where does it come from? What am I stereotyping right now about them? What are my biases? When I started investigating my biases, I had to face my biases when I left Ukraine. Going from Ukraine to China was like going to a new planet. If I had come in assuming things about Chinese people that I had been told in Ukraine, that they are poor, they only eat rice, they are uneducated, then I would not be interacting with curiosity. I would be looking at them and only seeing the reality that confirms my biases, or the decision I had already made. So the first step is clear the plate. The next step is how we listen. The listening quality for me is: I listen ready to change my mind. That is the only quality of listening we should have when we listen. If we are not ready to change our mind, we do not have permission to ask questions. If we have already made up our mind and are just preparing our answer in our head while the other person is talking, it is not a conversation. It is like two radios. We are just waiting to say the next thing. It is not a conversation, which means we are not in connection, which means this is not a relationship, which means we cannot actually work together. Because if we do not have a relationship, how do we work together? There is no trust, no collaboration. So first we assume nothing. We clear the plate. It is very hard to do, and with practice, we can do it slightly better. I am not saying it is possible to completely clear it, but at least we can have an open, curious mindset. Then we learn how to listen, which is awkward, because especially in North America, there is a culture of communication where we do not let each other finish our sentences. We start speaking whenever there is a pause. Whenever the person gets stuck and cannot find the last word, we go in and help them because we are already so ready to tell them what we think and why they are wrong that we cannot calm down and let them find that word. It is awkward. I actually did this research on myself. For two years, I did not allow myself to finish other people’s sentences. It was a nightmare, especially in the States, because it meant I spoke much less. In a group setting, other people would come in, and I would miss opportunities to speak. But what I found was very cool. Whenever I did not finish people’s sentences and let them hang in the pause while looking for that word, it was usually the most important word in the sentence because they were actually trying to be precise with me, which is wonderful. We should reward people for that behavior. Whenever I did not finish that last word, they would often say a different word than the one I had in my head. So many times, people went in different directions than I assumed. But if I do not let them say it and I say the word for them, there is this desire to be agreeable. People just nod and say, “Oh yeah, that is kind of what I meant.” Anyway, I just interrupted them, and now it is my turn. So it is that quality of listening. Then, when it is my turn to speak, if I have something particular to say, maybe there is nothing to say and we just hug and say, “I am sorry,” or a virtual hug if that is what is appropriate. But if there is something to say, then it is I-statements. What just happened, this is how it made me feel. This is the story I made up. This is what comes up for me. This is what it reminds me of. Most of the time, we are conflicting about something that happened to us in the past. The way you speak to me, your tone right now, reminded me so much of how my first-grade teacher used to talk to me, and I got transferred back to when I was six years old. I actually stopped listening because I got so triggered. Can we restart? My request to you would be: could we see if your tone of voice could change? I know it is not your fault. I know things happen to me when somebody talks to me this way.
Michael Hartmann: I love that. The point about listening is really important. I have been told that I interrupt, so I have to pay attention to that. But it is interesting because early in my career as a consultant, when we were doing client interviews, we tried to do them in pairs, with two of us. There were two reasons. One, we could alternate who was asking questions and who was taking notes. The other part was that before the next question was asked, after the client answered a question, neither of us would say anything. There was this awkward silence. What we found was that the most valuable stuff came after we let that awkward silence linger. It is similar to what you are talking about. If you do not immediately try to finish a sentence or answer for them, you are going to learn something that you may have assumed was different. It is fascinating what you did for two years. I do not know that I could do it.
Anna Lecat: What is interesting to me is that I learned the capability of sitting in silence with other people in China early on. I was 20 years old when I started my first company. I am a serial entrepreneur. In one of our first meetings, we were visiting a very established factory, me and my business partner. I was this young, easily excitable entrepreneur, and I had a plan. I had a PowerPoint presentation that I was going to present to this team of older men who were running the factory. If they signed up, we would be good to go because we were building a database of sustainable manufacturers in China. My business partner was an older, experienced Chinese entrepreneur. We sat down, they served us tea, and then nobody spoke. I was so ready to present. I had an agenda. I was thinking, “Watch me, I am going to tell them how it is going to be. The vision is clear.” But nobody spoke. I was so unsure because I was so much younger and did not know the rules. I looked at my business partner, and he showed me, no, do not speak. It was so frustrating. I do not know how you feel when you are in a room with people and everybody is just sipping their tea and looking at each other slowly in silence. It felt like it lasted so long. At some point, one of them spoke. Then I got my chance, made my presentation, and we signed the deal. When we came out of the meeting, I could not wait. I was like, “Okay, this was so bizarre. What was that?” I grilled my business partner. He said, “We believe that whoever speaks first is more excited about the project, which means they have less leverage in a negotiation. The longer you can keep silence, the more it shows that you are calm about it and care less. As such, you can negotiate better.” He used to tell me, “We get higher prices from our suppliers because of how excited you are to talk to them.” I was like, “What? Authenticity? I am excited to talk to them.” And I am still excited to talk to them. But now I have practiced Vipassana meditation for many years, and I dance tango. In tango, we really learn how to calm down our nervous system because we are so close with the other person, and we really feel each other. Now I know how to stay calm. If there is silence, I can stay in it without getting freaked out for a long time. It is amazing what happens there because we co-regulate, we see each other, and we recognize we are all human beings. We start listening. We start hearing whatever biases we have, or whether I am actually hungry or tired and not able to hold the thought. I can hear better about myself if I am in silent mode.
Michael Hartmann: It is really interesting because this is all about self-awareness. Most people, if they are like me, might think self-awareness is about your biases or thought patterns, but you are also talking about awareness of your body and what is going on there. It made me think of when I tried yoga for a brief period of time. It was much more difficult than I thought it would be. Two things I remember learning from that were how to steady my breathing, and then, more interestingly, I could be out running and relax my body while I was still putting in effort because I had learned to know what was going on with my body and recognize that I was holding tension. That is kind of what you are describing. In your case, meditation. I have never been able to do that, but I think it is interesting to bring it up as part of this.
Anna Lecat: That is actually what I teach whenever I teach the course on Loving Conflict. We start with the body. We first learn how to do a body scan before we have any discussions about conflict, why, what, or how. The body scan is easy to learn. We practice, and if I work with someone for two days, we do it several times a day. We learn how to scan our body while interacting with other people, not only in meditation at home by ourselves. This is the mindfulness we bring with us wherever we go. I got tested the other day. I arrived from the United States to Paris, and I was at the airport. Paris airport really stresses me out. I was walking and felt all the stress and everything everybody was feeling. I already feel a lot. Someone was rude to me, and I looked at them and felt my body. I scanned my body and felt so much tension in my neck and shoulders. They were looking at me with quite a lot of negative energy. I remembered that if I could soften my neck and relax my neck and shoulders, I could relax my body, and most of the time, they would relax too. So I did, and then they did, and then they apologized. We can all do that. Some people have it intuitively, some people learn it, some people do it through yoga or meditation. It is easier than that. It is just paying attention to our body, being able to scan from the top of our head, top to bottom, front and back. First we do it with eyes closed, then with eyes open. Then we do it as we listen to music, then as we talk to other people, as we walk. We learn to be constantly aware: this is my body. Why would I not constantly feel what is going on with it?
Michael Hartmann: I had not really put this together with the idea of dealing with conflict, but it is so true. Your body is part of body language. This feels like you have talked through a lot of tools that people can use, or maybe they need to learn them, in conflict situations. If they know they have a conflict type of conversation coming up with a peer, a boss, or a subordinate, what are some things they can do before they get into it to prepare for that kind of conversation?
Anna Lecat: We talked about the body, so make sure you arrive calm and present, and that you are able to be fully present. We all feel the quality of presence. When you are with someone who is really listening to you and fully there, it feels so good. We all want to be loved, seen, and witnessed. So simply: no cell phone on the table. Not just turning it face down. No electronics at the table, no computers at the table. Ideally, no table. Everything stays in the back. Here we are, just calm humans. In my book, I write a lot about rituals, like having a cup of tea together, mate, coffee, whatever your cup of tea is, to have a moment together that establishes that we are two human beings who want to have a relationship. Maybe it is a relationship for one project, maybe it is long term, or maybe it is ten minutes for whatever we have to deal with. But it is a relationship where we ritualize connection. We sit next to each other, we drink, we breathe, and we connect. The body is there, and we pay attention. If you already come in with tension, or if you are shaken because you are really triggered, upset, or overwhelmed, they are going to feel it, and they are going to be defensive. The conversation is already not going to flow. It goes back to hungry, lonely, tired, angry. We check those four. And it is okay if that is the case because often we have to start conversations when the timing is not perfect. For me, if that is the case, I will put my cards on the table and say, “I am actually feeling super angry,” or, “I am so hungry right now,” or, “I am tired. I did not sleep last night. Here is my card. Now that we know that, here is my request.” If the situation is not perfect, I am going to disclose to the other person what is happening. “I might not be very coherent. I am really tired. I would love for us to connect and have this conversation. So my request is…” Often, if I am triggered or angry, I like to have a very clear start and finish to the conversation, like a bookend. I might say, “Could we put an alarm for 10 minutes? We will finish this conversation in 10 minutes. I know I need to calm down and be present here for 10 minutes, and then we will finish, do whatever repair needs to happen, and go.” So whatever requests are necessary, I bring them and put them as my cards. That is the preparation. And there is also the preparation of assuming nothing, which we talked about before. We investigate and become researchers of the situation. What is going on for them? I have facilitated many groups in geopolitical conflict situations. I am Ukrainian, Russia is at war with my country, I am Jewish, I have family in Israel, I have business partners and dear friends in the Palestinian community, I have a company in China and customers in the United States, and we are in a trade war. So I have these conflicts daily, and I am in the middle of big conflicts. What I have noticed, and this is something my mentors also taught me, is that when I am with someone in high-stakes conflict, high-intensity conflict, what we need to do is get to our values and our fears. I need to understand what they are afraid of and what they care about deeply. It is not only, when we talk about different departments, that we might have different stakes and different roles. Can we go to a personal level? What does this person really care about? What are their values? Some people care about freedom or self-expression. Some people need a feeling of belonging, and that is their number one value before their role in the organization. What is their why? That is something I need to know about this person before diving deeper. Then I need to know what they are afraid of right now. Because if there is a conflict, it means somebody’s boundaries were crossed, somebody’s expectations were not met, somebody’s requests were not heard, and somebody is feeling unloved, unseen, or unwitnessed. What is going on for them? And then what about me? What am I afraid of? What are my fears right now? What do I care about so deeply that has been stepped on or disregarded? Then we talk on that level, and there we meet as two human beings who care about each other. On top of that, when we have that safety net of friendship, because that is what friendship is about, we can fall on that net. We can jump around in all kinds of conversations and fall back to: this is my why, this is your why, this is what I am afraid of. For example, I cannot stand the feeling of being ignored or unwitnessed. That is my personal fear. So I will put that card on the table. I will say that if we are working together and my emails go unanswered, I quickly get triggered into, “You are ignoring me. I am not important. You do not choose me. I am not being seen.” So as I build a relationship with you, can we agree? Here is my request: do you think your level of communication, how often you check emails, would allow you to answer me every two days? Would that be comfortable for you? And if not, okay, I am going to adjust, but I wanted to be clear that this is what happens to me. I am trying to design my communication style and my relationships to take into consideration my values and my fears, and yours as well.
Michael Hartmann: It made me think of a CMO I worked for. Our leadership team was getting really frustrated because we would all get emails late at night, early in the morning, or on weekends, and everyone felt obliged to respond. We got frustrated enough that we brought it up in a group meeting. It was really eye-opening because he said, “Oh, I do not expect you to reply to all this. It is just convenient for me.” It was this big aha. He listened and said, “Let’s set something we can agree to. If it is something I really need fast, I will let you know. I will text you in addition to email.” It made everything so much easier. Everyone felt calmer, like, “Oh, I do not have to do that.” It was this unspoken assumption about what he thought. When we brought it up, we realized we were all wrong.
Anna Lecat: I love those moments. To me, those moments are like discovering the blind spots of your car. I think one of my fears is having blind spots. I do not want to have them, and I know it is not possible. So I surround myself with people who tell me about my blind spots, and I ask and reward them for that behavior. I want to understand what I am not noticing. When it happens, it is such a relief: “Oh, this is the reality. Now I can adjust based on that reality.”
Michael Hartmann: I think that idea of being open to feedback is really important. I have been in the habit as a leader for a long time of saying to people, “I trust you,” not assuming that they know that. The one I have been using lately, more in my personal life, is, “I am for you.” When it comes to family, if they are dealing with something and I have to give them feedback about what I think they are doing or how they are handling something, I say, “I am for you.” I think it helps set the groundwork. Maybe we can wrap up here a little bit, but one of the things you said when we were talking before was to see the child in people when it comes to conflict. Can you unpack that a little bit? And if that is an important element, how would we do that in a professional environment?
Anna Lecat: Yes, thank you for asking that. That is my favorite part. I first noticed this for myself. When I am speaking to someone with whom I deeply disagree, when we have different values and I am flooded with emotions and cannot find connection, curiosity, or an open mind, or if somebody is really angry or upset, I notice that when I imagine them as a five-year-old, all of a sudden I have more curiosity. On the body level, what happens is I look at them and imagine them at five years old, and there is this “oh” feeling, like, here is a person who is hurting, who feels unseen or unloved or like they do not belong here, or like we did not listen to them fully. Then curiosity and love open up in me. In my workshops, we practice this. I do this with teams. Two people stand in front of each other, and we meditate while looking at each other with open eyes. Then I say, “Now think about them as a five-year-old.” As they do it, I keep prompting them: “What happened to them? Who loved them? How were they loved? Who held them when they fell down? Who acknowledged them? Who reassured them that they were beautiful and that they could do it?” As we do that, it is amazing what happens. It builds such a foundation for harder conversations, conflicts, or collaboration, when we acknowledge each other as, okay, you were also five, and you still have all those stories in you. They are there in every conversation. The harder the conversation, the more five-year-old stories are in that conversation.
Michael Hartmann: Fifteen or twenty years ago, I might have thought that was a bunch of, I do not know, pick the word, BS or goofy stuff. But as I have gotten older, especially having been a parent now, I find that it is actually more true. It is interesting. We have talked about this before. One of our early guests said that to be really good at these operator roles, you need a couple of things, but one of them is that you need to be someone who understands human psychology. That is what you are talking about. This has been so much fun, Anna. Thank you for sharing. I am looking forward to seeing your book out there. If people want to learn more about you or what you are doing, obviously we will share a link to the book, but what is the best way for them to do that?
Anna Lecat: The book will be on all digital platforms, and my website is annalecat.com. I do workshops all over the United States and in different countries. I do workshops in English, Mandarin, Russian, and French. This is my purpose in life. I feel very aligned with it. I noticed that the better we conflict, the better our relationships get. And there is more peace.
Michael Hartmann: I think we need more of that in the world today. It is unfortunately a skill that a lot of people are not taught or do not have good examples for. I am glad to see it personally. Thank you again, Anna. I appreciate it.
Anna Lecat: Thank you.
You can find out more on Anna’s website at annalecat.com.