 Hello, welcome to Out of the Comfort Zone. I'm your host, Arby Kelly, and you're watching OC16 Television with Think Tech Hawaii. Now we have a really cool guest today, but first I wanted to give you our book of the week. Now this is actually, I'm really excited about this book because it was written by the person who trained me in body language, and the very first line, I love it. She talks about how she's a recovering, awkward person. So if you're an awkward person or you have awkward friends and you would like to help them not be awkward, I would recommend this book. It's called Captivate by Vanessa Van Edwards. You can totally recognize the title, you can find it online, anywhere. If you have any problems with people, which let's face it, all of us have problems with people. This is a book to help you get through the first five seconds, five minutes, five hours, five days of any relationship to help you build stronger friendships, stronger relationships, and for those people who you just can't get rid of, here, have some tactful, easy ways to start weeding through your friendships so you're only surrounded by people you love and feel confident with. This is a really awesome book. I've read it like four times, loaned it to all my friends, so if you have any problems with people, this is a book I would absolutely recommend. Captivate by Vanessa Van Edwards. And now for the body language tip of the week. Now this isn't so much of a thing to do with your body as it is a thing to do mentally. Now when you first meet someone, you make a first impression about them and it usually takes you only one to two seconds to decide what kind of person they are. And you do this by summing up their outer appearance or their nonverbal communication. You look at their clothes, you look at their hands, you look at even what they're doing with their nails, you look at their hairstyle, color of their clothes, makeup or no makeup, jewelry, tattoos, glasses or no glasses. And then you look at their body language. And if they're talking, you listen to their voice tone. Are they over in the corner saying, hi, how are you? It's nice to meet you. Or do they have a low, deep, confident voice? And you sum up all of this information within just a couple of seconds and your brain compiles all of this information to give you a really good idea about who this person is, what kind of person they are, if they're good for you or bad for you. And these first impressions tend to be about 76% accurate. All right, so these first impressions, they're really accurate and they're really quick. But what a lot of people like you and I do, we meet someone, something about them seems off. And we say to ourselves, I don't really like this person. And then we say, I'm a horrible person for feeling that way. I should give this person a second chance. I should be kinder to them. And so we ignore our first impression and we give them a chance or we get to know them better or we spend time and energy on them. And then it turns out later that hey, they actually were exactly as bad as our first impression thought they were. So for you and your first impressions, just to make your 2018 easier, pay attention to your first impression and listen to what it tells you. Because I will tell you, it will save you so much time and energy, so much heartache. When someone shows you who they are, believe them. Don't make them tell you again. All right, that is your tip. Listen to those first impressions. And now, let's go on to our guest. Now, I've never met our guest before, so I'm really excited that she's on our show today. This is Lynn Hurdle Price, and I'll wait for the camera to zoom in. All right, you're over here. Hi, Lynn. So. Hi, RV, how are you? I'm really happy to have you on the show. But first, can we start out? What exactly is it that you do? I am. Well, in many circles, I am known as the Conflict Closer. I teach people how to close the door on conflict. But not in the way that people think. People think I teach you how to end it. Actually, what I teach you how to do is to close the door on the techniques that you are using that just are not working. The things that we're doing that are making conflicts last longer in life. So I am CEO of HerCom Solutions. I am a communication and conflict resolution coach for high achieving leaders. And I really have to say that I love, love, love working with people around conflict because most people hate conflict. Oh. Seems like you're exactly right. I know personally when I'm getting gearing up for a conflict, like, it's so nerve wracking. So this must be something not a lot of other people do. You must be very unique in the circles you move in. You know what's interesting? I had no idea that I was very unique because I know everybody has conflict. But I also do know that a lot of people, really a lot of people are fearful of it. Most people, more than 70% of us are avoiders of conflict and not in the good way that we think where, well, you know, I'm so good that I never get into conflict. No, I just don't have anything to do with it. I run from it when I see it. That's the avoiders I'm talking about. So when they learn not only what I do, but how I do it, I am unique in the circles that I walk in, I think. You know, Lynn, as you were saying that 71% of people avoid conflict, I was like, yep, you're talking to me. So me. So can you tell us a little bit more about how you got into conflict coaching? How I do my coaching. So what I usually do, first of all, is find out people's history with conflict, which I think is an approach that a lot of people are not ready for. They're thinking that I'm going to teach them how to deal with that person that gets on their last nerve and how I teach how they get that person to just leave them alone or to just shut up or to admit that they're right. But what I really wanted to do is look at your history with conflict. Where did you learn it? I mean, most of us learned how you handle, think about, view, deal with, feel about conflict early in life. And I want to know what were the messages that you received? How did the people in your life, the people that raised you, the people that surrounded you, how did they do conflict? And then I want you to think about what effect that had on you. What did you learn from the way that they did conflict? And what of that remains in the way that you do conflict now? So that's the first place that we explore. And then I want to look at what are the feelings that come up for people when conflict happens? And how do you deal with those feelings? And I want people to understand that those feelings often cause us to react rather than to respond in conflict. So once we start looking at reactions that we have, we want to begin to start looking at then how do we start to work with the emotion so we're not reacting and how do we then learn some techniques that will help us to respond? So once we're not reacting so much, how do we respond? Now, I can tell you from my own experience, that reaction, someone can say something that just sets you off and you feel like you're totally justified. Like they provoked you and you don't even realize that you've been set off and that you're suddenly in a conflict. So it sounds like the very first step is building that self-awareness of what actually is going on in your head and in your heart. That's absolutely right. And what you're describing is a trigger. We all have triggers and we get triggered and what's the interesting thing is that if we really start to develop that awareness and pay attention, we know exactly when we're getting triggered. We know what those triggers are. We know who pulls the trigger more often than not. We know all of those things. But yet, when we're in conflict, we actually don't pay attention to those things. So my first work is for us to start to pay attention to it so that we can prepare ourselves to put some things in place so that we handle it differently. That's really interesting. From a body language perspective, that's the first step we take also is building awareness of what your current is. And I know from a body language perspective in my conflicts, I can feel it now. When you go from being totally relaxed, having a great conversation, then that trigger happens and you go from being calm and carefree to like, and you can actually feel the changes in your body. Absolutely. Oh, no. It's very chemical. It's very much about your physiology and those reactions because I talk about something when my clients are called anger mountain. And with anger mountain, right? It's not a Disney ride, by the way. It is, though, a ride that our body takes when we are triggered. And there's a very small window before we start to rise, and that heat starts to hit us in the back of our heads and our necks. There's a small window that if we are using our techniques of awareness that we can actually see that we're about to go up anger mountain and we can actually put some things in place so that we don't go up anger mountain because when we go up there, we explode. And then when we come down, we often come down to regret and fatigue. Like we're exhausted and then we're like, oh my God, what did I say? What did I do? And that's not how we really wanted to handle it. I love that. So anger mountain, and if you have a couple seconds before you start on the ride where you can recognize and be like, hey, this is not the Disney ride I want to be on. I'm going to hop off and do something else instead. Right. That's right. I got to get off of this. One of the things that I really want to clear up because there's a lot of misconceptions about conflict and conflict resolution skills. One of the things I want to clear up is that I never take away your right to choose. You always have choice, but don't you want to have more choices? You really want to be able to have more in your toolkit than a hammer because I believe in that expression. I don't know who said it or I give you credit for it. But when all you have in your toolkit is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. So you just go around just hammering everybody because you don't have anything else to work with. So when you have conflict resolution skills and techniques in your toolbox, you still have the choice. If you decide you want to explode, you still have that choice. But it's great to have some other things to choose from instead of the explosion. That makes sense. That makes a lot of sense. So it's not like we're saying you can't get angry ever. We're saying that we want you to have a choice other than angry. So you have at least one other default setting instead of just... I want you to have a lot of other choices. Yeah, a lot more choices. Absolutely. Can you tell us a little about some of the other choices you want people to make when they realize they're about to head up Inger Mountain? What are some other choices they can make? Are there any other directions they can head? Yeah. Well, number one, every time I teach this, I think more and more people are becoming aware that it's not as corny as it sounds. But number one, don't get in touch with your breath. You have got to zero in through your breathing and your body and what it's telling you. Because we all have signals for when we are being triggered and we're about to lose it. You got to tune into that. So tune in. And then the next thing that you want to do is to bring yourself to a calmer place. You may not get to calm like I'm strolling through the field. Today calm. But you can get to a calmer place of where you can begin to think about what do I want to do next rather than just exploding. What do I want to do next? And one of the things that I recommend that you do next actually is a thing that we never really want to do when we're ready to explode. And that is to listen, to lean in and listen more. To decide that you're going to say anything but you're going to listen and if they're not talking because you were just getting ready to explode and they saw that look on your face and they shut up and ask them to say more about whatever it was that triggered you. Like what, tell me more about what's bothering you or tell me more about what I did that you didn't like and that's hard place to go but it gives you time to bring it down and it also gives you time to clarify whether or not you really needed to be triggered or not. Maybe you misunderstood. Maybe you got triggered and you got ready to interrupt before they could even finish what they were saying which is really common because most of us only listen to the place and the point where we want to interrupt. I'm not saying this. I am visualizing all the fights I've ever had with my husband and I'm like yep, that's about how it goes. He said something and I was like no and before he was even able to finish I'm off on a roller coaster. Oh gosh. Yes, it's absolutely true. I have a 16 year old and he is his first thing he looks at me and he goes let me finish, I'm going to let me say everything that and it's a great reminder for me. I love that. That is a great reminder. So your first tip viewers is to don't get super angry, just pause, breathe and then actually listen to what they're really saying and there's going to be more. We're going to take a really short break but we'll be right back here on OC16 Television with Think Tech Hawaii on Out of the Comfort Zone. To the likeable science on Think Tech Hawaii. Every Friday afternoon at 2pm dig into the science, dig into the meat of science dig into the joy and delight of science we'll discover why science is indeed fun why science is interesting why people should care about science and care about the research that's being done out there it's all great, it's all entertaining it's all educational so I hope to join me for likeable science. Alright welcome back we're out of the comfort zone on Think Tech Hawaii and I'm with special guest conflict resolution expert Lynn Hurdle Price. Now Lynn I have to say sometimes we're in a conflict and it feels like I'm not the problem here what if I think it's the other person who's causing all this conflict what can I do? Okay well first of all check out whether or not it really is the other person right we're talking about triggers and so one of the things that you can think about is as I'm getting triggered so I'm getting ready to say this thing do I really need to say this thing like why do I need to say this thing and if you decide that you need to say it because they really are wrong and they really do have a hard time admitting it or they really are causing the conflict then fine then say it but say what it really is a lot of us put judgments in our statements we beat or we beat around the bush or we blame people in ways that shame them as opposed to hold them accountable or something that we want to hold them accountable for so one of the things that I think is really important is that we really think about the statement we're getting ready to make because I can say you know alright I heard what you said and I just have to say that that's just stupid and I'm really annoyed and tired of you I have to say that because I'm done right okay that may be where you're at but what's your goal in that is your goal to destroy the person or is your goal to try to get this conflict resolved so if your goal is to try to get the conflict resolved and honest to gosh I really want you to answer that question for yourself in that moment are you really trying to just destroy the person and beat them down or do you want this resolved and if you want to resolve then I think you won't say it that way you could say wow I'm so angry right now that it's hard for me to formulate what I want to say but I'm going to give it my best shot and my best shot is when you did whatever that was right here's how it affected me or the company or our family or whatever it is and that's why I need to bring it to the table I want us to be able to look at what happens very different than calling you stupid what you did stupid and being sick of you even though in the moment we can feel very like we're really sick of this person name the other emotion and anger is easy to reach for but underneath anger are much true emotions I believe so maybe you're humiliated maybe you're ashamed maybe you've left you feeling vulnerable maybe embarrassed those are much closer to the source of what's happening inside of you than anger anger is like the shield you use to keep that soft heart of you safe beautifully said I love what you do and I'm really impressed by everything you're telling me but I'm also really curious how did you get into conflict resolution as a job purely purely no okay no that's not true I used to say by accident but I'm gonna have to tell you it was truly by purpose when I was 17 I was involved in a racial incident where I could have been either very seriously injured or killed I don't know I was able to get out safely I can tell you that in getting out safely the first thing that I thought about was I I don't know how but somehow I have to help people get through these kinds of conflicts with one another my new I was on my way to Syracuse University as a theater major and that's all I did my whole life was entertain I was in the arts I sang I danced I wrote everything I was not thinking about helping the world through conflicts so this to me was like wow that's a purpose hitting you and telling you that this is what you're supposed to do so I went to Syracuse the theater for a couple of years and changed to a new major and nonviolent conflict can change and 38 years later I am still in the role of traveling the world helping people with conflicts I've done everything from implementing schools programs in conflict resolution to working in corporations and nonprofits helping them to learn the skills and also to implement programs in their workplace and it's been phenomenal and then I've used the skills in my own life so it sounds like you can use these skills at work at home what are the best places to use these conflict resolution strategies anywhere conflict comes up to be perfectly honest anywhere comes up because here's the thing that's why I start with yourself that's why when I work with my clients I start with them because everywhere you go there you are so if you can work at getting in touch with yourself in conflict and how you handle conflict and why what are the roots of the triggers and the feelings that come up for you in conflict and then work on the techniques then you always have the best tools if I teach you well when you're at work and you have a boss that does x y and z you should do this that's just one side of things and that leaves you without you knowing why when your boss says x y and z this even bothers you it could you could possibly get to the place and many of my clients to where you recognize this isn't something that should be bothering me and so I need to look at taking that trigger off the table and I've helped many people take their triggers off the table because they realize that these were things that really are things that should bother them interesting can you tell us a story about that? yes I can I have a client from way back so fortunately the chances of them recognizing themselves although there's a lot of common conflicts but I have a client who actually was having some problems in their office and one of the things that was happening was that their supervisor was constantly yelling and whenever there was a problem how the supervisor dealt with it was to yell and for my client that was particularly problematic because it was something that they actually grew up with now I know that because of the work that we did together and they know that because of the work we did together but they never tied that together before we did the work what they knew was that they hated the yelling and that it sent them underground they wanted to avoid what they didn't recognize was why the yelling was so offensive to them once they were able to look at the roots of it then what they began to do was to start to take fear off the table for them from them this isn't the person in your household or in your school that's yelling at you this isn't that you are the kind of person that people need to yell at this is a supervisor who is using this as a technique right and it doesn't sit well with you so once they were able to separate that out and not make it personal it's not personal it's not me it's the technique that they're choosing then they were able to put themselves in a situation where they were able to use some techniques to have a conversation and to say when you yell I find that I'm not able to actually help you because honestly I don't hear you I'm not really clear on what you're saying because you're yelling right and so what I'd love for us to do I'd love to know what it is that you're upset about but I'd love for us to do it differently did the boss change overnight? No but there was a change because the client my client wasn't avoiding anymore and was actually going straight for the conversation and the supervisor actually appreciated it because everybody else was running away and here she was coming to the table but coming to the table in a way where she could use some techniques because it was no longer this personal thing I'm being yelled at I'm always being yelled at it's me it's me it's me right that was the trigger for her and she was able to take that off the table for herself and engage and that's what you want to do you want to engage in conflict because it's not going away people I love that I love that story and you're so right it doesn't go away and if we don't find a way to handle it and get to the root of the issue and actually deal with it it's just going to keep coming back no matter how fast or how far we run away from it that's right and I truly also believe that if it's not coming back with that initial person you're going to continue to run into that same kind of conflict with other people because you haven't been engaging in handling it and learning how to be in it so you've got to learn how to be in it so that you're not having those same issues that makes sense so if you don't learn how to handle it the same things are going to keep triggering you so you can run from conflict but it will chase you so you have to deal with it while you can yes indeed do you have any last minute advice on how they can handle or start addressing their conflict yeah well here's my thing most of the time I live in New York City so it's a blessing and a curse but the blessing for me is that I get to travel a lot on the subway so I get to hear and listen in on people's conflicts all the time and what I've found is that people cut each other off it and they don't want to address what really is happening in terms of what the conflict is people never allow people to really get to the place of what the conflict is about because honestly the first thing that often comes out in conflict are the emotions it may be hard to sit through and listen to somebody who's emoting but if you listen more ask more questions don't interrupt and try to direct them to get to what this conflict is really about and when it's your turn to respond you'll be talking about the actual conflict not about all of the different diversions that come up when we interrupt someone so I'm reacting to something you said you've never really gotten a chance to tell me what's really the conflict here because now we're talking about the thing that you said instead of the conflict interesting so for our viewers if you are wanting to have a happier more peaceful 2018 if you want to stop running away from your conflict sit down and face it and listen to what people are saying don't interrupt just sit and listen and find out where people are really coming from alright thank you Lynn we are so happy I am so happy you agreed to be on this show thank you for coming this has been an awesome way to start out 2018 I love it thank you alright and for our viewers I want you to know that you can use these skills to make your 2018 the best year ever you can be happier you can have better relationships you can make more at work and I want that for you so listen to the skills you're learning practice them and use them and after all of that have a wonderful day I will message you later thank you for being my guest you are awesome