 And welcome back to the Think Tech Hawaii studio. I'm happy to be back in here. I've been traveling, been working hard for you out there. Anyway, today on this episode of Security Matters Hawaii, we have a very special guest coming to us out of the East Coast time zone from the Center for Aggression Management. We have the founder and CEO, John Burns is with us. John, thank you so much for joining us today. To me, this topic is one that everyone needs to engage with, families, friends, co-workers, fellow students, we've all got to pay attention to that. I think the work that you're doing down here is something not enough people are paying attention to. They're really a little too reactive to this escalation to violence problem that we're seeing in our communities. So thank you so much for joining us. I haven't had you on before, so maybe give us some background on yourself as much as you care to share and the work that you're doing down there with the Center for Aggression Management. Wonderful, thank you very much. It's an honor to be on here, Andrew. I started this journey, if you will, 25 years ago when I was invited to find a solution. I've always thought and I've claimed to be solution man. You give me a problem, I'll come up with a solution. So on the basis of that, a friend of mine who was police chief said, John, I have a problem. My officers are getting into altercations with my citizens. So I've always believed that only when you can measure something can you truly manage it. So I went seeking for measures. I came across a person who I'm sure you've heard of, Lieutenant Colonel Dave Grossman. Lieutenant Colonel Dave Grossman had written a book but he and a guy by the name of Bruce Sittle had done the research. He'd found a connection between aggression, the production of adrenaline, the increase in the heart rate and the resulting body language and behavior that we can both identify, but most importantly, we can measure it. Okay. When I was working with the military, we were using infrared. And if we could get a square inch of skin, we could identify a person's pulse rate and watch it go up and down based on the stimuli. So this was hard science. But the moment we discovered this, which we call primal aggression, we realized that this aggression based upon adrenaline, i.e. the adrenaline rush, represented someone who was losing control. Okay. So what about conscious deliberate aggression? It didn't fit. With this, we developed cognitive aggression. Quite simply, intent driven aggression. And I'm with, in other words, what is your intent with this person or persons? Is it in your interest and theirs there for a win-win is it ought to be? Or is it in your interest and to their detriment? In other words, you're going to victimize this person. You're becoming a victimizer. So there are nine stages of this cognitive aggression, but the first grouping are the victimizers. Okay. And so these are those folks at that lower level that we've probably all met. Perhaps we've in our mind wanted to victimize someone in a certain situation. We're angry at them for some reason or something like that. Okay. And our behavior tends to be more about our personality, Andrew. Okay. Than it is. I mean, we have a destructive personality. We are inconsiderate. We are distrustful. These are things that generate this kind of response. Okay. Then we have the predators. And that's a whole host of people, all obviously intent driven. Yeah. And in a criminal setting, robbery, things that are criminally intent. Okay. At the highest level in the ninth stage, cognitive aggressor, we have the perpetrator of murder, suicide, or terrorist. Sure. A person whose goal it is to give up their life for a cause and their body and behavior reflect that intention. I often tell military and law enforcement that you do not want to approach a ninth stage cognitive aggressor in uniform. Sure. They may set them off. That's the final stage, perhaps. That's right. Yeah. Because there's a high probability they will instantly start shooting. Okay. Or if they have explosives, push that button. Hmm. I see. Yes. The eighth stage. Now, we might want to bring up that image that I shared with you. Yeah, let's go ahead and show that to the audience real quick so you can kind of see. So we've got primal aggression on one side, still a nine step escalation process. And on the other side right now, we're kind of talking about cognitive aggression with this nine step process. Exactly. So the ninth stage is the perpetrator of murder source like Sung Hee Cho that we see at the top, the horrific shooter at Virginia Tech. Yeah. Or Masawi, the 20th hijacker. The interesting thing here was that the ninth stage, as I said, the behavior reflects is reflected in their intention. The eighth stage is to murder or combatant who is prepared to give up their life for a cause but intend to survive in the case of the combatant to kill more of you tomorrow. Right. Keep killing, sure. And that difference in their behavior, Andrew, is descriptive, is reflective in their behavior. They will avoid security as an example. The seventh level, what I like to call a complicit tactician, completely complicit with the eighth and ninth level, they want certain people to die but they're not gonna kill them nor are they actually gonna put themselves that much at risk because frankly, they'll inspire other people to do so like the Lado Sabham bin Laden or a terrorist handler or someone helping with logistics, someone like an accomplice. Do we know much about, John, I'm sorry, do we know much about that leadership role that they play? Because obviously there's malice there, they're helping others hurt, helping someone hurt others. And is there much known about do they get something from it or is it almost just purely ideological or there's gotta be, it seems to me there's gotta be a little something behind that. You know, I'm the helper of the mad man, you know? Well, they're the helper but often they are the mastermind behind the event. So they are a lot more than just getting off on their basis but they don't wanna get their own hands dirty, so to speak. Is there a sense of superiority there? They think that they're better as the mastermind than the dirty hands or do we know much about their mental state? I don't know about the mental state in that sense. I haven't done the research myself but what I can tell you is that these are people who are fully committed. Now, one of the things that we did 25 years ago, one of the things we discovered was that this was simply aggressive behavior. Now, anytime we talk about aggressive behavior, Andrew, we need to make a distinction between assertive behavior and aggressive behavior. Okay, for sure. Assertive behavior says I'm gonna win because I'm gonna be the best that I can be. Whereas aggressive behavior says I'm gonna win because I'm gonna take you out. Ah, very, very different, yes. Yes, it is. Aggressive behavior is always destructive and negative. If something is constructive and positive, it is assertive behavior. Gotcha. Great distinction. Now, that distinction is important, especially for our coaches in virtually, I mean, I hear people costly, telling people to go out and be aggressive and then when someone becomes overtly aggressive, they wonder where that came from. Yeah, I saw Serena Williams got fined for hitting her tennis racket on the court at Wimbledon, $10,000. So, aggression or assertive, you know, I don't know, there's an interesting line there sometimes. Well, the difference, the line difference is intent. Yeah, oh, of course. And that is the key that we've learned. And as we use aggressive behavior and we judge on honest merits, we do not use mental health because frankly, mental health has been notoriously inaccurate. Sung Hee Cho at Virginia Tech, the horrific shooting there, was mental health assessed on three different occasions. And in each and every occasion, he was deemed to be depressed and stressed, but not at risk of hurting himself or others. And those are all, I believe, proximal to the event, like within the year prior to the event, to him going to town. Yes, he was very near the event. And Nicholas Cruz, a horrific shooting in here in Florida in Parkland, was mental health assessed by the Florida Department of Family and Children and was deemed not to be at risk of hurting himself or others. So mental health professionals play a very important role in helping us to fuse and helping people become whole. But as far as assessing future risk of violence, they have been notoriously inaccurate, we don't use them. Therefore, we do not violate HIPAA regulations. Ah, yeah, very good. That's pretty critical. Secondly, we don't use culture, gender, education, age, sexual orientation. Because of it, we do not violate FERPA in our schools or the Civil Rights Act of 1964. So we are able to record and track aggressive behavior with a certain impunity. And that's an important aspect of identifying who our aggressors are and how to track and identify them and diffuse them before they become violent. Yeah, it seems that that role of that mental health professional should be, once the assessment leads us to the point that this person is on a path, now this mental health expert can work on the issue that's driving them up that path. Absolutely. Yeah, that's their role. I mean, you know, it seems to be. And they do that beautifully. The problem is they are not good predictors and that's the bottom line. And they're caught up with so many other things, the HIPAA regulations and others that really make it very difficult for them to be as candid as maybe they would like to be. Yeah, and similar problems for HR professionals, right? In a workforce, similar sort of difficulties, I think. So one of those things that we discovered was as we look at someone at this nine-stage cognitive aggressor, again, realize we don't care what culture, gender, education, age, sexual orientation. When any human being rises to the intention where they're prepared to give up their life for a cause, their body responds to that intention and is based not on motives and other things we get caught up in, but simply on intention, that when any human being rises to the intention, their body responds to that intention by losing animation. In essence, the body says, I'm dead and the body takes on that look. What the military referred to as the thousand-yard stare, what others call dead eyes, but it's more than that, Andrew. Their whole body language and behavior loses animation. The Israelis call it the walking dead. And if you see any video, any stills of individuals in that stage of their attack or pre-attack, they will have that body language and behavior and they cannot avoid it. It is their own body reflecting their intention. Ouch. So I'll tell you what we're gonna do. We're at a good spot for a break. We're talking about recognizing what intention does to a person and how it changes them and how you can recognize that. We're talking with John Burns from the Center for Aggression Management and we'll be back in one minute. Aloha, I'm Keisha King, host of At the Crossroads where we have conversations that are real and relevant. We have spoken with community leaders from right here locally in Hawaii and all around the world. Won't you join us on thinktechhawaii.com or on YouTube on the Think Tech Hawaii channel. Our conversations are real, relevant, and lots of fun. I'll see you at the Crossroads. Aloha. A-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha. A-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha. Aloha, my name is Mark Shklav. I am the host of Think Tech Hawaii's Law Across the Sea program. My program airs every other Monday at one o'clock on Think Tech Hawaii. Most of my programs deal with my own life and law experience. Recently, I interviewed Alex Jampel, who I have known for over 30 years about his voyage across the sea as a lawyer from Tokyo to Hawaii. Those are the type of stories that I like to bring and like to talk about. Human stories about law and life. Aloha. Hey, welcome back. We're talking with John Burns from the Center for Aggression Management. And today, we're learning about what that behavior looks like in a person once they've made that decision to become cognitively violent. And there's a difference there. You know, the primal violent guy, you see it in his face, he's going nuts, he's coming at you to punch you. But John's got a really good take on what this cognitive behavior looks like. John, thanks for joining us and welcome back. It's my pleasure. Let's pick up where we left off. What might be a good idea is to step lower in our continuum now if you'll bring that image once again. And let's go down to the fourth stage of cognitive aggression. This is where bullying, abuse, harassment, discrimination, conflict itself all began. Now the key to understand this is that there's stages three, two and one. You see, bullying represents someone exhibiting bullying behavior. You are reacting to bullying, you're not preventing it. The same thing goes for abuse, discrimination, harassment, and of course, conflict. So would you like to prevent these for the first time? Understand what stages three, two and one look like. You're seeing the precursors. It actually gives you the ability to get out in front and reliably prevent bullying from occurring. Yeah, so necessary. And I think so much of the world is built to respond. You know, we're, I don't know if that's a part of our, you know, our language is subject verb object, right? So the way, I don't know if that's just the way our thought process are, but we seem so reactive as a culture versus proactive in, you know, really this is just finding someone who's in distress and getting them the support and assistance that they need and then making sure that that's working for them early on. Yes, yes, you're absolutely right. As an example, at the fourth stage of aggressive behavior we have what we call planting the seed of distrust. Now, how will we use this? If I may use you as an example, Andrew. Sure. At the fourth stage, it's directed toward an individual or individuals and it's covert because it is far too daunting to go face to face with someone at the fourth stage. At the fifth stage, we come out from behind the curtain and we become more overt, but at the fourth stage we plant the seed of distrust. So what does that look like? I would come to your, because I don't wanna come to you directly, it's too daunting. I'll come to you what I call your community. Those people who you like, respect and even love and who you want to like and respect and love you back. And I come to those people and I say, you know, I just don't know about Andrew anymore. And they say, what do you mean? We like Andrew. And I say, yeah, but I don't know if I can trust him anymore. What have I just done? Yeah, planted that seed. Plant the seed of distrust, which is gonna grow like wildfire. Now, this is common practice in every organization and every institution across our land. But it is outright overt aggression at the fourth level. And if we only understood what the third, second and first stages are, then we could actually get out in front and prevent this from occurring. And in the time we have left, let's drop down even lower on this continuum and talk about trust. Hey, Rob. Can we see the element? There we go. There's one element that all relationships require, whether it's a personal academic business, regardless, there's one element if it's gonna be genuine and true, it requires that element of trust. Aggression in the lower levels undermine trust. Trust is integral to things that we think in terms of a human resource aspect of teamwork, leadership, loyalty, all require trust. So if we can identify these elements in stages one, two and three, we could actually get out in front of and avoid losing trust. Also, we come to a critical area today that we're all trying to get our arms around, which is cybersecurity. How do we prevent, how do we prevent an Edward Snowden or a Bradley Manning from occurring in our area? Well, we know on the higher side of this continuum, we know that it is not instinctual for one human to attack another. You have to disconnect, depersonalize, turn this person into an object in order to attack them. So we can start to see those disconnections at the very outset of aggressive behavior. When we see things like hardening their point of view, what does that mean? That means you're disconnecting from the assertive, mutual, cooperative relationship to disconnecting with someone and then getting harding on my own point of view, not on the collective idea of everyone else. Now, Andrew, that's very subtle stuff. However, if you can be cognizant of it and engage, then we've developed what we call the judicious interview, which uses scientific cause and a frank principles so that we ask specific questions, our take specific action that produces a predictable result in the minds and bodies of the people that we're dealing with if someone's intention is to harm. So we can do something as simple as say to that person and we see them disconnecting and we can say something as simple as help me understand the intent behind what you just said. You see, I'm asking that question in a non-threatening way. In fact, help me help you kind of way. And at the same time, I'm addressing it, I love the word intent because it tends to take someone right to the core of their motivation. So by asking that question in that way, it enables you often, more likely high probability that you'll get the intent behind it, get an understanding of why they're moving so we can find people that yesterday were worthy of our trust that moved to disgruntled and now are moving to treachery in the word of cybersecurity, which is essential to us. Sure, and even in the physical space, I mean, we spend a lot of time, Stephen Covey's been in the studio actually, speed of trust, the 13 elements we worked on those. Now we're using Brené Brown. These difficult workspace conversations that aren't, if people shut down, as you talked about, right, they go in my idea is the best idea instead of a collaborative idea to work out what's best for all, a customer typically, but for the rest of the organization as well. That's just problematic in everyone and it's easy to see in a workspace. I think it's easy to see across the dinner table with family. You've got to find, if you communicate frequently, it ought to pop right up. You know, and maybe it's situational or sometimes it's certain topics people have triggers on. You know, these things vary a little bit, but you know when someone's not being honest and you know or when they're maybe not sharing the truth 100% and then that trust starts to erode. Precisely, this is human-based. So it applies to all humans, whether they're sitting across the dining room table from us or they're in our classrooms together or they're a co-worker, all of these elements can be used and applied in all settings. You see all of this malicious behavior, whether we call it bullying, harassment, abuse, cybersecurity or violence itself are simply aggressive behavior. And when people realize that aggressive behavior comes with precursors, which enable you to get out in front and prevent it in a reliable way, that is the essential thing to understand. Yeah, let's talk a little bit about that because you've got some great training programs there, you know, from the observers to the managers. Talk a little bit about the program that you've built there and how people can get engaged with that. Absolutely, thank you. We have, first of all, we've come to realize that having people all come to Orlando, Florida, and now, although people love to come to Orlando, Florida, send their families to Disney and then take a class with me, frankly, we've gone to webinar-based training because, well, I just had a few months ago, someone in Nigeria take my course. Awesome. So we have on our system, four-day train-the-trainer's kind of programs that you can, we called our ambassador's workshop and you can take that or we have a two-day program where you can become a certified aggression manager or we have a one-day introduction into aggression management. So we have all these variations in webinar-based. You can be anywhere in the world, be sitting in front of your laptop, you have a camera, I have one like we are doing and we can communicate, create a virtual classroom or I'm hired to come out to your organization and conduct training and incidentally, I would love to come now to Hawaii and conduct that training and play a little golf while I'm out there as well. Sure, sure. We've got about three minutes left. So let's get in a little bit to the response that you get. So someone goes to the class and like is everyone a good observer, for example? Is everyone a good manager? Because you've got some software you've built to help them gauge this sort of the path a person's on or where they're at and then how they're improving or maybe escalating or whatever. Yes, absolutely. We've built a mobile app where I should go through a vision right now to make it even better. So our system is called the Critical Aggression Prevention System. There are three components to it. Two are training, one is software. If you're in a corporate setting or a school setting and you'd like the system, we have one that we call Aggression First Observers who are all the people on the front lines, they're taught objective measurable observables. We don't want to go down that rat hole if he said she says. So these are objective measurable observables. They call it into a small core group of certified aggression managers who are taught to engage and diffuse. And then they use their software to identify what level of aggression this person is, thereby the presumption of threat, low, moderate and high. And that's essential because it gives us a sense of urgency to get involved and get involved now. And then it offers corresponding skill sets. So you're never using a sledgehammer when a tapping hammer will do. And therefore you're becoming effective. It scientifically validates the process in real time using face validity. It's an excellent tool. This is awesome. And we need more of this. And it also, it stops that silo problem of different types of measurements, right? So you get everybody in an organization on a standard measurement. I really encourage, if you're watching today and your organization has not been able to deal successfully with workplace violence or you have no program, reach out to caps, aggressionmanagement.com, get ahold of John. Look at the videos on the website themselves, first of all, just to get yourself acquainted with what he's doing. I think it is a game changer for stopping this cognitive problem that we all run into. And really for helping out each other, which is what it's all about. John, thank you very, very much for joining us today. I really appreciate your time. And I'll probably get you back in here, maybe in Q1 or two, to look at the update and the software. Sounds wonderful. Thank you so much. Great, thanks everybody. Aloha. Thank you.