How to Make Uncomfortable Situations Comfortable

Hi Welcome to MediatorPodcast.com - A podcast and video series about mediation, negotiation, and collaboration.  My name is Melissa Gragg, a divorce valuation and mediation expert in St. Louis Missouri.  

During this episode we will discuss How To Make Uncomfortable Situations Comfortable with Mike Gregory. Mike is a mediator in Minneapolis Minnesota, author of 13 books regarding various topics and creator of the collaboration effect ®. He is a frequent speaker and uses mediation techniques to deescalate situations. 

Welcome Mike!!

1. When did you first learn about collaboration?
2. What is collaboration versus communication?
3. What is The Collaboration Effect?
4.  What happens in our brains when we are angry and how can we stop from getting angry?
5. How can you de-escalate and help others de-escalate?
6. How does your attitude impact the process?
7. Do you address beliefs or values?
8. What type of communication works best and why to make situations more comfortable?
9. How can you build trust?
10. How can you be an active listener?
11. Why do you say "lead with compassion and listen with empathy?"
12. Do you want to share any bonus items with our audience? (The Asking Formula by John Baker and the course on Happiness from Yale University free online.)

Melissa Gragg
CVA, MAFF, CDFA
Expert testimony for financial and valuation issues
Bridge Valuation Partners, LLC
melissa@bridgevaluation.com
http://www.BridgeValuation.com
http://www.ValuationPodcast.com
http://www.MediatorPodcast.com
https://www.valuationmediation.com
Cell: (314) 541-8163 

Michael Gregory
NSA, MBA, ASA, CVA
Michael Gregory Consulting, LLC
Founder/Owner
Conflict Resolution Specialist | Speaker| Author
651.633.5311
mikegreg.com

Transcript

Melissa Gragg: 0:00

Hi, welcome to mediator podcast.com, a podcast and video series about mediation, negotiation and collaboration. My name is Melissa Gragg, and I'm a divorce valuation and mediation expert in St. Louis Missouri. During this episode, we will discuss how to make uncomfortable situations comfortable with Mike Gregory. Mike is a mediator in Minneapolis, Minnesota, author of 13 books regarding various topics about valuation collaboration and the creator of the collaboration effect. He is a frequent speaker and uses mediation techniques to deescalate situations. Welcome Mike, how are you?

Mike Gregory: 0:40

Great. Thank you very much for having me here today, Melissa. My pleasure. It's a pleasure and a privilege to see you and beyond with you again.

Melissa Gragg: 0:46

Uh, this is, this is so awesome. You're always a wealth of knowledge and really your background as a former IRS agent as a valuation expert, as a negotiator, as a mediator. Um, and you frequently do speaking engagements. Um, how, you know, like when you first got into this, how did you start to learn about collaboration? Or why was it like a passion of yours?

Mike Gregory: 1:14

Well, Sharon, a little Hebrew here too, but I first learned about collaboration shortly after I was born when my twin brother mark and the world, and I joined my other sources and I, I have a picture when I was about two years old. We're in a boat, Mike and Margaret and robo. So Mike's on one side, Mark's on the other side and the boats pointed out into the lake. And although it's just a picture in his pose for two years old, what are we doing? We're rowing the boat to go forward in a direction that we both have to work together. And my mom and dad taught us very early. If there's a problem here, I can fix it. So let's say we're fighting about a mall. No problem. Either you two can find a way to make it work or I can make the ball disappear. So Mike and mark said, Hey, we can do better than this. We can figure out a way to make this work. So I start off from a very early age, but professionally I was doing elements on mediation and collaboration before I really knew what those terms meant. And I took a course in a mediation at a local I'm in Minneapolis, St. Paul and a local law school Hamlin university house Mitchell hammer. And it was a one-week course. And I came back and my boss, I was the assistant director in about 1200 employees. The director said to chiefs, uh, to direct to, uh, folks who are fighting about budget. And he said, I don't think it's going to work at all, but go in and mediate that. So I wouldn't immediate it and it worked and he couldn't believe that it worked. And after it worked, he had me do other things. And then I was sent off to another district for four and a half months. And when I got there, they had 300 unfair labor practices, EEOC, equal employment opportunities, EEO complaints, and grievances. Well, I came from Minnesota, we had 30, they were the same size. They had 300. So after I was there for a week, I said to the director, I was the assistant director. I'm actually going to volunteer to try and address this. Do, would you like me to do so I got behind the scenes and I had to get the buy-in from executive management, senior management, frontline managers, the union equal employment opportunity, labor relations, uh, EEO, and everybody concurred with, okay, we're willing to give it a shot. And then I did one, I did a mediation and then I taught mediation. And then I set up a system. Well, four and a half months later, we went from 300 to 30, resolve 90% of them in four and a half months. Well, when I'd gone off on details like this in the past, when you're done, you're detailed, they have a coffee for you. It's P they have, they have cookies there and some coffee. And typically it lasts an hour. And typically about 20 people come by. And in all honesty, half of them are there because they want to be seen by the director. Okay. But half of them are there because you do make some friends in four or five months. Okay. When I left that location, it didn't last an hour. It lasted six hours and 400 people came and that hit me right here that said, wow, the impact on these people and the impact on me, I really feel like I've got a calling for this. And so there was a reorganization at the IRS when I was working with the IRS and I brought this up and we trained some 2,500 people in mediation and conflict resolution techniques. And I was doing these on very major cases or on cases where my frontline managers or frontline employees couldn't reach an agreement, but they thought it might, if you come in and mediate. So I would come into a meeting. So it was mediating. When I left the service, hoping that my own firm, I was asked to do some of these, and now I'm doing two to four every month. And then as I look back on my career, I've done some 2,500 mediations in negotiations from billion dollar issues of fortune 100 companies to I volunteer locally here every month in housing court, conciliation court, neighborhood disputes, public housing, uh, mediated between gangs. And I do that kind of stuff actually for fun, for fun, because I want to get back into my community too. So that's my background. And that's what I do. And I just love doing it. It's fun for me.

Melissa Gragg: 5:18

Well, and I think that, you know, what, what people don't maybe understand about mediation is that all the parties are coming willingly, right? They're coming, they're coming to solve sometimes a financial issue or sometimes an issue that just doesn't have easy resolution, but they're there willingly, which also means they can leave willingly. And so when, when somebody, like you kind of talks about how to make these uncomfortable situations more comfortable, I think it is in a couple of different layers of conflict resolution. You know, we think is kind of instinctual, right? But it's not, it really isn't, it's a lot of psychology. It's a lot of understanding how everybody works together. But if we go back to like, what is collaboration versus communication? You know, everybody's like, oh, we'll just talk it out. Oh, we'll just, we'll just figure it out. Right. But then they can't because they come with kind of their positions and they stick to their positions. So tell us more about collaboration versus just communicating. Well,

Mike Gregory: 6:31

Communication is just two folks having dialogue with one another, but collaboration says we have a goal. It's a big difference. We're trying to do something together. That's collaboration. And for me, I've been working with neuroscientists now for almost nine years. I'm not a neuroscientist, but I've learned a lot. And I come back with, I'm a simple guy, so I need to make it simple for me too. And collaboration is about, we need to be authentic. We need to find a way to connect with each other. We need to develop an element of trust here. We need to then listen. And listening means suspending judgment. It means focusing being a hundred percent on listening, and there are gender differences between men and women on how we listen. And then you can get into stereotypes. I don't want to do that, but there are generalizations that we have on how our brains and they're different. You have more white matter. I have more agreement or in my brain, and we don't necessarily know what that's for. We really don't science is in there with, we don't know what that's for or not, but men tend to want to listen to find a solution as a generalization and women, as a generalization, tend to listen, to want to understand. And so in mediation, women typically have a little bit up on the men because you're trying to understand as a mediator, you're trying to help the parties understand. So it's about connecting relationships, which is what I do with the parties before a mediation, because the mediation is up to them. They're making the decisions in arbitration and the arbitrator makes a decision in mediation. The parties make the decision. And in this process, it's, it's confidential with what's taking place. I learned things by meeting with each of the parties separately beforehand. And I learned when I can ask that sits 600 pound gorilla question in a mediation, but the timing needs to be right. And that we've been where we are with knowledge. And the tone in the, in the room needs to be right to ask those kinds of questions. But the listening is to paraphrase, ask open-ended questions, sympathize, suspend judgment, which is very hard. When you're emotionally involved as the two parties, it's hard for them to suspend judgment. I can suspend judgment. I can help them. I can help them deescalate. Did I need to empathize with them when I'm listening? And finally, you don't offer any advice when you're listening, you can offer advice later. But if someone's been listened to, they're far more apt to listen to you. So now that you've been authentic and have a connecting relationship, now that you've listened actively, now you can educate them, but you need to educate them the way they want to be educated. And 70% of us are visual learners. We like to see it. So having some elements where you can see the numbers on something, you can hold it, or you have a screen over here that has numbers. I'm just putting on my other screen, your screen over here. So you can see things on that screen. You can visualize this, you begin to educate them the way they want to be educated. And if you've done those three things, conducting relationships, listening, actively educating judiciously. Now you can build bridges to negotiate code. We've we've looked at what are the facts? What are the issues? What are the feelings, the emotions behind individual issues, and then what are your interests? And they can be economical. They can be social. They can be environmental, whatever the interest we've got them on the table. We can see how to work with each other to try and come up with a solution that both parties can live with with whatever that issue might be.

Melissa Gragg: 10:02

Well, and I think that the two of the big concepts that I think I see in like divorce mediation is going to be the act of listening, which, which I've interviewed you several times. So I I'm a little ahead of the game. So I've been focused on active listening, but also the judgment. I think that's really where just universally, we as humans, we have judgments based on past experience, based on how somebody has shown up. And when you get into the divorce arena, you have that, oh, they're never going to do that. Oh, he's not going to listen. Oh, she's not going to, you know, change where, um, recently somebody said, you know, every time you say a judgment, you say, you know that person's never going to change. Add a little thing at the end. Like, I don't know that for real. I don't know that to be true. I don't know that for certain, right? Because that's the truth. You, you, that person has shown up like that. But I don't know if that is truth going forward. And so I think that there's a lot that you, as a mediator are even emulating the things that you then want the participants to start to do as well. But you've created something that goes even beyond that, which is you have a whole concept called the collaboration effect and you've written a book about it. And so tell us more about like, how does that play into this process?

Mike Gregory: 11:31

Well, the start of the book, I actually have a story and I tell a story about what happens with two different parties. And won't go into that here now in detail. But essentially an attorney came to me and is like this with another attorney. This is what I'm going to do with the other attorney and beat him up. And this is how it's going to go. And he said, well, what can you do for me? He said, if you're going to do that, I can't help you. There's a pause on the other end. And I took him through with the initial element of trying to connect. If you see that dinner party, I don't know you, you don't know me. I've done research ahead of time. I've gone on to LinkedIn. I looked at Google, not on Facebook. I look read it up. The difference I've Googled this person. And I've learned some things about that person before I ever call. And then when I call this person, because I know some of these things, I might make a comment about where they went to school and make a comment about some hobby that they have or where they live, geography something. And then I say to them, you know, if we're going to work together, this is a common thing. I really proposed this. We're going to work together. I don't know you. You don't want, if I can just learn some things about you, we want to share some things about you and I'll share some things about what are we doing right now. We're becoming authentic with one another. We're building some trust with one another. So that's the first step. And then once you've done that you're working, connecting. Then you're listening to them. We've talked about that a little bit already. And then when you listen to them, then you're going to be educated. So I talk about that was the initial phone call from this plant. I thought, I don't even know if I have a client. And then he called me back up and he said, Mike, this, we called him up. We were going to write a 40 page brief on the issue. Number one, there's an issue. Number two, it's a factual issue, but it shouldn't work. We discussed it in 15 minutes. I didn't have to write it up. That was great. Now we're going to actually get together on issue. Number two. And I said on issue, number two, there's a lot that goes into this. And I won't go into all these details. But the nuts and bolts are one of the books that a friend of mine written her, her name is Erica gardens. She wrote the brain friendly workplace. She's here in the twin cities. She's a girl scientist graduate from university of Minnesota. And then she talks about having the right foods. And when I tell these stories, people generally remember not necessarily the story with they remember the foods part of it. And it's certain foods are really good in this type of a situation. You want antioxidants. So you'd like to have blueberries. You want have to cut up fruit, celery sticks, carrot sticks, peanut butter, dark chocolate. You want to have the right fluids. So minimum water. But in this case, the person said they like Starbucks. So we have Starbucks coffee there. And this attorney was planning to come in with five other attorneys. We're going to beat him up six hour one. And they said, no, no, no, you want it. You're there with one other party. And I want that party to be an engaging party. Okay. And when they come in, we're going to break this up into three periods. And the first one is just socialization. You're going to offer the food. They probably won't take any, but I want you to take some and you're going to offer the beverage. They'll probably take coffee or water. And then you're just going to do the small talk with this person who already knows a lot because you've taught them. But they're going to work with this person to make them feel very comfortable and be authentic with one another. And then we're going to move into the second stage that was connecting relationships, which is listening actively. And this is the heart. There are two really hard parts. I'm listening activity. One is suspending judgment of those things we just talked about. And the other really hard one is, do not offer advice. Okay? You're just there to listen right now. And when you, when you were listening to this other party, what you're doing is you are suspending judgment, which is really hard. And you're also not offering any advice. And it's really hard because you want, you might want to say something like, I think that's really stupid, or I don't agree with that. Let me tell you why you're wrong. All those things when you're possible. That's ridiculous. Yeah. All those things you need to focus yourself. You need to talk to yourself with positive. Self-talk not going there. Mike, not even talking to myself, I use my own name. That's called self distancing. You familiar with that? No self distancing is something that sports psychologists do with athletes and self distancing with LeBron James professional basketball player has a bad day. Watch how they interview him. Well, Brian, you were off today. You know, you were whatever. And this and that. And LeBron, James will not say, yeah, I had a bad day. Everybody has a bad dad, a bad I'll be better. Next time he doesn't say, they said LeBron had a bad day. Uh, Brian will do better. Next time. LeBron needs to focus for whatever reason. I just was not focused. I wasn't myself today. Well, the sports psychologist have taught them. If you use your own name, you're not looking at yourself as a third party. You can look at yourself objectively. You won't blame yourself. You won't beat yourself up. Instead of looking at it as, yeah. That's something that that guy has to do over there. So the same thing in terms of listening, when you think you need to apply judgment, you think you need to say something and you think you need to give advice. That's the time you say for my, for myself, Mike, Mike focus. Don't go there because right now you really want to listen. And if you listen, once that person has talked it all out, they've said everything they want to say, they now are more receptive to listening to you. So that gets us into the third stage. That's educating judiciously. It's how they want to be educated. Most people when they educate, they think about, I know all this knowledge and you want to know everything. I know. Well, you know what? They don't. They want to know what they need to know and want to know. And so you, after having listened to them, you need to calm yourself, center yourself again, and now you're going to educate them with what they need to know. You're going to ask them questions that allow them to say, yes, you're going to ask them questions and say, if with this edition, here's some additional information. And you think that might, if you, if I'm trained to help you go give it direction, do you think that might be making more receptive towards going this direction now that you know that? Yes, it would. Okay. And here's something else that was not brought up previously, would this help too? And now here's something that you're getting them to say, yes, you get them to say, yes, they're producing certain chemicals and hormones in the brain, which we've been more receptive to what you're presenting them. And now once you've connected and you've listened and you've educated them. Now you're ready to move on through those three offices. Now you're ready to start the negotiation. And what I have found is you need to present this in a real code term. So you would come back and say, you initially were at this position. I didn't know if he was at this position. You agreed with me on here are these 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, whatever number of points that yes, these would tend to make you move more. This direct what you're thinking. This is not what I'm thinking. And what do you think now you're actually having dialogue. You're now looking at this from some different angles because you presented additional information and presented interests generally on things that may not even have been with the original problem. So most people look at elements of mediation as it's a problem solving process. I don't, I call it it's a solution process. What is the difference? The solution is you came in to look at this problem in this way, and this is it. By the time you get done, you've developed a solution that you brought up things in different approaches and elements you've never thought about. So I'm not in divorce, but you are, I'm not into child custody, but you might be as part of what you're doing. And I would come back in on this and I'd say, well, they came in with, I want this in terms of money. I want that in terms of the house or whatever. I don't know what I'm talking about here, but you would do of just standing back, but you get into what are we going to do about the kids and what would be in the best interest of our children. And once, once you start to focus on children, rather than the money or the house, you have a whole different perspective. And I just bring that up as a simple example, but sometimes there are many different angles you can approach. And I, I, I've been in meetings with, uh, board of directors, fortune 100 company. And, uh, as we're working through some different solutions and some folks are being pretty hardcore with respect to their site. And I just, I just asked the question like this, no, this is all confidential, but you have a mission statement, right? You have a vision statement that you have these values up on the wall. Okay? If this were to come out, that this is what you had done, how might this be perceived by stakeholders like shareholders? Or how about some of your customers? Or how about your own employees? I'm just asking. I said, Hey, is this ethical? Do you really want to do this? I never said that. I just asked how might other parties view what you're just proposing here? Yes, you can put the thumbnail on top of them and really do a bad thing to this other party. You could, on the other hand with this ever chemo and the comment was, I mean, as an example of this would never come out. I said, well, you know, many people think that when it does at a future date, I'm just suggesting, uh, do you want to go there? And then other people in the room, they didn't interject. I asked the question, there's other people that they interjected and said, no, we don't. We can do that. So there's legally what we can do. And then there's ethically and morally what would be the right thing to do here. And, you know, and what will our other customers think if we did this to them and that got out, what might other customers and or vendors think about us and doing business with us? I never said any of that. I just planted the question, which allowed them to think about it, which took them to a higher moral plane. So that's what solution providing is versus problem solving. We need to be there really as a solution provider, but you can't get there unless you really know the folks in, they trust you and you can work well together.

Melissa Gragg: 21:19

Well, and I wrote, and I think as mediators, you know, we're coming into a conflict situation that if the parties were just talking, communicating on their own, it's going to rise to a level. You know, like even when you just said, okay, now we get to know each other. We like each other, we have trust. And then I say, you know, these factors, what do you think? Now? I can envision everybody being like, oh, you want to hear what I have to say? Now? I want to say it, but there it is hard in any of these mediations because these are charged issues. Right. And they're coming in and they have a lot of things that maybe they want to say, and no one has heard them. And the other side hasn't heard them. There's a lot of that. I mean, just think about it, your personal relationships, you know, like I just want them to know, you know, and, and then you can get past it. But what happens in our brains when we're super angry and then how can we stop from getting angry? Like, I deal with this with my kids all the time. But like in a professional situation in these mediations, the issues are so high conflict and, and the parties are so volatile because they haven't seen any resolution to the conflict that it's real easy for them to get angry. So how do we as mediators work with that or understand it first in order to do something,

Mike Gregory: 22:50

Working with these neuroscientists I learned. And here's a, here's a fact that when you hear this, you go really we're 98% emotional and 2% rational. Now let that sink in a second. You tend to think maybe we're 50% logical, especially engineer accountant, a finance,

Melissa Gragg: 23:09

90% logical.

Mike Gregory: 23:11

Right? Well then I ask this question, how much is too close too far out of the number four? Yeah. And you said the number four, well, you gave yourself a drop of dopamine when you did that. You weren't even aware of this happened, but you said you didn't do this. Yes, I got it. It's four. They might, I know what it is. You didn't read it, but you gave yourself a drop of dopamine. And in our, in our brains, at the top of our brainstem is the Magdalen. Magdalene is about the size of your thumbnails are two almonds and Mandela is there that they have a line or taggers chasing your, a mangle that kicks in you produce adrenaline cortisol. You produce additional blood sugars. You can now run faster. You are stronger because your adrenaline was kicked in, but your brain can't differentiate. The lion chasing you versus somebody did something to get you angry. Your brain says, I'm coming back in with a stimulus, which is going to impact me on what's called the stress response. And when the stress response kicks in, you flood yourself with these chemicals that, so it's called flooding. You flood yourself with these chemicals and hormones. And when you flooded the number of, uh, transmissions to your brain is radically reduced by about a factor of 90%. And now when I'm angry at you, all I see is you and I'm not listening. And I'm telling you, I don't know what's going on around me. I'm just angry. That's flooding. Now you have six to 10 seconds from the time you, you have a trigger and something's gotten, you started to get you angry. You know it, because that trigger has just gone. They just said something and that's the trigger. Or they just done something. And that's the trainer. You have six to 10 seconds to stop yourself from getting in. And once you do get angry, those chemicals or hormones stay with you for up to 22 hours or until you've had a sleep cycle. So you can't just say, when I got angry, I'm okay. An hour later, actually you can go off just like that because you've got the chemicals and hormones there. So you are ready to go. Having said that, how can you overcome them? And one of the things is to know, when the trigger starts, you feel the trigger in the front of your brain is the prefrontal cortex and the prefrontal cortex overrides. The mangle is 5% of the brain in terms of size, but it's, twenty-five percent of the energy in the brain. Well, that thing can get overworked. So the prefrontal cortex needs a break. So like your computer, you turn it off and you can reboot it. You need to do that for yourself. They've come back on neuroscience and said the ideal way to do that as a minimum is 10 minutes, a day of mindfulness. And that mindfulness can be prayer or reflection or meditation or yoga. But taking the time to clear the prefrontal cortex studies has said in as little as 21 days, we can show you you're more relaxed. You're calmer. You get less excited. You take things as they come, you're more apt to listen to others, but now I'm in a mediation and somebody is about to go and we have, that's what you can do for yourself. But you know what a mediation, somebody is about to go. I look right at them and I will ask them a question. They may have nothing to do with what we just started on talking about. I'm going to get them to look at me and ask them a question. Cause I can see the trigger just went. It started to go at six to 10 seconds to catch them. So I'm going to ask them something. And they're usually like, what? How's it? So what'd you have for dinner last night? I mean, it could be something bizarre. It can be something related to what we were talking about earlier, but they then are, you know, like what and look at, and now they're asking, I'm wondering why I'm asking them or whatever. And I can play the dumb guy. It's okay. I'm the mediator. So when I ask them something or bring something to their attention or something, they've now instead of going off of the trigger and it's still in the back of their mind, but now they've just moved to the front of their mind. Something that they're working on with me and I can stop them from flooding. And then sometimes after they flooded, we might be all done because we can't bring it back. And other times after they flooded, they can be okay. But when you feel it coming personally, I mean, some things you can do, you can take a deep breath. You can take three deep breaths. You can say, I know I'm triggered about to go. I'm leaving. I'm just going to walk away. And that's a, that's an acceptable method. Just I need to walk away because otherwise I'm going to say or do something I don't want to say or do, but there's a technique that if you're going into a meeting and you're worried, this might happen, you can use, what's called the 5, 15, 10 rule. You heard about this rule, okay, I'm going to do it with it. I'm a grandma. I've got a watch. I'm going to do this with the 5 15, 10 rule is breathe in for five seconds. You're going to hold it for 15 seconds. You're going to let it out for 10. So you've heard like I'm going down the hall. And then they go into this meeting. I don't, I'm nervous about it. Take some deep breaths while that has an impact, but this is much stronger. Like explain it to you in just a moment, but we're going to do it. I'm going to say breathe in for five seconds. Now how you say, hold it for 15. And then I say, let it out for 10. And I have people respond back to me later and said, I have asthma. This was really hard for me. So I don't want anybody to be negatively impacted in terms of your health. This isn't good for you. Don't do this, but here we go. Are you ready? I want you to provide a second. So breathe in that's with your diaphragm down here, there's breathing with your diaphragm and now hold it. You're going to hold it for 15 seconds and you're not used to doing it. So it seems like a longer time. You're about halfway there right now. So hang on there. And when I say now, when I say that, let it out slowly through your mouth for 10 seconds and ready now and just let it out for 10 seconds. Very slow. This is the 5 15, 10 roll. You're almost there. And you're there. Now, what you've just done is you've given your bloodstream a plug of extra oxygen and it's working your way through its blood. Your blood stream is working your way up to the brain. Now it turns out you do one of these. It doesn't have much impact, but if you did like three of these, I've done this myself. I've been driving at night, I'm tired and I don't want to fall asleep, but I'm really feeling it. I've done this three times. And it's like, it's not as, I'm not a coffee drinker, but it wasn't a coffee drinker and you get a cup of coffee. It gives you that hit. You've gotten it. Well, it's not as powerful as a cup of coffee for coffee drinkers, but it does hit you that I am more awake than I was before. And then you actually feel the additional oxygen that made its way into your brain. So the 5, 15, 10 rule, if I'm going to go into something and I'm thinking this might get tense, a way to make my brain clearer, think more calmly, be more in control is to do that before I get into that room. So clearly if you had your 10 minutes for meditation beforehand and cleared that prefrontal cortex that'd be even better, but those are some elements on how the brain works and what you can do. And my interaction with different neuroscientists on how to address this.

Melissa Gragg: 30:15

And it could also be part of it is when you get angry, you probably are breathing shallow. You're probably, you know, getting all worked up. And so it makes a lot of sense. And I think that these are all tools that mediators have to have because like we're going into one tomorrow. And it is, I already know, I already know like gloves are going to come off and who knows what's going to happen because they've already been talking about that this all week, you know? So it's, it's it's how do you get in there? And I was actually talking with my son about this yesterday because I said, you know, but it was in context with his siblings and I was like, you know, you're the oldest. And, um, really you can be a part of escalating things or deescalating. And he was like, I don't know what you're talking about. And so can you kind of help us understand some of the ways that we can deescalate not only ourselves, because as a mediator, you really do have to get into that, that, that middle of the road, you know, like non partial, you know, neutral kind of brain position, but then so we can deescalate ourselves, but then how do we help deescalate others when maybe they've gone past that six or 10 seconds? And now, you know, we either have to make a decision. Are we going to end the meeting or do we have the capacity to move forward? Okay,

Mike Gregory: 31:48

Well as a mediator, oh, that, that first, uh, I might actually set the tone before the session. Then I would talk with the folks before their let's call it the mediation. There's, what's called a facilitative mediation. You're working on a given problem. There's transformative. You're trying to transform relations. And there's the value to it that a mediator would say, well, if you go to court, this is what I think is going to happen. That's like a retired judge. Well, in facilitative mediation, you're using certain techniques and in transformative mediation, you're, you're focusing on can two people transform the relations so they can be professional with one another. So some of the things to think about beforehand to talk with the parties beforehand is things like, I know it's personally, but we want to not take it. Personally. We want to stay focused, stay, stay focused on the important thing, whatever the important things are. We want to stay focused on that. And then you actually make a decision whether you're going to be angry or not. I had a discussion with this with my daughter when she was younger. She goes, no, I don't when I get angry, I think that's no good goat. And I've come back and said, actually, you do have the choice to do that. It wasn't accepted at first. So I had to actually, it's a proven dad. Well, I can go on the internet and I can prove it to you right here. You have a choice to get angry in there and you can use active listening to coach somebody ahead of time on what that is. We've talked about this paraphrase, ask open ended questions, suspend judgment, summarize, empathize, don't offer advice. And for me, I'm a rabbi talking guy. When I actually go into mediation, I read a prayer. Before I read this several times, I read the prayer of St. Francis of Assisi. This helps me. And then, then it says either not so much to be consoled is to consult, not so much to be understood as to understand. And it helps put me in a place where I come in and coming in calmer. And what I do is I slow down. I talk fast about the things I'm in a mediation. I talk about this fast. I'm much slower to react. I played poker with a face that's calm. So if something's funny, I'm not just going to break out and laugh. And if something is sad, I'm not going to go super sad. I'm going to maintain something more neutral, but slowing down. And then that empathetic is the feelings. So not just summarize what I've heard or paraphrase, what I've heard, but I'm empathetic that yep. If that happened, that must have really hurt. That must've really hurt. Yeah. That must've made you very angry. So I'm, I'm affirming with them. Whatever the presented, as somebody, for example, somebody might yell out. I am not angry. Well, and I would say, I, I hear you saying you're not angry, but when I listened to your tone and your body language, I think right now, maybe there's a higher sense of anger that you may relax. Okay. Um, be aware of saying to them, be aware of your emotional triggers there, you get your hands, get tense, you start to tense up yourself. You can feel what that is in your back and spine and on your head. You know that there are different elements. You're going to have a change in eye contact. You went from this to this, you know, you, there are things that you've done, you know, are triggering you. And as I said earlier, to suspend judgment, that's, that's you talking to yourself? That's a self distancing of telling me, Mike, Mike, I'm not gonna go there. I'm right now listening. I want to focus on this. I can talk about what I think later, but I need to really listen. And we're in the Midwest. You're in St. Louis. I'm in Minneapolis and Paul, I do these all over the country, but I can tell you when I moved more towards the Northeast, the politeness seems to miss these. And thank you as and respectful of one another's. And it's more of in your face. I, I did a mediation once on long island, east of New York city, and I have two parties and I just agreed. Agreed. We'll be respectful, blah, blah, blah. Yes. Yes. Okay. We're good. We get into it. One party starts, stands up and starts using the F-bomb at the other party. The other party stands up and starts doing the F bomb and the other part, and I'm here. And I said, I put my hands up and he looked at me and I said, guys, are we okay here? And they both said to me like, yeah, what's the big deal. This is the way we talk. I was like, okay, I'm going to bid Western guidance. If somebody stands up and starts using the F bomb in a mediation, this is a big deal here. Politeness, understanding the parties, where they come from, I've mediated between games. And again, the parties are gonna interact with the way that they interact with each other. We need to be sensitive to that. And I've mentioned earlier, work with the other party to say, yes, what are things we can oftentimes in a mediation, in a tough situation like yours? Are there any things that we can agree to? What are the things that we can agree to or setting a tone and what we can agree to that helps. And I mentioned earlier again, self distancing and positive self-talk come on, Mike, you can do this. You can do this. Stay focused. Don't go there. Okay. So those are all things that are for me personally, but sometimes working with a party beforehand, I built trust with them. I'm talking with them about, when do we go in here? Are there some things that I can help you with those things, we can talk about it. And I give them the handouts to one things you can do. And even there's there's language that we use, that's aggressive language or more neutral language. So I sometimes have handouts on, uh, language and language. We want to be more proactive with, to put things in neutral terms so we can help avoid what's perceived as being aggressive, one party or another, but simply depending on the people.

Melissa Gragg: 37:23

Well, and I think the language is a really big deal. We've done some additional like advanced mediation training with other folks around the country and this language thing, because, you know, being empathetic is one thing in me saying, you know, I understand that that made you angry is different than me saying, oh, that must have been horrible. You know, because then I'm like, I'm no longer neutral. I'm leaning into your emotions and I'm making you feel better that I relate to the emotions, but there's other people in the room. And so as I go into, you know, like you either have to do it to both people equally, which is hard, um, or you have to kind of tone back that you're really just mirroring back to them of like, yes, I understand that you were frustrated. Like I get that. You were I'm acknowledging you are frustrated. I'm not saying that I would be frustrated. I'm not saying that. I think that it's reasonable to be frustrated, but I understand what you're saying and that, that frustrated you. Um, and the other thing that I, I thought was interesting is that, you know, I just saw something the other day that was, uh, uh, a truth that people didn't want to face was that no one makes you angry. You decide to use anger as a response. And I think that that is very powerful because it is taking ownership of that. But I think those conversations are best to be had like today, if I have a conversation with the two parties separately, you know, and, and then before the mediation, I would say something like that, you know, I would say, you know, we choose how we're going to show up in the mediation with everybody there. I think sometimes that could look more like I'm being a parent, right? Like everybody be nice. Everybody get along. Um, when that's not always, I mean, the whole point is that there's going to be conflict and there's going to be difficult. Um, decisions

Mike Gregory: 39:30

Earlier, earlier on in my career, I would have sent it a mediation. Do we have any ground rules that we want to have? Are we respectful professional? And I don't do that anymore. I don't because if the parties, if the parties elect to do this and I am not going to judge them on how they talk to each other, and sometimes that element of them being more forceful with one another is really what they need. So I have to stand back and I, again, I'll be asking questions. I'm always there to ask questions and help clarify things and get them to think about things differently with the questions I ask, but that may be their way we might volunteer work and working in public housing with gangs and neighbor disputes and things like that. I've learned, you know, this is just the way other folks are in a professional environment business to business that doesn't generally happen when we professional it's dollars and cents and other elements, future contracts, uh, relationships with vendors, customers, other stakeholders, all that. But when you get into elements outside of business, I've been involved with that many valuations where there's expert on either side and I've been a mediator with the experts are there, their attorneys are there, the decision-makers are there. I talk with all of them independently ahead of time. And I talked with the attorney and the client to get an element of trust with both of the valuers. So now when I'm asking questions, I'm here to address what's going on with these folks. That's generally pretty professional, but sometimes the attorneys, because they're advocates, they're not just determining what's the value, but they're advocates for their clients. They want a number to be higher or lower or whatever it is. And so they're going to try and spend things in a given direction, and they can be either a very positive and working towards a resolution, but helping their clients, or they can be a detriment to the process because they want to escalate their clients to get the client angry. And maybe we actually, we get some more billable hours out of this. See, that's our only motivation, but that sometimes is there. And so I might say, you know, the item that you're bringing up right now is maybe something that we want to, I'll say, we'll park that and put that over here in the parking lot. We'll park that we'll say that, but we need to stay focused on this thing that we're on right now. We could, we could come back to that if you, if the parties want to come back to that, but let's stay focused on what we are. So you sometimes have to take someone who wants to escalate it and take it a different direction and stay focused on the price. What's the main thing and keep the main thing, the main thing.

Melissa Gragg: 41:53

Right. And, and I think refocusing, especially if there is a higher agenda or in divorce, sometimes it's the children, but sometimes it's just to like move on, you know? Um, I think that one thing that's been very prevalent during the past, um, you know, 18 months, two years has been, you know, and I would even adjust this thought and question to how does your attitude or your mental health or your, you know, a given situation, how does it impact the process?

Mike Gregory: 42:31

Well, as a mediator, your attitude matters and you need to be centered and you're coming in to be the neutral here, and you're here to help the parties, uh, interact with one another with others, understand that there's all kinds of things. I don't know. That's why we did the trust thing upfront. I built the relationship upfront. What's going on in your life. I was recently involved in a case without going all the details. I'll just say there was a lot of drama. There was drama with drugs. It was drama with who's taking care of the kids right now. Uh, there was drama with the police being involved. There's lots of drama over here. And that drama escalated things to a much higher level than just addressing what the issue was that we were focusing on in mediation. And so part of it was working with this person and realizing that I'm not a mental health expert, I'm not a mental health expert. And I can't help, uh, in that area. I can sometimes recommend, maybe you might want to talk to a professional, but I am not that expert, but I can come back and realize there are other things going on here. I want, instead, this is kind of humorous. I went to the mediation, this was a, uh, a mediation volunteering in housing court in this, um, this person believed that in their building, there were folks coming in from another world and they were attacking some members from inside that building. And this person was here to help protect these other members in the building, from these aliens coming in from the other plant. Okay. And that it was a landlord tenant. Landlord wants this person to move out is evicting this person. And legally, they can evict this person in two days, but they're willing to work and say, do you need seven? Do you need, till the end of the month, what is it we need, we're working on this. This person was like not listening to what the landlord was saying. And all of a sudden we've been at this about a half an hour. This person didn't just says, you know, I could move out by the end of the month, just came out of the blue. And I said, let's just focus on that for a little bit. You said you could move out by the end of the month. And the person is yes, he has a little bit anyway. So then the person is still telling us about all the different things that they think is going on. And I'm writing this up and the landlord signs it and then the tenant signs it. Then we're all set. Tenant says you were extremely helpful today. Thank you so much. And she said, and after this, I'm in St. Paul St. Paul's where the capital is for the state of Minnesota. And she says, and after this, what I'm doing is I'm going to the governor's office. So I can tell the governor about the aliens that are in the building. I'm like, okay, all right, well, I'm just, I'm sharing with you. Did we get the job done? Did we get an agreement on when the person can move out by? And the other neighbors didn't like that this person was defending them against the aliens and doing lots of stuff in the building that was not good, but we stay focused on the problem. So there was something there that I'm working with, someone that had severe, I'll say mental illnesses might lay term perspective, but the person was able to stay focused for a short periods of time to work towards what we needed to do, but we needed to let that person talk by letting that person talk and listening to them with all these things they were concerned about. We were able to move towards the focus on what we were trying to do is reach some kind of an agreement that the parties could both live with. And then they live with that.

Melissa Gragg: 45:37

Well, and I think that that is, is part of, you know, as a mediator. And, and you talked about it a little bit at the beginning. We're not there to solve every issue. We're not there to be the expert on every possibility. We're really there to help people, constructively generate ideas and ways to solve this, the solution. Um, but, but in that type of situation, um, what if we look at what type of communication works best and, and how, and why do we make situations more comfortable? Like, shouldn't, we just let them yell at each other. And, you know, like the, the, uh, the people that were dropping the F bomb, or is there a way to kind of help move them into a communication that makes everybody feel more comfortable, maybe safer, maybe, you know, more willing to work together?

Mike Gregory: 46:43

Well, I'm going to reach down and grab my phone for a second.

Melissa Gragg: 46:46

Okay.

Mike Gregory: 46:51

And I'm going to make sure that the volume is off because it's bad for me, but it is now Simon. Okay. When I talk about communication, I'm going to talk about this on three different levels. I'm going to start off with, we have generational differences in the generational differences. I'm a baby boomer. I prefer a face-to-face conversation, but my kids are millennials. And my kids prefer a text. In fact, they prefer a text so much. I need to text them. And I'll say, what you call me that doesn't work. Then say, what do you want to talk about? Okay. Do I really need to pick up the phone and talk with you, dad? Okay. So I'm picking up on when you have a text, all you have are the words. And now there've been studies that have come out and said, when you consider the attitude, not the communication, but the attitude on communication, 7% of the attitude has to do with the words. So we're texting back and forth. There's a lot of room for misconception of what somebody's intended in terms of attitude, because all I have are the words, or if I have an email and somebody sends an email to you, and you might say that makes me angry. Well, you have some choices. I'm always suggesting open a word document, and you respond with how you feel right now to that email. But it's not on an email going back, it's in a word document. And what that allows you to do is label your negative feelings. You can say anything you want in that word document about how you're feeling and why, and then don't do anything with it, except save it. And the next day, come back and look at it again and say, I can do several things. I can delete it. I can just say, I can edit it and make it now. What is it I really need to do to respond to this and be professional in how I respond. And so in that sense, that all has to do with what, just the words, but on the other end, if we pick up the phone and we can talk to somebody, we can hear the tone of their voice. And when you hear the tone of the voice, you're picking up 38% of the attitudes are up to 45% of the attitude because I'm talking to somebody. And then if I can see you face to face, that picks up 55%, because I can see your facial expression. I can see your body language, and it's better for here in a virtual situation. You can see me somewhat. But if I step back here a little bit, I've been talking with my hands all the time. This isn't, my Gregor just talks with his hands. That's why I'm excited guy. So zoom, there you go. Do it in zoom. I don't want to talk to you. You know, doing it on zoom is better. It's better than having the phone, but it's not as good as face-to-face. So when you're thinking about communication and we have a conflict, maybe being face to face is the best doing it. Virtual on zoom is maybe second best doing it on the phone is third best doing it on a text is the worst, but maybe the best you can do. And you have to come with folks with where are they coming from? If you have a conflict and it's pretty simple, you can probably do a lot of texts. You know, just are you gonna pick me up at school? What time when we're going, bam, we go text work just great. There's not a whole lot of room for conflict there, but if there is some conflict that comes in picking up the phone and having some discussion might be better. And if we can say, let's talk about this later, when we're at home and we can talk with one another. So when I talking about different forms of communication and what might you use and why think about the other party in the way they prefer to communicate and think about you and the way you prefer to communicate, you'll be able to discussion just about how going to communicate with one another. When are we going to do it by text? When are we going to do it by phone? What are we going to do it on zoom? When do we maybe have to get face-to-face because of what the situation might be and it's that serious. And when you're looking at, uh, mediations in my last year and a half, let me think about this. I have not done a face-to-face. They've all been virtual. I do two to four a month in my last year and a half. They've all been virtual. Uh, some might be moving, but you have to have everybody needs to agree to come to face-to-face. So that means the attorneys. That means the experts. That means the clients. And I I've learned that we should all be my perspective. We should all do. What's going to work. And if some people are willing to do face-to-face and others say we can have them on zoom that's okay. But other times folks will say, Nope, we're either all face-to-face or we're all on virtual. So I work with the clients and what they want to do. But prior to that, they were all face-to-face. And now they're virtually all virtual with what I'm doing with my clients. And that's what they prefer to do. We it's it's a morphine in our society. So as I look at more virtual scenarios, I have to agree. Once people signed today, they have one agreement that they signed. This is the mediation agreement. And then I haven't signed another agreement that says, but because it's virtual, there are all these other things that have to happen. No one else can be in the room. No one else can be within earshot where there's all the, I have a three or four page document, all things that we need to do, because this is a virtual mediation, because I want to ensure as much as we can, just the parties that are there, we're interacting with each other. And sometimes you have the attorney and, uh, a client might be in an office together and they will do it the phone. And they're not talking to each other and I'll have, I'll say we can't use our phones. So you can't chatting with others outside the room on different things, rather we're in this room together. So there are a lot more things to think about today because we want to stay focused and we want to avoid other distractions. And I don't want you to play in a computer game. I don't want you talking with other people about other things. I don't want to even talk with other people about what we're talking about is confidential. What's going on in this room. These are all things that today you all need to think about going into that mediation.

Melissa Gragg: 52:39

Well, and that's a lot of things that we're doing in the court system to, um, with all of the online. But I think the other thing is that I see sometimes is that the, the clients are like, well, tell us what we're going to be talking about for the mediation so that we can talk beforehand. And maybe we can figure out a little bit before we get into that. And I think that the only thing that I ever get concerned is that both parties are in agreement. You know, like I usually will see one party that maybe is a little bit more dominant than the other that it, you know, and the other one is kind of just going along with it. So a lot of times, even in that capacity, I have to address them. You know, I have to say, Hey, Mike, I heard you say what you're feeling about any of this. And you know, I've only heard one side of, of, you know, Sally saying that you, you both, you both agree to all of these things, but I'm not hearing you support that. And, and sometimes it's even taking that person and giving them the permission to have an opinion, to be able to say it, because then you're also watching how the parties are reacting when that non-talking person is talking more, because that's usually, you know, they've, they've learned that role to be quiet, to not have an opinion. And so there is a lot of different dynamics, um, you know, depending upon the type of mediation that you're doing. I think that it's not a one size fits all. It's not that I don't, I don't really know if I can mediate any type of situation because I imidiate certain types that I really understand. I understand the psychology, the nuances, the court, the everything of, but to go in and you and I do a lot of different types of mediation, right? Because you have different specialties. And so I think you can kind of, but you, you have to know your audience a little bit better and you, you talk a little bit about kind of leading with compassion and listening with empathy. And, um, so I want to talk a little bit about that and then get more about you and some bonuses that maybe you're going to share with their audience. Um, but how do you, how do you do this, um, and stay neutral, right? Because sometimes, sometimes one of the parties is kind of despicable or, you know, having really gross, um, behavior or sometimes, and I know this goes beyond it. Sometimes it triggers something in you that has nothing to do with the parties. Right. They do something and it's like, oh, I hated when people would do that to me, but it has no relevance right. To the situation. So how do you, how do you stay with that compassion? How do you stay with that empathy and not let your own experiences kind of cloud, um, the actions of the parties?

Mike Gregory: 55:45

Well, there's a lot there. What, with what you talked about, I'm going to back up a second. One of my books is called peaceful resolutions. It has a chapter on negotiation, chapter on mediation and the chapter on virtual mediation in the chapter on negotiation. I talk about how to work with a soft learn, how to work with a hard bar and how to work as a professional, personal personable negotiated. And when you just talked about that, I'm thinking it for valuation here, you have it in spouse and announced spouse. The spouse knows a lot of spouse. Typically doesn't know a lot. There's a different share of balance in terms of power and different things. But, uh, I think that I have a checklist of about 15 things of how the soft or the professional or the hard negotiator looks at different things. And so that means when you've got some of these being really quiet and maybe there'll be a soft negotiator, there's all these things that are happening here that you need to maybe address as a negotiator or as a mediator with the parties, because they are willing to say, okay to things right now. But when they leave this meeting, they didn't come back and say, no, I'm not gonna agree to that. So you want to give them an opportunity and you want to really help them to voice what their concerns are. But I'm leading with compassion versus listening with empathy. There's some studies that have come out in the last six months. I used to think these were both in the same area of the brain, leading our compassion and empathy. And they've come back and said, they're not, I won't go to the different parts of the brain, but with empathy, we've talked about that. And we said, when you're empathetic with someone, you're putting yourself in their shoes, you're understanding where they're coming from. It turns out with babies, babies that are six months old. If they hear their parents arguing, they don't know what's going on, but they'll start to cry because something is not right. It can feel something isn't right in an empathy. Okay? But it turns out with compassion. It doesn't come naturally. We have to learn compassion. You can take courses in compassion. Doctors and nurses are taught to be compassionate. What does compassionate mean? Compassionate means you're remaining calm. You remaining confident. You're remaining competent. If you have a doctor or a nurse, you don't want them to be empathetic. Oh my gosh, you broke your leg. That's terrible. Oh, you want that doctor or nurse to say, okay, you've broken your leg. Where does it hurt? Uh, we're going to do some different things here. We're going to check some things out on you, but they're going to be calm and confident and competent. Do you want to lead with compassion? You want to listen with empathy, knowing that if you're a leader, you want to lead with compassion. And remember when things are happening. And there's a book called, uh, a poem called if by Rudyard Kipling and this poem of if, as all these different things that are going on, if the world is going crazy and blaming it on you and all these different things at the end, that was written by Rudyard Kipling. It's from the late 18 hundreds, I believe early 19 hundreds. And it says, but if on the F parts, the poem was just called the FDF. If all these things are going on, but if, if you can keep your temper while others are losing theirs and blaming it on you, then you'll be a man myself. Now it's not done. Chauvinistically men versus women. This is you will be mature. So that's where you have to, as a mediator, you need to remain calm. You, you need to remain confident. You need to remain competent. You're leading a mediation. So you're empathetic. You listen with empathy, but you lead with compassion and with your folks, sometimes helping them. We've talked about this with deescalation, helping them remain calm, and you give them the power to know that they're competent to make a decision. You reaffirmed with them. They're competent to make a decision. You work with them. So that they're confident in what they're doing is in their best interest. And as you look at all of the different issues involved, they're confident, this is in the best interest of the best we can do for all of us as we're coming to a solution. That might be something I don't love, but it's something I can live with. And if they have a sense that they are confident that what they've done is the best we can get for both sides. We can all live with this. That's a good solution because each party has said, I have been listened to, and I have been educated with what's going on and things I didn't know about. But now with everything I know we can work together to try to resolve this. And we have a solution we can live with.

Melissa Gragg: 1:00:19

No, this has all been, I mean, I think in the mediation space, even if you've been doing it for years, even if you're doing several a month, like not re checking yourself, you know, and, and, and continuing to educate yourself on better ways and better ways to align yourself with the purpose and others with the purpose. Cause a lot of times the communication isn't great in these situations. And so we are part of the process to help them understand you've been so helpful. You've, you've given some ideas of books that we can, um, purchase and some resources, but you also have some other bonus items that like, if somebody wants to continue to kind of educate themselves on some of these, um, concepts, what are some suggestions that you have

Mike Gregory: 1:01:15

To kind of, these are kind of fun things. One is, there's a book written by John Baker and it's called the asking formula. John Baker was the CEO of, um, Shearson American express for 10 years. And I'll just point out that the fortune 100 company, there are very few CEOs that have been there for 10 years. That's just a, that says something. But he would comment that what he would need to tell those people on a continual basis is if you want to ask for something, you need to one, know what you want to ask for it. And three have three reasons why it's beneficial for them. So think about this, know what you want, ask for it, have three reasons why it's beneficial for them not. I learned this approximately two years ago, having heard him speak. Then I bought his book. You can buy his book too, but I'm a simple guy in this book. That's the three main points right there. And I love that. The third one is, and three benefits for someone else helps. Remember this that's one bonus item. The second thing is, there's a group called the greater good science center at the university of California, Berkeley. And they came up this about 10 years ago. And I'm going to tell you, but your university about two years ago, came out and said, we're going to put a class together on this. And we're going to educate our students on this. And we're going to call it a class happiness. It's the course on happiness. And the professor, the president of Yale was asked, why are you teaching your folks? This course on the course on happiness at Yale? He said, well, over half the students take the course, but these are the leaders of tomorrow. And if I can teach them this about themselves, they can apply this in business with where they are. So there are five elements from the happiness question, and this is my Gregory taking this course and saying, here's a syllabus. It's a one semester course, but this is in a nutshell, it says, first of all, gratitude for five minutes a day. So when I start my day and I'm looking in the mirror and by the way, I take my glasses off like this, I am legally blind. So when I look in the mirror and I smile, I can just see the smile and I don't see any cracks or aging things. And I think I look pretty good. Okay. Because all I can see is a smile. So while I'm brushing my teeth and looking at myself and I can't see myself clearly, I think about what am I grateful for? And I started off with my wife and I moved into kids and they move into other tangibles and intangibles. I am so blessed in so many ways, by doing that, you produce certain chemicals and hormones. They stay with you for up to eight hours. So your whole day, you're looking at the world a little differently because I am so blessed. I have so many good things going for them. And then I come back and I talked about this with, if somebody shoots you an email and I said, open a word document, write that up. You're labeling negative feelings when you're doing it, you're labeling your negative feedback. So we don't keep a journal and they daily write some stuff in their journal. That's the way to do it. Or when you got that email and you open the word document, you're labeling negative feelings. That's really important. The third thing is that their course will say, make the decision good enough. But I made a presentation to C-suite people. So CEOs, CIO, CFOs all a C with her tail. And I said, make the decision good enough. And one guy raised his hand and he said, no, I worked for a firm once. And they said, are you ready to go to my boss? And I said, are you ready to go? You said, everything is good enough, which the boss got angry too. It's just good enough. You need to do more. So I said, okay, instead of saying, good enough, how about we say it a little differently and say, no, that at the end of each day, you made the best decisions you could with what you knew just at the end of the day, let it go. No, you did the best you could in the course of a given day. And then there's appropriate touch now with COVID. That might be harder because you may be alone. There wasn't anybody there you're with, but you still could maybe do a fist bump or even fake a fist pump. But having physical touch actually is important with my spouse. We know hug more and we hug more often and we hug longer. So that physical touch is very important for us. If you have a pet and pet probably has unconditional love for you, that cat or dog, or what you might have, and when they come to you, they're like, oh, I'm so happy to see you. This is great. And you're loving the animal back. Well, that's very important to have touch with others. And with pets finding that the last item is mindfulness. And we talked about this earlier 10 minutes, a day of stopping, and it could be at the start of your game, could be the, it, it could be during your lunch hour to do whenever you want, but taking 10 minutes a day for prayer or reflection or meditation or yoga helps through that prefrontal cortex. And they'll make you calm. So you put those five things together. That's basically the course on happiness, and that's given it to you here in just a minute or two, so that an item. So they ask him formula. And of course, I'm happy to start a couple of bonuses that could maybe help you and help others going forward. And you can do more research on any one of these as well.

Melissa Gragg: 1:05:56

Well, and I think that if people want to find your books and information about you, you do a lot of public speaking, you do paid, you know, keynote speaking around the country. You're a brilliant, uh, even all the neuroscience and mediator, you know, this has really been your passion and it shows. And so I really appreciate the information, but do you want to tell anybody a little bit more about how or why they could reach out to you and things and services that you can provide?

Mike Gregory: 1:06:29

Well, my, my goal is to help make this world a better place. It's pretty simple, very simple goal. And I help, I help clients identify addressing resolve issues, and my focus is do the right thing, do what it takes and have fun. And so, as I think about this, whether I'm doing a mediation negotiation, I'm involved with giving a presentation, my goal is to help folks collaborate better going forward. So the collaboration effect is about collaboration. And then one end is conflict resolution. But on the other end is how can we collaborate and do better? And when we collaborate and do better or more productive, more productive or happier in life and things just seem to be so much better. So applying collaboration, whether at work or at home or whatever environment you're in, it just makes the world a better place. And having done the research I have with neuroscientists, it's different things I'm involved with. Uh, I do more than happy to be a speaker. I'd be more than happy to address what the issues might be. And a call to me is always free. So somebody can call me about anything at any time. And I have now over 9,000 on my constant contact list for my newsletter. So I have all kinds of contacts that I don't know. There's a pretty good chance. I probably know somebody who might be able to help you with whatever it is. So give me a call at that number. I'd be more than happy to help with whatever your concerns might be, or hopefully point you in the right direction. I'm humbled by your very positive comments. I appreciate all that. You do one with your podcast, and I appreciate all that you do as a meaning as a person that works to resolve issues in a similar but different space than I am. So thank you very much for having me here and will see.

Melissa Gragg: 1:08:08

Awesome. It's always a pleasure. Thanks Mike.

Mike Gregory: 1:08:11

Thank you.