234 - Healing Leadership: Cultivating Empathy and Emotional Intelligence with Onyx Therapy Group's Dr. LaNail R. Plummer

Welcome to Listening with Leaders. I'm Doug Noll, lawyer turned peacemaker. I teach executive leaders how to listen to emotions rather than words so that they can become the leaders everyone wants to follow. And I teach those same leaders how to be authentically present, available, and connected to their families despite being insanely busy. I have learned that we are 98% emotional and only 2% rational. Learning how to listen to emotions is, in my experience, the foundational skill of life. Stick around to the end of the show and I'll reveal how you can be on our next guest in 15 to 20 minutes. So let's get started.

Dr. Lynell R. Plummer, welcome to Listening with Leaders. You are the CEO of Onyx Therapy Group, which can be found at onyxtherapygroup.com. And as I said before we got on the show, I am really amazed at the work you're doing. So why don't you start off and tell us a little bit about your backstory, and then we'll go from there.

Hey, Doug. Yep, I'm super excited to be here today. So thanks for welcoming me here. A little bit about the background in terms of Onyx and myself as a leadership— a leader. I can make it brief though. As a leader, I've identified as a leader for probably my entire life, and that aligns with the fact that many of my teachers and the adults in my life, even in my childhood, were calling me a leader. I had a way of captivating audiences and really finding how to motivate them to get things done. And again, that started in elementary school where I was in charge of some of our group projects and things like that, and we never had issues And I think it was because of my style and approach, which I couldn't necessarily label as a child, but my teacher saw something in me and that kept putting me in positions to allow me to grow as a leader. One of the pivotal moments of my leadership journey was being commissioned as a United States Army officer, and that happened when I was 21 years old graduating from Howard University. And of course, the military has an intense leadership program. They don't necessarily call it that. We have different titles for those things, but definitely developing us as leaders. So watching my father, who was in the military, as a leader, having all of the additional support in my schooling, and then just being presented with opportunities allowed me to continue to grow in my emotional intelligence, especially as a leader. Onyx is an international mental health company. We're headquartered in DC, and we have 34 women in our company, and we focus on women employment, particularly, but there is some diversification there as well. And all of our work is centered really on mental health, but all things related to human services. Services. And so that looks like mental health. That looks like education. It looks like coaching. It looks like workforce development. It looks like a lot of things because mental health is tied into all aspects of the human experience.

Yeah.

I like to tell people that I'm— I was not in the military myself, but I like to tell people that I think the US military has the most comprehensive and effective leadership program in the world.

It does indeed. It does indeed. And I think that's why whenever a veteran sees another veteran, um, especially on some resumes, there's a little bit of bias there because they think that they— the assumption is that we've all been trained as leaders, right? And, and it is because we— it's an intense leadership program.

Exactly. So tell us a little bit about Onyx. You focus on education, if I understand correctly?

Yeah, we focus on mental health, and education is one of those components that's connected to it. And so we are in our— we are in schools, and we do work with the superintendents and, and such. So Onyx is mental health focused, all things related to human services though. So our youngest population, our youngest client in the work is 3 years old and we go all the way up through the geriatric population and helping with transitions as well. Now that's largely the direct mental health services and support. The education means that we're doing mental health in the schools. We're doing teacher development, we're doing wellness coaching for schools and school leaders, we're doing IEP support, we're doing special education technical assistance. We're heavily invested in the work we do. All of it is centered on mental health though, because if a person doesn't have a good special education program, their mental health is compromised in those moments and they may act out. And in acting out, they'll get labeled, they'll be treated differently, maybe go down some different pathways, and subsequently their life could look different simply because the education system wasn't set up for success for that particular student. And so we think about mental health in those ways. And in coaching and leadership development, we are in quite a few companies, nonprofit and corporate, doing their leadership development and their executive leadership coaching. And by executive leader, I don't mean that they're already C-suite. It may be somebody who's brand new to work in the workforce, but they still want to envision themselves as a leader. And so we start that process and that pathway with them early on.

So I have a question, which I don't mean to be challenging, but I am— having worked in prisons for over 10 years, teaching life and long-term inmates, both in men's prisons and women's prisons, how to become peacemakers, stop prison violence— I've seen a lot of stuff, right?

Yeah.

But what— one of the ways that I grew in that process was to recognize there's no such thing as mental health. And it's total health.

Uh-huh.

How our brain, CNS, body, they're all connected. It's all connected.

Yeah.

One of my, one of my peeves is that medical, the medical world has divided up, has divided us up into all these little pieces.

That's right.

And we're not really looking at the holistic picture.

Yes.

And when I listen to the term mental health, I'm saying, well, what about physical health?

Yeah.

What about nutrition? What about exercise? What about living in poverty? What about trauma and violence? All of that is physical, but it affects the entire system.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. And so when I hear, I advocate for saying there's no such thing as mental health. All we're doing is focusing on one piece of the problem when it could be everything else. When you just look at something like epigenetics and how trauma can be carried from generation to generation through epigenetics, a physical process that has effects. A baby, a Palestinian baby, especially today, is being born into trauma and will immediately be, be born with PTSD. Because of epigenetics.

Yeah, it, it's not, it doesn't quite work just like that, but there is the genetic imprinting that occurs as we see in, in epigenetics. And I appreciate the idea of unifying all health, whether that's physical health, the mental health, spiritual health, holistic health, as well as community health. The challenge that we have though is that if we don't, if, What we're finding is that if we don't separate it, then people will overlook mental health. And so we have lots of research, decades, centuries worth of research around physical health. And people are just now starting to see the alignment, the true health of the holistic body. And so at this point where we are trying to take the full holistic health perspective, we do have to separate it. Because if we don't separate it, then people will say, oh, yeah, I'm just— I'm healthy. And that's because they ran 3 I ran 3 miles today and they had a smoothie and a salad, right? But in reality, they're still struggling with anxiety or they may, they themselves may have acute stress disorder or an adjustment disorder or many of the various mental health disorders that are outlined in the DSM. I do think that at some point we could in our world get to a place where people see health in one holistic manner and physical health our mental health matters just as much as a person's physical health, and that they prioritize mental health equally so with all aspects of their body. And when that equality is there, then I believe that then we could remove some of those qualifiers like physical or mental or spiritual and just call it health.

Yeah, I'm just— I agree with you. And I understand the need for differentiating vocabulary to describe this stuff. But I'm just wondering if we couldn't be thinking of other words, other ways of describing a person other than mental health. For example, when we talk about mental health, that in my— I'm lawyer turned peacemaker— that talks about cognition. When I think mental, I think cognition. OK, so where are emotions in that?

Well, I think that's part of the reason that I do podcasts and I do media work. Because it's a matter of normalizing those particular conversations. So mental health does include the feelings, especially when we're thinking about it from the amygdala or we're thinking about it from that limbic system, which is the sensory part of our brain. And so even the ways that we filter in something that we see or— and again, we're talking about it from a brain function. So how it moves from a brain function to a mind function is quite unique and different. Something that a person smells could trigger a particular memory, which has a feeling that's associated with it. And the smell, the actual ability to smell, is a physical experience, but it has a mental health connection, which is why we use things like aromatherapy when we're trying to desensitize a client or when we're moving them through a traumatic experience through exposure. So definitely the difference between the brain and the mind. And because the mind is part of the mental health piece there, then that's how we have the terms as separate.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, totally agree with you. I do— what I do in my work as a peacemaker is I teach people how to stop fights and arguments forever in their lives. I teach people how to de-escalate anger in 90 seconds or less.

Yeah, because an emotion only lasts 90 seconds. And, and that's the crazy thing about, um, how we perceive emotions, especially because of media portrayal, that emotions last for hours and for days and for years, when it's really the thought and the recurrence of a thought, even in an intrusive manner, that keeps an emotion intense and heightened. But yeah, anger is 90 seconds. Happiness is 90 seconds. We have to keep the thought in order for the emotion to stay relevant.

And what affect labeling allows us to do is to— what the brain scanning studies show is that when you label somebody's emotions, called affect labeling, the emotional centers— you've already mentioned the amygdala, the limbic system, parts of the central nervous system, parasympathetic nervous system, polyvagal system— are all inhibited at the same time. One brain region, the right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex, is activated. And it turns out this is all— this was new, a new study. The right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex is where the abstract concept of emotion is created in the brain. We actually, as I read the science, we actually have a database of emotions that we associate with affective experience.

That's right.

And our inability to access that database means that we can't be emotionally intelligent. So we become emotionally reactive and we basically revert back to childhood programming. Yeah, this all the time in fights and arguments, which is my— where I work. And once you can reconnect those— that part of the brain, people calm down almost instantly. It's really amazing to watch.

Yeah. And sometimes it's not even a matter of reconnection, it's a matter of intro— the introduction of connection, because it— the assumption is that a child already knows how to access that information, or that information is there.. But a lot of times they don't. They're storing information but don't even realize that they're storing it. And that's the complications of memory. And it is why we have to use different functions in therapy where it's not just talk therapy. There's different things that we have to do so that we're creating those neural pathways so that they can access the information even if they didn't realize that it was there. That restructuring of the cognitions. Right. The neural pathways.

A condition that I see called adult normative alexithymia.

Okay.

Especially when people are engaged in fighting and arguing and even more intensely violence, is that they can't access that— those emotions, right? Because they've never been trained how to build them. To your point, as children, they never learned how to create an emotional database. Yeah. They never got emotionally granularity where they can associate affective experience with a symbolic concept that we call emotion. And as a result, all they can do is react. It's a somatic experience, and which is a real problem. And, and most people are— suffer from adult normalexithymia, especially when they're in conflict. It really comes out. And that's the world that I work in. So I get interested in this stuff because that science informs me how to help people calm down and resolve their conflicts.

Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. What I feel— what I know, I'm actually writing a book right now for Norton, and it's, it's called The Essential Guide for Counseling Black Women, and it has a component in the book that aligns with my dissertation, which is also the professional development for Black women and for women of color, particularly because it's important for leaders to understand that culture plays a major part in responses as well. And so there's this idea, if we use Black women as an example, there's this idea that Black women, we've been labeled as like strong Black women or angry Black women, and not necessarily recognizing that those types of labels are actually counterproductive for the workplace, right? Of course, a lot of Black women are heavily competent, and we are, and that's a reflection of the fact that we are growing as one of the most highly educated populations in the United States. And because of that competency, there's more that's being placed on them, and then it increases burnout. And so how all of this connects in terms of leadership and how it connects in terms of mental health and mental being— when I do different talks to executive leaders or to business owners, and I'm talking about their workforce within their company, thinking about how, again, we access a person's cultural experience along with their own perceptions and possibly mental mental health, if that is something that's present in there, and how we utilize this triangulated kind of approach to ensure that we are keeping our, keeping our staff members having high retention, high morale, which always connects back to high productivity and financial sustainability for a company. But it starts at the basics of understanding how a person responds culturally. I mentioned the Angry Black Woman piece because if a person doesn't respond the way that somebody wants them to respond, they mislabel them. And in that mislabeling, it just creates this snowball effect here. While I know that wasn't your particular question, but we're talking about leadership. It is important for leaders to also, as a business owner, I recognize you just want things to get done, right? Like we have this mission, we have this vision, we want things to get done, but how they get done is centered on that human experience, which is centered on, in my opinion, how a person's mental health is, especially in perception, especially in motivation and discipline and response and harmony with all aspects of their life, not just their work.

Correct. And this is why I teach leadership empathy.

Yeah.

Empathy is a skill set that has to be learned and mastered. It's not just something we do. It's not walking another mile, a mile in another person's shoes. That's BS. Empathy is the ability to perceive, assimilate, interpret and reflect the emotional experience of another person from the other person's frame of reference.

Right.

That's a skill that has to be learned.

Yes.

Most people never learn that skill, and so they struggle with all of this, the stuff you're talking about. I've got a question for you. What is it that gets you up in the morning and gets you excited to do the work that you do?

The work that I do is what gets me up in the morning. I know that I know that I am going to be impactful every day. That has been reinforced over my last— I'm 43 years old, so that's been reinforced over the time that I've been here. And like I mentioned, I've been a leader for quite a long time. There's never been a sports team that I've been on where I wasn't asked to be the captain. I was horrible at softball, Doug. I was horrible at softball. And somehow I was the captain of the team, right? And it wasn't because of the skill set in softball. It was because of my ability to lead. And that was when I was living in Seoul, Korea. Because my father was in the military at the time. So I am— what gets me up in the morning is knowing the powerful, impactful work that I'll be able to do. And we could take a day like today, for instance, Doug. I got up, I did the things I needed to do, and my first meeting was with a DC-based, a DC local government agency. And I spent an hour and a half with them doing some work and then seeing a client and meeting with another organization that wants to incorporate mental health into their STEM programming. And then I get to spend some time with you today. And then I have a couple more clients later this afternoon. In every single one of those meetings and moments, there is impact, there is purpose. And because I know what my impact is and I know what I could bring to the table, that keeps me motivated. It doesn't mean I don't get tired, right? But I also believe in boundaries for myself so that I don't get burned out because I know that this work pulls a lot of energy from me, physical energy, mental energy, spiritual energy. And so I do have to have moments of rejuvenation and reflection and just retreating. But I'm motivated because I know that the work needs to be done and I was chosen to do this work and I feel empowered and honored and humbled to be able to do the work that I do.

What do you think are the unique skills— well, let me reframe that. What's unique about you, Lynell, that allows you to be as successful as you are?

Doug, it's so funny because people ask me that question, and I think that depending on when it's asked and what's going on, the answers will change. I want to be careful in, in how I present this. But I've had a really robust life already at 43. Lots of different challenges. I grew up and my ACE scores were through the roof. Those adverse childhood experience scores were extremely high. I've seen a lot in my life. I'm from Los Angeles and I grew up during the, the crack and cocaine epidemic and the gang violence that was occurring in Los Angeles during that time. And then I got a chance to live overseas, right, with my dad and to have different experiences there. The fact that my life has already been so robust, I think, is part of the reason that I'm able to see things and do things differently. What the skill— if we were able to connect it to a skill, it would be through the skill of observation. It would be through the skill of listening. It would be through the skill set of communication. So I know how to communicate to people and reflection and introspection, and that helps determine what my next steps and my next moves are going to be. But I think— tell me.

Those are the most powerful skills a leader can acquire.

Yeah. And I learned them early. And like I mentioned, I learned quite a few because I was in the military. And then I learned others just because it's— I wanted to pay attention. I wanted to see what was going on. I identify as a healer. And so in order to be a healer, you have to really be able to assess and evaluate and determine and then have good proper diagnosing, and not just mental health, but I'm a leader in all aspects. I was intentional. I've been intentional about what I learn, how I learn, and how I incorporate that in my life and subsequently share it with others. I'm also a professor. See how this robust thing goes on? I'm also a professor, and I just left my tenure at Hopkins to work on the book, and then I'll be going to a new university. But I was at Hopkins for a number of years, and I was able to, again, be able to use the skills that I have and to pass them on to the next generation of mental health providers and healers in the work that we're doing.

Good for you. You have a PhD?

I do.

And is it in psychology?

It's in counseling. Yes.

Counseling. Good for you. Yeah. That's a lot of work. I have a J.D. and an M.A. I thought about maybe going for a PhD program, but I decided I didn't need it.

You probably don't. I, my, my doctorate is actually an Ed. And so it's a doctorate in education because I knew I wanted to also teach. And so I already had all the— a master's degree in counseling could be considered terminal. You don't have to have a doctorate in order to practice. But I wanted to also continue my teaching career. So I'd already been teaching as an adjunct, and then I wanted more opportunities to teach with novice counselors or counselors in training.

Great for you. So earlier you talked about learning how to listen. Tell me what you learned and how you learned it.

Yeah. One of the challenges with listening, which is different from hearing, right? So hearing being more of that somatic functioning, like smelling something, it's a sensory experience. The difference between hearing and listening is how the mind works in those moments. And in listening, we have to be careful around our cognitive distortions. And one of those distortions is filtering. And so sometimes a person says something, and if you're listening, you filter it through what you think is being said and how it's being said. And that is a reflection of schematic— your schematic framework, right? When we think about it from Piaget. And so I learned how to remove these distortions and to remove filtering in my experience, which meant that I had to be vulnerable in every listening experience. That's difficult sometimes to do as a leader because people expect you to always know the answers and they expect you to always understand what's going on. And so we find that people climb the, the leadership ladder and they ask less questions versus when they were novice in the career, they would ask more questions. And as that happens, a leader is asking less questions, less clarifying questions, which means that they're dependent on whatever they think they heard, and that it could incorporate their distortions. And so if a leader doesn't know how to be objective and remove the distortions in their leadership— or excuse me, in their listening process— they'll actually cause more harm because they're making assumptions. They're making assumptions out of fear of vulnerability, of exposure, because people still connect asking questions to having a weak understanding or to having a weak mind or to making weak connections. And leaders don't like to be exposed and vulnerable in those ways because of the informal development of leadership, not the formal development.

That is one of the most beautiful descriptions I've heard. In my work, all conflict— the conflict is caused by a lot of different things. One, it's caused by not listening. Not being heard. And the filters that you talk about, I see and witness every day.

Yeah, it's true. It's true. When I do my communication work with clients, because I do couples work as well, I teach them through that 6-step communication process. I did— I just keynoted a conference at Holy Cross Hospital this weekend, and I talked to the couples that were there, the parenting couples. About the fact that most miscommunication occurs because when we hear something, we never, we never summarize. And so it doesn't give the person who spoke first an opportunity to confirm or to clarify. Correct.

Vera and Clara.

Instead, you—

they're the 5 sisters, verify and clarify. Vera, Clara. And we use that to avoid our ugly neighbor misunderstood.

Exactly. And a lot of people skip that step, and it's a skill, right? Like, you have to know how to communicate, and the best ways to do that is by step processes. Evidence shows us that a step-by-step process that's measured out and that could be observed is usually the one that creates the best outcomes. And so we have to teach people, especially the leaders, to feel comfortable clarifying and verifying information before they respond to something.

Exactly. Now, here's where I do something that's a little radical compared to most people. I tell my students, my leaders, and my clients, never use an I statement when you're reflecting. Only use a you statement.

Tell me about it.

The science shows— there's an interesting study that just came out of Japan that shows that they used artificial intelligence to analyze the therapist's patient relationship, looking for indicators of trust. And what they found was that the more self-referential the therapist was, in other words, the more I statements the therapist used, the less trust there was in the relationship.

That makes sense in a therapeutic relationship, but not always in a leadership position.

Tell me more about that.

Yeah, because in therapy, the therapist is supposed to remain objective. The therapy session is completely about the client. So when you can summarize what a client— when I as a therapist can summarize what a client is saying, it makes them feel heard. It makes them feel seen. It makes them understand that I am hearing what they're saying, and I'm also paying attention to what they're not saying and filling in that gap there as well. But I'm a therapist, and my job is to heal a person and to let them be seen and feel seen through that process.

I'm curious, why isn't that important in leadership?

My only objective as a therapist is to make sure— my primary objective as a therapist is to make sure that my client feels seen and heard for their healing process and their journey. Leaders have different desired outcomes, and generally it has to do with some sort of productivity, right? And so when we are— it is important, yes, to make sure that your staff members and employees feel seen and heard, but because leaders are not always trained in therapy, if they use a you statement at the wrong time, it could be paired with judgment, or it could be paired with making it seem like you know what I'm saying, or you're putting words in my mouth, and that's not what I meant. And so it could get complicated. But if we use that 6-step problem-solving process in those moments where we're asking for clarification and we're confirming information, then we can switch it in that moment of saying, this is what I heard you say, this what you were indicating that you were saying. And then say yes or no. Then when that person, the leader, has the next response, they can say, "You." But if they don't say, if they don't clarify that and put some structures in there first, it could seem very accusatory, and that could shut somebody down. If you, Doug, told me right now, "Hey, Lynell, you said X, Y, and Z," without confirming that's actually what I said or what I wanted to say, because I may have said that, or you may have had a filter and that's what you heard. If you filtered it and that's not what I said, then we're going to have an issue because I'm going to respond and say, that's not what I heard. But when people are not aware of their filters, a response is, that's what you said. No, Doug, that's not what I said. That is what you said. And then conflict arises there. So you have to be careful.

I agree. I agree completely with what you said, but I submit that you will get better results using a use statement in that circumstance, properly trained.

Properly trained, you would get a resolution statement than an I statement.

Yeah, we've tested this in maximum security prisons over 10 years, and we have seen the results of what happens when you use you statements over I statements. So I would say, for example, what you just said was XYZ, and then I leave it like that, and then you would say, that's not exactly what I said. I said And, oh, you said ABC. Yes, that's exactly what I said. Great. And then I might say, so here's what I think, and this is what's important to me. I say it, please reflect back to me what I just said. And then the other person will say, what you said was XYZ. And I said, not exactly. What I said was ABC. What did I just say? Reflect it back to me. Oh, what you said was ABC. Yes, good job.

I think there's a couple factors in there that, that could be misconstrued for our particular conversation with leaders. The research that you brought up around Japan was in a therapeutic environment. True. The example that you just gave was in an incarcerated environment.

No, in any environment.

But, and the example, but however, the example was in incarcerated, in an incarcerated environment.

True.

There, because leaders are generally not working in those particular settings, right? Most leaders are not coming in with a therapeutic background, and most employees are not necessarily operating from an incarcerated perspective. Again, it's just a matter of making sure that people set themselves up for success, and then also understanding the cultural aspect of that. If a person has been marginalized or oppressed and someone tells them, this is what you said, without giving them the opportunity to say, yes, I said it, or no, I didn't, it's going to continue.

Absolutely correct. Absolutely correct.

But the gap in there, Doug, is that there's an assumption that all people— if you tell me, Lynell, you said such and such in your example that you gave, there's the assumption that I'm going to say, no, I didn't say that. But when we think about marginalized people who are taking up a lot, who are a large part of the workforce, especially leaders, as we're growing the diversification of leaders, you have the assumption is that a person has courage to say, that's not what I said.

That's correct.

Now, talking about it from a leadership and employee perspective, that's a hierarchical relationship. Right. And sometimes if an employee says, no, that's not what I said. They could be misunderstood. So I'm just saying that to say—

Right.

You're absolutely right. Whatever the approach is for the leader, that gets to be their approach. From a mental health perspective, it could be very accusatory. So you have to be careful. A person, a leader has to be careful in how they choose to use a you statement versus an I statement.

Absolutely correct. I don't disagree with you at all. You're absolutely correct. And to me, that comes down to the issue of training.

Yeah.

How do you teach people how to listen? Yeah. So, and so they're sensitive to the people they're listening to, and so that their response, what I call Type 2 listening, where the objective is to listen from the speaker's frame of reference to make sure the speaker is feeling heard, it's done appropriately. That's pure training.

I agree.

And I suggest that most leaders don't get that training and they have no clue. And so they end up stepping on themselves in exactly the way that you've described. Because they haven't ever had the training or the practice on how to appropriately listen to other people, especially people who are radically different from them in terms of life experience.

Radically different. Absolutely. Also, sometimes people who are too much of the same, because there's this idea that with relatability—

assuming, right? Great point.

And then there's these gaps that are still there. And that person may look like you and sound like you and went to the same schools that you went to. And still have a diversified experience based off of how their parents parented them, the ways they taught them about emotional intelligence and vocabulary, or even their own self-esteem and their abilities and thoughts around competence versus in confidence, right? So it, it's always better to ask questions than to make assumptions. And again, my thought is that many leaders, because of you're mentioning the lack of training, which I 100% agree with, Many leaders are afraid to ask questions because of the perception of what it means to ask a question, as opposed to the reality and the prevention that comes with asking a question.

I agree. And then the art of asking questions is another whole different area of training. I was a trial lawyer for 22 years. I know how to ask questions, right? Yeah. But what I've learned is that the more open-ended your question can be, Yeah, safer it is and the more information you get. So, Lynell, tell me what's going on.

Yeah, that's right. And wait, you're— that was a question that I'm just—

that was an example.

Yeah. And so one of the things that I love when I teach my leadership courses for counseling students is which questions are open-ended, like which words at the beginning of a question creates an open-ended question versus a closed-ended question. That's right. That closed-ended questions are really those questions of which the answer can be one word.

Yes, no, I don't know, I don't recall.

Or did you, are, is. Those, if, if we lead the question with those, uh, they will create a closed-ended question. What and how.

But even with the open-ended question, you're absolutely right. And that's what I taught when I taught trial advocacy. I taught exactly what you're talking about. The— there are open-ended words that you don't want to use. Well, you don't want to say why. Don't ask, don't— why did you do that? That's critical. Tell me what happened.

Yeah, that's right, that's right. Yeah, because why is a question— rarely do you meet people who hear a why question and they don't become defensive. And so we talk about it from a brain function and the mind function, that's when you start to see the shutdowns that happen, because now they think that they are being criticized and being judged for something that they did.

Exactly correct.

Our very best to never ask why questions unless there's a particular type of therapeutic process of Gestalt that we're using for confrontation. But as a leader, I don't ask why questions. I generally make a statement like, tell me more about your thoughts in that moment. Tell me more about what you need from me in this moment. Tell me what would have made this feel different for you or a different particular outcome. And in asking those kind of questions, it empowers them to think about what they wanted in that moment, what they were thinking in that moment, and also how to start articulating what they need.

Exactly.

In my graduate classes I teach at Pepperdine University, I teach my students, my graduate students, de-escalate. Yeah. So when you're de-escalating, you're going to start with a wide open question, what's going on? They start telling their story. You de-escalate by reflecting their emotions. When you get the 4 autonomic relaxation responses, you're done. And you say, what do we need to do to solve this problem? And that's how we do it. Yeah. One, one more. This has been a great conversation. We've gone way over. I don't care.

It's been—

what's one thing about yourself, Lynell, that we would never know about unless you revealed it to us?

Oh my goodness, I don't know, Doug. I'm such an open book. People could ask me anything and I tell them.

You must have some interest or hobby or something that you like that is— for an example, the example I like to give is I'm a jazz violinist.

Oh, let's see, is that real, Doug? Are you a jazz violinist?

I'm a jazz violinist.

How cool is that? How cool is that? Let's see, I, I used to speak a little bit of Hangul because I lived in Korea, so I spoke a little bit, just enough to be— to make it work. I have 34 plants in my house, which is funny because I have 34 staff members too, so that's a funny connection. Let's see, I don't know.

34 plants in your house is perfect.

Okay, let's stay there. And that I, I'm in a book club and I, we recently read a book about mothers and daughters and things like that. And I actually became planting became a hobby because that's one of the ways that I connected to my mom. And so the question for the book club was like, what did your mom show you that you've kept as a particular hobby? So I plant because my mom has lots of plants too.

For you. Well, this has been an amazing conversation. Thank you so much for your time today. I learned a lot. It was just really interesting listening to you, and I know my audience will love it. So thank you.

Of course, of course. I'm excited for it to go out, and let me know when you want me back. Absolutely.

Doug Noll here. Thank you so much We're listening to Listening with Leaders. If you are a successful executive leader who would like to be on this program, please visit podcast.dougnull.com/podcast. If you got something out of this interview, would you please share this episode on social media? Just do a quick screenshot with your phone and text it to a friend or post it on the socials. If you know someone that would be a great guest, tag them on the social media to let them know about the show and include the hashtag #ListeningWithLeaders. I love seeing your posts and guest suggestions. We are regularly putting out new episodes and content. To make sure you don't miss any episodes, go ahead and subscribe. Your thumbs up ratings and reviews go a long way to help promote the show and mean a lot to me and my team. Want to know more? Go to my website, DougNoll.com. DougNoll.com, or follow me on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram. That's @DouglasEnoll. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you on the next show.