1181: Jefferson Fisher | Turning Confrontation Into Connection

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Coming up next on the Jordan Harbinger Show, when you use time, you slow it down and say, I already told you I'm not going to do that.

I'm centered.

I'm grounded.

I'm balanced.

And all they did was just slow down their words.

So using time and space is a great way to be able to regulate yourself in real time in conversations.

Welcome to the show.

I'm Jordan Harbinger.

On the Jordan Harbinger Show, we decode the stories, secrets, and skills of the world's most fascinating people and turn their wisdom into practical advice that you can use to impact your own life and those around you.

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Today on the show, trial attorney Jefferson Fisher on persuasion and communication, the power of stories both in the courtroom and beyond.

Also, some very practical tips on preparing for tough conversations, controlling our emotions when dealing with difficult subject matter, and how to stand up for yourself in a way that's effective without burning bridges or being a pushover.

This and a whole lot more with Jefferson Fisher.

Here we go.

I read the book.

I liked it.

And you've got a knack for persuasion, and I think it's likely because of your ability to craft a narrative, craft a story.

And I'd love to hear how you discovered that power of stories because it sort of runs in the family, if I'm not mistaken.

Oh, yeah, it definitely runs in the family.

I grew up kind of at a weird childhood in a good way.

You can relate to this.

I can.

It was, I mean, when I got picked up from school, typically I went to my dad's law firm or I got put in a deposition and he'd throw me his yellow pad and a pin and say, all right, be quiet while I finish.

Wow.

And of course, you listen.

You just absorbed things.

I would always go to his closing arguments or other attorney friends of ours that would listen to their closing arguments.

My great-grandfather was a federal judge, so he had a lot of clerks.

And I went to more weddings.

I was rent a ring bearer for all those clerks, which are now judges.

And so I just grew up listening to a lot of courtroom stories.

Mind you, all the men in my family are attorneys.

I'm talking cousins, uncles, great uncles, everybody.

So when we all got together, what do you think we all talked about?

It was all telling.

stories.

I mean, we would spend the entire evening.

Everybody would just take a turn telling a story, whoever had one.

They jump in.

This one time I had this case and he was, and they started just talking it up.

That was the entertainment.

Nobody turned on the TV.

Nobody had any kind of cell phone out.

That was an entertainment.

And so for me, I was the first of my generation, that great-grandfather, you know, great-grandchild line.

And so to be able to really.

absorb all of that was big in that moment.

That's really what planted the seed of, oh, this is how you tell a story.

This is how you, that's how you use your timing.

It was a wonderful, but very unique upbringing.

That is super cool.

And it gave you kind of an advantage, I would imagine, getting into the law game.

But let me, this is, this might be ridiculous, but if all your cousins and uncles and stuff are judges and lawyers, have you ever found yourself on the opposite side of the aisle from somebody that you're related to?

Or, I mean, you wouldn't go up

in a courtroom with somebody you know who's a judge, right?

Because you'd have to mention that.

But opposing counsel could be your cousin.

There's nothing really wrong with that.

That could happen.

They could, but no, we have a family rule.

We're not going to do that.

Now, we refer cases to each other or certainly we've been involved in cases, but never to the standpoint of I'm not going to be the first up in that.

So we might have our firms have different cases from other attorneys that are opposing, but never me versus a cousin or cousin versus a uncle, whatever that is.

Yeah, we have a family rule on that.

I mean, it seems like that should just be a rule because there's something that just appears slightly improper if I'm going up against somebody for shooting my dog and you and his lawyer are like, hey, oh man, yeah, we should hang out.

What are you doing after this?

I'm like, no, no, you're supposed to not like that guy that much.

You're supposed to be professional.

I don't want you to like that guy too much.

He represents this guy who I hope gets hit by a garbage truck on his way out of the courthouse.

Like, I don't want it to look too chummy.

And then I'm always going to question the result.

Like, did you give up on that because you just didn't want to talk about it anymore at Thanksgiving?

I don't know, man.

I'm not sure I'm happy with this result.

You could have done better if you were less personally involved.

I mean, that might be ridiculous, but I would definitely have that in the back of my mind somewhere.

Yeah, it's a rule that we certainly stand by.

And we can't be in front of any family that are judges or anything like that.

They should certainly recuse themselves.

But there's also that perception of, from the client perspective, you don't think the attorney should get along.

They should be on your end.

The other people are the enemy.

You should hate each other.

But you know this.

That's not the way to resolution.

I've seen the quickest way and the best results when I am very good friends with the attorney on the other side.

I've had it before where we had a deposition that was like four hours away and we needed to talk to this key witness.

And the other attorney and I drove together.

We just rode together to the deposition.

asked some questions, got what we needed.

He represented his side.

I represented mine.

Then we drove back.

It's when

you can get along.

That's when you can actually say, hey, here are the bruises on my side.

What, here's what I'm seeing for your side.

And go, yeah, I think we can do that.

And you can get cases resolved and get a much better result for your client when people are actually trying to work it out rather than having this, I'm going to beat you.

You're never going to win.

Yeah.

My case or better, my facts, you know, you're going to pay me all this money.

That kind of attitude doesn't gain any kind of trust.

It's from personal experience, having been involved in lawsuits against me.

I've also sued other people just for personal and business stuff.

People ask me this all the time online.

They'll go, oh, how do I get a lawyer as a real shark?

You kind of don't always want that.

Maybe in certain cases, if you're going up against a big corporation, you want somebody who's going to be a little bit of like a sociopath on your behalf.

But if you're working, like I, I, a long time ago now, basically my business got evicted in New York.

And tenant law in New York is basically just non-existent, right?

Especially for non-residential stuff.

It's like commercial real estate the landlords always have with the upper hand.

And we had this guy who was a lawyer who was just an awful human being.

And he would do stuff like, my client wasn't served properly with the eviction notice because it was on the floor and not taped to the door.

And it's like, obviously it just fell off the door.

And I took a picture of it and sent it to him.

And he was like, aha, we can say that you weren't served, but we're not going to tell them that until we get in front of the judge.

And the other lawyer was like, come on, guys.

You're just wasting our time.

And he's like, well, you got to bet, you know, we got to make sure that you do this.

And then the next time that lawyer, he was super unethical.

He was like, tape it to a neighbor's door and then take a picture.

And I'm like, I'm not going to tamper with

this.

Like, that is illegal.

So I ended up calling opposing counsel.

And he's like, I can't talk to you because you're represented by this guy.

And I'm like, look, I'm an attorney in New York.

I'm going to waive that right.

We got to figure this out.

What can we do?

And him and I sat down over coffee at Starbucks and just went like, He's like, I think my client will give you like three weeks.

I'm like, I really need four, but I will pay for it.

I just can't pay for it for like three months.

And he's like, I bet we can work that out.

So we had it all worked out.

And then when we, I basically fired that lawyer, walked back in front of the judge and was like, I'm representing myself.

We've decided to do this.

And he's like, oh, great, good.

And the judge was like, fired that lawyer, huh?

I think that was probably wise.

Just because he was known as like this really, his last name was Worms, by the way, like first red flag.

That's even worse.

This guy, though, there were so many red flags.

I was so young and I did see them, but I thought, oh, he's on my side until I saw how he operated.

And that was just terrible.

He didn't have an office.

We would go into like a dark office building and he would just stand in the lobby and pretend that that was his office.

And then he would forget that we met there for the first time.

And he would bring us to a different one the next time, like two months later.

And I'm like, this is not your building.

The other one was also probably the dude was just a straight fraudster, but he operated like that.

And you think, oh, this guy's on my side.

It's going to be great.

He's the Sopranos lawyer who like pulls all these little loopholes.

You don't really want that, right?

That's not the way to handle this from the sound of it.

I'm going to say, like with any occupation, any job out there, there's going to be that percentage that give rest of the profession a bad name.

And it's valid.

I get it.

They're ones that do not help the reputation at all.

And what they think is that if I put on this marketing face, if I hold a flamethrower, if I hold a hammer, if I'm the, I'm going to beat the other person up for you.

They're appealing to a certain demographic or segment.

Say, I want somebody to fight for me.

I get that.

I totally relate to that.

And we do.

Everybody does.

You fight and advocate on behalf of your client.

Now, but what you want is somebody who's dogged and you want somebody who is just will continuously, tirelessly work for you, not the person who is unlikable, unworkable, can't ever reach them.

I have yet to meet somebody who has been one of these big billboard attorneys.

It's the one where they have just the, it's over the top.

John Cameron, the titch is hammered.

Exactly.

It's like, yeah, it's the explosions, all that.

I have yet to meet one of those who actually try a single case.

What they run is a business where they have other attorneys that are far less qualified.

Underneath them, they turned it into an ant farm where they just have tons of cases.

So you want people, that's true.

You want somebody who is likable.

You want somebody who can talk to the other side.

You want somebody who's going to present well to a jury, not this machismo.

I mean, and that's for both men and women.

You don't want this, I'm going to destroy you mentality.

I think it's also kind of an old school mentality.

I mean, the best cases are typically where you have another attorney on the other side and you can just talk it out.

And I find that so rare in our profession.

I know you were also a bit, aside from hearing law stories over the campfire or the barbecue for your whole life, you've learned a lot from being a big brother.

I'd love to hear more about that because I think that that does probably play into your ability to mediate and resolve conflict.

I think anybody who's a listening, who's the oldest, can relate to this.

You naturally step into this role of growing up really quickly, taking a lot of responsibility and saying, oh, wait, I am the leader of this group.

I didn't have a choice.

I have other people who I'm responsible for.

I was four or five when my sister was born, And I could remember my dad said to me down, this is your sister.

And that left a big imprint on me of, well, I have to teach her.

And then I had another brother and another brother.

And they would tell you this, that I was in some way more of a parent to them than my mom and dad.

And I know many firstborns can relate to this.

I've always had older friends than friends my own age or that were younger.

I've always been an old soul.

I've always been the one to have to stress about external factors.

I was never a wild child.

I've never been the free spirit.

It's just not my personality.

And so being able to resolve conflict and teach not only my siblings how to communicate, the way I would communicate and have conversations with each one had to change depending on their personalities.

And it's just wild how varied those personalities are.

And when there was conflict, I would have to be the one to stop it, figure it out, have a compromise.

And this will be the resolution.

We have an excellent relationship.

I love being the big brother.

And it got to where, let's say my younger brother did something and my mom would get on to him.

My mom would say, you know, Jonathan, hey, you're being ugly.

And he would argue with her.

But if I said, Jonathan, yeah, you're being kind of ugly, man.

He'd be like, oh, okay.

Like if your sibling said it, it was.

had a different level of credibility to it.

Mind you, my parents are awesome.

I have great parents who raised us very well and they were very present.

It was just the way it was.

I was kind of the mother hen.

I always was watching out for who was there.

And I've always been that in my friend group.

I've always been, we go out in college and you go out to a bar.

I'm the one being like, okay, where's Jason?

Where's Tony?

Where's I'm making sure all my guys are together.

That's always how I've been.

But that really taught me at an early age of how you handle communication, how you go, oh, no, communication is not equal across the board.

It has to change depending on the personality, and you have to tweak it that way.

This just occurred to me, and feel free to steer me down a different path here.

But if your great-grandfather was a federal judge, was he in the South?

Yes.

Do you ever read any of his decisions?

Because that would be kind of interesting.

You know, it's 100 years ago.

Well, almost, 80 years ago.

That's pretty interesting.

Yeah, I've definitely, yeah, I've definitely read some of his opinions because back then, a lot of things were just cases of new impression.

He was one of the first to take a lot of the tobacco asbestos cases.

And so that was certainly a whole new floodgate of litigation down here.

Yeah, he had to rule on a lot of segregation cases.

Yeah, I was going to ask about that.

I was going to dance around that first, but then ask about that.

Yeah, because that would have been - you could read something in a decision that makes you see your great-grandfather in a slightly different light.

No, no, still proud.

Still proud of him.

No,

he did well.

Okay.

Yeah, because it occurred to me, I was like, you have to hold the guy who was really nice to you and the guy who wrote this other opinion in like two separate buckets buckets sometimes, depending on what it's like.

I was doing a, I did an episode on IQ tests a couple of weeks ago, and there's this Supreme Court decision, and I can't remember who wrote it, but they're talking about eugenics and like basically castrating people who are too considered feeble-minded to reproduce.

And

I think he said something like, three generations of imbeciles is enough for this family.

And they're like, we're just going to make it so they can't reproduce.

And it's like, that did not age well.

You know, and that was 80 years ago, 100 years ago.

But yeah, you knew that person.

So it's different than reading a Supreme Court decision about somebody you'd never met in your life.

Right.

Tell me about Bobby LePre.

How does connecting to somebody like this, you know, give you the high ground?

Let's put an example on the table.

Yeah, Bobby LePre was the name of a guy who is not his real name.

I couldn't use it.

Right.

The fictional name of a guy.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Fictional name, but it was very close to his real name.

And he was just this mountain of a man.

He was huge.

Just I felt physically insufficient next to him.

He came in.

I was taking his deposition, and I never really know what people are going to look like before I take their deposition.

And I started asking him questions.

It was a bar fight that I was representing somebody who was involved.

That was a family friend.

And Lord bless whoever was in swinging distance of Bobby LePre because the dew is huge.

Right.

Anyway, I mean, you know, in depositions, when you're asking questions, you're just trying to get the basic lay of the land, the what happened, what happened next, where were you, how to go.

It didn't matter how many questions I asked him.

I mean, he just got more and more upset.

I could just tell he was getting worked up.

His hands were moving.

His shoulders were getting more tense.

He was moving around in his seat more.

And so I asked him, I said something to the effect of, you know, do we, we have a problem?

You okay?

And the room kind of instantly froze.

And he just, it was like a yell, but it was just the sound of this guy, this huge voice.

And he said, no, but I got something to say.

And the bailiff unsnaps his ulster.

Oh, my gosh.

And so he's in his coveralls, right?

So it has like LePre and I mean, everything.

And, you know, he said, no, but I got something to say.

You attorneys, you're kind.

You know, worst thing that happened to America.

And I'll trust you as far as I can throw you.

All you do is try to lie and confuse people.

So go on and ask your stupid questions.

The judge must have loved that.

Oh, my goodness.

Yeah.

And so I remember looking at the court reporter who her hands had just got done typing it on the little pad, and she's just

looking between him and looking between me and the other attorney.

And I look at the other attorney who had to have been like, I don't know, maybe in his 80s.

And he's like,

he didn't know what was about to go down.

He was very concerned.

He was waiting for Bobby LePre to say, present company excluded.

But it didn't happen.

Yeah, I know.

He made no beef about it.

And the thing was,

we weren't exactly adversarial, but we weren't friendly either in terms of the, where were we positioned in the case.

I brought that story in to illustrate the fact that every person you see has a surface and a depth.

And often every time that somebody says something that offends you in that moment.

So if we could take what he had just said to me and time out and I step out of that for that moment and go, okay, hey, everybody, what's what's happening to Jefferson right now?

Why don't we take a look?

And we all can know what this feels like when somebody says something that hurts your feelings or gets you upset.

What biologically happens?

And it's your emotions, your body saying, yeah, I don't feel like I like that.

And they're like, Brain, what do you think?

And Brain goes, yeah, you know what?

Now that I think about it,

I don't like that either.

And then everything in us just goes, threat.

We say, target has been identified, new threat.

Our brow furrows, our muscles get tense.

We might clench our fists, we want to say something back, we want to yell because we either want to fight the threat or we want to flee from the threat.

That's just your fight or flight.

And it happens every single one of us.

You may not throw a punch, but you say something that hurts.

You want the word to cut.

You want the word to inflict pain.

Or if you've ever had somebody just hang up on you in an argument, just click.

or they say, you know what, I'm out of here.

And they leave the room.

That's fleeing from the threat.

And every little disagreement is some type of threat to us.

And so in that moment, what I did was take advantage of what I teach every one of my clients.

And anybody who's listening can apply this to their life right now.

And that is you use time.

When you are in the face of an argument or a conflict, use time.

Time is what slows things down.

So what I teach is say, let your breath be the first word.

that you say.

Jordan, you know this with depositions and clients.

Yeah.

Oftentimes we like to just start chasing.

The client will start stepping over somebody's words.

They'll try to have a very quick response as if there can be no time and they're under the clock.

That's usually when they say something they regret.

This is smart, though, right?

So you're instead of having a knee-jerk reaction and saying the first thing that comes to mind, your first word is just you're just taking a deep breath.

Is that the idea?

Yep.

Whatever your first word would be, put a breath in its place.

And so what I teach my clients is.

I want you to use a breath before you say something.

And if somebody is bringing up something you don't like, they're saying something you don't like, rather than holding your breath, which is what we do, we kind of like tense ourselves,

just immediately start going to your breath to be able to breathe through it.

It's releasing your muscles, making sure your logical stays at the forefront rather than getting emotionally flooded.

And so that's what I did.

I used a breath.

I very much needed one in that moment because, you know, I say lots of stupid things, but what I don't do is

I don't ask stupid questions.

I wanted to just start thinking of things I could say that was like, oh, you, I don't think you know who you're talking to.

Like that's the mentality we often get to.

It's like, oh, I need to remind you who you're talking to, buddy.

Sure.

So I took a big breath and I asked him a question.

I said, something to the effect of I said, are you okay?

What's been your biggest struggle?

Your biggest personal struggle.

And Bobby LePre went on to tell me about a few weeks prior, he had to put his mother in assisted living.

facility.

His dad had died.

His brother worked in the oil fields.

He was always traveling.

And he was the only one to take care of his mom.

At the time, he was getting notices, letters, demands, statements from lawyers.

And he had no idea what they meant.

I represented everything that he ever received in the mail in that moment.

And so I told him, I said, look, I can't imagine what you're going through, but I can tell you you're a good son.

And that's when he started to cry, Jordan.

He just, he started just to bawl.

We went off the record, and I just let him get it all out.

I let him complain about every attorney, every letter of every bank, every insurance.

If anybody listening has had to go through this process, it is very intimidating because you don't know all the bank accounts that they have.

You don't know what they signed.

And if you're not somebody who finished high school like Bobby, you have no clue about anything.

You know about your job.

You know what you eat for dinner.

and you know what you like to watch for TV.

You don't really know outside of the legal sphere.

It's scary.

You got to look up words and what they mean.

I've done some pro bono work and I remember saying, you know, you're accused of robbing this store.

And he goes, it wasn't me.

They have video evidence of you breaking in and robbing the store.

It wasn't me.

And I'm like, what does this say?

And he goes, I ain't saying.

And I said, no, no, no, you can read it to me.

I'm your lawyer.

He goes, I can't read it to you.

And I was like, oh, shoot.

And you just realize, wow.

This person is so intimidated right now and they can't even read the charges against them.

So of course he's going to deny that that's him.

I mean, he might as well, right?

He doesn't even understand that I'm on his side.

He thinks it's a trick.

Yeah.

There's so many people who

didn't finish high school.

Some I've met who never went to high school.

They don't know how to read.

They certainly don't know anything about law or contracts or pieces of paper that have words on it.

That's just not what they do.

Certainly doesn't mean they should be treated any differently.

And what I, what I saw in that moment was I wasn't talking to an angry witness.

I was talking to a worried son.

He goes, I don't know what to do for my mom.

And he was put in a position of wanting to very much take care of her, love her, somebody who's always been with him that he's now responsible for and going, I don't know what to do.

We went off to record and we talked about it.

And I got on the phone immediately with an elder care attorney that I knew and got it on speakerphone, put it on the table and just said, hey, I need free five minutes of your time.

I'm sitting here with Bobby.

And we kind of laid out a plan, laid out next steps.

She walked him through a few things that he was like, okay, I have this letter and I don't know really what to do with it.

And it got to a point where he felt comfortable.

I said, okay, you ready to keep going?

He said, yeah.

And for the rest of the deposition, somehow he looked even 10 feet taller.

He just, all the weight was off of him.

He felt so much better.

He was just jovial.

He smiled.

He cracked jokes.

And at the end of the deposition, I went to go shake his hand.

And instead, he just gave me a huge, huge hug.

That's the story that I like to use to illustrate that the person you see is not always the person that you're talking to.

From the person behind the counter, from the person who's taking your order to the person that's on the other end of the phone, whoever it is, everybody's overwhelmed.

Everybody's got struggles.

Everybody has stresses that you will never know about.

And when you have the discipline to reach the person behind the mask or the face, and that just means being disciplined enough to add time into it and have this mindset of instead of having something to prove, you have something to learn.

Whenever you have that mindset, have something to learn, not something to prove in conversation.

Magical, wonderful things can happen in your life.

So, this is a deposition, not on he wasn't on the stand, which is why I was the judge come at me.

My thing about the judge and the bailiff doesn't make any sense for anybody who's actually paying attention to the details of the story.

That makes more sense now that you were able to do that.

Cause I was thinking, why would the judge allow this?

No, his deposition.

I'm still confused as to why opposing counsel wasn't like, hey, objection, why are you asking him about his mom?

He certainly could have.

Yeah.

But he was difficult for everybody, right?

I mean, he was difficult for everybody.

And it was just a friend of a friend.

Again, he was not a party to the case.

I see.

He was just a witness.

And so the attorney he had was like a friend of a friend who just he agreed to sit in with somebody and do anything bad.

Gotcha.

Yeah.

So it was a much more local thing.

It was never supposed to be combative.

Got it.

Okay.

Until it did.

Yeah.

I was going to say, if my defense attorney was like, I'm just going to let him quiz you about your home life and your mom and your brother working in the oil fields.

I'm like, you, you are fired, right?

Like, this is not relevant.

He just started talking.

Yeah.

No, that's, that's really incredible.

I love the message behind this.

I think it's really smart.

And I think a lot of people are overly concerned about winning in conversations.

And you mentioned this when you say that it's important to define goals for the conversation.

One of, I think this is the last point I wrote down actually, so we'll go backwards, I suppose.

You said, is there a part of this that I'm trying to win?

And you have to be honest with yourself, but how do we figure out if we're having a conversation and I'm trying to win something?

Because a lot of times I think my brain tricks me into thinking that I'm not doing that.

There are different types of conversations.

You can't have them in a vacuum, of course.

You have interviews.

That's one style of back and forth.

You have at-home conversations, you have at-work conversations, email, text, totally different formats.

The biggest alarm system that should go off in your head is being able to tell, am I trying to push this over a line?

Like if you have a piece of a chessboard and I have a piece of a chessboard, and let's say we're not playing chess, whatever, but there's a line in front of us.

If I'm trying to just push and go, no, you agree with me.

And you're going, no, you agree with me.

It's as small as that feeling of, no, no, I need them to say what I want them to say.

My point, whatever I'm trying, my opinion is the right one and the only one.

And anytime that thought comes into your head, there's a lot of problems that can quickly devolve.

I'm not saying that you're not right on the subject.

I'm not saying that more than likely, you're the opinion that's more accurate, more truthful, maybe.

And in fact, it might be the truth.

Even in that point in time, if you are only interested in having the conversation because they need to take your chess piece on your side, you're going to run into problems.

It's that whole has something to learn, something to prove mindset.

That means you need to be very good and strategic about how you start using questions, not to just only get more of what you want, but understand where's the not.

You have to understand where's the breaking point, where's the point of miscommunication.

That's really what you're after.

I like to say that an argument is a window into another person's struggle.

They're not wanting to say yes for some particular reason.

Maybe there's a fear that they're not expressing because their fear of being wrong or whatever it is.

That when you start to only look to win an argument, you'll lose the relationship every time.

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Now, back to Jefferson Fisher.

I like these ideas because you're right, especially if you go into a conversation and it's sort of adversarial to begin with, maybe by nature, right?

Two attorneys or you're having a tough talk with somebody at work.

It's tough to not start off with an adversarial mindset, I suppose.

And so I like defining the goals for the conversation.

The first one, the one I mentioned is there a part of this I'm trying to win is actually the last one you listen to the book, but I assume these are in no particular order.

The first one was, what's one thing I need them to understand?

So how is that different than trying to get them to accept our perspective?

Yeah, having goals in the conversation is critical because most of the time we wait until we're talking to figure out what we want to say.

We wait until we're talking to determine where we want to lead the conversation.

Is there an end?

At what point do you get off the ride?

How do they know when the ride is over?

Most of the time, it just, we just keep talking until somebody goes, oh, yeah, that's, that's crazy.

In the Midwest, we slap both of our thighs and say, well, and that's the end of the conversation.

Well, it's been good.

Yep, we'll see you.

Y'all be good.

Yeah.

And when you have this, what I like to say, the mindsets of what is something I can learn, one thing I can learn from this conversation, most of the time, the reason why we think we have to win an argument and you run into trouble is because your goals are too high for the conversation.

They have to accept your point.

They have to say you're right.

They have to totally fall on the sword.

They have to say that they're wrong.

Give you everything.

That's not real life.

You need to set your goals lower.

Set the bar for how can I better understand them?

How can I show them that I'm going to acknowledge them?

in the conversation.

How can I show them that I'm appreciative of their thoughts, whether or not I disagree with them, whether or not I think they're right or wrong?

How I can at least appreciate their input or their feedback.

What's something that I'm trying to win in the argument?

What can I do that's a much lower bar that I can hit 100% of the time that I know the conversation is going to be a productive one?

That's where you want.

Another point that I loved was, what assumptions am I making right now?

Can you give examples of this?

Because of course I'm going to every conversation with assumptions.

Why is that a bad thing?

It can be a bad thing because oftentimes when we assume what they say about it,

you're often wrong about them.

You're often wrong about assumptions because our assumptions are typically self-interested.

We assume the negative intent every time.

I don't think we've ever read somebody's text and go, look how nice they were.

We read it in the most negative tone.

Definitely.

If somebody just texts you, okay.

Do you think it's a okay?

No, it's always do you ever hear okay?

Right.

It's like, okay.

You're like, what kind of okay is that?

You ever get the thumb up and it's like, oh, yeah.

Oh, thumb up.

Well, up yours too, pal.

Yeah.

It's like, exactly.

Yeah.

Meanwhile, they're like, no, yeah, thumb up is the new middle finger.

Yeah, it's, yeah, it might as well be.

It is.

Yeah.

Passive aggressive nonsense.

Extremely passive-aggressive.

So if somebody has texted you, okay, you never read it as, look how nice.

It was just, okay.

Yeah.

No, it's okay.

Same thing with text, you know, emails, anything.

We like to assume the negative intent.

It's our default.

But oftentimes, that is the very thing that's wrong.

They were never upset, but we're going to assume that they are.

They're mad at us.

They never were.

We hear that all the time.

I thought you were mad at me.

No, I wasn't mad at you.

What are you talking about?

What did I do?

You looked at me a certain way.

Yeah.

We love to create these stories in our mind, these one-way conversations only with ourselves that present a whole lot of problems.

And we'll avoid people.

We will find ways of inventing these stories about how they don't like us, so therefore we don't like them, simply because we assumed, rather than having the actual conversation with them and making sure that what you originally thought is the reality.

One of the other points on here, the planning of conversations, what's a small step I can take to show that I heard them?

Are you talking about literally showing somebody that you're listening or are you talking about something a little deeper than that?

No, it's the exact point of showing them that I heard them.

Most of the time, what you'll feel from the other person is they'll say, I feel like you're not listening to me.

And you're like, what do you want me to do?

I'm listening.

It's because they need something more than just you having a blank face on.

Now, there are people that have active listening, and that's where they go, uh-huh.

Mm-hmm.

Oh, right.

And that can be annoying.

Yeah, I'm doing it right now.

No, no, but it's like you can do it in a genuine way.

Sure.

But if you know exactly what I'm talking about, the people who do it after every sentence, like, that's right.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That can grind on you.

Sure.

And a lot lot of the times it's not really genuine.

They're not really listening, but it's using questions to show them that you're listening.

Let's put it in a very simple, harmless, innocent scenario.

Somebody talks to you at work and they say something about their weekend or something they're excited about.

And you're like, hey, I just started my own car wash business.

And you go, oh, yeah, you're, oh, first business.

I remember my first business.

You know, I'm now my third business.

I just took it to about 100 million in revenue for the year.

And they just start stomping on other people's spotlight.

And it could be the most harmless of thing.

They share something they're excited about.

And instead, we go, I'm more important and I'm cooler.

Let me

start talking about me.

And we just leave them in the dust.

Maybe it's something about their holiday, whatever they did.

If there's one thing that you want to do to make somebody feel heard is to ask one question before you give your response.

They're not the same thing.

If somebody tells you something they're they're excited about, ask one question.

It can be as simple as, what was your favorite part?

What else happened?

What did you like most about it?

Get them to say one more thing about it.

And that makes them feel like, hey, what I just said has value.

What I said meant something.

What I said is something you liked.

And then once they've responded to that, you can even ask, you mind if I share what happened with me the other day or what happened the other day?

And they will gladly do it.

So you never step on their spotlight by just asking one little question that provides all the value to them.

Last but not least, how can I show gratitude for being able to talk to them?

What's a good way to do that?

Why is that important?

Well, let's put it in context of kids, and then we can relate that to adults.

You having young kids, me having young kids, I would be terrified at the idea, Jordan, of later on in life when they make really big mistakes, they're like 16, 17.

And the first thought they have is, I can't tell dad.

I don't want to tell dad.

That would terrify me.

And so that means when I'm talking to my kids now, when they've messed up, if I have this big explosion of what's wrong with you, and just totally making them cower down, it's showing them, ingraining a pattern of when I do things that are a mistake, I am not safe here.

I cannot go to this person.

And when you can simply show gratitude for the chance to talk with them, you are rewarding that behavior in some sense.

So this happened with my my son.

Not too long ago, he came into the living room and he had his hand over his shirt.

This is a red polo shirt, and he had two hands over it, and he was just looking really like he was in the doghouse about something.

He goes, Dad, I did something bad.

I said, What happened, man?

And he showed me, and it was just a big hole.

It's just a hole, just a cut hole.

I said, What happened?

He goes, I cut it.

I said, Why'd you do that?

He goes, I just wanted to see if it would cut.

And I said, relatable.

Yeah, I said, oh, well, what did we, what did we learn?

He said, it definitely cuts.

Yeah.

You're right.

I said, well, hey, thank you for coming to me with this.

I think we should do that again, right?

Yeah, no, no, we're not going to do that again.

It definitely cuts.

But it's that.

Thank you for coming to me with this.

I appreciate you coming to me.

Thank you for talking to me about this.

So let's put it at work.

We're all grown up.

Same Same thing.

Somebody in the office has made a mistake and they're coming to you.

If you have this big overreaction where you're flipping papers and flipping the table and have, they know, I don't want to come to this person.

This is not a safe space.

Doesn't detract away from the bad news.

You'll address that.

Right now you need to show them control.

Right now, you need to show them leadership.

You need to show them a safe space.

And if you were able to just say, I'm sure I'm the last person you want to tell this to, it really means a lot to me.

It speaks really well of that you came and told me face to face.

Or thank you for coming to me with this.

Or I appreciate the fact that you were transparent enough to tell me.

Then address it, resolve the issue, but acknowledging the moment to be grateful for the chance to have that conversation, that's what connection is all about.

Yeah, I like that because it builds the level of trust where somebody can come to you with something more severe, especially with kids.

I guess I'm only thinking about this in a parenting context, but I want my son to come to me when he breaks something.

Like this morning, he's like, I peed on the floor a little i'm like what happened i said did you do it on purpose he's like no what happens man i let go of my you know let go he let go the pressure took over and i was like okay thanks for telling me where who doesn't you know who does who doesn't who doesn't have that problem i mean i can relate you know i get it and he's like it's a little bit on the wall and a little bit on the toilet i'm like all right survivable no problem The bathroom is essentially entirely designed to be able to withstand some level of wetness, urine, whatever.

So we're good.

I just wanted to make sure it wasn't in any electronics.

So we're fine.

Right.

And, you know, it's like, all right, good.

So I want him to be able to do that because I want him to also be able to go in 10 years, dad, everyone's drunk and so am I.

And I don't know how to get home because I have the car, but I don't want to drive home.

You know, like, that's what I'm trying to avoid.

And it's that moment.

It's the giving the little pound of saying, hey, thanks for telling me.

That's how you create the pattern of later on, they will share that stuff.

And again, you model that same thing.

When I mess up, I think crucial for especially kids to hear the parent, especially the dad say, hey, you know what?

I didn't say that too kind, did I?

Let me say that again.

Or, you know what, I shouldn't have said that.

I'm sorry, forgive me.

Like to have them hear you apologize and to have that conversation with them too.

That's all about building good communicators.

Man, I would love my kids, especially my son.

My daughter's a great communicator already at age three, but my son, it's not as intuitive for him.

He's smart.

He can do it.

He just either resists it or it's not in his, maybe not quite second nature for him just yet.

But yeah, building that instinct in them and building that skill set in them, I think is top priority.

Cause I really see that people who do this well just get further in life.

It doesn't matter if they're an attorney or a doctor.

It's just one of these life skills where if you got a black belt in communication, almost everything in your life is easier.

Oh, yeah.

You have such an advantage.

You really do.

One thing that we do here at the house, my son's seven, if he disagrees with me, I get him to tell me why he disagrees rather than just saying, hey, no, the answer is no.

Hey, you hear me?

I'm the parent.

I'm the dad.

Then that's the end of it.

My mom would do that a lot.

I'd say, why?

She's because I said so.

Yeah, I hated that.

Oh, I always hated that.

I hated it because it just left this unresolved.

So I have been very conscious to never say, because I said so.

It was a discussion.

And what always helped was using because and forcing the word because both on me and on him instead of because I said so.

It's.

because if you do this or because i care or because i love you and this makes me nervous or whatever it is And so when he disagrees with something, I'll say, all right, tell me why.

And he'll start, I'll say, no, and then he'll keep going.

I'll say, because, and that helps kind of lead the conversation.

This was probably two weeks ago, Jordan.

He, I needed him to go upstairs and get ready for bed.

He had other thoughts on that.

And so it got to a point where I said, are you arguing with me?

And he summoned himself and goes,

yes, sir.

Yes, I am.

And I was like, give me some, man.

All right.

Okay.

Let's do this.

Great.

Let's talk about it as we go get ready for

the music.

Yeah, exactly.

It's exactly what we did.

But yeah, having that kind of, that's how you start to really ingrain in the, let's talk, get out.

It's not, I'm just going to stamp, put a lid on it because I don't have the emotional capacity or intelligence to talk with you about this person to person.

I love that.

I'm teaching my kid to negotiate.

Actually, I think he's teaching me how to negotiate, but I let him do it.

That's funny.

Because he'll say, I don't want to go to bed.

I'll say, why not?

I'm watching iPad.

Okay, but you can watch iPad anytime.

Yeah, but I like this one.

What, the video you're watching?

Yes.

How much longer is it?

I push the button.

He's like, 2-0-5-1.

I'm like, all right, that's too long.

What if I let you watch until it says 10-0?

And he's like, what if you let me watch until it says 15-0?

I'm like, well,

you got a deal.

Because that's actually like a video.

But whatever.

And

he'll figure out eventually what my trick there is and I'll have to give, but it's fine because I'm, I would love it if he learned how to negotiate just about everything.

There's rarely an instance in which that extra five minutes is really going to make a difference for his sleep quality.

And plus I just anchor to a lower, you know, I say, no more minutes.

And he goes, five more.

And I go, two more.

All right.

You have a deal.

You know, I love this kind of thing.

And I think my parents, they just never would have stood for that.

They would have just been like, no, this is not a negotiation.

And I look back on that and I go, what a missed opportunity to teach me how to negotiate, which is something I had to learn as an adult.

Exactly.

Yeah.

Really, it is.

To have that mindset of the house, the home, this is the practice ground.

Yeah.

This is the education of where I'm going to teach you how to have arguments, how to have difficult conversations, how to negotiate.

Tell me why you want this.

Not just because you want juice, because you want juice.

Advocate your point.

And why not create that safe environment?

My son is very much the mini-me.

I mean, he's just a replica.

And my daughter is a replica of my wife.

And it's just hilarious.

There are differences.

This was Sunday, this past Sunday, after church, we were eating at a little Italian place where they have bread, and he's just eating more than he needed.

And I looked over him and he's just covered in crumbs.

And he's eating on like the crust of one.

Yeah.

I said, hey, buddy, how much bread have you eaten?

And this is just my son, if this gives you any indication.

He kind of leaned over and he goes, how much you want to know about?

Like, that was,

I was like, how did you come up with that?

Yeah, that's a little too charming.

You need to turn it down over there, pal.

Exactly.

I was like, okay, well, you've done enough.

I'm going to take this away from you.

But yeah, how you can teach your kids to communicate.

And it's a great way to reflect on how each one of us, most likely how you communicate now is a product of how you were raised.

How if your parents had conflict and arguments out in front of you.

That affects how you have those kind of conversations now.

If you were always felt like you couldn't say things versus today, I mean, it's all part of that circle.

It reminds me of one of my first criminal defense clients.

I said something like, how much did you have to drink that night?

He goes, how much should I have had to drink that night?

And I'm like, no, no, no, I'm not telling you what story to tell.

You tell me the truth part.

And then we try to figure out how to sandwich that into a palatable narrative that's going to get you probation here, pal, because you're not keeping your driver's license, that's for damn sure.

That's funny.

It's funny how much sometimes our kids probably have in common with our clients.

We're just big kids, man.

We're just grown kids.

It's true.

That's all we are.

And now it's time for me to take a strategic pause and give you a chance to support the sponsors that make this show possible.

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Now for the rest of my conversation with Jefferson Fisher.

You've got some wisdom about arguments.

I'm not talking about the legal variety.

I'm talking about the domestic variety, which are much more charged and can actually be a lot more expensive if you do it incorrectly.

But you split arguments into different phases, the ignition phase and the cooling phase.

I'd love to hear about what's going on in the brain and the body.

during these phases and what we should be aware of.

Yeah, any time you're in conversation, before it leads to an argument, you can sense it.

It's the sixth ascents that we have where somebody said something the wrong way.

You know, I don't really think I like their tone.

I don't think I liked how they said that.

They had a word in that friction builds and then there's heat.

And now it's a heated argument.

And then somebody goes a little bit further and now you're just in full, what I call ignition mode, where you're at a level 10.

You are now yelling.

You are now saying things.

I mean, your pupils dilate.

You can focus.

That's where you can focus on something and everything else kind of fades in the background.

Like culture mode on your iPhone.

Yeah, exactly.

Your muscles get tense.

You can feel it.

Like for me, it's my jaw behind my ears.

You hold your breath often.

That's why a lot of the times you yell, you say loud things because you don't, you're not breathing.

So you're, it has nowhere else to put the air except to force it out like a volcano.

Or some people start to shake or some people start to cry or get tear up up because they're feeling those high levels.

And then there's what I call like the recovery mode.

So you, you have the ignition side of things where everything is ramping up.

And then on the other side of it, it's usually there's a line right in between it.

I call it the line of going too far, where somebody said something that was just, it was too much.

They said the one thing that was going to, really hurt you.

They said something like, you're just like your mom or your dad or whatever.

And they knew that they said the one thing that's going to deflate you.

Yeah.

And then you have the whole opposite side of the phase where you're now using a lower tone.

Now it sounds like, I shouldn't have said that.

No, that's not what I meant to say.

What I meant to say was you're having all of this real conversation now that it's all cooled down.

So you have your ignition phase, your cooling phase.

On the cooling phase, it's all starting to come down again.

Sometimes that's when we people start to tear up or they get really worked up because it was such a high tension.

Now they're having a big release from their body.

That's when we say, a lot of times we apologize or we think, why did I say that?

There's plenty of times where we get at the end of an argument and we're thinking, how did we even get to this topic?

Like we started talking about how you fold the socks and now we're talking about what your dad said to me at a graduation dinner eight years ago.

It's because at the cooling phase, our analytical side starts to come up because now we've given it time.

We've given it time for it to catch up.

Before, ignition is very fast.

It sounds like we want to skip to the cooling phase.

You got it.

Yeah.

You got it.

How do we do that?

Using your breath.

So I know it's a repeat here, but it's using pauses.

It's the power of the pause.

And pauses in conversation and especially in arguments allow it to feel like you are breathing underwater.

Like you're always feeling like you never get yourself flooded.

You never get to that ignition mode because you are using the time to regulate.

Like if somebody's saying something that really gets you worked up and you say, I want to talk about this, I'm going to be better prepared for this conversation in about an hour from now.

They're not going to tell you no.

Nobody says, no, we need to have this conversation right now.

If they hear it's going to be a better outcome or a better conversation, they'll wait.

Even if you were to say, look, I can tell I'm not ready for this conversation.

When you're able to voice how you feel out loud, it gives you control over that feeling.

That's why it's say it with control.

When I can say, I can tell I'm getting defensive.

I can tell I'm upset.

I can tell I don't like that.

I can tell I'm not ready for this conversation.

When you claim it, you control it because it's just giving you a much better self-awareness of what you're feeling rather than acting on that defensiveness.

There's one thing of me acting defensive and saying, that's not true.

Wait, that's not what I said.

What are you kidding?

Versus me saying, I can tell I'm getting defensive.

It's like me just writing it down and putting it on a piece of paper and now i have a lot better control of what that feeling is rather than becoming that feeling and it's just a way of being able to have more control over yourself in that conversation to where you never have to feel that that big ignition phase like people who are emotionally immature love the ignition phase that's where they live the drama phase yeah they love the drama they'll have a fit in the middle of a grocery store they don't care who's watching in fact if there are people watching the more the better you know the people on Facebook, there are like, some people, you never want to trust.

You know, like, these are like, what's happening?

What's going on?

They want people to go, well, I'll tell you later.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

They want that drama.

They don't have emotional maturity.

They want to have an argument right then, right there in front of everybody.

And they love the ignition mode because that's most likely what they were raised in.

And that phase is a very exhausting, exhausting mentality, exhausting phase.

Your emotional intelligence, you never have to even get there.

You always find yourself even kill and even balanced, and you always stay in control.

It's one of those tricks that I wish I had learned, I don't know, 20 years ago, maybe 30 years ago.

There's some times where I definitely stayed in the ignition phase for a while or let myself get sort of stuck in there.

And I remember even early relationships I had in my 20s, it was like,

I found myself in the ignition phase with one girl particularly over and over and over again.

And I remember one time I was like, why do we always argue like this?

And this is the last night I saw her.

She goes, oh, you love it.

I was like, what are you talking about?

She goes, you love the drama.

And I was like, oh, crap, you think I enjoy this?

This is a huge problem because that means that you probably enjoy it.

You think that this is a thing we're going to do.

I am not interested in continuing to do this.

So I broke up with her on the spot and I never saw her again.

And I think that she was genuinely surprised because a lot of the people in her life, that's how their life was, right?

It was just ignition phase.

She felt loved when people around her were, I don't know, melting down and yelling.

And I was like, I cannot be a part of whatever dynamic you have.

A lot of times it's how they were raised.

I mean, the people who came from families that were extremely volatile and toxic and the people that you hear it as, I want you to argue with me.

I need you to argue with me.

They want to feel the drama so that they know you care.

And that's how they experience the love.

Like to know that you're actually invested as if.

they are crying and you're yelling and now we actually have some kind of connection.

And it's, that's just a very skewed way to look at it.

The people that don't have the emotional bandwidth to have these kind of conversations, it's a very different struggle.

The ignition phase sounds like, I already told you, I'm not going to do that.

They're yelling.

It's very fast-paced.

It's out of fear.

The cooling phase that says,

I'm always in control, is when you use time, you slow it down and say, I already.

told you I'm not going to do that.

Which one of those voices, it's the same thing.

They said the same thing.

Which one sounds more in control?

Which one sounds like they're grasping for control?

Which one sounds like, you know what, I never gave up any control.

I've always been in this spot.

I'm centered.

I'm grounded.

I'm balanced.

And all they did was just slow down their words.

So using time and space is a great way to be able to regulate yourself in real time in conversations.

You mentioned pauses earlier.

You have another pretty smart use of the long and short pause.

I'd love to go over this skill because I think it's quite interesting, especially the example of the truck driver you had on the stand.

Can you tell me about that?

Oh, yeah.

You have different types all the time of pauses.

And I define with short pauses, which is one to three seconds, and long pauses, which are more like five to seven, five to nine seconds.

One time I had a truck driver, it was a deposition, and he was accused of texting while driving.

Mind you, he didn't know that I already had his cell phone records.

His attorney should have prepared him for this.

There are certain attorneys that have no idea about the cases.

They're just a warm body in the room.

And I told him, I said, You were texting while you were driving at the time of the accident, weren't you?

He said, No.

I said, You text when you drive?

No, never.

I never do that.

Like, bang, bang, bing.

That's the dead giveaway.

Anytime somebody says always or never, it's rarely the case.

And so I gave it a long pause in about five to eight seconds, as if, like, just let his words settle for a second so that he could hear them back.

And before I said anything, he goes, I say never.

I don't when I'm working.

I wouldn't do that when I'm working.

And instead of responding, I waited another five to seven seconds.

And at this point in time, you can tell he's incredibly uneasy.

Whenever you give a liar a lot of silence, it's the worst thing they could ever hear.

Nobody's buying what they're selling.

And that makes them really nervous.

So they start to have conversations in their head for you.

They'll just start to unravel.

So I just gave another five to eight seconds of nothing.

Right about that time, they start to ask questions of you.

Like, well, I mean,

why would you think I would be texting?

As if he needs to hear my narrative so that he can start to fix his.

I didn't even have the documents on the table.

Instead, I had them in my bag.

I just realized I didn't have them in front of me, but I put my hand on the stack of papers as if they were the records.

And I said, you were texting while you were driving that day.

He goes, I mean,

I mean, and before I even finished, I said, if you were texting while you were driving, it's okay.

We'll talk about it.

He goes, yeah, I think I was.

I was texting while I was driving.

Oh, man.

I was texting while I was driving that day.

So.

What's the takeaway?

If you're a liar, keep quiet.

That's the takeaway.

Exactly.

There you go.

That's one way of putting it.

When you're dealing with liars, using silence to your advantage is a huge impact because they can't take it.

They want the immediate reaction.

They want that ignition mode because the more you talk about and the more you fight about it, in some sense, the more it feels like it existed.

If there's smoke, there's fire.

So they just want to make a lot of smoke to be like, all right, obviously we've been arguing about it for 30 minutes.

Of course it happened.

And when you can even give a whole lot of silence in that moment, you're going to find that they'll start walking their way back.

I really like that one.

I think somebody who's a really good liar might not bite on that, but I think most people, the average lay liar, would definitely fall into that.

I mean, I know if I'm not entirely confident about what I'm saying and somebody just doesn't say anything, I'm probably going to try and fill that silence with some type of way to try and convince them that I'm not full of shit.

Yeah.

That's the tell.

It's definitely the tell.

There's other times I've used that feels off.

I'll say that.

Something about that feels off.

Oh, what?

It feels off.

People who tell the truth are like, that's okay.

Yeah.

It is what it is.

The truth doesn't need an excuse.

Truth doesn't have to have some other explanation.

It is what, if you don't believe me, okay.

You don't got to believe me.

But even giving them a little rope of using that line of, if you haven't, or you did, it's okay.

Give them a little bit of an opening.

Most of the time they'll take it.

Even with my daughter.

Did you brush your teeth?

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

I brushed my teeth.

Look at me.

Did you brush your teeth?

Yes.

Yes.

I brushed my teeth.

If you didn't brush your teeth, it's okay.

You can go do it.

I need to go check.

I'm going to go check if I did.

Yeah,

that's how I know.

She doesn't go.

I got to go check and see if I'm completely exactly.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I need to go check my toothbrush.

Let me see if it's wet because I don't remember now.

Right, right.

Give them a little bit of opening and they'll go, whew, dog's a bullet there.

Something that you mentioned in the book, this is a totally separate point, but you mentioned that making eye contact with somebody while you're telling them something or explaining something, making eye contact the whole time is weird and intense, but making no eye contact is even worse.

So what is the appropriate amount of eye contact?

And when do we make it?

I wouldn't say there's any appropriate amount because then it feels like a calculation.

Right.

Instead, what I would recommend is that whenever you're talking to somebody, it's fine if you can look off or however you want.

You could be looking down.

You can be looking to the side.

As long as you finish your sentence looking at them, they'll feel like you were talking eye to eye the whole time.

I like that.

If somebody just has deadlock eye contact with you, it's makes you nervous.

Then you start kind of looking around like, like, I don't want to look at you, man.

But if you can just start talking, as long as you finish what you said at the very end, you can look wherever you want, but when you just bring it right back to their eyeballs at the very end of your sentence, they will feel like you spoke to them eye to eye the whole time.

I love that.

I needed that for the last 30 years as well.

I mean, during the show, it's easy enough because I have my notes.

I go back to my notes and whatnot, and people understand that.

But for a solid amount of decades, I was just like, I don't want to stare at this person, but I also don't want to keep staring at the floor.

Now I feel nervous about looking back at them in the floor.

This is just weird.

Now I'm being weird.

What were we talking about again?

I mean, that was my, that was every conversation for 20 years.

That's funny.

I would love to hear about how you recommend somebody stand up for yourself.

I'm talking about deflecting insults and bullying because the world is just full of people that want to make us insecure, prop themselves up temporarily.

And you made a really good point in the book, which is that they need your response to get dopamine because they're doing this for the dopamine in many cases.

Can you expand on this?

Because I thought that was pretty insightful.

Yeah, it's this idea that when somebody says something that is dismissive or disrespectful or belittling in some way, they are saying it to get something from you, and that is the dopamine.

They want the feel-good feeling.

They want to feel good by seeing your pain because they're already in pain.

Why not take it from you?

Whenever that happens, our default is typically to throw it right back.

Me, what about you?

You call me a name, I'm going to call a worse name.

And it's just feeding exactly what they want.

They take delight in getting that control out of you.

Instead, what I want you to do is number one, ask them to repeat it.

Whatever they said that was belittling, ask them to repeat it.

I need you to say that again.

I didn't catch all that.

Can you repeat that for me?

Oftentimes, they can't do it.

They don't want to do it.

Why?

Because they already threw their shot.

It's not going to feel as as good now.

You ruined the surprise.

You ruined the feeling.

Now it's not as fun.

Oh, man, you ruined the joke.

Whenever that happens, they don't want to repeat it.

Can you imagine saying something ugly and then going, can you repeat that?

And you go, now I got to say it again.

I said your face looks like a monkey's ass.

Yeah, and now I have to say it again.

It's like, oh, but it was funnier the first time, right?

Remember?

Like the timing's not right to get the laugh.

And it's like, you just

look like an a-hole.

Everyone's paying attention now, not just the person you were saying it to, right?

Yeah.

And now they're the ones that look terrible because they're having to like double down on it.

Now, if they double down on it, which most of the time they won't, most of the time they'll say, I mean, well, and they'll adjust it.

What I meant to say was, or I guess they'll adjust it.

Two is to ask questions of intent.

Meaning you're going to be asking questions of what they intended with what they said.

It sounds something like, how do you feel when you say that to me?

Or did you mean for that to sound rude?

Did you mean for that to sound disrespectful?

Or what did you want me to say to that?

Anytime you are asking questions about the intent, did you mean for that to be like that?

It makes them feel even more stupid because if you say, like, did you mean that to be disrespectful?

Now they have to say,

yeah,

I did.

As if like, oh, so there's that.

Notice how we we have not yet even responded to what they said.

We haven't thrown anything back.

There's been nothing of substance.

We've asked them really two questions in a row without having to have any substantive answer.

And three, whatever they said, you just let it have silence or even give it like a, oh, okay.

Just do nothing with it because now they will feel like an absolute idiot.

If they say something ugly, you say, say that again, and then they have to double down on that.

And you say, how do you feel when you say that to me?

What are they going to say?

I feel good.

I feel empowered.

They're not going to say that.

They're going to adjust off it.

They're going to realize, hey, this is not fun.

Get out of it.

This was not how this was supposed to go.

Let's say they double down on it.

Say, Jefferson, what if they do double down?

What if I say, did you mean for that to be rude?

And they say, yes.

Just leave it.

Don't even acknowledge it.

If anything, say thank you because you're thanking them for just showing.

you that they're a really terrible person and somebody you want to have in your life exactly who's going to reward that They're not going to, don't carry that.

Don't carry that.

Whenever you respond to something like that, that's you holding on to it.

That kind of thing, they're going to remember it and you won't.

No, I love that.

That's what you want.

I love that.

You had another good tactic or insight with these toxic apologies, and I'd love to hear more about that as well.

First of all, let me see if I know what this is.

Is that when somebody gives you that weird conditional apology where they're like, I'm sorry that you were offended by my jokes?

Instead of like, I'm sorry that I acted like a borish a-hole at your barbecue.

It's like, I'm sorry if you were offended by my jokes.

Not a real apology.

Is that what you're talking about?

Exactly.

Yeah.

These are what I call bad apologies.

I'm sorry if you can't take a joke, or I'm sorry that I've just been so busy, or I'm sorry if that hurt your feelings or something.

There's the ifs, or I'm sorry that you.

There's a lot of those.

Whenever they say, I'm sorry that you, that's not an apology.

at all.

It needs to be, I'm sorry that I.

Yeah.

That's how you know they're taking accountability for what they said.

Everybody knows a bad apology.

I'm sorry that you feel that way.

That's probably the number one culprit.

I'm sorry you feel that way.

Whenever somebody says that kind of thing to you, what do you do when somebody says that?

You know it's not an apology, but you can't just let it lie there.

What I want you to say is, don't apologize for my feelings.

Apologize for what you've said.

That's what they're doing.

I'm sorry you feel that way.

Don't apologize for my feelings.

I need you to apologize for what you did.

Those feelings, I got those.

Those are my feelings.

I'll take care of them.

Thank you.

You need to take accountability for what you actually did.

Those conditional type things where it's like, I'm sorry if.

I'm sorry if you were upset by that.

What I like to typically say is, it's not if, it's that.

It's like an instruction.

I'm teaching them how to apologize.

And I'm only because I can tell they need help instead of I'm sorry if.

Or you have people that are, look, I'm sorry.

I've just been so stressed out.

I'm so sorry.

I've just been so overwhelmed.

I like to respond with, you don't need to apologize for what your stress has done to you.

You do need to apologize for what it's done to me.

Or even if it's like, you don't need to apologize for your stress, you need to apologize for what you said.

Because what they're trying to do is push it off of, look, I behave that way because it's my stress.

My stress made me do it.

I'm saying, hey, look, you don't need to apologize for your stress or whatever it is.

I'm pulling them back to center ground.

I'm telling them, you need to apologize for what you've said.

Why should we care?

Isn't it their problem that they can't take accountability for something?

Like, okay, yeah, if it's our spouse or our kid, we want them to learn this lesson.

But if it's, if it's someone else, why do we care?

How is it our problem that they can't apologize properly, right?

That it's like their own disability, their own failure, their own shortcoming.

Depends who you're talking to.

If it's a stranger, yeah, sure, whatever.

If it's your kid, if it's your spouse, if it's somebody you work with, that needs to be on the chopping board.

You need to be able to hammer that out.

It matters because you get to decide who you talk to.

You get to decide who's in your life.

And if you are allowing people in your circle, in your camp, whatever it is, to apologize or let's say give things that are disguised as apologies when they're really passive aggressive marks, when they're really trying to get you to apologize in some way, have you ever had somebody go, look, I'm sorry that I'm such a bad friend.

Oh, yeah.

It's an invitation.

for you to go, oh, you're not a bad friend.

Yes, I am.

You always do.

For them to play the victim card again.

You say, what does it matter?

It matters because you get to control who you you talk to in your life.

If it's a stranger and you don't really care, okay, go for it.

I've also done, when somebody has some kind of snarky apology like that, it's like, okay, that's fine as long as you know that's not an apology.

That's just me saying, look, hey, you say what you want to say.

Just know that's, that's not an apology.

Because I know it isn't.

It's that kind of mindset that you need to have.

But yeah, it's what's it matter if they're never going to admit it.

I agree.

It just depends how close you want to keep them.

Yeah, man.

I think it's probably one of those pick your battles things.

I would also imagine that sometimes after like an hour, that person comes back and goes, you know what?

You're right.

Sorry that I did that.

Like, at least in my life, a lot of the times people just need time.

Cause at first they're defensive.

They get really heated.

They try the justification.

They try the fake apology.

They're not ready for the full thing.

And then like an hour later, they're like, oh, no, I'm wrong.

And then they come back.

You just accept it then, right?

You can, yeah.

Oftentimes, I've had it where there's some kind of tension.

And I'll say this, I'll say, I don't know what this is, but it isn't about me.

If I know it's a big overreaction, there's something else going on.

They're having a conversation in their head.

I wasn't invited to.

Something else is happening.

It wasn't me not screwing in the peanut butter all the way.

Something else is going on.

I don't know what this is right now, but I know it's not about me.

Pause, break.

Four hours later, they will say, hey, I'm sorry about that.

Yeah.

You see how time has now allowed them to regulate and go, okay, what's the logical side?

So what really happened?

It wasn't the peanut butter.

It was X, Y, and Z.

Whenever you're given that space and distance and patience and discipline to be able to allow those things to happen, yeah, you're going to have a much better conversation.

What do we do when people interrupt?

Because I think all of us have or have had people in our lives that interrupt us.

And I'm not talking about like an excited kid or our neurodivergent colleague who can't not do it because they're super ADHD and they get excited about discussions of their whatever.

I'm not talking about that.

That's nothing personal.

You don't want to shut those people down too hard.

It's like literally a disability for them.

But for most people who interrupt, they're just not as interested in hearing you talk as they are in hearing themselves talk.

Yeah, for sure.

Yeah.

When somebody interrupts you, what I recommend is number one, you let them interrupt the first time.

Reason being is because now they could be neurodivergent or have ADHD and they can't help it.

You're giving that grace to them.

Whether they're a child and they need to get it out of their...

mouth or there's somebody that is neurodivergent and they need to get out of their mouth.

The point is, they weren't going to to listen to you anyway, whoever it is.

If they're interrupting you, they weren't listening to you anyway.

They were already just planning what they were going to say.

And they have to say it so bad that they need to stop your speaking so they get their train of thought out.

So number one, let them get it all out first.

Now, once they get it all out, they're going to stop.

At some point, they're going to stop.

Whenever they stop, I want you to immediately pick up.

right where you left off.

Don't even acknowledge anything of what they have said.

We'll do that later.

Right now, you need to just go back as if you just pressed the pause button on what you were talking about earlier and just keep on talking.

Because right then, you're sending the message of, hey, you interrupted me, and you're going to keep on going.

Two, if they interrupt again, that's when you need to intervene.

See, now you've earned it when they've interrupted the second time.

The first time, there are a lot of these people that feel like as soon as somebody interrupts them, they got to go, excuse me, I was talking.

Where does everybody go?

They're like, oh, oh,

whoa, oh, somebody's got to talk.

You haven't earned that right yet.

When somebody goes, excuse me, was the end of my sentence, the beginning of yours, or whatever that dumb phrase is.

I don't even know, but yeah, that sounds like it.

Yeah, it's one of those.

They try and come up with some like cutesy phrase.

It always backfires because it says, I am grasping for control.

Right.

I need the attention so bad that I've got to have an emotional reaction.

Everybody on me.

No, I am talking.

It's me, me, me.

I need control.

When you just pause, let them get it out, and you keep talking, you go, ah, that control never left me.

I'm actually going to keep talking now so when they if they interrupt again now you've earned it you will say I can't hear you when you interrupt me ideally you want to use their name name catches people's attention so if you were talking and you interrupted me the second time I'd say hey Jordan and you're gonna stop because it's your name everybody loves their name I'm gonna say I can't hear you man when you interrupt me and what's gonna happen is they'll say oh oh I'm sorry most of the time they'll apologize like oh yeah yeah go ahead because now you've kind of called it out now you've earned it and you're doing it in a sense of kindness then they'll let you keep talking.

Now, if they apologize again, I'd say number three, then you need to be a little bit more forceful.

This is when you would say something like, I want to make sure,

are we having a conversation right now?

Or you just need me to, you just need me to listen.

Here, I'm like, I'm, let me go back to make sure that we're on the same page here.

Is this a conversation or is this a one-way street here?

That's my cue of like, hey, you're not letting me talk.

Or if I need to be a little bit more forceful of, I will listen to you when I'm finished.

You're telling them, this is what's going to happen first, and this is what's going to happen second.

That's how I like to handle interruptions.

Yeah, I love that.

Man, my face and ears would be burning if somebody said that to me, right?

I'd just be like, turn beet red.

That would be the worst.

I would learn my lesson, I think, if somebody used that on me.

You do it in a nice way.

Yeah, of course.

The kinder you are, the more character you show, really.

Yeah, and that makes sense.

Jefferson, this conversation has been a total waste of time.

No, really.

I enjoyed this a lot, man.

I love the practical stuff.

Yeah, me too.

It's very useful when people can come away with stuff to chew on.

And right now, everyone's like, oh, I can't wait till somebody interrupts me after this.

They're ready to fire.

And yeah, you come across really genuine, man.

Not easy all the time for us lawyers every day on a day-to-day basis.

We should do another one of these at some point, ideally in person, because I know you've got some stories that aren't fit to print from your courtrooms, and I want to hear those.

Yeah, you're in L.A., right?

I'm in Northern California, but I get to L.A.

all the time.

So definitely keep me posted.

Okay, awesome.

Yeah.

Yeah, we'll make it happen, man.

Thank you so much for having me.

I'm honored.

Yeah, thank you.

What if the real gender gap no one's talking about is the one where men are falling way behind?

I sit down with Richard Reeves to unpack why guys are struggling.

What's happening with our guys now, so many of our young men, where they're just not feeling that same level of motivation and aspiration as young women, right?

We don't want to go back to a world where women were discouraged from doing it.

Of course not.

But we should worry when we see gender gaps like that, two to one.

We should at least be asking the question, like, why is that happening?

Is that good?

But the trouble is, back to where we started.

Like, so many people just don't even want to confront the fact that this could be an area where we should be more worried about men than women.

They just can't do that because they think politically that's not acceptable.

And that's just got us into a horrible position.

Too many people, even now, struggle to admit that men are having problems because they think men are the problem.

And until we get past that, we're just going to keep losing these men.

There's an old traditional saying, which is women need to hear that they're loved, and men need to hear that they're respected.

I'm going to say there's a grain of truth to that.

I do not want to stereotype.

I do not want to say it's true of everybody.

And as a society, that's how we have to think about this.

It's and, not all.

And right now, too much of our politics, especially around gender, is being framed as all, pick a side, pink or blue.

Insane.

And it's got us to a very difficult place in our culture.

And so we've just all got to give ourselves permission to care about boys and men without living in fear of the fact that in doing that, we've somehow gone over to the dark side and become a misogynist.

That is not true.

And it's more of us that say that, the less true it will become.

For more on what it really takes to help men thrive without setting women back, check out episode 1126 of the Jordan Harbinger Show.

Definitely want to have him back.

There was a lot of notes I didn't get to cover.

He's really a wealth of knowledge on communication.

His book is also a fun read and an easy one at that.

All things Jefferson Fisher will be in the show notes at jordanharbinger.com.

Advertisers, deals, discount codes, ways to support the show, all at jordanharbinger.com slash deals.

Please consider supporting those who support the show.

Also, our newsletter, We BitWiser, we give you something specific and practical that'll have an immediate impact on your decisions and your psychology and your relationships in under two minutes a week.

If you like the practical stuff from these episodes, you're going to love the newsletter.

If you haven't signed up yet, I invite you to come check it out.

It's a great companion to the show.

JordanHarbinger.com slash news is where you can find it.

Don't forget about Six Minute Networking as well over at sixminutenetworking.com.

I'm at Jordan Harbinger on Twitter and Instagram.

You can also connect with me on LinkedIn.

This show, it's created in association with Podcast One.

My team is Jen Harbinger, Jace Sanderson, Robert Fogarty, Tadis Sedlowskis, Ian Baird, and Gabriel Mizrahi.

Remember, we rise by lifting others.

The fee for the show is you share it with friends when you find something useful or interesting.

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In the meantime, I hope you apply what you hear on the show so you can live what you learn.

And we'll see you next time.

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Let's listen in on a live, unscripted second-grade Challenger School class.

They're studying Charlotte's Web.

What words did this author use to describe this barn?

Descriptive words.

Wonderful.

Can you find some adjectives in there?

New is an adjective describing rope.

Rubber is an adjective, and it modifies boots.

Those students are seven.

Starting early and starting right makes a real difference.

Learn more at challengerschool.com.