Episode 333 · 3 September 2026 · 45:27
How to never have an argument at work again, with Lawyer turned peacemaker, Doug Noll
Featuring Doug Noll
How to never have an argument at work again, with Lawyer turned peacemaker, Doug Noll
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Introduction to Doug Noll and the promise of never having an argument again
From prison to peacemaking: Doug Noll's wild journey
Listening someone into existence: the core technique
The neuroscience of affect labeling and why questions fail
Applying the technique in high-stakes environments and the workplace
interview#workplace#high-stakes#conflict-resolution#communication
Nervous system leadership and the three questions every employee asks
interview#leadership#nervous-system#employee-engagement#workplace
Common mistakes and the seven layers of emotion
Empathy Leadership: Doug Noll's new book and the empathy paradox
interview#empathy#leadership#book#paradox
Host verdict and practical takeaways
Show notes
How to Never Have an Argument at Work Again — with Doug Noll
Guest: Doug Noll — trial lawyer turned professional peacemaker, founder of the Noll Institute for Peacemaking, and author of Empathy Leadership (out September).
Can you really go the rest of your life without ever getting into another fight or argument? Doug Noll says yes — and he's tested it in some of the most hostile environments on earth, from California's supermax prisons to corporate boardrooms.
Doug joins Al and Leanne to explain how "affect labeling" and nervous system leadership can de-escalate even the most explosive conflict. He shares the fascinating neuroscience behind why conventional active listening fails, how to calm a dysregulated brain in 90 seconds, and why empathy is a critical leadership capability rather than a "soft skill."
Top 3 Takeaways
People are emotional, not rational. When someone is upset, their prefrontal cortex — the rational processing center — is temporarily offline. Trying to reason with them is like speaking a language they can't hear. Lead with emotion, not logic.
Name the emotion, don't ask about it. "You are angry" activates the prefrontal cortex and calms the brain's threat response in under 90 seconds. "Are you angry?" forces an escalated person to use a brain function that's currently unavailable — making things worse. And no "I" statements either; they're about you, not them.
Every nervous system is asking 3 questions: Am I safe? Can I trust you? Do I matter to you? Once you see conflict through this lens, you'll spot the pattern everywhere — from angry bosses to movie villains. The bad guy is almost always someone whose core needs aren't being met.
More From Doug Noll
- Website: dougnoll.com
- LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/dougnoll
- Instagram: instagram.com/dougnoll
- X (Twitter): x.com/dougnoll
- TikTok: tiktok.com/@dougnoll
- YouTube: youtube.com/@DouglasENoll
Connect With Us
Get in touch, book a call, or find Al and Leanne on LinkedIn — all in one place: truthliesandwork.com/connect
Mental health support: findahelpline.com — UK: Samaritans 116 123 · Mind 0300 123 3393 — US: 988 — Australia: Lifeline 13 11 14
Truth, Lies & Work is part of the HubSpot Podcast Network.
Full transcript
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Leanne ElliottHello and welcome to Truth, Lies and Work, the award-winning podcast where behavioural science meets workplace culture, brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. My name is Leanne. I'm a chartered occupational psychologist. My voice is about an octave lower. Why does it sound so low?
Al ElliottPoor Leanne's not been very well recently, and, uh, and, but I like it. I, I do like it. I think I prefer— I'd like you to, uh, to be ill more often. My name is Al. I am Leanne's husband and also a business owner, and we are here to help you simplify the science of work. Today's guest is Doug Noll. He's a lawyer turned peacemaker who spent 25 years mediating everything from divorce disputes to prison violence. His claim is pretty simple. If you learn his listening technique, then you'll never have a fight or an argument at work again, or anywhere else for that matter.
Leanne ElliottThat is a big claim. Big promise. So today we're testing it, not debunking it, not cheerleading it, just genuinely asking, could this actually work in your office tomorrow?
Al ElliottWe'll find out after this short break. Does your experience with AI sound a little like this? You prompt for 20 minutes, the output is polished, is confident, and is completely flipping useless. Well, that's what happens when AI doesn't know anything about your business.
Leanne ElliottMm-hmm. But you know what does know something about your business?
Al ElliottHubSpot.
Leanne ElliottHubSpot's AI. It works with your actual customer data. Every interaction, every signal your team has generated over time. So instead of prompting and hoping, you ask once and ship it.
Al ElliottCheck out hubspot.com, the agentic customer platform for growing businesses. Hey, editing Al here. Just want to say that for this one, I don't know what happened, but we had a couple of issues with Doug's audio. So occasionally it kind of dips in and out, but I've done my best to clean it up. Still, I thought it was an important enough story that we needed to bring it to you anyway.
Doug NollMy name is Doug Noll. I'm a lawyer turned peacemaker, and I've been doing that since 2000, and it's taken me to some pretty wild places.
Al ElliottCan we start, Doug, with those wild places? So your book, which was your previous book, starts off in Valley State Prison. Right.
Doug NollIt was Valley State Prison for women.
Al ElliottFor women. Take us back to that day. Tell us what happened.
Doug NollMy colleague, Laurel Koffer, received a letter From a woman serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole. And she was asked if Laurel could come in and train the lifers how to become mediators and peacemakers to stop prison violence. And 8 months later, there we were inside of Valley State Prison for Women, which at that time was the largest, most violent women's prison in the world. 15 women, ages 65 to late 20s. All lifers or long-termers, Black, white, Asian, Hispanic, Pacific, angry, skeptical, and a little curious. And our job was to teach them how to become peacemakers and mediators to stop prison violence. And we had never been in a maximum security prison before. It is intimidating the first time. Eventually you get used to it. But when those steel doors slam behind you, you know you're in the belly of the beast.
Al ElliottIt sounds to me like that is a gigantic task that could not end well, but it did end okay, didn't it?
Doug NollIt did. Part of the reason for the success was who we were. Laurel responded to Hurricane Katrina by going to Mississippi in the areas affected by the hurricane and introduced mediation to the communities who were completely devastated. So she had tremendous experience in training large numbers of people in mediation and peacemaking. I had my own training experience as a professor and also a trainer. And so we had this unique set of skills That we were able to meld and develop a curriculum for these incarcerated people. And we didn't know if it was going to work or not, but it did. I mean, massively. And we, so for 10 years, we were working every week, usually 3 days a week in different prisons in California and Connecticut, teaching lifers and long-termers how to become peacemakers and mediators. It was incredible.
Al ElliottWe're going to go into your methodology in a second, but there is a 3-word phrase, sorry, 4-word phrase that I've heard you use quite a lot, and that is feel someone into existence. Talk us through what that actually means.
Doug NollThe actual phrase I coined was listening someone into existence. It was actually a phrase that an associate superintendent of a school district said after a listening circle I conducted with teachers and administrators in a school district teaching 'em these skills. And she said after the circle, that's the first time anyone has listened to me into existence. And I said, wow. So that's where that phrase came from. The idea is this, Al, we are desperate to be heard, validated, and listen to. Nobody listens to us. We're all trying to get heard, but we're not taking the time to listen. And active listening doesn't work because it's all about me. What I hear you saying is that, so that's I statements, or it's passive voice. It seems to me that, or we ask a question, are you angry? None of it is ever about you. And so we go through life never being heard. Don't be a drama queen. Put on your big girl panties. Rub dirt in it. It doesn't hurt. Oh, there's a silver lining to every cloud. All these sayings invalidate us, tell us not to feel, not to experience emotion from the time we're 2 years old. And it destroys us. And so that's where listening someone into existence came from, because it is the antidote to all of this.
Al ElliottI think there's a great example of this with, you were mediating a divorce, I believe, 2 people.
Doug NollYep. They were for— they had been divorced and were fighting over an $18,000 problem. They'd each spent $50,000 trying to destroy each other. Right. And that's where I got my insight. So I got called into this mediation in Santa Barbara. Couple had been divorced for 20 years. When they were married, the wife had been in an automobile accident and their small children had been in the backseat. They settled with the insurance company. And in California, the insurance proceeds for a settlement for children has to go into what's known as a blind trust. It's a bank account that you can't take the money out of without a court order. And it makes sense, right? You don't want mom and dad to run off to Las Vegas and blow the money. Well, in this case, many, many years later, mom got laid off, called her adult kids who were all doing fine and said, can I take that $18,000 to pay my rent and buy groceries? And they could say that. Sure, go. She did not get a court order. Ex-husband finds out, files a lawsuit against her for breach of fiduciary duty, fraud, theft. I mean, all the usual stuff. They spent $50,000 each in attorney's fees and costs trying to destroy each other. And then they come to me. And I'm sitting there. I talked to them about what mediation is, and all of a sudden they stand up at the conference table and start screaming at each other. And I sit there for a minute and a half. What am I going to do with this? And then the insight hit. Listen to the emotions. So I sat them down. I did my Moses, Moses parting the seas. Sit down. And I said, Susan, I want you to tell us what John is feeling. Not what he's saying, what he's feeling. I'll help you. Can you do that? And she said, I don't know, I'll try. So John started telling his story, and Susan all of a sudden went, yeah, but yeah, but yeah, but yeah, but. Counterargument, right?
Al ElliottYeah.
Doug NollI said, no, tell us what he's feeling. And so she looked at me and said, he's really angry. Tell him that. John, you're really angry. And for the next 3 hours, that we did, back and forth, until finally they finished their stories. And John looked across the table at Susan with tears streaming down his eyes.
Leanne ElliottOh my God.
Doug NollAnd he said, that's the first time you've listened to me in 25 years. Dead silence. They settled the case and they walk out holding hands. I knew what I'd done, but I didn't know why. So I started playing with it in other mediations and I got the same result. And then the science came out 2 years later, 2007. And that's when I had the science that explained what I had observed. And the idea here, when you name what somebody feels, the centers of the brain associated with negative emotion are inhibited. And one part of the brain in the prefrontal region, the right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex, is activated. And it's that part of the brain that's responsible for emotional self-regulation and awareness. So literally naming what someone feels helps people calm themselves down, and it takes about 90 seconds.
Al ElliottWhen you and I were talking before, I think we said That if you use the techniques in both of your books, then you can basically go through the rest of your life without having a fight or an argument ever again. Now that's a bold claim. Back that up for me. Tell me, how do we do that?
Doug NollSo the promise that I make to my clients is that if you learn these skills, you'll never have a fight or argument again in your life, but you have to practice. This is like learning how to ride a bicycle. You just can't read my book or my books or watch my YouTubes or my TEDx and know how to do this. It takes some practice. But when you learn how to do it and you see the results, your life transforms forever. Because what you learn is a very profound idea, and that is there's no such thing as rationality.
Al ElliottMm-hmm.
Doug NollWe are emotional beings. And when you start seeing us, human beings, as emotional, not rational, everything makes sense. And then the idea of naming emotion makes perfect sense. And so you start saying stuff like, you're angry, you're frustrated, you feel disrespected, and then you watch the brain calm down.
Al ElliottYeah.
Doug NollAnd it happens every single time without failure because that's how we're hardwired.
Al ElliottI can imagine, let's say I'm in a situation with, um, I'm at work, there's another department head who comes in. Um, they're angry because I've done something at work that they're not happy with. So they come in and they go, what the hell did you do that for? That's just, it's ruined everything. You turned that server off and I specifically said never turn it off. And I turn around to this guy or woman and I say, you are angry. I, in my head, I imagine the next phrase to come outta that person's mouth is, you are damn right I'm angry, and escalating it. Why am I wrong?
Doug NollOoh, no, that's perfect. If he says, damn right I am angry, pat yourself on the back. That's exactly what you want because he just got heard. He just felt validated. Now he's still escalated and you got more work to do, but that's a major breakthrough. So yeah, not only are you angry, Al, you feel really disrespected and ignored and unimportant, and nobody cares about what you're doing, and you feel unappreciated and unsupported, and you're really anxious because the shutdown really set you back. And you're really upset and frustrated and pissed off.
Al ElliottDoug, why does it not work if I just add the word are in front of it? So why, if, why instead of you saying you are angry, me saying, are you angry? Why does that not work?
Doug NollBecause when people are upset, they're in threat status. The prefrontal cortex, which does all the processing, is now inaccessible. When you ask a question, you're asking them to do something that's physiologically impossible. So they get really frustrated and they just get angrier because they can't answer the question because physiologically their prefrontal cortex is offline, which is why we don't ask questions, at least emotional questions. We can ask questions later when they're calmed down, but not initially.
Al ElliottSo Doug, let's go back to this example of the IT per— IT director coming in shouting at me. And so what, what's happened? They've come in and gone, what the hell have you done this for? I've said, you are angry, Arnold. You are angry, Arnold. And he says, damn right I'm angry. I've specifically put a note on that laptop saying, do not turn this off or the entire world will blow up. Um, and, and someone has turned it off and I think it's you. At that point, what do I say next, Doug?
Doug NollArnold, you're really pissed off. You're frustrated. You did everything you thought you could do to protect the system, and it didn't work. And you feel really deeply betrayed and rejected. It's just really frustrating. You feel completely disrespected, like you were ignored, your instructions were ignored, and it caused a lot of chaos. And you're tearing your hair out in frustration.
Al ElliottYeah.
Doug NollBecause you didn't know what else you could do.
Al ElliottAnd so what are we hoping is going to happen after we've said those things?
Doug NollArnold is going to say, yeah, exactly. And he's going to nod his head. His shoulders are going to drop. He's going to sigh like that and say, okay, how are we going to solve this problem? How do we prevent this from happening again? If I did it, somebody else is going to do it. There has to be a better way. Let's figure it out. Or, Arnold, how do we make things right here? You're right. It was a big mistake. How do we make it right? Now you're in the conversation and you're problem solving at an appropriate time when Arnold is calmed down. If you tried to ask those questions when he was totally escalated, he's just going to get angrier and you're going to go nowhere.
Al ElliottSo Doug, The signs you just said there were that shoulders drop, the actual level of voice drops a little bit. What else?
Doug NollSo there are 4 autonomic body responses, nodding of the head, some kind of verbal response like, yeah, damn right I'm angry. A dropping of the shoulders and a sigh of relief. Showing the body, yes, I've been heard. I'm relaxed now. That's what you're looking for.
Al ElliottI think there'd be some people who've never come across your work before who would be concerned that by naming the emotion, you're almost feeding it.
Doug NollWell, in a way it is. You're lending your prefrontal cortex to this angry person for the 90 seconds it takes for their prefrontal cortex cortex to come back online. So you are feeding it in a way, and there's nothing wrong with that. It calms people down, and that's what we want. No more fights and arguments. People just heard. They feel validated. They're happy. They thank you. Thanks for listening to me.
Al ElliottYou mention in, I think it was your TED Talk or your book, I can't remember which one it was, that in some of these prisons you're dealing with, sort of like gang members and people who are— I just can't get my head round a gang member coming up to me in prison and me just going, you are angry, and that working. But have you actually seen this work in real life?
Doug NollOh yeah.
Al ElliottTell me about it.
Doug NollSo we ended up in Corcoran State Prison and here in California, which is one of California's supermax, and we were given the challenge to work with men coming out of violent gangs. And for 3 years, I taught 100 feet away from Charles Manson's cell. And these were guys that were pretty rough and they got it. It was amazing. The stories were just incredible. In fact, we've got a couple of, we've got one guy now who has been, he's at another prison. Which is a downgrade of security. So showing that he is no longer a security risk and he's leading Prison of Peace in that, in that prison. You know, he's trained over 1,000 people in prison how to be peacemakers, mediators.
Al ElliottHow did you feel when you, one of the first few times you actually saw that happen in that quite hostile, like tinderbox environment?
Doug NollWell, by then we knew what we were doing. So we just smiled. Yep, working again, just like clockwork. In the early days, we weren't so sure, but by the time we got to that prison and other maximum security prisons, we knew what we were doing and we knew what the effect would be. And we would get pushback from the men in the beginning, and we said, nah, trust us. We know what we're doing here. Just Give it a try and see what happens. And they would, and they'd come back and say very sheepishly, you were right, we were wrong. This is amazing.
Al ElliottYou mentioned there the neuroscience caught up with your technique a couple of years down the line. Now, I think you mentioned a guy Lieberman, if I remember.
Doug NollMatthew Lieberman.
Al ElliottTalk me through that. How, how, what's the neuroscience behind it?
Doug NollSo Lieberman, And his colleagues at UCLA study a field called social neuropsychology. And they're looking at how our social interactions work in the brain. The guy's a friggin genius. And his wife, Naomi Eisenberg, another genius. I mean, these people are giants. And in 2007, he and his colleagues Set up an experiment. They put people into a scanning machine and they showed them evocative pictures that evoked emotion and watched what happens to their brains. And they saw the emotional centers explode and the prefrontal cortex quiet down. Then what they did is have their subjects name their emotion. And when they did that, it reversed the effect. The amygdala and all the limbic regions associated with negative emotions deactivated, and the right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex activated, and they calmed down. There's the hard science.
Al ElliottI'm going to ask you a question, Doug, that you may not want to or be able to answer, but I'm interested to see. So, If someone is perhaps sociopathic or psychopathic, where they may not be able to recognize emotions, how does that work?
Doug NollThat is a great question. And I'm thinking because of the thousands of people that we trained over 10 years, we only kicked one person out of the program. And you can imagine in prison, there are a lot of maladaptive people. And there's just one guy that—
Leanne ElliottYeah.
Doug NollSo our experience is that if you've got a functioning brain, whether you're sociopathic, psychopathic, or an overt maladaptive narcissist, this will work. Maybe not permanently, but in the moment, it will work. The one guy that we kicked out was a maladaptive overt narcissist. And we just couldn't penetrate him. So we finally had to let him go. But that was after 2 years of trying.
Al ElliottDo you ever feel any fear in these prisons?
Doug NollFear?
Al ElliottFear, yeah.
Doug NollNot once.
Al ElliottWhy not?
Doug NollThese people were so thrilled with what they were learning from us that they became dedicated, Loyal students, and they would protect us against anything. We were in class plenty of times when there were riots going out on the yard, and they said, stay here, don't worry about it, we got you covered. Not once did we have a problem. And we brought in trainers, both men and women. None of us ever had a problem. Not once. Not even close. Surprised the heck out of us, but eventually we got used to it. They were so happy to be given tools that really worked and changed their lives. They would do anything for it. And this happened in prison after prison after prison, you know, 20 or 30 prisons.
Leanne ElliottWelcome to the break.
Al ElliottYes, my favorite part of the show. They, these, these 2 idiots have stopped talking.
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Al ElliottI've been on it for quite a while. Didn't know where that was going. Didn't know where that was going.
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Leanne ElliottAnd if you do want to hear a really personal story, go to episode 136. This is Troy's honest account of fatherhood, killing hustle culture, and what really matters when you stop performing and start living with intention.
Al ElliottListen to I Digress wherever you get your podcasts.
Leanne ElliottThat concludes the break.
Al ElliottLet's return to the scheduled programming.
Leanne ElliottBack to the studio.
Al ElliottSo let's move a bit more into perhaps a less high-stakes environment, going back into the workplace. Have you done any work with organizations around this? Have you ever been in at all? Yeah. Tell me about that.
Doug NollSo in workplace settings, it's hierarchical mostly, and people have very low skill levels. So conflict is predictable. And fixable. However, people don't have the skillset, and so it just gets worse. And our experience has been when you teach these basic skills to leaders, so they learn what I call nervous system leadership, the dynamics change dramatically. And so leadership failure is not due to a personality defect or ignorance or Being stupid or not having skills. It's not recognizing that you're dealing with nervous systems. And when people are in a threat response, they cannot function. And when you get a consistent threat response, that's when people shut down, quiet quit, leave, or in the worst case, sabotage passive-aggressively. Because their nervous systems are not being attended to. And once a leader gets the insight that I've got to manage these nervous systems, I've gotta take a dysregulated nervous system and regulate it, calm it down. That's when the transformation occurs. And we've seen it over and over again.
Al ElliottSo when you do go into organizations to teach this nervous system leadership, what are the common pushbacks from people in your class? What are they saying?
Doug NollSoft skills. Yucko. Empathy. Ooh, emotions. Yucko. This is irrational. I'm going to look like a fool doing this. Oh, but what if I get it wrong? I'll lose all my authority. Same old crap every single time. We always hear the same 3 objections. They're all wrong. And the only way you overcome them is to go out and experiment and try it for yourself and see that your objections are baseless.
Al ElliottDoug, you just hit something there, which I think a lot of people are going to be worried about. You said, I'd be losing my authority. So big boss walks into a room and someone's angry, then it feels like the big boss should come in there and go, shut up, sit down, get on with your work. But instead you're suggesting big boss comes in and says, You feel really frustrated. That I suspect there are some people in the world who are managers who'd like, no, no, no, I'm losing my authority. I look soft then.
Doug NollAh, wrong. Well, that's what they're feeling and thinking, but they're not thinking it through carefully. The reason they say, sit down, shut up, do your work, is they're unconsciously soothing their own anxiety Over the upset of their team. So their brain has recognized the upset and gets anxious over it, and then tells the boss, tell them to shut up and not feel this. Go away. Don't feel. Because if you don't feel this way, I won't feel anxious and everything will be good. Doesn't work. So if you take the time instead to listen to the emotions, And name them while remaining calm and compassionate, everything changes in about 1% of the time. Because if you walk into a meeting and tell people to shut up, sit down, do your work, those people are going to be resentful. They're going to feel like they can't trust you. They're not going to feel safe. And they're going to start looking for another job as soon as they can. And that's what they do. That's what quiet quitting is all about. So instead of worrying about authority, worry about nervous systems. Are these nervous systems feeling safe? Can they trust me? Do I matter to them? Do they matter to me? Because that's what the nervous systems are asking in every second. Can I trust you? Am I safe? Do I matter to you? And if the answer is no, you've got checkout and conflict. And your job as a leader is to make sure that it's yes to every question in every moment.
Al ElliottWhat were those 3 questions, Doug?
Doug NollAm I safe? Can I trust you? Do I matter to you? That's what our nervous systems are asking in every microsecond. And it's not just work, it's in every social environment. And as Lieberman has pointed out, our brains cannot distinguish between a social threat and a saber-toothed tiger launching itself at you. The brain's going to react the same way. So a little insult, sarcasm, being ignored, Being dismissed. That's a saber-toothed tiger as far as the brain's concerned. And we just don't get over it.
Al ElliottCan we talk about someone who might be like this? So let's talk about, I think we, most people in the world have had a bad boss and everybody's had a bad boss. Exactly. I mean, they, they made, they've made movies about it and, and yeah. So everyone in the world has had a bad boss. What is going on in their head, do you think? What makes them so angry or appearing to hate you or me?
Doug NollYou're talking about the supervisor, the boss? They're frustrated and they're angry because they don't have the skillset to manage people. Let's take the typical situation. You've got a widget maker who's really good at making widgets. Best widget maker in the world gets promoted to supervisor. With the assumption being, if you're a great widget maker, you ought to be a fantastic supervisor. And what people don't realize is that leading is very different than doing. And there's no training given. So this supervisor who got a huge dopamine release by being the best widget maker is now in a position where there's no dopamine because there's no way of measuring how good you are. And that leads to frustration and anger, anxiety. Upset, depression. And so they take it out on their subordinates because they don't know what else to do with it. Happens over and over and over again. In fact, there was a book in the 1960s called The Peter Principle that still holds true today. And that's, that's a dynamic that's going on.
Al ElliottJust made me think then that applies to those teachers we were scared of at school. Does it not? Is that the same thing?
Doug NollAbsolutely. Same dynamic. And here's the thing, Al. Once you see the pattern, you see it everywhere. We have a really small repertoire of behaviors and words and emotions that repeat themselves over and over and over again. And when you learn these skills, you see the patterns and they're no longer upsetting and you know what to do. That's why You'll never have a fight or argument again because you see the pattern and you can fix it. Bosses, teachers, law enforcement, parents, brothers and sisters, spouses, it's all the same.
Al ElliottYou just made me think that there's probably a lot of movies where the bad guy is the person who is exhibiting all the things you've just said there, and the way the resolution is to understand the bad guy. Is that, is that too simplistic?
Doug NollThat's exactly right. And so you can look at a movie and watch somebody do bad stuff and look at what are the emotions going on with this person? The example I like to give, and I'm already dating myself, when I was a kid, Popeye the Sailor. Did you ever see any of those cartoons? All right, here's the theme. Popeye's walking down the street, street with olive oil. They're having a great time.
Leanne ElliottYeah.
Doug NollBluto shows up and he absconds with Olive Oil. Popeye is left there as a weakling. He goes after Bluto. Bluto beats the crap out of him in extremis until finally the spinach pops out with the magic elixir. Popeye inhales it, beats the crap out of Bluto, rescues Olive Oil.
Al ElliottYeah.
Doug NollAnd they walk off into the sunset happily ever after. Week after, after week after week. Go look at the Die Hard movie. Bruce Willis, same thing. Almost every, every movie follows this formula. That's the, that's the formula. And what's going on emotionally? Why doesn't somebody talk to Bluto and calm him down so he doesn't have to feel like he's got a abuse Olive Oil and Popeye? Why doesn't Popeye take his spinach when he sees Blue in the beginning? And why isn't Olive Oil empowered to protect herself? We don't ask those questions.
Al ElliottI have heard that some people use a technique of deliberately escalating their own voice in a disagreement so that they can then de-escalate the voice and hopefully the other person follows. That doesn't sound like it's going to work.
Doug NollThat comes from NLP, Neuro-Linguistic Programming. There's a certain truth to it, but it's got to be applied carefully. So somebody is at this level up here. Do you want to come in right underneath them? They're going to escalate up. You come up underneath them. One more time, they go up.
Leanne ElliottUp.
Doug NollYou come underneath them and then they drop and you come underneath them. So you want to follow them with your intensity, but not be more intense. And that takes practice.
Al ElliottWell, Doug, talking of practice, you must have seen thousands, if not tens of thousands of people practicing this in front of you. What is the number one mistake that most people struggle to overcome when they're trying to bring out this technique?
Doug NollThey're really afraid to say you or you feel. They want to go to I, or they want to go to passive voice. And the reason is we are culturally trained and socially trained that if we say you and are very direct, it's too intimate. We don't know what's going to happen. So we're told to distance ourselves, right? By using an I statement. What I think you're feeling is that. That creates distance. It's supposed to be calming, and I'm not in your face. The problem is it doesn't work. I statements never work in this situation. So that's the hardest thing for people to get over. I had to get over it. I kept slipping into I statements.
Al ElliottYeah.
Doug NollUntil I finally programmed myself not to, and then I got much better results. It's scary in the beginning until it's not.
Al ElliottSo you're telling us we should say you and then insert emotion. What happens if we get the wrong emotion there?
Doug NollThere you go. This is the number one question. What if I'm wrong? Doesn't matter. It just does not matter as long as you're using a you statement. The speaker will feel like you're trying to listen to them. And rather than feeling offended, they'll feel grateful. They'll correct you. I'm not angry, I'm frustrated. Oh, you're really frustrated? Yeah, I'm really frustrated. And you feel really disrespected? Yeah. And unappreciated and unsupported? Yeah. And you feel invisible? Nobody's listening to you. Yeah. And you're really pissed off. Yeah, I'm really pissed off. That's how it goes every time.
Al ElliottI suspect that once you go past the first level of emotion, then really we're getting down to one of a handful of human emotions here. You are frightened, you are threatened, you are what, you know, is that right? Is there like just basically about 4?
Doug NollGood observation. Good observation. 7 layers. The 7 layers of emotion that we use in this work are anger, disrespect, fear, disgust, shame, sadness, and abandonment. So we work through the layers. And when you get to disgust and the 4 layers below, you've got to use discernment. Because these are intimate emotions. You know, for somebody to feel, for you to say you feel abandoned and betrayed is deeply intimate. And you want to be careful about that. In workplace, you're good with anger, disrespect, and fear. Once you get below that, you got to be careful. And that takes training.
Al ElliottExcellent. So these are literally Not literally, figuratively layers of an onion that you're— and once you get down past the past, what was the one that we have to be careful underneath?
Doug NollFrom disgust below.
Al ElliottDisgust below.
Doug NollDisgust, shame, sadness, and abandonment.
Al ElliottAll core emotions there, I think, aren't they?
Doug NollThat's right. And almost all anger comes from feelings of abandonment, betrayal, and rejection. So whenever we have an emotion, we're not just having one emotion. We've got having 4 or 5 all at once, but we're only aware of one. And part of the beauty of affect labeling or listening to emotions is we're helping the people unpack all of the unseen emotions that they're experiencing but are not aware of.
Al ElliottI think I would be tempted in this situation, maybe that's just my Britishness, is to put some kind of rising intonation at the end to say, I asked the question. Yeah, that's still a question. That's a no-no.
Doug NollYou're doing that to soothe your own anxiety. You don't want to be wrong. You don't want to look like you're being impudent or patronizing. And so you ask the question to soften it. But like I said, prefrontal cortex is offline. It can't answer the question. So frustration builds and anger increases. No rising inflection.
Al ElliottSo Doug, I believe your 5th book, Empathy Leadership, is out in September, which is about when this is going to be released, I believe. Tell me more about the book. Who's it for and what does it say?
Doug NollSo this book is a leadership book. Everybody and their uncle writes leadership books. Why another leadership book? And why a book on empathy? Market is flooded and most of it's all wrong. So What prompted this was the conversation between Elon Musk and Joe Rogan on Joe Rogan's podcast. And Musk said, essentially, empathy will destroy Western civilization. That pissed me off. So I started looking at the literature around leadership empathy, and I found something really interesting.
Al ElliottYeah.
Doug NollInteresting, what I call the empathy paradox. One study shows that 80% of leaders think empathy will make them weak. That same study showed that 79% of all employees will work harder for a leader who knows empathy. There's another study of 15,000 emerging leaders that showed that empathy was the crucial determinant Of leadership success. So we have this paradox. The one thing that will give leaders what they need and want, they reject. Why? It turns out it's a good reason. Because people who teach emotional intelligence or talk about empathy have never studied the neuroscience and they don't get it. So they teach this fluffy, soft, Kumbaya, tree-hugging ideas, telling people what to do, but not how to do it, and certainly not based on hard science. So I thought, we need a corrective here. So that's how Empathy Leadership came about. And it's basically blowing up a whole bunch of ideas around leadership.
Al ElliottNumber one.
Doug NollNo such thing as rationality. Human beings are not rational. When you use rationality or reasoning or logic or persuasion to calm an angry person, you're lost. You're done. You can't reason somebody out of pain. You can't logic them out of anger. Their nervous systems are dysregulated and you've got to work at that level. And then I provide the specific tools on how to do that. Basic affect labeling, listening to emotions. And the book spends 4 chapters or 5 chapters looking at the science, blowing up the old ideas, showing why these ideas work. And then the rest of the book is application.
Al ElliottFabulous, Doug. Thank you so much. If people want to learn more about you, where's the best place for them to go?
Doug NollDoug Noll, D-O-U-G N-O-L-L.
Al ElliottFabulous.
Doug NollAnd you can go to the book section and find Empathy Leadership and order it or preorder it. You can go to my YouTube channel, Douglass Noll, or Douglass C. Noll. You can find me on LinkedIn. And I have a Substack, which I put long-form articles every week about all of this.
Al ElliottSo, Leanne, that was Doug Noll. Verdict?
Leanne ElliottWell, Doug says naming someone's emotion instead of arguing back does something to the nervous system, and that part is grounded in the neuroscience evidence that he cited. Whether you can pull that off mid-argument with your CFO is a different question.
Al ElliottYeah, and that's the bit I'm not sure I'm quite sold on yet. Not saying Doug's wrong, it just feels— there's a very different culture with American Americans than British, I think. And I think that American just saying, hey, you're angry— that's a terrible American accent— but someone saying that in America seems kind of like, okay, yeah, that could get away with that. In the UK, saying you're angry, people go, uh, what are you doing?
Leanne ElliottAngry? Angry? I'll show you.
Al ElliottBut I suppose to be fair, right, saying you're angry to someone screaming at you does take a level of composure that genuinely most of us, and particularly us Brits, Don't have in the moment. But Doug gives plenty of evidence that it does work. So I just wanna reiterate, I'm not saying it doesn't work. I'm just saying it's so alien to my British brain that I don't know. I'm just like on the fence.
Leanne ElliottQuick story time, and you can cut this out, love, if you don't have time to put it in. I was walking around Mostar Park once and, uh, the dog did some business. So I, as a good citizen, picked it up and put it in the bin, and then the park guardian chef person.
Al ElliottNazi.
Leanne ElliottYou can't— straight to the N-word. Um, he started shouting at me saying that I'd put it in the wrong bin. Um, so I— and told me to pick it out. So I did. And I went to put it in another bin that I thought was the correct bin. And he came chasing after me saying, shouting again, saying that's the wrong bin. And I turned around, I said, okay, but why are you shouting at me? Like, just tell me where I need to put it. Why are you shouting at me? And he did calm down. Yeah.
Al ElliottSo there you go. Proof, proof.
Leanne ElliottAnecdotal.
Al ElliottAnecdotal proof that this does work. Now, Doug does keep saying that it takes practice. And so we are going to try this genuinely. Leanne's obviously inadvertently tried this. But next time either of us is in one of these tense conversations, we are, we will try it and we will report back.
Leanne ElliottWe will. If you want to try it yourself before we do, Doug's @DougNoll, that's D-O-U-G-N-O-L-L.com. And his new book is Empathy Leadership, and it's out now. You should definitely go and check it out.
Al ElliottThis is Truth, Lies and Work. We will see you next week where we're back to regular scheduling. So it's back to This Week in Work. But we've learned some lessons over summer. People have liked what we've done. So we'll be mixing it up between now and Christmas and Thursdays, they're going to change. You will see. So we'll see you all next week. Say goodbye, Leanne.
Leanne ElliottHappy September as well, everybody.
Al ElliottHappy September. Happy September. Oh, and tell us on LinkedIn if you prefer husky Leanne or normal Leanne. Bye-bye. Bye.
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