Conflict is unavoidable—but avoiding it may be costing you connection, creativity, and collaboration. What if conflict isn’t something to fix… but something to dance with?

In this powerful and timely episode of Women Road Warriors, we’re joined by Anna Lecat, an intimacy and conflict consultant, global speaker, and author of Loving Conflict: Creating Collaboration Where Others See Division. Anna invites us to rethink everything we’ve been taught about disagreement. Instead of seeing conflict as a threat, she reframes it as a Tango—a dynamic interplay of tension and connection that leads to creation, trust, and deeper intimacy.

A triple immigrant who has lived and worked across Ukraine, China, the United States, and France, Anna brings over 25 years of leadership experience helping individuals, couples, and organizations stay connected when it matters most. Her approach blends embodied practice, storytelling, and cross-cultural insight—making conflict and intimacy practical, learnable skills in love, leadership, and life.

In this conversation with Shelley Johnson and Kathy Tuccaro, you’ll discover:

1. Why conflict is not the problem—disconnection is
2. How to transform tension into collaboration and trust
3. What intimacy really means in relationships, teams, and leadership
4. How the quality of your life is shaped by the quality of your relationships

If you want stronger relationships, better communication, and a new way to approach difficult conversations, this episode will change how you see conflict forever.

🎧 Listen now and learn how to love conflict—and turn it into collaboration.

https://annalecat.com/

https://womenroadwarriors.com/

https://womenspowernetwork.net

#Podcast #ConflictResolution #HealthyCommunication #EmotionalIntelligence #DifficultConversations #RelationshipSkills #HumanConnection #LeadershipDevelopment #WomenInLeadership #PersonalGrowth #WomenRoadWarriors #AnnaLecat

This is Women Road warriors with Shelly Johnson and Kathy Tucaro.

From the corporate office to the cab of a truck, they're here to inspire and empower women in all professions.

So gear down, sit back and enjoy.

Welcome.

We're an award winning show dedicated to empowering women in every profession through inspiring stories and expert insights.

No topics off limits on our show, we power women on the road to success with expert and celebrity interviews and information you need.

I'm Shelly.

And I'm Kathy.

Conflict is a part of life and something we all like to avoid.

But what if you can learn to love conflict?

Now that's a concept.

Anna La Catte teaches that conflict isn't a problem to solve.

It's an opportunity to connect, collaborate, and build something new.

That's a perspective we can all embrace.

Anna reframes conflict as a kind of tango that comprises tension and connection which equals creation.

Anna is an intimacy and conflict consultant, speaker and author of Loving Conflict Creating Collaboration Where Others See Division.

She brings over 25 years of leadership skills to help individuals, couples and organizations stay connected when it matters most.

Kathy and I were impressed with her take on life and wanted to learn more, so we asked her on the show.

Welcome, Anna.

Thank you for being with us.

Thank you.

It's great meeting you both.

Oh, and vice versa.

You know, you certainly built your powerful perspectives at an early age.

Growing up in Ukraine, I am just amazed at your whole thought process.

Your story is super compelling too.

You refused to accept groupthink and gained acceptance even when you experienced conflict, division and prejudice.

Could you give us maybe the cliff notes of your story and how you got started in all these wonderful revelations?

Yes, with pleasure.

Thank you for asking.

So I was born in Ukraine, in Soviet Ukraine, and I left home at 17.

I moved to China and it was not obvious because around 16, it was when Soviet Union fell apart.

And it was very hard to actually leave because all the borders were closed and it was hard to get a visa to go anywhere out of Soviet Union.

And so I applied to all kinds of scholarships everywhere in the world to go travel.

I wanted to leave and discover the world.

And then I found out that China had a program where if a Ukrainian person studied Chinese and learned it well enough get into Chinese University, they would give us a visa and scholarship to go.

And so I came home to my parents and said, okay, where is China?

I'm going to learn Chinese and get into Chinese University, which I did.

And then, oh my God, sorry.

That alone is a huge accomplishment.

I can't even fathom Learning Chinese.

I'm sorry to interrupt, but oh my God, I'm impressed.

So I learned.

Well, actually, there's nothing to be impressed about.

It was my ticket out.

And I think both of you understand that, right?

When we are desperate and hungry and we need something, we can do hard things, right?

So true.

I would have learned anything at that point to get out and to see the world.

And so I did.

And I got into Chinese University and then I stayed in China and started my first business when I was 19.

And I started working in the manufacturing industry where there were no women.

No women, no young women, no white women.

I met a business partner, a Chinese man who was older than me, who said he was looking at me struggling, trying to figure out how to do business in China.

And he said his name is Hunzhou.

And I called him George because it was easier for me to remember.

He looked at me and he was like, well, you have big dreams, but you have no idea how to do business or do business in China.

Because I didn't go to business school.

I didn't really know.

I just knew that I had big dreams and I needed to survive and feed myself.

And so I decided that doing business was the best idea.

And so he helped me.

He invested in me and in my business and helped me establish a company and taught me how to do business.

And so we started.

So by 20 years old, I already had a business in China and we were traveling from a factory to factory.

The idea was to represent Chinese sustainable manufacturers who build high quality products in front of the US manufacturers and brands.

And at that point, it was the time when Made in China stigma was born, where everybody thought that, well, Chinese products are bad quality products.

While really what was happening was that the US brands asked Chinese factories to produce things that had what's called planned obsolescence in them.

So it's the ask was build us something that's going to break in a year.

Because the idea was, well, if we buy something in the US and it breaks in a year, you go and buy it again.

Right?

Yeah.

And that's not the best perspective because that does not inspire confidence.

It doesn't, Right, Right, absolutely.

And so I thought, okay, let's change that.

Let's only build high quality products.

And so we decided, bravo.

By the two of us decided we can persuade Chinese factories to build, well, to build long term.

And we promised them business.

And so that was already strange because that was not what other people were doing.

And so we built that business.

And it was challenging because we would go from factory to factory and they would see this young Western, well, non Chinese woman telling them stories about how she's going to bring them business.

Very few people believed me, but I spoke fluent Chinese and I was hustling, I was persuading people.

And so we finally built a database of suppliers.

And then I went to the States and I found them business.

And so that was my beginning in the business world.

Then I moved to.

So that was my first immigration.

Then I moved to.

To the United States.

So I lived in China for 15 years.

Then I moved to San Francisco, lived there for 12 years.

And then I met a man in San Francisco who was French, who we fell in love and decided that we will get married and have kids.

And four years ago we moved to France, so that I'm on my third immigration now, which is actually my hardest immigration yet.

I think that as we get older, changes are more difficult.

I agree, definitely it can be.

Oh, my goodness, you have had quite the life and certainly tenacity, your tenacity as a teenager, but you were kind of like you said, it was a necessity to do all of these things.

And that will motivate you.

Your childhood in the Soviet Union was not easy.

You experienced both anti Semitism and cultural erasure.

And of course, you had to wait in long breadlines with your mom and you really had to be very careful.

And so you were experiencing conflict, which you talk about at a very young age.

And certainly going to China, introducing the concepts that you did, I'm sure you got pushback.

So, I mean, you really learned to take conflict head on.

Right?

That's right.

And I think that early on I understood that it was not about the conflict.

It was what was behind the conflict.

It was the connection that conflict can bring.

And sometimes going through conflict means only I will learn something.

The other person doesn't necessarily learn something.

We don't always find agreement through conflict.

But as long as we stay present and we listen carefully, at least.

The least we can do is to learn something new about ourselves.

Listen carefully.

That's not something people do well or easily when they're experiencing conflict.

I think their brain's shut down.

Yep.

Yeah, right.

And that's why I talk about loving conflict as a practice.

The more we do, as you know this, the more we do something, the more comfortable we become with it.

And then the more skills we grow, and then we get better at it.

And then when we get good at something, we start loving it.

So for me now, whenever I now I know the signs of hard conversation, Right?

Because when I talk about conflict, I mean conflict in hard conversations and tensions.

I do not mean aggression, war, or violence.

So it's that kind of a conflict where we feel so uncomfortable that we want to change the subject.

And so that's my sign.

Whenever I want to change the subject, I know I need to stay.

So whenever I get a tight chest or I can't breathe really calmly, I feel anxious.

I know that I need to stay because there's something, there's a goal here.

And now when it happens, I verbalize it.

So I say, okay, that's what I'm feeling.

I feel very uncomfortable right now, and I would like to stay together.

So can we do this together as a team?

Stay tuned for more of Women Road warriors coming up.

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Welcome back to Women Road warriors with Shelly Johnson and Kathy Tucaro.

If you're enjoying this informative episode of Women Road Warriors, I wanted to mention Kathy and I explore all kinds of topics that will power you on the road to success.

We feature a lot of expert interviews, plus we feature celebrities and women who've been trailblazers.

Please check out our podcast@womenroadwarriors.com and click on our Episodes page.

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Check us out and bookmark our podcast.

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We want to help as many women as possible.

Let's talk about something most of us would rather avoid at all costs.

Conflict.

We dodge it, soften it, suppress it, or pretend it doesn't exist.

But what if conflict isn't the enemy?

What if it's actually the doorway to deeper connection and collaboration?

That's the powerful reframe.

Our guest, Anna Lakat brings to the table.

Anna teaches that conflict isn't a problem to fix.

It's an opportunity to engage, understand, and create something new together.

She even describes conflict as a tango where tension and connection move together to create something meaningful as an intimacy and conflict.

Consultant, speaker and author of Loving Conflict, Creating Collaboration where Others See Division, Anna draws on more than 25 years of leadership experience to help individuals, couples, and organizations stay connected when it matters most.

This is a conversation that could completely change how you see disagreement and maybe even how you show up in it.

Anna, you talk about conflict as a path to trust and collaboration and that most of us do avoid the hard conversations.

I think none of us find it comfortable.

We want to avoid it.

And the avoidance disconnects us.

So how do we get through a hard conversation?

Is there a way to address that or to proceed?

Because I'm not sure people know how.

To me, the first thing we do is stay.

The first thing we do is stay.

All right, Right.

So we need to slow down and not run away, not change the subject.

Most people do not get to this stage.

Subject is changed.

Well, the holidays can present a challenge.

If not all family members get along, right?

When we know that people are already anxious.

Many people are anxious to go home, to be with their families, right?

To have a crazy uncle who will start saying something that you hate.

And people are like, oh, let's just not talk about that.

That's like the agreement at the family table.

Let's not talk about politics, right?

Or let's not talk about religion.

And to me, these are the most important conversations in the family because behind those conversations are our values, our love, our fears.

And so as long as we can get deeper, so not stay on the surface, but get deeper.

So if somebody is very passionate about a topic, the thing to do is to listen carefully.

What is it that they are passionate about?

What's behind the passion?

What is their fear?

What are they afraid of?

And what is it that they're standing for?

What are they trying to get through this passion and talk about that instead?

So instead of talking about the issues at hand, always getting deeper, basically get inside their head.

Do people always know when they're passionate about something, why they are?

Because I think sometimes people just shoot off, and when it's the heat of the moment, they say things they regret.

I think that there's a loss of control in those kind of situations, right?

And so when there's a loss of control on the other side.

So let's say you are having a hard Conversation with someone, and they're losing control.

You know, I learned this in China early on.

We had a negotiation between an American company and a Chinese company.

And an American executive got so angry, he hit the table with his fist.

And I looked at the Chinese side, and they were all smiling.

They all calmed down.

The angrier the American executive got, the calm the Chinese people got and smiler.

And I got so confused.

I was like, they're not matching it.

They're not getting defensive.

They're not getting upset about the expression of anger.

And so I matched how they were behaving to see what was going on.

Just I listened very carefully.

And then slowly, the American executive calmed down.

And as he calmed down, I asked them, the Chinese guys, what was going on.

Why is it that you didn't match?

Why didn't you get angry, too?

Why didn't you hit that table?

And they said, whenever somebody shows their anger, listen.

This is the time to listen, because they will show you.

First of all, if they're angry, it means they care.

The worst case scenario in a conflict is when people dismiss you.

When people don't care anymore, when they shut down, because then connection is the hardest, right?

But if they're yelling, if they're angry, they care.

They care about this conversation, they care about your opinion, they care about negotiation.

They care about something.

And when we know what people care about, it's gold.

It's like the key to their heart.

So about when somebody is expressing emotion, we need to try to not match it, but instead calm down and listen carefully to what they say.

And by being calm like they were, they were diffusing the situation, too.

Is that fair?

And the other person who was angry and pounding his fist on the table, he was trying to get them to react.

Maybe that was one of his strategies.

So that they'd be pulled off their square, essentially.

Exactly.

Exactly.

And so what happened was he kept doing it, and he was not getting the results he was looking for, so he had to calm down.

And then the conversation was calm, rational, logical, where he could not, you know, he could not overpower them with his emotions.

And so that was such a. I was 19 or 20.

It was such a learning experience for me.

I had another moment with the same group, actually, of Chinese executives, where actually, the first time I met them, we came in and I was the only woman at the table.

There were like ten of us, me and then nine Chinese older men.

And we sat down, they poured tea to everyone, and nobody spoke.

And I was so anxious to start speaking to Start the negotiation to introduce my project.

And my Chinese business partner looked at me and he showed me the sign that I should also be quiet.

So we sat for a long time, silent, just looking at each other.

Just like sipping our tea and looking at each other.

It felt like the longest.

I don't know, it seemed like an hour.

And it was so awkward.

You know, it can be quite awkward when people are just looking at me and they're not talking and then they.

I probably burst out laughing.

That's me.

I was so, you know, okay, yeah, right.

Like, we all react differently when we are out of comfort, right?

Because it was not comfortable.

So some of us get angry, some get check out, some we don't feel our body anymore.

Some start laughing, right?

Depending we need to release this.

And so I was just like, I was so curious.

I was staring at them.

And I trusted my business partner, so I knew that we needed to be.

I needed to be quiet.

And then finally they spoke first and they said, okay, now tell us, what is it about?

What is it that you propose?

And then afterwards, when we left and we got the deal that we were looking for, and then when we left the meeting, I was like, well, I ran to my business partner, I was like, okay, tell me, what was that about?

And he said, in our culture, whoever speaks first has less of leverage.

That's actually a sales technique.

Once you've done the close, whoever speaks first loses.

Really?

I have.

I'm learning something new.

Well, thank you.

Yeah.

So it makes sense.

It really, really does.

I think I talk too much.

I'm going to start listening more.

And so at that moment, when he said it to me, I was like, okay, I need to learn how to stay quiet.

Because something I understood that the ability to stay quiet in a highly emotional situation is a power.

So it's powerful negotiation, but it's also power during conflict, right?

Because if I'm uncomfortable, if I'm scared, if I am angry, staying quiet allows me to focus on my breathing, on my emotions, on my sensation in my body.

I'm not speaking, so I am collecting my energy.

I feel my feet on the ground.

I exhale slowly so I can find myself again.

And then I can be deliberate about what I say next.

And for that, I needed to be comfortable with silence.

So when you say, what do we do right?

How do we get comfortable with conflict?

Is first is to get comfortable with our silence.

That's a tough one.

I think people would have to practice, right?

And we practice, right.

Like everything else, like all the hard Things we practice and we.

I mean, the two of you have done so many hard things.

So.

I find, like, speaking of hard things, I come from a very violent background, even as a small child.

Well, that's my.

My.

My baseline was violence and fear.

And anytime I would speak, would be, you know, told to shut up.

That, you know, I.

My.

I waste the air.

I pollute the air.

You know, my words are useless and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And so it took me any time.

Like, in my adulthood, anytime conflict would arise, I would shut down.

So when I finally went to therapy, I spent two years in this women's center, kind of relearning how to live and unlearning all the trauma.

Well, now, 13 years later, in relationships, I still struggle with when conflict arises.

So is there something that you could tell me that would kind of assist me in getting past that initial blockage?

Is there something that you could say that would help us kind of cross that barrier?

I will share with you what I do, because I also.

I mean, we're not comparing dramas, of course.

It was very tough to grow up where I grew up, in Soviet Ukraine.

And as you already mentioned, Shelly, that I was.

So I'm Jewish, and there was a lot of antisemitism growing up.

So I was in many situations where it was dangerous and violent.

And now when I get triggered and I get flooded emotionally.

Right.

So I'm not able to be deliberate.

For me, what helps me.

And I think it's different for everyone.

And there is, like, a long list of things that we can do.

If somebody's volume gets too loud for me and I cannot hear them anymore because all I see is violence.

Right.

Or the possibility of violence, I feel unsafe.

I will say I want to stay in this conversation, but not at this volume.

Can we please change the volume or not at this tone?

I cannot be here with this tone.

Okay, so you set yourself, you set boundaries is what you're doing.

Right?

But you hear my voice, right?

Yeah.

So this voice, this calm, grounded, low voice, is where I am at all times.

So whenever I feel that I cannot stay in this voice, I need to change the situation.

I need to redesign the situation.

So to me, my number one priority in life is staying at this voice at all times.

So, yes, I am a mother of three children.

Yes, I run business.

Yes, I am a wife.

And I have my parents, elderly parents, who live with me.

Yes, I have many responsibilities, But I believe that my number one responsibility is to myself and to my mental health.

And the expression of that mental health is that my ability to stay calm and speak this way no matter what, because I know that this is when I am not triggered or flooded, right?

And I know that when somebody else gets angry or scared, which is the same thing actually, because people get scared and then anger is there to cover up the fear, right?

As long as I stay in this voice, in this calm, I can regulate them, co regulate them.

But the moment I get out of this and I get angry and I get dysregulated, then I need to get out completely.

I need to get out of the room, I need to get out of the conversation, go to the woods, walk, calm down, find back this calm and then go back into the conflict.

Stay tuned for more of Women Road warriors.

Coming up.

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Welcome back to Women Road warriors with Shelly Johnson and Kathy Paul DeCaro.

Imagine if every disagreement in your life wasn't a breakdown, but a breakthrough waiting to happen.

Sounds radical, right?

Our guest believes it's not only possible, it's essential.

Anna La Catte challenges the way we've been taught to see conflict.

Instead of something to fear or avoid, she reframes it as a creative force.

Anna calls it a tango where tension meets connection, and together they create movement, understanding and growth.

With more than two decades of leadership experience, Anna works as an intimacy and conflict consultant, helping people navigate tough conversations without disconnecting.

She's also the author of Loving Conflict, Creating Collaboration where others See division, a roadmap for turning division into collaboration.

If conflict shows up in your work, your relationships or your life, and let's be honest, it does, this is a conversation you'll want to lean into.

Anna, you talk a lot about self regulation, right?

Somebody needs to be regulated and it's usually me.

So I spend a lot of time in nature and taking care of myself so that I can bring this calm to the rest of the, to the, to the world.

So you can do almost the same thing if by, if you, if you say you can't get out into nature by doing meditation, right?

I'm assuming like you can put yourself if you can't physically get to a calm place, like you can actually maybe just stop and Go inside and just kind of calm yourself through that.

Would that work?

Would that be a tool?

Look, I, I'm a meditator, so I meditate every day.

And I think that I personally, even though I know how to meditate, for me it's not the easiest way to calm down.

I need to go hug a tree.

So even when we're in big cities, there are birds, there are bushes, there are, I mean, right?

There is a way to connect, to see a bird.

To me, when we look at nature, anything that's outside of what humans build, there is something magical that happens that when it reminds us of our humanity.

A flower, I don't know, something.

So that's one thing.

Another one is, okay, we had hard life, right?

We all had things happen to us, some worse than others, but everybody had hard things.

Growing up.

When I am feeling uncomfortable, when it's unsafe, I try to see the other people when they were five years old.

Gotcha.

So you think you try to see them as a five year old, essentially.

Exactly, exactly.

Because whenever somebody is angry or upset or dysregulated, they just went back to their five years old or four or three.

They are also triggered.

And so to me it really helps to imagine, okay, is he now talking out of his five years old or.

He's not talking to me right now.

He's talking to, I don't know, his ex wife or his mother or his, his grandma or somebody did something to him that now he's triggered again.

And so thinking that way brings compassion out of me and then I calm down and then the other person feels it.

That makes total sense.

It does, yeah.

You're bringing the humanity into it again and trying to understand the person.

Because when you think about it, our emotions develop as we're children and we do, we go back to how we related, then it may manifest differently.

But yeah, I think that people could be deeply, actually mad at somebody else, not even the person that they're yelling at in the room.

So that's a powerful perspective.

I just wanted to mention one more thing that helps me so when I am having a conflict with my husband, for example, I know that we are both very powerful and we both run our own businesses and we are usually out there in the world making decisions.

So when we are having an argument, it's some sort of competition happening.

We forgot that we are a team, that we are on the same team and we are going one against the other.

And so we now know, we've been together now for 15 years, that when this is happening.

We need to switch and remember that we are on the same team.

So we need to sit next to each other so we never have difficult conversations sitting one in front of the other.

So when we're in a restaurant, for example, and we know something tough needs to be discussed, we ask to be seated next to each other.

And the problem is in front of both of us.

So we are never one other's problem.

The problem is in front of us and we are on the same team.

And so that reminder really shifts the perspective.

We don't need to be defending from the other person.

We are together, looking at something happened in our life that dysregulated us.

It's not each other.

That's a powerful perspective.

Another one is, I think that we forget often is how touch is important for us as human beings.

Sometimes when somebody is really angry, I will just slight, with an intention of calming them down, will just touch them on the shoulder.

And it's just like with.

I'm thinking like how I am with my kids.

If they upset, I'm not going to yell at them because they're already upset.

I need to regulate them to calm them down.

So I will hold them.

But like in a corporate environment, for example, I can't hold an executive.

I could.

Can you imagine going out as a CEO?

Like I could, I could, but it's not always appropriate.

And so.

But I will, to the extent that it's still allowed to do in the corporate America, I will initiate some kind of a touch.

And people don't even notice what's happening, but they feel calmer.

So it's like remembering we are human beings, we're not machines.

Yes, I was going to say bringing back the humanity.

And maybe it's also bringing somebody back to when they were a child and their mother did that.

So it's a natural reaction for them to calm down.

So that's powerful.

Anna, your perspectives are really revolutionary.

I don't think a lot of people talk about it, but you reframe conflict as a kind of tango, which is tension plus connection, which equals creation.

And you discuss that in your book.

Could you kind of give a summary of that?

How does that work exactly?

How's it at tango?

So first of all, I'm obsessed with tango.

I'm a tango dancer.

I've been dancing for many, many years.

And tango is fully improvised dance.

I don't know.

Have you ever seen tango dance?

Yes.

And so it's hard to believe that the two people can improvise every step to that level.

And I actually learned.

I danced both roles, so I know how to lead and follow and tango.

And I learned how to lead because I was so frustrated at the fact that women always have to sit and wait to be invited to dance.

Women are not allowed to go and invite men to dance.

They have to wait to be invited.

And so I decided that I will not wait to be chosen.

And so I learned both sides.

And as I learned both sides, it's extremely difficult to lead.

I understood that actually every step of tango is negotiated and questioned.

So since we don't know what's going to happen, we don't know what the other person is going to do, we need to negotiate and adjust.

We hesitate, we pause, we hold, we look, we listen carefully to the other person.

And there are all kinds of misunderstandings that happen along the way.

And so we need to adjust, renegotiate, and continue.

And the better we do it, the longer we do it, the deeper our connection is created.

And then we create something that's bigger than both of us could alone, which is art.

And so the more I practice, the more I realize that the all the skills that we need in conflict to stay connected through conflict, we already practice them in this kind of improvised partner dance.

We negotiate conflicts and hard conversations every second, every step, and connect deeper and deeper to each other.

And to be able to do this in tango, you know, sometimes we say this.

You know how we say it takes two to tango?

Yes.

Yep.

Yeah.

Well, it's misunderstood.

We usually think, well, it takes two to tango means two people.

Actually, it means it takes two connections.

One with yourself and one with the other person.

You first need to be fully connected with yourself.

Where are you?

Where is your.

Where is.

Are you stable on the ground?

Do you feel your breathing?

Do you hear the music?

Do you know.

You know, where is your balance?

And only then start noticing the other person.

Where are they at?

How are they feeling?

What is it that they need?

If we cannot stay connected with ourself, we cannot connect with the other person.

It's the same in a hard conversation or in any conflict, right?

We need to first know, where am I?

Am I okay?

Am I safe?

What is it that I am?

How am I contributing to the conflict?

What are my biases?

What are my beliefs?

Am I triggered?

And am I imagining that this person reminding me of something that happened to me a long time ago?

Or am I actually interacting with this person who is in front of me?

What is real?

Right?

So we need to first check with ourselves, and then okay, this person in front of me, what's going on with them?

What do they believe in, what information they have and how are they feeling?

What are they scared of?

What are their values and how will I now interact with them?

That's a lot of thinking that's going on as you're interacting with someone.

So you really have to do a lot of self awareness and really be very intuitive and develop your empathic skills.

You have to have empathy as well in order to read the other person and understand where they're coming from.

How do we develop all of that?

Because I think people shut down and they just react.

I think when we.

Okay, I will tell you what helps me.

You know, when something is really important, all of a sudden I have the skills.

So for example, when I go, when I went on a first date with my now husband, that first date, I had all the skills.

I had compassion I had.

I could feel myself.

It was so important for me that all of a sudden I could read, almost read his mind because I really liked him and I really wanted this to work.

So I think that when we really need something, we have the skills.

Stay tuned for more of Women Road warriors coming up.

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Welcome back to Women Road warriors with Shelly Johnson and Kathy Tucaro.

Conflict touches every part of our lives, our relationships, our workplaces, even our inner dialogue.

And yet most of us were never taught how to stay connected when tension shows up.

Our guest, Anna La Catte, believes conflict itself isn't the problem.

Disconnection is.

She invites us to see Conflict as an opportunity to collaborate rather than collide.

Through her unique perspective, Anna describes conflict as a tango, a dance of tension and connection that when navigated with awareness, leads to creation instead of division.

Anna is an intimacy and conflict consultant, speaker and the author of Loving Conflict Creating Collaboration where others See division.

Anna, in our last segment, you were saying that when we really need something, if there's a conflict or something that we want to accomplish, we have the skills to do it.

We're more in tune, right.

And so means that we know how to do it.

So now when I'm in front of someone and it's difficult for me to connect, I take myself back to the moments when it mattered and I had the skills and I bring that compassion and that attunement and that presence into these conversations, for example, for me.

And I think we will have different triggers.

Right.

For me, I have this one trigger.

When I'm with someone who is arrogant, I get triggered.

It's very difficult for me to connect with somebody who thinks they are better than everybody else.

You know, those kind of people.

Oh yes, yuck.

I can't stand people like that.

Okay, very good.

So we have the same triggers.

I'm glad.

So, and so I was the other day I was having lunch with an acquaintance here in Paris.

And as she was paying, she handed the credit card to waiter without looking at him.

And I got.

For me, this is.

I think waiters are.

Or anybody who helps me, they are extremely important.

I will stop everything to honor them because they were bringing me food, right.

And it doesn't matter what I'm doing, I'm right.

I'm going to thank them.

I'll talk to them.

I asked them their name and I want to honor everybody who is helping me.

And so when she did that and she kept talking to me and she just handed him credit card without looking at him.

For me, everything got dark.

I could not listen to her anymore.

I forgot that she was a human being because I got so upset and I needed to apologize to the waiter and.

And so.

But I want to stay connected with her.

And I don't want to be that person who acts out of the darkness and over the upset.

And so it really was like walking out of the darkness into the light of like, okay, she's still someone I just had lunch with.

So how do I talk to somebody I love and somebody I care about?

How do I look?

So I literally set up, you know, and I looked at her with.

So I change my state first and I behave, I pretend and then it comes back, and then I find my voice, this voice, the calm voice.

And then out of that voice, I can address it.

So then I addressed it with her.

Okay, here's what just happened.

I want to be clear that I just want to share with you that I got super triggered.

I think it comes from my childhood that the Russians in Soviet Union thought they were better than other people.

And so to me, it's a trigger.

Anytime I see anybody who thinks they're better than other people, I want to protect all the marginalized people.

I want to be.

You know, I want to fix things.

So going forward, can you please not do that?

And I explained to her why it's so important to look people in the eye when you pay them.

And so later on, she told me she apologized, she had tears in her eyes.

She didn't realize it was happening, happening.

And now I can go with her and have lunch and not worry it's going to happen, because I know she changed.

You gave her a valuable message, and you were able to handle it in a very diplomatic way that she was able to accept.

Is that where the whole concept of loving conflict comes in?

Because I'm seeing from your book it means not engage, not handle, not tolerate, not manage.

And it also does not mean picking fights, being aggressive, seeking drama, and abandoning your own needs.

You're essentially being very proactive and assertive rather than aggressive.

I mean, it's all of these positive things where you're in control of yourself, and then you are able to get the reaction that you would like to have from someone else.

Or at least cooperation.

Exactly.

Yes.

Because collaboration is what I'm looking for at all times.

And I think that this obsession with collaboration comes from the fact that I am now in the middle of several major conflicts in the world.

And you see, I'm Ukrainian, and Russia is at war with Ukraine.

I've built businesses between China and the US for many years, and now they're in a trade war.

I'm Jewish.

I have a family in Israel, and I have friends in Palestinian community.

And there is a conflict in Middle East.

Right.

So I'm constantly in situations where I know that if we do not collaborate, we have war, it leads to war.

So, you know, we can look at it on an example, on private examples in our families.

We know that if we don't have hard conversations for a long time, it leads to breakups and divorces and disconnection.

If we take it on a community level or company level, it is.

It leads to worse situations.

And Then if we take it to countries level, we see what's happening with wars, right?

So I think collaboration is something that we all need to learn right now.

And we cannot collaborate without moving through the conflicts, moving through the difficult conversations.

And you said, and Shelley, you said before that it's so much work and yes, it's a lot of work, but I think that without this work we do not get the deep love and the deep relationships that we all yearn for.

You have some powerful messages here.

You should be a world diplomat.

I mean really, I think that world leaders could really learn from all of your principles here.

I'm looking at some of the points of your book.

Engage with presence, assume nothing.

Listen to understand the art of questioning and the rule of us, which is moving from me versus you to we to build a shared identity, even in disagreement.

We could use that today those concepts.

I think that there is so much divisiveness, we're shattered, we're fragmented and we don't have a shared identity.

Right?

Absolutely.

And I think it's definitely right now a time for us to change that.

And I'm working a lot with groups that are very fractured.

So I am, as you know, and as you mentioned, I'm a conflict and intimacy consultant.

So I'm now hired by organizations and companies where they have a major conflict or when there is a hard conversation to have and they are not managing it well.

I also work with families, many couples that are pre divorced, for example, or when they have a very, very something very hard happening and I come in and I teach them, I walk them through these steps that you just mentioned and we work on the skills so that they're able to do it.

I work a lot in Asia, for example.

You know, as I'm fluent in mentoring, I work a lot in Asia in family businesses where they have generations working together and where they have a lot of conflict, where they have like an older founder and who brings in the younger children and they don't really speak the same language.

Or in the States, for example, nowadays with what's going on in politics, it affects corporations, right?

It affects boards, it affects teams, where they stop anytime something major happens, politically, they stop talking.

And so I come in and I facilitate those conversations.

So we all sit together and hold hands.

I love it.

Where do people reach out to you?

Because I imagine you work with individuals as well as, like you said, corporations.

Where is the best place to reach out to you and to find your book?

Loving Conflict, Creating Collaboration where others see division.

Thank you.

So my website is annalikat.com and my book is coming out end of March, so it's now going through the birth canal.

So it's finished, but the publishing is happening end of March.

And yeah, I work a lot with couples.

Right now my focus is couples because I believe that if everything is good at home and in our intimate life, we carry that security, that safety and that anchor into our public life.

I think that when we have enough intimacy to feed our body and soul and what we want from love, we are then kinder and more compassionate to people when we go out and we interact with the world.

So I'm really putting a lot of attention now on that and work with many couples in the States where they are missing intimacy because something happened where trust was broken and we are walking back into trust together.

I love your perspectives, Anna.

People can reach out to you@annalakatt.com that's spelled a N N A L E C A T dot com.

Wow.

You're exactly what the world needs.

This is powerful.

Thank you so much.

Thank you so much for being on the show with us.

Oh my gosh, it's been such a great conversation.

Honestly, it's been fabulous.

So thank you very much.

Thank you for having me.

Thank you, Anna.

You can sign up for Anna's book Loving Conflict, Creating Collaboration, where others See Division on her website and the book's coming out in March.

It's a powerful compilation of the information we just covered.

Things like why conflict is not a failure, but a form of connection, how to shift from reactive patterns to courageous dialogue how cultural, relational and personal history shape conflict and practical exercises to support collaboration under pressure.

You can find out more on Anna's website at annalacat.com we hope you've enjoyed this latest episode and if you want to hear more episodes of Women Road warriors or learn more about our show, be sure to check out womenroadwarriors.com and please follow us on social media.

And don't forget to subscribe to our podcast on our website.

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You've been listening to Women Road warriors with Shelly Johnson and Kathy Takaro.

If you want to be a guest on the show or have a topic or feedback, email us@sjohnsonomenroadwarriors.com.