Shownotes
We sit down with the remarkable J'Lein Liese, a PhD in psychology whose life journey bridges everything from training police in South Africa and advising on post-crisis conflict at Sandy Hook, to her early days as a 13-year-old horse trainer searching for belonging on the Mexican border.
This conversation is a masterclass in the art of genuine human connection. J'Lein Liese shares deeply personal stories and lessons from her work in some of the world’s most intense conflict zones, revealing practical frameworks for dissolving division and leading with empathy - whether you’re in a boardroom, a crisis, or just trying to get through a tough family dinner.
You’ll hear about her four-step “FEED” process for navigating difficult conversations, the neuroscience of why we disconnect, and real-life examples - from negotiating in the Middle East to addressing the polarization that’s gripping families and organizations today. If you’ve ever wondered how to keep a relationship intact when values collide, or why “tell me more” is the most powerful phrase you can use, this episode is for you.
Get ready to laugh, reflect, and maybe do a little soul-searching as we dig into what it means to play nicely in the sandbox - no matter how high the stakes. Enjoy the conversation.
👤 Connect with J’Lein Liese:
✅ “Lead With Conversations” Book: https://geni.us/LeadWithConversations
✅ Website: http://leadwithconversations.com/
✅ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/j-lein-liese-ph-d-13308a4/
✅ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/leadwithconversationsofficial/
👤 Connect with Selling Isn’t Everything:
✅ Official: https://SellingIsntEverything.com
✅ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@SellingIsntEverything
✅ LinkedIn (Shari): https://www.linkedin.com/in/sharilevitin
✅ LinkedIn (Brent): https://www.linkedin.com/in/brentadamson
✅ Brent’s Latest Book, The Framemaking Sale: https://www.theframemakingsale.com/
Selling Isn’t Everything is produced by Chris Stone at Cast Ahead: https://CastAhead.net
Transcripts
In this episode of Selling Isn't Everything, we have the honor and privilege of interviewing Jalaine Lise Sherry, one of your dear friends and also a PhD in psychology, who. Boy, she had a lot to teach us, didn't she?
Shari Levitin [:She did. And she's worked with everybody from the FBI to coming in at Sandy Hook, and she talks about conflict resolution, but more importantly, she gives us frameworks so in our everyday life, we can get through difficult conversations and lead to human connection.
Brent Adamson [:Enjoy the podcast, everyone. Then. I think that's pretty powerful.
J'Lein Liese [:It calls me different things.
Brent Adamson [:I imagine they do.
Shari Levitin [:Yeah, Yeah.
J'Lein Liese [:I go by anything as long as it's nice.
Brent Adamson [:Is there anything between. Is the apostrophe actually replacing anything? Like, you know, and you not becomes. Don't. There's no. Okay.
J'Lein Liese [:My. My father was a Green Beret. My mother was in the Peace Corps. I was the result, different value system. And they got creative. I mean, it was the 60s. It could have been Moonflower. So I guess I should be a little grateful.
Brent Adamson [:Amazing. You. You stopped actually, like, in a. A Green Beret in the Peace Corps.
J'Lein Liese [:Like, what I always do say, like, people say, how did you get into conflict resolution? And how did you get into this work? And I'm like, have you looked at my name? I mean, did I have an option? You know, because I've had to explain my name my entire life. Right.
Shari Levitin [:So, you know, this is super fun for me, and I've been looking forward to it, mostly because we're friends. And interestingly, Brent, I don't know if you know this, but Jelaine and I are new friends, which I think is rare, once you hit this phase of life, to have a new friend that you would consider one of your best friends. And it's a really cool thing, but I think it was, what, only three years ago at Christmas that we met.
J'Lein Liese [:It'll be three years in December.
Shari Levitin [:Okay. So it was three years ago, and I was meeting a friend for a drink in a bar. Sounds like a.
Brent Adamson [:As. As one does.
Shari Levitin [:As one does. And she used to work for me, like, 10 years ago. It was Andrea Dogan, and I hadn't seen her literally, in 10 years. And so we caught up. We caught up. And then she said, you're not leaving? I said, no, I'm leaving. I'm. I'm making my husband dinner.
Shari Levitin [:Or she says, no, you're not leaving. My friend Jelaine is coming. You have to meet her. You're going to be business friends. But you are. Guys are going to hit off. You're going to be best friends. You cannot leave.
Shari Levitin [:And so I didn't. And sure enough, dinner made. And then we become hiking buddies and, you know, hike, like every other Sunday with our dogs, with your amazing dogs. And I think the more we got to know each other, it was just like the conversations. It was one of those relationships where they just went everywhere. And so we became good friends. And I am always blown away with the conversations, your opinions, your background, and your humility with all of what you do. I think I'd like to start, because it really moved me is you're 17 years old, you leave school, you go to Arizona.
Shari Levitin [:Can you just tell the audience a little bit about your origin story, like why you left to go become a horse trainer?
J'Lein Liese [:So I grew up. I left home when I was 13. I wanted to ride horses, and I wanted to be a professional. I wanted to go to the Olympics. I had all these dreams. And so my grandfather connected me with this wonderful horse trainer who just happened to have her ranch on the border of Mexico in Nogales, Arizona. So I moved in with my trainer, and I lived down there. I went to school in Nogale.
J'Lein Liese [:You know, in Nogales, I was like one of, I think, five white students on a campus of 3,000 in Nogales, where I was the minority for the first time. Yet if you've ever been to Nogales or to Mexico, the culture is just so warm and loving and embracing. And so even though I was 13, I didn't feel homesick or lonely because the culture just wraps you up in a hug, and people are just so kind. But in the horse world, and I would go on the road, you know, 20 to sometimes 25 weeks out of the year to show horses. Back in the 80s, it was, you know, I don't know if I'm just call it directly like there was racism or if it was a status issue, but if you were white or black and you groomed horses, you were called a groom, and you slept in, you know, hotels. But if you were Mexican, you were labeled Mexican and slept in stalls next to the horses, it had a huge impact on me. And so by the time I was 17 and graduating from high school, I had to make a decision. I could either continue to train and try to, you know, go for my Olympic dreams and do all of that, or I had.
J'Lein Liese [:I could go to school, I could go to university, and I was told by my trainers I couldn't do both. I had to pick one or the other, and I didn't know what to do. And one day I woke up in the morning. I mean, literally, I did nothing but go to bed the night before. But I woke up in extreme pain and I had a spontaneous pneumothorax. My, my lung had just collapsed for no reason, but it hurt a lot. And I went to the doctor and the doctor said, you know, showed that it was, you know, the X ray showed that it was re. Inflating by itself.
J'Lein Liese [:There was no reason for it to collapse. I had no health issues, but I couldn't ride horses for six weeks. And in that six week period, I decided, okay, what do I really want to do? What's really important to me? So I was 17, very idealistic, and I thought, you know what? I think that prejudice and racism is just a misunderstanding. And if people could just get together and have real conversations, we could solve this. So I decided I was going to quit riding horses. I enrolled at asu, which I. Which at Arizona State University because I hadn't taken SATs, I hadn't done any testing or anything. And so being a state school, I was allowed to enroll.
J'Lein Liese [:And that first semester, I mean, I was 17 freshmen. I saw some things happening on campus. I'm like, I want to fix this, I want to get into this. And so I convinced the administration to give me a $30,000 grant at, you know, my freshman year first semester. And I created a program called Leadership 2000. Because in 1987, the year 2000 felt very far away. And so it was called Leadership 2000. And it was a four day kind of leadership retreat for students that dealt with all the isms and just, just being a good person.
J'Lein Liese [:Like how. What kind of human being do we want to be as we move into the world? And it caught, you know, some national attention and different things happened. So by time I graduated with my bachelor's, I already had, you know, basically a consulting business in place. And that's how I got started. And I've never. It's really weird. I mean, I know that we're going to talk about my, you know, my website and I'll be able to announce my website. I still don't even have a picture up.
J'Lein Liese [:I've never used a website. I've never had a business card. I've never done any. Everything has just been referral. And I've worked in 60 countries. I've worked in almost every major war zone. I trained police in South Africa for six years. I've done, I mean, just all kinds of different things.
J'Lein Liese [:But it's all just because I want to help make, you know, our place a better place. And if I can do that through building relationships with people, that's my mission.
Brent Adamson [:Julian, what do you. So for everyone listening. So it's actually super interesting when you say you train them. Train them to do what exactly? Or is it to start doing something? To stop doing something? What's the. There's such a great story of you, of human connection and finding common ground and all, but when, when someone asks you what do you train on? What? What do you say exactly?
J'Lein Liese [:My little tagline is, I help people play nicely in the sandbox together.
Brent Adamson [:Good luck.
J'Lein Liese [:But it's, it's really. It is about being able to have, you know, productive conversations. I mean, if you look. So I'm a psychologist, right? So I did my Master's and my PhD in psychology. Don't hold that against me. But I love the brain. And if you've ever studied the brain, our brain was designed to keep us in relationship. It's really fascinating.
J'Lein Liese [:And so I've developed tools that, in terms of how to communicate, that if we follow the way our brain wants us to process information, there is almost no reason why we can't stand stay in a relationship. We may not agree, we don't always have to agree, but we should always be able to find enough common ground and connection that we can disagree but keep the relationship intact. And to me, that's the only. That's. That's the number one thing that we need on the planet today. We need to be able to have conversations. We need to stop, you know, refusing to talk to people or cutting them out of our lives because we, we disagree on something. Again, if you look at how human beings were formed, we were, we were designed.
J'Lein Liese [:Whether you believe in a higher power, whether you believe in evolution, human beings were, were designed to be a we. The human baby is one of the only. We're like one of the only species where we are completely dependent at birth. We cannot survive by ourselves. As a human baby, we are completely dependent. And then we're supposed to, you know, reach adolescence and we go through a stage of independence. But the only reason why the human, you know, we continue on as human beings is because then we become interdependent, procreate, live together and that kind of thing. And as a baby, we are dependent.
J'Lein Liese [:And if we're lucky to live a really long life, we're dependent when we leave. So we are designed to be interdependent. And yet so much of what's happening in the world and the way we communicate and talk to each other is creating division instead of connection. And so my goal in life is to connect us.
Shari Levitin [:It just occurred to me you left the house at 13. There was obviously a reason you left the house. And I'm wondering how much of your upbringing and some of the challenges in your upbringing brought you to this work of wanting to help people connect and resolve conflict. I assume that was a factor, but I don't think I've ever asked you that.
J'Lein Liese [:I grew up in a household where we didn't have good communication. I mean, I had. You know, my mother was. I was. You know, I actually said this. My book. You know, she was a yeller, like, but she would yell, get it off her chest. And then she was fine.
J'Lein Liese [:And then everyone's supposed to go back and be happy. Meanwhile, I felt like someone had just put a serrated knife to my gut and left me in a pile of blood. And we never were allowed to talk about anything. You know, if I ever had an issue to discuss, it was I. It just. We had to let it go. If anything happened that was negative, you're just supposed to let it go and move on once it got off someone's chest. And that didn't work for me.
J'Lein Liese [:I mean, maybe I'm overly sensitive, but I want to unpack things. I want to come to a solution. I want to prevent the same pattern from happening over and over again. And because there was no communication in my family that I would consider productive, I looked. I was, you know, okay. They say that you teach what you need yourself, right? Sometimes we teach what we need to learn ourselves, and other times we teach what we just really want and crave within ourselves. And I craved that ability to have authentic conversations and unpack things that, again, we don't have to agree, but we do need to be able to share our experiences so that we can find a way to connect and move forward together.
Shari Levitin [:And you've done that and literally, like, trained with the FBI, trained in hospital countries. I know. I'd just like you to share how you open your book. Leading with conversation, by the way, is like my Bible. I use it all the time, like at home and at work and other places, because. And I'm sure we'll get to your framework, but can you just take us back to the day of the Sandy Hook shooting? And I know you had a somatic experience, and you were actually called in as one of the people to work with the authority in Sandy Hook. Can you tell us a little bit about that?
J'Lein Liese [:I actually wasn't at Sandy Hook myself, I actually was called by people who are helping to facilitate some of the aftermath if I could support their efforts. And so that was my role in that piece. Right. But what happened, and I think I did talk about this in my book. I can't remember every story that's in my book, but is when people got together. We're in this place in our country right now where everything is just an immediate attack. Right. And so, you know, you have some people saying, well, you know, this is a gun issue and we need to get rid of guns and, you know, that kind of thing.
J'Lein Liese [:And then we had people on the other side saying, well, you know, this isn't about guns. And you know, all of you guys who are anti gun, you're, you know, anti life and, you know, you're, you know. Or what was it? I'm getting confused. Anyhow, we had people who were like saying this is because of the guns. And then we had people on the other side saying, well, you're, you know, you're all about killing people because you want abortion and that kind of thing. And it was just really, it was just very. People just get very divided, right? They go into two separate camps and then you're no longer having a conversation. It's no longer about the kids.
J'Lein Liese [:It's no longer about what's happening is for a long time that was the big division on a country was, you know, abortion and guns on, you know, depending on your word, what side you were on, that's who you voted for and that's where you're. And that's what was your party. And yet we're so much richer than that. And anybody who is, I'm going to say is pro choice is also pro life. And you know, and the fact that they care about people and that's the approach that they come to it. And people who are pro life life care deeply about people and that's their approach and how they come to it. And if we could just start with we all care about people and we all care about what's in the best interest of people. We have a different way of approaching it.
J'Lein Liese [:Maybe then we can have a better conversation.
Brent Adamson [:Since you've written the book, things have arguably just gotten worse. I mean, it's like, I guess I'm.
Shari Levitin [:Like.
Brent Adamson [:Nor did I mean to apply once. That's in retrospect, I kind of retract that statement. But, but, you know, but, but, you know, two things have happened. One, of course, just the polarization, at least in the United States, so, you know, we've all become either a red or a blue, and there's, you know, never the twain shall meet. And to your point, inside that, or in that massive gulf between these two perspectives, of course, is a massive amount of common ground that we've all seemed to forget to look at. The, the thing that's becoming especially troubling today, it seems, Jelaine, I'd love to get your thoughts on this is we now have better tools than ever before to run away from the problem. There is weekend. There was a really interesting article in, in New York Times just last weekend of people now building romantic relationships with their AI algorithm and falling in love and doing all the things one might do in a romantic relationship with their AI.
Brent Adamson [:And it's like, so it's becoming increasingly easy to detach. It's become increasingly easy to go in the arguably the exact opposite direction of what you're advocating for. We have now better tools and technology to enable us to do so than ever. I, I just like, where's. Do you look at that? Do you get discouraged? Do you get excited? Do you think like, where, where's your head at in all this? I guess it would be really interesting to get your thoughts on this.
J'Lein Liese [:So this is awesome. That's a great question. Right? Okay, so let me just. I want to go back to how the brain processes, because I think this. Okay, this will give you the answer, right?
Brent Adamson [:Okay.
J'Lein Liese [:So I have a four step process, you know, in, in my book that I call feed, right? And it stands for facts, Explore, which is expl. Emotions and experiences, Evaluate, which is basically our thoughts, our opinions, our judgments, and then decide when we choose what we want to do. This is how the brain processes. If you think of an alarm clock, the fact is the alarm clock goes off in the morning. We immediately explore how we feel about that alarm. Based on how we feel, we start to evaluate. Do I have to get up right now? Can I sleep for 10 more minutes? Do I really want to go to Starbucks? And then based on that evaluation, we make a decision. We either get out of bed or we put it on snooze.
J'Lein Liese [:That's how the brain processes, but it's not how we show up in conversation. I'm going to finish answering your question, but I'm going to ask you something first. If you think of those four layers as levels, facts, explore your emotions, evaluate, you know, come up with thoughts in perspectives, and then a decision. Which layer or which level do you think we leave out of conversation the most?
Brent Adamson [:Probably the facts, but But I think. But, but this is maybe I. So there's this. Really what happens when you live in a post factual world.
J'Lein Liese [:Well, so hold on. So you say fact. But I. I'm gonna.
Brent Adamson [:I know I'm getting ahead of the story. I think. I don't know.
J'Lein Liese [:Because what we do is that we leave out facts and explore, right. We start our conversations with an evaluation. Like go back to. And the second we do that. So when we start with an evaluation and especially a negative. If I said something opposite of you, right. What that does. If I were to say like you would ask me to do something and I say no, and then I say because.
J'Lein Liese [:Which pretty much almost every parent does, right? But if we say no and then. Because the second the brain hears no cortisol is released in the brain. It puts us. Which puts us into a state of hostility and distrust. Even if it's an amicable conversation, we have to. We have this now this chemical in our brain putting us in this state that we have to fight while we're trying to stay in conversation. So one of the biggest things is that we. So you.
J'Lein Liese [:You are right to your point. We leave out facts. But we leave out facts and then we also leave out the. Explore. Explore is the most important part. So when we start with the evaluation, especially if it's negative, we go into a state of hostility and distrust. Even if the facts behind it. When people say no because and the because makes sense.
J'Lein Liese [:The person who's hearing it has a. Has a really struggle to hear those facts because the cortisol is already putting them in this state of hostility and distrust. Right now. Going back to what you said about AI, AI is connecting with the heart. So if I look at my. If I. And I have a model in my book that shows this where it's. You have the facts explore, which is emotions.
J'Lein Liese [:I put a heart symbol and then evaluation. I have a head like the brain, right? And then decide. Think about it from sales. In sales, you want to. You want to ignite the heart. So the head will want to come up with a reason to buy, right? If you connect with the heart, if you get someone emotionally connected, the head will do everything they can. It can to justify making that purchase. At the same token, if the heart feels in danger or is threatened, the head is going to become the massive protector.
J'Lein Liese [:It becomes an army that goes around the heart to protect it. So when we hear no, right. The instant thing that on the person on the receiving end, their brain wants to protect their heart from being hurt, right? So now let's go back to AI. AI is all about connecting with the heart. I love going into, like, my chat GPT. I'll say, what do you think of this? And it tells me, immediately gives me an emotional reaction. That's awesome. You're wondering, oh, that could cause a problem.
J'Lein Liese [:You might want to reconsider this. But this is why, but, oh, I can really feel your pain on this one. Or I can really feel why you're doing this. Whoever designed AI was brilliant because AI is designed to connect to the heart. And that's what's missing in our society today. And it's missing out of our conversations. We try to go from facts to evaluation. We'll say like, no, because.
J'Lein Liese [:Or we'll even say, well, here's the situation and this is why we're going to go that way. But when we skip what I call exploring, you know, the heart and the experience, that's when people disconnect from each other.
Shari Levitin [:I hear what you say about AI and that's why it's so addicting. Right? I mean, I was just reading that, you know, and that's, to Brent's point, why we, you know, so many people are going to have relationships with their AI. It's just validating. It's a mirror. It tells you what you want to hear. All of those things that, you know, can be good and can be scary. And now what you're saying about conflict resolution and this whole idea that, yes, we've never been more polarized than we are now. I'd never seen anything like it.
Shari Levitin [:When I was growing up, I didn't know if people were a Democrat or Republican. It didn't matter. I voted on both sides. Like, it was the person, it was the issue. We were certainly not there anymore. I think what would be interesting with this feedback process, because it's so powerful and really simple, but if you're not doing it, it's advanced, right? Because the, like you said, the cortisol kicks in. You know, we start telling ourselves stories and, and, and so we lose the connection. Can you give us an example of maybe how you've used the feed process in a really tense situation?
J'Lein Liese [:I was asked by the State Department back when President Bush was in office to help with some of the human trafficking issues in the Middle East. And so I was there doing some work. And it was also the Arab Spring. So I was also asked to do some work between. I was doing some mediation between Sunnis and Shias. And it just so happened when I was in Bahrain during this Time period, it was the morning of Muharram, which is the pride. I don't want to speak for Shias, but I think it's the most important Shia holiday right of the year. And it's a 10 day process.
J'Lein Liese [:And people go down it and they, they actually close off the streets at night. And you know, people go and they, they mar, you know, they kind of, you know, walk in the streets and they mourn the, the passing of Iman, who's Imam Hussein, who was, it was actually, I think during that battle, you know, decades and decades and eons ago where Sinis and Shias took two separate turns. And most Shias are from Iran. They, you know, they originate from Iran. And so a lot of my Shia friends in Bahrain were Iranian. And I went down, they invited me to see the morning of Muharram. And the energy is just palpable. I mean, people actually, they have tables on the streets that if anybody wants to use different instruments where they can in a way flog themselves so that they can connect to the pain of the loss of, you know, I want to speak again for, you know, for Shias, but like, you know, the passing of Imam Hussein, but it's very intense.
J'Lein Liese [:I mean, very, very intense. The energy is palpable. You would have thought that he had just died the day before. And I'm down there and I'm experiencing like thousands of men in the streets and my friends kind of take me off to the side and we're having a conversation. And I think it was really the emotion of the moment. But all of a sudden I find myself in this dark alley with, you know, surrounded by just, you know, these men. One I knew, the rest were his friends, I didn't know. And they kind of circle me and they start like shouting in my face, like, this is what the west doesn't understand.
J'Lein Liese [:You know, we aren't afraid to die. Imam Hussein died for, for us. And we will die for, you know, for our children. And this is what the west doesn't understand. And you can bring your nuclear bombs and you can threaten to bomb us, but we're going to. And we don't care if we die. You know, we don't. And I'm just sitting here thinking to myself, I want to go home.
J'Lein Liese [:I want to go hug my son, who I think was like 2 years old at the time. I want to go home. And. But I also was in this moment, right? It was like 10 or 11 o' clock at night. And so again, what I was hearing from them was their Evaluation and their reaction to what was going on. So my favorite question, to bring people out of that position. When people are in a position, right, an evaluation and a decision is a position. And sometimes we take these positions and we battle against that position.
J'Lein Liese [:We start to argue, but that doesn't usually help going back to our point of our world. But my favorite question in that moment is, tell me more, right? When you ask someone, tell me more, it takes them out of their position and into what their experience was that led them to that position. And in that experience, we can find connection. That's where we can become human to human again. So in that moment, I asked him, I said, tell me, help me understand. Tell me more about Imam Hussein. Tell me, I can feel the passion. I can feel the love.
J'Lein Liese [:Can you please tell me more about him? And the second I asked that question, he said, imam Hussein died for us, and I would die for my child. And I could relate to that because I would die for my child. And then the conversation shifted. And then all of a sudden, when I asked him that question, saying, tell me more, help me understand, that brought him back into his experience, right? And then I shared my experience saying, I would die for my child, too. And we were back to being friends. And all of the intense. Like, at one minute, it was almost like we were Iranian American, and now we're two friends again, and the relationship stayed intact.
Brent Adamson [:The. To me, it's just this. This question of laddering, really, it's. Right. I don't know if that's how you think about it, Jelaine, but to me, it is. You know, if you. If I'm here and you're here. But at least in some ways, those two things, which might feel polar opposite or at least very different, ladder up to a set of common values, right? It's.
Brent Adamson [:There's whether it's safety, whether it's respect, whether it's affirmation, whether it's, you know, any one of a number of sort of core values. And so it's weird. It's like the disagreements happen when things get lost in translation. The thing that you and I both care about manifests in these completely different ways. And so we get stuck in the manifestation of it. Like, I think I'm just saying with really long words, what you're saying in a much more elegant sort of way is that. Is that. Is that right?
J'Lein Liese [:We all have values. And the thing about values, they're all positive. Values are a hundred percent positive.
Brent Adamson [:That's interesting.
J'Lein Liese [:And we can connect and go back to the fact that we actually have the same value. We all care about life. We care about our kids. We all want people to be happy. We want people to be able to live their dreams. Those are the values that we all share. How we get there, the approach is different, but going back to, like, when we talk about the discord. And this is.
J'Lein Liese [:Yeah, I don't think this is in my book. So this will be special for the podcast. Right?
Brent Adamson [:There you go.
Shari Levitin [:Is.
J'Lein Liese [:Is how we. How we have gotten so polarized. And so when I used to work in deep conflict, and I've worked in a lot of conflict zones, there is a path to, you know, we can call it just war or even genocide, right? But it all comes. It's five steps. The first step, if we want to move into a war or even a genocide type of framework is the first thing people do is they avoid people who they feel are different than them.
Shari Levitin [:Right?
J'Lein Liese [:That's the first thing, is that we just won't talk to people. And we see this in school. I remember when I was working a lot in race relations, it wasn't even anyone didn't like somebody else. But as a human being, we have a tendency to be drawn and to interact with people who we feel the most comfortable with, people who are just like us. So you go into a school lunchroom, and you might see kids divided by race or religion, not because they didn't like each other, but because they just gravitated to where they felt most comfortable. So to me, the first step in stopping, you know, violence and conflict and, you know, discord is let's make each other more comfortable with people who are different than us. Right? That's number one. Number two is once we start avoiding people, then we start to use verbal slurs.
J'Lein Liese [:That is the number one issue in our society today is the name calling. We don't say, you know, we, you know, because name calling slurs is dehumanizing. As a human being, I can't hurt Sherry. I can't hurt Brent. You two are human beings. But back when I worked in the Rwanda during the genocide, if you're a cockroach, I can hurt a cockroach. I can kill a cockroach. I do kill cockroaches, which is what the Hutus called the tootsies, right? So a cockroach can die.
J'Lein Liese [:We can. We can feel comfortable killing a cockroach. But I couldn't kill Sheri. She's a mom. She's my friend. She's a woman. She's a. She's you know, she's a person.
J'Lein Liese [:So slurs are the number one thing. If we could eradicate one thing in our society today and just take out of the human experience, it would be the name calling. And even when I worked in domestic violence, I never heard a man say, oh, I went home and I beat my wife, Sally. It was, I beat that. You know, insert any word you want, right? So that's the second level. So the first level is that we avoid people who we think are different or who we're not comfortable with. Then we create verbal slurs. And we even do this in sports.
J'Lein Liese [:I mean, how many people say, oh, I hate that team? It's I hate. And they call them names, right? We tend to have to put slurs or whatever in front of us, whatever we dislike. So one is verses we avoid. Second is the slurs, and then third is discrimination. That's when we actively discriminate against someone. We don't invite the kid to the party because we don't like what religion they're from or what country they came from. So they're discriminated against. Now we've been avoidant, we've been using slurs, and then we actually discriminate.
J'Lein Liese [:And then from there it moves into violence. And then the last stage would be war or genocide. And I'm really scared where we are today because we're definitely. We've gone past the. We're entrenched in the avoidance of others. We're entrenched in the name calling and the slurs, and we're seeing the discrimination, the violence. And I'm very concerned for some serious discord.
Shari Levitin [:How much do you think social media is, you know, causing this? And certainly foreign powers are causing this and working very hard to polarize our country. You know, certainly again, when I grew up even just calling people, oh, the Dems, you know, talking about the Democrats, that's horror, right? And certainly you and I being Jews, I mean, we've been through this In World War II, you know, the Jews, the other. And we're always looking at the other. First of all, this is what we're going through in this country right now. But when you're working on a micro level, and this is so ingrained because it's happening on social media, it's happening in our country. You go into an organization and you work with them. Is it just by calling out these steps and by calling out the naming, is that how you're creating transformation when you're actually working with teams, or is it something else like what's your process?
J'Lein Liese [:Well, I want to back up to one thing you said about social media, because I think this is really important, because I think we could change it. Actually, I never thought about that until this conversation. Social media was designed, especially back when we called it Twitter or now it's X, to simply give a short evaluation, right? To give your opinion. That's what social media was designed for, to give, like, you know, just an opinion or a judgment or a thought on something. I wish we could change it to say, my experience. There would be no, there'd be very little conflict. Or we could. We could reduce conflict when we say, well, my experience was this, because you can't argue with someone's experience.
J'Lein Liese [:And then someone could come back and say, well, my experience was this. And then you can find common ground. But all of social media, and I feel like that is one of the biggest dangers in our society today is that it comes out with just a sound bite. It was designed to just be a one or two liners, my opinion. And then people debate and they debate, and they have no idea how they got to that opinion. And that's the problem is that. And so again, I would like to put tell me more as a phrase and embed it in every single person's, you know, psyche. Because when you see someone given a judgment instead of reacting to it, because that's the problem, right? We react to what someone says, even if it means the relationship's gonna go sideways.
J'Lein Liese [:And here's where we're foolish. When we react without knowing how a person got there, well, then we're just as bad as that person in a way, right? Like if someone says, I hate Trump or I hate the Dems and what. And you argue, well, you're wrong. And this is why you have no idea how they got there. Whereas if we could just sit back and say, so can you tell me more? Help me understand what it is.
Shari Levitin [:Not convinced. The fact that we're looking at different facts, you know, lately, like, right, you know, we're on the plane and you're looking. Are people watching CNN or Fox, whatever. Literally, like, you know, when I'm on a plane, like, I go back and forth if I want to watch the news because I don't want to be judged.
J'Lein Liese [:And we get labeled for it, right? We immediately. We immediately. And so here's the other piece. We don't live out of facts. We live out of stories. And by the way, this is really. This is really important if you want to talk about what causes conflict in our world, a Fact is boring, right? A fact doesn't have any energy around it. It's not good or bad.
J'Lein Liese [:It just is. The brain does not let us just sit with a fact, right? If I'm walking down, say, a trail with, you know, With. With Sherry, and I see a mountain lion, I'm gonna see. The fact is, I see a mountain lion. It's not good or bad. It's just there, right? Then I'm gonna go into what I call explore that, you know, where the emotion, which is our limbic system. And my brain's gonna be like. And then my evaluation is gonna be like, I could die if I keep walking that direction.
J'Lein Liese [:I could die. He's hungry. He wants to kill me. I'll start thinking all kinds of thoughts. And then I. On the story. So that thought that I have is a story. Oh, he's hungry.
J'Lein Liese [:He's stalking me. He wants to kill me. Or maybe my story is, he's perfectly fine. Just. I'm just gonna sit here and just let him pass. Whatever story I create based on what that fact of seeing the mountain lion ignites in me, that story that my brain creates to make meaning of seeing this lion in front of me. And then I, I. The actions I take with will be based on the story, not on the lion.
J'Lein Liese [:It's based on the story that I create about that lion. And so. And the brain requires that. That is survival. If we. If our. If we did not create a story to the facts that we see, we would not survive, right? So we have to be able to look at something and immediately have a feeling about it, like, oh, this is dangerous, or it's okay. And then we have to.
J'Lein Liese [:And then we create a story. If it's dangerous, here's why. So here's the actions you need to take. If it's okay, here's why. And then we stay engaged. So the stories that we create are the number one reason for the discord in our country. Because we are not debating facts, we're debating stories.
Brent Adamson [:You know, let's make it personal. The has about 50 things I'm processing simultaneously here. But there's. On this one, though, the. If. If one were to say, I feel depressed, that may be more or less a fact. The fact that that's how they perceive their feeling is to feel depressed. But if someone says, I'm sorry, you've just created a story, right, I'm sorry that you feel depressed.
Brent Adamson [:Because now what essentially is like, the, The.
J'Lein Liese [:The.
Brent Adamson [:The narrative that you've essentially created in your head is like, Depressed. Feeling depressed is a bad thing. And that needs to somehow, like, needs to be fixed or that you're somehow broken. Right. And for those of us who either struggle with mental health or been around people who struggle with mental health, I think there's always a story that immediately gets created that somehow you're broken and that you need fixed. Right. And so a lot of the language that people use to try to be empathetic or sympathetic immediately creates these stories that actually position you in a way that maybe you never intended in expressing that feeling in the first place. I don't have a PhD in psychology.
Shari Levitin [:It's really interesting what you just said. Right? Like, right. Society shames us, right? And for a long, you know, so often, you know, we don't want to talk about those things. And then we give stories for ourselves and judgments to ourselves, but we do.
Brent Adamson [:All this for ourselves all the time.
J'Lein Liese [:We do it to sound right.
Brent Adamson [:Yeah, yeah, well.
J'Lein Liese [:And that's. That's what a brand is, right? A brand is a story. And so we're all always conscious of our personal brand, and that is a story. And that goes back even to leadership, too. Like if you don't control your own brand or your story, or if you're in a position of having to defend or justify yourself because someone else picked up on your story. Oh, well, if. Whether it's depression or whatever, and they create their story around it, you know, that's. That's another piece that I feel is so important, is that we need to be in front of the narrative.
J'Lein Liese [:I always train my leaders. Like, you need to own the narrative because if you're ever in the position of having to defend or justify what people are saying about you, somebody else owns your story, right? But also, we're living in a society where we can't even sometimes have even real conversations, like when you talk about depression. I took an Uber not too long ago, and the Uber driver was a teacher by day, you know, by day, Uber by night. And she was telling me she told a story about something, but she used the word unalive. And I was like, wait a minute, can we. Can you back up? And she's like, oh, yeah, we're not allowed to say suicide anymore. We have to say the person is now unalive because suicide is triggering, and suicide is just a word. But the story, the attachment that we have to that word and that the stories that we create.
J'Lein Liese [:So. But now we're almost taking things to an extreme by saying, I'm alive versus dead, because we also don't want to trigger somebody. So there's so many different layers to this because it's going in so many different directions. I'm wondering how we're going to rein it back in.
Shari Levitin [:How have we gone from bar, I mean, with all of this as a society? You know, I was telling Brent we. We were working with a Fortune 500 client, brand name. He knows the story. I think I've told this to you, too. But, you know, we're doing the masterclass, and literally at the end of the master class, I get a call from hr, and they said, sherry, we need to talk to you. You told a story about your black dog, Remy. And one of our participants was offender. And I'm like, oh, my God.
Shari Levitin [:Like, you know, I gave it color to my dog. And. And, you know, all I could do is make a little joke and say, well, I like cats equally.
J'Lein Liese [:I. I don't understand what's going on here.
Shari Levitin [:But, like, and then the second week, they said you said the word dyslexia. It was very, very upsetting to people that some people have dyslexia. I was just talking about an ad or talking about something else. And then the third time, somebody was offended in that company because I said the word hurricane, because there was a hurricane in Florida, and somebody got offended. And, you know, so. So I guess, you know, that going back to what you were saying about the story, people were telling themselves, so many people are telling themselves right now, I'm offended. That's not right. This group isn't being taken care of.
Shari Levitin [:They're the underdog. They're this. I guess my. My question to you is, how in the world do we change the story and do we change the narrative with 10,000 pounds of social media reinforcing everybody's views, which is rocky, which goes printed at. And telling them. And then they're AI to your point, saying, great question, you're right, they're wrong. You should be offended.
J'Lein Liese [:Well, let's talk about, I think what the most important part of that is. And that to me is that because we don't live out of facts, we live out of stories. So the greatest power we have is a story that we have about ourselves. I always tell people, if you want to change your life, you want to change your experience, start with changing your story. Because if we carry a story, if someone tells us a story about something and we carry it and hold onto it, then that they. It's called mirror neurons. But people reflect that back. Let me give you an example.
J'Lein Liese [:When I was first Asked to go to South Africa. It was 1996. Apartheid ended in 94, and I was asked to train police in South Africa. Now you all have seen my name. My name is very odd. They didn't know what race I was or, you know, whatever. Like just, you can't put me in a box with my name. I show up in South Africa and the government had hired me, but I show up in a community situation and they just, I walk into the room and everyone's just staring at me.
J'Lein Liese [:And I'm like, hi, you know, what's going on? And someone, someone did say to me, they said, you're white. And I'm like, I am. And they said, why would our government, after apartheid ended, bring another white person, especially from America, an American white person, to do anything here? And I was immediately self conscious of that. I mean, so that might, that whole time, that whole trip, I'm thinking, oh my gosh, here I am, the white, A white American in South Africa who just ended apartheid. The last thing they need is a white. And as long as I saw myself as a white American, that's the feedback I would get. That's mirror neurons. I, I do a session and people wouldn't say anything negative.
J'Lein Liese [:They'd say, oh, for a white American, you're really, you know, you're good, or whatever. But they would reflect back that story. When I changed my story, even though I didn't have it until they gave it to me in a way, but I embraced the story that they put on me. This goes back to Brent, your point about, like, even the Depression, when I took on the story they offered to me, I was seen then. I was constantly seen as that story. But when I got to a point inside of myself, when I realized, wait a minute, I'm here because I have something to offer, no one ever mentioned my race or being American again. Then it was always about the tools. And actually when I left South Africa, they ended up having this little celebration for me.
J'Lein Liese [:And they, you know, and I mean, they gave me this really great compliment, which embarrasses me to say because there's nothing even remotely close to the situation. But they, they said to me in this card, we call Mandela the people's president, but you're the people's lady. And it just, it hit me so hard because I went from being this white American, like, how dare they bring a white American to really being seen for what I wanted to, to be there for, right? Like, I, I felt seen at that moment that I was there for the right reasons, and they felt it. So I always say, you know, if we want to change a story, we have to change our own story. So when people give you a story and they tell you that's who you are, this is what we think about you, we have a choice. We can take that on not a good idea, or we can get really clear and say, what is my real story? And the second we get clear about our story and we're really 100% clear on it, you'll never hear it again from somebody else.
Brent Adamson [:Here's the question I wrote down, is, who defines difference? Because that whole ladder that you laid out, which is you avoid those people who are different, which leads to dehumanization, which leads to slurs, which leads to active discrimination. All that starts with a moment where someone has defined it's a story, right? And. And to me, one of the things is. So my background is linguistics originally. So where I get really interested in is how can I use language to bridge gaps of difference? So one of the things I've done in training, you know, like college, you know, college graduates in their 20s going out talking to senior executives, you know, who are heads of sales or heads of marketing, for example, is. Is to change your pronouns from you to we. And. And I said and.
Brent Adamson [:They will. It's funny how you can change your story literally by changing your pronouns. One of the things we find as heads of marketing is like, now they know you're not ahead of marketing, but they'll grant you that. That moment. They'll. They'll kind of suspend disbelief for just a moment and incorporate you in. And now what you've done is essentially you've diminished difference rather than exacerbated it, right? And so there's so. So the things you can do with stories.
Brent Adamson [:One of the tools in your toolbox for story creation is language choice, isn't it?
Shari Levitin [:Yeah.
Brent Adamson [:And so. So it's really interesting how the two.
J'Lein Liese [:Go together well, and there's two things with it, right? So one is language choice. And that. And that is really important, especially, again, the language we use on ourselves. But the other piece is that we, as human beings, we want to feel good about ourselves, right? We want to feel right about what we think or believe or feel. And so when it comes to. When we talk about conflict, and it's one of the major reasons why we have so much conflict in this world is someone will create a story, and we want to feel right about that story. So what do we do? We talk to other people. And the moment we talk to somebody else, and they agree with our story, we no longer think it's a story.
J'Lein Liese [:We think it's factual. As long as we have one or more people who agree with our story, then we start treating that story as if it's fact. And then we take action. And we feel not just morally right, but oftentimes morally righteous in our rightness because other people agree with us. And that is the biggest danger today, is we. So if you think about it going back to that levels of genocide, we avoid people who we think are different. So that means that we're connecting with people who think like us, who are then embracing those same stories about the other, whoever the other is, right? And then we get validation. So if they feel this way and I feel this way, then this isn't a story.
J'Lein Liese [:This is factual, right? And so when we take action, we don't just feel right. I find that people feel morally righteous in how right they feel, and that is what's hurting us the most. So we have to be conscious of, one, the story that we tell ourselves. And then two, be really careful about looking for validation. Because when we look for validation. Here's the thing about stories, too, that I find in organizations, people can go. And I call it building an army. I call that validation, building an army.
J'Lein Liese [:People can, like, be upset with something that's happening at work, and they can go talk to a colleague and they build an army, right? The person agrees with them, and they build an army. And then if they act out with passive aggressive or whatever it is, they feel justified for it. The problem is, when we build an army around a story, we're not problem solving. We're still keeping our. Our stress doesn't go down. We might feel better in that moment whether we're building an army with AI because AI is a big army builder, which I, by the way, that just is a new revelation on this podcast, because I hadn't thought about AI as being an army builder, but it is right because it emotionally validates our perspective. So once we have that, once we feel validated, then we. And we take action.
J'Lein Liese [:We think that we're right about it. And so the way, you know, we need to, one, look at our own stories, but two, be really conscious of not seeking and not being an army builder. And we can do that as people. We can have personal integrity that. I could go to Sherry and say to Sherry, you know what? You know, Sherry, I need to talk to you about Brent, because I was really.
Brent Adamson [:You wouldn't be the first.
J'Lein Liese [:I was really offended by what he said. And I need. And I can either say I was really offended and get. I want Sherry to validate me and say, yeah, I felt the same way, or I can have personal integrity. And then I could like. And if she didn't validate me, I could then say, well, yeah, that we need to get rid of Brent. Hey, maybe you and I should just be. Maybe be partners and let's get rid of this guy because he's X, Y and Z, right? Or I can take personal responsibility and have.
J'Lein Liese [:Have a little personal integrity, right? And I can go to Sherry and say, hey, Sherry, you know, I had a conversation with Brendan. It didn't go well. I don't. I'm not looking for you to agree with me, because that's not going to help. What I'm looking for is I need some ideas from you on how I can go have a conversation with Brent so he and I can get to a better place. That is problem solving. And that's what we need to do as people.
Shari Levitin [:We're all in a business where we're moving forward and we're looking not to blame, you know, but to correct and to have that future conversation. I guess my question is there are so many people who have maybe had trauma early in life, and their go to default behavior is blame and not to take responsibility. And it goes deep, and it goes maybe way back to their childhood. And I've always said that it's a lot easier to be mad than sad, right? Because when we're mad, we get to blame somebody else. It's not our fault. And talk about pronouns, we changed the pronoun. They did this to us. And this is what happens in our country.
Shari Levitin [:They, you know, those people, this group made this happen instead of, you know, I in taking responsibility. My question to you is, yes, we need to change our stories. Yes, companies need to change our stories. But is it ever so deeply ingrained that some people and some organizations just sort of default to blame and they're addicted to it? Because I know people. I have friends, I have colleagues that every time we talk to them, it's like, oh, God, I can't believe this is happening. It's like, oh, woe is me. And they almost get off on the validation, right? Like, they like, oh, God, that must be terrible. You're having 20 people for Thanksgiving in your second home and you're busy cooking.
Shari Levitin [:I feel so bad. These aren't like. And I know a lot of people that behave this way, and it's like, that's just Their go to. How do you undo that? Like, because it might be really deep.
J'Lein Liese [:Well, so first of all, let's go back to what you first said. I love what you said when you said, we'd rather be mad than sad. That goes back to my, you know, what I know, you know, in sales and what I know from psychology is that the head wants to protect the heart. Right? Mad is a brain emotion. It's a thought is a. It's an. It's an. It's a.
J'Lein Liese [:It's a headset. Sad is a heart thing. So if the heart is sad, the brain wants to protect the heart. Because being sad is not a good experience. We're more energized. We can do more and act more when we're mad versus when we're sad. Right? So that's number one with that piece. The other piece, though, is that.
J'Lein Liese [:That's where I love, like, the techniques of, like, saying, like, tell me more. You know, that to me, tell me More is a mindfulness practice. When someone comes at me with something negative that I find myself feeling emotionally charged and I want to react to, I. When I. When I ask the person, tell me more, I'll give you an example. This one's. This one is in my book. But my.
J'Lein Liese [:One of the first stories in my book was, again, it's a South African example. When I was working in South Africa, I was training police, and there was a situation where this little girl had gotten off the bus. And South Africa was the rape and murder capital of the world at the time, kind of still is. That's a story, by the way, but I just said it anyway. But, you know, so this little girl had had a really, you know, let's just say she had a really bad experience. And I just happened to have all nine police commissioners in a room together the next week. And so I asked the guys, and they're from, you know, all different races in South Africa. And I asked the guys, I said, okay, guys, what are you going to do about this? Because we've been working together for two years.
J'Lein Liese [:I wanted to see if anything that we had been talking about was actually going to go into action. And the first response I got from one of the men was, where was her mother? If her mother hadn't been working and had been there when she got off the bus, this would have never happened. It was her mother's fault. When I heard that, I had a visceral reaction. And I was thinking, there's a lot of things I could say in that moment to Put him in therapy for the next 20 years. But I also knew he was giving me his opinion, his evaluation, and I had no idea how he got there. So had I reacted, which is what most of us do, we feel that emotional, you know, visceral response. It would have gone sideways.
J'Lein Liese [:But that's what I use. Tell me more. So in that moment, I said to them, said to the, you know, I said, tell me more. Help me understand what you mean by that. And then another man jumped in, and he's like, it's gender equity. Gender equity has destroyed the fabric of this nation. Again, an evaluation that told me nothing. So again I asked the question, tell me more.
J'Lein Liese [:And by the second or by the third or fourth time, the real story came out, where one of the men said, let me explain. I think we need to explain our situation to, you know, which was, under apartheid, if you were a person of color, a man of color, whites could do whatever they wanted. They could pay us, not pay us. They could, you know, force us off the sidewalk, in the street. They could spit on us, whatever they wanted to do. Right? We had no power. So we felt emasculated. Now, post apartheid, we have a.
J'Lein Liese [:We have a constitution that's one of the best in the world, but it's really about also promoting gender equity. So now we feel like, as men, when we were, you know, first we were emasculated under apartheid, and now we're feeling emasculated post apartheid because if we go up against a woman for the job, the woman will get the job. The second I heard that, I just melted. You know, all of a sudden, I could feel just the pain and the fear and just. I mean, I can't relate to it as a. As a white woman from America, but. Oh, I felt it in that moment. And I.
J'Lein Liese [:And. And I just. I just softened. I had no. No more anger. It just left my body. And then I allowed them to talk for a minute. And then they said, wait a minute, guys.
J'Lein Liese [:We all have mothers and sisters and daughters and wives. The women that we love need us to be their partners. We have to do this differently. And it was at that moment where I really saw real change start to happen. But that change would have never happened had I reacted right. And that's how I have a lot of political conversations. Even today. I have friends who I can't mention certain political leaders or it's a.
J'Lein Liese [:They have a visceral response, right? It's become so intense that we can't, you know, that they don't want to even have a conversation. But if I go, you know, if we, if we go back and Tell me more. Let's, let's, let's just talk about the issue. Let's forget the person involved, but let's just unpack this a little bit. We actually find that we, we, we feel the same way. We may not like the approaches that are happening, but we do believe that the same problem needs to be solved. We don't like how.
Shari Levitin [:It's.
J'Lein Liese [:How the approaches to solve it.
Shari Levitin [:Right.
J'Lein Liese [:But as long as we react, we're never going to get there. So we have to, I mean, I believe that we all have to train ourselves in. Tell me more. Like, I feel like that's the one thing that could change humanity right here is if we were just to say, when we find that visceral reaction. Tell me more. Help me understand. There's a connection that occurs at that moment.
Brent Adamson [:I think you've nailed it and in so many different ways. But in nailing it, I, if nothing else, feel yet even more concern about, well, that ain't ever going to happen. So, so maybe. So I'm wondering if you. Maybe we could end on like, the note of optim. So are you an optimist, a pessimist? So if this is what good looks like or the solution looks, or at least better, let's call it just better. If this is what better looks like. Right.
Brent Adamson [:Are, are you optimistic that we can get to that? You. So, one, there's a practical question of, like, you've got this really nice practical solution which is now in book form. I can totally relate, having just published a book myself. It's like, like there's a question of scale. Like, how do I literally just get the whole world to know about this and do it? But, but even, like, outside of the context of your book and your ideas, just for the world, I, I are. Where are you? I mean, give me some hope. Would I. I.
Brent Adamson [:That maybe that's what I'm asking for you. It's just, could you give me some hope that we can find our way to this better place that you describe?
J'Lein Liese [:So let me close with a story, but it's not my story. This is a baseball story, and it's about three umpires. One is a rookie, one is a journeyman, and the other is a master. And it's after a game one night, and these three guys are kicking back and having a couple of beers, and the rookie wants to impress the other two, right? So he's like, you know, he goes, when I'm at the. When I'm out there on the field, I always call it like it is. That's right. He goes, I call it like it is. And the journeyman looks at the rookie and he's like, yeah, you know, when I was a rookie, I used to say, I call it like it is now.
J'Lein Liese [:He goes, I'm a journeyman and I call it like I see it. That's right. He goes, I call it like I see it. And the master is just sitting there chuckling to himself, and he's like. So they turned to him, right? And they said, well, what do you think? Think, you know? And he's like, well, when I was a rookie, I used to say, I call it like it is. And when I was a journeyman, I would say, I call it like I see it now. He goes, a master. And it ain't nothing till I call it.
J'Lein Liese [:And that is the power that we have as human beings. That is my optimism. We as human beings, if we could just realize it, we have a choice. We can be a rookie and go around saying, that's just how it is. Can't do anything about it and be that victim that Sherry mentioned earlier. Or we can evolve to the point of realizing, wait a minute, this is how I see it. Or we can all choose. And it's a choice.
J'Lein Liese [:It is a choice. And we can become masters and realize it ain't nothing till we call it. And let's make that call. So that's what I hope for. I want to turn everybody into a master, a master of themselves, their life, and how they choose to show up in the world.
Shari Levitin [:I think we all need to get more of you, Chillain, and more of your energy, and that's why I love spending time with you. And the audience is going to want to know, how can we get a hold of you? People are going to want to hire you. They're going to want to talk to you. They're going to have you do conflict resolution. Because God knows there's not a company, a family, a business that doesn't have conflict, that doesn't need. Tell me more. So tell us more. Tell our audience how can we find you, get in touch with you, hire you, be your friend, or at least go on a dog walk with your two gorgeous dogs.
Shari Levitin [:Not going to talk about.
J'Lein Liese [:Well, first of all, I mean, of course I had to do a little plug for my book, which just came out. There it is with Conversations and it actually has every single tool. I've been told that it reads like an Action novel. Because every. Every chapter is just a story, right? I use stories, and then I share the tool. And I've also been told that Americans, you know, that nowadays we have an attention span of five minutes. So every chapter is like a five to seven minute read. But every tool is in this book.
J'Lein Liese [:And then. Yes, please. I mean, my. Our. Our website is leadwithconversations.com and you can email me or find my phone number there. And I would love to help any organization. I'm really proud of an organization. I just worked with that for a year.
J'Lein Liese [:They do, like, a 360 evaluation, and they were always, like, three to five points below the company average. And this is a Fortune 100 company, and this year they're three points above the company average. And it just makes me happy because they had to deal with so many different fires and crises and everything that everybody always has to deal with. But what's different now is they know how to stay in relationship while they do it. And it just shows. It shows, right? So that's my mission in life. I want everyone to stay in relationship, whether it's with your kids, your spouse, or at work or your animals, whatever it is. I want all of us to be able to have disagreements but still stay in relationships so we can move ourselves forward.
J'Lein Liese [:That's my mission, and I'm here to help.
Brent Adamson [:It's a good mission. Jillian, thank you so much.
J'Lein Liese [:Thank you, Jillian.
Brent Adamson [:So, Sherry, I've got a question for you. So. So I know Jelaine is a friend, and we talked about that a little bit in the podcast. You met her at It Sounds like a restaurant in Park City. Sat down. You were introduced. At what point in the conversation did you know, I want to be this person's friend? What. What.
Brent Adamson [:What was the. Was this something she said? So just the way she talked in general. What. What was that moment?
Shari Levitin [:It was energetic. I. I think it was more energetic. You know, it's exactly what she said. You know, you see somebody and I'm like, oh, my gosh. She's like me. You know, she was, you know, very talkative, very energetic, very open, very dynamic. Being in the same field, I thought, oh, my gosh.
Shari Levitin [:You do in leadership what I do in sales. We're a little bit like a peanut butter cup here. And it quickly. It quickly got into talking about emotional things and. And personal things. And, like, literally, I just told my husband, I'm not making dinner tonight. Like, get your own dinner. Go.
Shari Levitin [:Go to Internet. Like, go. Because. Because I knew that I needed to take that moment and meet this human being. And then we started being dog walking friends and still are. And we'll literally go on a 45 minute hike that turns into two and a half hours. And what, What I find really interesting about Jelaine is she really practices what she preaches. You know, of course, we always talk about politics and the state of the world, and she's got intel that people don't have.
Shari Levitin [:I mean, the girl works for the FBI. She'll tell me things and I'll go, what? And she'll go, oh, yeah, we gotta be really careful. Like she's got intel. Right.
Brent Adamson [:Just to be clear for anyone listening, she doesn't share anything she's not supposed to.
Shari Levitin [:No, of course not.
J'Lein Liese [:But.
Shari Levitin [:But she also has different insights. And to her credit, she doesn't have beliefs that are so rigid and she can see the good in the bad in any big political situation and really analyze what's going on and be open to new information. And I think that's why I loved her the most, because I love people that re. Have strong opinions and have a lot of facts, as she said, but are still very open to, you know, looking at things differently and maybe having a change of opinion. And so she's a good listener.
Brent Adamson [:You know, I wonder, at some point, maybe, maybe in some of these episodes, at least if not all of them, we bring it back to this kind of idea of, I don't know, selling, since that's kind of at least where we started this whole thing. But the. But to me, the this, this, it's such a. I think it is a superpower of being able to live in complexity and to be able to be comfortable living in complexity. Right? So there's this natural tendency, I think, in human relationships and dating and marriages and parenting and in politics and in sales to just try to simplify things, right? To get things down to like, all right, what is this? Let's boil this down and let's get sick. Sometimes there is no boiling. It's just you have to kind of live in the. In the messy sort of soup of reality and, and be comfortable enough with it to find a way towards clarity in the complexity as opposed to despite it.
Brent Adamson [:I think I'm rambling now, but does that make it. Does that resonate with you?
Shari Levitin [:It makes me think of. And people are complex, right?
Brent Adamson [:Right.
Shari Levitin [:Things are complex. And I don't know what show I was just watching, but, you know, you look at some of the old Godfather movies, right, and they're like, they're these mob Bosses that, you know, execute killings and horrific events. Oh, maybe it was. We were watching a Taylor Sheridan show. It was Linus, right? Have you seen Linus? It's so good.
Brent Adamson [:Taylor Sheridan's okay.
Shari Levitin [:But, you know, there's this scene. I don't want to. Spoiler alert. But the mob bosses, you know, they're killing people. They're, you know, murdering people in cold blood. And then you see a scene of them with their children and their dog, and you're like, oh. And then you realize that, you know, people are complex, and it's not black and white. And in children's books, you know, very often, you know, there's the villain, there's the good guy and the bad guy.
Shari Levitin [:And I think you're right. I think we sort of boil, you know, issues down to good and bad, black and white, this party, that party. But there's nuances, and it's complex, and that's who Jelaine is as a person. And I think, to me, that was a lot of her message, is that people are complex. But when we listen and we break it down. And I want to just share a very personal moment.
Brent Adamson [:Yeah.
Shari Levitin [:Because I. I think we all find ourselves doing that depending what our beliefs are and judging other people and judging other situations, and it's so easy to do. And this was during the pandemic, and I had just hired a new employee. I had met her on Zoom two to three months, and I loved her right away. Everything about her, you remember, I'm not going to use her name, but the first person that you met and just dynamic, funny, young. She's just Guy. And she came over. We were having a company retreat.
Shari Levitin [:And I remember this moment because we were actually in the pantry, the professional organizer, and she was looking at my pantry and telling me how to organize it, and she looked at me with these wide eyes. She says, I've been trying to tell you something. I need to tell you something, and.
J'Lein Liese [:I hope you don't fire me, dear.
Shari Levitin [:She said, I'm not vaccinated, and I'm not going to get vaccinated. And now you have to understand, my husband's a doc, right?
Brent Adamson [:Yeah.
Shari Levitin [:We were volunteering at the vaccination clinic. We got early vaccines so I could go back on the road again and work. And I was very involved in that. And thankfully, I took a breath, and I'm not saying I always did this, this. And I said a version of tell me more.
Brent Adamson [:Tell me more. Yeah.
Shari Levitin [:And she went on to tell me why her beliefs, which I don't have to get into. And the more I listened to her, the more I left her, and the more I realized that we were much more alike than we were different or.
J'Lein Liese [:That.
Shari Levitin [:Our values were absolutely the same. How we went about it were different. And after about 15 minutes of listening, I just hugged her. I have no boundaries with my employees or my clients. I literally embraced her. And I think we, like, proclaimed our love right then and there. Like, it was a moment. No, I.
Shari Levitin [:He's like, I just love you. You're such a great boss.
J'Lein Liese [:I'm like, I love.
Shari Levitin [:And, you know, we worked together for two years. I went to her wedding and Italy, and I love her, but it was that moment. And again, it's not that I always do it. I'm human, but that I said, tell me more. I want to hear. And I think that's the biggest thing I heard from Jelaine is that we're aligned in values. And I even do something in my.
J'Lein Liese [:Seminars where I have people write down.
Shari Levitin [:What are the three most important things in your life? And the top three are the top three. It doesn't matter what country you're in, what color people are if they're black, white, left, right, that the top three are always the top three. And that's what I really heard from Jelaine is, how do we get there?
Brent Adamson [:So what are the top three?
Shari Levitin [:Well, I'm going to turn around on you. What are the top three most important things in your life?
Brent Adamson [:Priority pizza.
J'Lein Liese [:Okay, good.
Shari Levitin [:Yeah, that's one of them, actually. It's sushi, but go ahead.
Brent Adamson [:Chipotle.
Shari Levitin [:Yeah.
Brent Adamson [:No, I. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm being a jerk. I apologize.
Shari Levitin [:Ellen. Asshole says golf never when it's white.
Brent Adamson [:I thought you said everyone. So an asshole says what? And then I was gonna say what? I thought you were playing a joke. That's a great joke. But the. No, I assume it's what, Family, kids, You know, it's. It's not. It's not job. It's not right.
Brent Adamson [:It's. It's. It's a classic thing of, like, no one's on their deathbed saying, I wish I worked harder on my job. Right. It's the. It's. It's human connection, I assume. Right.
Shari Levitin [:In some kind or another top three that I see. And maybe it's the way I set it up. You're always going to get something about family. Always, Always, always. You're going to get, you know, family, relationships, spouse. You're going to get something about health and wellness. Maybe spirituality in there, depending where you are. If you're in the south, you're going to get more God, you know, et cetera.
Shari Levitin [:Or in India, I've done it. You're going to get versions of that and then you are going to get. It's not job, but it's sense of purpose. So it could be philanthropic work, it could be, oh, my gosh, Jelaine, her sense of purpose, you know, really, like, it's real. You know, a lot of people search for that. It's real. But the. The top three are always the top three.
Shari Levitin [:And I always say then. And I do this at the end of a keynote, you know, we're actually more alike than we are different. And then I'll make a joke, like, if it's a software company, I'll say, how many of you wrote down your CRM software? And everybody left. You know where the punchline is. We can't change somebody's life priorities in a sales conversation. What we can do is find out what their priorities are and eventually link our offering to it. It's going to give you more, like time with family. It's going to give you whatever it is.
Shari Levitin [:But. But I think that the point for Jelaine is how do we get there? How do we get to these common values? And she's got a methodology for doing it.
J'Lein Liese [:What.
Shari Levitin [:What did you get out of the conversation?
Brent Adamson [:I. You know, it's the. Well, I think it's that the. I mean, so the. Everything that I'm working on now in the framing sale is about frameworks, right? It's about how do you take. Things are big and hard and overwhelming and putting some sort of frame around them such that they feel more manageable, doable. And what she's done is put a framework around. Around human finding human connection.
Brent Adamson [:Right. Or finding common ground. And that's. And I think that's. We all kind of know it's urgent, but I think she lays out a particularly strong case for, like, not only is it urgent, but this. What. But that it's. It's achievable.
Brent Adamson [:And this is why I asked her the last question, which is, I. I really. Sometimes when you lay out just how distant we are and, and, you know, disconnected from one another we are today, whether it's politics or whether it's AI or whether it's social media, whatever it might be, it's easy to become discouraged. And that's. So for someone who studies this as deeply and as completely as her, it's nice to know that she sees optimism. And so that makes me feel a little bit more optimistic, too.
Shari Levitin [:That's beautiful. And I know that the mental health question really resonated with you, and I thought the comment that you made was, first of all, very vulnerable of you, Brent. Very. I, A little bit more, a little.
J'Lein Liese [:Bit more that way.
Shari Levitin [:I've noticed. No, maybe I'm rubbing off.
Brent Adamson [:Maybe.
Shari Levitin [:But at any rate, you know, you, you asked her, you, you were talking about the stories we tell ourselves, and I thought you made such an interesting point when you said, you know, why are we telling the story that having depression is a bad thing? Why do we tell ourselves the stories? Because you and I have talked about this privately about, you know, you feeling, you know, you're suffering from depression. And I've been very honest about, you know, my coming out about adhd and these are mental health issues and the very labeling of it, which is also interesting because in her five step approach, she said, you know, the first step is to avoid, you know, when, when there's conflict, and the second is to have a slur or a title. And it makes you wonder, do we, when we call ourselves, oh, I'm depressed, oh, I have anxiety, oh, I have adhd. Is that, does that label create a story that we should be creating for ourselves? Or.
Brent Adamson [:Yeah, no, no, I, I, I tend to agree. I mean, because the, we tend to more implicitly, but sometimes explicitly talk about how do we fix it? What's the solve? Right. Which, which if you think about it, the implication is it's broken. Like you're, and, which means you're broken and say, I don't, Sherry, I don't think you're broken. You know, the, but that, that doesn't mean we can't find ways to manage those things such that we can even, you know, maximize their utility and minimize their, the downside. But the but, but to come from a position of how do I take what I'm given and get the greatest utility out of it? Maybe that's too cold and clinical, but hopefully, you know what I mean? But, but not how do I take what I'm given and fix me? Do you know what I mean? Those are two very different, different stories in Jillian's point of view.
Shari Levitin [:They really are. And my mother used to say all the time that any strength is a weakness and any weakness is a strength. And I think what you're saying, Yeah, I don't like the utility word. It's sort of like, sorry, yeah, opacity, valuable, pacity. But, you know, then again, you're a linguist. So you, you have fan words.
Brent Adamson [:Half of them I do.
Shari Levitin [:But anyway, the point is that what you're saying that I really like is that this whole idea that, you know, how do we look at it differently and say, okay, where's the strength in that? The Ying to the yang? Is it. Yes. Depressive. But that also means this. But it's an interesting question. And what was that question that you woke up with one morning and that you asked yourself? I love that.
Brent Adamson [:What if it's not a problem, right? What? Oh, what if this is my superpower as opposed to my greatest weakness? It's that, right? That's the. And sometimes it feels that way and sometimes it doesn't. But what I think that's one thing we conclude from all this is one, you've got killer friends, and two, we need to bring them all the podcast. So go find us another friend, Sherry. Go find us another friend.
