029 - Leadership Skills: From Reactivity to Clarity in Conversations - with Kirsten Asher

Meet Kirsten Asher, creator of Feminine Embodiment Method, who teaches women to embody and flow instead of hustle and grind through the way they move, breathe and think.

 Creator of Feminine Embodiment Method, who teaches women to embody and flow instead of hustle and grind through the way they move, breathe and think. Have you ever felt disconnected from your body or emotions? Do you ever find yourself being afraid to show up as a leader in your full feminine power or do you feel pressured to lead from a more masculine place? Give yourself permission to be feminine as you learn to reconnect with your senses and emotions using the tips she shares. If you find yourself feeling a little disconnected, frustrated or stressed then grab a cuppa something wonderful and listen in to this powerful episode!

Keywords: reacting, understanding, listening, communication, body language, miscommunication, missed signals, collaboration, input, information, analysis paralysis, law enforcement, second-guessing, creativity, left brain, right brain, nurturing, leadership, manager, respect, loyalty, progression, distress call, logical, decisive, aggressive, domineering, balanced leadership, feminine qualities, perspective, emotions, training.

00:02:52 Feminine leadership balances logic and empathy.
00:06:48 Miscommunication and emotional intelligence are important.
00:09:29 Compartmentalize, manage emotions to be a leader.
00:13:39 Collaboration brings better results; avoid overthinking.
00:14:35 Trusting gut instinct is crucial for first responders.
00:17:42 Analytical, assertive, decisive leader balances creativity and collaboration.
00:23:53 Listening to React hinders effective communication.
00:27:32 Understanding others leads to compassion and empathy.
00:29:49 Understanding personality types improves communication skills.
00:32:00 Empower team, listen, share ideas, make decisions.
00:36:59 Putting ego aside, ask why with clarity.
00:38:56 Suppressing emotions, communicating with self-control.
00:43:27 Deep breaths can change your body state.
00:47:07 Balance brain, harmony, dance, left, right, practice, listen.
00:51:29 Training can save your life, relationships, career.

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Transcript

Kirsten Asher: 0:00

to train the leader in the manager in a sense that the manager is managing what's going on a leader helps your team grow and rises up and teaches them how to be a leader. So if you're managing, you're not leaving at all, you're not doing much for your team to, to get into the next position to show you what they can do if there's if you're demanding respect without giving respect, if you're demanding loyalty without giving loyalty, like you said, they're gonna go out and do what they need to do, because it's their job, they're getting a paycheck, but you're not going to have the same amount of respect and loyalty that you're wanting to have. If you don't give it to somebody else. To come right away, there's a man with a gun

Kerry Mensior: 0:57

preceding emergency signal from paramedics are available units will close out well. Welcome to the podcast today. I am so honored. Kirsten is here with me. And I have to tell you, this is an amazing lady. I had the pleasure of meeting her a few weeks ago at a charity event. And I was just immediately she just knocked my socks off, I had the opportunity to talk to her for a short amount of time. And I immediately knew that all of you would want to hear the wisdom from this lady. And everybody knows I call myself the Robin Hood of public safety. I steal from the people who have the wisdom, which today is Kirsten, and give it to the people that need it. So Kristen, welcome to the show.

Kirsten Asher: 1:49

Thank you. Thank you so much. I love that Robin Hood. analogy. That's great.

Kerry Mensior: 1:54

Thank you. So you have just, uh, you're doing some amazing things in the world. And the the people that I have on the show, I try to make sure that we're well rounded. We're supporting all the first responders. And I want to ask you if you work with feminine leaders and first responders, let's be real, it's a male dominated set of occupations fire, EMS, law enforcement. And yet at the same time, there's a lot of females in these occupations. And whether you're male or female, looking to the other gender, for ideas for ways to handle situations, I've always found over my 30 year law enforcement career and time in the in the fire and EMS fields before that to be really, really valuable. So first and tell us what you do with feminine leadership.

Kirsten Asher: 2:52

So with feminine leadership, it comes down to our right and left brain and a lot of the leadership in the past decades have been very left brain so it's very logical, decisive, aggressive, and more in the pushy, sense, and domineering. And now we're coming in to we're shifting the paradigm into this balanced leader, which I like to say. So it's bringing in, quote, unquote, the feminine qualities, not necessarily the feminine aspects of being womanly, but the feminine qualities, so creativity, collaboration, listening, understanding, not reacting, those are all feminine or right brained. So now it's bringing the left brain and right brain together for a more balanced leader. So you can access that decisiveness. And you can also access the support of your team, the collaboration, and also, which I think for your listeners is, is the understanding and perspective and listening to whoever they may be speaking with.

Kerry Mensior: 3:53

Yeah, that's perfect. So with that foundation, how do you see that rolling in on training aspects,

Kirsten Asher: 4:00

on training aspects, it's putting an emphasis on being balanced. And you know, whether it's working with small groups or one on one as your training, giving the person the opportunity to practice listening to learn. So whatever that person is telling you, instead of being ready to react or being ready to already say what you're thinking about saying you're actually taking in the person's words and their feelings and their body language, and reading that, and then responding instead of reacting. So you can start to have this flow of conversation between the two, whether it's a difficult conversation or a high emotional conversation, you can stay level. So I think in training, it's really important to bring that aspect into it.

Kerry Mensior: 4:47

Okay, so for the people who are creating training courses, or they're, they're in the training classroom as a leader in that classroom, either as a facilitator, the instructor, whatever title they Have, you're saying to make sure that there's some component in their training that addresses these type of qualities? Is that what I'm hearing?

Kirsten Asher: 5:11

Yes, absolutely. There's, you know, exercises where you can have two people working together and expressing what's on their mind. You know, maybe it's an example of the perpetrator and the officer and what they're talking to, and how they're how they're using their words, and repeating back what they're hearing. So I don't, I don't know if you've recognized this, but in either relationships, co working leader to team member, somebody can they be expressing what they're feeling or expressing what they're thinking, and the other person is hearing it differently? You see this in relationships a lot of the time. So saying back what you hear, can get you both on a clarifying level. So you're now talking about the same thing rather than I think you're saying something differently than what you're actually saying?

Kerry Mensior: 6:05

Yeah, there's a lot of my consulting clients what I share with them as part of what's called the value chain, or we won't get into that part, but a component of the value chain is clarify and verify, and clarify and verify works really well. It's exactly what you just described, you're paraphrasing back what you think you've heard that person say, so you're clarifying. This is what I heard you say and verifying. That is indeed what they meant. Because how many times have we all heard something? And I'm not, I'm going to air quote, I don't like you're going to air quote, we heard something was not the intended message, or we, the other person heard something from us? And we're like, new new No, that's not it at all. How did you hear that? You know, how could you possibly think that if we jumped to that, but if it's if we do what you just suggested, which I always look for a takeaway in every segment of the tactical TLC show is and that's a great takeaway is just take a minute, not even a minute, a moment to clarify and verify the way that you just described it. So Kirsten, it sounds like what you're also describing as bringing a high level of EQ, that emotional quotient, we have the IQ and then bringing a high level of EQ into the game. Is that accurate?

Kirsten Asher: 7:37

Absolutely. And that's where we in like I was saying, in the past decades, as well, if it was from IQ. And everybody was, if you're not highly intelligent, you're not the best leader, if you can't be assertive in this specific way, you're not a great leader. And now we're bringing in this what you're saying is the emotional intelligence, and the feeling and the understanding and connecting the mind and body. And that's not to say it's a spiritual woowoo type thing. It's where lately we've been so disconnected. So we're like, we're talking heads and we're not really connecting the emotional the feeling and that's not to say it's emotion is crying, you know, emotion is frustration, emotion is annoyance and, and being able to connect it through your body and manage that when it's coming up. But that's part of the emotional intelligence and part of the listening and part of the understanding from the other perspective and point of view.

Kerry Mensior: 8:38

Now before, we have a bunch of cops, firefighters, medics turning off the podcast and switching to a different episode, I want to I want to tell everybody right now, we're not going woowoo on, you know, the next half hour, 40 minutes, we're not doing that, what what we have to understand is because see is this you know, as a cop for 30 years, I learned very early on, I needed to get really good at compartmentalizing. Because if we roll up on these emergency situations, you know, my very first cause of firefighter was an attempt suicide. And I at that point, I had never seen so much blood in my entire life and the guy was still alive. Wow. And you can't take on those emotions. You need to be able to compartmentalize for that moment. There's also that ability to manage and use that term and I love that use that term. Manage your own emotions because we have to, to be able to be in the role of a leader, whether that's in the corporate world or in the emergency response moment. We have to be able to manage our emotions. And whatever techniques you use whether you use compartmentalizing or, or anything else As you manage your emotions, that doesn't mean that they're cut off completely and you become a robot. And that is a, it's a really fine balance. And I just did the teeter totter motion. Because that's out of habit. And I want to correct myself on that. I call it harmony, think of an orchestra. There's different instruments that are playing at different levels at different times of balance, when you do this, it's one or the other, up or down. And I've actually gotten away from, I did it out of habit, and like, say, I want to correct myself. Harmony is a much better way to view it than balance, because balance implies either or, whereas harmony is we bring in enough of different things. Is that kind of fit what you're saying to?

Kirsten Asher: 10:56

Absolutely, absolutely. And I love that analogy, because it does make sense to say balance is the either or, and the harmony is you have all aspects of these different sounds, these different ways, these different abilities and capabilities coming together to work simultaneously. I like that.

Kerry Mensior: 11:15

Thank you. So with the work that you do, how do you see this? This harmony of bringing in right brain into a left brain logical? So we got the let me make sure I got this right. So left brain logical. That's information, right. That's like, data and statistics and policies and procedures. Am I right on that? Okay. And then right brain helped me to understand that a little bit better.

Kirsten Asher: 11:49

Right Brain is the more creative side, it's where you're more understanding, receptive, the listening, side, comprehension, collaboration. So some people, it's, it's nurturing and caring, yes. But it's very, it's not nurturing in a sense of, I'm a woman, I'm taking care of my family and nurturing them. It's, I'm taking care of my team members, I'm making sure that everybody is heard, I'm making sure they all feel acknowledged, when they do something great. I'm making sure that there's communication not only between myself and them, but then all together. And we're all we're always in this distinct ability to say, I, you know, I need you either over here, or there's constructive criticism, or how are they receiving that and making sure that there's this dialogue, back and forth. And in that nurturing sense.

Kerry Mensior: 12:46

i And I love that you said this, because a huge light bulb just went on for me in the sense of when I've been an incident commander, whether as, as, as a firefighter or as a law enforcement officer, that collaboration that you're talking about that creativity and solving problems. That's all right brain stuff. And that's critical for successful work out in the field. Because there is no incident that I've ever been to, that's cookie cutter from something else, that they have similarities, they have a lot of things in common. And yet each one is unique and different and requires that teamwork collaboration of if I try to just dictate to everybody, I tried to be just left brain, if you will, and command everybody to do it. Because that's my title. I'm an incident commander. When I do that things don't, things never went well, ever. But when I collaborated, when I took input from the team members, when I got information from different spotters, different points of view, the more information I had, and the more people I was able to talk to, with out dropping into paralysis by analysis. And we're starting to see that in some, some incidents, especially in law enforcement. Today, we're starting to get into people who second guess themselves too much and don't don't bring in enough left brain. And what I love about what you're saying, what I'm hearing you say, is, the left brain is still good. We just want to make sure we integrate some collaboration, some creativity, and that nurturing is not feeding a baby with a bottle. It's taking care of each other and ultimately for first responders, the public, is that

Kirsten Asher: 14:33

right? Absolutely. Absolutely. And what I want to just touch on with something that you just said is second guessing yourself. So part of the right brain is the gut instinct is the feeling is the in a split second, I need to make a decision which the decision part is your left brain, but that gut feeling is your right brain. So if we're so disconnected from our body, and that feeling I have, what should I do next, I don't have a good feeling about this, I need to go right instead of left, I'm being told to go left, but everything in my body is telling me to go right. So being able to have that connection is huge. And I can assume for any first responder that is, could be life or death. And so making sure it's it's very connected. And you're using both the right and left brain in this harmony that you said,

Kerry Mensior: 15:26

terrific. Well, thank you so much. As we close out this block on training, our key takeaway is wrapping in to the training that you're creating, being able to have exercises, where you make sure that the students are able to practice, not just get told, but actually practice bringing in right brain things of creativity, collaboration, nurturing, taking care of people, and that it's not woowoo stuff. So thank you so much for the the wisdom that you're sharing and allowing me to steal it and share it with the others that need it.

Kirsten Asher: 16:07

Of course, thank you so much for having me

Kerry Mensior: 16:09

on here. Absolutely. We're in the leadership block. And with us is a beautiful lady who has just tons of wisdom. And there's something that you that you wrote, and I'm going to quote it back to you. So you ready for this? I'm ready. All right. It's nothing bad. It's actually genius, I think. And I want you to qualify. One word in here were two words, actually, how you said how feminine qualities can help leaders become more influential, and empower their teams. So talk to me about this feminine qualities because as a guy, I'm a guy, I'm, you know, I'm a guy. And so help me understand how rapping in my feminine or going feminine is going to help me in a male? What is it typically a male dominated occupation? I'm gonna be straightforward about it.

Kirsten Asher: 17:09

Absolutely. And that's a lot of the questions, a lot of the basis of the question that I get, especially from men. And what I mean by these feminine qualities isn't to say it's a woman light thing isn't to say it's bringing you into this more feminine place of, I guess more womanly, that's not it at all. So we have these the separation between the right brain and left brain. And if you put it in those in that sense, your left brain is what we've known as leadership, you know, it's the analytical, it's the assertive, it's the decisiveness, it's being able to take a situation and make a clear decision on who goes where what needs to be done. The feminine, quote, unquote, air close, or the right brain is that side where it's the creativity is bringing your teams together, the collaboration, the making sure that everybody has these clear conversations, it's your understanding, listening to learn, rather than listening to react or say something or put in your opinion. So if you take these as a leader now, and bring them together, you have this synergy. That is more you have your left brain qualities and your right brain qualities. As a leader, that's huge. There's no more of this command and control. And you do exactly what I say there's this fluidity of back and forth. Now you're listening to your team members, and giving them feedback. They're giving you feedback, you're still the leader. You're just bringing in more of those ideas from your team and creating this collaboration.

Kerry Mensior: 18:50

Yeah, you're you're you're preaching to the choir here, because I have, I have said for a number of years, I can't even it's been more than 20. You can tell you can command you use the term command and control and with title and rank. There's some people who think that makes them the leader and in a paramilitary organization like law enforcement, fire, EMS, it, it does make you a manager, but not necessarily a leader. And when you talk about command and control, you can order somebody to do something but they will never do it with the same passion and the same commitment that you could have had them do it with. They'll do it they'll go out though make more arrests or write more tickets though. They'll be more proactive. But if you not you, person, but you the leader, the the the manager had become a leader. You would get more passion, more commitment, more buy in, and it'd be a whole A lot better place to work than if it's just, you're going to do as I say. And and I think that's a missing component. And that really sounds like that left brain, right brain part that you're rolling in is the ability to, you know, be creative to, to be able to, there was another C word that you use besides creative collaborative.

Kirsten Asher: 20:20

Yeah. Yep. Absolutely. And to say, between the leader and the manager, in a sense that the manager is managing what's going on a leader, helps your team grow, and rises up and teaches them how to be a leader. So if you're managing, you're not leaving at all, you're not doing much for your team to, to get into the next position to show you what they can do. If there's, if you're demanding respect, without giving respect, if you're demanding loyalty without giving loyalty, like you said, they're gonna go out and do what they need to do, because it's their job, they're getting a paycheck, but you're not going to have the same amount of respect and loyalty that you're wanting to have. If you don't give it to somebody else. You know, it's it's putting yourself in the shoes of somebody demanding you to go out and do this and not giving you any loyalty respect, you're not going to want to do it. So putting your feet in their position, and realizing that you were there at one point as well. What did you need, you needed a mentor, you needed a leader, you needed somebody to show you the way, and vice versa, you know, they have your team has great ideas as well, and listening to those and creating this really great container of innovation. You know, if you're constantly as a leader, focusing only on your ideas, and your ideas are the best. How many companies Apple, Nike, all these companies brought in their employees ideas, had think tanks, you know, and if you're just focusing on your own ideas and ways of doing something, you're going to stifle not only yourself, but your whole department and your whole team.

Kerry Mensior: 22:07

Yeah, without without question that that that will happen. And it affects ultimately affects the the culture, at least that the unit that you're working in, as well as it starts to have a ripple effect, as those people leave your unit and go to different units. And potentially the entire agency, especially if you're a rank and title, leader within the agency, how you're doing things has a huge ripple effect and care what agency you're working with, large or small, it's it has that ripple effect. So Christian, I want to I don't know if you know who this guy is. His name is George Thompson, a lot of law enforcement officers know who he is, he was the inventor of Verbal Judo. Oh, and George is he's passed away and came up with a lot of amazing concepts that have really helped law enforcement. And one of the things I'm doing with bank, bank being the acronym for the four personality types, blueprint action, nurturing, and knowledge is rolling in bank to take what Verbal Judo was and take it up to the about 10 levels above that. But one of the things I loved about George Thompson is he said, people are usually listening, you would hope, but in reality, they're not listening. They're waiting to talk. And you said something about listening to learn. And I absolutely love that I wanted you to take a moment and just kind of expand on this concept of listening to learn instead of listening to react.

Kirsten Asher: 23:54

Absolutely, it's, like you said listening to react is you're not getting the full story, you're already coming up with your answer, to give back to the first part of what this person is saying in front of you. Listening to learn is staying open to the the feeling that they're giving you staying open to the words that they're giving you staying open to the body language that they're giving you and actually being receptive in this conversation. And allowing your when they're done allowing your thoughts then once you have the whole entire story to create your response. You know, if you're constantly sitting here ready to ready to react and ready to just jump on whatever they're saying whether it's good or bad, it's you're not fully, fully taking in what they're saying. And that is going to be miscommunication. That's going to be missed signals that's going to be you know, maybe their body language was telling something else and their words were saying something differently. So really taking in 100% of what that person is doing and saying and then creating you Your response after that.

Kerry Mensior: 25:02

And I think that's, that's really important with the, the idea that if we know it, let's say we have our best friend, and they, they do something that's rude. And but they're our best friend, they've been our best friend for years. And they do something. And if we see that, and we go, well, that's, that's not who they are, they must just be having a bad day, they, maybe they're hangry, there's just in you dismiss it. By the same token, if you have somebody that you're not happy with on a regular basis, and they do that same thing that your best friend did, then we jump to the wall. That's just the way they are. They're just a rude person. And ultimately, what it is, is we look for validation, we look for validation of what Yep, that just proves that they're a real person, or we look for validation of well, that's just out of character. It's the same, the same incident done. The only difference is it's our perspective. And mentally, it's human nature, we we look for things that validate our beliefs. So that is either a validation in the form of an excuse or validation and of taking something and going, hey, well, that's, that's, that validates what I already think of that person. Showed him hearing you say with that, with with that concept, married to what you're talking about listening to learn, is we're willing to suspend our disbelief, one way or the other, they're a good person or a bad person. And look at this, what they're seeing independent of that, is that, am I getting that?

Kirsten Asher: 26:55

Absolutely. And it's, whether it's the coworker that you don't get along with very well, or your best friend. Understanding their perspective, is going to help immensely understanding that your best friend is hangry, or just having a bad day. Oh, okay, cool, great. This person that you don't get along with at work, first of all, why don't you get along, because that could be something that needs to be fixed. If you, too, are on a call somewhere, and you're not getting along, or you don't respect that person, it's going to influence what you're going to do, it's going to influence your gut reaction, it's going to influence the whole situation. So listening to learn to what they're saying, maybe that person is just, you know, having a bad day, like your best friend was asking why questions, you know, what's going on? Do you need to talk about anything? Is there something that's underlying, but also having those conversations with somebody and figuring out a little bit more about them, if you know a little bit more about that person, you know, why they do certain things, why you may have a different set of opinions, maybe you, you have a different value system, and that's come that's clashing a little bit, but finding that out, and understanding that, that's okay, that's them. But when you have this deeper understanding of a person, you can have more compassion for them of what they're going through. If they if that thing happens, again, you can say, okay, cool, we may not still see eye to eye or get along very well. But I get that their home life is a little up and down, or I get that they're having a little bit of financial stress, or I get that, you know, XYZ, whatever it might be see, then you have a little bit more compassion for that person.

Kerry Mensior: 28:41

Yeah, and I think too, you know, I spoke earlier about bank code, knowing somebody's bank code, you mentioned their values might be different than than yours. And bank code is all values based communication. And that's one of the reasons that I absolutely love it, is you begin to understand that they're communicating based on their primary personality type more a mix of all four, we all have blueprint, we all have action, we all have a nurturing we all have knowledge. But there's one that we're going to generally come from, that's our primary, and one that is our least. And so if we're coming from our primary personality, typing, communicating with someone, and that happens to be their least you're not speaking the same language. It's like I'm speaking French and you don't speak French. Or you're speaking Korean and I'm looking at you going i get bits and pieces of what you're saying just because of tonality and, and body language in hand. Lots of hand gestures, right? Whenever you go to another country and you don't speak the language in that country, lots of hand gestures. Oh, yeah. But when you when you understand their personality type, you can you can hear them better because you're able to speak their language and we talked in the last section about an Under training about having emotional intelligence bringing a high level of EQ and, and that is a large part of it is understanding. It's not about me. It's about the person I'm talking with. And I'm talking with them not talking to them as well. So yeah, great, great information on leadership. So thank you for that, then, you know, I have to say, so again, Kirsten Asher is with us in this episode, and she is absolutely brilliant. She's, she's helping people understand guys, dumb guys, like me understand about how to rap in creativity and collaboration in the right brain and understanding that having feminine qualities and leadership is doesn't take away from anything, it actually enhances it. And you use the word empower. So we're gonna dive next into communication. So I want to come back to your quote about that, and about how leaders can be more influential and empower their teams. So we're going to talk about that in the communication block. Sound good? Sounds great. All right. Thank you. With us today is in just absolutely amazing lady. And I use that with a capital L, Kirsten Asher. And Kirsten, and we've been talking about training, we've been talking about leadership, I want to shift into communication next. And your your quote was, you show people you teach them, you share with them, you you just you change the lives, and you do it by one, one particular thing, and you do a lot of different things. But in this one area that I want to dive into is how feminine qualities can help leaders become more influential and empower their teams. So talk to me about this in the in with the lens of communication.

Kirsten Asher: 32:00

With the lens of communication, empowering your team is giving your team the option to an opportunity to share with you ideas to really listen to what they're saying whether it's an improvement in business and improvement in client faced organization improvement and structure and processes and really empowering them to make decisions to lead they're, you know, whether it's their department or whether it's a certain project, but giving those them the opportunities to step up a little bit. And, and have that ability to come back to their team and say this is this is something that we're going to move forward with, this is a new practice that we're going to bring in. And really having that ability to, to take it to the next level and give them ways to show you how they can be better leaders.

Kerry Mensior: 32:59

That and that's awesome. And I got to jump in here for just a moment because I've been teaching leadership classes for a really long time and facilitating up at the Museum of Tolerance, a Holocaust Museum up in Los Angeles, about leadership. And one of the things that I've heard, and because we're talking about things that happen in a non tactical environment, the things I've heard is, you know, at work hops, we don't have time for that we're firefighters, we're out there, we're, we're at an incident. And we don't we don't have time for that whole collaboration thing and creativity, right brain thing. We got to make decisions, we got to be decisive. And we need to move quickly. And there are times that that's very true. There are times, but when you look at the reality of if you took 100% of the time that you're working, how many times that you actually don't have time for that is a very small percentage of your entire job. Show what we're talking about. We're not going to take away from a tactical decision making we're not talking about in the middle of a building entry and clearing. We're not talking in the middle of a squat operation. We're not even talking in the middle of a traffic stop that's going bad really quickly. Because the person that we've stopped, just robbed a liquor store down the street. And we don't know that but they do and they think we know that. We're not talking about those small percentages of our job. We're talking about the vast majority that truly affect our teams lives and the quality of our team would you would you agree with with that?

Kirsten Asher: 34:53

Absolutely. Absolutely. There's a time in place where you need to make very, very quick gut decisions. and do what needs to be done in those moments. And like you said, that's a small portion of it, and you have maybe the other 90% or 80%, where you need to have the communication skills of speaking clearly what's at what are you actually thinking? What are you actually feeling in that moment? How are you able to say this in a way to clarify what needs to be clarified to the other person or to the group that you're talking about? And then, like we had talked about in a video or two ago is, is what are they hearing? What are they hearing back for you and making sure that you verify that the communication is actually getting across properly?

Kerry Mensior: 35:43

Or they're, you know, in the area of communication, and I'm going to kind of put you on the spot here. But I've been doing that all along for almost 45 minutes, and you're just like, so wicked, smartest, crazy. So I don't think you have a problem with this question. Can you give us some ideas, examples of information that you share? how somebody can communicate that way? And I know scripts don't work, but frameworks do. So is there any frameworks that you can give us questions that we can ask phrases that we can use that to help us communicate better?

Kirsten Asher: 36:22

Absolutely, it's first, giving the other person an opportunity to say what they need to say. And if there's if you're feeling any type of resentment, anger, frustration, annoyance within that conversation, asking them to clarify, okay, you said, XYZ? What do you mean by that? Or why would that come up? And staying very level headed and not bringing in these high and low emotions? But saying very, okay, cool, I'm listening to you. I'm not reacting like we were talking about, I'm not getting ready to say what I need to say and have my ego step in, I'm going to put my ego to the side, and really ask you why you are saying this? What? What makes you have that feeling? Or how did you come to this conclusion, you know, all these very powerful words, that who, what, how, why can create so much clarity. And if you're having one of these conversations back and forth, whether it's with a team member, whether it's with somebody, you're in relationship with any point of your life, instead of coming at it with a reaction of you did this, you made me feel this way you did, XYZ, bring it back to yourself and said, hey, when you talks to me this way, or when you said this, this is my experience of it, you know, they may not have meant to jump down your throat at that moment, they may might have been in a high intensity and high emotion state, and you just happen to ask them the wrong thing. And understanding like, the story you're creating about that is probably not what was going on. If that makes any sense. I kind of jumped from thing to thing.

Kerry Mensior: 38:16

But no, it was actually it was I saw your stream of consciousness that are totally show. You know, I keep things here on the podcast reel. And I'm, I'm going to toss this back to you. Okay. That's hard. You know, I think of as you're talking, it flashed in my head, I you know, they're married and divorced. And I think back to situations where I was in an intense emotional discussion, I can think of times where as a firefighter American as a cop, or I was in very high emotional situations. And there are times when the other person, I don't know how they find it, but they find that button, that's the watch button, the want the one that just makes you lose your mind. And, you know, as cops, we have to control this firefighters EMTs we have to control that we have to, as you said earlier, and I love the term, we have to manage our emotions. And yet, if we're going to communicate and manage our emotions, and you know, not use force on this, this suspect that we would love to use force with because of any number of reasons, but we're not going to. Now we also have to communicate with them. While you're just in it, it means we have to wrap our brain into coming up with something when all we're doing is suppressing our reptilian urges to emotionally respond almost instinctively. So it's hard. I'm just saying

Kirsten Asher: 39:55

and, and I part of me can't relate cuz I've never been in that hive and sensitive position where there's, you know, a perpetrator where you're having this conversation with somebody who just did a terrible crime and you're trying to repress that so much. I've had conversations where you are not understanding why somebody did something and you're both on fire seeing read, not able to communicate, not really able to just to say what's actually going on because you're, you're so frazzled in the brain and body.

Kerry Mensior: 40:31

Yeah, those are similar, those are really similar. I want to reassure you that it's still it's still the same chemicals that are coursing through your body through your brain, it's still that you just said it, you're both seen read. So what are your ideas for being able to manage stuff in that moment, because that's valuable. That's the wisdom that I'm looking to steal from you as Robin Hood of public safety, stealing from the the wisdom from the people that have it to the people that need it. So I'm going to steal from you and give it to me because I need that stuff.

Kirsten Asher: 41:03

Well, first what I have practice, you know, as practice makes almost perfect, right? We were never going to be perfect. But as long as you continue to practice something in consistency, it's going to help you enormously bringing it back to breath. If I'm seeing read your you're short of breath, you're sorry, you're starting to create tension in the body. And that's not going to help you. So if you kind of can take a second, take a moment, maybe step to the side and just do really deep belly breaths, and just say, let it go. Let it go. Because a lot of what this is, is this ego saying no, no, I did it right. I'm right, you're wrong. And if we can take that, set it aside, and say, Okay, I'm coming back to this conversation with an open mind. Now explain to me, again, why this is why you're thinking this, why you're feeling this way. And I'm going to be as open as I can and not take it personally. And that's what I think is, the biggest thing is we constantly are taking things personally and not realizing that other person is going through something that's creating this cycle in their head. So if it's, you're disconnecting yourself from it, you're hearing it as a story, not as the story directed to you, and not taking it personally. And when you get in that mindset, then you're able to listen to learn, you're able to then create your responses.

Kerry Mensior: 42:30

Okay, Kristen, you have just given like a series of really awesome takeaways. So I want to I want to take step back and kind of recap them real quick, because my mind was just real untrained. Like, due to your your, like, wham, you were just so much wisdom, I love it. So one of the first things that I heard you say was on the breathing. Now, here's what we do know. fire, EMS, law enforcement, we're all trained, we need to control our breath. And what we do know about physiology, is that under periods of high stress, our breathing becomes very shallow. Now, you talked about belly breathing. And that's awesome. Because when you do a belly breath, and want everybody to picture this, your belly, just extending out to be able to allow your lungs to fully expand. When you are in that hyperventilating, that rapid shallow breathing. And you train, take a deep breath. Most people if you watch this, most people do this with their, with, if you say take a deep breath, and they're like, Okay, I gotta take a deep breath, they go like this, they go. And they just raise their shoulders, your your deep lung, air is not up top, the only thing you're affecting is your upper lobes of your lungs, the stuff down low, that belly breath that you talked about. It's that deep breath, that gets the oxygen into the brain. And just three, three breaths, if that's all you have time for, where you're able to slow that breathing down, get that deep breath in, that's magical for changing the chemistry, and that you change the state of your body. This change the state that your body's in your shallow breathing, you change it to deep breathing, that deep belly breath three, ideally, at least, you might not have more time than that, for you know, in a tactical situation. If you're just in an in a confrontation with your spouse or significant other co worker, you should be able to have a little bit more time than that. In the worst case scenario, you're in a tactical situation. 3d breasts get in one even because when you change your state, you change your mind. And you can do it the other way around. It works both ways. Change your mind change your state But we're using this physical state of the body to change how you're reacting, because you're seeing red, get out of that deep right now is brilliant. So thank you for bringing that up. The other thing that you talked about was being able to kind of emotionally take a step back and go, okay, it might be the other person, it might not be me. So that whole taking it personally, again, big challenge, but, you know, just realizing that it may not be you, and that you might even be hearing something different. You know, in sales work, the things that salespeople are told you have to overcome an objection, and somebody says something about, oh, that cost too much? Well, that's not or that costs a lot. Well, that's not necessarily an objection, it might just be a concern. And the reason I use this analogy is what the person is saying. You You're hearing objection, it might not be an objection, it might just be a concern that they're raising, that if you both worked on that concern together, it goes away. Whereas if you view it as an objection, then you're you're you're in a win lose situation, which is, interestingly enough, very left brain, right. Correct. Correct. Left brain, correct.

Kirsten Asher: 46:21

Absolutely. And I think that's great, especially in sales is seeing it as more of a concern rather than an objective. I think that's on point on point.

Kerry Mensior: 46:32

So when we're in interpersonal communications, you know, we're in a relationship, and we're having some, some conflict and conflict at some point is, is inevitable, you're going to have some in that conflict is just to varying degrees, higher low. But, Kristin, if you and I are in some level of disagreement about something, would you would you say the things that you're talking about where you're rapping in the right brain? Does that is that one of the key things that allows us to work as a team for solution to that disagreement, then going head to head on it?

Kirsten Asher: 47:07

I absolutely believe it is, absolutely, it's YOU the balance between the brain and the harmony is, is like advanced, so you're gonna lose a little bit of left, and then you're gonna go into the right and then the left and then the right. And as you're doing that, you're creating these neurons that are firing at the same time, and you're creating this ability to get there quicker. So as long as you practice that, you know what fires together stays together. And as long as you're continuing to practice this style of communication, where you're removing yourself and not taking it personal, you're actually listening to learn, it's going to be easier. So when you have these disagreements, you'll be able to either get to it quicker, you'll be able to lower your blood pressure, if you're getting really tense and angry about it, you'll be able to step to the side of that and say, okay, cool. Let me take my breaths. Let me realize it's not about me, it's whatever that person is going through. Let me try to understand where they're coming through in their perspective of their points of view.

Kerry Mensior: 48:08

Wow, awesome stuff. Kirsten Asher, you are just, you're amazing. And I'm so glad that I met you. And I'm so glad that you granted us this time to be on the show and took away from your busy busy life to be able to, to be here with us and share wisdom with us and just make lives better make people safer, both citizens as well as first responders. So thank you for that.

Kirsten Asher: 48:33

Thank you so much. I appreciate being on here. And I love your question so much. It really I love when we go into it and go deep. So thank you.

Kerry Mensior: 48:41

Well, I could fire with you and stay together with you for a long time. But we're, we're at the end of the show. So we we have to get people back to work back to their lives and into their commute. So thanks for being on the show. You brought a little bit of tenderness and that's okay. I always like to have that. So, thank you for that. And how can how can people stay in touch with you? Because I know that there's people that are watching the videos and they're like, Wow, I need to know more about this beautiful lady. How can they how can they stay in touch with you?

Kirsten Asher: 49:10

They can. My website is Kirsten asher.com. And it's k i r s t e n. Asher a sh er. And then my Instagram is the social media that I'm more active on and that's at person dot Asher with the K I R S T E N

Kerry Mensior: 49:31

A S H ER for those who are listening to podcasts. It'll be in the show notes. If you have any questions you're driving, can't write it down. You're rolling around in your your patrol vehicle your fire truck can't write it down. It'll be in the show notes for you. So, Kirsten, again, thanks for being here. Thanks for sharing your wisdom. Folks. As you continue on with your daily lives check into bank code. Just a great way to communicate, relate, negotiate with people. You can go to as a free gift For me, you can go to my bank code.com forward slash victory because I want you to have victory in your life, victory in your training, leadership and communication and bank rolls into all three. So my bank code.com forward slash victory, check it out. It's a fascinating report that you can learn about yourself and your personality, have your family do it again, I provide this as a service as a gift to you. And each report is valued at $97. So you get some good value there. And the best thing is you can learn about how to communicate better. And it changes parenting changes, relationships changes how you deal with public, just, it's a 360 thing. So thanks for listening to Joe. Take care. Stay safe. And as I always share with everybody, my golden rule which is Do unto others, before they even think about doing unto you. Stay safe. Bye bye. I hope you found a lot of great value in this episode of The de escalation conversations podcast, please be sure to go to our website the idea dot world th e ID e a dot world on that website. Just click on the link that resonates with you most if you're a K through 12 educator, if you're a firefighter, medical services, law enforcement, flight attendants, whatever industry you're in, we have specialized training for you. So check that training out because literally it can save your life. It can save your relationship it can save your career. So check out the idea that world and I look forward to seeing you soon. Take care