288: Humanistic Business Management: Find Perspective, Compassion, and Reason in Your Customers and Team Members with Jennifer Hancock

Robert Plank 0:00 Robert Plank Show episode 288, humanistic business management. Find perspective, compassion and reason in your customers and team members with Jennifer Hancock. Hey everybody, and welcome back to the show. We're joined today by Jennifer Hancock, and she's the founder of humanist learning systems, and the author of several books, Jennifer specializes in programs that combine Applied Science and compassionate ethics for solutions that actually work. I'm excited to jump in. I hope you guys are excited listening. What's up today? Jennifer, well,

Jennifer Hancock 0:33 it's a it's a beautiful day here, so I'm excited to talk to you and your listeners, awesome.

Robert Plank 0:38 Well, I'm excited to talk to you too, and it is a beautiful day over here in California. So this whole humanist learning systems and all that. I mean, what's that all about?

Jennifer Hancock 0:47 Okay, so humanistic business management is about being a good person and using your business to do good while also making money. So it's about thinking about your business as a social entity that's embedded in your society, and what sort of impact you want to have. Now, if we're in business for ourselves, obviously we want to make money, but if that's your only reason for being in business, you might make decisions that are unethical, that things that you wouldn't do in interpersonal relationships, right? But you might do in a business relationship, if they're unethical in your personal life, they're probably unethical in your professional life as well. So what humanistic business management is about is about integrating our ethics into our decision making so that we do have better outcomes for ourselves, for our customers and for the communities in which our businesses operate. Okay,

Robert Plank 1:40 so, so, just to make sure that I'm kind of, like, understanding you, so it sort of sounds like so, so sometimes, I guess people have, like, one set of ethics for, like, with their their kids and their spouse and their friends, right? And then when they get in business, like, sometimes they do some kind of shady stuff and things don't quite line up. Is that right?

Jennifer Hancock 1:59 That can happen, right? And the point of humanistic business management is to make sure that we're integrating our ethics and doing it in a way that uses critical thinking. So, you know, in the introduction, you said, I comply. I combine applied science with personal responsibility for solutions that actually work. A big part of being ethical is to make good decisions, right? And we can't make good decisions without good information. And so a humanist doesn't just say, Okay, I'm going to try and be a good person and hope for the best. We also know that our decisions have to be based in reality and ideally in science, in order to have the best results. So if you're struggling with a problem in your business, understanding that problem well and understanding what'll really actually work to solve your problem is going to put you ahead of the game, because if you're just guessing as to what solves your problem, you may or may not solve it, and in business, may or may not solving your problem is a recipe for failure, right? So a humanist is going to approach it and say, not only do I want to be ethical, I want to be effective. So I'm going to use science to help me be effective and solve those problems that you know I might not instinctually know how to deal with. Okay,

Robert Plank 3:14 so sort of to make sure that I'm following along here. Like, do you have, sort of, like an example or a case study where maybe, like, you had, like a client or someone like come to you and things were sort of in disarray, and then you use some of this humanist stuff, and you kind of set them right in their ways.

Jennifer Hancock 3:30 Sure, let me give you an example. A lot of the training my company provides online learning opportunities for personal and professional development, and a lot of the times when companies hire me, they're hiring me to do a harassment training. So most of the time, if you've been in a company, you've been in a harassment training, and they say it's against the law, don't do it, and they spend almost two hours telling you this, right? But that doesn't actually ever change the dynamics in the workplace. People are still being harassed. They're still being bullied, and the dynamics at the workplace never change. What I do with my trainings is I provide a science based education that's actually behavioral based. So I say, if you're being bullied, this is what works to get it to stop. What we know from science actually works to get bullies to stop. And I did a training for a law firm last year, and they hired me to do one office, and then they ended up hiring me to do all of their offices. I think it was like eight offices altogether. And what, what they told me happened after the training was that the dynamic, the interpersonal relationships, really, really improved quite a bit because I've given them the tools that they needed as individuals to navigate those sometimes difficult interpersonal relationships in a way that was, you know, that worked, but it was also ethical. It was grounded in compassion, which actually is really cool, because the science backs up the compassion. An approach to interpersonal relationships. And the reason people adopted it is because, instead of telling them it's against the law, don't do it. I said, if you're having trouble with someone, here's how you can fix it. And it was very self interested. And so when people know this is going to benefit me, they'll try it out, and then they get immediate positive results. And everybody's doing the same thing. Everybody's intentionally being nice to everybody else, in order to manipulate the other horde person they were working with into being nice. And it ended up having a company wide cultural shift.

Robert Plank 5:32 Okay, so, so I'm not, I'm not sure. I'm still quite, quite following. So, so when you, when you, I'm sure I will in a second. So you, you consult with, like, like this law firm, for example. And maybe there were people who were, like, had bad relationships with the co workers, and maybe they were, you know, bullying, or maybe, like, just being, being fake nice to get what they want. And so, I mean, is that, is that right? And then, like, what did you kind of, I mean, what did you do exactly to kind of set them right in their ways? Sure, okay,

Jennifer Hancock 5:59 so the basic problem was they had it was all. Everybody in the office was a good person, but interpersonal dynamics can sometimes go astray. Right? We've all been there where we're trying our best, but we just don't click with someone, or, you know, we feel like we're being undermined in some way. And it's not that any of these individuals were bad people, it's just that they were right and the other person was wrong, right? That's how they were viewing the the interpersonal dynamics, whatever, you know, I'm right, this other person's wrong, and if they just did it my way, everything would be okay. And it was causing conflict within the office, not because anybody was bad, but because, you know, it's hard to get along with people in office sometimes, and especially when you're under stress, right? People are not at their best when they're under stress. So what I taught them was how to train someone to be nice to you.

Robert Plank 6:52 I'm interested in science. How do I train someone to do that? I would like to train everyone in the world to be nice to me, right? Exactly,

Jennifer Hancock 6:59 you know, but in a interpersonal you've got someone who you think is horrible, and you can train them to be nicer to you, yeah, who doesn't want to learn that, right? Because it's, it's very, it's very selfish way to view the problem, right? But in order to do that, you know, need to know how to train people, and that requires compassion and and ethics to do, and so I taught them the specific skills, like specific things to say in difficult situations and body language to use. Right that we know from behavioral psychology works to get unwanted behavior to stop. So if there's someone in your office that's got an annoying habit and you want them to stop, or they're bothering you in a way you don't like, you can actually train them to stop using what behavioral psychology, which has seven decades of research behind it, and it works, and it works immediately. And so everyone in the office started training everyone else in the office to be nice to them, and the result was a much happier office for everybody. And everybody got to think, Well, I'm the one who's, you know, manipulating this other person. But the reality was they just all, they all changed their own behavior ever so slightly in how they responded to negative people, what they perceived to be negative, and the the impact and change on the office was dramatic,

Robert Plank 8:21 awesome. So, so you mentioned a few things in there, so I guess there's the body language part of it. There's like, what to say to a person, and there's like, kind of, like, how to feel about what someone did or said to me. So like, what sort of, like, what sort of things that did you teach them, as far as, like, you know, what to say, what to think, how to how to have the body language, sure.

Jennifer Hancock 8:41 Okay, so the specific technique I teach is called extinguishing a behavior. And if anybody took psychology in college, they might remember behavioral psychology, right? But this is how we train animals and dogs and humans too. And with extinguishing a behavior in particular, it has a variety of applications. One of them could be the application, how do you get a bully to stop, right? Or how do you get harassment to stop? But you can also use it with, say, Cranky customers, right? How do I get a cranky customer to stop being cranky, right? How do I extinguish that behavior, or get it to stop? And there's some specific things that have to happen in order for this to happen. The first thing is you have to stop rewarding the bad behavior. Now, in bullying, we might say, oh, let's ignore them and they'll go away. But that's not actually the technique that works. The technique that works is to not reward them. And so you do have to spend a little bit of time thinking, Well, what is the reward this person gets when they're mean to me? How do I respond? And why is it, you know, what am I doing that's kind of reinforcing that? And can I tweak my response ever so slightly so that I still get what I want, which is to stand my ground, but they also are not rewarded for bullying me, right? And this happens with cranky customers. It happens sometimes in interpersonal dynamics, in the workplace, things like that, but you stop rewarding them and. And you do that in a way where you say you have something you say, like if they say something to you, you respond. This is not an ignore them and they'll go away situation. You have to respond, but the way you respond will either reinforce their bad behavior or extinct or help extinguish it. And then, and that involves, you know, eye contact, if you if you're comfortable with that, and includes your your body language. It includes what you say, and, more importantly, the tone with which you say it. And it's very easy to come up with something you can say, and you have that planned in advance, and you practice it in advance for whatever the specific situation is. You know, with my son, right? He's in school, and sometimes kids tease him, and he'll just look the kid in the eye and command them to stop, but not in a rude way, just a matter of fact way, stop, and if they don't, he follows up with behavior, which is to report them to the teacher so they get in trouble. But his body language is confident. He's going to look this kid in the eye, he's going to say very calmly, stop, not as a request, but as a command. And he's going to wait for them to respond and see what they do. And if they continue, he responds again with stop, and they tells the teacher, right in the workplace, in the adult workplace, that's not how you'd want to do it, but you'd want to find out, you know, what is the most common scenario that you're encountering, and how can I respond to to it in a way that is calm, measured and direct and makes it clear that this behavior is I'm not going to respond to this behavior, but I'm not going to not respond to it either, right? And if you do that consistently, and there is science that says the consistency is really the key to this, they will stop. So let's talk about an example with, say, a cranky customer. Someone you've got, a customer, is coming to you and they're completely freaked out about something. Maybe they asked you to do a job for them. You did it to the best of your ability, but it wasn't right, or they forgot to give you some critical information, and now it's all wrong, and the world is collapsing, and they're hysterical, right? Right? How do you handle that, right? Well, how you handle that is going to impact. You know how successful, whether you get to keep that client for one right, whether they start giving you bad reviews or not, and you know whether or not they're going to recommend you to other people or bad mouth you to other people. So it's really critical that we understand what this dynamic is that's playing out. That you know, whether this person is a bully and they like to bully people to get their way, or they're just a freaked out customer who's, you know, their part of the puzzle is falling apart on them, and they want your help and don't know how to ask for it politely, regardless of that, the way you can respond in a way that will not reward their bullying or their freak out and help them get to a calm place, so that you can help them solve their problem. And it has to do with being calm yourself and not getting drawn into the drama of whatever it is that's going on, and understanding that if I do this consistently, it's going to work. Now the mistake people make is they try this and then the other person behaves even worse. They escalate. And this is where the science comes in. Like, not only do we know that not rewarding a bad behavior works, we also know what happens when you respond to a bully with a calm response, no, don't do that, right? And that is that they escalate. So if someone's used to bullying, they're used to bullying to get their way. They do it because other people capitulate to them and give them what they want. And if you stand there and say, No, I you know you need to calm down before I can help you, they're gonna freak out on you. And that's actually predicted to occur. We have seven decades of research on this right, and we know when we stop rewarding bad behavior, the behavior actually escalates for a little bit, and that's called an extinction burst or a blowout. And if you understand that, that's part of the process, you look at that escalation very differently than you do if you don't know what's going on at all, because you don't know the signs, right? Because when you do something and you see immediately what is predicted to happen, you go, okay. This is working even though it for a moment it doesn't look like it is. And that allows you to remain calm in the face of that, so that you can get to the other person, to the calm place they need to be okay. Well,

Robert Plank 14:21 this is starting, starting to make a lot more sense to me. So basically, like so some of these people who are bullies, they're used to getting their way. They have this, like, reinforced behavior, because every time they've just been loud, pushy, whatever, everyone else just kind of, you know, folded for them. But if you, if you don't, don't give in, then, then at first, they'll escalate and get even worse. But if I know that this is part of the process, then you can kind of, you can kind of be more confident about it and just kind of let it run its course, I guess

Jennifer Hancock 14:49 Exactly. And because you stay calm and they're not able to get to you, eventually they will stop and it it gets worse before it gets better. But once they. Stop, then you can start helping him. So if you've got a cranky customer, right, and they're freaking out, and you respond in a calm way and say, Well, let me help you with this, but I need you to, you know, articulate. You know, we do this with kids, right? Use your words, yeah, right. But you can do the same thing with the customer. You don't treat them as a child, but you stay in a calm place and refuse to help them until they themselves are calm, all right? And you just get, I want to help you, but I need you to give me X, Y and Z information first, right? And you get them to they might escalate for a little bit, but eventually they will calm down and let you help them. And if they don't, you know, some people just won't. This doesn't work for everybody, but for like 95% of people, you remaining calm, will help the other person, you know, cycle through a burst and then calm down so that you can help them all right. And a lot of times with with entrepreneurs like I created a course called How to Handle cranky customer problems for a group of entrepreneurs where I live, and you know, what they wanted to know, right? Is, how do I get this person calm so I can help them? Because if you're an entrepreneur, you're probably a solopreneur, right for a while, and you've got a customer, and they want you to do something for them that you you literally cannot do, right? They need a solution that you cannot offer, or whatever the request is. Maybe it's an unreasonable time frame. Maybe the price that they want it at is unreasonable. You still want the business. You still want to help this person, but you need them to be reasonable about their demands so that you can help them, right? And there's a tech you know, you can use the same technique to help them get to that calm place so that you can help them solve their problem, whatever that is, in a way that doesn't have you like trying to meet a deadline that's completely unreasonable or trying to do it for a fee that you will lose money on, right? No one, no entrepreneur, should be doing that, but it's really hard to stand your ground when you're starting out and you need the customer.

Robert Plank 17:06 And so, you know, you're mentioning this stuff with like, you know, customers and solar printers and stuff like that. And, you know, a lot of a lot of listeners on the show are remote workers. So if we're dealing with like, you know, joint venture partners or people like that, there's not a lot of, like, immediacy, not a lot of like, you know, Skype, phone call or then with customers. It might be like an email or a help desk situation where, you know, I imagine that, um, a lot of the customers might, might tend to be more pushy just because they can, sort of, like, hide behind the keyboard because they're not actually, like, saying it out loud. And so does this sort of stuff apply? Even though, like, the body language doesn't apply, and then there might be more misunderstandings, just because it's written words and stuff like that, right,

Jennifer Hancock 17:47 exactly, and it really we're talking about behavior. And even though the behavior might look like, you know, in your face, shouting, or it might look like a written text to someone, it's still behavior, and it still follows, you know, a set of rules. And there are ways to respond that that exacerbate the problem, and ways to respond that put you, as the entrepreneur, in control of the dynamic that's about to play out. And in order to be in control, you have to know what the dynamic is that's playing out. Because if you don't, you're at the mercy of the dynamic. But as soon as you understand the dynamic, the behavioral game that's being played, basically, and how this game will will absolutely play out. Um, then you can be in control of it and use that to to help yourself remain calm, but also help fix whatever the situation is

Robert Plank 18:43 okay. And sort of like, so with those cranky customers I saw, I'm sort of thinking back to when, when I struggled with this a lot, like when we first got a help desk, we started dealing with a lot of people and and back then I had a really thin skin, and then sort of deal with, like, different, you know, people shouting or bullying, because I mean that that just happens. Sometimes I would like, sort of try to, like, mirror their behavior. And other times, like, if they had a bunch of like, you know, like nasty stuff to say, I would sort of like do my best to, like, take like, to try to read around the nastiness and just be sort of all business and just like, stick to the facts. So I mean, are either of those strategies? Like, are they both bad? Are they both good? Is it just, like, a use different things for the situation, or, like, what are your thoughts like, as far as, like, how to how to respond to those people? Sure.

Jennifer Hancock 19:30 Okay, so there's a really great book that I read when I was younger that my parents had. It was called games people play. And there it talks about, it's a really great way to conceptualize, like energy states, right? And if you think about where people are at any given time, right? They could be in child state, they could be in the adult state, or they could be in, like a depressed state, right? There's three different states. If someone's in child tantrum mode, the best thing. You can do for them is to be the calm parent. And the way a really good parents parent is they don't meet the kid where the kid is in their tantrum, right? That doesn't help the kid figure out their tantrum, and it doesn't solve the problem, and it makes the parent feel like crap, and in the meantime, the kid's still tantruming, right? The way a good parent handles a tantrum is the way a good customer service rep handles a customer and tantrum up, right? And that is to remain calm and to encourage the person to use their words. I e be professional and keep saying things like, I want to help you, but in order to help you, you have to be able to work with me. And you notice I just said that in almost a monotone tone of voice, right? I no emotion. This person's being emotional. So I'm going to not be emotional. I'm just going to, you know, wait for them to calm down before so I can help them, right? And you're never you're not saying, I can't help you, right? You're just saying, until you stop having your tantrum. I can't really help you. I need you to to be coherent with me so we can problem solve together. You can't problem solve when someone's having a tantrum. And is there

Robert Plank 21:12 a specific reason why you why you say you didn't like, you didn't command them to calm down. You just said like you can. You can do your thing, but until, until your anger and all that plays out, then I'll be here waiting until you're ready. Is that purpose? Yeah,

Jennifer Hancock 21:26 oh, that's absolutely on purpose. Because, you know, if you're freaking out and someone sells you to not freak out, does that help you? That makes it twice as worse. It makes it twice as worse, right? So you don't want to do that to the person. You don't want to condescend to them. You're trying to be supportive in a calm way, to help them get to a calm place, so that the two of you can problem solve together. So you're being supportive, but you're not. You're not letting them bully you into through their tantrum, into whatever it is. They're hoping they that you'll do for them.

Robert Plank 22:02 Okay, makes sense? So, so child state, adult state, and depressed state. So we covered the child state, and then, so then what's the what are the characteristics of that adult state? And then what's the response

Jennifer Hancock 22:13 there? Well, the adult, the adult state is the calm, professional state, which is where you should be. You never follow someone down their, their tantrum rabbit hole. Now, if someone's on the other side where they just don't care, it's a little bit harder, because they're they're often very not community. These are the people that just kind of ghost and go away and then write an ask to review later, right? And there's not a huge amount you can do for that, but the rules are the same. You know, they're behaving in a way that's counterproductive. They probably aren't in a huge amount of control of their behavior. You don't know if there's something wrong that has absolutely nothing to do with you or the situation or something else is going on with them, right? You know, if someone had something traumatic happen to them the day before they're trying to interact with you, their ability to be functional and problem solved with you is non existent, but it has nothing to do with you, right? It's not something you did or didn't do. It's something that's going on with them, which is why treating people with compassion, even when they're being difficult, is the right thing to do, because nine times out of 10 their emotional state has absolutely nothing to do with you. Gotcha. I mean, sometimes it's you, sometimes you were a complete and total jerk, right, right? But if you're basically a good human being and you're trying to help them solve their problems legitimately, their bad mood has nothing to do with you. A lot of times, when I first did this program for a group of entrepreneurs, most of what they were telling me as examples of, you know, how should I handle this had to do with a customer who was mad about something that had nothing to do with them or their service. Okay,

Robert Plank 23:54 yeah, right. And you're making me think back to, like, different sort of problem customers and things like that were like, you know, sometimes they have a legitimate complaint, and sometimes it was just, like, pure nastiness. And I would look at it and I would sort of be like, well, if, if they're, if I can, if I can, sort of like, pull the facts out of all this stuff, and if, like, they legitimately said, you know, I don't like this, this feature of your product, or I don't like, you know, this thing about your software, that would be a legitimate complaint. But if they just say, Oh, you suck, or something like that, I'm like, Well, I don't have anything to work with there. As far as the facts go,

Jennifer Hancock 24:28 right, exactly. And you know the I want to help you, but I need some more specifics from you. And with a kid, you'd be saying, I want to help you, but you need to use your words, right? You know, what is it that you need me to do for you so that I can help you fix whatever this problem is, and as long as you remain calm, they will continue to freak out for a little bit, but about 90% of them will calm down and eventually allow you to help them. So

Robert Plank 24:54 is the right way of thinking about this that you know some people might come to you in like the child. Child state where they're just like a total mess. And you say, well, I need you to turn to be calm. And then once they calm down, are they then in an adult state where they're still unhappy, but at least they can sort of reason with

Jennifer Hancock 25:10 you? Yes, yeah, that's, that's what you're aiming for, okay? And then

Robert Plank 25:14 so then you said that the third type of state is that depressed state. So what is that and how does that relate?

Jennifer Hancock 25:20 Well, you know, like I said, sometimes what's going on has nothing to do with you, and they might be so upset by what happens that they're not even going to go into a tantrum. Okay, so how? And they'll just, they'll ghost, and you won't know what happened. Or maybe you have a deal with someone, and they just kind of go away, and you're wondering what happened to your customer and why they never took advantage of what they bought. And, you know, things like that. That's someone who start, I guess the best way to turn that is ghosting. They go away, and then you hear through the grapevine that they were unhappy. There is not a lot you can do for people who don't want to be helped,

Robert Plank 25:57 right? I mean, that that applies to pretty much all of life, right? Exactly,

Jennifer Hancock 26:01 you know, if they do not want to be helped, there's not a lot you can't help them. But if they do legitimately want help, and the people who tantrum usually want to be helped, all right, the people who go off and disappear, you know, usually don't, or maybe they don't think there is anything you could help them with, so they don't even try, right? Okay, so, but with the people who are tantruming, you can usually help them, but it might take a little bit for them to blow through their tantrum before they calm down enough for you to help them,

Robert Plank 26:34 okay, so, so, if I'm understanding this, right? So it sort of sounds like, you know, if you have you have someone come to you with, like, some sort of problem or some sort of conflict. It sounds like the place that you want to get them to is that adult state, and they might be in the in the child state, and they might and they might move to the adult state, but they also might skip over to the depressed state, and in that case, there's not much you can do just kind of, just kind of let it go and pick your battles. Is that,

Jennifer Hancock 26:59 yeah, exactly, exactly. I mean, you still respond the same way, either way, right? But whether or not they'll come to an adult state is a good is, is up to them

Robert Plank 27:10 and and sort of in your in your travels and stuff like that. Have you noticed, like, a certain percentage of these like, are, like, is the majority, are the majority of people in like, an adult state, and maybe, like, 20% or in the percent, or in the other two or like, about like, how much is that?

Jennifer Hancock 27:25 Well, we all like, if we're let's go back to, say, an interpersonal dynamic in the workplace where you don't like this other person and they don't like you, but you're working together, right, right? Um, those dynamics both people are moving in and out of professional and child state most of the time. And you know, we've all had our moments where we just think the other person's horrible and irredeemable, right? Oh, yeah. And that's not really an adult thought, right? An adult compassionate thought is to recognize the other person as fully human and worthy of your compassion. The child thought is they're horrible and a monster, and I don't have anything to do with them. And there isn't a human alive that doesn't have that thought, even though that thought is rather childish and it's not really reality based, because this other person is a real human being, and they're responding to whatever it is they're responding to, you could very well in your thought, you're thinking this person is horrible. Have you ever had this situation where you're having a conversation with someone and you're thinking this person is an idiot and horrible, but you say something that's polite and nice, and the person responds to you as if you just called them horrible and immature, yeah, all right. It's because your body language and your tone of voice is betraying your thoughts. All right, so sometimes when people are behaving horribly with us, it's because we're kind of seeding that without even realizing it. We're thinking we're putting on a good show. But the reality is, they're picking up on our thoughts, and they they understand fully what we meant, even though we didn't say it right? And so it's not always clear when we have these interpersonal problems, who really is to blame? My mom always said it takes two people to fight. If I'm in conflict with someone, it's partly them, but it's also partly me. And if I can step back from my thoughts about this person being horrible, and start viewing them through the lens of compassion, as a full human being who might very well be responding to something horrible that I'm doing that I don't even know that I'm doing, I can almost always reset those those dynamics and improve them. Okay? Because once I start thinking about the person compassionately, it changes how I respond to them. So if they do something I don't like or that would normally trigger my anxieties, or whatever it is, instead of getting anxious, I can look at them and say, Oh, they're not necessarily in control of their behavior right there, and I don't have to respond. With anxiety to what they're doing, because it's not really about me, it's about them, right? That changes the entire dynamic. My side is completely different, and because my side is now completely different, their side starts to change. And you know, it's really rare when I do harassment training. So the question I always get is, you know, most of this stuff will work itself out very, very quickly, like I said with this law firm I did last year. You know, the interpersonal no one was a bad person, although several people would have sworn up and down that one of their coworkers was a bad person. But the reality is, they were all doing the best they could with the stress they were under, and it reflected in how quickly the dynamic improved within the company, right? But every once in a while you do come across someone who is just pathologically damaged in some way, shape or form, and they don't respond to this the way a normal person would, right? But 90 some percent of the people are going to respond to your changes for the better by being better themselves and so

Robert Plank 31:06 and that situation where you have someone who just, you know is damaged or not willing to change, or whatever the situation is like, What's the case there? Is it just a case of like, fire to them, or don't do business with them? Or what happens there?

Jennifer Hancock 31:20 It all depends. I mean, you don't know this when you start out right, you start by changing your behavior a little bit so that you're at least not part of the problem. And most people respond to this by escalating for a little bit and then becoming, you know, behaving in a much better way, in a much more professional way, but some people will escalate and then escalate more, and then escalate more, and then escalate more, and it becomes pretty obvious within a few weeks that this person is going to escalate to the point that they can't be dealt with. So if you've got a co worker, like you've got a bullying problem in the workplace, like someone's being accused of bullying, and you start this process, 90% of people will respond positively to this within a few weeks, but some people will blow out spectacularly, right? So let me give you an example. There was a case of a hedge fund manager in Canada that I was asked. A reporter called me about, and she showed me the emails that this manager had sent to an intern, and they were of a sexual nature. And basically this hedge fund, hedge fund manager, uh, said was saying the only reason to have an intern is so you can have sex with them. Oh, geez. Right. Okay, right. So this person had been in this position for 15 years, and this one intern, you know, refused to have sex with them, and he freaked out. And the email chain that, like, people are shocked, this guy put what he put in writing in emails to this girl, um, because, like, who in their right mind is this graphic and leaves a paper trail like this is not the sort of thing you want written down, right? You want, if you're gonna do this, you want plausible denial. This guy just wrote the most weirdest, bizarre things to this girl, and of course, he was fired for it, right? Because you can't have someone like that in your workplace, right, right? It didn't shock me, because what, what that email chain showed was a blowout this extinction verse, when you don't, when a bully doesn't get their way, they escalate and they get worse and attempt to, in an attempt to get their way. And the victim in this case did everything, 100% right. At no point did she give in and allow this guy to get away with it. And he just got worse and worse and worse and worse to the point that they had to fire him. And it was that's exactly what you expect to see happen with someone who's not in control of their behavior. People who have control of their behavior will escalate for a little bit, but as soon as the cost becomes too great, they stop. But there's a small section of people who are not in control of their behavior, and they will keep escalating to until they until it becomes so egregious that it's obvious to everyone what's going on and they get fired. So you know, you got to give people the benefit of the doubt, because the majority of people were will calm down and get to a good place, and they will moderate their behavior. It's the rare individual who can't, and you will find that out. Either way, your behavior should be the same, which is to not reward the bad behavior and to remain calm and to keep encouraging this person to behave, to be professional, so that you can work with them professionally, like don't join them in the insanity. Stay professional, stay calm, stay compassionate. Understand this person's behaving badly for a reason that has nothing to do with you, and you're going to help them become better. Like that's the motivation. I'm going to help this person behave better and get what they want right, and then at the same time, I'm going to get what I want. So this is the ethics right back. By science, and it really does work, but in a very, very small number of cases, you know it's gonna blow out in a really spectacular way, but that's not on you, right? That has nothing if that person blows out in a spectacular way, it has absolutely nothing to do with you, right? There's a flaw in them that caused them to behave that way. Either way, you being professional, you're giving them the opportunity to behave better so that they can get what they want, and you can get what that you want out of this interaction. And it's you know, and in 90% of the cases, that will work after they escalate for a little bit. So when they escalate, don't just assume, Oh, they're one of those people, no, this is normal. A little bit of escalation is perfectly normal. Cool. A lot of escalation that doesn't stop after three weeks. You know, that's not normal.

Robert Plank 35:53 And, and this is great, because it's just, it sounds like a really, like, there's, it's almost like, like, if then logic or like, a decision tree to say, like, Okay, well beforehand, sort of the the bad way of thinking, and maybe, like, the situation when, when it comes time for you to come in, is that maybe everyone in, uh, maybe everyone in the office or in whatever sort of relationship thing, even if it's online, everyone's sort of being maybe passive aggressive or, like, fake nice. But then, as you said, like, even if someone's fake Nice. Well, their body language gives them away, their facial expressions give them away, even with when they don't notice it. So it's almost like everyone's being like, adversarial and fake nice. And what I'm hearing a lot from you is like, to have to have some perspective, and maybe, you know, have that, that lens of compassion as you, as you said, and sort of give them the benefit of the doubt, and sort of like, think in terms of what they're going through, and they might be having a bad day, or they might just be responding to to your hostility. And it also sounds like maybe in a lot of these sort of Office situations, maybe like it sort of spreads, or maybe it just becomes sort of the the norm for everyone to just be sort of hostile, and then if even a few people sort of clean up their act and set a better example, and and maybe, like, think before responding, as opposed to just either take it lying down or be even worse in response. And by setting a better example, it sounds like the sort of thing that will sort of catch on and rub off on people. And then everyone around them will either go the direction of saying, like, Okay, well this person stop being mean to me. Now I can let my guard down. And then, as you said, there are some like sociopaths in there, a little bit where those people will just kind of not even know how to react and just get worse and worse, until eventually they'll kind of weed themselves out. It sounds like,

Jennifer Hancock 37:34 Yeah, that's exactly what happens. The book that I wrote on this is called the bully vaccine, and it's not that you're not going to come across bullies in life, but you want to be inoculated so that you don't come down with the case of the bullies, right? And what you're describing this, you know, a few people will kind of start this, and then it creates a new cultural norm. We can call that a form of herding immunity, right? Where the cultural norm is. We don't treat people that way, and we do give people the benefit of the doubt, and we help each other be our best selves, right? And it's the motivation for doing this is self interest, right? And this is the beauty of it. When I do the training, it's not if you're doing this you need to stop because it's illegal, it's if this other person is doing it. To me, this is what I can do to get them to stop and be the hero, right? And who doesn't want to do that, right? This is why, when I do the training, everybody adopts it. Because they they all think the other person's the problem, they're not the problem. The other person's the problem, but they change their own, their own behavior to help the other person change their behavior. And it ends up that everybody ends up behaving better, and you end up with herd immunity. And I do, I have, like, a six hour course on on this where we talk about change management, like group change management, and as it ties into individual change management, and what we see this resistance to not having a reward, to a condition behavior, or learned behavior. This is why change management is so difficult, right? Because instead of having one person who is no longer getting the reward and getting cranky about it, right, oh, we have a new email system, the horror, right? And everybody's gonna complain about it, up to high heaven. And why can't we go to the old way that worked, right? Instead of having one person going through this slight escalation of I no longer have my reward, and I'm going to be cranky about it. You now have a whole group of people doing that right, right, and understanding that that's normal, that pushback is normal, helps you organize how you go about creating a cultural change so that that pushback doesn't become the norm. Because there's the thing, when you reward a behavior, it becomes more common. So if people push back and you let them get away with it, they learn that pushing back works right, and that's not what you want them to learn, right? You want them to learn that when it comes to change management, you want them to learn that resistance is few. People and to get with the program, right, right, right? And so the same science of how do we extinguish unwanted behavior applies to change management. I have, like, a one hour course on why is change so hard, and it applies to us as individuals trying to change and improve ourselves, but also to the group dynamic, right, right? And you can tie this into, you know, bad workplace, you know, environments, and talk about how exactly are we going to change the cultural norm of how we treat each other in this company? Because companies can get into people and companies can get into bad habits very, very quickly, and getting them to unlearn a habit is like trying to learn how to stop smoking. It is not easy, but it can be done if you know what exactly has to happen to make it happen, and that requires science and most people guess and muddle through and then fail,

Robert Plank 40:54 right, I imagine, and, yeah, like, with any sort of, like, sort of long term kind of project, there has to be, like, you know that that faith, that it's going to pay off, even, even if it takes a few weeks. And I think that, like, it sounds to me like, if someone doesn't approach this scientifically, if you just go with the actor gut instinct, they're not going to think further than, like, a few minutes ahead. And then that sounds like that'll just lead to, you know, years and years, if not a lifetime, like that, one person who was working for there for 15 years. I mean, that could have been 15 years of everyone around that person just being miserable, just because that kind of is what caught

Jennifer Hancock 41:28 up. This person did not come out of clear, you know, whole cloth. This person was sexually assaulting his interns for 15 years, and

Robert Plank 41:35 just that, that bad behavior being reinforced. And no one really, no one really,

Jennifer Hancock 41:40 10 years before someone stood up to him and stopped him, and it took one person,

Robert Plank 41:44 and if only that had happened 15 years earlier, or they found you 15 years ago, that bad behavior could have been corrected in a few weeks, and then long term would have, would have paid off so awesome stuff, and we've gone way over time. But that's okay, because we had a lot of fun talking, but I want to make sure that everyone knows all about these courses that you mentioned, like you mentioned the bully vaccine book, you mentioned the one hour course, a six week course. So if people kind of listen to our show today and they like what they they have heard, where should they go and what should they buy from you to sort of get get everything on the right track here,

Jennifer Hancock 42:15 sure the company is called humanist learning systems, and you can find us at humanist learning.com and I have a bunch of programs for individuals. I can also do all of these programs for groups. And then the books are also there. And it's not just training for me. I have other humanist educators on this website as well. If you're dealing with harassment, I would encourage you to get ending harassment and retaliation in the workplace. It's one hour overview course on this process. If you're dealing with change management issues, it's why is change so hard? If you've got kids dealing with bullying, go to the website, the bully vaccine project, and you can get access to the book and programs for your kid and stuff. There

Robert Plank 42:57 awesome stuff. Well, I liked our conversation today, I had a lot of really interesting aha moments when it comes to, you know, dealing with customers, dealing with, you know, team members, and dealing with workers, and even dealing with people in their day to day lives. Because, I mean, what's the point in being happy in your business when you know, when you leave the office or you get off the computer, you're miserable. I mean, that's that sucks too. So it's great that we covered not just, you know, business, entrepreneurial, money making stuff, but also some of this life advice in general. So everyone should go right now to humanist learning.com and find a program that's right for you and whatever problem you're having, find one of those solutions that solves it. So humanist learning.com I want to thank you so much, Jennifer for stopping by the show today and dispensing your knowledge for us all right. Well, thanks for having me on. Want to listen to more fantastic episodes of the Robert Plank show. Subscribe to us at Robert plank.com/itunes and browse past episodes at Robert plank.com you.