4D Human Being Podcast | Live and Lead with Impact

Team Toxins, Antidotes, and Choice

• 4D Human Being

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Want more cohesive, collaborative, and healthy teams? Most team problems don’t start in the plan—they start in the space between people. In this podcast, Philippa and Penelope break down the behaviours that quietly wreck trust and teamwork, so you can build teams that actually work well together.

You’ll hear about Gottman’s Four Horsemen and how they show up in everyday team life:

Defensiveness – That knee-jerk pushback, blame-shifting and excuse-making instead of listening.

Criticism/Blame – Attacking someone’s character rather than addressing the issue.

Contempt – Acting superior through sarcasm, eye-rolling, or mean-spirited jokes.

Stonewalling – Completely checking out and going radio silent.

Better yet, you’ll get practical antidotes you can use today. Curiosity turns defensiveness into learning. Constructive communication replaces blame with clarity. Appreciation undercuts contempt. Care and connection repair stonewalling. You’ll hear real examples, scripts, and simple tweaks you can try this week to cut drama and build a shared language for conflict that actually helps.

If you’re tired of being stuck in the “who’s right?” mud pit, this is your way out.

Follow the show, share it with someone who needs it, and drop a quick review. Which antidote will you try first?​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

SPEAKER_00:

Hello, my name's Philip Waller. My name is Penelope Waller, and we are two of the directors at 4D Human Being. And welcome to the 4D Human Being podcast. What's it all about, Pen? It's all about your personal and professional relationships, it's about your communication skills, how you lead, how you work and build teams, how you are looking after yourself and your well-being, and how you are much more at choice. What do we mean by that? Well, sometimes we can get a little caught in patterns in life. We can all be a little bit on our automatic pilot. So 40 human being is all about helping us get back to choice and being a four-dimensional human being, and your fourth dimension, of course, is intention. So whether it's about your impact, your leadership style, your team dynamics, whether it's about your well-being, whether it's about your communication or your presentation skills, anything that involves human beings interacting with other human beings, 4D Human Being are here to help. We're gonna take a deep dive and look at some tools, insights, theories that are gonna help you go from a 3D human doing to a 4D human being. So that you can happen to the world rather than the world simply happening to you. Yes, hello, hello, we're not there's a question, are we? And it can, I will just warn, I'm gonna I'm gonna hold the hold the space and own it that it can catch, so my throat can suddenly catch, and I'm sort of choking. So I've got some water, and then the coffin starts. The coffee starts. What I love is we're about to talk about how to get to healthy teams from a really unhealthy, coldy, rheumatic. Although I don't think we're quite in the space of the top. Not rheumatic, a coldy, roomy. Yes. Um not I'm not talking about the poet. No, no, exactly. And um, of course, talking to one of my daughters yesterday, and they're half Italian, it's the change in the air. Yeah. It's the change in the season. Yeah. So the cambiodari or the or you take a cold area, a cut of it. Yes. It's a that that's why apparently everyone's ill at the moment. It's not because it's been quite a quick transition, which is true. Which is which is absolutely true. And I think it might also have something to do with lots of people back in classrooms, not enough handy handy washy washy. No, it's the idea. It's the adias, the idea, it's the adios. So we are going to absolutely focus on health today. Well, actually, we're sort of going to focus first on the opposite, sort of the viruses that can get into tea. Exactly teen toxins, teen viruses. Yeah. Um, which I am gonna take that toy off and hump for it because it's the noisiest toy in my office. Well, I have a similar squeezy chicken at my house, and let me tell you, it is permanently out of reach now. Because it's the bane of my life. My youngest daughter Stella bought though, so thank you very much. Stella, I mean, thank you, Stella. Love you, but the squeezy chicken. No, no. So in Teams, we this is the third episode. We have looked at trust, we've looked at collaboration, and today we are looking at team toxins. So we will also team toxins so that we can get to No, exactly. So we will then absolutely look at the antidotes. Yes. The toxins is a really give you the jab. Yeah, one of the many ways that you can look at the kind of blockers in teams, and then we'll give the antidotes to those toxic things. Toxic is toxicity is quite a strong word, but that's what they're called in terms of how we use it in team psychology. Yeah. So you and I are very aware that we're not feeling too good because you know something's changed, we go, well, that's not that's not usual. However, team toxins, they're a little bit more sneaky, yes, aren't they? Well, it's really interesting you say that, Phil, because they are sneaky, and yet we can sometimes be very good at identifying them in other people. Oh, beautiful, beautiful. It's like so easy to see it though, isn't it? So annoying. So annoying. And I never do that. It's so true. Oh, it's just glorious. We were doing a piece of work on this, myself and Steph, uh, one of our fabulous 4D team members, um, yesterday. And we really, really did encourage people to hold the mirror up. So, what we look at today, yes, absolutely. Some of the some of the terminology we'll come up with today and talk about today, firstly, you might have heard of, secondly, it might be very easy for you to suddenly conjure people in your mind who display these behaviours, yeah. And of course, as we always say in 40 human being, even if we are in a team, even if it's a group of people or a system, we would always say probably the biggest part of what you need to do is to start with the self. So this is also about ourselves, and we are all human, we are we none of us are perfect, we all display challenging behaviours. Okay, so why are we even looking at team toxins? Well, we so we started off at the beginning of these three episodes talking about the pyramid, the Lencioni pyramid, and really what that talks about is how how we get really high performing, successful teams. And right at the bottom of that is trust, and then up from that we get collaboration, and then it moves up to uh commitment, accountability, and then of course, aligning on goals and results and results winning, achieving collectively. Yeah, and so of course, some of the things that break down the trust, the collaboration, the kit commitment, the accountability are those kind of unhelpful behaviours, sort of quite negative behaviors that if you like, they are they are slowly kind of chipping away at the cohesion of the team. And there's a wonderful TED talk by um Margaret Heffen of called um Forget the Pecking Order and it's about super chickens. Yes, it really talks about that the the glue between people, the social cohesion is incredibly important in terms of teams performing performing well together, and that speaks to the Lencioni in terms of trust and collaboration. And these kind of toxic behaviours are they are identified and called toxic behaviours because what they do is they chip away and remove all of that social cohesion between us, and we'll talk about where they originated in terms of the research a little bit later, and then they've been sort of uh moved and used in in terms of the corporate world. Um, but they're behaviours that we can all display, we'll sometimes be very unaware that we're doing them, but through research, they have been demonstrated as what they call the four horses of the apocalypse. Come on, come on, charging in, which are the four core negative behaviours that are most likely to damage relationship and social cohesion. Okay, so take a breath, everyone, because you're going to be now given, and some of you might know them, the four horses of the apocalypse. And probably we could all, if we really tried recognise all of them in ourselves, but actually we can have a favourite. Yeah, I was gonna say there's a call out, isn't there, to go, all right, as the as Penelope, you know, brings these horses one by one in. Can we just very kindly to ourselves go? Ooh, I think that might be my favourite horse. And the other thing to say, of course, is you know, obviously, from a sort of psychotherapeutic and developmental perspective, there's really good reasons that these toxic behaviours exist. I mean, they are they are protective and defence mechanisms, they're not there just because we we like to annoy other people. You know, it's a really good thing to hold in mind that if you are having challenges with your teammates, it's pretty unlikely they wake up in the morning and think, right, come on, let's get Bob. I'm going toxic to annoy Bob this morning. Yeah, yeah. It's so much more likely that these are these are behaviours that have been developed and internalized because they have protected us from something or served us well. Yeah. And something that we I talk about a lot in the therapy room and the coaching space, and I'm sure you do, is the cost and benefit analysis of our strategies of our behaviours. And absolutely they've benefited us well enough, they've kept us safe enough and got us here. And there's a cost, yeah, and sometimes we can get to a place where for ourselves and particularly in teams for the collective, the cost is high. Exactly. Exactly. So before we we dive into the four team toxins and the antidotes to them, uh a small amount of background in terms of where these came from because I I just I absolutely love this piece of research. So they stem from uh the work of John Gottman and the Gottman Institute, um, and this research was done was quite quite a while ago. It was a piece of research that was originally done on um on couples, on married couples, and they were observed interacting with each other in interview situations with uh with somebody and also the two the two of them, and the observations identified certain behaviours, both positive and negative, and the negative behaviours were categorized into these four kind of toxins. Yeah, and the key here is it's not about the subject, the situation, or the context, it's about the responses. Yes, exactly, the responses. The interactions, the interaction patterns, exactly. And so what they did is is they counted the number of toxic interactions in each of these four categories between each of the couples, and they tracked these couples for a number of years, and they predicted at the beginning which couples would stay together and which couples would separate and get divorced, yeah. Um, based on the observation of the volume and type of these toxic. Do you think they told the couples? They can't have done that. But they knew that that's what it was for. Yeah, they can't. Well, they certainly can't have said, Well, we've noticed we we give you we give you four and a half years. Yeah. But they predicted in their research the couples that were stayed together and the couples that would divorce. And years went by and they were tracking the couples and in contact, you know, it was a big sort of clinical clinical study. And 94% accuracy on their predictions based on observing these behaviours. That is the same shivers down my spine. I mean, that is both amazing and terrifying. When we talk about them, you can really, really understand that you can understand why this happens. And you know what comes up for me as we say that is we go right back to task and relationship. You can focus on task, roll your sleeves up, get you know, get your results, believing it's just fully the meritocracy and it's just about getting your job done. And yet this piece of research tells you that your success is going to be dictated by the glue in between because it's not about whether these couples did the washing up or not. No, it's about how they did it. Yes, exactly, exactly that. And then because it was such a hugely um influential piece of research, this concept of toxic behaviours, all the four horses of the apocalypse, has been kind of utilised in many different ways throughout sort of human development, team development, uh psychology. And one way is looking at these behaviours in teams, yeah, um, which is what we are fascinated with. Yeah. Okay. So this is not necessarily about your your husband, your wife, your partner. It sort of is as well, isn't it? It's sort of about it's about everything, really, isn't it, Ben? Well, it's an interesting one, isn't it? Because, well, it's both, isn't it? Because because actually, what we find with some of the profilers that we do is absolutely it runs through. So your personal and professional profile is really similar, and we and you've got the consistency, and that probably means this is showing up all over the place. And sometimes we get profilers where people are really different, and that's also telling us that okay, there's some authenticity issues here, like there's something not running through, like what are what's being masked. Anyway, if you don't, if if you really think you're different at work and different at home, so that this doesn't apply, you've got another issue to deal with, which is who are you consistently through exactly okay. So tell us the four horses. So the four the four toxins aren't so the first one is defensiveness, which we are most of us are probably quite to know what you're talking about. It's actually oh we had this session yesterday, we had this on our session, we had people doing jokes about about all of these times, it was so funny. So defensiveness, which we most of us know quite well. Somebody comes and tells you, but you didn't do that, or you didn't do that right. Lots of us have got a natural instinct to make sure that the other person understands the wrong thing. I think you're fine. If you look again, actually, what you'll see is and again, just just to keep keep reiterating, there are very, very good reasons that we use these things. It's not the and the only reason isn't that the other person's an idiot. Because we we learn when we're young, you know. I don't I don't want to be wrong. I don't want to be told off for eating the cookies, so I'm gonna go mm, I don't think you want mm. Oh no, I'm fingerprinting. Exactly. Which brings us to the next uh toxin, which is criticism and blame. So again, you're so full of rubbing. Absolutely listen to you, honestly. Oh, you think you know everything? Actually, exactly, exactly. So if you think about the cookie as a really good example, so you take the cookie and the parent or the caregiver says, you know, who you bet that cookie. No, no, I didn't I didn't eat that cookie. You know, I I haven't been really busy in the other room. You bet that cookie. Well, you've tried to make it try to defend the business now. So Philippa. You know that one well from children. Philippa did it. So that is blaming and criticism. If the defence hasn't worked, we need to attack somebody. Well, it's a bit like the fortress, isn't it? I've tried to defend the fortress, and I'm gonna pour oil down the down the down the crenellations or I'm gonna drag somebody or throw someone else off the wall, exactly. So that's the second one. Criticism and blaming. There is a lot about funny humour in this. I tell you, we I tell you, it's quite it is quite funny because we know it about it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's the second one. So we've got defensiveness, then we've got blaming criticism, and of course, there is a scale to all of this, so you know they they can be quite subtle, of course, they can be quite aggressive as well, but they can also be quite quite subtle. I mean, particularly defensiveness. Interestingly, when we're doing work on egos with leaders and teams, you can very often ask them to respond in a way that doesn't demonstrate defensiveness, and it just creeps in. Yeah, well, it's interesting because it's making me think of passive aggression, which is really challenging for a lot of people. And if you think about blame and criticism from passive aggression, it's got more of a flavour of wow, you know, you really, you really, you really know your stuff, don't you? Exactly. You really, really, you you've got all the answers, haven't you? Yeah, exactly. It's of course, ver the language is saying yes, one thing, yes, but really we're in criticism and blame, exactly. Exactly. And that subtleness brings us on to the third one, which is my personal favourite, because on the scale of sort of subtle to to overt, you can get really subtle with this one. So the third one is contempt, uh-huh. And if you if you want to think about contempt in terms of what really do, how it might display in body language, yeah, just a little gentle eye roll at somebody when somebody says something, and what contempt is doing it is kind of separating you out and and saying, even with a tiny little roll of the eyes, I am better than you. 100%. You are an idiot. And you can see why that is so appealing, isn't it? Like, and also because I haven't said anything. Exactly. Well, exactly. Exactly, and you have to be so careful, of course, because lots of us are on um virtual calls now, and of course, you could sort of get away with it in the room, but now your face is on your screen, you've got to be careful with the contempt. Well, also I would say that you've got a very, very small window where we only have audio AI transcripts because I think at some point fairly soon it will be also reading visuals of at that point, you know, Sandra smiled and looked over at because it will be reading, so it won't be long before there's no hiding because it will be she showed contempt, yeah. She rolled her eyes, exactly, and of course, at the other end of the contempt scale, it really is yeah, full on. Full on there and did you even go to school? Yeah, look at you. How have you even got this job? Oh my god. Or you say it to another person, of course. Well, this is a really interesting interesting thing about um about contempt. So all of these, all of these toxins are behaviours that you know we we can display even unconsciously, and they are there to kind of protect us. Like, so for contempt, for example, it's because I don't want to feel less than somebody else. So I'm gonna sort of put them down and try and make it. It's a step, it's like status, isn't it? If we put while I'm not raising myself, I'm not raising myself up, I push you down and then I feel better. Exactly. And the other thing about contempt is it has it has an another little win to it, which is it's probably probably the best toxin to get a little collective tribe going with. You're actually selling contempt to me now. I know. Yeah. So, you know, can you imagine being in a being in a with a group of people at work? This is making me think of like those um uh survivor TV shows. Yes, exactly. We're sort of ganging up on something else. Because our instinct as human beings is if we're in a tribe, we've got to make sure that other people are not as strong as our tribe or they're out of our tribe, whatever it might be. So maybe we're in a group of people at work and we'll and and we'll start talking about oh well, you know that finance team, you know, they're a bunch of idiots. So we can be collective in our contempt and it can it can it can create social cohesion. I was gonna say, going back to Margaret Heffender, yeah, the sneaky thing is we've now got glue. Yeah, and of course, you see this in the playground, it's making me think of maybe more global cultures that we've become divisive and that we slip into this because now I belong. Yeah, and that becomes more and more polarized. Yeah. So the more and more we um use that glue, the more and more we bed that in, yeah, the harder it is to find a bridge. Yeah. And this is because all of our energy is going towards that internal gluing. Yeah. And that's I mean, just this is probably worth saying here because I've it was coming up for me earlier. Just the energy spent on these toxins. 100%. Well, again, on a very small poll of of people, we asked for the percentage of time spent on uh sort of conflict and uh dysfunctional dynamics, about 20% of time in one's own team and about 45% of one's time across other teams and stakeholders. Now obviously that was just a small poll that we did. But that's that's a that's a day or two a week. Anyone who feels they're spending, and I guess could we if we had those together, that's 65% to be fair. But any but anyone who feels they're spending over half of their I mean imagine being in a relationship where over half of your time was in the crunch. Yeah, that would be absolutely exhausting. Exactly, exactly. So that's contempt. Yeah, that is there's contempt. There's contempt. There he goes, and the fourth one is stonewalling or ignoring, avoiding. So this is very much, you know, you can imagine sort of folded arms and turning away. It's an absolute cut off of communication. So I would be a bit careful here with to differentiate this from I need to take some time out, I need to kind of reflect and gather my thoughts. That that's you know perfectly acceptable in terms of our boundaries and what we need and our nervous system. Stonewalling is you literally don't exist. I I will not I will not engage with you. And whilst there's no real hierarchy to these these toxins, what the Gottman research found was that stonewalling is probably the most damaging because at least with the others, you do have some communication, but with stonewalling, the communication's gone completely. So the disconnect entirely, the I don't even, I just not I am not engaging with you. I mean, this does make this does take me to the psychotherapy uh kind of lens, which I know we can't speak for everybody, like everyone's got different backgrounds and upbringings, but it suggests that uh any kind of dialogue and trying to address difficult is so dangerous and or so pointless that you've learned for your own safety to disconnect. So that's hard, isn't it? And and and of course, you know, we always have to recognise with these with these behaviours that of course, in some situations, it might be true that any contact or communication would would be too dangerous. That you have a right to protect yourself, yes, exactly, both physically and psychologically. It's just that we carry that through when it's not true. We carry that through and when it's exactly when it's not true, and and there isn't actually that danger. Yeah, those people might be manifesting an energy or a front foot or an assertiveness that for you absolutely pushes the button of when somebody is front foot and passionate, that is dangerous. Yeah, that's right. Or you know, dis disrespectful as well. That'd be a big one when people cut people off. So those are the four toxins defensiveness, criticism and blame, contempt, and stonewalling. So you may already be thinking about those in terms of things that you've either seen in a team you're working in, or you may be thinking, I know I can do this, or you may be thinking, I can't see, I don't think any of those apply. And this is where, of course, toxicity in culture and relationship is like the water in your goldfish bowl. That's just what it is to be in relationship, so that's one thing that we can do. We can't really see it because isn't that just that's just what it is, which also links to my second point on it, which is yeah, but it's them. Yeah, it's because they're they keep doing that. Yeah, it's to put a bit of a highlight on those, so that as we're sort of gently asking you to go, oh yeah, I think I can stonewall, if that doesn't just doesn't feel accessible, there might be these defences in the way, which is I don't think any of that's not none of those, none of those are me. Um, and uh well you know I do I did ignore that person, but you know, they're an idiot. Yeah, well exactly, they deserve it, exactly. And just again to reiterate, of course, in some cases, usually you know, relatively few, it it may be that it's a good idea to sort of move away from people, but but generally speaking, I think it's much more useful for us to look at our own behaviours because I said this to a group yesterday, uh I I sort of I like to think of ourselves instead of having a sort of a personality and identity, I like to think of ourselves almost as if we're walking around holding up a mirror and other people are doing the same, and we kind of catch each other's reflection. And based on our behaviours, our beliefs, our patterns, including these toxins, we will catch other people's mirrors differently. And so, as an example, um i i when emotions get heightened, for example, um maybe if I'm in an argument or something, then possibly contempt is the is the space that I might go if I'm displaying some unhealthy behaviours. Now, of course, that will then elicit a different toxic behaviour in in other people. Yeah. So I'll end up having quite different relationships, even when things are heightened, with different people, and we're doing this all of the time. So of course we can say, well, it's them, they ignored me, or they were being But actually it's us. It's actually the combination of the two. Yeah, we are responding all the time to each other's behaviours in these areas. Yeah, and the other thing I'd say on that, which is such a thread through this work, through psychotherapy, through our personal lives, is you always, always have the right to walk away from a system or a relationship. But it it is a very, very good question to ask yourself. Have I really have I tried, have I really self-reflected? Have I have I have I tried to acknowledge and own my own toxins here and show up in a different way? Because otherwise, you definitely, definitely risk, and I'm sure all of us can relate to this. That if I have another relationship or I move to another team, it'll be it'll be better. Well, exactly. And unless we've done that work, it will be the same. Yes, exactly, exactly. Soxins have a habit of following us. Exactly, exactly. We are we are our threatens. We're carrying in our little suitcase. Yes, and it's not saying right now we've got to become perfect human beings and never display these behaviours. It's not it's not that we we we are never going to be those people, it's recognising our contribution to dysfunctional team behaviours, and and also really it's you know, we say this a lot of you know in our work a lot that it's great when it all works, when you've got the people that just it just works so easily. It's actually the development is when things are tough. Where things are tough. Those are the those are those are the people to really dial up the tools, dial up the effort. Yeah, it's easy with people who are just get you and manage you and work with you. Exactly, exactly. And of course, the temptation when things are tough is to do the opposite. Well, exactly, exactly, can be to display these behaviours and feel very justified in doing so. I'm not making an effort with them. Why should I? They're they're they're off, they're an idiot. So we we are, you know, we are perpetuating the situation based on our beliefs and and the behaviours that we display. So we have a choice, as always at 4D, we say you have a choice. So you you have a choice, which is you stay in your position of well, they need to change and they need to do something about it. It's not me and I this team was fine before they came around. How how successful is the attitude of they need to do the changing? How I mean in any any relationship, personal, professional, how successful is that? Well, exactly. Never, exactly. Well, and also it drags other people into it because if you think about team dynamics, when we have problems with other team members, often we're likely to go to a colleague or to our boss to say, you know, you've really got to sort Bob out, he's a nightmare. And then the leader has to get dragged in. Yeah, and the leader has to try and take the different views, yeah, and you know, Bob Bob will say, Well, actually Oh, Penn, or then you're off. You're off. And and the other thing on that, which I really love about toxins, that really I think this is a really good opportunity to really again to sort of smile at them is when you feel so justified because they're such an idiot, yeah, or so horrible. And so you go and you find someone over a coffee, you know, over the water cooler or in the in the in the kitchenette, and you say, uh, Sandra or you know, Bob, they are such a nasty bit of work. You know a nasty, and you go into this, they're so mean, they talk about other people, I've caught them. I would never do that. I would never, I would never do that. And and you're like, it's it's I just find it so wonderful that you are right in it. Yeah, I wouldn't I would never go off and bitch about other people. I mean, but if you if you know what I mean? I mean I mean, who do they think they are? And you're like, and they're completely snow blind, like completely blind to it. Exactly. It's brilliant, exactly, absolutely brilliant. I know, and what what I think is better gossip, what I think is quite useful about this is it's not the easiest thing in the world for us to hold up the mirror and go, yeah, I can be a bit like that. The the first starting point is it's quite useful to have some language around this, that you know, that there are these four categories. Yeah, um, everybody does them at some point or another. So, you know, we can and and actually, if if when we start talking about the antidotes, we can see how the antidotes can really, really, really help in so many ways to kind of bring them to the surface a little bit. Come on, Dr. Dr. Penelope. Yeah, and allow us all to sort of accept, really. Well, there's something do you know what it's really reminding me of? It's really reminding me of improv, being in an improv team and also a writing team, the creative process. That because you're really working with all of your vulnerability, everyone's working with a at the edge of vulnerability, at not knowing, and I don't know what's gonna happen here. What do you what's gonna what are you gonna give me? Oh, I didn't like what you get because you're constantly in that space of this might not work, this might fail. It's one of the best ways through it is to find the language and a humour for it, is to go, oh, oh, was that your I'm open to any offers? Yeah, yeah, exactly. And to find this because it's a different glue that can is already an antidote before we've even looked at the specific antidote. And this is what threads through the antidote. Yeah, I actually I absolutely love the antidote. Okay, doctor, Dr. Penelope, here you go. This is the only time I'm gonna be called a doctor in my life, Bill. So, so there's we'll give you four antidotes for the four toxins and a little bonus one as well, which is kind of what you've just spoken to. So the first one, so defensiveness. Um, the antidote to defensiveness is curiosity. Because when when we are going into defense, we are justifying, we're kind of turning the spotlight inwards and letting people know that they're wrong and that I did this, and they need to know about me. Yes, and what we do with curiosity is we just flip that around and go, well, I'm I'm not gonna defend this, but I'm gonna step into whatever it is that you're seeing or talking about. And it's very, very difficult to be defensive about ourselves when all we're doing is getting curious about the situation or the other people. So let's look at what that looks like. So we move from hang on a minute, have you looked at column three? I think you'll find an Actually, I spent all night doing that, and actually, I think I what when I did that, which had actually had been totally overlooked by other people. So that's I'm all here, I'm all about me, what's going on for me, defend, defend. And I shift that to ah, yeah. Okay, so what what is it that you that you that you saw there? What is it that particularly has is problematic or difficult? How can we do differently? How can I help? So just with that body language, you can think of defensiveness as kind of hands up and pushing away, and then curiosity is kind of turning them and open. Or those palms open. I love this game. We've we've actually, this is I'm gonna do a quick plug for a series that will come up probably early next year, which is managing difficult conversations, which is gonna be such a thorough, brilliant, it's got so much in it, and something that we all really are just so passionate about because let's face it, it's the toughest, it's tough it's the toughest thing, isn't it? It can really ruin a day. Yeah, but the palms open, and I love that exercise where if you clench your fists and say, Yeah, no, I'm I really want to hear what you've got to say, I'd really, I'm really curious, it's really difficult because you're but if you open your palms, and equally the other way around, if you close your fists and go, I don't care what you think, listen to what I've got to say. Then if you open your palms and say, Well, I I don't really care what you think. I I I want to it's almost impossible to get the end of the sentence. Yeah, exactly. Because that open palm gesture is screaming up to your brain, I think we want to have a dialogue. Exactly, exactly. So, questions, it might be just self-reflection, you know, instead of going, instead of sort of going away and sort of building your case, it might be going away going, I wonder, I wonder what's going on with with Bob at the moment. I wonder why he's you know he's upset at the work that I've done, or it might be uh I wonder what we could have done differently, or it might be um, I wonder who else I can I can speak to. Like it it does, it can go in all sorts of directions, and it doesn't necessarily mean that you're saying, Okay, well, you know, they're they're right and I'm wrong, and I'm terrible at what I do. It's just it's shifting from locking down and defending to exploring impossibility. So very different. Yeah, and I'm wondering if maybe the answer is the palms open, but to to respond to the person who goes, Yeah, but why should I ask Bob? Yeah, he doesn't know or appreciate everything I've done. Yeah. Well, we sort of say it's like drinking poison, isn't it, thinking that the other person will get ill. Uh if we are holding these feelings of defensiveness or blame or contempt or whatever it might be, we are kind of in psychological pain. We are suffering because we we feel unhappy or frustrated or whatever it might be. Um, and then we can we can sort of perpetuate that by sort of saying to ourselves, well, they need to change, they should do this. But we're still but we're still in angst. You know, one of the one of the uh metaphors I'd love for this, which I this has definitely helped me. I mean, and you're amazing at kind of pulling out you know, you could people talk about taking the high road, which is which is fairly useful, but it has a bit of a moral tone to it, I think. Take the high road, they take the low road. But a way I really like to think about it is you're down in the mud pit and you're wrestling, and everyone's uh and you did that, and they're going, well, you did that, and you're like, I don't want to be in this mud pit. I really hate it down here. It's it's it's wet, it's cold, it's horrible, it's unpleasant, there's no snacks, I'm full of hate, it's awful. And you go, Well, there's a way out. Like you can you can lift out of the mud pit and go, how can we do this differently? But that voice that goes, why should I? I want to win the fight, then we can win the fight in the mud. But then you've got to stay in the map. Then you've got to stay in the muppet. Totally, 100%, 100%. So that is curiosity, which is a great antidote to defense. By the way, as soon as you think you've won that Muppet, someone else is turning up. It's coming in. Never ending. Never ending. It's Disophie and so the second one, criticism and blaming. And again, we can feel very justified, we can feel like the other person has done something wrong, or you know, they they need to take the rat for something. Uh, so the antidote to this is constructive communication. And what I what I like about this is it's it's a slightly sort of tamer antidote. It doesn't go quite as far as some of the other ones. And I think one of the reasons for that is probably that when you are in full blame and criticism, there's probably only so you can say it's only so far. Yeah, we're not gonna get married, yeah. Yeah, so I still think you're an idiot. We go we go into constructive criticism, and we talk about this a lot in challenging conversations. We talk constructive communication. Constructive communication, sorry. Not constructive criticism, it's a bit too near. No, yeah, um, so what we talk about is getting the rational brain on online. So the blaming and the criticism will be will likely to be more subjective, more emotional. Yeah, it didn't. Yeah, we're in front of it. The prefrontal cortex is offline, so this is to try this is using a structure and a language to get the prefrontal cortex back. So it might be, can I share three things that have been challenging about this? Or or not, you're an idiot, you're an idiot, you're an idiot. You made all the mistake, yeah. Or or it might be, but actually, uh, we're sort of joking about it, but even saying, can I share three things about this? It's actually it's I laughed about saying you're an idiot, you're an idiot, you're an idiot. But actually, it's a joke because it's not actually where you want to go when you start using language like that. Because it's silly, it's funny to set up a constructive piece of communication. You know, your brain then knows you'd be the idiot if you now feel deep with blaming, isn't it? Yeah, so it's funny. That's it, it's not and I like tricking the brain sometimes. Yeah, so constructive communication. This may take a bit of effort and a bit of thought. Again, it doesn't mean that you've got to sort of concede your position and suddenly say, Well, they didn't do anything wrong, and it's it's being constructive and clear in how you're communicating that. And it goes back to facts, doesn't it? It goes back to facts and it goes back to what our intentionality is in terms of moving forward rather than that more emotional, you've got to be proved in the wrong. Well, exactly, and that whole thing of you're an idiot or I don't like you or I'm angry, none of that has anything to do with the three things that have got in the way of this of this task being done properly. Exactly, exactly. So that's your constructive communication. The third one, contempt. Yeah. So the antidote to this, it makes perfect sense. And depends how breathing hard now. Yeah, breathing hard, depends how far along the sort of scale of contempt you are, you might need to take some time out. Yeah. Uh, but the antidote to contempt is appreciation. Because what that's doing is is even if 98% of you thinks Bob is an idiot, I don't know how he got that role. Uh I'm gonna roll my eyes every time he opens his mouth. Yeah, even if 98% of you thinks that, can you find one or two percent of yourself and one or two percent of what Bob does that you can appreciate? Now, maybe on the bell curve of this, there might be one or two people in your life that you can find absolutely zero percent to appreciate, but it's pretty unlikely. It's pretty unlikely. It's pretty unlikely that you're working with a human being who there's nothing that they do in terms of their work, their behaviours, their relationship skills, that you can't find something to appreciate. So even if you feel sort of contemptuous towards them and you want them to understand that they are um not as good as you at something, if you can shift that into what I can appreciate about him, or I was this, it's a really good way to start shifting your neural pathways, your thinking into that more positive attitude. Yeah, even if it's I I I really appreciate that you they are trying their best. Exactly. Or I really appreciate that they are working all the hours that they need to work, or or actually that that they're working extra hours, even if it's something really simple. Exactly, or that they're really passionate about it, and perhaps why that's why they're getting angry about something, or um that you know they raise money for charity for the for the organisation. There'll be something about that. I I I really appreciate that actually Bob leaves at five every day because he's a really committed family, exactly. Exactly. So it goes back. That's the antidote to contempt, isn't it? Um, and then the last one, which I'm gonna I'm gonna suggest is is possibly one of the hardest, although it is the way back in. So, stonewalling, when we've completely cut somebody out, if we do kind of find it within ourselves to reconnect and think, okay, come on, you know, we we need to work together. What our sort of subconscious can want to do is to go back in with criticism and blaming and defensiveness. So we've okay, we've overcome the stonewalling, but there's a danger that one of those other toxins will will take over. But we feel good about ourselves because we've made the effort to step in. So the antidote to stonewalling to and also to stop us going down the path of other toxins is care and connection. So even if you feel somebody has behaved really badly and you've you've chosen not to talk to them for a while, uh is there an opportunity for you to sort of say, I hope you're okay, checking in, you know, can we connect with some other teammates and have a drink? Yeah so kind of taking all of the the work situation and the problems you've had offline and just going right to pure care and connect. There's so much in this that I think is so interesting that this in this, just in this from stonewalling to care and connect, if you if you if you open that up like a never look, there's so much research in there. Of course, when you stonewall and you disconnect, and you've got you've gone into what we call your dorsal vagal in the nervous system, you've just you've shut down. But what you want more than anything, but you can't, it's a horrible feeling where you're inside yourself and feeling very maybe sad or angry, but you start to feel alone. Yeah, and what you want more than anything is connection, but it's very you you cannot ask from there because it's it feels like there's a wall up. So what's really interesting about this is you're putting out the thing that you actually need, so you're you're modelling it. The other thing about it is you're absolutely accessing your intentional self, you're taking the focus off of you, which is at the moment is a really difficult place to be. And the other thing is just going back to that, to the dorsal vagal, to the nervous system. If you think about the polyvagal system, we're trying to get back up the ladder. We're at the dorsal vagal shut down at the bottom, in the middle, we're in fight or flight, which is that contempt, criticizing, blaming, anger. And at the top, we've got safety and social connection. And what you're trying to do from this place by trying to care for someone else is to create the social connection that absolutely is where you want your nervous system to get back to you. So it's just it's just absolutely incredible in terms of one tool that is absolutely accessing you at the core of your nervous system operation and your and your your neurology. I just think it's amazing. And I really hear you that it that is that's gonna feel quite hard, but it feels a bit to me like if you think about it like a sport, that it can be difficult to put your running shoes on and go out for a run. It's got a real physical ah, it's got like a resistance to it, but it's a doing, yeah, rather than uh, rather than uh, well, I feel I feel so much love, I'm gonna I'm gonna go and ask how they are. Actually, it's a it's like it's think of it more like a sport. Yes, yeah. And it's interesting that you you you said that because if we think about where this where this research originated in married couples, and and stonewalling was found to be the sort of the most toxic of the toxic behaviours, of course, in relationship, if perhaps there has been a bit of a standoff, and you know, and quite right that we take some time out if we need to do that, we need to get the system regulated and maybe in internally kind of work through our thoughts on it. Very often, of course, what you what you can do in couples is you can use affection to get back to the repair bidding. The repair bid, exactly. And it will it won't fancy a cup of tea. Yeah, and it's uh it's unlikely that the repair bid will be well, we need to have this conversation again about it's more likely exactly as you said, can I have a hug? Can I do you want a cup of tea? So it's very much in that space of just pure care and connect, let's not go back over our channel. Yeah, yeah. In fact, let's not go to the constructive communication, let's just let's just be in relationships. Exactly. And and ensuring that within teams, you know, particularly in hybrid and virtual teams, ensuring that we have opportunities to do that is hugely important. I mean, particularly when we're working across silos, you know, where are those easier opportunities to care and connect? Because you know, talking to leaders and teams, that's very often the thing that feels hard. Just suddenly spontaneously reaching out to somebody when there's no there's no water cooler to stand around, there's no opportunity to do that. Yeah, yeah, or there's no, I really like that report you just did. And actually, that feels really important on this one that it really isn't connected to the task. Yeah, and actually, you might have to be explicit because if you've had a difficult moment with someone, or that there's a toxicity in that relationship, and you go towards them and say, I really wanted to to check in with you and to see how you are. And they might very well bring up the task, the topic, the work that you were doing that caused the problem. So there might actually be something here about being really explicit, and I really so if they say, you know, well, you know, I know we had an argument about that project, but you know, blah blah blah. I think you know, if we look at it again, I think you're fine. And actually, to be explicit, to say, I really hear you, I really want to simply reach out to see how you are, to let's come back to the job and to really name it because otherwise we'll kind of we'll hang back on to the task because it's what we know, and like you say, it can feel like there's nothing to hold on to if it's just it'll be disconcerting. That's right, but it also, of course, ties in with going back to sort of the the idea of it almost being like a sport or an action to do that we're just gonna think about connection, is we can also reprogram and rewire our responses by doing daily act, you know. It's like it's like you know, it's like anything, isn't it? If you're habit building, it's habit building. And if you do the actions rather than necessarily unpick, well, you know, psychologically, this is well, they did this, and that's because their parents were there, like you could just do the action that's going to start to build a habit. Totally. And I mean, hopefully in your teams and across across different stakeholder teams and silos, I mean, hopefully there's not a lot of stonewalling going on. And I would offer to leaders if there aren't simple, simply accessible opportunities for team members to do that care and connect, yeah, you know, 10 minutes a week, and particularly across siloed teams, yeah, it's really missing a trick. Yeah. What do you mean? Because we can avoid falling into these toxic behaviours by putting these antidotes in place in first, like having a vaccination. Yeah. And then the final, yes, there's like a bonus antidote which is my absolute favourite, Phil, and and this was really displayed in a workshop that we ran yesterday, is play.

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And the thing about play is not only is it a sort of a general antidote to many of these toxins, and it's you know, it just switches the brain on in a different way. The thing that I I really noticed about playful teams is they can play, like you said right at the beginning, they can play around the kind of the weaknesses and the toxins that they know that they bring. Like I can be playful about, well, you know me, Bob, I'm a bit, I'm a bit like that. Well, Phil, is that your is that is that is that patient Philip a couple of years? Yeah, exactly, exactly. And so it's which is wonderful. Play is absolutely joyous. And I've said this, I think I've said this so many times, but um the psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott says, you know, the sign of the sign of great mental health in an in an adult is the ability to play. And you have to be slightly careful that it doesn't push into sort of sarcastic yes, so you have to be a little bit careful where it becomes a defense. Yes, and if you have a team where they either have a lot of play or you've encouraged their pla play between them, it's pretty likely it's going to be one of the best teams you've ever worked on. And there's a really good way to test that play is if you can play with someone else and then they can play back with you. And if they can't, then you're you're out of whack. I want to say one more thing before we close, which feels important, is the lovely phrase, you get what you tolerate. And that if you if you realize that you're in that a toxic culture or in a toxic team and you are contorting and compromising constantly to try to make it work, then look at some of these antidotes, look at some of these tools, because you get what you tolerate all the time that we stay in contortion and compromise. It goes back to what you said right at the beginning because we're not making any change, then we'll keep having to tolerate it. So we can all do this for ourselves and for others. But actually, we could start by thinking about you know what, this is for me. This is gonna make my life. Well, that's right. You know, it doesn't have to be about everyone else. That's right, Phil. And I think as leaders as well, we can we can encourage these kind of antidote behaviours through little mini processes that we put in place or language that we use. So don't necessarily wait for the toxic behaviour to show up. Yeah, think about have you got these antidotes in your team already? That's right. Yeah. That's right. Preventative, Phil! Preventative medicine, Dr. Penn. I love it. That's where I want to end it. I mean, 4D preventative medicine. I love that. I love that. Well, get us in as well. We'll we'll do a lot of play with the team. Yeah. We love it. Well, there you go. Never have an ill day in your life. Let's hope let's hope we didn't have many more of them this winter. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the 4D Human Being Podcast. We hope you enjoyed the show. Do take on board some of the insights, tools, and tips because every time that you try something new to get back to choice, you are making a vote for the you that you want to become. And I love that phrase, Pen. I do too. And please do share this episode with somebody that you know would really benefit from the lessons and learnings we've been chatting about today. And of course, if you're interested in more from 4D Human Being, do get in touch. We run workshops, trainings online, in person, conference events and keynotes. We've got the 4D on-demand platform for your whole organization. And we do have a free essentials membership where anybody can sign up for absolutely free to access some of our insights, tools, and tips. So do get in touch with us if you'd like to hear more. We cannot wait to hear from you and to carry on the conversation.