Modern Wisdom: w/ Jefferson Fisher – A Blueprint For Mastering Every Conversation (Transcript)

It can be just like a bomb. That’s what happens when you usually start with context first or a lot of unknown first — “We need to talk.” Period. Or if you just respond “K.”

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Mine, like the fing thumbs up reaction emoji. Oh, that’s my favorite. It’s the most passive aggressive s.

JEFFERSON FISHER: Yeah. That’s more harmful, often, than giving them the middle finger on the emoji.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Like, put thumbs up, tell me to f* off.

JEFFERSON FISHER: That thumbs up is just the worst thing you could have possibly done. It’s like you have a “K” in there. It’s like, “I didn’t care enough about you to put an ‘O’ right in front of it.” That’s how little I care about you in that moment.

You’re creating that unknown and that fear. It’s the same way, often, when somebody starts a story with the context and they’ll say something instead of getting to the point — meaning starting with their end first. They’ll be like, “So you remember the other day when we did this thing and you probably don’t remember, but…” and they start going, and you’re like, “What’s happening? Are they upset? Are they not upset? Have I done something wrong?”

And we go often into fixing mode. We want to try and fix it. And usually we start to kind of, “Oh, you want to go there?” And like, “No, no, no, no, no, that’s not it. That’s not what I’m…” And then it gets really, really frustrating. And then you go, “Okay, so you want me to… wait, okay, you just totally missed it. I mean, I gave you the whole…” It’s because they’re not being clear about it.

Starting Difficult Conversations the Right Way

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Well, we don’t have theory of mind and good storytelling saves the exciting twist for the end.

JEFFERSON FISHER: Right.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: But I guess good emotional storytelling buries the lead in the headline, right? You say, “Hey, I’m not mad at you and this is nothing to be worried about, but…” Or some degree of, “I love you and I just really want to have this conversation. I think it’s super important.” And I know that — what was one that I got from Connor Beaton, who I worked with the other day? “I need to have a difficult conversation with you and I know that you can handle it and I know that we can handle it as well.”

JEFFERSON FISHER: I love it.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: F*ing great, dude. You’re like, “Oh, let’s go. This is good.”

JEFFERSON FISHER: Yeah. And see, that makes you want to get into it, to say, “Hey, we’re going to grow through this.” So rather than when somebody comes into a conversation — what I call labeling the difficult conversation — rather than, let’s say, I need to give you bad news about something and I’m already feeling anxiety about it. I don’t know how I’m going to say it. I’ve been thinking about it while I brush my teeth, while I drive here. “God, how am I going to have this?”

And then I just start with, “Hey Chris, how’s it going? You good? You’ve been playing pickleball lately? Yeah. I mean, have you seen that? It’s like ping pong, but not. It’s crazy.” And then you’re like, “What’s going on?” And then I go, “So, so listen…” and that’s when you know, you can already tell in the tenor of my voice, like something else is going on.

But when you’re able to say, “This is going to be a hard conversation. This isn’t going to be fun to talk about. This is something that is going to be hard for us,” it’s almost like we kind of ready them and to be emotionally resilient, to kind of nod and go, “Okay, I’m ready. Let’s talk about it.” But saying, “I’m telling you this because I know we can handle it. This isn’t a conversation that you and I can’t get through.” Like, let’s go. We can do that all day.

The Power of Holding Space: Theo Von and Sean Strickland

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: One of the other lines that I’ve heard a bit — there are two situations that over the last couple of years have been very formative on how I see communication. The first one was Theo Von with Sean Strickland. You see this clip? Sean and Theo. Sean Strickland, MMA fighter, UFC fighter. You know who he is?

JEFFERSON FISHER: Oh, is this where he goes, “I’m just going to sit with you?” Yeah. That was so good, bro.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: It is one of the most beautiful examples of spaceholding that I’ve ever seen, and was something that I’d never seen done before. And then my friend Charlie from Charisma on Command did a breakdown of it and fully explained what was going on. He goes through the body language of Sean. So Sean’s gripping this water bottle, he’s got some f*ing bottle of Evian which he’s getting ragged around while he’s having this conversation. He’s grasping with one hand, he’s looking for control, he can’t find it. He’s looking for control, he’s looking for control, and then Theo makes a joke that pulls him out. And then puts him back in. Yeah, here we go, dude.

VIDEO CLIP BEGINS:

JEFFERSON FISHER: I remember laying in bed, like I remember I stopped believing in God, man. Like fing, like I had fing, yeah, it’s crazy s, dude. Crazy s, man.

THEO VON: Yeah, it’s okay, man. It’s a lot of that sad, dude. I used to be scared at night, like, I used to stand up. Like I heard when I was a kid that like if you peed around your — like animals could pee somewhere that other animals wouldn’t come, you know what I’m talking about? You know what I’m talking about, huh? Yeah, have you ever heard that?

SEAN STRICKLAND: Yeah.

THEO VON: I’m sorry, bud. So, ah man, I’m sorry, buddy. That’s all good, dude. We don’t have to talk, man. I can just sit here with you for a minute.

SEAN STRICKLAND: Oh, f*.

VIDEO CLIP ENDS:

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Oh, f*.

JEFFERSON FISHER: “I can just sit here. We can just — it’s all good. You take a second, just process it.”

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Yeah, man.

JEFFERSON FISHER: It’s so good.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Talk to me. When you see that, what do you see going on?

Holding Space and Staying Composed in Conflict

JEFFERSON FISHER: Well, you see from him have a much bigger position, and then his leg goes up, which is already kind of coming more into yourself, right? Because probably if he could on that couch, that’s the position that he really wants to be in. It’s like when you’re trying — I mean, there’s a reason why they call it the fetal position when you’re trying to get yourself more regulated, and he’s doing this right here, which in a lot of different therapies is very regulating because it’s allowing you to have a lot of tension and then a lot of release.

And so for people who are having a really hard time and they feel like they’re going to have a panic attack, or they’re really trying to process things, they’ll grab a pillow — like those plushy toys that they have a purpose, right? It’s like you squeeze, squeeze, squeeze, and it’s release. And so in that moment, that’s exactly what he’s gripping for, and that’s probably what he was trained to do. But you can tell he’s looking for control.

And I love how — that’s a perfect way of just saying, you said a minute ago, space setting, where a lot of people just say, “Just hold space for somebody.” And that sounds like therapy talk of like, what does that exactly mean? Well, Theo does it right there. He says, “Hey man, we don’t have to talk about anything or solve anything. We can just sit. Just let me sit with you.” And that right there is — I mean, who doesn’t look at that and go, that’s strength right there. How courageous is that?

Rather than — and you can tell Theo starts to like, yep. And he was already coming back to when he was in 5th grade and the desk being taken away. And he was all of a sudden 11 years old again.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: There’s a couple of moments where Theo makes a couple more jokes, pulls him out.

JEFFERSON FISHER: Yeah.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: And then he goes back in and he sits with him again. And Charlie breaks this down. The video he did was like — I’ll have to check it out. That’s exciting. It was so formative to me, dude. And it’s crazy to be friends with someone that’s able to — genuine friends with this guy for like 6, 7 years, and he’s able to just put a piece of content out that maybe 100,000 people have seen, 150,000 people. It’s not a massive video.

JEFFERSON FISHER: Yeah.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: And it just completely introduced me to Joe Hudson, who’s now a guy that coaches me, who taught Charlie all of the stuff that he used to break it down and grasping. And so that was the first one. The first one was, “It’s okay, buddy. We don’t need to talk. We can just sit here if you want.” Yeah, that was the first one.

Then the second one is from Connor Beaton from Man Talks, and he used this line that I’ve never ever heard anybody else use before. He said, “Your emotions aren’t too big for me.”

JEFFERSON FISHER: Yeah, that’s a good one.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Oh my God, “Your emotions aren’t too big for me.” Yeah, there’s space for you to just be you. And in both of those situations, it’s a reassuring. There’s no performance needed, no nothing.

“Your Emotions Aren’t Too Big for Me”

JEFFERSON FISHER: Yeah, because I think in all relationships, especially romantic relationships, there can be this feeling of somebody is afraid they’re being too much. That’s why we may not want to express all our emotions. We’re afraid they’re going to be too much, then the other person’s not going to be able to carry it, hold it. They’re going to dismiss it. They’re going to see it as — all the things that we’re telling ourselves in our head — it’s not going to be there. They’re not going to be able to support me. I’m going to be too much. I’m going to be left by myself. I’m going to have to carry this by myself.

But that kind of language to say, “My emotions are big enough for this moment.” Or even, I’ve said to my kids — which we love to say — is, “My love for you is big enough to handle this. My love for you is big enough for even this little outburst or you doing something wrong.” Yeah, my love for you covers all of this. You don’t have to worry about having to perform or having to have the right answer.

Like my son right now, he’s 8, and so he’s finding his way through — like a lot of school boys during recess or right after pickup, they throw the football just back and forth into like crowds of boys, and it gets really easy of like who can throw the best, who can kick the best. And they’re choosing who’s most dominant, who’s the coolest of all of that.

And I remember him coming home and he’s really down about it. And he was like, “They didn’t — I played, but nobody used me.” In other words, he didn’t get thrown to in that game. That really — he was like, “Is that like —” I’m sorry. And he was apologizing to me. And I had to — I mean, this was a dad moment. Right here. I could have been like, “Yeah, next time I want you to go ahead and elbow a kid.” I was like, “Dude, my love’s bigger than that. You’re good. You don’t have to have any of that.” And I think that’s the kind of model of things that more men can do.

Reassurance Lines That Work in Difficult Conversations

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: What are some of the other lines that you love to use in a conversation? Conversations becoming dysregulated, or you know that this person needs reassurance. Someone needs reassurance in a conversation that you’re having. What are your favorite lines to show them that you’re there with them?

JEFFERSON FISHER: The one that I like to use — and it’s going to sound cheesy, but it works, I promise — is, “If we’re not okay, then nothing’s okay.” Like, if you and I aren’t okay — this is why I say this to my wife. “If we’re not okay, then nothing’s okay.” In other words, it’s really easy to go, “We’re fine, we’re fine,” and then just all of a sudden focus on the kids or finances or whatever, and it’s easy to kind of switch over to getting busy with something else and it gets swept under the rug.

But you miss that chance, then it becomes this little bitty paper cut, and then you’ll have another little paper cut, and you have another little paper cut. And so eventually those become big ruptures over time.

The one I also like to use is, “Something else is coming up, I’m not sure yet.” If we’re in a conversation and I can tell that there’s more to it for me — I am having a bigger emotional response than what’s called for — I can invite her into that conversation. Let me put that differently.

If we’re having a level 3 conversation — in other words, nobody’s mad at each other — but something happens and all of a sudden I’m at a 7 or 8 and something’s really got me upset, it’s much easier if I say, “I can tell something else is coming up for me, I’m not sure yet,” rather than me trying to hold it in, avoid her, go distance, and try and fix it myself.

When it’s actually me inviting her into what’s happening to me in that moment, that is the very conversation and connection that is going to make her closer to me, to be the person that I need in that moment, rather than thinking that I have to present her with somebody who’s 100% whole and fixed and has it all together.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: And you’re a part of this. You’re a part of the team. We’re working together.

JEFFERSON FISHER: Exactly. And that is the vulnerability side of it. You can’t strengthen alone. Like self-improvement — if you’re just in it for what, if it doesn’t help you connect with anybody else, then self-improvement is just self-worship. There’s nothing else to it. It’s to improve you around others as well.

Staying Composed When Conversations Get Heated

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: So going back to the triggered in the body, conflict in a conversation. How can people interrupt that reaction in real time? What are the best ways to stay composed when a conversation gets animated?

JEFFERSON FISHER: When things are starting to get ratcheted up, you have to find a way to slow it down. You have to find a way to elongate the process. You don’t get extra points for having a very quick comeback. It looks good on social media, right? It doesn’t work in real life. You have to be able to slow it down.

So what does that look like? It means you have to use your breath a lot. What I teach is have your breath be the first word that you say. I teach this to every one of my clients before they go into deposition or cross-examination. It’s your breath. That’s the only way you’re really going to slow things down — if I choose my timing in this conversation and not let somebody else press their timing on me.

Like in the home, for example, if we wait to have a conversation when the kids are in the bath and we’re trying to do dinner and everything is stressful and we’ve already had a tired day, my battery’s already at 20%, chances are it’s not going to go great in conversation. But if we’re able to slow things down and I’m able to pause and use my words to let them know a better time would be better, that’s going to do a lot better for me.

So what does that do in the process? How do you do that? Aside from using your breath in conversation, you need to say it out loud. “I can tell I’m getting defensive. I’m going to be better for this conversation here in a little bit.” “I can tell I’m not saying things as well as I want to, and I don’t want to approach the conversation this way.”

Rather than trying to get defensive, if you were able to say, “Listen, I can tell this moment is a big one and you’re saying a lot of things that are really important. I want to make sure that I take the time that gives my part what this deserves.” And that’s going to take some time.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: We’re a team.

JEFFERSON FISHER: Yeah, exactly.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Even in disagreement, we’re a team. Even in conflict, we’re a team.

JEFFERSON FISHER: All the more. Yeah. Especially when it’s conflict because — nobody wants to be in it alone. Nobody. We know what it’s like to be in a relationship with somebody where you’re the only one in the boat paddling.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: So breath, first word.

JEFFERSON FISHER: Yes, breath.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Space if —

JEFFERSON FISHER: Timeouts.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Battery is low, I need a little bit more room. What else?

Scheduling Conversations and Managing Emotions

JEFFERSON FISHER: Get quick to timeouts. The timeouts are something that you can’t really be overused in some sense. If you find that things are really, really frustrating, they say the data was like, you need to have 20 minutes to kind of regulate yourself again.

In other words, don’t try and say, you know what, let’s just, I need a moment. And then it’s not 2 minutes later and they’re like, you know what? And then you’re right back at it again. That’s not near enough time. You need more time with that.

So we got pausing, using your breath, giving time to elongate it. So 2, timeouts, and then 3, set aside actual time for the conversations that matter. We’ll set aside time for me time, to do what I want, go work out, go do whatever, but we won’t set aside time for some of the most important conversations we’re ever going to have.

And so if I were to say even to you, I’d say, hey, I’d like to talk to you about something really important to me, and I’ll make sure that we have time for it. When’s a good window? Sometime next week. You see how much better that is than me going, hey, do you have 5 minutes for me to tell you about something? And that’s what happens. It just comes right on you to where nobody is prepared.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: There’s a book that my housemate was reading, How to Stop Worrying and Start Living, by Stephen Covey, one of his lesser knowns. In How to Stop Worrying and Start Living, he says one of the most important things that he used as a tactic was to have worry time.

JEFFERSON FISHER: Schedule it. Yeah.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: This is something that I probably should worry about. I’m going to wait until Sunday, 2:00 PM. That’s my worry hour or worry afternoon or whatever.

JEFFERSON FISHER: Yeah.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: And there’s something about saying, I don’t need to do this now. I will do it and this is when, that closes the loop a little bit. Pop it in a note. You can have a nice schedule. Get a nice schedule for your worry Sunday, your worry Sabbath. It means that I am going to deal with it. So it doesn’t quite— you’ve given it the love that it needs. And it feels almost like a relational equivalent of that.

JEFFERSON FISHER: Yeah. And I think you should also put pen to paper. A lot of the times these things sound good in our head until we actually say them, and we realize that didn’t hit like I thought it would.

When you actually put pen to paper and write out what you want to talk about, why you want to talk about it, and when’s the best time to bring it up, that gives a different sense of clarity as to, is this something I really need to say? Does it need to be said right now? And am I the one to say it?

And so when you’re able to actually write down, what am I asking them to do? What am I asking them to do with this information? Am I just venting to vent? Or am I asking them to act? Or am I asking them to listen? Next would be, what do I want to walk away from this conversation? Why do I need this conversation? Maybe that’s all there is to it.

But if you actually take the time to write it down as part of whatever habit tracking you’re doing, your conversation is going to go better than if you just kept it all in your head and then got upset that they didn’t react the way that you thought they would.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: A good rule is I write things down so that my brain can rest. There’s something about, I’m going to keep this in working memory because I’m worried that I’m going to forget it. I need to bring this thing up and it’s emotionally charged. And currently it’s endlessly unresolved.

So I’m just going to lock those neural pathways in. I’m going to say that thing like a f*ing mantra. This slight, this concern, this worry. Whereas if it’s— and it sounds so dumb to have a worry list— to have a worry list. I’m going to worry about these things. Oh, and at this time on this day.

JEFFERSON FISHER: I think it’s awesome.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: At least I don’t need to keep it in working memory because then I’ll worry that I forget my worries.

JEFFERSON FISHER: Yeah.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Infinite regress of worrying about worrying.

JEFFERSON FISHER: Yeah. And then it’s just living in your head rent-free. Then it’s taken up all the space that you could be using towards something else. But worries are good, but being able to get them out of your head, I’d say that’s even better.

What Anger Usually Hides

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: What does anger usually hide?

JEFFERSON FISHER: There’s a quote that I heard once, something along the lines of, “I sat beside my good friend anger. And he turned to me and said, ‘My name isn’t Anger, it’s Grief.'”

And I think a lot of the times anger is hiding fear. It’s hiding sadness. It’s hiding grief. All these things that are really the true bottom of that emotion. They say in therapy, where it’s hysterical, it’s historical. Meaning that it comes from something else.

And often our emotions, which are extremely complex, we use the most basic language a caveman would use. I’m sad, I’m mad, I’m angry, I’m tired. When there’s a whole emotional vocabulary to use that’s out there. If you sift and you sift and you sift and you ask, where is this coming from? You find that what comes across as anger and yelling and injustice usually comes from a deep place of sadness.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: When I look at an emotions wheel, you see the more surface level ones and then you split them out into, well, there’s different components of anxiety or sadness, even grief. Like those aren’t the bottom. There’s things that are more precise than that.

And it makes me think about how much diet advice for people that want to lose weight. They think that they need a huge number of different recipes maybe, but you probably have 70% of your calories coming from the same 6 meals. Like you’re eating the same stuff over and over. So what you need to do is just take the small bucket of things that you usually do already.

JEFFERSON FISHER: Right.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: And just get a little bit better at that. And I think with emotions, certain people’s predisposition, conditioning, life situation, current environment, et cetera, it channels them into grooves of emotions that they typically default to. Some people get mad, some people get sad, some people get wistful, some people feel grief. Some people get depressed or anxious or whatever.

But if you look a little bit deeper and if you can try and break them apart, if you can spend a little bit of time with them, you go, it’s actually not that, it’s not those 5 meals. If I look a little bit more closely, it’s these.

And yeah, anger is really effective at what it used to do, right? Before we had law enforcement, if you crossed the line with me, I needed a sufficiently animated response to tell you, you crossed the line. You’re not going to do that again. And I’m going to show you how formidable I am by being loud and big and scary. And it’s also going to warn everybody else in the tribe that’s watching that they can’t do it to me too.

JEFFERSON FISHER: Yeah.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Because if they do that, this’ll happen and they don’t want this to happen. But now that response isn’t needed in the same way. You can actually bypass that because, presuming that there’s no physical threat, you can actually communicate it to somebody in a way that’s way more effective because anger doesn’t usually get responded to with behavior change.

JEFFERSON FISHER: Yeah, rarely if ever does getting angry at somebody lead to changing their behavior. The harder you push, the more hardened they become. The more you tell somebody they’re wrong, the more convinced they are that they’re right.

And it wasn’t that long ago that we did duels. Like, you disrespected my honor in some way, we’re going to go shoot it out, and one of us may be standing, one not. And thankfully we don’t do that anymore. We have increased some emotional capacity there.

But I do think that anger is one that you find, especially in relationships, if you’re really mad at your spouse or partner or whatever, if you just go a little bit deeper, it didn’t take long for that anger just to turn into sadness. That’s why a lot of times yelling turns into tears.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Yeah, you see that with people. I saw this on the front door of nightclubs a lot. So these girls would have been kicked out. Maybe they were too drunk. Maybe they’ve been doing something that they shouldn’t have done or whatever, and they get kicked out outside.

And it happened more with— maybe because guys are ashamed of allowing their anger to turn into sadness, or maybe that’s not an emotion that comes up. I’m not too sure. But these girls would get kicked out. They’d be outside. It’s Newcastle, the most northerly city in England. So it’s f*ing freezing and it’s like November or something. And they’re outside in some tiny little party dress and they were just having fun with their friends.

And then they did something and they’re feeling injustice and they’d be shouting and screaming. It’s so funny. Door staff that are inside of a venue come and deposit a problem that the door staff outside of the venue now have to deal with, right? Something happened inside, and the guys outside are now justifying what happened.

And the girls would be shouting and screaming and like, I’ve got to go, my friends are in there, they’ve got my bag, what about my coat? You can’t do that, that’s not fair, she’s a bitch. And then very quickly, that would turn into tears because it felt like, this is injustice, I’m indignant, this isn’t fair, that shouldn’t have happened to me, and I’m drunk.

JEFFERSON FISHER: Yeah, that too. Well, it works the same way with shame, right? Shame is usually met with defiance and defensiveness and anger and unfairness, when behind that is usually some type of self-loathing sadness underneath it.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: I don’t be able to see.

JEFFERSON FISHER: Yeah, exactly. There’s a difference between shame and regret. And usually whenever you’re getting in that cycle of I can’t show my emotion, that’s the same reason why you hide what you hide. It’s the same reason you have the secrets you have, because you couldn’t imagine life with people knowing you have those emotions and feelings.

And I think especially for guys, we still feel the same things, but a lot of us have a problem with showing it. We’d rather go static or rather go stoic, and expressing it, that’s a whole lot harder.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: What are the biggest mistakes that people make when they’re on the receiving end of aggression?

Setting Boundaries and Handling Difficult Conversations

JEFFERSON FISHER: That the other person doesn’t want to be understood, where they’re— that’s all there is to this person. If you’re on the receiving end of aggression, one, I think that’s— you need to lay some boundaries to make sure that you’re not— like, assertiveness is good. Aggressiveness says, I don’t care about you. Then that’s not okay.

But I think that if you find that you’re on the other side of aggression, you’re dealing with several different levels of how you want to lay a boundary of how I want to be spoken to. So we could talk about how do you respond to something like that. If it’s somebody who means something to you, then usually that’s very telling. Like we talked about a 3 a conversation, if somebody comes in at a 7, well, it’s very telling. That means they’re having a conversation in their head that you weren’t invited to.

And so it’s rather than coming at it with, they have to agree with me, it’s this mindset of have something to learn, not something to prove. And if I can think at the outset of, I wonder where that’s coming from, I wonder why they’re responding that way, I wonder what’s happening, I wonder what would cause that response, then you’re going to be in a whole lot better position to keep yourself from getting emotionally wrapped up and responding in kind with aggression.

Aggression with matching aggression doesn’t really go anywhere. Anytime that somebody comes at you with aggressiveness and you respond, all you’ve done is just told them that you’re exactly what they said that you were. You’ve just proved their point, and now they’re just going to want to ratchet it up.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: How do you think about setting boundaries well?

JEFFERSON FISHER: You have to focus on the consequences and be okay with it. I think that’s one of the hardest parts of boundaries. People are okay with saying, I’m not good with this anymore, but their bark doesn’t really have any bite to it. They’re not willing to accept the consequences.

For me, in simple boundaries in conversation— and I know boundaries get talked about a lot— it’s just simply saying, one, what you’re not going to do, two, if they continue to do this, and three, what you’re willing to walk away from. So for example, let’s say you’re saying something that’s offensive to me. I’m going to say, I don’t engage in conversation with people that are going to disrespect me. If you continue to disrespect me, Chris, this is the end of the conversation. Maybe I have to be willing to get up and walk away rather than saying, you can’t yell at me.

If I were to turn it to, I don’t respond to that volume. That’s a whole different power move that says I’m the one that’s going to be much more in control and confident in this conversation. The more controlled and confident I feel, the less in control you’re going to feel.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: I suppose the difficulty when you’re the person who is at a 3 and somebody else is at a 7, is that the person at the 7 doesn’t usually want to listen to somebody that’s at the 3. They need time to come back down.

JEFFERSON FISHER: Exactly.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: And if you want to fix, if you’re in the mindset of fixing, the only way that they’re going to be able to hear you, even if it makes it worse, is for you to go to a 7, which puts both of you at an 8.

JEFFERSON FISHER: Exactly.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: But yeah, the time away, but the time away without feeling like you’re abandoning the conversation. Which is, I suppose, where the clear communication comes in. Why that’s so important.

JEFFERSON FISHER: Yeah, there’s a difference between just saying, I’m out of here, slamming the door and leaving, versus saying, I’m not leaving this conversation. I am going to make sure that we take some time because I can see you need some space. I’m good with that. You good talking about this later this afternoon? Usually they’ll nod their head, yeah.

Or sometimes I can tell you when I feel like my wife and I are on the same team is if I’ll ask something and she’ll go, “I’m fine.” And I know she’s not. And I might ask, “You good with talking to me about it later?” You know what I mean? But you have to be able to give that, to say, hey, I’m not, I don’t want to leave this conversation. This matters to me. If it matters to you, it matters to me.

The “Seems Like, Sounds Like” Technique

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Chris Voss has a slammer for getting people who seem like they have something on their mind to speak up when they don’t want to. And it’s just, “Seems like there’s something on your mind.”

JEFFERSON FISHER: Yeah. He’s the best. I love Chris. It’s the “seems like, sounds like.” “Seems like you have a reason for saying that.” But it’s also Chris Voss’s voice.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Like, yeah, of course.

JEFFERSON FISHER: I mean, you hear his voice and he could be like, “You know what, I think you should give me that couch.”

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: And I’d be like— he could tell me to suck his d* and I’d probably—

JEFFERSON FISHER: Yeah, probably. He’s that good.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Look, his voice is that good. He’s a handsome man. And also the voice.

JEFFERSON FISHER: Yeah, yeah. Also the voice. Yeah, he’s got a voice that naturally just calms you down. “Seems like, sounds like.” So if somebody says something and you go, “Sounds like you have a reason for saying that. Sounds like that really matters to you. That seems like a really big deal.”

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: They go, “Yeah, yeah, it was a really big deal.”

JEFFERSON FISHER: But it’s the same thing with passive-aggressive people. You can use that same tactic.

Dealing with Passive-Aggressive People

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Okay, tell me how to deal with passive-aggressive people.

JEFFERSON FISHER: So somebody’s being passive-aggressive, it’s usually something that was taught in childhood, meaning they’ve learned that their needs weren’t going to be met right in that moment. So they would rather kind of expect you to solve it for them. In other words, they want you to— they don’t want to be direct, they just expect you to find the answer.

So it’s the people that say things like, “You know, it should be nice if I was invited to something like that,” like they’re not going to voice it. So they would rather kind of— they’re not going to use the front door. They’re always going to use the backside exit.

And instead of meeting that, you can say, “Sounds like you have a reason for saying that. Sounds like there’s more to that.” Usually they have an answer for that. Or if they’re being passive, you can say, “What’s coming up for you?” That’s the one I like to use for a lot of different things, is “what’s coming up.” It has a way of disarming people in a non-defensive posture. Rather than saying, “What’s wrong with you?” I’m going to say, “What’s coming up for you?” Meaning that I’m signaling that there’s something else going on in here that I’m trying to help you bring to light.

But that “sounds like, seems like”— “Sounds like you have a reason for saying that. Seems like there’s something else that you’re not saying”— has a way of getting the passive-aggressive people. But if it’s entrenched in them, they’re going to really double down. “I mean, it would just be nice, you know, if somebody were to invite me to something. But no, that’s fine.” You can’t help the victim mentality. That’s not going to switch by just a few sentences.

How Childhood Scripts Shape Our Communication

JEFFERSON FISHER: Yeah, well, you think of how we respond to everything, how we were modeled in communication and how we were treated as children, what they call, you know, your childhood trauma shows up all the time. And so it comes into these filters that you apply.

So maybe you’re in an argument with your wife or your girlfriend or whatever, and you felt controlled in that moment because she made some snide comment about what you can or can’t do and what she didn’t want you to do, and you didn’t like that because you’re a guy who gets to decide your own thing. And all of a sudden you’re voicing and yelling at what could have been a level 3, you’re now at a level 11.

But really, deep down, what your body felt was you were back to that 8-year-old boy whose mom wouldn’t let him go outside without first doing X, Y, and Z, or a dad that didn’t make him feel safe. And so you’re responding based on old scripts. And so we all have these old scripts, like old tape cassettes that we play anytime we feel these big feelings of, I’m being controlled, I’m being pressured, I’m being caged, I’m not my own person, I don’t feel safe, I’m never going to feel safe, I’m too much. These old scripts that we’ve been playing in our head. And so we show those all the time in the language that we’re using. So it’s not that you’re seeing the person and talking to them. It’s usually a reflection of something that happened in your past that’s showing back up.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: And the passive-aggressive person had needs that weren’t reliably met.

JEFFERSON FISHER: Yeah, it could have been. I mean, well, here’s the takeaway though, is that at one point in time, that passive-aggressiveness had a utility to it. There was a time when maybe they weren’t safe to say what they actually needed.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Their aggression wasn’t safe.

JEFFERSON FISHER: Their aggression wasn’t safe. Voicing anything wasn’t safe. And so they found that their life went better when they didn’t have to voice it. They held it in. And so they found some way to cope and expect somebody else to read their mind rather than something else. But there’s a lot of different things that show up from childhood. We’re just big kids.

Delivering Bad News with Kindness

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: What about when it comes to delivering bad news to people?

JEFFERSON FISHER: It’s a required life lesson. It’s impossible to not get around that and people get really uncomfortable with it. And usually it’s because they’re feeling other people’s feelings for them. Like, I don’t want to say that, that’s not nice. Like, they feel like they have to be nice.

The real takeaway is being— choosing to be kind, right? Nice says it’s focused all on the surface, the pleasantries. “I can’t say that. I can tell you the truth, Chris. That’s not nice.” Kindness says, I care enough about you to tell you the truth. Because I care about you, I need to give you this really hard news of what it’s going to be.

And you can use labels, simple as what we just talked about a minute ago. “This is going to be some hard news. You’re not going to like what I have to say.” Give them a moment and then deliver the news. But what you can’t do is twist the knife where you start to blame them first.

If you need to give bad news, like imagine if I was just going to break up with you right now. The worst thing to do about it is all of a sudden go, “You know, I just think you’re so great, Chris, and I’ve really enjoyed a lot of time.” We start talking in past tense as if like, what do you—

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: I was enjoying that so far.

JEFFERSON FISHER: Yeah, yeah, let’s just keep going. To where, you know, you’re not being straight up and being honest. And often that’s sometimes the kindest thing you can do is be as direct as you can be when it comes to sad news.

Delivering Difficult News Directly

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Let’s say that you need to break up with a partner and you’re feeling super nervous about it. How would you guide that person through the conversation?

JEFFERSON FISHER: When I would use a label, that means rather than — and this is assuming you set aside time and you’re not trying to do it through a text message or while you’re—

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Apparently that’s gauche now, that’s looked down on to do it over text.

JEFFERSON FISHER: Yeah, it’s probably not a good idea. Or you’re doing it in the middle of a movie or something. Let’s assume you’ve already put good time around this to have a good conversation. It’s to say, “I need to have a hard conversation with you.” And then the first words out of your mouth need to be, “This isn’t a relationship that I can see myself continuing in.”

You see how all of a sudden I’m getting right to the point rather than saying, “I need to have something hard. You’ve just been great. And it’s not you, it’s me. We’ve had all these memories.” Instead of all that, get right to the point. It’s much easier. People can take bad news. It’s going to have a harder impact, but the rest of it is going to be a whole lot better for you rather than trying to sound nice and be like, “I don’t want to upset. It’s all me. It’s not you at all.”

Even though that’s softer in the moment, that long-term impact is going to be a whole lot worse because you weren’t really being honest. And so even if you need to fire somebody, bring them in. “This news is probably going to shock you. I need to let you go.” And that’s where you get to say, “I’ve enjoyed having you as a person. You’ve done great with the company.” Or maybe it’s in a relationship. “I need to be out of this relationship. I need to move on. This relationship isn’t working for me,” whatever it is. And that’s where you get to say, “I’ve learned a lot from you.” And whatever it is, the nice stuff. But don’t start with the pleasantries and then end with the hard.

Don’t Bury the Lead

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: I think Chris has another one, which is if you’re saying that you can’t go to an event, say “I can’t go” or “I can’t make it” first, right?

JEFFERSON FISHER: First, right?

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Don’t say things have got so hard recently and this chaos came up and I’ve got this thing and blah blah blah blah blah blah blah and then that at the end. Yeah, just don’t bury the f*ing lead, dude. Put it up top.

JEFFERSON FISHER: I very much align with that. So what I teach is you start with the no first. Most people start with the thanks first. They start with the gratitude. They go, “Thank you so much. I’d love to, but I can’t.” But the word “but” has a way of deleting everything that came before it. Like, “I love you, but you’re crazy,” you know, whatever.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: That might be true.

JEFFERSON FISHER: Yeah, exactly.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Both of those things might be true.

JEFFERSON FISHER: Sure, sure they could. However. Yeah, you want to start with the no first. So “I can’t,” period. Then the gratitude. “Thank you so much for inviting me.” Then add in some kindness. “I’m sure it’s going to be a great time. Hope you have a wonderful time. Knock yourselves out,” whatever it is. But don’t — that compliment sandwich is a little hard to chew.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Dude, I’ve got a f*ing fantasy going on in my head of me, you, Chris Voss, and James Sexton doing an episode together. I’m going to try and make that happen before the end of the year.

JEFFERSON FISHER: We probably could.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: I think that would be straight fire. I think that would be so much f*ing fun.

JEFFERSON FISHER: Yeah.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: And I put something in the middle of the table that’s remotely valuable or that most of you guys want. And I’m like, “Hey, negotiate over this.”

JEFFERSON FISHER: Exactly.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Like a gladiatorial fight to the death.

JEFFERSON FISHER: Yeah, exactly.

Staying the Course When Emotions Rise

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: So you’re having a difficult conversation, you’re firing a member of staff or you’re breaking up with somebody or something similar. And during that conversation, the emotions begin to come up and there is always this temptation to almost even bail out of the conversation. To like poly-eject — to see that somebody begins to get upset and then the employee comes into work tomorrow and you go, “I thought you were firing them.”

JEFFERSON FISHER: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: What about that? Because I think that a lot of people enter into conversations with the intention of doing the thing and leave a conversation having had this weird Spaghetti Junction mess. When people have difficult conversations, often they do not finish what they meant to start. How would you navigate through that?

JEFFERSON FISHER: To me, it’s like people have no problem 3 minutes in a cold plunge, but give them 2 seconds having to be honest with somebody in a conversation and it terrifies them. Think of it like a cold plunge. You start it and at the beginning, you’re trying to catch your breath. You’re thinking, “I can’t do this.” And then all of a sudden you have some clarity and you realize, “I can do this.” You realize your body’s going through this and there will be an end to it.

Same way in a difficult conversation. It’s going to be a splash. What I teach is “cold shower conversations” as an example of those — it’s going to be a shock to the system at the beginning, but we’re going to see our way out of it. You start to have the hard words. You’ve already said, “We need to break up. This relationship isn’t for me,” or “I need to let you go,” whatever it is. You say the hard news and then you realize, “Okay, I did it. I said the thing.” And now you can have a lot more clarity. It’s way easier to crest the mountain when you just go right up and then it gets down. It’s when you have a slow go up.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Bail out.

JEFFERSON FISHER: Yeah.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Way easier. I haven’t got there yet. I haven’t done it yet. There’s still time for me to avoid this mountain.

JEFFERSON FISHER: Exactly. And so it’s just like that. For me, in my world as an attorney, I grew up in courtrooms and depositions and watching this. I’ve seen a lot of emotional fighting and yelling and all sorts of hard tactics against each other. Super adversarial. I’ve seen a lot of fights, of arguments. Don’t put me in a ring. I won’t be any good with boxing gloves.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Sean Strickland’s going to eat you alive.

JEFFERSON FISHER: Oh no, no doubt. I’d bail out. That’s why I’d bail out. But whenever you increase your capacity to hold other people’s emotion — meaning you can feel all your feelings without me holding them — and I know that I’m in control of myself and I’m going to continue breathing through it and I’m not going to be holding what you’re presenting, the better it gets. The more I realize that disappointment is part of the game. To be a great leader, to be a good person in my world, you have to learn the art of disappointing people. In other words, telling them sometimes what they need to hear, not what they want to hear.

The Open Loop Is the Worst Thing

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Makes me think about when the parents of missing children go on the news. What is it that they always say? “We just want to know.”

JEFFERSON FISHER: Yeah.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: “We just want to know.” Because the open loop is the worst thing. The open loop is where the most pain is. And I’m sure that no parent would say this, but logically it kind of makes sense that finding the child dead in some ways would be emotionally preferable to living for decades in the uncertainty. No parent’s ever going to come out and say that, obviously. They actually probably don’t want that, but you understand what I mean? Closing that loop.

JEFFERSON FISHER: Is exactly what people want, even though it’s what your body is telling you absolutely not to do. So when you’re able to break up with somebody and not leave them guessing why, or you need to fire somebody, whatever the hard news is, and not leave them guessing why — that is you acting in alignment with integrity. That’s you acting in alignment with your values. It’s you going from nice guy to a good man.

Maintaining Emotional Sovereignty

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: One of the things that you mentioned there was somebody else’s emotions not permeating you, not being absorbed by you. You’re holding yourself here. Many people that are empathetic, people that are highly sensitive, people who seem to absorb the emotions of those around them, find that really difficult — to keep the “you are there and I am here.” What’s your advice for people to keep that emotional sovereignty when somebody else is getting sad with them?

JEFFERSON FISHER: I’d want to first say that having empathy and being able to feel other people’s emotions like that — that is a superpower. I don’t think that’s something to decrease. What I don’t want you to do is to feel so much of their feelings that you don’t allow them, the other person, to feel their own.

In other words, “I’m afraid of disappointing you because you’re going to be so upset, and for you to be upset at me makes me upset, and that’s going to get into my system, and I can’t possibly share and do that because they’re going to be disappointed in me, and I can’t take them being disappointed in me.” That’s more of the fear there.

But somebody who goes, “I feel a lot of feelings and you can feel yours” — it’s don’t pick up what nobody asks you to carry. Don’t start to feel the weight and burden of somebody else’s feelings. For example, you might have your in-laws coming into town. You don’t really want them to stay at your house. And you start to feel like, “Oh, they’re going to be so upset and it’s going to cause such a thing.” Well, if you also understand that you have agency and they get to choose what to do with those feelings, you’re going to come out at a much healthier place. And I think a lot of times we don’t give the other person the choice of what to do with their feelings. We want to fix it all. We want to tell them what to do with it.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: So how would you navigate that situation?

JEFFERSON FISHER: If somebody like my in-laws were coming in, I would simply say — beginning with the phrase “I need” — “I need to make sure that here in this holiday season, or whatever, that we’re prioritizing slowing things down and trying to keep things quieter in the house. And I’m going to need y’all to find — maybe I found another hotel that you can go enjoy — that instead of having—” Yeah, exactly.

A lot of the times we fall into the habit of people pleasing, which — people pleasing to me is not a bad thing. It’s just you need to make sure that you’re one of them. You need to be able to also do what’s acting in alignment with what you’re wanting.

The Shame of Small Fears

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: I had this essay that you’ve kicked the tripwires of about 10 times so far today, so I’m going to read you a little bit of this. Okay, I’m ready. Thought might be interesting. I called it The Shame of Small Fears.

“Imagine explaining modern fear to a caveman. You see, Gruck, people today get terrified when they have to…”

“Send a message.”

Gruck blinks.

“Message carved on stone?”

“No. Sentence on a glowing triangle.”

“Enemy tribe see message?”

“No.”

“Sabertooth tiger smell message?”

“No.”

“Then… why fear?”

“Because… the other person might think badly of me.”

Gruck cries laughing.

“And yet, that’s the whole point. We inherited a nervous system calibrated for lions and we’re using it to navigate awkward conversations and underwhelming careers. Evolution never updated the software, it just repurposed it. Your ancestors needed courage to keep their bodies alive, you need courage to keep your identity intact.”

It’s almost comic when you zoom out. The same species that once stared down hungry predators now breaks into a sweat trying to say, “Something needs to change.” But it’s not because we’ve become pathetic, it’s because the monsters changed shape. Old dangers could kill your body, the new ones threaten your belonging. Your whole biology gears up for exile from the village that now only exists as a group chat. Your body still thinks you’ll die alone in the wilderness if you tell the truth. It’s the residue of a limbic system designed for a world that no longer exists.

That seems to be— it’s not about the fear, it’s about the shame in your fear a lot of the time, I think. People realize, I am the progeny of people who survived ice ages and I’m getting worried about having to tell this person that they crossed the line with me or having to enforce a boundary.

JEFFERSON FISHER: Yeah.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Hey, I’ve had a long year. I’m stressed and I love your mother, but she’s a lot.

JEFFERSON FISHER: Okay.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: And so her house is really great this time of year. I got a discount.

JEFFERSON FISHER: Okay.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: But yeah, it really is the case. It’s like the sensitivity on a system. It’s the same reason that we have gyms. We have gyms because we have removed the need to pick up heavy objects from our normal daily life, right? So we have to artificially create this thing. And if it wasn’t for the gym, everybody would be flabby messes, right? Purposeful physical training, because the whole stress on our system, the whole homeostasis, got turned down.

Yeah, it’s kind of the same here too. Your limbic system will attenuate itself to the maximum amount of discomfort that you have, which means now that a hard conversation might be the most difficult thing that you do that year. Like that one conversation, firing that one member of staff might be the— so yeah, you’re going to feel it.

And I think what I’m trying to get at, what I tried to get at with that incredibly long essay, which I spared you the rest of, is there’s a lot of shame that people have around this. This fear is so small. Why do I feel like this? You go, well, because it’s still a big deal.

JEFFERSON FISHER: Yes.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Yeah, you have a limbic system that was made to avoid bears and is now worried about your belonging.

Honesty Is the Hardest Conversation

JEFFERSON FISHER: Yeah. I think most people, they don’t have a hard time with fighting. They have a hard time being honest. And it’s funny how honesty can sometimes be the hardest thing that you’re going to do because you’re laying bare your wants, your needs, whatever it is for your relationship, for your business, for the home, for your friends, whatever.

And it’s the same exact thing as what the essay says. I may not throw a punch, but I’m going to throw a word that’s going to hurt. I’m not going to pick up a rock and throw it, but I’m going to want a word to cut. My words can either hurt you or heal you. And if I self-improve everything about me, but I don’t improve what comes out of my mouth, that’s a Formula 1 car without a steering wheel. Like, it looks great, that’s awesome, but where are you going to go with it?

And so I think if you don’t apply the same type of mindset of improving your body as you do the words, when we talk about emotional vocabulary, when we talk about actually working through how to have conversations and being honest, and being, dare I say, vulnerable with things. There’s a lot of people who are just an empty house but have a great looking landscape. You have to understand that the conversations, like you said, that you’re going to have all year long, those are much harder and take a lot more courage than anything you can do at the gym.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: I agree. And I think a lot of the time people are going there precisely for that reason. People will spend years in misery to avoid a few minutes of pain.

JEFFERSON FISHER: They say that the conversation you’re avoiding is the result you’re choosing. If you choose not to have that conversation, well, you’re getting that result, then you’re going to live with that result. It didn’t have to be that way.

And I think in therapy, they say the breakthrough you’re needing is in the work you’re avoiding. Being able to get through that conversation. You can be the fittest person, but still the same on the inside. It’s not like it’s improved anything about how you’re going to have things in your life.

And there’s no metric. That’s the wildest thing. We’re able to watch our HRV and make sure you’re in all the zone 2 cardio and all the other stuff. I got a Whoop too. To be able to do all that physical discipline, that’s all great, but there’s no metric on sitting on the couch with your son in your lap and also having your phone in your hand. Or being able to say something really hard to the person that you love, to mend relationships with family members you haven’t seen in a long time. That’s a whole lot different metric that there’s just no number for.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: It’s a quiet victory or a boring success.

JEFFERSON FISHER: Yeah.

Observable Metrics vs. Hidden Metrics

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: And yeah, we trade observable metrics for hidden metrics all the time. All the time. You know, you’ll take a job that pays 10 grand more a year, but is a 45-minute commute instead of 15. You go, okay, well, you can’t really see the commute in quite the same way. What does that mean? How much more stress do you— I’m going to have to miss a couple of evenings with the kids and I’m going to spend less time with— or you move to a new area in a house that’s bigger, but the stress of being there puts strain on your relationship. And it means that you go to bed and the texture of your mind’s a little bit more agitated, for a decade while you live there. Hidden metric, observable metric. Postcode, very observable. Peace of mind, very hidden.

And there’s this idea, the McNamara fallacy, do you know that? So Robert McNamara during the Vietnam War, he was charged with trying to make sure that the war was moving in the right direction. And what he was focusing on were enemy combatant deaths and US forces’ deaths. But that wasn’t what mattered. What mattered was the sentiment at home. The issue is very hard to quantify the sentiment at home in the US, and obviously the Vietnam War was hugely unpopular domestically in the US.

And it ends with this line, which is, we intend to measure what matters, but instead, what matters to us is only what we can measure. So this weird inversion of us supposedly trying to focus on the quantifiable and pull it in, but instead, whatever is quantifiable is what gets pulled in.

JEFFERSON FISHER: Exactly. Yeah. I think there’s a lot of different paradoxes like that in life. For me, what I’ve learned through this transition from full-time lawyer, being able to talk on communication is— I thought what’s best for the business is what’s best for the family. I could look at these hard metric numbers, whether it’s more money, more time, or however the increase, more, more, more, 10x, whatever, is best for my family. When in reality, what’s best for the family is what’s best for the business. And that’s not something I can track. But that’s something I can feel.

When Someone Isn’t Understanding You

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: What about if you’re having a conversation with someone and it feels like they’re not understanding you? It’s getting frustrating.

JEFFERSON FISHER: Yeah. If you go, okay, I’m not saying this the right way and you feel like they’re butting up against that, then I would take it piece by piece.

One, are you giving them the takeaway? Are you giving the headline at the beginning or are you putting it down in the footnotes? How are you framing the conversation? Because if you’ve buried the lead, like you said, that is typically going to lead into a lot of miscommunication.

Next, I would question the biggest myth in communication, which is that what is sent is what is received. In my own relationship, she could say, “No, you said this.” I go, “I didn’t say that.” She said, “Yes, you did.” I went, “No, that’s not what I said.” She goes, “I wish I had a video camera in here so I could have seen exactly how you said that.”

So instead of this mindset of, “That’s not what I said,” and trying to push that miscommunication, instead ask, “What did you hear?” And if I can ask that question, and then actually explain, “What I’m hearing is X, Y, and Z,” you got to stop. Okay, that right there, that’s not at all my intent. I think that’s where we’re going wrong.

So it’s the ability to slow down to find the actual breaking point. And that usually requires, “Okay, here’s what I’m trying to convey. I’m not asking you to fix anything. I just need you to hear that this means something to me.” And sometimes the other person’s like, “Oh, okay, so you want me to do this?” No, no, no. Let’s go back again. Okay, what are you hearing? And they go, “Well, I hear that I guess I’ll never be able to do this again.” No, no, that’s not at all right.

Usually when people are going to extremes or absolutes, the always and nevers, that is a very clear sign that they’re not engaged in the conversation. Instead, they’re playing an old script. “Well, then you just want me to do everything you want me to do.”

And so if you’re able to actually break it down and go piece by piece, “Okay, what did you hear at this moment? This here, this is the miscommunication. Okay, when I bring this up, what’s coming up for you? Because I can tell something else is happening.” Then you get into a little bit of the emotion of it, of where are you feeling defensive.

So when I can voice that, and this other person’s voicing, “I can tell I’m getting defensive. I can tell I’m not ready for this conversation. I can tell I’m getting worked up,” that’s really helpful information. I think I saw some study that if somebody’s heartbeat’s over 100 BPM, it’s almost impossible to bring somebody back down very quickly. It’s not a good time to have a very— yeah.

The Heart Rate Conversation

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Over 100 BPM, your front brain is basically turned off.

JEFFERSON FISHER: It’s gone. Yeah. And you’re having to make sure that the other person’s, they’re going to quickly be dysregulated in that moment.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Have you seen, Jared, can you pull that up? Just search Reddit divorce heart rate on Google. And this guy, I think he was wearing like a Garmin or something and he tracked his heart rate through the conversation.

JEFFERSON FISHER: Yes.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: That he had with his wife. And the reason I say it is, you’re going 100 BPM. 100 BPM is heart rate in 5-second intervals when wife asks for a divorce. I love how he’s put via Fitbit Charge 2. It’s like it’s a sponsored post. Yeah, resting BPM. So dude, he’s got a nice resting BPM. He’s down at 60 and he’s awake. He’s a fit guy.

JEFFERSON FISHER: He’s doing great.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Yeah, well, he’s got a Fitbit Charge 2 on, so he’s obviously been tracking it for a while.

JEFFERSON FISHER: “Can We Talk?”

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: “Can We Talk” keeps him quite, he’s regulating.

JEFFERSON FISHER: He’s doing good.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: So hang on, what are the intervals? That’s 5 minutes. 5-minute intervals at the bottom.

JEFFERSON FISHER: Okay.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Is this 1:15 in the f*ing morning? I think that’s 1:15 in the morning.

JEFFERSON FISHER: Unless it’s on, it’s 24-hour.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Yeah. It should be on military time.

JEFFERSON FISHER: Yeah, you’re right.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: And, okay. “Can we talk?” He managed to hold on to it.

JEFFERSON FISHER: Timing has a lot to do with this.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Yeah, that’s true.

JEFFERSON FISHER: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: There’s a spike just before “I don’t think this is healthy for either of us.” So she’s, “Can we talk?” And a full, what’s that, 6 minutes later, she’s still not giving the lead.

JEFFERSON FISHER: Yep.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Unless he’s, well, there’s no way. That’s got to be the spike.

JEFFERSON FISHER: Now look, yeah, you see the spike right before the, before “I don’t think this is healthy for either of us.” Most likely that’s like his anxiety. He’s realizing what’s going on. “I could tell something’s wrong.”

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Because he’s kept regulated there, right? Yeah, bro. He hits 155, 160. He’s in zone 3 or 4, depending on how old he is.

JEFFERSON FISHER: And then he has a huge drop. And then picks back up again.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: I wonder if that’s just a release of—

JEFFERSON FISHER: Yeah. F*. He just got the news and now he’s like, what am I going to do? Yeah. I think there is that release of like knowledge of, now I know.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Because, I mean, maybe it came out a bit early.

JEFFERSON FISHER: But look, he comes right back at it. I mean, he’s right there close to 150 again and he’s like—

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: How long does the whole thing take? 115 resting BPM. “Can we talk?” 120. 20 minutes, dude. 20 minutes. They’re in and out and he’s off on a walk. So yeah.

JEFFERSON FISHER: Yeah.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Anybody that thinks that 100 BPM is hard to hit in a difficult conversation.

JEFFERSON FISHER: It’s not hard.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Homeboy managed to get 150% of that.

JEFFERSON FISHER: Yep. Went off for a walk. Good.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Good.

JEFFERSON FISHER: That’s a good one.

Holidays, Loneliness, and Strip Clubs

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Exactly, dude. I remember the first set of Thanksgiving that I did in America. I was living at an Airbnb on South Congress, and it’s directly opposite the Red Rose, Austin’s premier adult establishment.

And it was, I’d been to Blair White’s house, if you know who Blair White is. It’s an uncomfortably hot trans influencer. And Lex Fridman was there with Michael Matti— it was a very strange Avengers, autistic Avengers assemble.

And then we got back to where I was staying at the Airbnb. This is 10:00 PM, 10:30 PM or something on Thanksgiving. And the entire car park was full. All of the street outside was completely full. It was like, it must have been standing room only in the strip club.

And I remember thinking how bad your Thanksgiving had to be at 10 PM to go, that’s it. I’m sick. Are your parents— I cannot any longer be— I’m going to the Red Rose again. Are you off to see Crystal? I hope she’ll cook you f*ing dinner and wash your socks. And I was like, okay, here we go. Well, I just— the British mind cannot comprehend what level of freedom Americans have apparently around Thanksgiving, including being able to go to the Red Rose. Tempio.

JEFFERSON FISHER: Holidays are hard for people. And Thanksgiving’s hard. Christmas is hard usually because it can be sometimes a reminder that they’re alone.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Yeah.

JEFFERSON FISHER: And, I mean, there’s no place lonelier than a strip club. Yeah. You can be surrounded by people and still feel very alone.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Yeah.

JEFFERSON FISHER: And that’s why, what, you’re looking for some illusion of companionship, you know? So they’re in pain and they’re looking for some way to find a salve.

How to Respond to an Insult

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: How should people respond to an insult?

JEFFERSON FISHER: With a lot of silence. You say something ugly to me, I’m going to give it about 5 to 7 seconds of nothing. Meaning I’m going to allow your words as if I see them just to fall to this table here and give you a moment of like, you still, you’re still proud of that right there. You can take it back if you like, but I’m not taking it.

And it’s that mindset of, I’m not taking it. I don’t have to pick it up. That’s not mine. Because we get so used to catching, just because somebody threw, we feel like we automatically have to catch. It’s not tennis, it’s not volleyball. You don’t have to hit it back over a net. You can just let it be there.

So 5 to 7 seconds of nothing in that silence. Two, what I like to do is usually ask them to repeat it.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Yeah, that’s—

JEFFERSON FISHER: I usually will say, “I need you to say that again.” I’ve yet to have anybody who could do it because they don’t want to show they’re ugly. They don’t want that highlighted. They don’t— they know what they just said. And now what they were expecting was that hit of dopamine of me giving it right back to them and feeling that sense of control.

I’ve now put a big spotlight on their behavior, and then it’s just not fun at that point. They’re like, I gotta get out of here. That wasn’t the hit that I was expecting. And when I say “I need you to repeat that,” or “I need you to say that again,” they’re going to have to remember their words and regurgitate them.

And that usually, people don’t like to extend past this feeling of being reasonable. Now, I know people will go, oh, I know lots of people are unreasonable. Listen, I have deposed probably thousands of people. I’ve seen lots of liars and manipulators. They never want to come across as unreasonable.

People who are manipulating you, they’re not afraid of anger. They’re afraid of calm. And whenever I can show you that I’m not rising and going, “How dare you,” like getting this, “Who do you think you are,” kind of bow up. It’s almost more scary to them if you go, “I need you to say that again.”

Now, most of the time what they do is they try and like, “Well, I mean, what I mean,” and they try to justify. Exactly. And try and adjust in some way, or I guess they could double down. If they do double down and repeat it, then you get to say, “I thought so. Thanks.” Like, just let it go. Because at that point, you’re still just leaving them. They’re going to remember what they said and you’re not going to be the one to remember it at all.

Another that I like to ask is, “Did you mean for that to sound as insulting as it did? Did you mean for that to embarrass me in some way? Did you mean for that to offend me or hurt me or belittle me? Or did you want me to feel less when you said that?”

Whenever you talk about intents, the “did you mean,” “did you intend to,” “did you say that in order to,” it questions the very root of their heart in that moment of like, why did they really say that? And they said that to hurt you, to cause that pain.

And at the same time, maybe you just took it the wrong way. Like in text message, usually we have a way of reading everything negative in a text message. We never read things positive, right? I could text you, “We need to talk,” and nobody gets that and goes, “Yeah, like sick. Yes, let’s go. Chris wants to talk. Let’s get after it. Let’s go.” We always read the negative.

And so, “Did you mean” is also a great way of double checking. Like my wife and I, if I sometimes reply really quickly, she’ll say, “Did you mean for that to sound short?” No, no, I didn’t mean to. I was just in the middle of pickup or I was at a grocery line or whatever. It’s allowing that benefit of the doubt for a second.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: In both of those situations, where it’s not ambiguous about whether or not that was a mean message or not, right? What you’re doing is bringing the person’s ugliness to the front. Yep. Because, yeah, you’re right. Even when people say mean things, they feel justified in their meanness. “You deserved it,” right? Or, “I’m righteous somehow.” And with enough room for the heat to die down a little bit— 3, 4, 5, 6, f*, 7.

JEFFERSON FISHER: Yeah, exactly.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: It’s a long time.

JEFFERSON FISHER: Yeah, very. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: And to then basically say, do the thing again, but without the heat that powered it when you did it the first time. Like you’ve run out of fuel.

JEFFERSON FISHER: Exactly.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: And you’re now going to have to look at it in a more sterile environment.

JEFFERSON FISHER: Right.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: More plain environment. And I’m just going to ask, I’m not going to infer, I’m going to ask whether the outcome that happened after you said that thing was what you meant. And that is you admitting to your own intent around this.

JEFFERSON FISHER: Exactly. It’s like imagine having to ask a girl out and she’s like, “Well, I didn’t hear you.” And you go, “Never mind.” Like you don’t want to ask it again. It’s that feeling of like, I already said it.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: “You said you’re so hot.”

JEFFERSON FISHER: Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. That’s right. And then all of a sudden you realize, no, that didn’t feel good at all. And now they just don’t want the cheese. They just want out of the trap. They’re not going to want to do that because making them say it again is just revealing their ugly, and darkness hates light.

The Reverse Steel Man

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: You were talking about inviting someone to, “What are you hearing? What are you hearing from me? What did you just hear me say?”

JEFFERSON FISHER: Yeah.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: “How are you interpreting that?” You know, the idea of a steel man and a straw man, right? So straw man representing the weakest version of someone’s argument. Steel man, me saying, so we’re in a debate, but what I think you’re trying to say is, and I put across the best version, the best possible version of your argument.

JEFFERSON FISHER: That’s good.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: What you’re doing with the invitation is like a reverse steel man.

JEFFERSON FISHER: Mm-hmm.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Or an invited steel man, right? Saying, “Can you tell me what you’re hearing me say?”

JEFFERSON FISHER: Yes.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: And then, ah, okay, so no, not quite. And the same thing with the reason that you do the steel man is so I go, “Okay, so Jefferson, what I’m hearing from you is this and this and this. Is that right?” And you go, “Well, actually, no.” You’re just saying, “Hey, come do the steel man thing for me.” Yeah. And then if there’s anything that’s not fully understood. And you’re doing the same thing with the insult to a degree. It’s like inviting this person to almost steel man the nuclear warhead that they just dropped on you.

JEFFERSON FISHER: Right.

The Power of Calm in Confrontation

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: You know, probably more like a septic tank than a nuclear warhead.

JEFFERSON FISHER: You know, exactly.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: You know this big puddle of shit that’s in front of us?

JEFFERSON FISHER: Yeah, yeah.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Is that shit? Or is it soup? Because I can’t — to me it smells, and smells a lot like shit. Just making sure that we’re not confused. I’m not confusing what this is.

JEFFERSON FISHER: Yeah. There’s actually this hidden power around, “Tell me what I’m missing. I’m missing something here. Something else is going on. Tell me what I’m missing.”

So lots of times I’ll be in a deposition, and I’ll have somebody who I know I’ve caught in a lie. There’s lots of people lying under oath all the time and they have no problem with it. Because I know, because I have the evidence right here and they just don’t know that I have it. And so it’s often the people who it’s most blatant — like they didn’t have to lie about it. They could have just fallen on the sword, but they’re so contradictory that they can’t possibly not.

So if it’s like, if I were to tell you, “I feel like you’re really upset,” and they go, “I’m not upset, I’m just like—” it doesn’t matter what emotion I said, they’re going to always tell me, “I know it’s not that, I’m okay, it’s just I’m—” it doesn’t matter what it is, they’re always going to contradict that.

And so when I know I’m up against that kind of person, you have to do this searching where questions matter a whole lot more than statements. Meaning if I’m going to ask a question that is more open-ended, I’m signaling to this aspect of, “What am I missing here? I hear you telling me this. I’m missing where you’re getting to that.” Same way with the insult. “What am I — you say that I’m, you know, the whatever, the worst thing. I need you to say that again because something’s missing, because it’s not hitting me the same way you want it to hit me. So where is that coming from?”

And that right there is the womp feeling — the wet blanket, the sad emoji for them — of like, it didn’t work. What was missing was they were actually intending to cause pain because they’re in pain. And it felt better for them to cause you pain than actually deal with their own emotions.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: It’s a much more sophisticated approach than even trying to lean into empathy immediately. If you say, “It sounds like you’re really upset,” when someone says something mean, because that feels like an elevated kind of communication.

JEFFERSON FISHER: Yeah, it could be sarcastic. Yeah.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: But even if you say it genuinely — “Feels like you’re upset when you’re doing that” — also, you’re putting a kind of interpretation on this person’s language as opposed to just allowing them to clarify it for you. And I keep having this image in my head of giving somebody a ton of rope. You’re just giving them as much rope as they want and they can choose to climb up it, get out, or they can f*ing hang themselves with it.

JEFFERSON FISHER: Yeah. I see this a lot in depositions or cross-examination where I know that they’re lying. I know they are. And I could just say, “You’re lying.” You think that’s going to get them to admit it? No, never. They’re going to double down. “How dare you accuse me of whatever?” But if they tell the lie and I slow it down, and I open a folder and I look and I close and I give that 5 to 7 seconds and I say, “I need you to tell me that again.” They just go, “I mean, why would you think I would do this?” Like they start questioning things — “Why do you think that I would do something like that? What do you think?” Like they’re asking you to solve the problem for them.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Give me a suit. You come up here.

JEFFERSON FISHER: Exactly. Yeah. Yeah.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Yeah.

JEFFERSON FISHER: And so liars, manipulators — they want the anger, but they fear the calm. And so when you’re able to, in those moments of somebody doing something offensive, show a calm, controlled approach, that’s what they don’t like. Like, imagine you saying something that’s a lie and I’m saying, “Yeah, I’m going to need to come back to that later.” It’s the worst because they want you to swallow hook, line, and sinker. They like the fast, rapid — they took it.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: That’s also closure.

JEFFERSON FISHER: For sure.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Right. It’s an open loop. So much of this is the loops that have been left open for small amounts of time or for even longer amounts of time. They’re the ones that — on the insult thing, British people have a trend of pushing and pushing and then saying, “Only joking, mate. It’s only a joke.” How do you deal with someone who pushes you and then retreats to, “I was just joking?”

Handling “I Was Just Joking”

JEFFERSON FISHER: It depends how well you know them. If somebody says, “I was just joking,” I usually like to say, “Then I need you to be funnier.” That’s what I usually say. Or I’ll say, “I need you to find new material.” Like, “Let’s workshop that one a little bit.”

But if it’s something where maybe you don’t know them that well and they say, “I’m just joking,” I don’t let it slide — meaning you just go, “Oh, okay, that’s fine,” and then they’re just going to walk over you again. We’re not going to walk on eggshells with that. But if you were to say, “I know that wasn’t a joke,” or “That didn’t sound like a joke — sounds like an issue,” that’s a lot.

So much of this is being the bigger person in conversation, and that often means being the most courageous in the conversation, and that’s a hard thing to do.

Phrases That Make People Sound Weak

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: What are the most common phrases that make people sound weak?

JEFFERSON FISHER: Usually beginning with, “I’m sorry, but—” That’s one — “I’m sorry, but” you don’t really mean it. “I don’t mean any disrespect, but—” “I don’t want this to sound rude, but—” Yeah, you do. Or else you wouldn’t be saying it like that. You just delete those and say what you need to say.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: From after the but.

JEFFERSON FISHER: From after the but. Exactly. It’s just hedging. Another is where people cut out the legs underneath their sentences before they even get them out. Like, “I hate to bother you, but—” “I mean, I could be wrong about this, but—” “I mean, you probably know better than me, but—” It’s all this hedging that makes them sound really, really weak in the conversation. That is unnecessary.

A lot of the “I thinks” and “I believes” — in casual conversation it’s not a problem, but if you’re wanting to sound assertive, you can just replace them with “I’m confident that.” Instead of, “I believe I’d be a good asset to this company,” it’s “I’m confident I’d be a good asset to this company.” And they’d write down, “Man, he sounds so confident.” It’s just pure language choice.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: I learned from my academic friends — I hedge sometimes because I’m wholly unqualified to talk about pretty much everything I talk about. And it’s important to caveat, especially if you’re like—

JEFFERSON FISHER: For sure.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: I’m in bro science territory here.

JEFFERSON FISHER: Yeah.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: I learned that academics have an equivalent for that. They say “it’s directionally correct.” Directionally correct, dude, is the f*ing — hey, 51/49 or 99/1, I’m directionally correct either way. If I know that this is at least on this side of the fence, I got it. I love — directionally correct that men are stronger than women on average. Their upper body strength on average as well is wonderful. You hide so many things and say anything “on average.”

JEFFERSON FISHER: On average. Yeah.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: I mean, on average, you just literally need to be better than 50% right.

JEFFERSON FISHER: Yeah.

Where Self-Assurance Comes From

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: So yeah, it’s a good start. You mentioned assertiveness. Where does self-assurance come from in your opinion?

JEFFERSON FISHER: It’s tied a lot to confidence. So I teach that confidence is as assertive does. If you want to feel more confident, you need to say more assertive things. And most often we get taught and see that the most confident people are the loudest — the bro-est of any of it — when it’s actually the person who’s the most controlled, the one who’s the calmest.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Careful derogating the bros.

JEFFERSON FISHER: Exactly. Yeah, not at all. Not at all. Would never. Being able to say — who’s going to be the most emotionally reactive when things hit the fan? Because they will hit the fan.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Yeah.

JEFFERSON FISHER: And making sure that — how do you know who’s the captain of the ship? It’s who has the highest threshold for conflict. That’s going to be one of the biggest markers right there. Confident people don’t need to say it for you to know it. I don’t have to say it to make sure that I know it or you know it. My grandfather told me once, “Little dogs yip at everything, but big dogs only have to bark once.” It’s that kind of mentality of knowing that I don’t have to have a comment for every little thing.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: The most f*ing Texan quote of all time. Little dogs and big dogs.

JEFFERSON FISHER: That’s right. Little dogs yip, big dogs bark. Yeah. Exactly.

Vagal Authority

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Have you heard the term vagal authority?

JEFFERSON FISHER: No, but it sounds like something I would learn.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: And it sounds like something that you would love. So Joe Hudson, who Charlie introduced me to, he’s got this idea of vagal authority. And what he means is, in a room or in an interaction, whose nervous system is dictating how everybody else moves? Everybody’s in different levels. Some people are at 8s, some people are at 3s. Where does the room go? Especially in a one-on-one, who’s got the vagal authority between the two of us?

JEFFERSON FISHER: Interesting. So who’s the thermostat?

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Yeah. Who’s dictating this?

JEFFERSON FISHER: Who’s the thermostat? I mean, you’re the host.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Well, f* me. I’m not going to dick measure you in who’s got more vagal authority, because I am going to lose. But I just love that term. The first time that he ever said it, I thought vagal authority is—

JEFFERSON FISHER: I think that’s right.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Such a wonderful way to think about what it is. So we talk about nervous system capacity, emotional resilience, and that sounds great, but it’s very abstract.

JEFFERSON FISHER: Mm-hmm.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Vagal authority, and just defining it as in an interaction, whose nervous system is in charge.

JEFFERSON FISHER: Right.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Are you both going to compromise and meet in the middle?

JEFFERSON FISHER: Right.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Are you going to stay where you are? Are you going down to where that — I mean, obviously you could have vagal authority innate and be like, “Hey, come up to me.”

JEFFERSON FISHER: Yeah, exactly. Like, you are big.

The Thermostat in the Room

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Get up here. But assuming that you’re coming at this from the right side of the fence, so it sounds like a lot of what you’re talking about is your version of Vagal authority.

JEFFERSON FISHER: That’s probably right. There’s a lot of conversation, the same way they say show up like you’ve been there before, same way in conversation, meaning you can say something and have an emotional reaction. And well, like we talked about at the very beginning, those, that beautiful moment of like, my capacity is large enough to take any of this and all of this.

And so if you’re in a meeting and you walk in, who’s the thermostat? Who’s going to be controlling the temperature of the room? And if you’re the one that has to chime in on every single thing, who’s emotionally reactive at the slightest, the smallest little inconvenience, somebody who— it’s usually, if somebody cusses a lot, there’s usually a sign of emotional reactivity of like, I’m getting really hyped or low on something.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Or they’re British.

JEFFERSON FISHER: Yeah. Or they’re British. Yeah, sure. And to be able to versus the person who has a very high threshold to where they don’t say everything they could say. Like, they have opinion, but they don’t need to voice it, in other words, for it to have any validity. They know that they know it. They don’t have to name-drop. They know that they have value. They don’t have to talk about how much their company sold for. Like, they don’t need to say it. They know what kind of car they drive without having to be flashy. It’s an understatement of knowing that, you know, “walk silently with a big stick.”

What Makes Someone Sound Composed

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: What is it that makes someone sound composed?

JEFFERSON FISHER: A calm voice. There’s a voice that sounds warm, voice that sounds in a lower register, words that are spaced out more. If I talk really fast all the time and you can’t really catch up with my message and I’m really like, just, it’s going to naturally make you more anxious. We all have those people in our life that just to be around them, you feel a little bit more anxiety. Those tend to be people who are— the sky is falling, we have to have— they’re very, very fast when they talk. They’re very quick to make judgments and choices and decisions about how they’re going to feel and how this is going to go, versus slowing it down, weighing, and knowing that the best type of choices are ones that have been intentionally thought of.

Like, let’s say, for example, if you ask me a question and I immediately just have an answer right off the bat versus you ask me a question and I take a breath and I think about it and then I answer, which one sounds more composed? It’s not going to be the one that’s all hyped up, it’s going to be the one that’s a little bit more slower. You think of people who are the most composed in your life, they’re generally the people that make you feel the most comfortable.

And to me, I like the aspect, I’ve always compared it to just a feeling of warm, feeling of you’re welcome here. Yeah, you can disagree with me, that’s welcome too. I see it between nice guy and good man. A nice guy wants to be liked. A good man wants to be worthy. Like, how do I show you with my words that you’re worth my time and this conversation’s worth my time? I do that not by trying to rush you out the door or look for the next person to talk to while I’m talking to you at the networking event or small talk. So I’m choosing to give you my time.

Assertiveness vs. Being an Asshole

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: What’s the difference between being assertive and being an asshole?

JEFFERSON FISHER: Assertiveness says I can respect you and I can respect the other person or respect myself. Let me say that differently. So there’s like a spectrum of somebody who’s passive versus aggressive, and then assertiveness is in the middle. Aggressive aggression says I don’t respect you. Somebody passive says I don’t respect me. Assertiveness saying I can respect both of us, meaning I can lay out my boundary and I can still like you.

Like, my dad would say all the time, you know, I’m going to need to discipline you. Doesn’t mean I don’t love you. I need to have this conversation, and it’s because I love you that I’m going to have this conversation. And when you come to terms with I can want all the good things for you and also say I’m not going to tolerate that. Both things can be true.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: What about being an asshole?

JEFFERSON FISHER: What about it?

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: I think a lot of the time when people think they’re being assertive, they are leaning into assholery.

JEFFERSON FISHER: Is that a word?

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Correct.

JEFFERSON FISHER: Okay.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Of the two of us, I’m aware that you’ve done 1,000 plus 2,000 depositions, but it’s our language. I will remind you it’s our language.

JEFFERSON FISHER: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Although it is my taxes and your country, so I better be careful. A lot of the time people mistake brusqueness and callousness, like socially acceptable callousness, as the same as being assertive. I’m going to say this thing in a way that’s unnecessarily terse or cutting or inconsiderate. And that’s the same as being assertive. And a lot of the time I see people who are assholes that people see as unlikable assertive people. If that makes sense.

JEFFERSON FISHER: Yeah.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: I think a lot of the time the border of asshole and assertiveness functionally can sometimes deliver the same outcome, which is, you bully the person into getting what you want, but you state your intention without apology, right? That’s something that the asshole and the assertive person have in common. But the difference is that the assertive person is doing it from a place of compromise, pro-socialness. The asshole is doing it almost to show off, to look good, to be inconsiderate. One is considerate and the other is inconsiderate, at least as far as I can see.

JEFFERSON FISHER: Yeah. And I’d say one is selfish. The other can also be supporting. I would say that the person who wants to be assertive has both people in mind. The other does not. So I think the considerate, inconsiderate— the person who always has to win the argument is the person who typically loses everything.

The Most Skipped Step in Assertiveness

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: You’ve got 10 specific ways to practice assertiveness. What is the one that most people skip?

JEFFERSON FISHER: Being intentional with your words, meaning they find that the more words they use, the more believable they’ll sound. And just the opposite. It’s this idea of the more words you have to use to tell the truth, the more it starts to sound like a lie. It sounds like you don’t really know what you’re talking about. The more words you have to use to explain something that should be relatively easy to explain. So excessiveness, oversharing, saying too much, it’s a very quick way to miscommunication because you’re giving them— do you know Golden Corrals? Like buffets? Ever heard of those? It’s not a place you’d probably go to, but.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Look, hold your thought on Golden Corrals and where you’re going. Okay. I need to make this statement to a person who’s lived in the South of America for a good while.

JEFFERSON FISHER: Okay.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: As a British person, I feel I have a more accurate understanding of American cuisine than Americans do.

JEFFERSON FISHER: That’s probably true.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: And this is because Denny’s and IHOP and Cheesecake Factory are elite establishments.

JEFFERSON FISHER: Good. Thank you.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Okay. You do understand. So many Americans look down their nose at what are objectively wonderful places to go and eat. Denny’s, coffee at 2 in the morning, unlimited refills.

JEFFERSON FISHER: Yeah.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Cinnamon pancake stacks.

JEFFERSON FISHER: Don’t you dare.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Fantastic. Very good. Very good. Very good. As Theo Von once said, you can see a woman giving birth in there sometimes. You just don’t know what you’re going to get. You never know. Sometimes.

JEFFERSON FISHER: Yeah, I hope to see that.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: So Golden Corral, as yet not been to. However, I did go to a Cracker Barrel. I really liked that.

JEFFERSON FISHER: Nice.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: I want to go. I only want to— Do you do the peg game? Peg? Pegging?

JEFFERSON FISHER: Oh no, let’s not go there. It’s the game that’s like a wooden triangle and you have the tees that it’s like— that’s not the pegging that I’m familiar with. Yeah, no, no, you would be.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: I don’t know that. Again, British. What I did like, and I refuse now to go to any restaurant where I can’t buy any item of furniture or art on the wall.

JEFFERSON FISHER: Yeah, the little general store.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: I want to be like, how much is that? Sir, that’s somebody’s daughter. She’s not for sale. No, I don’t care. She looks like she’s pinned on the wall. That’s going to be— she would look wonderful above the fireplace.

JEFFERSON FISHER: Yeah, you can have all the blankets and— you know, I’m going to take it all. Pop guns that you want.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: I’m going to take it all. Golden Corral.

JEFFERSON FISHER: Yeah, we were talking about where sometimes you’re giving people too many options to choose in the conversation, meaning the meaning is going to get lost.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: You’re a Cheesecake Factory menu.

JEFFERSON FISHER: You’re absolutely, yeah, exactly. Anyway, we can talk more about the Cheesecake Factory. I’m all for it.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: I’m so glad that I found a kindred spirit. I knew I liked you, but now I really like you.

JEFFERSON FISHER: Okay, really?

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Yeah.

JEFFERSON FISHER: Let’s just talk about the Cheesecake Factory menu. Let’s just read that. Yeah, exactly. You’re giving people too many options, and that often will lead to miscommunication because they’re picking and choosing what you’re trying exactly to say. And so you don’t want to— don’t leave what your intention is in the conversation up to the other person to guess. You need to be sufficiently clear.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Too much, correct? Yeah.

JEFFERSON FISHER: And that is what will often lead to the most unassertive communication, because you can say a lot and still not say anything.

The Danger of Compressing Someone’s Answer

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Oh, I’ve got one to add to your list of ways that people sound weak, or at the very least imprecise and difficult to understand in a conversation. They ask a question, and I notice this with new podcasters when they begin, because they’re uncomfortable with sitting in silence. They’re uncomfortable with asking a question, especially potentially a tough question, and then leaving it after the question mark.

So they’ll say something like, “Jefferson, you’re a trial lawyer, and that means that sometimes you need to represent people that have done bad things. How do you feel about that? Do you feel—” and then immediately jump on it. They give you a couple of options. The problem with doing that, especially as a podcaster, is that I am imposing a duality. I’ve compressed the infinity of answers that you could have given me down into two choices.

JEFFERSON FISHER: Yeah.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: And in order for you to pick the third one that might be true, you have to say no, no, and this. And most people just go, “Well, yeah, it’s kind of like that,” because it’s easier, right? Here’s two paths that I’ve carved for you, pick which one. And they’re usually relatively okay. It’s an estimation of where I think you might go. You’re like, it’s your job, it’s a very important service. Do you see it as your job as an important service, or do you not take that work home with you, whatever?

JEFFERSON FISHER: That does sound very British when you’re doing it. It sounds BBC interview. That’s crazy.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Oh yeah. I like Piers Morgan.

JEFFERSON FISHER: Yeah.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Piers Morgan, but with a functioning hip. You said earlier on about people that duel. You know that the front benches in the House of Lords, the green benches where all of our politicians sit and talk waffle, the distance between the two front benches is the same as a broadsword held out at arm’s length.

JEFFERSON FISHER: No way. Yeah.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: So if you do that again, and then on the other side, that’s the distance between the two, which tells you everything that you need to know about how politics works.

JEFFERSON FISHER: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. We’re very, very sensitive to honor.

Being Right Is Overrated

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Being right is overrated. What’s that mean?

JEFFERSON FISHER: It means we’ve heard these phrases of, do you want to choose to be right? Do you want to choose to be happy? Do you want to choose to be the person who always has to be right? Usually that’s a person who’s also the loneliest.

If you have to be right in this one particular argument, and we all have these kind of silly arguments we might have — like, my brothers and I might get into an argument about a movie, whatever, what’s the best movie on whatever — I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about a serious argument that you’re having with somebody who matters to you, and you have to be right on it, and you’re refusing to back down. And then they eventually go, “You know what, have it, you got it, you’re right, congratulations.” And that moment lasts for about a millisecond, and then you’re just kind of left with feeling like an idiot.

You can continue to win arguments but also lose the relationship, because nobody wants to be with somebody who always has to be right. It shows more of an insecurity than it does intellect.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: So what should we prioritize instead of being right?

JEFFERSON FISHER: Connection. It’s the ability to see perspectives and understand. I’d say appreciating somebody’s perspective is an underrated skill, meaning I don’t have to agree with it. I can still hear it.

So rather than saying, “I don’t agree with that,” which is me commenting on your point, I can say, “I see things differently.” That’s me commenting on your perspective. Very different. And so when I’m able to use words of perspective, like, “Huh, I see that differently. I have a different take on that. I look at that from a different perspective. I get there another way,” people go, “Huh, okay, then what do you see? What do you believe?” Rather than having to have their sword and shield and defend their position, they don’t have to defend it. Now they get to go, “Oh, okay. They’re not trying to attack me. They just go about it a different way.”

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: It’s very inviting.

JEFFERSON FISHER: Yeah. Perspectives are what allow you to have conversations of understanding rather than — I can’t stand it when somebody goes, “I just don’t understand how they could possibly believe that. I just don’t get how their mind could even—” and it’s like, did you try? Have you asked how they came to that?

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: I don’t think people mean that a lot of the time. What people are saying is, “I am sufficiently morally superior to that person that my theory of mind wouldn’t even allow me to understand how somebody could vote for Donald Trump.”

JEFFERSON FISHER: Or do whatever.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Yep, or Kamala Harris, or support this perspective.

JEFFERSON FISHER: Yeah, it’s because they feel this superiority of, “I’m obviously right, they’re obviously wrong. How could they not see from life?”

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: “Look at how right I am. I’m so right that they’re essentially a different species in a different universe to me.”

JEFFERSON FISHER: Right.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: You know what it makes me think about? It makes me think about empathy. We’re talking about the ability to feel and understand somebody else’s emotions. But a lot of people are able to do that — like type 1 empathy, we could call it. I can feel and understand your emotions whilst not having type 2 empathy, which is understanding how you arrived at your perspective, and believing that you arrived there too.

JEFFERSON FISHER: Yes.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: And I think a lot of the time people stop there. Type 1 empathy is similar to anger. There are a whole bunch of people who are kind of infected with empathy. There’s an entire book Paul Bloom wrote called Against Empathy — it’s about why you shouldn’t have it. He optimizes for something else.

But it’s funny to think about how you might be able to feel somebody else’s emotions either by choice or not by choice, but it’s much harder to say, “I understand why they arrived at that perspective. I understand how they arrived, even if I don’t hold it myself.” It’s a different kind of — yeah, maybe empathy is the wrong word, but it feels like an asymmetry between those two things.

Opinions, Confirmation Bias, and the Need to Be Right

JEFFERSON FISHER: Even when you share your opinion on something, the way we typically share it is very guarded because we’re gauging if it’s a new opinion or something you don’t know if the room’s going to be friendly to. You might hedge. You might try and add a lot to show this is a justified opinion, that you have lots of evidence for it. So we come at it already from a very defensive position because we say, “This is my opinion, which I feel very special about, and this is my treasured opinion, and I’m going to do anything I can to protect it.”

So if you come at it with a different opinion that’s unlike mine, how can I make sure that I preserve what I believe to the exclusion of what you believe? It’s like juries and confirmation bias — we usually stick with what we know first, and it takes a lot of time and a lot of conversations for us to change that outlook. A lot of the time you’ll have a juror who makes up their decision within the first 3 minutes, and then all they’re doing is filtering all the evidence that comes forward.

If you know anybody that hears an opinion or a bad thing that’s happened in the news about somebody political and they go, “Oh, well, they probably just—” and they totally dismiss it. Because like we said, facts and evidence don’t matter.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Why do you think modern culture is so obsessed with being right, winning debates?

JEFFERSON FISHER: Because what is our worth if we’re not right? Nobody thinks that they’re on the side of wrong. Nobody goes into something thinking that they’re the enemy or they’re thinking about it the wrong way. Nobody wants to go, “I’m thinking about this the wrong way? Yes, I am,” and just stick with that. They all think that they have their own way about it. And so I think we’re obsessed with it because what value does one derive from if we don’t feel that we’re walking in accordance of either good or evil?

Detecting Deception: What Actually Works

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: I’ve had a lot of communication experts on talking about detecting deception. What’s realistic and true about working out whether someone’s lying to you or not?

JEFFERSON FISHER: Evidence. Like a true trial lawyer. Yeah, a nerd. Let’s say you don’t have that. I think it is very hard. There are people who are excellent liars.

I would say that liars love rebuttals and hate silence. If they’ve said something that’s a lie and you allow that to sit, or you say, “I need to come back to this,” that feeling of not being able to accept it — here’s a cue that tells you if somebody is really lying: they can’t stand that you don’t believe them.

People who are telling the truth know it’s the truth, and if you don’t believe it, then, well, okay, I’m at peace because I’m telling the truth. But those who know that it’s a lie usually will have this disproportionate response of, “How dare you not possibly believe me?” and “How could you?” rather than having the confidence of — the truth is the truth. A truth needs no excuse.

And so those who are probably not saying all of the truth show up in ways where they’re going to question you. They’re going to ask you what you think they should be doing. “What do you think I was doing? You tell me what you think.” They question it, they get upset about it, and they usually won’t let it go because they would rather harm you than be honest.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Yeah, that makes sense. It’s almost like somebody is trying to lay down — it’s similar to anger. It’s reminding me of this outsized response.

JEFFERSON FISHER: Right.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: This overly dramatic, “Well, how could you?” The indignation that comes with that. I can imagine a lot of times where it goes, “What do you mean? Yes, that thing happened. How do you not see it?” Because indignation is a useful tool, right? It actually mirrors what you would do if you were telling the truth. So it’s like, “I really wasn’t doing that thing.”

JEFFERSON FISHER: But I find that indignation is very much related to fear. It’s all tied to something of, “I’m not enough. I’m not being believed. I have no worth. What am I doing?” And so it goes back to that idea of — the truth is the truth for me. You can choose to take it or choose not to, but I can’t make you believe that. I know what I’m living with, and I’m living with a clear conscience. Should you not believe it, that’s your choice.

But the ones who are not being fully honest, they know that they’re not, and they know what they’re living with, and they know what’s true and what’s not true. And usually a little bit of a sign is they’ll start to question it and they have this very unregulated response.

Gold Standard Repair After an Argument

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Ruptures hurt relationships a lot. What does gold standard repair look like to you? How do people come back together after an argument?

JEFFERSON FISHER: This is big. My wife and I, we have kind of set up — we did this a few weeks ago — a system for us as a couple of how best can I show up for her and she show up for me when it comes to repair?

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: You’ve been together for 15 years.

JEFFERSON FISHER: Yeah, but still, dude — time means nothing.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: I just assumed given your professional career that this might have been a year 3 or 4 or 5 thing.

JEFFERSON FISHER: What do you think I learned all of this from? It’s because I made a lot of mistakes. This information — any information — either comes because you learned it at a great personal cost and risk, or you’re just making it up. I’ve learned all this because of my life experience.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Research is me-search, as they say.

JEFFERSON FISHER: Yeah, that’s exactly right. And so we’ve done smatterings of things, but we decided to actually put something down.

I’d say the number one thing you have to do to come back from an argument is ownership. You need to own what you said or what you did. It’s the element of, “I did that, I said this,” not, “I did this because you did that.” That gets no points, zero score. That doesn’t help you at all when you start to go, “Well, if you hadn’t have said this, I wouldn’t have—” That’s toxic and that’s no good. You’ve got to take it on the chin. “Hey, what I said — not cool. I own that. I did say this.” And it’s a true apology.

And then you have to go into acknowledgement and affirmation, meaning, “I can only imagine that made you feel hurt. That made you feel upset. That made you feel less than. That made you question my feelings,” whatever it is. You have to feel the feelings from their perspective of what you would assume.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Emotional steeling.

JEFFERSON FISHER: Exactly. Yeah. “I imagine that made you feel like this,” or “Of course you’d be upset about this. Why wouldn’t you be upset about that? Yeah, I said something big.”

And then third, it’s the element of — we’re still a team. I’m still working towards this. You kind of have to have this element of hope where it’s, “We’re going to still continue to work this out. We’re going to continue to get better at this.” You’ve got to keep working through it. And depending on what you did, there’s got to be apologies, of course.

The Quality of Relationships Through Hard Times

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: I wonder whether most relationship failure is just bad communication. Obviously there’s incompatibilities, there’s fundamental, fundamental problems that are insurmountable. There’s a line from Visakan Varasamy. He calls it the divorce paradox. Says, why is it that so many people separate from someone who seemed to be their favorite person?

And it’s because bad times are a far better predictor of relationship longevity than good times are. It’s how you deal with disagreement, not how you enjoy wonder, that determines relationship longevity. Very few people have ended a relationship because there were insufficient peak moments when you compare them to the number of people who’ve ended relationships because there were far too many bad ones. Too much rupture without repair as opposed to too little skydiving with a parachute.

JEFFERSON FISHER: Yeah.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Yeah.

JEFFERSON FISHER: I believe that the quality of the relationship doesn’t depend on how good are the good times. It’s, can you be with them through the bad times? I’m good on the bad times. Yeah, exactly. The hard, the really hard conversations, because those are invitations to grow deeper together, to bond more, to get closer together, to be known, to be fully known with that person.

You don’t get that in the first few dates. You get that in the 15-year knock-down drag-out, who am I, what am I doing conversations. That’s where you get to see really what’s there inside. I mean, you have to find the bottom to know how far you can go up.

Choosing a Good Partner

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: What have you come to believe about choosing a good partner?

JEFFERSON FISHER: That is hard work. Doesn’t matter even if you’re somebody who talks about communication, or you’re somebody for however long you’ve been married, it’s hard work. I don’t know anybody that has been in a long-term relationship or finding their person. Of course you want somebody you can be a friend with and you can buy somebody you can be vulnerable with. But more importantly, you need to have somebody that you communicate well with.

If you don’t have communication right, to me, that’s a relationship that’s not going to have longevity to it because it feels good in the moment, but in year 6, year 7, year 10, you’ve had kids into the mix. That didn’t help conversation. It puts conversation problems on steroids. Now every little fissure and crack gets highlighted and it’s more stress. And then you’ve got kids’ schedules and somebody’s got soccer practice and somebody has a dentist appointment and then things just get way, way harder in that element.

And so you have to have somebody who communicates well with you and honestly, Chris, somebody who can put up with your ugly. Somebody who— because you’re going to have those just moments where it’s not a good look, just not a good look.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: That wasn’t me at my best.

JEFFERSON FISHER: Yeah, yeah. And they know that. They’re not going to punish you for it. They know it wasn’t, and they’re going to choose that their love is big enough for that bad moment and know that it’s not always going to be that bad moment. But at the same time, they’re going to expect you to come out of it and say, “Yeah, I could handle that better.” Not blame them for your bad moment.

Lessons from Being a Trial Lawyer

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: What’s the most fascinating thing about being a trial lawyer that you’ve learned after spending so much time in it that people from outside of your industry don’t know or don’t understand?

JEFFERSON FISHER: It’s different in the sense of you’re having to have, like, you know the movie Inception?

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Definitely.

JEFFERSON FISHER: Like, who doesn’t? It’s like you’re having a conversation within a conversation. I’m having to prove a point within a point. And so I am hired to have problems with somebody I don’t have problems with. Right? And all of a sudden their problems have now become mine. And now I’m advocating on their behalf. I’m being their voice. And now this other person’s hired somebody to have problems with me. Right?

And so it’s now attorneys arguing, secondhand removed from the people who are actually in the conflict. And then now I’m going to present this case to 12 people and a judge in a courtroom of what case should be left standing. Now it depends on the facts and the case and everything else, but you are having to have a conversation that is not even being said.

For example, as soon as you walk into the courtroom, all eyes are on you. If you hear a piece of evidence that’s bad for you and I go, “Pfft,” what does that tell the jury? They go, “Oh, this must be really bad for them.” But if I stay calm and controlled as if like, “Yeah, I expected to hear that,” then it doesn’t hit that way.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Regardless of whether you did or not.

JEFFERSON FISHER: Exactly. And then even when I’ve seen this a lot where if anybody’s been in jury, they’ve seen attorneys approach the bench, counsel approach the bench, and they come up and they usually play some kind of noise, white noise, something to where you can’t hear what the judges and the attorneys are saying.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: No way.

JEFFERSON FISHER: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, that’s fun.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: And so they should put some tunes on instead. They really should play some Cardi B.

JEFFERSON FISHER: Oh, I think that would be pretty baller. That would be pretty cool. You’re up there and you’re like, yeah, just some Kendrick. Um, and so you’re talking and they always say it’s, they watch who leaves and the reaction of the attorneys, because usually the judge is ruling on something that the jury can’t hear on. It’s a matter of law that would sway the case.

And if the attorney is walking away defeated, they go, oh, something must have happened. Or if the attorney’s always objecting, that’s the worst. You have to be really selective with your objections. So let’s say a witness is about to say something and it seems like it’d be something big, and I stand up and I object, and the judge sustains it, and they skip to the testimony. They go, oh, he’s hiding something from me. He must not want me to know everything.

So what is this? What am I teaching? I’m saying you are having a conversation all with your body language, your whole presence, how calm and controlled you are. How can you be the most credible in the room without having nothing to do with the actual facts of the case. And you do that a lot by being the person who they go, “That person’s telling me the truth. That’s a truth teller. I can tell by how confident, controlled, measured they are. They don’t seem like they’re worried and anxious about every little thing the witness is going to say.”

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Which is interesting because that can be taught and engineered to a large margin. So it’s just levels of deception that are more sophisticated than the levels of detection.

JEFFERSON FISHER: And the thing is, it exists in every conversation, not just in the courtroom.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: I mean, dude, look at UFC fights and boxing fights that go the distance.

JEFFERSON FISHER: Yeah.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Both fighters put their hand up.

JEFFERSON FISHER: Right. Oh yeah, exactly. At the very end.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: It’s the exact same as you walking away from the bench. You might as well, you might actually next time do this for me.

JEFFERSON FISHER: Let’s do that.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: See if it works.

JEFFERSON FISHER: I’ll try it.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Dude, if it works, I’ll give you all the credit. Thank you.

JEFFERSON FISHER: Yeah, absolutely. That’s good.

The Core Principle of Good Communication

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Okay, so lots of different techniques around communication. At least for me, the main thing I’m taking away, or one of the main things I’m taking away, is a degree of consideration for the other person. That seems to be like a real through line with a lot of what we’re going on here, that holding your ground, being assertive, and also being understanding about what we’re doing here, that kind of consideration is important. If there’s one principle that people should hold on to when it comes to good interpersonal communication, what would it be?

JEFFERSON FISHER: One conversation is typically not enough. You need a lot of them, meaning we put a lot of pressure on one single conversation and that increases the anxiety, increases the fear of the moment. That I’m going to say the wrong thing, do the wrong thing. And you’re putting hype on a conversation that didn’t need to have that kind of hype on it, because really it should be the opposite.

It should be, “Hey, I’m talking to you about this because you matter a lot to me, and at the end of this, we’re still going to be best friends, and we’re still going to go to dinner together tonight, and we’re still going to do X, Y, and Z. I just— because I love you, I need to tell you this. This was on my heart.” You see how that’s— rather than me trying to push everything at once.

Versus if I were to say, let’s say it’s a big, big important thing that needs to take some time. I like to have a conversation with you over the next few weeks. I like to have a conversation over this month to talk about X, Y, and Z. Whenever you say that this is a conversation that’s going to take some time, it automatically lowers everybody’s anxiety rather than you having to decide, “This is the moment right here. Choose to be with me, not be with me. Where are we doing? What are we not doing?” It hypes that “what if I get it wrong” feeling.

And there’s a lot of times there’s more conversation that needs to be had. Another I’d say is that element of having something to learn, not something to prove. When you feel like you have to prove your point, people who have something to prove are the ones that always have to push their opinion. “How dare you believe what you believe and not what I— how dare you have an idea that’s not mine and go with something else,” versus questioning in a very curious way.

That’s like you said, which I like, is that perspective seeking. How can I encourage the pursuit of perspective? How can I get really disciplined on knowing where your thoughts come from? Where did you learn it? How long have you believed it? Where did that originate? Is that something you taught yourself, or is that something you came across from really hardship?

And the more you give people time to share with that, the more they’re going to open up to you and realize you are a safe place to share these kinds of things and not harden up.

Wrapping Up

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Dude, you’re great. Let’s bring this one home. I appreciate the heck out of you. Where should people go to check out everything that you’ve got going on?

JEFFERSON FISHER: You can go to jeffersonfisher.com or social media, Jefferson Fisher.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Beautiful.

JEFFERSON FISHER: Thanks, man.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Denny’s, Cheesecake Factory, what do you think?

JEFFERSON FISHER: Let’s do that. So I think you go Outback. You go Outback.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Is that like steakhouse? Yeah, yeah, sure.

JEFFERSON FISHER: Okay, like a lemon onion or something.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Cool. All right, goodbye everybody. Dude.

JEFFERSON FISHER: Thanks for having me.

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