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About this Episode

Welcome to today’s episode of The Communication Solution podcast with Casey Jackson, John Gilbert and Danielle Cantin. We love talking about Motivational Interviewing, and about improving outcomes for individuals, organizations, and the communities that they serve. In this engaging episode we delve into the intricate dynamics of political discourse, focusing on the challenges and opportunities for understanding and civility. Through personal anecdotes and discussions on the role of values, mindfulness, and the biological underpinnings of conflict, the hosts explore how individuals can engage in political conversations in a way that respects differing perspectives without compromising their own values. The podcast highlights an innovative civility summit initiative that aims to bridge divides through decisional balance exercises, emphasizing the potential for growth and understanding in political dialogue. The conversation encourages listeners to approach political engagement as an informed choice, rather than a conflict, fostering a more constructive and less confrontational political landscape. The episode concludes with an invitation for listeners to share their own experiences and insights on navigating the complex world of politics with civility and respect.

In this podcast, we discuss:

• Introduction to the Challenge of Discussing Politics: The podcast opens with an acknowledgment of the complexities and sensitivities involved in political discussions and the intention to explore these through the lens of motivational interviewing (MI).
• The Risks and Rewards of Political Discourse: The hosts express excitement and caution about delving into such a contentious topic, emphasizing the importance of setting protective guidelines for a respectful dialogue.
• Motivational Interviewing and Political Conversations: The discussion clarifies that MI is not intended to change political opinions but can be used to navigate personal ambivalence and improve interactions with others who hold differing views.
• Exploring Political Beliefs with Empathy and Acceptance: The hosts discuss the potential of MI principles like empathy, acceptance, and positive regard to facilitate more constructive political conversations and reduce conflict.
• The Influence of Unconscious Bias: The conversation touches on the challenge of recognizing and setting aside unconscious biases to truly listen and understand opposing viewpoints.
• The Biological Basis of Strong Political Reactions: A shift towards the physiological and biological explanations for the intense emotions and reactions often observed in political debates.
• Aligning Political Engagement with Personal Values: The hosts reflect on the importance of ensuring one’s political actions and discussions are in alignment with their broader value system.
• The Psychological and Biological Drivers of Political Behavior: A deeper dive into how human psychology and basic survival instincts may underpin political beliefs and behaviors.
• Considering Politics from a Survival Perspective: The discussion explores the idea that political affiliations and conflicts might be rooted in fundamental survival instincts, such as assessing threats and allies.

You don’t want to miss this one! Make sure to rate us or share this podcast. It would mean so much to us!

This has been part one of a two-part podcast. We hope you’ll join us for the second portion. You don’t want to miss this one! Make sure to rate us or share this podcast. It would mean so much to us! Thank you for listening to the communication solution. This podcast is all about you. If you have questions, thoughts, topic suggestions, or ideas, please send them our way at casey@ifioc.com. For more resources, feel free to check out ifioc.com.

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Transcribe

 Hello and welcome to the communication solution podcast with Casey Jackson and John Gilbert. I’m your host, Danielle Cantin. Here at the Institute for Individual and Organizational Change, otherwise known as IFIOC, we love to talk about communication, we love to talk about solutions, and we love to talk about providing measurable results for individuals, organizations, and the communities they serve. Welcome. To the communication solution that will change your world.

Hi everyone. I’m Danielle Cantin, your facilitator of the Communication Solution Podcast, and I’m here with Casey Jackson, your host, and John Gilbert. How are you guys? Awesome. Well, we’re here to talk about basically the communication solution, but really weaving in all of the principles and theories around motivational interviewing, this incredible evidence based practice that has me mesmerized by the results and outcomes that it’s able to achieve in people’s lives.

 What I’d love to dive into today for a topic is,  one that typically you’re advised not to talk about, which is politics. Yeah, I was, I was hoping and thinking, you know, what if we use this podcast in this time together to talk about and unpack the complexities around politics and how can we look at that topic through the lens of motivational interviewing?

How does that sound? That is a very tight needle to thread, for sure. Sounds risky, which makes me want to do it twice as much.  With protection, which means that we’re putting some kind of guidelines to,  I think what I’m intrigued with with that, Danielle, is You know, we talk so much about equipoise and try and keep bias out.

So I think trying to unpack it from that perspective could be a challenge, but I think it’s very interesting. I have extremely strong political beliefs like many people do and have lots of pretty emotional reactions,  to things that are happening locally and,  in the United States and globally. So to unpack it from that, from an MI perspective and looking at that,  It’ll be a tight rope for us to walk, but I’m, I’m definitely willing to do that.

I don’t know what thoughts you have, John. Yeah. Well, what I’m particularly curious about from your perspective in the involvement with the motivational interviewing network of trainers meant,  and thinking about that is how much is there this like underlying theoretical philosophical basis to, am I, and how much is, am I a sort of approach that’s ever evolving?

With the outcomes. And I just, I think getting oriented to what is the lens we’re even looking through might be helpful for everyone, us talking and others involved to just get oriented. And I say that too, with our time that we were in,  at the international training. This year in Copenhagen, there were people talking about integrating more philosophy into MI.

And I just think we could be shooting in lots of directions if we don’t kind of get oriented first to what is the lens we’re looking through with this and then maybe going from there. I don’t know, you know, when you say that, that the things that I would clarify pretty quickly is that. Using motivation learning to talk politics is a mismatch because you can use aspects of it to reduce resistance.

You may be able to have somebody work through their ambivalence, but I think the caution or almost the red flag in that, not even the yellow flag, is how would you do that if you don’t, if your own bias is involved? Like, how ambivalence towards what you want them to? Do or because they’re trying to resolve something internally.

So we’re not going to go down that path of like, how do you use motivation in a political conversation? That is not this conversation. That’s not what we’re going to talk about. Because that’s, that would not be an accurate application of motivational interviewing just based on bias. I think when we step back and look at the construct of motivational interviewing of how do we want to work through our own ambivalence, interacting with people in our lives that may believe differently than we do, or people that we run across that may behave in a way that’s very,  Antithetical to the way the things we believe or how we believe people should treat each other.

 I think those are the things that you can think, how can I be more effective in my interactions in the next period of time as, as the U S is rolling towards, you know, another presidential election. And there’s a lot of political unrest globally as well too. So I think if we can tease that out, I’m pretty excited about,  seeing where we can go with that.

Easy. Easy. So, well, one, there’s, there’s so many areas to explore here. It’s kind of like what is most salient and that’s part of getting oriented to the, the lens first. So I’m kind of curious for you, Casey or Danielle, what,  Rings is most salient to start with, either from an M I perspective or what’s happening locally or globally.

What, what, where’s the salience here to kind of hook on? Yeah, I think the thing for me, because I, you know, as I’m preparing for the whole, be the change training. Series, I’m just so immersed in reading different things and and looking at the research of what produces the most change and I’m going to lead into this by saying this isn’t the right way.

It’s not the only way. You know, the reason why I’m even leading in with that is I think there. It’s hard for me. I’ve had this conversation in my brain this morning, ironically, that I really believe so strongly in my heart because my mother was such a strong advocate and a fierce advocate for human rights, women’s rights, you know, underserved population, just that was my mother.

And she was a force. And I so respected, admired that. But what struck me this morning is that that doesn’t always generate change.  In the most effective and efficient way. So how do you tell people not to advocate how not to march for their rights and march where they believe in? Because it’s, that is one of our rights in the United States to be able to do things like that.

So that’s why I want to make sure that I’m not saying I’m agreeing, disagreeing, saying this is the right way to do it, or this is the right way to do it, or that’s the wrong way to do it. I just want to preface what there’s lots of right ways. Depending on what fits with your values, this is where I think we can open the door to conversations and motivational interviewing, because it’s like, how do we make the best values based decisions?

What struck me about this, John, was that just really being so immersed in the research recently that,  Dr. Miller and Dr. Moyers produced in, in their latest book, looking at the meta analysis around the impact of empathy and acceptance and positive regard. Are some of the strongest indicators for people to change behavior, which is the antithesis of arguing and marching,  and advocating because that pounding your fist on the table can feel very validating that I’m doing something and I’m not doing nothing.

 It’s. interesting to look at the correlation between that and actual systemic change. So you can’t say that that’s not affected because you look at some of the times that’s happened in the U. S. history or in histories in other countries and sometimes those revolutions brought about significant change.

 I, I think about this from change in my fellow human,  Not political change or, you know, hopefully environmental change, but I think that’s what’s difficult to do this. Well, so for me, when I’m looking at the data side of it, I look at the foundations of motivational and I look at what the data shows around what changes behavior or thinking and it really comes down to ironically, just that high accurate empathy and starting from a place of acceptance.

Because it doesn’t generate a reactive response. It doesn’t generate a resistance response. It may not generate change immediately, but there’s a higher potential. There’s higher change potential when there’s not already an inertia being built up to stop yourself from changing. Because you need to fight against somebody or justify a choice or justify a decision or justify a behavior.

So I think those are the things for me that are really intriguing that I think looking through that motivational or viewing lens, looking at what data shows us, it’s interesting that some of the ways that we’d interact with each other would almost be the opposite of what we think we’re supposed to do or what we feel driven or compelled to do, which tends to be more of a confrontive approach.

Yeah, when it related to that, I can just think of all these examples and maybe we could talk through one if we wanted to, but we’re, we’re thinking about this conceptually and the, the sense of thinking that,  if the person just knew is a bias, I have listening to lots of examples for coding. I was just listening to a.

Child protective services won the other day that, oh, this person doesn’t believe that their child having a positive.  Test for drugs in their system,  really matters that much. Well, that seems to matter what I think you’re pointing out, Casey, that the tendency is, and this could be the same with our blood work, with our health, that the tendency is to focus on that and not focus on the accurate understanding first and curiosity first and acceptance and sense of that.

They seem to care about something at all. And That those fundamentals that are in effective psychotherapist book that, that you’re alluding to seem to be more important as a foundational default. Then the eighth one of that would be some potential information related to all that. And it’s just so difficult as humans to not be triggered and jump to, especially when we feel it’s really important and we’re passionate about it.

The writing reflex and all that stuff to the information and trying to get the person to see. And I think it’s just so corally, you could get into tribal, you could get into all sorts of ways of looking at it. But it just seems so difficult that it seems like the core you’re talking about just takes a lot of basic practice.

Well, that’s it. And even when you talk about, you know, the eighth. You know, indicator, you know, from the research, he, the only time using even that eighth indicator is if the person wants it or it’s in there based on their value set. And usually we want to give our opinion or advice or education because we think they need it because we think they’re not where they need to be.

And so I think that’s why this becomes so complex. It’s like, well, they don’t get it. They need to understand. So I’ll wait and be empathetic until I explain to them what they need to do. That is not motivational learning either.  And it’s not as effective. It doesn’t mean it’s ineffective. It’s just not as effective.

I think what’s so complex about this is even in the situation you talked about. You know, with like a CPS referral, I think this leans into things that you have so much information around and know so well, John, around like confirmation bias, people want to continue narratives that support their own behavior because the fundamentals of motivational learning is we don’t want to be perceived that our behavior is not in alignment with our values.

So the louder I scream and the harder that I march, or the more that I do the behaviors or say the things that I say that look like I’m completely tied to my values, the more righteous I can become about that. When you look at it from more than one value at the top of the mountain, this is where internal conflict starts to come up.

This is where ambivalence can come up. So you can say it from an advocacy perspective, I know this is going to help. If it means that you’re actually doing damage to other people. Does that cause a different reaction in your brain about potential ambivalence inside of you? Like you’re, like you’re making a conscious effort to put your finger on one side of the scale, which is not bad and it’s not wrong, but if it’s going to create potentially from a physics perspective and equally an opposite reaction that could cause damage, where’s the righteousness in damage is damage?

And I think that these are really complex, extremely complex moral issues, personal issues, values based issues, you know, that we’re trying to untangle, but that’s where, for me, motivation, at least I get, I get to kind of put up a stake in the ground and and pop a compass on top of that. It gives me some direction of how do I.

Unpack these extremely complex issues. I, I, you know, and John, you know more about this than I do, but I’m, I’ve been fascinated ever since I was exposed to the Dunning Kruger effect in terms of. In a major argument, someone is inaccurate, but neither believes that they are both believe they are completely accurate.

And the Dunning Kruger effect is the reality is that somebody is not accurate, but neither people believe it. That’s a really fascinating. So every time I get into conversations like that, I think I need to try to keep my brain open because I believe in truth so much, and I’m, I’m such a huge proponent of honesty and transparency.

I try to be that as much as I can every day of my life. That how can I do that if maybe I’m the person that’s not accurate right now, which always gets me to stop for a second, think, try to absorb more information, not just so you can win. That’s not the intention. It’s that I believe in truth and I want to, I want to understand what the most effective or the most right thing is given the circumstances.

 And if I’m not right, I think that startles people sometimes because I’m like, oh, my gosh, you’re 100 percent right. I was completely wrong on that. And it almost seems too easy. And they’re like, They think that I’m either shining them on or placating them. And it’s like, no, no, I, that, I, that was just a complete, that was my, I’ve just misunderstood that it was a misread on my part.

I was not accurate in that. John, that’s happened with you. And I, I cannot even count the number of times in 10 years that it’s just like, Whoa, that was, I didn’t have the right perspective. I was missing information and I could feel how righteous I felt, but that was just inaccurate.  You know, and I always try to just as humbly as I can just go, yeah, that was.

That was, that was me, that was my, I was taking the righteous road in a way that was inaccurate or not what my intention was. That’s not always easy for us to do. Does that really feed into the concept of the unconscious bias? It’s like, you know, I don’t know that everybody’s walking around really appreciating the fact that they have that.

Um. And I’m speaking about it just because I happen to come off jury duty and it was just so reinforced that we have all of that, you know, so it’s like, let’s, let’s, let’s call it out. And can you put that aside? And it sounds like in these conversations, unpacking anything you might have around the ambivalence or even strong, strong feelings about something.

 Are you willing to kind of interject that acknowledgement? That there’s things you don’t know about yourself. I think what’s so fascinating to me, John, I’m really curious. Your perspective on this is I think what’s startling to me, which shouldn’t be, this is all part of the Dunning Kruger as well, too, is that it startles me that some people just don’t care.

You can explain what unconscious bias is, and they don’t care. You can explain what very clear bias is. And there’s people that just, they, they process the data, they agree with the concept, and they don’t care because that’s not what they’re, they’re not going to make decisions based off of how that affects other people, or they just don’t care.

So they’re aware, they’re informed, they understand concepts, but that’s just not how they operate. And I think that was, I was under a delusion thinking that everybody wants to do the right thing for the right reasons for all people. The majority of the time, like we’re here to be helpful and interact in the most healthy way with our fellow human beings.

And I was startled that I even have a very specific friend I can think of that says, yeah, that’s not my job. And I don’t, I don’t give a shit about somebody else’s family or kids. And I’m not paying taxes to take care of their kids or educate them. That’s my job to take care of my family. So I don’t care.

And I don’t care if it hurts their feelings and I don’t care if they’re homeless and I don’t care. And it was just like, Literally, I could feel brain cells exploding in my brain ground. I’ve never, Oh my gosh. And it’s somebody that is a friend of mine that it just,  I didn’t know that perspective existed, which was just complete naivety and ignorance on my side.

Which is Focus mountain, right? Cause it’s like, I even have the unconscious bias of like people have similar values, which for me, it’s, it’s about integrity. It’s about truth. It’s about learning and growth. So I’m always actually tuning in and super aware of, do I have an unconscious bias? Whereas other people are like, don’t care.

That’s it, Daniel. It’s so funny. What struck me when you said that, because I’m thinking about this example with a friend of mine and thinking about what you were just talking about. I remember this. I, I was. Lucky enough that I worked super hard during my master’s degree, worked overtime, like I was going full time master’s, working overtime, saving as much money as I could because I’d been working since I was 18 in the field, and I was saving money to go to Europe for a year.

And it was about month 7 when I was in Europe. And I was just, I was in a hostel. I can’t remember where I was at, even what country I was in. But I remember, you know, a guy walks into the hostel, you know, young guy like me walks in the hostel into the room and it’s like, you know, says some salutation in, in their language.

And I said, Oh, Hey, how are you doing? And I could hear my accent. I never thought I had an accent because I’m from the Pacific Northwest, but so every, most people believe they don’t have an accent,  you know, or there’s a Southern accent, but I could actually hear like, Oh my, I have an accent. I didn’t think that I thought I was the only one who speaks clearly,  with no accent, but when, as soon as I said that, it was like, I couldn’t stop, stop thinking about that for the next few days.

Like, Oh my gosh, I have an accent. I just. Heard it when I said, how you doing,  like there’s a cadence or there’s an accent to that. And I think it’s the same thing is when you’re so immersed in your own reality of truth or growth mindset or integrity, the way that we individually define it. And then you find your human mates that kind of resonate with that.

Then you think, okay, I’ve got other people out there that believe this and it really validates what I believe. Not knowing there’s another tribe somewhere who’s doing the same thing from a different belief or a different value set like that’s it makes sense when we say it, but when we look at daily operations, it’s mind boggling to us that it happens, even though it’s been happening since the dawn of, you know, human,  that there’s tribalism and there’s things that happen.

There’s different beliefs. And even within within groups, there’s infighting because there’s different beliefs or values and how those get, Actualized or, or people try to operationalize those. So why is it any wonder that, you know, in the U S our countries being split in half or globally, you can look at other countries that are being split in half by wars and religion because it’s been happening since there’s been humans.

So that ambivalence has existed and then it gets into how righteous am I going to get in my, get in my behavior in terms of how I approach these things that I have heartfelt, soul felt investments in that I believe with every fiber of my being and somebody believes 180 degrees the opposite of what I know in my every cell of my being to be true and then somebody believes that 180 degree opposite of that.

That is discombobulating. So what do we need to do? We need to be righteous. And what we’re talking around, it seems with the eight components of what seems to be most effective for helpful helpers in an effective psychotherapist, that book, it seems to be. The opposite of that is to, you could say, squelch or dissolve everything we’re talking about, depending on how you want to look at it, how you want to approach it,  active, passive to then surrender, suppress those sensations for what, right?

And I think this is the key is what’s our motive behind doing what we’re talking about. I want to, I want to parking lot that for a minute, just to. Respond to some things that you both brought up, but I do want to bring it back to like, why would we even go to the work of this? Right? Why would you try to remain humble when it feels a lot more comfortable and a lot more,  great in the moment to just let it rip, right?

With your feelings, your emotions. So why would we? I think that’s really important to get oriented to. I just want to comment as briefly as I can that, you know, Casey, you and I have talked about this a lot being egocentric. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Not egotistical per se, but centric, focused on our perspective. I still am very aware of this myself, a lot of my own, not growing up as much with,  focused on other people’s perspective and how I view the world.

But a lot of humans, we could say, I don’t know of a study to point to, have this way of viewing the world from their perspective. With that. Comes what you were talking about Danielle that I have biases. We all have biases and how we look at the world Well, we need to make sense of all this Otherwise, we’re going to be two or three year olds that everything is crazily different all the time And we have no way of operating in the world.

We have to have these frameworks of schema and learning a by product of these frameworks are going to be stereotypes are going to be un Irrational, less based in objective thinking things because we’re making quick decisions that serve us a lot of the time. And I’ll just point people to the book Thinking Fast, Thinking Slow by Daniel Kahneman and Amos, I can’t remember his last name.

But they show in a series of research how incredibly irrational we are as humans for how rational we want to think we are and basically how Maya Angelou’s quote of people won’t remember, you know, what you said necessarily or what you did. I’m paraphrasing, but they’ll remember how you made them feel.

Has wrong. So true in my life and seems to be so important is do I feel competent? We could bring in self determination theory. Do I feel like I relate to those people around me? Do I feel like I am right? Right? All these things we could bring in. And the more I feel those things, the more I feel hardened to me being right and you being wrong.

And it’s uncomfortable for me. To leave that. So why would I leave that? And that’s what I want to kind of bring up is we could get into the psychology of Dunning Kruger sunk cost implicit bias, which, by the way, if anyone wants to test those. University of Pennsylvania has a great series of tests you can go on there and I found mine and you can find yours and it’s all free that are validated.

 We can’t get rid of them completely and we have some that are will stay unconscious, but anyhow, I’ll just say, regardless of getting into all that minutia, that’s its own world. Why would we not just go with feeling good in those moments then? What’s the point to taking an MI or effective psychotherapist eight stage thing to all this?

Ah, there’s so many things I’m thinking.  So I’m gonna try to keep this on track. One of the things, I think one of the startling things to me is how much For being raised in psychology, you know, academically and, you know, really wanting to be a, I was obsessed with psychology and still am to an extent how much I’m drifting towards more physiology, biology, brain chemistry, neurology, because there’s such a hardwired aspect to those things, you know, the measurability of that.

Seems to be easier to measure to some extent than psychology.  So that’s just an overstatement, but that’s my brain is, the more data I get, the more information I lean that way. I, I love,   Lisa Barrett’s, you know, this whole new,  reality around trauma and the way the brain works is, you know, flipping things on its head because it’s not the triune brain concept.

So when you’re talking about this, John, it’s so much psychology that you’re talking about. And one thing that she said that just. My reset button is, is we all came from a gut on a stick in the water.  So it’s like we were a gut on a stick in the water and when things were going to consume us, we just retract it.

 And it’s like, Oh my God, I don’t know if there’s much different than that between this 2024 election in the United States.  A lot of us are just guts on a stick that just when something’s coming our way, that’s dangerous and we either want to eat it. Or, or we’re afraid it’s going to eat us, you know, and it’s like, so there’s psychology, but honestly, if we’re just a gut on a stick, it’s kind of somewhat of a survival mindset of, I need to put my, I need to mark my territory of who I am and what my identity is.

And then I need to assess who comes into my territory of, is it food or is it a predator?  So which is, that’s not psychology based, that is, that is, you know, biology,  survival based. That’s energy based. That’s a different mindset. The irony in that is, is that the basis of psychology? Are we putting all these human words around?

Ideas when the reality is, is that our neural network is set up in a way to try to think about how we’re maximizing energy and minimizing energy. So to get a certain interesting rush when we yell and scream and go off on someone, we get a brain boost. It gives it because that adrenaline rush gives us a sense of power and that power can come across to ourselves as a rock straight, a strong sense of righteousness.

So to try to tease these things out to me is just so fascinating because our brains are designed as a bank of withdrawal and deposits and because if you withdraw too much, you will die. It’s not that you’ll be poor, you will die. That’s our, that’s our physiology. That’s our biology. So you can’t shrink into your shell every time something comes by because the energy expenditure that that takes, if you do that consistently, you’re not taking in enough calorie count to sustain that.

So you have to start to discern what is true predator and what is true prey. And you have to start to pick that up. This is at the most basic cellular level of when things started to consume other things. So it’s so interesting when we start from that mindset and then start to look at psychology. It’s like, then we put all this psychobabble around it of all these different theories of that people are putting together, which aren’t inaccurate.

It’s just another way of defining. What our biological basis is, the research is extremely consistently explaining, and I’m going to just say for somebody driving around with maybe a flag in the back of their truck, ready to shoot somebody. If they don’t agree with them, is that really wildly different to the person that sees the person driving around with a flag in their truck?

 Like that, that’s, is that anemone, you know, in the ocean when something that comes by that could consume it?  You know, how do you, how do you assess threat? And this is again, the basis of trauma and trauma response. So it’s so interesting. We talk about this because I think it’s it’s for me. It’s almost more fun to talk about the political side and the psychological side and the emotional side.

But then there’s this other part of my brain now that’s becoming more educated in terms of, but is this all just word salad that justifies. Some things that are just basic biological survival mechanisms.  But now, since we do get food, air and water,  regularly, well, for me, probably too much food,  that since we have access to all of these things, then we have more time to get into the psychology and the interactions with each other because we’re not in just pure survival mode any longer.

And once we’re not just in pure survival mode, then we start to stake out a ground in terms of a belief system. And once we start to stake that out, then we’re gonna start fighting people for that belief system because we can expend more energy. So, and for me, this really does it is so consistent with how I feel about politics, how I, how I feel about, you know, things that are happening around the globe, but isn’t just a representation of me and the way that I’m seeing myself in the world and how I want to perceive myself to be while I’m walking on this planet at this period of time.

 Thank you for listening to the communication solution podcast with Casey Jackson and John Gilbert. As always, this podcast is about empowering you on your journey to change the world. So if you have questions, suggestions, or ideas, send them our way at Casey at IFIOC. com. That’s Casey@IFIOC.Com. For more information or to schedule a training, visit IFIOC.Com. Until our next communication solution podcast, keep changing the world.