E226: 라이언 카틀리지(Ryan Cartlidge) - "반려견 훈련에서 '우리 대 그들'의 사고방식 극복하기"

Speaking of all those learners and kind of your background and all that fun stuff, where did that all start? So how did you originally kind of get pulled into this crazy world of training and behavior? Well, I've always been into animals, even though when I was young, I wasn't allowed pets. Well, I had goldfish and I had mice, and they had to live kind of in the garage. My family weren't an animal family. In university, I got a parrot. And with all of those animals, I have both guilt and gratitude, like many people who don't know what they're doing, and they use what they know and what's familiar with us in society, and I think, unfortunately, that's aversive strategies to manage behavior. So I feel sorry for them having to deal with young Ryan, but I'm grateful now in reflection because I learned a lot from them. And then I started to volunteer in zoos around 2007 after going to university and doing a bit of traveling, and I landed a job in Keynes, Australia, in the tropical North Queensland, very close to, oh, it's just the most, it's my favorite place in the world. I think I can say that. The Daintree Rainforest. I'd go visit the Daintree Rainforest and see cassowaries. If you don't know what a cassowary is, it's a bird that stands nearly as tall as me. I'm nearly two meters tall. They've got bright blue and bright red necks. There's a massive horn on the top of their head and daggers on their feet that they can kick really hard and cause some serious damage. I'd see tree kangaroos. That's kangaroos that live in trees, hopping around, and musky rat kangaroos. Kangaroos the size of a rat that used to follow us through the forest, and snakes, and crocodiles, and these ancient rainforests. But there was a zoo up there where I landed a job in an educational show setting with free flight birds. And there's two kind of birds that really shifted everything. And the reason I think I'm sat here talking to you today, they pulled me in and I was hooked on positive reinforcement training. So the first one was a wedge-tailed eagle, which is one of the largest species of eagle in the world. Two-meter wings band, massive talons on their feet, big beaks. The feet are the things that can do a lot of damage, though. And this particular wedge-tailed eagle, Reg, he wanted to use him to do damage on me. Oh, no. I could work with Reg in our arena area, and he would do trained behaviors for me cooperatively, and I could talk about him and have him on my glove. But as soon as I went into his holding area, he would fly on my face with his talons out. And I didn't know what to do.

The people at the organization I was working at didn't know what to do. So I traveled. I went to Taronga Zoo in Sydney. I met someone called Nick Bishop and Peter Clark. And they helped, specifically Nick Bishop, helped me learn about positive reinforcement. And using all of the tools that we love so much, we shaped Reg to, by chucking mouse legs, every time I walked past his holding space, I'd throw him a mouse leg and then slowly crack the door open and throw a mouse leg on the ground and run away as fast as I could if he stayed on the perch. And we got to the stage after a couple of months where he was voluntarily stepping onto my glove and I could play with his feet and put some equipment on him that he needed for flying. And then I just had the most amazing relationship with this animal after that. We got a video of Reg the wedge sitting on a perch and I would walk up to him and put my hands under his wings and give him this big scratch and he would roll his talons up on the perch and lean into me. And so much so that if I stepped away, he would fall off the perch. They're big. Wedge-tailed eagles, in my experience, they love tactile engagement. And this bird was no exception. And we used to spend specifically, intentionally spend time every day with him, giving him that tactile attention. Nick also introduced me to a trainer called Steve Martin that owns a company called Natural Encounters Incorporated in Florida. And through Steve and through Nick, I was introduced to Susan Friedman and I took her Living and Learnings with Animal course. And then in a story I like to call Gaining Wisdom by Removing Wisdom, I was sat in the dentist office about to get my wisdom teeth removed. And I had Susan Friedman's functional assessment and intervention design form in front of me. And I went through it with a situation we had at the zoo with Security the magpie goose. Security was another bird that was demonstrating behaviors one might label as aggressive, flying at people's heads, stabbing at their boots. A little bit less intimidating than a wedge-tailed eagle. But if you've ever come into confrontation with a goose, they can hold their own. And so I did Susan's functional assessment and intervention design. And before I go on, I should say that euthanasia was being thrown around as a solution for this animal. It was that bad. But we then, after having done the functional assessment and intervention design, implemented some station training, modified his enclosure, and played around with the daily routine of this animal. And within a few weeks, he was manageable. And so it was life-changing for me.

And that's why I say I gained wisdom by getting my wisdom removed. Because I remember, I remember sat in the dentist office and, you know, life's never really been the same since then. I was empowered and I haven't stopped. First of all, a couple of things to go back through there. I love that your parents wouldn't let you have pets, but they let you have mice. I don't think that's, that's like not the line most parents would draw. I don't think they, they, they, uh, I think I just came home with mice one day. I don't think, I don't think I even asked them. And they're like, they're living in the garage. Um, yeah. Yeah, that's pretty funny. But then, um, the, the second thing I wanted to comment on there was, uh, you make working with birds sound super appealing. It sounds like working with a melon walk constantly. Oh, look, I'm a bird nerd at heart. Uh, yeah. Yeah. I've worked with a huge array of different species, uh, across continents and, and in different organizations. Uh, and when you're, when you're working with a bird, uh, you, and, and you're free flying it. I mean, it's, you know, the world is, is this oyster, uh, and, and it's, it can go at any time. Um, so you really have to build those relationships up and you really have to have trust. Um, and I was lucky enough in 2013, I think, uh, to go to Nepal and meet a guy called Scott Mason who paraglides with his birds. Um, so we, we went up, you know, hundreds of meters in the air with his Egyptian vultures, uh, flying with him. And like that, that to this day is probably one of the coolest things I've ever done, uh, to be flying with after having trained him. Um, and so my love and my passion of birds and appreciation of them. Yeah. It's, uh, it, it's something that I'm, that. It's not all them flying at your heads with talent. They are some of my favorites situations because, because, because of the wisdom I gained back then and the empowerment that it's given us. And, and, you know, the rats never wrong. They're flying at our heads for a reason. And, um, we have the tools to, to, to help them and, and their human, uh, learning partners be successful. So I like them all talents flying at my head or not. I love them all. It shows a really extreme example of how much you can change behavior with a little bit of proper application of training. Right. Absolutely. Uh, and yeah, that, that, that, it just completely sucked me in. I mean, I just, I saw results immediately. And what I also saw was the things I was being told to do that, to do before I learned from Susan, from Nick, from Steve wasn't, weren't working. And that was really clear to me.

So if that's where you started out, right. That's a little different, at least my understanding of what you're doing day to day now. So do you want to talk a little bit about how you got from there to running animal training academy, um, and kind of what your days kind of look like today? Yeah. Yeah. Uh, yeah, that was, that was 2007, eight, nine, 10. I was in Cairns. Uh, uh, then I traveled, I went to Canada, uh, worked in a facility that had, I can't even remember hundreds of birds of prey. Uh, and then we went, I went from doing wildlife shows and free flight shows with audiences of 20, 30 people to 700 people, um, flying condors and falcons, dropping falcons out of hot air balloons and like just madness stuff. Um, and then going to the state fair of Texas in the U S with natural encounters and Steve Martin's company, we, and they had a trained behavior. They dropped a birds out of a Ferris wheel at the state fair of Texas. Uh, and they used to fly down over an audience size of thousands of people, um, and land on a presenters club on stage and just these opportunities to do these insanely cool, um, behaviors and working these shows overseas, uh, and in different teams, uh, and, and see how different teams operate. I remember when I was at Dallas working with natural encounters and, and they used to have the, the show kind of start abruptly and, and without really being aware of it, a bird would come soaring through the audience and kind of come and land on Steve's glove on stage. Uh, and they, and, and so they didn't want people walking in a certain area just before that happened because then they might get a, uh, a hog smashed them in the head. Right. As you can see, I'm getting cat kisses right now as I'm trying to tell this story. Um, and, and they, and the, the team used to say, Hey, so up until that point, it'll be like, we, we always had to do those kinds of things. You had to manage the flow of humans when you had birds flying around. Uh, and, and up until that point, I'd always kind of said, Hey, can you stop? Can you stop here? Cause we don't want you to get hit in the head, but to see the team at natural encounter say, Hey, like here you, you are in a perfect spot right now. Cause you have this opportunity to get this awesome closeup view of this bird. So if you, if you stand right here, you're just going to see this amazing thing happen just right here. And I was like, what do you want them to do instead rather than what do you not want them to do? And like to, to get this opportunity to work in these teams that really understood the

science and applied it across the organization, uh, was, uh, with people. Yeah. With people. Exactly. Yeah. It was, uh, I'll never forget that. That was a really eyeopening to me. Then I landed back in New Zealand because of family reasons. Uh, I met wifey Sapphire and we moved down to Queenstown in New Zealand, which is on the South Island of New Zealand. It's a ski resort town and there's a little bird park there and they have this, uh, they fly New Zealand native birds around. Uh, and whilst I was there, I met a friend from high school who was also living in the same area and he had this online business teaching people how to tune high performance cars. And he's like, Ryan, you do all this animal training stuff. You could make a course. I have the studio doing, what are you doing tonight? So I went over there and we recorded this animal training course, uh, called animal training 101 and something like that. I can't even remember. And we stuck it online, uh, and people brought it and I'm like, what, what is this thing? Uh, and then we had to come back to Wellington where I am now, where my family is, uh, where to return here. And I'd already worked at Wellington Zoo and I knew that I didn't want to just work in a, in the zoological organization without being in a specific training role. That was my passion. Uh, and, and I, they didn't really have anything like, they didn't have a position like that at the time. So I didn't really know what I was going to do when I went back to Wellington. Uh, I started to study business. I started to study resource management, uh, and, and considered a change of career. Uh, and it was my friend Ben who owned that high performance car online business. Who's like, dude, don't go to university. And I was like, why? He's like, man, like, why? Like, because you could, all of that information you get from university, you could find for free online. If you try hard enough, you can find it for free and therefore you can still learn and you could spend all that money that you're going to spend on university on building this business. Um, and that, that just made sense to me. Uh, and so I decided that I was unemployable. Meaning that I could get a job. I just wasn't going to take one. Uh, much of the stress of my wife and my, my family at the time. Um, but I just relentlessly tried to learn. Uh, there's a big difference between learning about marketing and a university paper and implementing marketing. I learned that pretty quickly. Uh, but I, but I had a trust in the science about behavior.

Uh, and I had a growth mindset of continuously learning from both successes and failures. Uh, and I just, I mean, what you see in animal training academy now as a result of a lot of failure. It's not, it's that, that's why I'm here. Cause I was okay to fail time and time again. Uh, and so now my day looks like doing things like this. Um, and, and podcast interviews, huh? Yeah. Well, I'm working in closely with, uh, Veronica Patelli from dog biz at the moment. And she's really helping me, um, get this thing I've created into a manageable, um, workable thing that's going to, uh, serve me and our family and all of our, our members and our audience. Uh, because it was at the end of last year, probably not manageable. I burned out pretty badly. Um, but we've, we've hired some people with, she's taught me about scheduling. I say no to pretty much all of the things now, uh, and, uh, we've seen massive change in six months. So that the failing continues, uh, and, and just different kinds, right? I fail with more knowledge than I did before, but I still fail. I fail forward. Yeah. I like that phrase fail forward. So when we did our kind of pre-chat before, um, hopping on to, to do the real podcast, interview today, um, I know you mentioned, and you kind of mentioned it in passing just now, this, this idea of like mindset and kind of techniques that you've been working on, um, for yourself around navigating difficult conversations. Right. And I don't think it's a surprise to anybody listening that the dog training world, heck the world overall in general right now, it gets events to feel like a super divisive place, right? Super us versus them. So I want to talk about that and dive into that stuff a little bit, because I think it's super valuable, you know, what really causes people to kind of fall into that us versus them mindset. And then, you know, why is that a bad thing? Why, why is falling into that place something that actually holds us back? Well, my thoughts are going to be sporadic here and they're likely going to jump around a bit. So, um, I express gratitude at advanced to everyone, uh, for sticking with me and then hopefully we can, uh, give some value in all of us jumping around. Um, I can't actually answer your question or fact. I'm not that knowledgeable, but I, but I'm definitely opinionated and I have many of them. So I'm willing to offer them. Um, so with regards to mindset, uh, when, when I think about mindset and when, and we talk about mindset a lot with an animal training academy, uh, there's a book by a lady called Carol Dweck. And, and that book is called the growth mindset.

Uh, and the growth mindset is all about looking at a situation, uh, and knowing that you can learn and you can grow. And, uh, there's always opportunities. A fixed mindset is I'm fixed. My traits are fixed. My knowledge is fixed. I can't, I can't change. Therefore, I'm not going to try. And, and they're two very different things. There's a whole book about it. I just explained it in like 20 seconds. It doesn't do it justice. Um, so growth mindset, I read years and years ago when I first started ATA, uh, cause it was recommended on a marketing podcast. Um, we did some episodes on the growth mindset with Dr. Afir Fredericks, uh, who works for a growth mindset company in the U S and now is, um, a professor at a university over there teaching some of this stuff. And it, it, and it's something I always wanted to create, but it's not really dog training related or animal training related. Right. But like it has hit a nerve with our audience. Uh, every it's, we did a book club on it and an ATA in the ATA membership. Uh, it, it comes up so often in web classes. We do now guests mention it and I constantly get feedback about how it's been one of the most meaningful episodes we've done for our audience. Um, so once again, there's a whole book on that, but when I talk about growth, when I talk about mindset, that's what I'm talking about, the growth mindset. Uh, and, and that's going to come up probably, uh, quite a bit as I, as I share more with you and you ask some of the questions you've sent through to me. Um, and when we talk about conversations, uh, there's a book called crucial conversations, uh, by a host of authors and I can never remember all of them, but the company's called vital smarts. Uh, you have asked the question, navigating difficult conversations. I'm going to reframe that a little bit, um, and, and label them as crucial conversations because the book crucial conversations. And by the way, I don't have any IP for any of this stuff. All of the IP belongs to vital smarts. Um, so all credit goes to them for, for the ideas that come from that text that I'm sharing today. Uh, but the book defines crucial conversations as happening when three things are occurring. Uh, the, the stakes of the conversation are high. Opinions vary and emotions run strong. So once again, stakes of the conversation are high opinions, vary and emotions run strong. So those three elements are present. Uh, and you can literally ask yourself that, Hey, I'm about to have this conversation. Uh, the stakes high. Am I emotional about this as, as animal trainers, we often are, right?

I was going to say that never happens in the dog world. Never. We never have those three things come together. That's, I mean, like I say, I can't answer your question, but I can be your opinion. I think that because we're, we're so invested in it and we care so much about it, uh, there's always emotion there. And I, and I think that contributes to, um, the way we decide to frame things in our minds, um, and who we are and who, who, who we identify as, uh, and, and how that might be different than what we see in others. One of three things happens when you enter a crucial conversation. You either handle it really well, uh, or you shut down and you don't say anything because it's just too hard, uh, or you get communicatively aggressive. You use sarcasm, you raise your voice, you yell, you become mean, you talk behind other people, you talk behind people's backs. Um, so one of those three things, I'm going to hazard a guess that a number of people fall into those last two categories, including myself. By the way, I'm getting much better, much better year after year at falling into category one, but I'm far from perfect. Sometimes it's too hard and I shut down and sometimes I find myself being sarcastic. I'm a sarcastic person and every, and I notice it a lot and I'm like, the reason that we're not talking about the important thing right now is because I'm feeling unsafe and so I'm using sarcasm. Um, so I think this has relevance for, for people falling into an us versus them mentality. Are we handing these conversations well? Now I, as you have mentioned, and as we've talked about, I have the pleasure of just doing this every week. Uh, and, and so where you, you guys, uh, this is episode 226. I think you, you told me like that. Awesome. Congratulations. That's so cool. Yeah. Um, thank you. We're about to release episode 150. Uh, and, and as with you, I'm sure there have been kind of just conversations that you jump on to have with someone and they say something that just resonates with you and changes how you think about all of the things. Yeah. Um, absolutely. And so there's two, there's two that I think are relevant to this conversation. Uh, one was with, one was with Steve White. I had a conversation with Steve White. Uh, and the other one was with Laura Van Aarren Dongpa. And they were both talking about being at conferences, uh, and someone being up in front of them and doing something with a dog. And there's one Steve White saw and he went, well, you know, that's them and we're us. You know, they're, they're, they're doing, they are doing it that way.

And Steve said the person next to him just went, hmm, I wonder why that person did that. And Steve was like, whoa, it's so different than how I was just looking at that situation. Yeah. And Laura talks about being at a conference. And so they talk about this in the ATA podcast episodes. I'm happy repeating it because you can go and listen to them say it as well. And in those, in their ATA episodes, but she was sitting next to someone at a conference and she said she had been sitting next to this person for days. And there was someone up in front of them training their dog. And this person did something that you might label as, uh, different than how you might do it. And this person jumped up and said, see, I told you they weren't force free. And Laura's like, wait, you've been sat here the whole time just waiting for something to like prove your story that this person is this, is they. Um, and so I think how, how, you know, how crucial conversations to growth mindset, um, and, and that they are two beautiful examples of different ways of looking at the same situation. And I think the books we've talked about for me, um, have, have contributed greatly to my understanding and my application of, and, and being inspired by our podcast guests have contributed greatly to my understanding and application of how, of how I manage it personally. Um, so what, what I think causes us to, to get silent or violent to shut down or get communicatively aggressive, uh, is a reinforcer that I think we're all familiar with and working with canines and that is safety. Uh, and I have an animal related example to share with you if it's helpful. So years and years ago, before I got this job in Cairns, I was living on this property doing wildlife rehabilitation. And we had this little Australian magpie bird brought into us, you know, who probably are a couple of weeks old, unable to defend for itself. Uh, we called this bird Buddy, uh, and our hand raised Buddy. And, uh, we taught Buddy to, we didn't need to teach him, he's a magpie, but, uh, we, we helped facilitate building his flight muscles and giving him opportunities to learn how to fly. And because we were living on this big property, it was a cattle property. So there was one house and next house was like very, very far away, but it was kangaroos everywhere and wombats and you name it. We had all sorts of things. And we just released Buddy. And so Buddy would hang out on the property and hang out in the kitchen with us. He would come into the house, uh, follow me around everywhere.

Come when we ate lunch outside, he would come and like lie on his back and get tickled his belly. Uh, and Buddy also eventually caught the attention of, uh, the wild magpies that lived in the area. Uh, and these birds would have given an opportunity, uh, share with Buddy how they felt about Buddy being there. Um, so they would chase Buddy and, and, and get, if they could, they'd get Buddy on the ground and stab them with their beaks. So Buddy hung out with us for safety and I, and I remember that we were standing down the paddock one day, far away from the house, doing something with the cattle. And you just hear the screeching and you see this flashes of black and white, just screaming towards you. Buddy's at the front being chased by three or four magpies. Buddy sweeps in, lands on my shoulder and these other three magpies, three or four magpies land up in a tree near us and just look at us and scream. And, and Buddy comes to us because he's reinforced by, by that safety. He's just, he's just added humans to his environment and, and now he's removed the other magpies. And so I'm always conscious when I'm talking to someone, uh, I actually visualize this. If I see that safety has been breached for myself, that feels like an increased heart rate, shallow breaths, sweaty palms, cloudy thoughts. I actually visualize Buddy on my shoulder. I'm like, Buddy's here, Buddy's here. I'm looking for safety right now. Or if I see it in the other person, if they start using sarcasm or if they raise their voice, start talking faster, get more animated. I'm like, oh, Buddy's here as well. Hey, Buddy. Thanks. Thanks, Buddy. And, and, and so I use Buddy's presence, um, as a cue to, to tell me that, um, we're about to, we're about to have a challenging conversation. And, and I think that's always present in an us versus them mentality. Um, yeah, so that's, that's, that's what I've thought about when you've asked that question. I'm not sure if it's answered your question, um, but happy to. Yeah. I think it, I think it definitely answers the first piece of that. Right. And I think it sort of hints at the second piece of that about how, you know, we all lose out when we let ourselves fall into that us versus them mindset. Right. Like who knows what Buddy could have taught those other magpies if like they'd been open to change. Right. Yeah. Um, I'm sure Buddy had some real advantages because he hung out with you and food was probably a little bit easier and shelter was probably a little bit easier and right. There are lots of good things he got from that and they missed out on it because. Yeah. It wasn't part of them.

They could have come and hung out with us. We would have welcomed that. Yeah. And I think that's such a valid point. I think, well, I think what you said is really valid. Like if, if we have that fixed mindset, I mean, if, if we're like us and them, we're kind and, and we behave in ways that are communicatively aggressive or, or we just don't engage because it's too hard to engage. Then yeah, we miss opportunities to learn about ourselves and about the others. Um, now what the book crucial conversation teaches you is that when Buddy enters the conversation, when you notice safety is at risk, increased heart rate, sweaty palms, shallow breath, whatever it is for you as an individual. And, or, or if you notice that the person you're talking to stops talking, folds their arms, crosses their legs or starts talking faster, louder, gets more animated. Okay. Okay. Cool. Buddy's here. Buddy's here. Cool. Thank you, buddy. Thanks for showing up. Uh, and, and it cues some new behaviors for you. And, and, and those behaviors for me often the behavior is to say, Hey, I can see we're trying to force our opinions on each other. Let's, um, I'm committed to staying in this conversation until we find a solution that works for us, but let's just take a break for now. My understanding of the physiology of that is blood leaves your brain, goes to your muscles. You get ready to fight or to run away. And that's the worst time. That's the worst time to be trying to have some of these conversations. Um, so, so often it cues taking a break, literally moving yourself and giving your body time to go back to home in a status, let your blood go back into your brain. Um, but then the next step is to ask a series of questions, uh, to try to challenge some of your preconceived ideas or thoughts or frames of reference. Uh, and there's a whole host of questions, but one of them is why would a reasonable, so let's say you see someone using an aversive strategy and you're like them, there they are. If you ask the question, why would a reasonable and rational person do what this person is doing? Why would a reasonable and rational person do what this person is doing? Now, I would once again, hazard to guess that's not in the repertoire of a lot of people to ask that question in these situations. And it is a hard question. It's a hard question. And it's a controversial question. I share this question every six months or so in our paid community. I just put a post up. I'm like, Hey, think about this. Think about a challenging situation and think about this.

And it, and it, I, I think every time I've shared it, it's got, um, responses from people that don't like it or they find it offensive or they find it hard. Um, at the end of the day though, it's just a question and, and it's okay. It's okay. If the answer to that question is, I don't think they're reasonable and rational. If that's the answer, then you're going to be really challenged to have a conversation with them. That's going to have mutual purpose. Um, so acknowledging that's important. And sometimes I, I acknowledge that. Um, but I also feel like if you could understand every single book someone's read, every single movie they've watched, every single location they've traveled to and had a holiday, every single relationship they've had, every single time they've hurt someone, every single time they've been hurt, every time they've been loved, every, every relationship that's gone, that they've had for 20 years, every relationship that's gone South and they don't talk to that person anymore, who their parents were, what their upbringing was like, what their jobs have been, how they were treated in those jobs. If you understood all of that stuff about people, even if at the end of that, you were like, I still don't really agree with it. You would understand it more. So, so an example of that is there's this program called Jenny Doyle comes to stay. Uh, and we literally watched this two days ago. And she goes to these, these families that might be viewed as them and she stays with them. And she tries to understand them. And so she went and stayed with a Mormon family. Uh, now that for me is something that I don't know much about. Uh, and I, and I can form judgments when I see it and I, and I don't have a problem with it, but I might say, I see how if, uh, if I was to do that, I would be sacrificing these parts of my life because they choose not to based on their faith and their religion to have these things. And I don't understand that. And it's easy to judge that, but she, Jenny Doyle was asking them about this. And this guy had a big beard. He, he, he was quite large. And she's like, what, how do you feel about this? And he, he shared, they had like seven children that one of them was a stillborn at seven months and that he feels that she ascended straight to heaven and that it changed their entire life. And they think they believe, and, and, and maybe they're true. I'm not, I'm not anyone to say that they're not right. That when they die, they're going to ascend to heaven and they're going to be a family again. And the path to get there is true.

This through their religion and their faith and adhering to it. And now without that, with that information, I can be like, man, if I had a stillborn, I would likely do the same. If I thought there was a way I could be with my daughter again. You know, I know when my dad died, like that was kind of like, you know, you question, like, I kind of hope that there is, cause I'm not a religious person. I'm not saying that I'm right or wrong. But I kind of hope there is. And so I tell that story because what Jenny Doyle's program does so beautifully is help you understand where these people are coming from in a nonjudgmental way. But you don't know if you don't ask. And I think with the magpies, if we take that time, if we ask ourselves the question, why would a reasonable and rational person do this? And we don't know, then that's our starting point. You know, trying to understand the other person's perspective, not trying to force our opinion on them, but trying to understand. So how do we fall into an us versus them mindset? I think quality questions, and this is an Anthony Robbins quote, quality questions create a quality life. And I think by asking the right questions, it can help us break out of that and find the information that we need. And by, I also believe that every single person is my superior, every single person, and so much as I can learn something from them. Everyone knows something that I don't. So what can we lose? How can it hold us back? I think just a limitless number of learning opportunities. Man, that got deep. Okay. That is even back out. Thank you for bringing a big laugh. I like to... I was getting emotional. Yeah. So I mean, yeah. So I think, you know, we kind of were talking about, you know, questions and stopping and taking the break and, you know, thinking about, you know, where is this person coming from and thinking about why they're doing what they're doing. I can see how all of that would help us stop from falling into that super defensive place, right? Are there any other, you know, really kind of specific skills or techniques or tips that we can apply when we... Obviously, like the first step is just to recognize when you're going to that place, right? When Buddy's showing up. Absolutely. Which is hard enough in and of itself. Yeah. You know, do you have any other kind of concrete tips that people can use to kind of keep themselves into a productive mindset? Absolutely. Absolutely. And so the Crucial Conversation book calls Learn to Look. And it's a skill that I'm constantly learning about on a regular basis. So learn to look when your heart starts racing.

Learn to notice in yourself when you're starting to feel unsafe in a conversation. For one, and learn to look when the other person is starting to feel unsafe in a conversation. Increase heart rates, increase speech volume and speed in others, cloudy thoughts in yourself, sweaty palms, whatever they are for you. I know my internal behaviors very well. They're personal. No one else can experience them. But I know when I'm... But I don't always catch myself because I'm so emotional sometimes. Aren't we all? Yeah. And it's a beautiful... Emotions. I'm so grateful for my emotions. I think some of the most challenging emotions I have are there and they can help provide such massive opportunities for growth and learning and they do frequently. So that's the first thing. The second thing is, so Buddy shows up. It's Ryan's way of saying that. Buddy's here. I hate Buddy. I love Buddy so much. So I'm always grateful when Buddy's there. And then to start the book, what the book calls Start With Heart. And once again, all IP goes to Vital Smarts for all of this stuff. So starting with heart is a bunch of questions. And why would a reasonable and rational person do what this person is doing? It's not part of the Start With Heart set of questions, but it's one of many questions that I ask myself. Start With Heart ones are specific. From Ryan's interpretation of what Vital Smarts teaches. And they are, what do I want from this conversation? Because reinforcers shift so quickly. What I want now is to stay safe. That's when the heart starts raising and you start raising your voice. But is that what... Did you enter this conversation going, I'm going to go talk to Melissa because I want to stay safe? So reinforcers shift during a conversation. So remind yourself, what are you actually trying to achieve here? What is the thing that you want out of this conversation? Then the second question is, what does Melissa want? What does the other person want? What is my understanding of what they want? The third thing is, what don't I want? What don't I want to happen in this conversation? And the fourth thing is, what do I want for this relationship? If you want a good relationship, if that is part of what you want, then it's really important to be conscious of those reinforcers shifts. And be thinking about what you're actually talking about and what the other person wants as well. And what you don't want to happen. So there are a number of questions from a huge range of questions that I immediately ask. Those are the ones that I try to process on the spot. If I need to. Because sometimes you can't just leave.

Time away is important, as you said. There's a whole host of other questions as well, like I mentioned. Thinking about, so if you have more time to think about it. So you've noticed that Buddy's there. Hey, Buddy, thanks for showing up. He's sitting on your shoulder. You're like, hey, look, we're just trying to force our opinions on each other. Let's take a break. And you go away. You ask these questions. Other ones are trying to think of a mutual purpose. Ask yourself, does this person think I respect them? Does this person trust me? Does this person... Because if you don't have mutual purpose, respect, and trust, if that person doesn't trust you, and you're saying something, it goes through the filter of this person's trying to manipulate me. I don't trust what they're saying. So if you doubt there's trust, respect, and mutual purpose there, that's your starting point. Don't even talk about all of the things you need to talk about. Talk about your trust. Because if you don't have that, then it's a challenging space moving forward. So how do we get trust? We build our trust accounts up. We know about that. We add reinforcers into the conversation. We build on our relationship, just like we do with dogs. Often, you know, when we're working with a challenging animal, whether it be a canine, a bird, or whatever, in this situation, a human, before we start training them, we have to build a relationship up with them. They have to know that we're a provider of predictable and pleasant events. I think we skip that step a lot with humans. It has to start with relationships. So just drop everything and just go and have a coffee with that person. And have a laugh. Put your differences aside. Don't talk about dog training. Talk about each other. Get to know them. And then truly being focused on mutual purpose. So I said to Melissa I was going to give a recent example. And that is we recently, due to burnout last year, hired some staff. And Rose is amazing. And I've asked Rose if I can talk about this, and she said it's okay. So this is quite a recent example. Rose is also exploring the possibility of becoming a personal trainer. And she was very open with us when she first took on this role that she was doing that. And eventually, she would like to take some clients on. And it was starting to influence, impact on her ability to do her job for Animal Training Academy. She then, on top of that, got offered a new opportunity, which was going to require even more resources from her. And she came up with a plan to say, here's how I'm going to manage everything in ATA. And we basically said no.

Because we are worried about you, Rose. We think that your resources don't match your thoughts about what you can achieve. And we want what's best for you and your family. And we don't think this is it. And as a company, our values mean that we prioritize self-care and mental health. And we think by saying yes to this, we'd be compromising our values as a company. So she resigned so she could take on this other role. However, I didn't want her to resign. I didn't want to lose Rose. And Rose also didn't want to go. So there was a lot of emotion in that conversation. What I wanted as well for ourselves was to keep our weekends that we just started for the first time in six years, two full days off a week now. And I didn't want to burn out again. I didn't want Rose to burn out. But I wanted Rose to stay. And I wanted, and Rose wanted to stay. Rose had read Crucial Conversations. She'd only heard about it. She'd been with us six months. She'd already read it. She'd already started to practice it. And that's why I wanted Rose to stay. I was like, look at this great mindset that sat right in front of me. There's no way you're leaving. And so we could frame a conversation under Crucial Conversations. And we continuously said to each other, I'm dedicated to stay in this conversation until we find a solution that works for both of us. Rose withdrew her resignation last week. And so she's still on the same employment contract. She's still an employee of ours. But our lawyer drafted a variation of employment agreement. So we changed a number of pieces in a way that really works for Rose. And we can support her in her personal training endeavors. And we also can benefit from the relationship moving forward. And it does mean we've hired someone else as well. But I think we've actually come out the end of it better than at the start. Now, I could have really easily got angry at Rose and say she let me down. But when we went into conversations with Rose, I had my computer open and I had what I wanted, what she wanted, what I wanted for her, what I think she wanted, what we didn't want, and what I wanted for the relationship. And I just consistently, every time I started talking, I repeated those things. And I said, hey, man, like, you know, I've been in an employment situation where I wanted to leave as well. And I wasn't as respectful as you have been in telling me. And so, like, you know, this isn't about you. This is just about you sign an employment agreement. You're entitled to resign at any time with three weeks notice. And you're doing it respectfully. And I've been there. Everyone's been there.

And so, mutual purpose. True, true, not just saying mutual purpose. Like, living mutual purpose and really having mutual purpose be the goal. Back to Anthony Robbins. He talks about quality questions. It was life-changing for me learning about that because if you ask yourself a question and there's an unfinished loop, so you have the question but you don't have the answer, your brain will find an answer. TV programs use cliffhangers. You know, they leave it open. And you know what that feels like? I need to know what happens. Your brain's the same. This has been my experience. I'm not a neuroscientist. This is, in fact, this is just Ryan talking. If you ask the question and you keep asking and you keep asking, your brain will come up with the answer. So, I can say that I'll work towards mutual purpose with full confidence that I will. And to do that with Rose was an absolute pleasure. And we came out of there with a high trust account, I think. Then we went into it. The other thing is to treat yourself as a learner, I think. And to do this in a really specific way. And that way is to use a rubric designed by dog trainer Sarah Owings. Now, if you don't know what a rubric is, because I didn't know what a rubric was when she first used that word for me. It's defined as an evaluation tool or set of guidelines used to promote the consistent application of learning expectations, learning objectives, or learning standards. Now, we're harsh on ourselves, man. If there's an aggressive or reactive dog in front of us, we don't blame the dog. We do a functional assessment. We look at the environment. We put in a shaping plan of small approximations. We find the reinforcers. And off we go. If we are reactive, like we can really beat ourselves up. So Sarah's rubric has three main parts. And they are, what did I just do that I liked? What did my learning partner, in the case of a crucial conversation, your learning partner would be the person you were talking to? In the case of your dog training, it would be your dog. And so I'm going to actually reframe that first question. What did I just approximate that I really liked? And the language is really important here. What did my learning partner just approximate that I really liked? And what is one small thing I can change for next time? Or in Ryan's words, what's one small piece that I can build on my awesome source for next time? So even in a hard conversation, if you really sit down and ask that question, you can find something you did that you want to repeat again in the future. A reinforceable behavior from yourself.

And then you can also from the other person as well. I've never not been able to find something they did that I liked. No matter how emotional I was at the time. And then make a small change. We have to remember, I think, that we are earthlings. Behavior works the same for all earthlings. We need approximations ourselves. Mary Hunter said at Clicker Expo this year, making it easy isn't cheating. Sometimes I think our expectations on ourselves are so big. But really, to respect ourselves as a learner on planet earth, we have to give ourselves small approximations. And then we have to celebrate them when we achieve them. So asking great questions, treating yourself as a learner, time away, and really being dedicated to the mutual purpose and building relationships. Okay. So if that's what we can do on our end, right? Like how we control our own behavior and, you know, kind of structure the conversation on our part, there's still this other person involved, right? And not all of us are lucky enough to have somebody awesome like Rose who's already read the book, who already kind of understands the game plan, who's opted in to what it is we want to talk about and the way that we want to handle the conversation. So are there things that we can do, you know, when we're having these kind of crucial conversations, is there a way that we can help keep our partner feeling safe to hopefully help keep them in a better headspace? Are there things that we can do to avoid a situation where, for lack of a better phrase, because we're all dog trans, we're reinforcing behaviors from them that we don't actually want to see? Yeah. Right? How do we kind of manage that? I think it takes vulnerability and courage. If we're in a space where after listening to this or reading the book Crucial Conversations, we start to see Buddy entering the picture more with regards to our own safety. We notice that we stop talking because it's too hard, or we raise our voice or we interrupt and we button when the other person's talking. That's all signs that Buddy's there and we're feeling unsafe. So if we start to notice that, I think that's how is that going to be interpreted by the other person? Are they going to feel safe with our communicative styles when we're doing that? You know, sometimes if we stop talking, it means that we're just going to let people do what they want, which might make them feel safe. The whole point of Crucial Conversations, though, is really a win-win. Like, I could have said yes to Rose to do this thing, but it would have been a disadvantage to us. It's not what we wanted in an employee either.

So mutual purpose is all about win-win for yourself. And so mutual purpose isn't about saying, oh yeah, cool, that person got what they wanted, I'll just take this little sacrifice over here, and I'll lose out a little bit. That's not what mutual purpose is. Mutual purpose is you win, I win, and dedicated to being in that conversation. So for them, they might feel unsafe, and I'm not really answering your question here, but I'm getting to it. So we can respect them. We can listen. We can seek first to understand. So you can do things like repeat. You can say, can I just repeat back to you what you just told me just to make sure that I understood everything properly? That is going to just be like, oh yeah, absolutely. Like, two things are going to happen there. You're going to repeat back to them what they just told you, and they're going to be like, yeah, you got it. They're like, wow, that person listened to me. Most of the time, they're going to be like, no, no, that's not quite what I meant. Or yes, and this other thing as well. So you're just putting deposits and trust again. You're building trust there. You're building respect, and you can say things like, okay, cool. So once again, let me just check that I've understood. Here's what you're saying. I have some thoughts. Is there anything else you'd like to add before I talk? And so I think listening is probably one of the biggest things, getting curious, making sure you understand that perspective before offering yours. And the other thing that requires vulnerability and bravery is changing your own behavior. And once again, remember, do it in small approximations. But how that looks for me now and how that looked in my conversation with Rose last week, by the way, my heart was racing when Rose walked in that door. Because she had come to our home, to my office. The day before that, she had emailed me her resignation. And here she was in front of me now, and we had to talk about this. And at that time, I didn't have the solution that we eventually came up with. That took more time and more thinking and more question asking. But in that conversation with Rose, and it was probably one of the most important and well-managed crucial conversations I've ever done in my entire life. And I read Crucial Conversations over a decade ago now, and I've been practicing it since, and I haven't found a situation where it hasn't pushed the situation forward in a positive way. A crucial conversation doesn't solve problems. It's just an approximation towards improving the situation. What I did with Rose was repeat every time, here's what I want.

Here's what I want for you. And at the start, I said, here's what I think you want out of this conversation, Rose. Am I correct? And I was. So pretty much every time I spoke, I repeated those things. Here's what I want. Here's what I don't want. Here's what I want for you. It's really important that we work on this mutual purpose that we've established. So I think those things are the things that I employ to just let the other person know that I'm listening, I'm respecting them, and just keeping that conversation on track. Because with Rose, it had so many moments where we could have gone way off the track of those things that I wanted, that she wanted, and we didn't want. There were so many moments and opportunities to just go on tangents. So consistently coming back to that. This is why we're here. This is what we're talking about. And the results, I think, speak for themselves. That's how I do it. We've had this whole conversation about this stuff. But obviously, it can be super hard to do, right? Even when we're really trying to commit to it. So to kind of round this out, I wanted to ask you how you handle it when obviously you have these high standards for how you want the conversation to go. So how do you handle it when maybe you realize you didn't handle it as well as you could have or you wish you had? How do you, I guess, have empathy kind of for yourself a little bit there? Let yourself down. Yeah. I think Susan framed this. Susan Friedman framed this really well for me once. She said, I wish podcast Susan. Well, I'm going to frame it as myself. I wish podcast Ryan could talk to husband Ryan sometimes. Those two need to have a conversation. So definitely, you know, sometimes Buddy's there and Buddy's like squawking around my head and like magpies have really sharp long beats and like picking me on the forehead. And I'm like swatting him away like, leave Buddy, this is too important. Yeah. So like definitely, I frequently find myself in situations where afterwards in hindsight, I'm like, oh, you know, I didn't really. There's not immediately, but eventually I'm like, there's some big opportunities for learning right now. And if I handle one really badly and I do for sure, it can affect me for days, even weeks. Like I can, I can, I can, I can really weigh heavy on my mind in an unpleasant way. Eventually, once I'm able to regain my brain and the blood flows back up there, I remind myself that I'm a learner. And what would I do if this was a dog? If we had trained a reactive dog and then the dog had a relapse into, I don't know that word, but we'll use it for now. The behavior resurfaced.

I mean, the behavior never goes right. So it came back up in some set of antecedents. The dog thought, all right, I've got to resort back to these behaviors to get my reinforcers right now. We would take responsibility for that. Build fluency up in the behaviors we've trained. Generalize it. Proof it. Train new behaviors. Manage the environment. Do what we need it to. And so reminding ourselves that, man, I've learned all these crucial conversation skills, but my old behaviors, which were ineffective, they haven't left me. They're still there. And sometimes my environment is going to cue me to bring those out, to protect myself. Piss off, buddy. I'm busy right now. And so I think after I've regained my brain, I can go, okay, cool, Ryan, you're a learner. What did you do just then that you liked? When we have our dogs in front of us, we're not looking for behaviors we don't like. We're focusing on reinforceable behaviors. And so there's a switch to go, oh, Ryan, you've been thinking about all those things you did that you didn't like, but what did you do that you liked? And I can find something. Okay, cool. So great. Awesome stuff. Like, do that again. Make sure you do that again in the future. That was awesome. What did the other person do that you liked? You know, that's an uncomfortable question. They were just an arsehole. They're completely unreasonable and unrational. You know, there's something they did that I like. I can always find something. And then the really important part is what is one small approximation I can take to build on this next time? Don't place an expectation on yourself that you're going to be perfect. But what is one small thing you can do? And I always, so a recent thing I've done to regain my brain faster is taking time away. And then just doing a brain dump onto a word dog. I've found that when I go away and I'm in an emotional state, that my thoughts are random and they repeat. And they're just pinging around in my head. I get them out of my head and onto paper. Once they're out of my head, I find I don't need to rethink them anymore. I've already, like, turned them into reality in my world. They're on a computer screen now. By the way, I never save any of these. I delete them immediately. It's just to clear it out of my head. Yeah. And so I do that. And that's what I learned from the last time. Because something I used to do when I was young and I hadn't done it for years. And in a recent situation, I found myself going, okay, what can I do? And I did that. And I was like, wow, that kind of sold everything.

And then I went very quickly back to the person and had a conversation with them and it was great. And I had a lot of clarity. And so I've been employing that frequently now. And so the frame of reference with regards to the unpleasant situation goes from beating myself up about it to gratitude. Because I think it's those most challenging situations. If you allow them to, they can provide the biggest opportunities for growth. I'm so grateful that I burnt out last year. It was one of the most challenging mental health related things I've ever experienced in my life. But out of it has come weekends, employees, new scheduling behaviors that have completely changed my life and would not have happened. I would have stayed in this not completely burnt out, but burnt out state. So I think I can't even remember what your question was now, which means I've been passion talking and I love passion talking. So I'm all good at that. You were totally still on the, I was asking you how you deal with it when you kind of haven't lived up to your own standards in a crucial conversation. Excuse me. So I think you were right on track, right? You're talking about. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Just treat myself as a learner and you can have empathy for yourself. And I think treating yourself as a learner is respectful for yourself. And I think immediately empathy is part of that. To say you're just a learner on planet Earth that is cued by their environment and has a learning history and you're biologically incapable of doing anything ever. Then what your antecedents and consequences make you do in the present moment. And so empathy, I think, goes from that. You know, I want to kind of leave folks with a final thought. So if we were to kind of drill down our conversation and pull out one key takeaway or one key piece of information you really wish that listeners would remember from this and take away from this, you know, what would that piece be? Oh, man. This is such an easy question compared to all the other ones. It would be to buy the book Cruiser Conversations. Don't even read it. That's an approximation that I don't even want to talk about right now. I'm just talking about buy it. Get it in your antecedents. First step. Yeah. Buy the book Cruiser Conversations. Stick it on your desk. I don't care what you do with it. Just buy the book. Fair enough. All right. Well, thank you so much for coming on the podcast, Ryan. This has been awesome. Yeah. Thank you for the opportunity. It's been a pleasure. And I always say to my guests on my show that we want you to passion talk.

What that looks like is asking what that question was again. So well done to you, Melissa, on being such a fantastic host and asking such great questions and confusing me on this episode. Hopefully you weren't too confused. Hopefully it was just good passion talk. Good confusion. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. And thank you to all of our listeners for tuning in. If you haven't already, subscribe to our podcast in iTunes or the podcast app of your choice to have the next episode automatically downloaded to your phone as soon as it becomes available. Today's show is brought to you by the Fenzie Dog Sports Academy. Special thanks to Denise Fenzie for supporting this podcast. Music provided royalty free by bensound.com. The track featured here is called Buddy. Audio editing provided by Chris Line. Thanks again for tuning in and happy training.