Love Conflict. Build Collaboration with Anna Lecat

This is Women Road Warriors with Shelly Johnson and Cassie Ticcaro from the corporate office to the cab of a truck. They're here to inspire and empower women in all professions. So gear down, sit back and enjoy. Welcome. We're an award-winning show dedicated to empowering women in every profession. Their inspiring stories and expert insights. No topics off limits on our show. We Power Women on the Road to Success with expert and celebrity interviews and information you need. I'm Shelly. And I'm Cassie. Conflict is a part of life and something we all like to avoid. But what if you can learn to love conflict? Now that's a concept. Anna LaCat teaches that conflict isn't a problem to solve. It's an opportunity to connect, collaborate and build something new. That's a perspective we can all embrace. Anna reframes conflict as a kind of tango that comprises tension and connection, which equals creation. Anna is an intimacy and conflict consultant, speaker and author of Loving Conflict, creating collaboration where others see division. She brings over 25 years of leadership skills to help individuals, couples and organizations stay connected when it matters most. Kathy and I were impressed with her take on life and wanted to learn more, so we asked her on the show. Welcome, Anna. Thank you for being with us. Thank you. It's great meeting you both. Oh, and vice versa. You know, you certainly built your powerful perspectives at an early age growing up in Ukraine. I am just amazed at your whole thought process. Your story is super compelling too. You refused to accept groupthink and gained acceptance even when you experienced conflict, division and prejudice. Could you give us maybe the cliff notes of your story and how you got started and all these wonderful revelations? Yes, it was pleasure. Thank you for asking. So, I was born in Ukraine, in Soviet Ukraine, and I left home at 17. I moved to China. And it was not obvious because around 16, it was when Soviet Union fell apart and it was very hard to actually leave because all the borders were closed and it was hard to get a visa to go anywhere out of Soviet Union. And so, I applied to all kinds of scholarships everywhere in the world to go travel. I wanted to leave and discover the world. And then I found out that China had a program where if a Ukrainian person studied Chinese and learned it well enough to get into Chinese university, they would give us a visa and scholarship to go. And so, I came home to my parents and said, okay, where is China? What's I'm going to learn Chinese and get into Chinese university, which I did. And then by... Oh my God. Sorry, that alone is a huge accomplishment. I can't even fathom learning Chinese. I'm sorry to interrupt, but oh my God, I'm impressed. So I learned... Well, actually, there is nothing to be impressed about. It was my ticket out. And I think both of you understand that, right? When we are desperate and hungry and we want to... We need something, we can do hard things, right? So... True. It was... I would have learned anything at that point to get out and to see the world. And so, I did and I got into Chinese university and then I stayed in China and started my first business when I was 19. And I started working in the manufacturing industry where there were no women, no women, no young women, no white women. I met a business partner, a Chinese man who was older than me, who said he was looking at me struggling, trying to figure out how to do business in China. And he said his name is Hongzhou and I called him George because it was easier for me to remember. And he looked at me and he was like, well, you have big dreams where you have no idea how to do business or do business in China because I didn't go to business school. I didn't really know. I just knew that I had big dreams and I needed to survive and feed myself. And so, I decided that doing business was the best idea. And so, he helped me. He invested in me and in my business and helped me establish in a company and taught me how to do business. And so, we started, so by 20 years old, I already had a business in China and we were traveling from a factory to factory. And the idea was to represent Chinese sustainable manufacturers who build high-quality products in front of the US manufacturers and brands. And at that point, it was the time when Made in China stigma was born where everybody thought that all Chinese products are bad quality products. Well, really what was happening was that the US brands asked Chinese factories to produce things that had what's called plant obsolescence in them. So the ask was, build us something that's going to break in a year because the idea was, well, if we buy something in the US and it breaks in a year, you go and buy it again, right? Yeah, and that's not the best perspective because that does not inspire confidence. It doesn't, right, absolutely. And so I thought, okay, let's change that. Let's only build high-quality products. And so we decided, by the two of us, we decided we can persuade Chinese factories to build well, to build long-term, and we promised them business. And so that was already strange because that was not what other people were doing. And so we built that business and it was challenging because we would go from factory to factory and they would see this young Western, well, non-Chinese woman telling them stories about how she's going to bring them business. Very few people believed me, but I spoke fluent Chinese and I was hustling and I was persuading people. And so we finally built a database of suppliers and I went to the States and I found them business. And so that was my beginning in the business world. Then I moved to, so that was my first immigration. Then I moved to the United States. So I lived in China for 15 years. Then I moved to San Francisco, lived there for 12 years, and then I met a man in San Francisco who was French, who we fell in love and decided that we'll get married and have kids. And four years ago we moved to France. So that I'm on my third immigration now, which is actually my hardest immigration yet. I think that as we get older, changes are more difficult. I agree. Definitely, Kimby. Oh my goodness, you have had quite the life and certainly tenacity, your tenacity as a teenager, but you were kind of, like you said, it was a necessity to do all of these things and that will motivate you. Your childhood in the Soviet Union was not easy. You experienced both anti-Semitism and cultural erasure. And of course you had to wait in long bread lines with your mom and you really had to be very careful. And so you were experiencing conflict, which you talk about at a very young age and certainly going to China, introducing the concepts that you did. I'm sure you got pushback. So I mean, you really learned to take conflict head on. Right. That's right. And I think that the early on I understood that it was not about the conflict, it was what was behind the conflict. It was the connection that conflict can bring. And sometimes going through conflict means only I will learn something. The other person doesn't necessarily learn something. We don't always find agreement through conflict. But as long as we stay present and we listen carefully, at least the least we can do is to learn something new about ourselves. Listen carefully. That's not something people do well or easily when they're experiencing conflict. I think their brain's shut down. Yep. Yeah. Right. And that's why I talk about loving conflict as a practice. The more we do, as we, you know, the more we do something, the more comfortable we become with it. And then the more skills we grow and then we get better at it. And then when we get good at something, we start loving it. So for me now, whenever I, now I know the signs of hard conversation, right? Because when I talk about conflict, I mean conflict in hard conversations, intentions. I do not mean aggression, war or violence. Right? So it's that kind of a conflict where we, we feel so uncomfortable that we want to change the subject. Mm. Yep. And so that's my sign. Whenever I want to change the subject, I know I need to stay. So whenever it gets, I get like a tight chest or I can't breathe really calmly, I feel anxious. I know that I need to stay because there's something, there's a gold here. And now when it happens, I, I verbalize it. So I say, okay, I, that's what I'm feeling. I feel very uncomfortable right now. And I would like to stay together. So can we do this together as a team? Stay tuned for more of Women Road Warriors coming up. Dean Michael, the tax doctor here. I have one question for you. Do you want to stop worrying about the IRS? If the answer is yes, then look no further. I've been around for years. I've helped countless people across the country and my success rate speaks for itself. So now you know where to find good, honest help with your tax problems. What are you waiting for? If you owe more than $10,000 of the IRS or haven't filed in years, call me now at 888-557-4020 or go to mytaxhelpmd.com for a free consultation and get your life back. Welcome back to Women Road Warriors with Shelly Johnson and Kathy Takarov. If you're enjoying this informative episode of Women Road Warriors, I wanted to mention Kathy and I explore all kinds of topics that will power you on the road to success. We feature a lot of expert interviews. Plus we feature celebrities and women who've been trailblazers. Please check out our podcast at womenroadwarriors.com and click on our episodes page. We're also available wherever you listen to podcasts on all the major podcast channels like Spotify, Apple, YouTube, Amazon Music, Audible, you name it. Check us out and bookmark our podcast. Also don't forget to follow us on social media. We're on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn, YouTube and other sites. And tell others about us. We want to help as many women as possible. Let's talk about something most of us would rather avoid at all costs. We dodge it, soften it, suppress it, or pretend it doesn't exist. But what if conflict isn't the enemy? What if it's actually the doorway to deeper connection and collaboration? That's the powerful reframe our guest Anna LaCat brings to the table. Anna teaches that conflict isn't a problem to fix. It's an opportunity to engage, understand and create something new together. She even describes conflict as a tango, where tension and connection move together to create something meaningful. As an intimacy and conflict consultant, speaker and author of loving conflict, creating collaboration where others see division. Anna draws on more than 25 years of leadership experience to help individuals, couples and organizations stay connected when it matters most. This is a conversation that could completely change how you see disagreement and maybe even how you show up in it. Anna, you talk about conflict as a path to trust and collaboration and that most of us do avoid the hard conversations. I think none of us find it comfortable. We want to avoid it and the avoidance disconnects us. So how do we get through a hard conversation? Is there a way to address that or to proceed? Because I'm not sure people know how. To me the first thing we do is stay. All right. Right. So we need to slow down and not run away, not change the subject. Most people do not get to this stage. Subject is changed. Well, the holidays can present a challenge. If not, all family members get along. Right. When we know that people are already anxious, many people are anxious to go home, to be with their families, right? To be with their families, right? To have a crazy uncle who will start saying something that you hate and people are like, well, let's just not talk about that. Right? That's like the agreement at the family table. Let's not talk about politics. Right? Well, let's not talk about religion. And to me, these are the most important conversations in the family because behind those conversations are our values, our love, our fears. And so as long as we can get deeper, so not stay on the surface, but get deeper. So if somebody is very passionate about the topic, the thing to do is to listen carefully. What is it that they are passionate about? What's behind the passion? What is their fear? What are they afraid of? And what is it that they're standing for? What are they trying to get through this passion and talk about that instead? So instead of talking about the issues at hand, always getting deeper. Basically get inside their head. Do people always know when they're passionate about something, why they are? Because I think sometimes people just shoot off and when it's the heat of the moment, they say things they regret. I think that there's a loss of control in those kind of situations. Right. And so when there's a loss of control on the other side, so let's say you're having a hard conversation with someone and they are losing control. I learned this in China early on. We had a negotiation between an American company and a Chinese company and an American executive got so angry, he hit the table with his fist. And I looked at the Chinese side and they were all smiling. They all calmed down. The angry the American executive got, the calm the Chinese people got and smiled at and I got so confused. I was like, they're not matching it. They're not getting defensive. They're not getting upset about the expression of anger. And so I matched how they were behaving to see what was going on. Just I listened very carefully. And then slowly the American executive calmed down. And as he calmed down, I asked them, the Chinese guys, what was going on? Why is it that you didn't match? Why didn't you get angry too? Why didn't you hit the table? And they said, whenever somebody shows their anger, listen, this is the time to listen, because they will show you. First of all, if they're angry, it means they care. The worst case scenario in a conflict is when people dismiss you, when people don't care anymore, when they shut down, because then connection is the hardest, right? But if they're yelling, if they're angry, they care. They care about this conversation. They care about your opinion. They care about negotiation. They care about something. And when we know what people care about, it's gold. It's like the key to their heart. So when somebody is expressing emotion, we need to try to not match it, but instead calm down and listen carefully to what they say. And by being calm like they were, they were diffusing the situation too. And the other person who was angry and pounding his fist on the table, he was trying to get them to react. Maybe that was one of his strategies so that they'd be pulled off their square, essentially. Exactly. And so what happened was he kept doing it, and it was not, he was not getting the results he was looking for. He had to calm down. And then the conversation was calm, rational, logical, where he could not overpower them with his emotions. So that was such a, I was 19 or 20. It was such a learning experience for me. I had another moment with the same group, actually, of Chinese executives, where actually the first time I met them, we came in. And I was the only woman at the table, and there were like 10 of us, me and then nine Chinese older men. And we sat down, they poured tea to everyone, and nobody spoke. And I was so anxious to start speaking, to start the negotiation, to introduce my project. And my Chinese business partner looked at me and he showed me the sign that I should also be quiet. So we sat for a long time silent, just looking at each other. Just like sipping our tea and looking at each other. And it was, it felt like the longest, I don't know, it seemed like an hour. It was so awkward. You know, it can be quite awkward when people are just looking at me and they're not talking. And then they... I probably burst out laughing. That's me. I was so, you know, okay, yeah, right? Like we all react differently when we are out of comfort, right? Because it was not comfortable. Some of us get angry, some get checkout, some get... We don't feel our body anymore. Some start laughing, right? Depending. We need to release this. And so I was just like, I was so curious. I was staring at them and I trusted my business partner. So I knew that we needed to be quiet. And then finally they spoke first and they said, okay, now tell us what is it about? What is it that you propose? And then afterwards when we left, so we... And we got the deal that we were looking for. And then when we left the meeting, I was like, well, I ran to my business partner. I was like, okay, tell me what was that about? And he said, in our culture, whoever speaks first has less of a leverage. That's actually a sales technique. Once you've done the clothes, whoever speaks first loses. Really? I am. I'm learning something new. Well, thank you. Yeah. So it makes sense. It really, really does. I think I talked too much. I'm going to start listening more. And so that moment when he said it to me, I was like, okay, I need to learn how to stay quiet because something I understood that the ability to stay quiet in a highly emotional situation is a power. So it's power for negotiation, but it's also power during conflict. Because if I'm uncomfortable, if I'm scared, if I am angry, staying quiet allows me to focus on my breathing, on my emotions, on my sensations, my body. I'm not speaking, so I am collecting my energy. I feel my feet on the ground. I exhale slowly. So I can find myself again, and then I can be deliberate about what I say next. And for that, I needed to be comfortable with silence. So when you say, what do we do, right, how do we get comfortable with conflict? First is to get comfortable with our silence. That's a tough one. I think people would have to practice. Right. And we practice, right. But like everything else, like all the hard things we practice, and we, I mean, the two of you have done so many hard things. So I find, like speaking of hard things, I come from a very violent background, even as a small child. Well, that's my, my, my baseline was violence and fear. And anytime I would speak would be, you know, told to shut up that, you know, I, I waste the air, I pollute the air, you know, my words are useless and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And so it took me anytime, like in my adulthood, anytime conflict would arise, I would shut down. So when I finally went to therapy, I spent two years in this women's center, look kind of relearning how to live and unlearning all the trauma. Well now, 13 years later in relationships, I still struggle with when conflict arises. So is there something that you could tell me that would kind of assist me in getting past that initial blockage? Is there something that you could say that would help us kind of cross that barrier? I will share with you what I do because I also, I mean, we're not comparing traumas, of course. It was very tough to grow up the way where I grew up in Soviet Ukraine. And as, as you already mentioned, I was, so I'm a Jewish and there was a lot of anti-Semitism growing up. So I was in many situations where it was dangerous and violent. And now when I get triggered and I get flooded emotionally, right? So I'm not able to be deliberate. For me, what helps me, and I think it's different for everyone, right? And there is like a long list of things that we can do. If somebody's volume gets too loud for me and I cannot hear them anymore because all I see is violence, right? Or the possibility of violence, I feel unsafe. I will say, I want to stay in this conversation, but not at this volume. Can we please change the volume? Or not at this tone. I cannot be here with this tone. Okay. So you set yourself, you set boundaries is what you're doing. Right. But you hear my voice, right? Yeah. So this voice, this calm, grounded, low voice is where I am at all times. So whenever I feel that I cannot stay in this voice, I need to change the situation. I need to redesign the situation. So to me, my number one priority in life is staying at this voice at all times. So yes, I am a mother of three children. Yes, I run business. Yes, I am a wife and I have my parents, elderly parents who live with me. Yes, I have many responsibilities, but I believe that my number one responsibility is to myself and to my mental health. And the expression of that mental health is that my ability to stay calm and speak this way no matter what, because I know that this is when I'm not triggered or flooded. Right. And I know that when somebody else gets angry or scared, which is the same thing actually, because people get scared and then anger is there to cover up the fear. Right. I, as long as I stay in this voice, in this calm, I can regulate them, co-regulate them. But the moment I get out of this and I get angry and I get disregulated, then I need to get out completely. I need to get out of the room. I need to get out of the conversation, go to the woods, walk, calm down, find back this calm and then go back into the conflict. Stay tuned for more of Women Road Warriors coming up. Every movement Trucking Moves America forward is telling the story of the industry. Our safety champions, the women of trucking, independent contractors, the next generation of truckers and more. Help us promote the best of our industry. Share your story and what you love about trucking. Share images of a moment you're proud of. And join us on social media. Learn more at truckingmovesamerica.com. Welcome back to Women Road Warriors with Shelley Johnson and Kathy Takarov. Imagine if every disagreement in your life wasn't a breakdown, but a breakthrough waiting to happen. Sounds radical, right? Our guest believes it's not only possible, it's essential. Anila Kat challenges the way we've been taught to see conflict. Without of something to fear or avoid, she reframes it as a creative force. Ana calls it a tango. More tension meets connection and together they create movement, understanding and growth. With more than two decades of leadership experience, Ana works as an intimacy and conflict consultant, helping people navigate tough conversations without disconnecting. She's also the author of Loving Conflict, creating collaboration where others see division, a roadmap for turning division into collaboration. If conflict shows up in your work, your relationships or your life, and let's be honest, it does. This is a conversation you'll want to lean into. Ana, you talk a lot about self-regulation. Right. Somebody needs to be regulated and it's usually me. So I spend a lot of time in the nature and taking care of myself so that I can bring this calm to the world. So you can do almost the same thing if you say you can't get out into nature by doing meditation. Right? I'm assuming. You can put yourself, if you can't physically get to a calm place, you can actually maybe just stop and go inside and just calm yourself through that. Would that work? Would that be a tool? Look, I'm a meditator, so I meditate every day. I think that I personally, even though I know how to meditate, for me it's not the easiest way to calm down. I need to go hug a tree. So even when we're in big cities, there are bushes. I mean, there is a way to connect, to see a bird. To me, when we look at nature, anything that's outside of what humans build, there is something magical that happens. It reminds us of our humanity, a flower. I don't know, something. So that's one thing. Another one is, okay, we had hard life, right? We all had things happen to us, some worse than others, but right? Everybody had hard things growing up. When I am feeling uncomfortable, when it's unsafe, I try to see the other people when they were five years old. So you think you try to see them as a five-year-old, essentially? Yes, exactly. Because whenever somebody is angry or upset or well, disregulated, they just went back to their five years old, right? Or four or three. They are also triggered. To me, it really helps to imagine, okay, is he now talking out of his five years old, or he's not talking to me right now. He's talking to, I don't know, his ex-wife or his mother or his grandma, or somebody did something to him that now he's triggered again. And so thinking that way brings compassion out of me, and then I calm down, and then the person feels it. That makes total sense. It does. Yeah. You're bringing the humanity into it again and trying to understand the person. Because when you think about it, our emotions develop as we're children. And we do. We go back to how we related then. It may manifest differently, but yeah, I think that people could be deeply actually mad at somebody else, not even the person that they're yelling at in the room. So that's a powerful perspective. I just wanted to mention one more thing that helps me. So when I am having a conflict with my husband, for example, I know that we are both very powerful, and we both run our own businesses, and we're usually out there in the world making decisions. So when we are having an argument, it's some sort of competition happening. We forgot that we are a team, that we are on the same team, and we are going one against the other. And so we now know, we've been together now for 15 years, that when this is happening, we need to switch and remember that we are on the same team, so we need to sit next to each other. So we never have difficult conversations when sitting one in front of the other. So when we're in a restaurant, for example, and we know something tough needs to be discussed, we ask to be seated next to each other. And the problem is in front of both of us. So we are never one other's problem. The problem is in front of us, and we are on the same team. And so that reminder really shifts the perspective. We don't need to be defending from the other person. We are together looking at something happened in our life that disregulated us. It's not each other. That's a powerful perspective. Another one is, I think that we forget often is how touch is important for us as human beings. Sometimes when somebody is really angry, I will just slight with an intention of calming them down. We'll just touch them on the shoulder. And it's just like I'm thinking, like how I'm with my kids. I'm not going to yell at them because they are really upset. I need to regulate them to calm them down so I will hold them. But in a corporate environment, for example, I can't hold an executive. I could. Can you imagine going down to the CEO? I could, but it's not always appropriate. And so, but I will, to the extent that it's still allowed to do in a corporate America, I will initiate some kind of a touch. And people don't even notice what's happening, but they feel calmer. So it's like remembering we are human beings. We're not machines. Yes. I was going to say, bringing back the humanity, and maybe it's also bringing somebody back to when they were a child and their mother did that. So it's a natural reaction for them to calm down. So that's powerful. Anna, your perspectives are really revolutionary. I don't think a lot of people talk about it, but you reframe conflict as a kind of tango, which is tension plus connection, which equals creation. And you discussed that in your book. Could you kind of give a summary of that? How does that work exactly? How's it a tango? So first of all, I'm obsessed with tango. I'm a tango dancer. I've been dancing for many, many years. And tango is fully improvised dance. I don't know. Have you ever seen tango dance? Yes. And so it's hard to believe that the two people can improvise every step to that level. And I actually learned, I dance both roles. So I know how to lead and follow in tango. And I learned how to lead because I was so frustrated at the fact that women always have to sit and wait to be invited to dance. And I'm not allowed to go and invite men to dance. They have to wait to be invited. And so I decided that I will not wait to be chosen. And so I learned both sides. And as I learned both sides, it's extremely difficult to lead. I understood that actually every step of tango is negotiated and questioned. So since we don't know what's going to happen, we don't know what the other person is going to do. We need to negotiate and adjust. We hesitate. We pause. We hold. We listen carefully to the other person. And there are all kinds of misunderstandings that happen along the way. And so we need to adjust, renegotiate and continue. And the better we do it, the longer we do it, the deeper our connection is created. And then we create something that's bigger than both of us could alone, which is art. And so at the Moe practice, the Moe realized that all the skills that we need in conflict to stay connected through conflict, we already practice them in this kind of improvised partner dance. We negotiate conflicts and hard conversations every second, every step, and connect deeper and deeper to each other. And to be able to do this in tango, you know, sometimes we say this, you know how we say it takes two to tango? Yes. Yeah. Well, it's misunderstood. We usually think, well, it takes two to tango means two people. Actually, it means it takes two connections. One with yourself and one with the other person. You first need to be fully connected with yourself. Where are you? Where is your, where is, are you stable on the ground? Do you feel your breathing? Do you hear the music? Do you know, you know, where is your balance? And only then start noticing the other person. Where are they at? How are they feeling? What is it that they need? If we cannot stay connected with ourself, we cannot connect with the other person. It's the same in the hard conversation or in any conflict, right? We need to first know, where am I? Am I okay? Am I safe? What is it that I am? How am I contributing to the conflict? What are my biases? What are my beliefs? Am I now, am I triggered and am I imagining that this person in reminding me of something that happened to me a long time ago or am I actually interacting with this person who is in front of me? What is real, right? So we need to first check with ourselves and then, okay, this person in front of me, what's going on with them? What do they believe in? What information they have, right? And how are they feeling? What are they scared of? What are their values? And how will I now interact with them? That's a lot of thinking that's going on. Is your interaction with someone? So you really have to do a lot of self-awareness and really be very intuitive and develop your empathic skills. You have to have empathy as well in order to read the other person and understand where they're coming from. How do we develop all of that? Because I think people shut down and they just react. I think when we... Okay, I will tell you what helps me. You know, when something is really important, all of a sudden I have the skills. So for example, when I went on a first date with my now husband, that first date, I had all the skills. I had compassion. I could feel myself. It was so important for me that all of a sudden I could read almost read his mind because I really liked him and I really wanted this to work. So I think that when we really need something, we have the skills. Stay tuned for more of Women Road Warriors coming up. Dean Michael, the tax doctor here. I have one question for you. Do you want to stop worrying about the IRS? If the answer is yes, then look no further. I've been around for years. I've helped countless people across the country and my success rate speaks for itself. So now you know where to find good, honest help with your tax problems. What are you waiting for? If you owe more than $10,000 of the IRS or haven't filed in years, call me now at 888-557-4020 or go to mytaxhelpmd.com for a free consultation and get your life back. Industry movement Trucking Moves America forward is telling the story of the industry. Our safety champions, the women of trucking, independent contractors, the next generation of truckers and more. Help us promote the best of our industry. Share your story and what you love about trucking. Share images of a moment you're proud of. And join us on social media. Learn more at truckingmovesamerica.com. Welcome back to Women Road Warriors with Shelly Johnson and Kathy Takarov. Conflict touches every part of our lives, our relationships, our workplaces, even our inner dialogue. And yet most of us were never taught how to stay connected when tension shows up. Our guest, Annala Kat, believes conflict itself isn't the problem. Disconnection is. She invites us to see conflict as an opportunity to collaborate rather than collide. Through her unique perspective, Annala describes conflict as a tango, a dance of tension and connection that when navigated with awareness leads to creation instead of division. Anna is an intimacy and conflict consultant speaker and the author of Loving Conflict, Creating Collaboration Where Others See Division. And in our last segment, you were saying that when we really need something, if there's a conflict or something that we want to accomplish, we have the skills to do it. We're more in tune. Right, and so means that we know how to do it. So now when I'm in front of someone and it's difficult for me to connect, I take myself back to the moments when it mattered. And I had the skills and I bring that compassion and that attunement and that presence into these conversations. For example, for me, and I think we all have different triggers, right? For me, I have this one trigger. When I'm with someone who is arrogant, I get triggered. It's very difficult for me to connect with somebody who thinks they are better than everybody else. You know those kind of people? Oh, yes, yuck. I can't stand people like that. Okay, very good. So we have the same triggers. I'm glad. And so the other day I was having lunch with a acquaintance here in Paris and as she was paying, she handed the credit card to Waiter without looking at him. And for me, I think Waiters or anybody who helps me, they are extremely important. I will stop everything to honor them because they were bringing me food, right? And it doesn't matter what I'm doing. I'm going to thank them. I'll talk to them. I ask them their name and I want to honor everybody who is helping me. And so when she did that and she kept talking to me and she just handed him credit card without looking at him, for me, everything got dark. I could not listen to her anymore. I could not. I forgot that she was a human being because I got so upset and I needed to apologize to Waiter. And so, but I want to stay connected with her. And I don't want to be that person who acts out of the darkness and all of the upset. And so it was like, it really was like walking out of the darkness into the light of like, she's still someone I just had lunch with. So how do I talk to somebody I love and somebody I care about? How do I look? So I literally set up, you know, and I looked at her with, so I changed my state first and I behave, I pretend, and then it comes back and then I find my voice, this voice, the calm voice. And then out of that voice, I can address it. So then I addressed it with her. Okay, here's what just happened. I want to be clear that I just want to share with you that I got super triggered. I think it comes from my childhood that the Russians in Soviet Union thought they were better than other people. And so to me, it's a trigger. Anytime I see anybody who thinks they're better than other people, I want to protect all the marginalized people. I want to be, you know, I want to fix things. So going forward, can you please not do that? And I explained to her why it's so important to look people in the eye when you pay them. And so later on, she told me she apologized, she had tears in her eyes, she didn't realize it was happening. And now I can go with her and have lunch and not worry it's going to happen because I know she changed. You gave her a valuable message and you were able to handle it in a very diplomatic way that she was able to accept. Is that where the whole concept of loving conflict comes in? Because I'm seeing from your book, it means not engage, not handle, not tolerate, not manage. And it also does not mean picking fights, being aggressive, seeking drama and abandoning being your own needs. You're essentially being very proactive and assertive rather than aggressive. I mean, it's all of these positive things where you're in control of yourself and then you are able to get the reaction that you would like to have from someone else or at least cooperation. Exactly, yes, because collaboration is what I'm looking for at all times. I think that this obsession with collaboration comes from the fact that I am now in the middle of several major conflicts in the world. And you see, I'm Ukrainian and Russia is at war with Ukraine. I've built businesses between China and the US for many years and now they're in a trade war. I'm Jewish, I have a family in Israel and I have friends in the Palestinian community and there is a conflict in the Middle East. So I'm constantly in situations where I know that if we do not collaborate, we have war, at least the war. So we can look at it on private examples in our families. We know that if we don't have hard conversations for a long time, it leads to breakups and divorces and disconnection. If we take it on a community level or company level, it leads to war situations and then if we take it to countries level, we see what's happening with wars. So I think collaboration is something that we all need to learn right now and we cannot collaborate without moving through the conflicts, moving through the difficult conversations. And you said, and Shalee, you said before that it's so much work. Yes, it's a lot of work, but I think that without this work, we do not get the deep laugh and the deep relationships that we all yearn for. You have some powerful messages here. You should be a world diplomat. I mean, really, I think that world leaders could really learn from all of your principles here. I'm looking at some of the points of your book, engage with presence, assume nothing, to understand the art of questioning and the rule of us, which is moving from me versus you to we, to build a shared identity even in disagreement. We could use that today. Those concepts, I think that there is so much divisiveness. We're shattered, we're fragmented and we don't have a shared identity. Right, absolutely. And I think it's definitely right now a time for us to change that. And I'm working a lot with groups that are very fractured. So I am, as you know, and as you mentioned, I'm a conflict and intimacy consultant. So I'm now hired by organizations and companies where they have a major conflict or when there is a hard conversation to have and they are not managing it well. I also work with families or many couples that are pretty divorced, for example, or when they have very, very something very hard happening. When I come in and I teach them, I walk them through these steps that you just mentioned and we work on the skills so that they are able to do it. I work a lot in Asia, for example, as I'm fluent in Mandarin. I work a lot in Asia in family businesses where they have generations working together and where they have a lot of conflict, where they have like an older founder and who brings in the younger children and they don't really speak the same language. Or in the States, for example, nowadays with what's going on in politics, it affects corporations, right? It affects boards, it affects teams where they still anytime something major happens politically, they stop talking. And so I come in and I facilitate those conversations. So we all sit together and hold hands. I love it. Where do people reach out to you? Because I imagine you work with individuals as well as, like you said, corporations. Where is the best place to reach out to you and to find your book, Loving Conflict, Creating Collaboration Where Others See Division? Thank you. So my website is Annalicott.com and my book is coming out at the end of March. So it's now going through the birth canal. So it's finished, but the publishing is happening end of March. And yeah, I work a lot with couples. Right now my focus is couples because I believe that if everything is good at home and in our intimate life, we carry that security, that safety and that anchor into our public life. I think that when we have enough intimacy to feed our body and soul and what we want from love, we are then kinder and more compassionate to people when we go out and we interact with the world. So I'm really putting a lot of attention now on that and work with many couples in the States where they are missing intimacy because something happened where trust was broken. We are walking back into trust together. I love your perspective, Zana. People can reach out to you at Annalicott.com that's spelled A-N-N-A-L-E-C-A-T.com. Wow, you're exactly what the world needs. This is powerful. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for being on the show with us. Oh my gosh, it's been such a great conversation. Honestly, it's been fabulous. Thank you very much. Thank you for having me. Thank you, Anna. You can sign up for Anna's book, Loving Conflict, Creating Collaboration Where Others See Division on her website. And the book's coming out in March. It's a powerful compilation of the information we just covered. Things like why conflict is not a failure, but a form of connection. How to shift from reactive patterns to courageous dialogue. How cultural, relational, and personal history shaped conflict and practical exercises to support collaboration under pressure. You can find out more on Anna's website at annalicott.com. We hope you've enjoyed this latest episode. And if you want to hear more episodes of Women Road Warriors or learn more about our show, be sure to check out womenroadwarriors.com. And please follow us on social media. And don't forget to subscribe to our podcast. On our website, we also have a selection of podcasts just for women. There are a series of podcasts from different podcasters. So if you're in the mood for women's podcasts, just click the Power Network tab on womenroadwarriors.com. You'll have a variety of shows to listen to anytime you want to. Podcasts made for women. Women Road Warriors is on all the major podcast channels like Apple, Spotify, Amazon, Audible, YouTube, and others. Check us out. And please follow us wherever you listen to podcasts. Thanks for listening. You've been listening to Women Road Warriors with Shelley Johnson and Kathy Takaro. If you want to be a guest on the show or have a topic or feedback, email us at sjohnson at womenroadwarriors.com.