EEC 433: From Hostility You Didn't Know You Had to Healthy Strategic Action., with Joy Bertrand

Summary

Podcast Summary: Excellent Executive Coaching – EEC 433

Episode Title: From Hostility You Didn't Know You Had to Healthy Strategic Action
Guest: Joy Bertrand
Host: Dr. Katrina Burrus, PhD, MCC
Release Date: May 19, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode explores the hidden costs of hostility in high-pressure professions, particularly trial law, and offers practical strategies to transform reactive, unhealthy communication into purposeful, empowered action. Lawyer and coach Joy Bertrand joins Dr. Katrina Burrus to discuss how a culture of hostility wreaks havoc on professionals' health and effectiveness—and how leaders across fields can break out of damaging behavioral cycles.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. The Health Crisis Behind Professional Hostility

[00:36–02:41]

• Observation: Trial law culture is rife with health problems—heart attacks, depression, substance abuse, and high suicide rates, especially among women.
  • Joy Bertrand: "I saw heart attacks at 45. I saw an industry that has some of the highest rates of depression, substance abuse, and suicide in the professions. And for the women in this profession ... their rates are even higher than the men's." – [01:04]
• Critical Story: An anecdote describes a female lawyer ignoring heart attack symptoms due to work pressure, highlighting the severity and normalization of the issue.
• Underlying Cause: The traditional advice of self-care misses the mark; Joy identifies a mindset of hostility in the profession as the real root issue.

2. Understanding Hostility as a Mindset

[02:41–04:49]

• Definition: Hostility = Anger + Aggression; becomes habitual, like gossip or complaining.
• Physiological Impact: Sustained hostility triggers adrenaline and cortisol, damaging the body and impairing cognitive (frontal cortex) function.
  • Joy Bertrand: "It shuts your reasoning off ... you start operating only from kind of the reptilian part ... You're not thinking strategically." – [03:41]
• Leadership Impact: Hostile leaders can't make clear, strategic decisions; both health and leadership effectiveness suffer.

3. Hostility as a Legal Tactic & How to Disrupt It

[04:49–07:04]

• Common Practice: Pushing opponents into a hostile, reactive state is a deliberate (and effective) litigation tactic.
• Modern Communication Approach: Instead of matching aggression, effective leaders increase calm as others escalate.
  • Joy Bertrand: "The most powerful person in the room is the calmest person in the room." – [06:26] (quoting Lexley Overton)
• Action Step: Recognize the tactic, refuse to mirror it, and remain grounded.

4. The Power of Calm, Strategic Response

[07:04–10:28]

• Impact on Others: Calm responses make it hard for others to continue hostility and create a clear, impartial record.
• Long-Term Game: Avoiding emotional traps protects health, keeps the focus on strategy, and prevents self-inflicted stress or punishment.
• Leadership Myth: "Mad Men"-era toughness is outdated; real power comes from physical and mental self-care.

5. Moving Up the “Hawkins Scale” with Courage

[10:28–12:28]

• Emotional Scale: Power vs. Force (Hawkins Scale) – Hostility, anger, and victimhood are "heavy" emotions at the bottom (zero). Courage is at 200; gratitude, etc., are at the top (aspirational).
  • Joy Bertrand: "You just have to get to 200. And that's courage." – [10:17]
• Practical Courage: Take value-aligned action even under attack. Physically ground yourself to regain composure.
  • Joy Bertrand: "Courage is taking action even when it's hard in a values aligned way." – [10:42]

6. Embodied Action and Training for Resilience

[12:28–14:28]

• Physicality Trumps Theory: When under stress, your body should default to learned behaviors—practice calm, physically powerful presence.
  • Joy Bertrand: "You've got to teach your body to do this so that when you are under pressure, you're not trying to access your mental Rolodex of options." – [12:36]
• Roleplay: Bertrand has clients rehearse difficult scenarios, practicing confident posture and grounding techniques.
  • Memorable: “Your boobs enter the room first”—a quip to encourage physical presence. – [13:12]

7. Beyond the Courtroom: Universal Application

[14:28–17:58]

• Coaching Approach: Joy works with lawyers in trials, voir dire, and everyday team dynamics; most cases resolve outside court, making these skills broadly applicable.
• Facing Hostility Outside Law: Hostility can come from clients or colleagues, not just opponents.
• Empowerment for All: This approach isn’t limited to law; anyone can learn to act from values, confront conflict with composure, and initiate change.

8. Reformulating the Approach for Broader Leadership

[16:24–17:58]

• From Fear to Values: Shift from fear of speaking up to clarity about values, and then act accordingly—whether that means public advocacy or private communication.
  • Joy Bertrand: "I'm going to be clear about what those values are and start speaking from there and start speaking my truth." – [16:36]
• Boundaries: Refuse to be drawn into mudslinging; remain heart-centered, strategic, and courageous.

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Notable Quotes

• On the professional health crisis:
  "I saw heart attacks at 45... women trial lawyers, their rates are even higher than the men's." – Joy Bertrand [01:04]

• On the impotence of old advice:
  "Yoga, melatonin ... didn't get to the heart of what I think is really a cultural problem ... this mindset of hostility." – Joy Bertrand [01:19]

• On the power of composure:
  "The most powerful person in the room is the calmest person in the room." – Joy Bertrand (quoting Lexley Overton) [06:26]

• On leadership health:
  "You cannot be effective at this work or at any leadership role if you are not healthy." – Joy Bertrand [07:46]

• On moving the emotional scale:
  "You just have to get to 200. And that's courage." – Joy Bertrand [10:17]

• On embodied training:
  "The body remembers what the mind forgets. You've got to teach your body to do this..." – Joy Bertrand [12:36]

• On the myth of aggression:
  "There's a real myth that you have to be this bare knuckle brawler to be effective..." – Joy Bertrand [13:58]

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Key Timestamps for Important Segments

• [01:04] – Health crisis among trial lawyers and the culture of hostility
• [03:41] – How hostility disables strategic thinking
• [06:26] – The value of maintaining calm (power vs. force)
• [10:17] – Courage as the actionable midpoint on the emotional scale
• [12:36] – Embodied training: teaching physical calmness for stressful situations
• [14:28] – Application beyond trial law: working with teams and clients
• [16:36] – Reframing the approach: acting from values, not fear

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Conclusion

This episode underscores that breaking free of hostile, reactive patterns is vital for both professional effectiveness and personal health—especially in high-pressure environments. Through value-driven courage, physical grounding, and emotional mastery, leaders and teams can replace hostility with strategic, empowered action—benefiting themselves and those they serve.

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Connect with Joy Bertrand:
Website: www.fightgiantsandwin.com
Phone: [phone]

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For more episodes and resources:
Visit excellentexecutivecoaching.com

Transcript

[A]

How do you go from a hostile communication to transform into a healthy strategic action? Let's ask lawyer Joy Bertrand. Welcome to the excellent executive coaching podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Katrina. Behold. And today we have Joy Bertrand. That's a correct. Help me with your last name.

[B]

Bertrand Bertrand.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

Good.

[A]

So, Joy, tell us, you've spent many years in trial law, but what did you witness happening to the best lawyers in the country over time that made you realize that it was a health crisis, not just an occupational stress? Yeah.

[B]

What I saw personally to my own health. I'm married to a trial lawyer, so I see what comes firsthand.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

Yeah. And I see it with my colleagues. I saw heart attacks at 45. I saw an industry that has some of the highest rates of depression, substance abuse, and suicide in the professions. And for the women in this profession, women trial lawyers, their rates are even higher than the men's.

[A]

Really?

[B]

Yeah. And there's been several studies that have looked at this and tried to figure out the answer, and it really kind of landed with these platitudes of, do yoga, take melatonin, go to the gym. And it didn't get to the heart of what I think is really a cultural problem in trial advocacy, which is this mindset of hostility. So I looked at how to start changing that. And the story that really resonated with me was, I believe, out of an Indiana University study that talked about a trial lawyer getting ready for a big presentation the next day. She ate well, she had dinner, and that night she was in her 50s, went to bed and said to her husband, I think I have some indigestion. She took some Pepcid, wasn't getting better, and her husband said, I think we need to go to the er. And she said, I can't. I've got this presentation tomorrow. He finally talks her into going to the er, and she says, okay, but I have to bring my computer with me. And I thought of how many times I have sat in urgent care and emergency rooms with my computer on my lap. And I started to see what the story was going to be. She gets to the hospital, and they've said, you're in the middle of a heart attack.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

And it was such a resonant story. And I could think of so many women colleagues of mine who have had to leave the profession entirely. They have a 50% higher rate of burnout than their male colleagues just leaving. And the loss of human capital, that is. We need good trial lawyers. We need people standing up for righteous causes and claims. We need people standing up for regular people. So what can we change as a culture and what can we, no matter what happens with the culture, take control of and protect our health with? And the first thing that was consistent in these studies was the mindset of hostility, which is, yeah, tell us about

[A]

how the mindset affects, you know, the hostility.

[B]

Right. Hostility is a mindset and it's a choice. Over time, it becomes a habit, just like gossip, just like kind of complaining. And what hostility does. Hostility is basically anger plus aggression. It triggers in our bodies these fundamental responses to threat. You start creating high levels of adrenaline and cortisol in particular. You hear a lot about cortisol today is the stress hormone. We need those hormones. They are great in an emergency. They're great when you're running away from a saber toothed tiger, you know, back in the caveman days. They're great when you come up on an emergency, you know, car accident and you need to help. But the other problem that those hormones cause for you mentally is it shuts your reasoning off. Your frontal cortex shuts down and you start operating only from kind of the reptilian part in the back of your brain. You're not thinking strategically, if you're thinking at all, in a very reactive way. So not only are you damaging yourself physiologically, particularly causing damage to the heart because of these stress hormones, but you are also pushing your brain to go offline. You cannot lead and you cannot make strategic decisions when your brain, your reasoning part of your brain is offline.

[A]

I want to ask you is some of the strategies of the attorney is to push their opponent into that situation where they don't reason as well because they're hostile and they feel attacked.

[B]

I think that is absolutely a litigation tactic. I've seen it personally myself, where you're just getting bombarded with all kinds of crazy allegations. They're screaming at you on the phone, screaming at you in depositions. I've had to tell male lawyers in depositions to sit down and keep their hands to themselves. And it is clearly a strategic decision on their part. I think in part. I think partly they're also living in this hostile mindset and not really thinking the long term effects of this. But they've been rewarded for it at some point, or at least not sanctioned for it. So they continue doing it. They know it's effective. I've seen it with judges that are clearly trying to knock a lawyer offline. And seeing it and recognizing it is, of course, the first thing you can do. The first tool is to just Be like, okay, they're not thinking right now. They're coming from a very emotional reactive place. I don't have to match that. I can see it for what it is. Sometimes I can call it out or you don't even have to address it. You can just continue to be calm. And there's new theories about matching emotion. The thought used to be like, you know, meet them head on. And if they amplify you amplify. The new research and communication says that is not effective. All you do is make it worse and create more confusion for everybody. See it for what it is. And actually, the more they amplify, the more you get calm. There's a great colleague of mine, Lexley Overton, who talks about the most powerful person in the room, is the calmest person in the room. And I think that is such great advice. The more you can stay centered and grounded, the more powerful you are. And that also turns a lot of the sexist culture that trial lawyers still have that it has to be this macho, you know, dropping F bombs and yelling at people, almost getting into fistfights to be effective. And nah, I'm not going to do that. I'm going to stay calm. I'm going to try to listen to what you're saying to the extent any of it makes sense and respond from a calm, grounded place.

[A]

So when you respond right, so you make the choice to respond in a calm, deliberate way, what's the impact on the other?

[B]

Well, one, you're holding a mirror up to them, and it makes it really hard to yell at people who aren't yelling at you, unless you're just a complete bully in the trial lawyer context. You're also making a really clean record of who the problem is with. Judges do not like to hear about personality conflicts. They do not like to read briefs that are just calling the other side jerks. And the effect is you're still playing your long game. You're not getting caught in the immediate emotional stress of the moment. You're like, look, I've got to get through this deposition. I've got to get this witness to admit to 1, 2, 3, and then we're out of here. We're not going to mess around. I'm certainly not engaging with this guy or this woman. So it helps you in several respects. Most importantly, it protects your health. You cannot be effective at this work or at any leadership role if you are not healthy. And this is something that is still really surprising to my colleagues and really surprising to people in the business world. I think there's still a lot of holdover for what I call the Mad Men era of the late 60s where they're hard fighting, it's play hard, work hard, three martini lunches and you're basically matching the abuse you're getting from someone else by doing it to yourself. And that serves no purpose. To be clear headed, to hold a team together requires a great deal of physical strength. And you're already in circumstances that are very taxing on the system. You've got to be very protective of that system to make sure you're not adding to the problem. I've actually had to say to colleagues coming off of trials, you know, sounds like you're being pretty punishing to yourself right now. You know, that bottle of wine seemed like a good idea at six o', clock, but now it's two o' clock in the morning and you can't sleep. You've got 400 extra calories on board, full of sugar. You're now taxing your pancreas and your liver and you got to get up and go to trial tomorrow. What are you doing? So hostility is something you can manage and it is a choice. And there are other choices you can make. And this is where I think it's really important to tell people that if you're going to seek out a problem, also seek out the solution. One of the great ways to look at this is called the Hawkins Scale from the book Power vs Force. And you want to come from a place of power, you don't want to force yourself and others. And the way he structures it is at the very bottom at zero on a scale of zero to 1000. At zero are these heavy taxing emotions that require force to move through, like anger, self loathing, victim mindset. Hostility is one of the big ones. And at the top is those, I'll call them aspirational ones of, you know, gratitude and self realization. That's a goal. In the middle of a heated discussion, you are not going to be like, I'm going to a place of gratitude. Right? That's not realistic. And I, I think it's actually really unhealthy to tell people to try to get there. But where you can get on a scale of zero to a thousand, you just have to get to 200. And that's courage.

[A]

Say more. It takes courage. So you feel very hostile towards somebody who's bombarding you with accusations and you take a pause. Where does the courage come in?

[B]

Courage is taking action even when it's hard in a values aligned way. So you're being bombarded, right? They're throwing whatever they can at you. You can take a moment, you can physically center yourself. If you're seated at a chair, find your sit bones and really sit. Put both feet on the floor, ladies, don't cross your legs. Ground yourself and remind yourself why you're there.

[A]

And also, you made a very interesting point, is to be very strategic in your approach in that you have one, two things you want. You want to get there. You want to get these answers so you can take the courage, not be hostile, and then refocus on what you want and how you want to get there.

[B]

Right. And focus on the action you're going to take. Yeah, righteous indignation is a great motivator. It doesn't serve a purpose unless you act on it. And so what courage does is let's, you know, courage, care, right? The heart, that's where it's coming from. It's coming from your values. And remind yourself why you're with this client, why you believe in this case, why you believe in this team project that you're working on, why you believe in your team. And then act. And it allows you to find clarity in the midst of a lot of intentional swirling around, or there are words that I will not use publicly about that. But it's a storm, right? It's an emotional storm that they're creating on the other side. You're not going to engage in that, and you're going to stay focused by finding courage and remind yourself, hey, this is part of it. The fight is part of this. But I don't have to lower myself emotionally to their level.

[A]

So how do you help clients? How do you help clients, specifically?

[B]

I put my preference in working with people is to put them into action and to make it a very physical experience. The great saying of Gabriel, the body remembers what the mind forgets. You've got to teach your body to do this so that when you are under pressure, you're not trying to access your mental Rolodex of options. You are in it. And, you know, you're falling back on the training, as they would say in law enforcement or the military. So I put them into action. And I've had lawyers come into my office to work with me to get ready for trial. First thing I do is just say, stand up. Let me see how you're going to walk into the courtroom. And it is amazing. Like brilliant trialers coming in, you know, with their shoulders hunched and put your. You know, I had a coach once say, Your boobs enter the room first, right? You walk in from a place of power and then you're open, you're in a much stronger communication spot. And then we start working on practicing even, you know, having people come in and test them, bringing in other lawyers to test the communication, make it deliberately confusing and overwhelming in a controlled space to start finding that courage. Okay, so it's coming at you now, right? The judge is yelling at you. Where are you going to go? And I even tell lawyers, you know, in court, when this is happening, put your hand on your heart and just check in with it, Judge it. I need a moment to just sort out what I just heard or, you know, wow, that's a lot. Give me just a moment, please. What are they going to do? Make you talk? Right. And this immediately physically connects you to why you're there. And you're going to come from a much stronger place. I think there's a real myth that you have to be this bare knuckle brawler to be effective. And communication studies show that those people are often the least effective. It's the people that stay calm and stay centered and are speaking from a place of value that really impact the listener.

[A]

Do you go and accompany people when they need to have an important trial?

[B]

I do. I do a lot of jury consulting. I help lawyers, I watch jurors in voir dire to help jurors figure out who really needs to not stay on the panel, but also how to talk to the people who do stay. Because I think there's lawyers spend so waste so much time worrying about going to this jurisdiction or that jurisdiction culturally, and how am I going to do this in this jurisdiction? I'm like, you're going to talk to the people who are in front of you and you're going to identify the values that are important to them and where you can connect with them. You don't get to just go into jurisdictions that are what you believe to be friendly. And I wouldn't assume that about them anyway. So working with them and working with lawyers both about just what they say, but how they say it and how they present from the moment they walk into the room is really important. But most cases don't go to trial. 97% of federal cases resolve outside of trial one way or another. So these skills have to translate to other settings, whether it's depositions or just team meetings and running your own team. Some of the worst hostility can come from your own teams or your own clients. Right. Who feel frustrated and helpless and you're the representative of the system to them, you're the one who's going to take that. But most importantly, for all the work I do with lawyers and the reason I started taking this, I'll say out into the world is that there are so many opportunities right now for all of us to make change. And I think so many people are afraid to step out and speak up about whatever their heart issue is because they're afraid of the conflict, they're afraid of being hit with the hostility. And this approach gives anyone the tools to speak from a place of courage and take action.

[A]

So this approach, reformulate the approach.

[B]

The approach goes from, I'm just one person, I'm scared, I don't want to speak in public because people are going to be critical of me. I don't want to take the heat on social media, who's going to listen to me kind of mindset to hold up. I find this really offensive to my values and this is really important. So I'm going to first be clear about what those values are and start speaking from there and start speaking my truth. And from there as a layperson, you can then engage in the strategic thinking of, well, how much can I do? How much do I want to do? Does this really serve the purposes that I want it to? And I'm not saying any of these are exclusive. It might be. I'm going to join protests, I'm going to write letters to the editor. I'm going to go to city council meetings, I'm going to go to the HOA meetings or pta. I'm going to speak my truth. And I know I'm coming from a place, a heart centered, value centered place that may challenge other people, but I'm not going to get into the mud with them. I'm not going to let this become a hostile exchange. And I can see it when it's happening in other people and let them have it, let them do them and just let it reflect back to them rather than absorbing it and taking it on. But this is, I don't know of a time in modern history when it's been more important to empower people to take action and really speak truth to power than now.

[A]

That's wonderful and thank you very much for sharing your knowledge and experience. Where can people get a hold of you?

[B]

They can call my office. That's probably the easiest. 602-374-5321. And all this information is also on my spiffy new website, www.fightgiantsandwin.com.

[A]

thank you very much. Thank you Julie for sharing. Bye bye.

[C]

Thank you for listening to the Excellent Executive Coaching Podcast. You can subscribe to all Future [e-mail] join us each Wednesday to learn more about the latest trends in leadership techniques and bring your coaching to the next level. To learn more about Dr. Burris CEO mastermind, use the contact form [e-mail].