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- [00:00]
Podcast Host
This message may be shocking to many millennials. If you are one, you might want to sit down. Right now, loads of people are searching the following on low rise.
- [00:10]
Olivia
Jeans, halter top, velour, tracksuit, puka shell necklace, disc belt.
- [00:16]
Podcast Host
You likely place these in the dark of your closet in 2004, never to be seen again. But if you can find it in yourself to dust them off, there are a lot of people who will give you money for them. Sell on Depop, where taste recognizes taste.
- [00:30]
Desmond O'Neal
This Friday, Crime 101 hits theaters.
- [00:33]
Co-host/Interviewer
What is it that you do?
- [00:34]
Desmond O'Neal
I take high value items and make them disappear. So you're a thief. One crime connects them all. I'm getting close, I know it. But only one will walk away. I underestimated you. Chris Hemsworth, Mark Ruffalo, Barry Keoghan and Halle Berry. We're good at this. Yeah. Crime 101, directed by Bart Layton. Rated R, under 17. Animated without parrot. Only in theaters Friday day.
- [01:00]
Sponsor/Ad Voice
In this episode of Stronger, it is my pleasure to introduce to you my friend, Desmond o'. Neal. Now, Desmond has become one of my training partners over the last year. He's also married to Evie Pompous, who has been a guest on the show. But Desmond has had a 30 year career in law enforcement. And just giving you off some of the statistics, it's so impressive. Seven years with the Secret Service and 15 years with Homeland Security investigations. He later became an instructor for the High Value Detainee Interrogation Group, symbol H I G, a unit created to find more accurate and reliable non coercive methods of gathering intelligence. Desmond talks about the power of curiosity over confrontation. I can't tell you the amount of times I've gone into meetings and I have had the luxury of being able to call Desmond and discuss with him strategy and how to approach specific people, whether they're confrontational or whether you're getting along with them. Great. There's always a strategy and you should always do your homework before going into these meetings. Active listening and the use of silence, I mean, these are very important things. It's almost that lesson of the most silent person in the room sometimes is the most powerful. And Desmond goes into detail on this and gives some incredible stories about when he's had to go into general population to extract information from people that, you know, have been put away for doing some pretty bad things. So just understanding and teaching me to always know what the mission is and to go in there with an objective is a valuable tool that I'll always incorporate into my business and into my life. Desmond's a friend and he's an incredible mind. I'm so excited for you guys to listen to him. First off, the Stronger podcast would not be possible if it weren't for our sponsors. I'd like to thank Timeline. Timeline is a product that I got turned onto a few years ago through Dr. Gabrielle Lyon. She told me about Mitopure, which is a Urolithin A product. So I started taking Urolithin a several years ago. I started with 500 milligrams. I bumped it up to 1,000 milligrams. And there were just things that I saw in my body that was improving and one of them was my skin. I started noticing that those lines that were coming on pretty fast, you know, at 48 years at the time, probably 46 years old, it started slowing down and I realized it was because the Mitopure product, Urolithin A, attacks from a cellular level. So when we go to train, exercise, eat well, walk, all these things are helping our mitochondria. And our mitochondria are the cells of our body.
- [03:42]
Desmond O'Neal
The.
- [03:42]
Sponsor/Ad Voice
That helps us with our energy and it's what keeps us feeling young and vibrant. So anything I could do to help my body repair from a cellular level, I am gonna do. I've been training and eating right for a very long time. And I would say the most recent thing that I've incorporated into my routine to help from a cellular level would be Mitopur's Urolithin A product. So I'm super grateful for that and I've been really enjoying it. So don't let another year go by feeling less than your best. Grab 35% off. 35% off your one month subscription of Might Appear Gummies@timeline.com stronger35. That's timeline.com backslash stronger35 while the offer last. Guys, thank you.
- [04:31]
Co-host/Interviewer
I'm like doing these, like, formula. This is Desmond. Like, I just kind of rolling in out of nowhere, kind of picks up and I'll introduce. So like, I. I mean, but your wife, Evie, it sounds funny, but like, you're like the G.I. jo and G.I. jane. I mean, she is, she's. You look at her and you wouldn't really envision she's like this. She's like this force. Like she really is.
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Desmond O'Neal
She is. That's truly. It's truly how she is as much of a sweetheart as she is. There is a lot of horsepower in that brain.
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Co-host/Interviewer
Oh, yeah.
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Sponsor/Ad Voice
So you're both.
- [04:58]
Co-host/Interviewer
I mean, you're both Secret Service agents. I mean, you just recently retired?
- [05:01]
Desmond O'Neal
Yeah, so I was. So I had been like, I'd been in law enforcement for 30 years, so 22 of that was as a. As a federal agent. My first seven were with the Secret Service. And then I transitioned over and I went to Homeland Security Investigations, and I spent the 15 last 15 years there.
- [05:17]
Sponsor/Ad Voice
Right, and you.
- [05:18]
Co-host/Interviewer
And you did do some training for the CIA?
- [05:20]
Desmond O'Neal
Yeah. So part of that was the later parts of my career. I became involved in a group called the hig, which is an acronym for the High Value Detainee Interrogation Group. It came online in 2010. Right. About the. For the purpose of when there was a lot of enhanced interrogation techniques going on, a lot of things with going over in Afghanistan, there were some concerns in terms of the enhanced interrogation tactics that were being used. So the Obama administration created a new group to say, you know, there's got to be a better way to gain information, accurate, reliable information. So he put together his task force which said, you have to create this group. And so that group came online in 2010, 2015. I was working on. I was at the Naval Postgraduate School and I was working on my master's. And so my thesis was, how do you develop a better interviewing protocol? Because at that time I was internal affairs for my agency, which meant that I was going to be interviewing other special agents, other people in law enforcement who probably would have had the same interview and interrogation training that I had. And the way that I had been trained up to that point, it was very. It's accusatorial. It's just. It's an old school type of interview and interrogation training. So my thought was, there's got to be a better way that I can learn to be a better interviewer. And I was introduced to the HIG in 2015. Loved it. Just brilliant. People really at the tip of the spear when it comes to what actually works when you're trying to communicate with somebody at a deep level. And then I just, you know, I just kept knocking on the door and saying, hey, I'll take part, whatever you need me to do. And then.
- [07:06]
Co-host/Interviewer
Which is incredibly valuable for everyone because at some point in our career where. Some point. How about life? Like, we're always, in a way, being interviewed and people are always judging and you're coming in and you, you've got to speak to a contractor, you got to negotiate this. I mean, I can't, you know, I mean, looking over, even the last year, how many times I've talked to you about, and I find myself pretty good at it. From the business end of it. But when you sit down and you do a negotiation with a brand partner. Let's not even say negotiation, let's just say a discussion. I've called you several times and I'm like, how would you approach this?
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Desmond O'Neal
Yeah.
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Co-host/Interviewer
And I found it.
- [07:36]
Desmond O'Neal
You were very helpful, you know, and that's the beauty, I think, of communication, or at least in that framework, where you start to see that it's not just about interrogation. It's not just about, you know, somebody that you're speaking to, they try to get information from. It is fundamental communication with anybody. And it applies across the board. Right. And so it is one of those where when you start to talk to different people for, you know, for example, the conversation that we and I, that we've had, you are naturally really good at it, you know, because I've seen it. And what we've always told any of our operators were, if you're having a conversation with somebody and it's going really well, don't worry about anything because you're doing whatever needs to be done. There's things that are naturally and organically just happening. When things fall apart, that's where you have to step back and say, what happened here? Why did that fall apart? Where is the disconnect that's taking place? And that's where understanding the science that goes in terms of communication applies. Because when you can start to better understand why things are working the way they are or what this person's head space is, then you can really get it, do a deeper dive into, like, what's really going on in terms of this interaction between you and I. Right.
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Co-host/Interviewer
I mean, you've had to speak to a lot of terrorists in the past. You've had to interrogate specific terrorists. Right. I mean, which sounds like you're gonna come in there in a very angry state. But in a way, from what I've gathered, you almost have to come in there. It sounds weird, but almost on their level. Like, at the end of the day, you're trying to get something out of them.
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Desmond O'Neal
Right.
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Co-host/Interviewer
You're trying to extract information. So do you find that. I mean, is that true? Do you find that challenging going into those situations when you have to sit with someone that might be an evil person or.
- [09:10]
Desmond O'Neal
Yeah. In the sense of trying to remember what the mission is. Right. And so whether it was somebody that was considered a terrorist, whether it's just somebody in a criminal setting, whether it's a number of different people in any walk of life, it's a matter of Going in and saying, what is my mission here that I need to accomplish? And who is this person in front of me? Because all, all communication in a lot of ways is a negotiation. The person I'm speaking to has all kinds of things on their mind. They have their own life, they have their own opinion, they have their own beliefs. And for me to come in there and try to inject just my thoughts, my feelings, my understandings, and not being mindful of who this person is, you really start to lose the connection that you can have with somebody else. And so you, you have somebody that's done something really bad. There's a reason that they did something bad. In a lot of times it could.
- [10:01]
Co-host/Interviewer
Just be the environment. They're the people they were raised from or the environment. You're speaking to a 28 year old that's done some bad things. Where was he raised the last 28 years? And what does he think about us as a country?
- [10:12]
Desmond O'Neal
Yeah, absolutely. So you go in and you have to give people the ability to feel as though you're really interested in listening to them. Because if you go in with a sense of curiosity as opposed to being convinced, and a person feels that that's really going to open the door in terms of a lot of things that they'll be able. Wanting to talk to you about or interested talking to you about. We look at communication often in terms of, it's like in three different levels. There's like a cognitive level, like how do you feel about me when I'm talking to you? Am I giving you the head space? You and I have talked about that? Am I giving you the headspace to be the person that you need to be in that moment? Are you, do you feel judged? Do you feel that I'm judging you? Do you feel that whatever you're telling me, I'm accepting? Am I asking you truly try to understand your perspective or am I coming in with my agenda? So if I can understand one, your cognitive headspace, that's something that's going, you're going to feel that and you're going to feel the sense of, you know, this person, I don't like him, but he seems different than the other people. And I may, you know, I may spend some time talking to him. Right. So you have to understand that part of it.
- [11:21]
Co-host/Interviewer
At least one of the things that I don't think I did as a kid and my father, I hear his words, he'd always go, listen before you speak. And as a young kid, you kind of roll your eyes and I think it took me a while to do that. I think it took me a while to be able to go into a meeting if I was seeking something or if I wanted to accomplish something by the meeting. As a young kid, you get excited, and out of nowhere you start firing at the mouth a little bit, and then looking back on it, you're like, maybe not the best thing. I mean, listening, right? I mean, this is. It's almost like an art, right? It really is. I mean, people, I think a lot of times when they're coming in, or if I have an employee that in the past was coming in, asking for a raise, they would come in and they just start firing off, which shows a level of weakness, I feel. I mean, what's your. What's your opinion on that?
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Desmond O'Neal
When you're.
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Co-host/Interviewer
When you're speaking with someone at that level and you're going into a situation that may not feel hostile in the moment, but you're dealing with someone that is potentially hostile, do you go in and try and listen, or are you always trying to control the conversation?
- [12:17]
Desmond O'Neal
Yeah, it's a great question. It is definitely about listening because you have to, you know, really understand again, when. What their headspace is and where are they coming from. Are they coming from a place of emotion? Are they coming from a place of just trying to get things done? Because going back to when we talk about communication, we talk about a cognitive level, there's also a context level in terms of what is this person, what's their motivation, what are they using their words to accomplish at this moment, Right? So, for example, if you're talking to someone and they are talking a lot of emotion, there's a lot of things on their mind in terms of how they're feeling. Their head space is about them and their emotions at a time. If they're talking about, you know, just finishing a project, like going from point A to point B, they are somebody that is really wanting to get the solution to something. They want to solve that. So if you can understand where this person's headspace is at that moment by listening. And when we talk about active listening, a lot of people say that communication is very effortful, like, it's hard to do really, really well. And so if you can start to look at a person and give this person the space that they want to talk, and then you can start to understand, all right? This person is very emotionally based at this moment. There's a lot of emotion. They're angry. I need to find a way to dive into that at a Deeper level. And, and so being patient. I think that's one of the things that I've noticed in my career is we're not. We as humans, we're not really good at that. And silence is a form of communication. And being silent and being appreciative or respectful of just where that person is at that moment pays a lot of dividends later in the conversation because you can listen to the person, then you can enter the conversation at a much deeper level, at the level of where they are at that moment. If you're not, if you're not paying attention and you just jump into the conversation, oftentimes there's going to be a disconnect where now things are going to all of a sudden be combative. So I can use you as an example with that. And I've seen you do this multiple times. When people come into your gym and you're training somebody, you'll ask them like, hey, how you doing? And you'll. Regardless of what they say, it's such an open ended question. Regardless of what they say, you'll meet them in the head space. Because if somebody comes to you and says, man, I just had a rough day, I didn't sleep well, you'll play in that area. Your job is to train them in reps and sets and all the things you need to go. But if they're not there, if somebody's just like, hey man, let's go. Like, what's my protocol today? You'll take it there. But if somebody's just like, hey, Don, it's tough day, you'll spend the moment in that. Because you meet them in their headspace. So once you can do that and you allow that person to play in that area and then you transition them over to where you want to go, it's a much better relationship. That's why you're gifted in terms of what you do. We've seen it.
- [14:55]
Co-host/Interviewer
I appreciate it. I still got a lot to learn in that category, but kind of leaning towards your wife a little bit because she, the first time I heard her, she was talking about these four archetypes. See if I remember. Lion, T. Rex, mouse and monkey.
- [15:09]
Desmond O'Neal
Yeah.
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Co-host/Interviewer
Okay. Now all four of these are a representation of four different demeanors, personalities, behaviors.
- [15:19]
Desmond O'Neal
Behaviors at the moment.
- [15:20]
Co-host/Interviewer
Right. What's interesting is, is that when I originally heard that you're like, oh, well, I'm lying. But wait a second, I can still be monkey. Yeah, right. And it's, I think, some of the best communicators now. And all four of Them. Right, so can we just go through quick? So T Rex is someone that's a little. You can have good T Rex or bad T. Rex. Right. So someone that's combative negatively or combative positively. How would you break that down?
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Desmond O'Neal
Yeah, so, so the, the wheels or the animal archetypes came from the research from like Dr. Lawrence and Emily Allison from the UK and they had looked at a lot of complex interrogations, a lot of high stakes communication, and they were able to break these down and they put the animal archetypes in there because it allows operators to communicate very quickly with each other if we're trying to understand the headspace of what we're seeing. So for example, if somebody is T. Rex. Right. So that would be the archetype of T Rex. A person who's going to be T. Rex is going to be very direct in their speaking, in their, in their behavior at that moment. They're going to be very direct, they're going to be very frank, they're going to be very forthright. It's just like. Right, cut to the chase.
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Co-host/Interviewer
Yeah.
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Desmond O'Neal
And so that's going to be what they would call a good T Rex. Now when you said bad T. Rex, what that means is there's an undertone of emotion with that. Right. These are people that, they're very direct, frank and forthright, but there's also a sense that they're attacking, they're sarcastic, maybe.
- [16:37]
Co-host/Interviewer
Losing their cool a little bit.
- [16:37]
Desmond O'Neal
They're losing their cool a little bit. And so you can start to understand their behavior at that moment. Because these archetypes will shift moment to moment, sentence to sentence, with wherever the conversation is. And so the best communicators are the people that can identify what that archetype is and then adapt to that specifically. So yeah, T. Rex is the first one.
- [16:57]
Co-host/Interviewer
So those, so you have T Rex. And then we go to lion, which is more of your leader. But again, you can have a good lion. Bad lion. Right. A good lion could be someone that's, you know, leading. A bad lion could be someone that's leading. And it's like it's my way or the highway type of thing. Right. That might be a little bit more direct. So that's how you would break that up. And then how would you, how would you separate good mouse and bad mouse?
- [17:20]
Desmond O'Neal
So good mouse is a person that is very humble. They're seeking guidance. So if you are giving somebody instructions in terms of what the workout protocol is and somebody is really absorbing that and listening to you and doing as Such that person has a. Is their behavior is good mouse. Is what they're doing is they're looking for you as a lion to give them direction, which they're going to follow.
- [17:42]
Co-host/Interviewer
All right, so bad mouse would be someone who's, I think, probably more. Would it be insecure, more negative? I can't do this just in a bad headspace in that sense.
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Desmond O'Neal
Yeah. A bad mouse is going to be somebody that's really, really detached. Somebody that's just super uncertain.
- [17:58]
Co-host/Interviewer
I can't do this. No, no, no. Every time I do it, I fail, which is that.
- [18:02]
Desmond O'Neal
Which is an emotional headspace to say I fail because that's what's going on with that. So you'll see a lot of that in, you know, domestic violence cases where you have one person that's really, really strong lying and another person that's a really, really weak mouse because they're just trying to, like, almost like, remove themselves or shrink into themselves to avoid just the. The anger of the lion. But bad mouse is just that. It is somebody that is very uncertain of themselves. They just don't have the confidence. They're not displaying at the moment. And so that's the behavior you're seeing at that time.
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Co-host/Interviewer
So what would be monkey, then?
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Desmond O'Neal
So good monkey, bad monkey. So good monkey is going to be somebody that's very conversationalist. They're going to be somebody that is easy to get along with. They're friendly. It's somebody that you just, for the most part, you know, kind of like this. Like, we just enjoy each other's conversation and we add on to that. So there's collective value in terms of where things go. Bad monkey, which you see a lot, that feels. It's still friendly. It becomes a bit pleading, like, these.
- [19:00]
Co-host/Interviewer
Are the people, but, like, a bit fake. A bit of, like a little bit of this is just, like, fake conversation.
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Desmond O'Neal
Yeah. It's like people come to you and they are, like, overly friendly because there's some agenda attached to that.
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Co-host/Interviewer
Yeah, they want something.
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Desmond O'Neal
They want something from you. They want something free. They want you to give them a connect. There's some deal or project they want you to. It just becomes way too much.
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Co-host/Interviewer
Opportunistic.
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Desmond O'Neal
It's a little too opportunistic. Yeah.
- [19:21]
Co-host/Interviewer
Okay, so would you find that a good negotiator is someone that can roll through all four of those archetypes, like having the ability to adjust.
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Sponsor/Ad Voice
Yeah.
- [19:32]
Co-host/Interviewer
That's second to the person they're sitting in front of them. Is that the magic? Is that.
- [19:36]
Desmond O'Neal
That's the Magic. Right. The magic with that is. And what the research has shown is the best operators or the best interrogators, the best communicators. Right. It doesn't have to just be always being like a, you know, a law enforcement setting or criminal setting. It's all of us. The people that are the best of that are the people that are the most versatile when it comes to what is in front of me at this moment. This person is showing me T Rex at this moment for some reason. Are they a good T. Rex or they a bad T. Rex? If there's a bad T. Rex, there's an underlying sense of emotion with that. How do I respond to that person? To make the communication effective, it really comes down to what's your mission? Right. Meaning that if my mission is to continue the conversation, then my tactical approach is to understand where this person is in terms of the archetypes or the wheel, and match that accordingly. Right. I have, as I said before, you know, communication is very effortful, and it takes a lot of work to do that. And you don't always want to do it. Right. There's times you're like, I just want to turn it off. And I have people that I'm close to that I just don't agree with, and we just see things completely different. And Evie's asked me before. She's like, aren't you, like, the expert or the, you know, the guy in this? And I'm like, I wouldn't say expert. I was like, but I know. She's like, can't you, like, make this better? And I'm like, I can. I just. I don't want to.
- [20:56]
Sponsor/Ad Voice
It's.
- [20:56]
Co-host/Interviewer
It's.
- [20:57]
Desmond O'Neal
It's hard.
- [20:57]
Co-host/Interviewer
I can. I can. I can understand that. I mean, sometimes. And I. And I never get into politics with anyone, but sometimes a conversation will come up about politics.
- [21:06]
Desmond O'Neal
Sure.
- [21:06]
Co-host/Interviewer
And suddenly, if I see someone's really far in one direction, if I even threw something out there that maybe they didn't agree on, I know that's a battle I'm never going to win, because there's certain people out there just. They own it, that's fine. So I purposely don't try and go there, which sounds like I'm being really. What's the word I'm looking for? I mean, I'm being what? I'm being more like Mouse. Would it be more like mouse, where I'm just kind of hiding in a corner a little bit. But I also understand a lot of times there's just certain topics, religion, politics. I'm not winning. I'm not winning. And it's not because I believe that I'm wrong. I don't think it should be right or wrong. I think it could be.
- [21:48]
Desmond O'Neal
I wish it would.
- [21:48]
Co-host/Interviewer
It could be a conversation. I'm interested in hearing your way. You're interested in hearing my way. And I'm not a bad person because I'm voting this way or that way. Right. And I think that's. Situations like that become really tricky. I also find the most difficult people I've ever had to use the word negotiate, but my children. Yeah, it's like, here I'm like, here I'm this, like, coach, where everyone's like, wow, how do you. Like, you can get the most out of people. And sometimes I'm sitting there scratching my head, going, wow. Like, my daughter's really. She's a lover more than life, but she's. She's smart, and she puts me in corners sometimes, and I'm like, shit. How do I even respond to that? It's fascinating sometimes when you're so connected to something that it becomes like you're too emotionally invested. I mean, do you ever. Are you ever, like, you're this master negotiator. Do you ever find there are times where you're just like, oh, my God, this is tough.
- [22:41]
Desmond O'Neal
Yeah. So one of the interesting things with that is there's no magic bullet to where things are always going to be most successful. Right. Like, you can understand all of the. You can understand the framework of, you know, the behavior wills, what we talked about. You can understand a person's head space. You can understand the motivation behind them. And there may be times when you simply just cannot connect and move the conversation further. The benefit of that is knowing I did everything that I could in my space and my knowledge base to do the best I could to try to connect to this person. It's also one of those where if you've had those conversations, you walked away from somebody, you're just like, you know, I don't like the way I handled myself. I don't like the way the things that I said. This is a way at times when you can start to understand the depth of communication, where you can walk away from conversation, agree and disagree, but you're still proud of yourself in terms of the way you handle that. And I think kind of going back what you had talked about with the different perspectives, one of the things that I just find fascinating, especially with a lot of the people that we would train, we would spend a lot of Time on like self awareness and self understanding and how bad we are really understanding who we are individually. So if I don't really understand myself that well, then how am I going to come in and do a really good communication with you? And the foundation of that is, you know, we look at naive realism, right? So naive realism is you think you see the world objectively and everybody else sees it a bit skewed. And so if I see it different than you do, then I'm either lying to you, I'm biased, or I'm uneducated or uninformed. And so when people carry that perspective, what happens is you're just like, you obviously don't see the world correctly because your perspective is the correct one. And I say the exact same thing. And it becomes something where you start to look at people's value systems. And we all have our own perspective, we all have our own values. Like what you value is going to be different than what I value. And so my values and my beliefs and my approach to life is simply just based on a thousand different things that have brought me to where I am. Yours is the exact same way. And so a lot of those may align and some of those aren't going to align. And so if politics or religion or whatever don't align, it's really hard to get somebody else to change that, that narrative or that direction, because that's just ingrained in who they are. And so the best way to approach that, because we have that oftentimes right, People wouldn't like me because I represented the US government or I represented I was a male, or it was something where they didn't like me because of something else that I represented. But it was really understanding why they had that opinion, like what brought them to not like me as that person in front of me at that moment. And being able to ask that and being okay to say, I can try to understand your perspective, and I'm listening to it like I am genuinely interested in understanding why you see this situation in the way you do, right? If you look at empathy and everybody talks about empathy, and I think it's always fascinating because empathy is one of those really difficult approaches to really try to understand somebody else. It's a way to connect to somebody. And it really is about asking really good questions. It's hard to do. And empathy, even though theoretically people know what it is, do you know what it is at that moment, at that time with that person in their headspace, that's what empathy is. And so if you can understand A person's perspective, like their understanding of what's going on at that moment, it helps you better understand them.
- [26:21]
Sponsor/Ad Voice
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- [26:37]
Co-host/Interviewer
What can I say?
- [26:38]
Sponsor/Ad Voice
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- [27:53]
Co-host/Interviewer
The first time you had to go in and do a negotiation, was your heart like beating through your chest? What was your feeling then in comparison? Because right now I look at you as one of the coolest people I know you can be in a room and I feel like you're not going to get rattled and you're going to be able to have a conversation with anyone. But was Desmond like that 20 years ago?
- [28:14]
Desmond O'Neal
Yeah. No, absolutely not. Like there's been. And that's a great question. And I know you and I have talked about this experience. Equity really matters. There is a huge difference between what theory tells you and what I know. Knowledge base versus Do I have time in the booth? Do I have time in the gym. Do I have time doing these things that go over courses of a decade to where I can say, yeah, I've applied these things, these theoretical things. I've applied them in the room, and I've seen them where they've fallen apart. I've seen them where they've broken. Right. And you hear a lot of different ways where people will go in and they'll say, hey, you know, if a person's doing this or they're doing this, this is an indication of that they're lying, or this is an indication that this person is going to do this. That's not always true. And I think the reason I bring that up is it really matters when you can get in and you can spend time with people or you can spend time making the wrong decisions in terms of what you think or what you want your skill craft to be. And so 20 years ago, I started. When I started my Federal career in 2002 at the Secret Service, in 2005, I became part of their polygraph division. So I had been a polygraph examiner for about 15 years.
- [29:31]
Co-host/Interviewer
Wow.
- [29:32]
Desmond O'Neal
And then led into being an instructor with the hig and so I had spent a lot of time in the booth and a lot of time overseas talking to different people. Because part of our mission set when I was with the Secret Service, we would do a lot of assistance with different local police departments that would just ask us, hey, can you come in and help us with an investigation or a case, you know, a double murder or, you know, a child abuse? And we don't have the detectives or the skill set maybe that you guys do. Can you help us? And so we would spend a lot of our time, in addition to doing things for the Secret Service, we would do a lot of things with the local police as well to try to solve, you know, help them solve different crimes. And then after I left the Secret Service and I went to Homeland Security Investigations as a polygraph, part of the polygraph program, most of my interviews, interrogations, took place overseas. Right. We would go over and we would work with different entities, different assets, different police departments to say, you know, we want to try to fight crime and corruption on your land versus ours.
- [30:36]
Co-host/Interviewer
Was that well received, or were they always kind of.
- [30:37]
Desmond O'Neal
No, they were there. No, because we have offices all over the world, Right. And so we would spend a lot of time, for example, in Central America, we would go and, you know, for example, we would work with the, you know, the Mexican government, or we would work with, you know, the government, you know, in Ecuador or Belize or whatever to say, we have offices here and we want a task force. We want to collaborate with your federal officers or your local or state police, but we have to interview them first and we want to know that they're not on the take, right? We don't want to know that they're not, you know, involved in corruption. And so we would go as a team, we would go down there and we would interview a number of different law enforcement agents that wanted to work with us, right? Because we would. They would get a stipend, they get extra pay, like there is. There's some positive benefits for them to work with us because we're fighting crime on their doorstep as opposed to waiting for it to come to ours. So even though we were interviewing different people in law enforcement, you know, you would get some pretty significant confessions and information in terms of some pretty egregious stuff that was taking place. So you would show up, you know, to the boss the other day and be like, hey, just FYI, this guy admitted to killing a couple of people.
- [31:50]
Co-host/Interviewer
Why would they just admit out of the blue? Was there any reasoning behind it? Was it guilt? Was it like this level of self remorse where they just couldn't handle it anymore, or did they want to get caught?
- [32:03]
Desmond O'Neal
So I'll give you a specific example. I won't tell you the exact country, but I was interviewing, and he would have been the equivalent of a sergeant here in the US in terms of law enforcement. And I was interviewing this individual and they wanted to be, again, they wanted to be part of this unit that was working with the US Government because it was a positive thing for them in a lot of different ways. And so they would come in and my job at that moment was to really understand, is this a person that we want to work with? Have they done something so egregious that we just can't put them on paper? Or are they also connected to a cartel or, you know, some other group where they're coming in to try to infiltrate? So there are a lot of different questions that we had to answer. But my conversation with this individual, with all of them, was, I'm not going to release any of the details that you tell me to your bosses, but I'll have to release them to mine just so we kind of understand who you are. So there is some incentive for these men and women to work with us. So I'm talking to this sergeant and I'm asking him about, you know, his overall job and the things that he has done. And if there's things that he's concerned about that if somebody knew, would be a problem. And he goes to tell me. He said. And he spoke English, so it was just him and I in the room. And he said, look, he said, we've got a pretty bad crime, pretty bad gang problem here, and a lot of guns, a lot of drugs. And he goes, it's really, really hard to. To combat that. He goes, so a while back, and I took a while back, being like a year ago, a year prior to this conversation, he said, a while back, myself and a couple of my colleagues went to a party where we knew a lot of these gang members were. And he said, and we found three of them, the leaders. And he's like, and we kidnapped them, right? We grabbed them and we put them in our van and. And he goes, then we wrapped them in carpet. And I'm like, all right. And he goes, and then we drove them to a certain location in the city, set the carpets on fire, and then dumped them into the ditch, wherever they're gonna leave them. And I'm like, okay. I'm like, how old are these kids? Or how old were these guys? And he goes, they were probably teenagers, 16, 17. And I'm like, so. I'm just. So my point of saying that was those kinds of conversations came up quite a bit for different things. That was one that's probably extreme, but you would get a lot of that where it's just like, it wasn't for me from the US to come in and judge other people, how they are fighting crime or things they need to do. Had I done that right, had I judged this person, had he now felt that I was looking at him in some type of disdain, it would have completely ruined the rest of the conversation in terms of what we do. That wasn't my job. My job was to get the information right? And so it's something like that that comes across where you're like, man, that's pretty messed up. It's heavy. But it's. At the end of the day, it's the job I need to do. So I take the information to the boss, and I'm like, hey, this is the information I have. This is probably not a person that we would want to put on our payroll, you know, for what had happened, you know? But those became things where over years and years of really spending time and somebody's headspace, you would get them to tell you a lot of very personal things because. And it was true. Like, I wasn't. I wasn't judging Them. Right. I. Jalen was curious in terms of what made this person feel at that moment that that was something he needed to do. And, you know, who am I to say otherwise?
- [35:31]
Co-host/Interviewer
Well, I mean, going to some of these meetings, I mean, it's. You're not always going to be successful. When I say successful, I mean, you were able to extract out of this person information which is in your situation, always the goal. How many times you go into a meeting and you realize that the person's not in the right headspace and listen. This might happen with someone who's listening to this, who has a boss or an employee who's valuable. I've had a lot of people work for me in my clubs in the past, and I've sat down with certain employees and realized that they're just having a bad day. And you need to put this on pause and say, listen, go get a drink of water or walk out of the room. Is that something. Is that a tactic you would normally take? Or do you find that you're just sitting there trying to use your skills to manipulate the conversation and go in the direction you need it to go in?
- [36:15]
Desmond O'Neal
So a couple things with that. So there is a huge difference between manipulation and influence. Right. So it's never about manipulating, never about manipulating a person. Manipulation.
- [36:24]
Co-host/Interviewer
That sounds almost negative.
- [36:25]
Desmond O'Neal
Yeah. Well. And so it's important, especially for the listeners or people who want to understand, like, how is this applicable to them. The difference between manipulation and influence is manipulation. You make it about you. Like, I'm going to do whatever I need to do so I can win. And, you know, it doesn't matter what happens to you. Influences. It's best for both of us. Right. How do I influence you to continue the conversation? Because that's best for both of us because of what we're trying to accomplish. One thing that I always stress with anybody that I speak to, and especially when we're talking in a training scenario or a teaching scenario, if you see emotion, ask about it. If you see somebody is showing you some type of emotion, whether that emotion's verbal or nonverbal, there's just something with their posture. Ask them about what it is and do it in a way where it's not about you saying, I think you are this. It's saying, it seems as though you're upset. It seems as though what I just said to you was something that you didn't want.
- [37:32]
Co-host/Interviewer
Not like an annoying tone where you're looking at them going, wow, you look upset. You're sitting on the other end Going, yeah, I am upset.
- [37:38]
Desmond O'Neal
Right. Because you ask them. Because what that does. There's two things that that does. If you notice somebody else's emotion, it shows that you're engaged and you're connecting with them, and you're picking up on something that they are showing you. And they may be showing it to you suddenly that they don't want you to see it, but you've picked up on it. Or they may be put it out there because they want you to pick up on it. And either way, it's a win for you. And so if you can say to somebody it seems as though what you've done, as opposed to. I think. Because when I say, I think I've made it now about me and my perspective when I say is, it seems as though it's almost like this internal shoulder shrug where, like, I'm okay to be wrong, but I noticed something here that is going on, and I would like to understand why that is. So it seems as though that you're upset with me, meaning that I'm okay with it. And if I'm wrong, I'm wrong, but I'd like to know why that is. And you give the person the platform to discuss it. So as you and I have talked about, if it's on their mind, it's in your way. And if they have something on their mind and you have an agenda or a conversation or something you're trying to do but this person's headspace isn't there and you feel it, the worst thing you can do is ignore it. The best thing you could do is just ask them about it. Because when we go back to talking about empathy, simply trying to just understand another person's headspace is enough to really make this person feel connected to you.
- [38:56]
Co-host/Interviewer
You said you just reminded me we had a conversation a few weeks ago about an example you gave about someone where. And I've done this. I mean, I can assure you that almost everyone who's listening to this right now have done this. You're sitting here listening to someone express something in their life that's going wrong, and that other person will fire back with, oh, yeah, I went through the same thing.
- [39:22]
Desmond O'Neal
So, like, worst thing to do.
- [39:24]
Sponsor/Ad Voice
I know.
- [39:24]
Co-host/Interviewer
And when you said that the other day, you put it in a way I've never heard it. You're robbing them of their moment.
- [39:30]
Desmond O'Neal
Yeah.
- [39:30]
Co-host/Interviewer
And I'm trying to think of that story right now. I'm not expecting you to use any names, but you. But you gave a specific story of someone coming in Expressing displeasure in something in their life. And the other person jumped in thinking they were being empathetic, thinking they were coming to the rescue. You know, oh, I broke up with my boyfriend. I broke up with my girlfriend. Oh, yeah, that happened to me once. And suddenly you're robbing them that moment.
- [39:52]
Sponsor/Ad Voice
And it was.
- [39:53]
Co-host/Interviewer
It was wild because in the past, when I've done that, I always thought I was coming to their level and showing them this level of empathy. But the reality is, is when you said it, I thought to myself, I don't want to hear if I'm sitting there venting and expressing something going on in my life that I just know you probably can't fix. But I want to get off my chest. The last thing I want to hear is that you went through it also.
- [40:16]
Desmond O'Neal
That's a lot.
- [40:17]
Co-host/Interviewer
Just give me my moment.
- [40:18]
Desmond O'Neal
Absolutely. And it happens a lot. And I think that's what people. There is good intention behind. Sometimes there's good tension. Sometimes it's just somebody using that as a segue where they can talk about themselves. Yeah.
- [40:29]
Co-host/Interviewer
Where they can talk about themselves more.
- [40:30]
Desmond O'Neal
But what something to try to avoid. What I would always encourage everybody is never tell somebody else. You understand, because in truth, you really don't. And it does become something where. When I was younger, when I was 21, my dad had passed away. I had never known anybody else whose father had passed away at the age that I was at the time. So I was really trying to understand how to process all of that. You know, I had a lot of siblings, and we really connected and bonded over that. But it was something where I didn't know how I should feel or not feel or whatever the case may be. I had a lot of people come up to me and say, look, I understand I had this happen to me or that happen to me, but it always felt disingenuous, even though I know there was good intention underneath that. The concern became, if you understand, then it almost makes it as though that I'm not able to express myself in a way that I feel that I should be able to in whatever the case may be. Because now this person saying, oh, I understand, and this is what I did, and I took this approach, and it always kind of sat off with me. And what I've come to realize over the years of doing what, in terms of being an interviewer or an interrogator, you'd never really understand a person's true dynamic when it comes to something they've experienced. Right. And when you have then shared in something similar Right. So, for example, you know, fast forward to several years ago. Evie's father had passed. Right. And she looked at me and she's just like, now I get why that is. Because we would look at each other and say we had two completely different ways that both of our parents passed away. Right. And so I could never understand what she had gone through, and she could never understand what I went through. It doesn't mean that we didn't care or respect it. It just was a matter of saying, I don't need to feel like I have to put myself at your level because that's your story to tell. And everybody else, everybody has their own story. Everybody has their perspective that they went through. So it's better to say I've had something similar than that. That. I'm not saying my experience is the same as yours, but I would really like to understand how it affects you. That's a way to deeply connect. Like, we both have children. I'm not saying the way you've raised your children is the same as mine. Just because your child or your children act a certain way and mine act a certain way doesn't mean it's the same. So for me to say, oh, I understand why your kids are acting like that, or I understand how you feel, that takes away your moment and that takes away your experience with that.
- [42:57]
Co-host/Interviewer
I made a mistake a few years ago. I mean, I made plenty of mistakes. But I'm saying a few years ago, I think on social media, I commented there was a talk on menopause and someone was asking me a question, and I commented I didn't think anything of it at the time, but I turned around and I wrote I get it. And it was a big eye opener for me because I had a couple women come on and they're like, you don't get shit. And I'm thinking about them like they're 100% right. I don't get it. Maybe. I've worked with thousands of women who have gone through, you know, pre menopause, perimenopause. Menopause.
- [43:28]
Desmond O'Neal
Yeah.
- [43:29]
Co-host/Interviewer
I've worked with a ton of women. I'll never get it.
- [43:31]
Desmond O'Neal
Yeah.
- [43:32]
Co-host/Interviewer
So I. Since then, it was. It put me in check. And there were certain areas in my profession I just don't want to talk about because I don't get it. So when a woman asks me about menopause, I will give some basic facts. I'm trying to, you know, make sure that they understand there's. There's information out there, but the best information is Going to come from a woman who's a female that's not 25.
- [43:55]
Desmond O'Neal
Yeah.
- [43:56]
Co-host/Interviewer
I don't care if they went to Harvard to study this stuff.
- [43:58]
Desmond O'Neal
Yeah.
- [43:58]
Co-host/Interviewer
I think you have to go through things I was working at. I became a coach at 21 years old and I'm working with people in their 60s and 70s, 40s and 50s. Now that I'm in my 40s, approaching 50, I get it.
- [44:12]
Desmond O'Neal
Yeah.
- [44:12]
Co-host/Interviewer
I get what starts happening with recovery. I don't care how smart of a coach you are, until you actually go through that process, you're never, never going to get it. And that's why I believe that experience, there really is no substitution for experience. I don't care where you're getting the knowledge from. I don't care what you're. And again, I'm shooting myself in the foot here because there's probably is that circumstance where someone has the right to learn something and be able to apply it. Things that are theory and that we don't know enough about in life and science. But I do believe that experience and the stuff that you're speaking about right now, it's. It's irreplaceable.
- [44:46]
Desmond O'Neal
Yeah. It is one of those where it does require you to just hit pause a bit and really understand what you're about to say. And are you adding to the conversation in a way that's meaningful for this person, or are you just saying something because you want to say something at that moment?
- [45:03]
Co-host/Interviewer
Which I see happen a lot, especially in conferences. People are. And as a presenter, as someone there, you never make fun of anyone but you kind of. Other presenters, I've seen at each other and go, there's the one. The person who just raises their hand and you're like, well, do you have a question? You just want to hear yourself speak. And I think that becomes a little bit difficult. So your whole career. When did fitness become a big part of that?
- [45:25]
Desmond O'Neal
Yeah, I know that's a big pivot.
- [45:27]
Co-host/Interviewer
Now, but this is a huge part of what it is you actually do.
- [45:30]
Desmond O'Neal
It's a huge part. It became something where. When I was growing so 18. And I can. And I can be very specific on why that is. So growing up, immigrant. My parents were both from Ireland, so first generation here, big family, sister, younger brothers, very close. Growing up, I was always the sick kid and I was always really the small kid. Right. It just became one of those things where I just had a number of illnesses that I was always just trying to, like, get over.
- [46:00]
Co-host/Interviewer
Right.
- [46:01]
Desmond O'Neal
I just always just wasn't A very healthy kid in a lot of different ways, you know, just could never put weight on. Was just one of those where I just. I wanted to work out, I wanted to run, I wanted to do all these things. I just wasn't as good as all my friends. Always felt like I was at this deficit. And we had moved. We had lived in a small town in Missouri and we had moved to St. Louis. So a much bigger. A much bigger city at the time. And I went to a doctor just as a general checkup. And I was 18 and so senior in high school. So he's just doing a general checkout. He's never seen me before, right? And he's like, can you. Can you come in tomorrow? And I said, tomorrow, Saturday? Yeah, just come in about 10 o' clock maybe.
- [46:46]
Co-host/Interviewer
Yeah. A bunch of tests. Yeah.
- [46:48]
Desmond O'Neal
So I just, I looked and, you know, I was just like, all right. So I show up the next day and he's just like, we're gonna do a couple different things. We're gonna do this camera down the throat. And I got my colleague here. I want him to kind of listen to stuff. So they're really focused, like, around my heart. So at the end, he's just like, point blank, he's like, hey, man, you got a really serious heart problem. He goes, you need surgery.
- [47:08]
Co-host/Interviewer
How old were you?
- [47:08]
Desmond O'Neal
18.
- [47:09]
Co-host/Interviewer
Did you freak out when you heard that?
- [47:11]
Desmond O'Neal
Kind of, but probably more for like a. Not like a death thing, right? I'm 18. Like, you know, you feel like you're bulletproof. It was just one of these things, like, how is this going to affect me, like, going to prom and, like, all the other things I need to do. Like, I'm not really taking consideration, like, the seriousness of this. So he's like, hey, man, you gotta. This is a thing, right? And so it was diagnosed as something called Epstein's anomaly, right? So I have some deformities in my heart. My VAL was off. I had a hole. I had a couple different holes. So I had a lot of things that they had to fix. So within probably a period of like a month or so, I went in for, like an open heart surgery and had all these different things done. And so I remember in, like, the recovery room of the hospital, right, Like, I was skinny before, and I'm super skinny now. And now I got this, like, this serious scar on my chest. I'm like, I'm never gonna get a girlfriend.
- [47:59]
Co-host/Interviewer
Like, this is.
- [48:00]
Desmond O'Neal
This is impossible, right? Like, this is the worst. So I was just, like, the only thing I Can probably do is, like, work out in a lot of different ways. So I was. And I was also. And I think this is more so than anything else was I was not sure at the capacity of what my heart could handle. And I was. That worried me.
- [48:19]
Co-host/Interviewer
Yeah.
- [48:19]
Desmond O'Neal
And so when I got. When I got released from the hospital, the doctor was just like, hey, give yourself like a month and don't do anything. So I remember the day of that month, like, I jumped on a bike and I rode, like, 10 miles, right? I was just like, I want to know if this thing's going to kick off, then I want to be responsible for that in some sense, like, because I don't want to just be scared about what that is. And I came home and Mom's like, look, you can't.
- [48:41]
Co-host/Interviewer
You can't do that, right?
- [48:42]
Desmond O'Neal
You gotta ease into it. So fast forward to all that. It was a matter of thinking at the age of 18. I'm like, I need to figure something out because I feel I'm in a huge deficit already in terms of just having, like, this genetic defect that's always going to affect me in a lot of different ways. So it became something where I really put a lot of effort and energy and studying and studying the best that I could. Like, not to your level in terms of the knowledge base of it, but really trying to put a lot of emphasis in exercise and nutrition. Because I was scared, and I was scared of the sense of saying, I don't know what my capacity is or what my limitations are going to be. And I remember when I started to want to pursue a career in law enforcement, like, there were a lot of times that I was told no. And, like, because of your fitness. Because of my heart.
- [49:30]
Co-host/Interviewer
Oh, because of your heart.
- [49:31]
Desmond O'Neal
Yeah. So, like, shortly after, you know, having heart surgery, you know, I was. I was like, I need to do something. So I applied for the Air Force. Like, I wanted to fly, and I went through all their tests and did everything. And then they're like, you know, you've got this heart issue. We need you to do a number of different tests. So I did everything that I could as it relates to what that is and came back to them. And they were just like, you're just. You're not our guy. Like, we just. We don't trust. We don't trust your heart. So now I'm like, you know, I'm like, shit, now what am I going to do? Like, this is something where I'm, like, really, really concerned with, is this going to be a problem? That I'm going to always have. And so I just really kind of focused on my fitness and different exercise protocols, and my cardio was just never great, and understandably so, but it was just mediocre at best. And then when I finally decided that I was going to go into law enforcement, you know, it was one of those where you had to pass a physical. Right. And so I went to. And I remember this specifically. Like, I went to the doctor where, you know, they're like, look, you have all the protocols, you have the college and you have the work experience, but you have this heart thing, you know? And they're like, so we have to do a bunch of different tests and so forth like that. So I do a bunch of different tests, and it's the same thing, man. It's just this repetitive nature of being like, man, is this going to be something that's always going to just stick with me? And I go for my final eval, and the doctor comes in that represents the police department. He's just like, let me see the paperwork that you have. And so I gave him all the paperwork from the cardiologist and the different people that had tested me, VO2 max, and all the different things that I did. And he's like, I'll be back. And so I remember, like, he leaves and I pray. I knelt down at the table and I prayed. I'm like. Because, I don't know. I don't have a plan B. Yeah, this is. This is what I've got. Like, I studied in criminology. I don't. I don't know what else I'm gonna do here if I don't. If I don't get to be and follow this career path. So he came back in, like, 10 minutes later, and I stood up, and I was just like. He goes, well, he goes, look, you've got some pretty good cardiologists. He goes, so if they tell you that you're not gonna have a heart attack on our shift, then we'll take you.
- [51:41]
Co-host/Interviewer
Wow. And I was like, oh, my God. You probably got emotional.
- [51:44]
Desmond O'Neal
Yeah. Like, even now telling it, because.
- [51:46]
Co-host/Interviewer
Yeah.
- [51:47]
Desmond O'Neal
But, you know, again, the same protocol happened when I went to the federal government. Right. Same thing, like a protocol. And I'm like, this is, like, the third or fourth time I do this. And so I think it became something where fitness became an identity for me, because it was the only thing that allowed me to pursue the career that I had, because I didn't. I wouldn't have been able to do that. Like, I was in pretty good shape. The best that I could have been in under those circumstances had I not taken care of myself and put that much effort into it. I don't think I would.
- [52:13]
Co-host/Interviewer
I find it ironic that, like, here you get rejected from the Air Force, you almost get rejected from becoming a cop. Right.
- [52:20]
Desmond O'Neal
Yeah.
- [52:21]
Co-host/Interviewer
And then. What was the then? The path was like, you almost kind of outshot all those things by ending up doing what you're doing. So here in the beginning, you get rejected from. Was technically at the time, your dream.
- [52:32]
Desmond O'Neal
Yeah.
- [52:32]
Co-host/Interviewer
Then you're going to something that's like, second best. It's almost like your safety school.
- [52:36]
Desmond O'Neal
Yeah.
- [52:36]
Co-host/Interviewer
And you almost get rejected from that. So now you're like, holy shit. Like, this is. But then you ended up far surpassing all three of those things. I mean, I find that inspiring.
- [52:46]
Desmond O'Neal
It was something where, you know, metaphorically, it's just like, I'm going to go west, and I don't know if I'm going to end up in Seattle or San Diego, but I'm going to pursue.
- [52:55]
Co-host/Interviewer
Little different lifestyles and see where life takes me.
- [52:57]
Desmond O'Neal
And see where life takes me. Right. And so it did become something. Like, I never took it for granted. Like, even now, I've never taken it for granted because I know that that's still something that I deal with. And I think, you know, or I know that the time that I've spent with you has expanded that in terms of my recovery and the way that I move and the way that I balance, because you've given me a broader protocol and something that I hadn't been doing. Right. And that was one of the things when we initially sat down, like, you sat, and you said, what are you doing now? And where do you want to get to? And I laid it out, and you're like, we need to work a lot on your mobility.
- [53:33]
Co-host/Interviewer
Yeah.
- [53:34]
Desmond O'Neal
Yeah. So it's pretty significant movement, cardio.
- [53:36]
Co-host/Interviewer
And also understanding that every day is not going to. To be a world record. Right.
- [53:40]
Desmond O'Neal
Yeah.
- [53:41]
Co-host/Interviewer
I think. I mean, in the last year, I think your improvement's been incredible, and I think there's a lot more room for all of us to improve. I think we just got to keep at it and understand that, yeah, we are getting older. But also, it's like, I think aging is a privilege. It's just like, things I've gotten to the point now where I'm like, we're.
- [53:56]
Desmond O'Neal
All going to face it.
- [53:57]
Co-host/Interviewer
It's all happening. How are we going to do. How are we going to go through this process? And it is inspiring. Now I see people in their 70s, 80s, you know, there was a woman someone posted about the other day, she was 100 years old and she was sprinting the 100 meter the other day. And you're like, see, like, it's all right. I worked out with Jack Lane when he was 90 years old and the guy came in, was inclining 50 pound dumbbells and had like a tight shirt on and was like ripped. And I was like, oh my God. And you know, I saw his wife at a. I've talked about this. I saw his wife at his documentary get on stage at 90 something years old and do 20 push ups, like to the floor, like military style push ups. It's like, you see this now we're in a different era. You know, my parents, my grandparents. It wasn't that era. It wasn't that time where people were, you know, putting all that time into movement and exercise. And now, you know, thank God my parents are doing that. But I think now our generation, I think we're going to be a lot better off, you know, in the, in the future. All right, so Des, I got inspired to do this Q and A from the old Z100 days where you'd be driving in a car. This is before XM radio. And you were actually listening to people calling in like Casey Kasem and they would ask questions. Every once in a while we, we get a, you know, you get a crazy on. We haven't had that yet. I am looking forward to it and I welcome it when it happens. But that's part of our segment now is we're going to take a couple questions. I know we have Olivia on right now who probably wants to ask you something. And keep it light. We'll keep it fun and looking forward to it. Let's rock and roll. All right.
- [55:21]
Desmond O'Neal
Olivia.
- [55:22]
Co-host/Interviewer
Oh, I know Olivia. I know you.
- [55:24]
Desmond O'Neal
How are you?
- [55:25]
Olivia
Hi, Desmond.
- [55:26]
Desmond O'Neal
Hi, how are you?
- [55:26]
Co-host/Interviewer
What's going on?
- [55:28]
Olivia
I'm great. How are you? Thank you both for having me.
- [55:31]
Co-host/Interviewer
Thanks for being on. Olivia. It's good to see you.
- [55:33]
Olivia
Of course. All right, so I have a question for you guys for context. I'm starting my first clinical rotation of nursing school next week and advocacy is an essential component of the nursing model of care. So I'm curious, especially for Desmond and your expertise, any practical conflict de escalation strategies I could use in the workplace to better discern what others need from me and protect myself, my co workers and my patients?
- [56:04]
Desmond O'Neal
Yeah, great question. And I would definitely, for de escalation de Escalation is going to be something where you are going to have to be very mindful of the emotion that person's showing you. So de escalation means there's going to be some type of underlying anger, there's going to be some concern, some conflict. This person, whoever you're dealing with, is going to be showing you some type of aggression, possibly some type of emotion, some type of hurt for you to give this person the space that they need for as long as they need it. And just don't feel a need to jump into understanding what their hurt is or their anger. If somebody's yelling at you, give them that space. Ask them some open ended questions, try to something to the effect of, you know, it sounds like that you're very angry about this. I'd like to understand why that is. It seems as though that you feel that the care you're getting here is inadequate. Can you explain to me why that is so I can serve you better? Something open ended like that. Because what you will try to do is if you can connect with this person in this headspace that they're at, what you're doing is you're giving them the autonomy to be who they need to be and allowing them to run that course in terms of then starting to give you options, or you can start to understand where their anger is coming from, then you can start to follow up with some type of solution. So for example, if this individual shows you some anger to say, you know, I don't like the way that I'm being treated here, something to the follow up of, you know, could you tell me how you feel you're being treated so we can better understand that. And then they, you know, they tell you, I'm not getting my medication on time, I'm not seeing the nurses as much as I want to, then your response to something like that would be, thank you for sharing that with me. Let me look into that to see what I can do to make this better for you in terms of what that is. I will follow up with you to let you know what I found out. Because what you're doing is now you're giving this person the space to talk, but you're also starting to give them the solutions by which that you will help them through this problem. And what you're doing is you're now connecting with this person at a deeper level. The most important thing you're going to need to do is if you say that you have to follow up with them. So if you tell somebody, hey, I'm going to be back tomorrow to talk to you. You have to show up tomorrow.
- [58:23]
Co-host/Interviewer
You know what's so smart about what you just said is you didn't make any false promises. And I think that it reminds me, I called Delta the other day. I had a flight issue. Call them up to have a conversation. They say they're going to help me out. At the end of the conversation, they weren't able to help me out. And they turned around and I was. Maybe I was a little obnoxious with this response. I'm human. But they said, can we help you with anything else? And I said, well, you didn't help me in the first place. Right. It's like, Right. So I think that frustrates me sometimes when you're in an environment which you and I talked about this today becomes a bit hostile when you're dealing with someone who's angry they were mistreated. We're not in their situation. We don't know what their feeling is. We don't know what their financial situation is. All these things are going through their head and then out of nowhere you come in and. And you're, you know, maybe choosing different words. That's setting them up for, you know, for potential failure. And if you're unable to deliver on that, you know, it's not helping the situation out and you're going to be really stressed out about it. So I love the words that he chose when delivering that message because you weren't saying that you were able to help them. No, you were basically telling. You were saying, let me understand the situation better. So you were immediately coming to their level, saying, listen, I'm here. I would like to help. Let me see if I can help. He was almost acting as a friend without crossing that professional barrier. So I thought the verbiage and his delivery, I thought that was brilliant.
- [59:49]
Olivia
I very much agree. I'm just curious how you would deal with a situation where the individual who is being aggressive or whatever the situation is, if they're not able to be reasoned with. Because active listening and validation is extremely important. But that only goes so far if a person is unable to communicate with you.
- [60:09]
Desmond O'Neal
Right.
- [60:09]
Olivia
So what do you suggest in that kind of scenario?
- [60:13]
Desmond O'Neal
You have to know your own limitations. Right. So active and effective communication doesn't mean that it's 100% going to always be. It's always going to work. Meaning that if the person can't be reasoned with, laying out the groundwork of what is possible and is not possible. Right. So if so, for Example, if a person's just like, I want this done and this done and this done, and you have to lay out, look, I just want you to understand up front that's not going to happen. You know, for these reasons, we have protocols in place or we have, you know, certain medications that we're restricted to give you. I want to make sure you understand what your options are and why we can't do those type of things. Because what you're doing is you may have a person that you can't reason with, but you have to be able to walk away to say, I did everything that I could in terms of giving this person the information that they needed. Because longevity wise, you as a nurse, like this is going to be your profession in terms of you dealing with people and interacting. If you can maintain the same type of Persona, the same type of honesty, the same type of integrity, whether you're dealing with this person or five or six years from now, you maintain that type of curiosity when you're speaking with people and giving them the best, Olivia, that you can. It's not always going to work, but it's always going to be best for you. So you have to look at the long term aspects of like, who do you want to be and who do you want to and how do you want to represent yourself in this profession? Not everybody that you're going to interact with is going to be able to be reasoned with. That's not your fault, right? You do the best you can with the information you have and then you move on and you maintain your integrity. And everybody has their own walk, right? Everybody has their own walk with God or whoever they, you know, whoever they believe in, right? Meaning that you have to go on and say, I did the best that I could for this person. Let me give the same care and consideration for the next person. And you continue that. And that overall, I think will alleviate you feeling the need to have to try to fix every person every time because it's not possible to do.
- [62:10]
Sponsor/Ad Voice
Right?
- [62:11]
Co-host/Interviewer
And Olivia, I mean, I know Olivia through my challenge community. Olivia, you're a really good person. We all know this, right? All the challengers know this. That you're on right now trying to figure out a way to better the situation. I think says a lot about yourself. Des is right though. You can't. The people who in life that are just going to be unhappy and they might be a bit combative and I think going into the situation, knowing who you are as a person and approaching it with kindness like you're going to do because I know you. And with a level of seriousness in the sense of, like, when you say you're going to look into it, I know you and you're going to look into it. That right there, I think is. I think that's a beautiful thing and I commend you for doing that. So keep me posted on everything. Let us know how it goes.
- [62:55]
Olivia
All right, will do. Thank you both so much. I appreciate it.
- [62:58]
Desmond O'Neal
Have a good day.
- [62:59]
Co-host/Interviewer
Thanks, Olivia.
- [62:59]
Olivia
Have a good day.
- [63:00]
Podcast Host
Thank you.
- [63:01]
Desmond O'Neal
Bye.
- [63:01]
Olivia
Bye.
- [63:02]
Co-host/Interviewer
All right, Des, is there any one type of interrogation that stands out to you in the past?
- [63:09]
Desmond O'Neal
Yeah, so a few years ago. So to set a context. And so, yes, there's one. I think in terms of all the ones that I have done, oftentimes as an interviewer or interrogator, the people that you interview, you don't really know the end result of what it is. Right. You're going to look for information, you're going to look for intelligence. So Several years ago, 2017, 2018, I was at the Naval Post graduate school, and I'm finishing a master's degree. And one of my classmates, his name is Vern Pearson. So Vern is the. And still is, he's the district attorney for El Dorado County, California. So him and I were talking and he asked me if I would do an interview of an individual named Philip Garrido. Now, for context, Philip guerrido. So in 1991, Philip Garrido and his wife Nancy kidnapped an 11 year old girl and it was in the area of El Dorado, California. So kidnapped this girl named J.C. dugard, kept her captive for 18 years. He had fathered two, you know, two children with her. And then in 2009, he was found, she was found alive. And he was convicted of 430 years and his wife was convicted of 36 years in terms of kidnapping this young girl. So Vern Pearson had worked that case and he had asked me, he said, there's always been some concerns that Philip Garrido had also kidnapped a young girl named Michaela Garrett three years prior. Similar area. She was a little more west, but there was. But would you interview him? Because he's been interviewed multiple times and I never, from Vern's words, he's like, I've never been comfortable with the way that that interview was done. Would you, would you take a crack at it? So I said, sure. Right. So I got permission from my agency to go and do this interview of this, of this individual. And I did a lot of research on him. Right. He had written a manifesto about how to cure himself of pedophilia. And he had written a bunch of different things. So I had spent a couple of weeks doing a lot of work on this case just to better understand who this individual was. And so I showed up one day, he didn't know I was coming. And I showed up with my colleague and you know, the prison had set up, it was in California. And they gave me an office to set this, set this interview in. And I showed up on a Tuesday. And my goal was to understand if he was in a time and place in 1988, you know, where he would have kidnapped and killed this young girl, Michaela Garrett. So, and my plan was to have that conversation with him by Thursday. So I had planned to spend about 40 hours with him in terms of our conversation. So I remember him walking into the room and he's a very large and he's 6 4. He's a big person. And he just looks at me and he's like, who are you? And I said, well, I'm especially Jonial. I work for Homeland Security and I'm interested in talking to you. I've read your manifesto in terms of curing yourself of pedophilia. And I was like, I would just like to ask you some questions in terms of if you know, if that's valid in terms of who you are and the things that you have talked about. So he's just like, well, I wasn't going to come in and talk to you, but the voices in my head said, this might be interesting, so here I am. So I said, okay, so he has a seat and we start a conversation in terms of just who he was as a person and his life and his experiences of the things that he had done overall. And so when we talked about archetypes earlier, I spent a majority of my time that I was spending with Philip being mouse, asking open ended questions. He was very astute when it came to the Bible, which I'm not. So he would go on at times for hours talking about scripture and different things. And it was my job to actively listen to him, to understand something that I could pull back and reorient our conversation in a direction. So I had to give him all the things we talked about. I had to give him the autonomy to be who he needed to be. I was nonjudgmental. I was really listening to things he was telling me. And he was telling me repeatedly he was a serial rapist. Right? So he would spend most of his 70s and 80s driving around Nevada, driving around California, picking up hitchhikers, raping these women, dropping them off like this became a pretty extensive conversation that we had. So by Thursday, we've had these conversations, and every day he would get up and the guards would come get him at five o', clock, and. And he would say, you know, all right, you know, good talking to you. And I said, okay. I said, look, if the voices allow you to come back tomorrow, I'll be here. If not, then it was nice to meet you. And every day he showed back up. And Thursday came around, and we spent a lot of time. And he didn't know I was interested in his killing of this girl or potential killing of this girl, because it would have. I wanted to understand who he was as a person, the way he spoke to me and the interaction that we had had.
- [68:02]
Co-host/Interviewer
And he's also kind of earning some trust with you.
- [68:04]
Desmond O'Neal
There's a lot of. There's a lot of that. Like, there is a lot of conversations that we're having that are. That are pretty deep, they're pretty personal. He shared a lot of stuff with me, and we get to his time frame in 1988 and the things he had done, the places where he was, and it got to the point where I didn't feel that he had killed this girl, right? And then Thursday came, and then Friday came, and we finished our conversation. So I had spent about 40 hours with him, you know, or the first four days talking to him and doing what I needed to do to find out who. If he was responsible for this. This is a little girl that was, I think, nine years old, right? And so it's something that's pretty. Pretty needed some closure. And so when I. When I leave for the day and I call up my friend Vern and he goes, what do you think? And I said, he's not your guy. And he goes, you sure? And I said, I'd bet my career on it. Now, I don't say that with ego. I say that because I did everything that I knew that I could do in terms of my job, right? Like it was my responsibility to do what I could do. So he said, okay. He said, if you're putting your career on it in some sense, that I'll, you know, I'll talk to the investigators. And so he said, you know, appreciate your time and doing it. And so he called the people who were overseeing the case, and he said, look, you guys need to revisit this, because the guy that we thought it was for the past, you know, 20 years isn't the guy, you know, so they went and you know, relooked at the all the information they had, relooked at the evidence, found some evidence that they hadn't looked at before and were able to find out somebody else who had killed her in regards to, you know, this little girl. So they were able to find some closure, charge somebody with it, you know. So my job I felt, you know, in terms of the things that I do for a living or the things that I did for a living or my ability to be able to put all those things together was kind of the point of being able to kind of get.
- [70:00]
Co-host/Interviewer
And you're also, you become a master at almost detection. So when you're talking to someone and you through the conversation you could pretty much tell if someone's lying or not, right? Or do you most of the time or how does that work?
- [70:09]
Desmond O'Neal
Yeah, and that's a great question. There's a lot of misinformation in terms of if people are liar not. There are no indicators of if somebody's lying. So if anybody tells you that they're trying to sell you something, there are things that people will do where it will cause you to pause to say they moved a little bit, meaning that there's some verbal and nonverbal behavior that they just exhibited. It doesn't indicate that it's a lie, but it is something that I will follow up with as well. And so there are things just to where you have to really pay attention to people and actively, as we talked about, actively listening. The victory lies in the minutia, right? It's the little things that you do, the little things you pick up on the subtleties of what somebody will do at that time, where you have to pay attention to that because those become the threads you pull. And so with, you know, with my interview with Philip, it required the totality of everything that I was able to do because of the implications of what this was going to end up being. Right.
- [71:04]
Co-host/Interviewer
And so did you ever think, I mean, I'm just curious, through that 40 hour conversation or whatever the amount of time was, did you think when you built that trust to ask just to see if how he would respond or maybe through body language or gestures, maybe you're able to pick something up? Like I found that fascinating that you didn't actually, even though you were going in there with that in mind, like that was your agenda at the end of the day was to pull that out of him. You still kept your composure for that four day span or when you Felt like you developed a rapport with him at the end. Like, listen, can you, can you tell me about this girl? And just seeing how he responded, like, that's not something you would ever think about doing.
- [71:40]
Desmond O'Neal
It wasn't needed at the moment. I needed no shock value from him. I needed no, hey, this is why I'm here specifically for this girl. There were a lot of things with him that I was trying to understand because had I gone in just with that agenda and not given him the autonomy to speak to me, he could have disclosed a lot of different things. I mean, there were a lot of things he disclosed in terms of women that he had raped and people he had kidnapped. He had never told, told anybody before. So if I go in with just a narrow focus that I'm just interested in talking about this girl, I'm not going to get all that information, or unbeknownst to me, maybe there was some other little girl that he had killed or had hurt and it hadn't been this girl. And so I didn't want to narrow my focus of what I wanted to accomplish on that Thursday. And at the same time, you know, I wanted to maintain the integrity of who I was as a person. The way that I treated him from the very beginning to the end, regardless of who he was as a person, I still had to walk away from there being, you know, the person that I am or the person that I have you know, portrayed, not portrayed myself to be, but carrying myself in terms of the integrity of having a thorough, detailed conversation.
- [72:48]
Co-host/Interviewer
All right, so your job takes place globally. I mean, there's many times you're going into different countries, there's this loss when it comes to language. With languages and there's a language barrier. It almost reminds me a bit of, you know, I always say, when you're texting someone and you see the conversation going awry, pick up a phone call, listen to their tone, meet them in person, look at their facial expressions. So much changes. What do you find are the challenges when you're speaking to someone that maybe can't articulate things in a way, or maybe you're interpreting it a little bit differently because they're not using the right words or forming the right sentences. Is that something that kind of skews your conversation and change your decision making?
- [73:28]
Desmond O'Neal
Yeah, it absolutely can. And it's a great question because for all the times that we would travel overseas, 90% of those times I was using an interpreter. And the importance of that would be to making sure that the interpreter that I was Working with was repeating everything in the same context, in the same tone, the same utterances, whatever the case may be. Because just as we talked about the victory lies in minutiae, it's the little things that people say or don't say that are gonna cause the conversation to go in a different direction. And so I have had interrogators or I've had interpreters in the past who would just give me a summary of what was said. And it's.
- [74:09]
Co-host/Interviewer
That doesn't work, right?
- [74:10]
Desmond O'Neal
It doesn't work because it's not. I'm not now allowed to pick up on the small subtleties of where they are or if there's an undertone of emotion or different words that they had chosen. And so it really becomes something. Especially when you're doing international negotiations where you have interpreter that you have, you know, worked extensively, even if you haven't worked extensively with them in the past, sitting down with them ahead of time, saying, it is vital for you to be able to give me every detail. Because especially when, you know, part of the interrogation group, the hig, you know, our interrogators, or, I'm sorry, our interpreters went through the same type of interrogation training because they would start to understand the importance of all the little things that we as operators needed to know. Because if they left something out that was a huge. That could be a huge gap in terms of knowledge base that we're gonna.
- [74:59]
Co-host/Interviewer
Lose, I would find that vital that the interpreter knows you as a person or knows your tendencies during the job or how you like to run a negotiation or an interrogation however you want. Like, I would find that vital. Did you. Would the interrogator turn to you and be like, listen. They're delivering this in. In a way that sounds aggressive, but it's really not. Like, would they turn around and almost describe a little bit of. Of what was. Not only the words that were being said, but sometimes maybe how someone's delivering it in tone might. Because they're nervous or whatever. Maybe they're sounding loud or whatever like I'm sounding, but it's just coming off that I'm a loud person. Like, would they. Would they. Would there be that type of detail?
- [75:40]
Desmond O'Neal
Yeah, there was as much detail. Especially the interpreters that we worked with were just like, they were top tier a lot of times. And they would, and they would. They would follow everything and they would, you know, if there was an utterance, they would give that utterance and they would say, this is what's going on. This is the context. This is the word that they chose. This means this. It's in a different language. So they would really give, you know, give our operators everything that we needed in terms of really understanding what is being displayed at that time. Because language and communication, it's very easy to misinterpret. Right. And it is one of those where, you know, and I'm always. I'm always a fan of the quote from George Bernard Shaw, who says the single biggest problem with communication is the illusion that it has taken place. And oftentimes people think just because I said something, I've communicated with you. And that's never the truth. Wow. It's the message received is the message. And so the message received between two people, especially when it has to go through an interpreter, becomes more complex if everybody is not on the same page. So when I would have a good interpreter with me, it was. I was blessed to have that. But they had to be good and they had to be on point.
- [76:44]
Co-host/Interviewer
It's fascinating. It's something that you never really think about. I mean, obviously on my end, because I'm not doing what you're doing, but I find it fascinating. Des, Listen, man. Love you to death. I can't thank you enough for putting time aside being down here. Like I said, you and Evie have become like family. And I. I look forward to our weekly session and when you bring your beautiful little girl out. I also want to thank Christian Ponder at the Post. I think this place is incredible.
- [77:05]
Desmond O'Neal
Fantastic.
- [77:05]
Co-host/Interviewer
Fantastic. I mean, I got my team out there right now. They're doing emails and we're having meetings, and it's just one of those places that we show up to and just you feel like you're at home. So I want to thank the team there and listen psych for our next session.
- [77:16]
Desmond O'Neal
I appreciate it. Thank you. Appreciate it. Thanks.
- [77:24]
Podcast Host
The views, information or opinions expressed in.
- [77:26]
Desmond O'Neal
The series are solely those of the individuals involved and do not necessarily represent those of Chip and Joanna Gaines. Buy no audio nor Magnolia.
- [77:34]
Podcast Host
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