Ports of Call. On Blue Horizons far at the world's end, strange fascinating lions back in us, bid us revel in their exotic splendors, come with us as we head for Ports of Call. Separated from the continent of Europe by 27 miles of wind-tossed water, and from America by 3,000 miles of blue sea, the tiny island of England lies like a green carpet under the soft English sky. Sailing up the English Channel past the rocky point known as Lamb's End and the busy harbor of Plymouth, we anchor at the great docks of Southampton at the junction of two wide rivers. Four hours by fast express and we arrive in London, the greatest city in the world. It was near London on a sultry June day in 1213, that England's greatness was forever guaranteed. On a broad meadow in Surrey, the feudal barons of England are gathered outside the silk and pavilion of their hated King John. Distant thunder booms in flooding measures, lightning licks about the cloud's sharp edges. The air is charged with tension as the barons draw closer, speak in low tones. I think you, the King, will sign Oxford. I have heard it said that he means to press for still more time to consider. He must be deaf and blind.  It's true, but if he thinks he can... Does he think to impress us with this silken pavilion and trappings of state? Ah, he's not even a man much less a king. Majesty! The King! Ah, mark his insolence as he seats himself. Well, my lords, your King will hear what you have to say in defence of this charter which you propose we shall sign. If your Majesty pleases, Baron Robert Fitzwater has been chosen to represent the barons in this discussion. Let him present himself. There is little to discuss, Your Majesty. You have been sent a copy of the charter. It represents our demands. There are certain clauses to which we object. We are willing that certain clauses be subject to discussion, but certain others we will demand. What others? I will read the most important. No free man shall be imprisoned or exiled without judgement of his peers. All persons shall be free to come and go in times of peace except outlaws and prisoners. No justice, constable, sheriff or bailiff is to be appointed but such as knows the law and is willing to observe it. Justice is to be done in cases of wrongful dispossession and all illegal fines are to be remitted. Are these your demands? If your Majesty wishes to keep his throne, he would be wise to sign the charter. But those are the very clauses I will not sign. That your Majesty want war? Lords, it is beginning to rain. Let us postpone this. It is raining and I have not had time. Your Majesty had best sign. Oh, very well. Give me the pen. And so was signed the Magna Carta, foundation of English law. Over the tiny turbulent kingdom years came and went. The house of Plantagenet was succeeded by the house of York, then Lancaster, and finally Tudor, whose impatient siren Henry VIII defied the Church of Rome. Bitterness and strife followed his death, but Elizabeth gained the throne where for 45 years she played Catholic against Protestant and enemy against enemy to the glory of England. 1599, in Elizabeth's magnificent court, her favorite for five years has been young Robert Devereaux, Earl of Essex. Just after Easter, she receives him in her private apartments. Well, Essex, is there some urgent matter of life and death that causes you to ride here in the rain this morning?    Madame, I... Oh, you know I am not displeased.  Even Walter Raleigh? Even Walter Raleigh. You are jealous of him. I am jealous of every man on whom your Majesty's eyes fall for so much as a moment. If I could have my heart's desire, it would be that I might take you in my arms, draw the curtains between us and the world forever. The last that I am a queen. I know. But yours is a glorious reign. You have made England mistress of the sea. There are some who say Sir Francis Drake accomplished that. Sir Francis was but the instrument of Spanish destruction in your Majesty's hand. And without your favor, there could have been no ships bringing the treasure from the West Indies to England. Again, you are thinking of Sir Walter Raleigh. What is it that I may do to prove how high I hold you in esteem? Esteem is a cold word, Your Majesty. Affection, men? It is still but lukewarm. I am not afraid to speak boldly. And though you may rebuke me, I adore you. Essex, what do you want of me?  I beg you to send me to Ireland to put down thy own rebellions. You, Essex! Your surprise itself speaks ill of me.  Essex, you forget yourself. My sword is but a shining ornament. Oh, Your Majesty, you refused to permit me to go to Spain with Sir Francis Drake. Let me serve you now in this. I would put down the rebel tyrone in one swift stroke and add glory and even greater acclaim to Your Majesty's magnificent reign. So, you see me as a timid woman, holding you back from your man's life. Timid? Elizabeth timid? No. And if your feeling for me leads you to fear for my safety, I am a thousand times blessed. But Your Majesty knows that people are ill-pleased that the Irish rebels have not been put down. And if I should send you, the people's idol, they would...  I cannot resist Your eloquence. I will instruct Cesar to have Your appointment drawn. Your Majesty, I am Your slave. God keep you safely. I will give you a token to wear. It shall be worn next my heart. I swear it. Take this ring and, Essex, if ever I should misjudge you, remember this. You have only to send me this ring and it will always bring forgiveness. Your Majesty, my love. Yes, Martin? Sir Francis Bacon, Your Majesty. Let him come in. Your Majesty. Come in, Bacon. I sent for you because you are a friend of Essex. There's little I would not do for Essex and nothing I would not do for Your Majesty. Well spoken. I am told that London is filled with gossip, Bacon. Gossip that Essex has lost half his men. Dead from disease, frittered away and unimportant scannishes. But he has made no real attempt to crush to Rome. Tell me, what is your opinion of the state of affairs in Ireland and of the manner in which Essex is proceeding? I am greatly honoured that Your Majesty should consider my advice worthy of her attention. What is your advice? Essex and I have been the closest friends since boyhood. As Your Majesty knows, Essex has greatly favoured me. My present position at court is due to his influence in my behalf. I know his nature as well as my own. And forgive me, Your Majesty. I have heard the present gossip that is being repeated in the court as well as in the street. You may speak freely. Your Majesty, if you were to continue him here at court as an ornament to yourself and to society, he would be in his right element. He is beloved by the people and well liked by foreign ambassadors. I have Your Majesty's permission to continue. Yes, yes, speak on. To put arms and power into his hands may be a temptation for him to prove unruly. Therefore, if you would send for him and satisfy him with honours here near you, if Your Majesty's affairs would permit it, I think it would be the best plan. Arms, power, temptation. Your frankness is very welcome, Sir Francis. You will speak of this to no one. Certainly not, Your Majesty. You have our permission to retire. Your Majesty. Perhaps I shall send for you again, Bacon. I am at Your Majesty's service. Good night. Good night, Martin. Yes, Your Majesty. I am going to my chamber. Send my women to me there. Yes, Your Majesty. Oh, I am weary. Why, Lucy, you here already? I thought Your Majesty might retire early tonight. Oh, you thought I seemed tired, ill. Oh, no, Your Majesty, never seems weary or ill. But since you had decided not to attend to Anthony's ball... There, there, it's all right.   Ah! Talk to me, child. Has Your Majesty heard of Will Shakespeare's new play at the Globe Theatre in praise of my Lord Essex? What's this? Oh, yes, Your Majesty. It is called Henry V, but everyone knows it's my Lord Essex who is meant by Will Shakespeare's words. What words? I know them well. We're now the general of our gracious empress, a good time he made from Ireland coming. Thing rebellion broken on his sword. How many would the peaceful city quit to welcome him? Huh? It would seem Will Shakespeare also wishes my Lord Essex well. But who does not? Except Sir Walter Randall. Enough of this for tonight. Call the others to prepare my bed. Your Majesty. In the morning will the time enough to consider what must be done. Is my wig ready, Lucy? Yes, Your Majesty, it is here. Hand me my mirror before you put it on. My hair is grey. Oh, Your Majesty. Don't try to take the mirror.  My face unpainted. My hair hanging in wisps about it. I beg Your Majesty. Lucy, will let me dress your hair. What's that? My Lord. Essex. Your Majesty, I have only this moment arrived from Ireland. I know my clothes are dirty and disordered from the long journey. My boots covered with mud. But I could not forbear one moment to see you. Lucy, go at once. Yes, Your Lord. Now, Essex, tell me what there is to be said about your conduct in Ireland. They say, Lucy, with an Essex of quality. Is it true he burst into her chamber and found her in a dressing gown unpainted and without Eve on her weave? I have heard it said. And now Essex is a prisoner at York House. But Essex, is it the height of injustice that you should be kept prisoner? Oh, what does it matter, Merrick? One day I am in the Queen's paver and the next I am cast out of the court and disgrace. There is this to consider. James of Scotland would like to rule England also. Merrick, you're not suggesting... Why not? It would not be the first time in this country a sovereign has been deposed. If you would throw your great popularity into the scale for James, much might be accomplished. I ask to depose Elizabeth. Why should you be loyal to her? After all you've done for England. She's ordered you into custody without compunction. Let me take a letter to James assuring him of your devotion. Oh, very well. Elizabeth is determined to destroy me. England holds nothing else from me now. Months go by. Francis Bacon warns Elizabeth the people will rise in anger if Essex is severely punished. At last she is set free. But only a few weeks later... Essex, the Queen is being told of your activities on behalf of James. What? I heard it from one of the Queen's ladies in waiting. She is not yet convinced, but you are in danger. Leave London at once. Go to Wales. There you can raise the standard of revolt. Men will flock to join you. Why should I run away? If the Queen wants my life... Who is there? The Lord Keeper, the Earl of Worcester and William Nollus and the Lord Chief Justice. You were under arrest in the Queen's name, Lord Essex. Take him to the tower. Robert Devereaux, Earl of Essex. You have been found guilty of high treason against the person and the crown of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth. You are sentenced to be hanged, drawn and quartered on Lugget Hill on the morning of February 25th. And may God have mercy on your soul. Has your Majesty had me brought here from the tower to gloat over me? No, to tell you of the chain in your sentence. Your Majesty? Yes. You are not to be hanged on Lugget Hill. But like other important prisoners of state, you will be the headed in the courtyard of the tower. Well, have you nothing to say to me? What is left to say? Why did you not send me the ring I gave you? I told you it would always bring forgiveness. I was brought to trial that justice might be done.  Oh, you'll try my patience. But bet I can understand. It is not too late. Give me the ring, admit you wronged me. No. If I crawl from mercy now, if I beg forgiveness and it is granted, it will only mean that in a week, a month, or a year, this miserable past will be played out again. In the end, I shall die. So let it be soon. Oh, why must it be thus? Our love was destined to bring us nothing but misery and suffering. When I am gone, it will be over. By six, give me the ring. No! Last time I shall ask. Do you still wear it next to heart? Yes. Then give it to me. Say you were wrong. I have not much time to prepare my soul for death. I beg your majesty will send me back to the tower. Go then. I shall never see your face again. So closes one of the most colorful chapters in the story of England. Three years later, still grieving over the death of Essex, Elizabeth died. With her died the Tudor dynasty and the light-hearted stewards diced and drank and fiddled away England's wealth on the painted beauties of the court. Rebellion swept the land. Grim Cromwell ruled for nine brief years. With the death of the frivolous Charles II, the steward line ended. From Hanover in Germany, where summoned to England's throne, George I, and George III, who lost the American colonies in 1776. In 1805, the gallant Lord Nelson pits England's navy against the combined navies of France and Spain at the Battle of Trafalgar, and Lord Nelson dies to win it. Napoleon scourges Europe for 20 years. In 1814, Lord Wellington defeats him at Waterloo. Peace brings a new renaissance to England's life. A new generation of poets is born. Shelly, Keats and the tragic Lord Byron. June 20th, 1837. It is five o'clock in the morning. In her bedroom in a quiet London house, a young girl is asleep. Who's there? It's the Archbishop, my child, and the Lord Chamberlain. Please open the door. The gentleman, I'm not dressed. I can't see anyone now. We have most important news for you. Please permit us to come in. Can't it wait till I have vision and dressed? No child. Oh, my dressing gown. Here it is. I must put on my stockings and slippers. Oh, my hair's so untidy. Are you really ready to let us in, Victoria? Just a moment, gentlemen. There. Now you may come in. Uncle Leopold and my governess will be very angry with me for receiving you in my dressing gown at this hour. What news can you have that is of such great importance? The news that your uncle, William Fourth, died at three o'clock this morning. You are Queen of England, your Majesty. Queen of England? I? You have long known you would one day rule. Oh, yes, I was told I would be queen. But that's quite different from having the Lord Chamberlain of England kneeling at my feet. What will my governess say? You no longer have a governess, your Majesty. From this moment, you will command not only your own actions, but your loyal subjects, both in England and beyond the seas. God, don't. I may rule my people wisely. Two years later, a German prince, Albert of Saxe-Coburgotha, arrives in England determined to win the hand of the lovely young Queen Victoria. On a beautiful English autumn day, Victoria and Albert are strolling in the palace garden. Your Majesty is very thoughtful today. I'm thinking of something I said to Lord Melbourne, the Prime Minister, before you came to England. Something about me? Yes, Albert. To judge from your melancholy face, it must have been something most unpleasant. It was. Now I regret it. Then if you regret it, do I hope you have changed your mind? Oh, I didn't mean to say... that is, I... Yes, I will say it. I have changed my mind. I like you very much indeed. Victoria.  To marry me? Perhaps if you had made the proposal to me instead of the Prime Minister and my Uncle Leopold, I might have consented before. It was only because I fear to displease you by declaring my affection. Dare I hope you may learn to love me? My governess always told me it was not seemingly for a young girl to talk of love. But I'm sure that is not wrong for me to tell you that you may hope. Victoria. With Victoria's marriage to Albert, began the prosperous years of her reign, by four years the longest in English history. Brilliant successes came to her armies, and on the sea her navy became supreme. The 19th century sees England's colonies expand beyond her wildest dreams. Victoria becomes Empress of India. But Albert's death has changed her into a bitter, grieving woman, living in her memories in the golden past. Her life spins out. 50, 60, 70 years. Late one June day in the year 1894, she stands in St. George's Chapel at Windsor. Edward, Albert, Christian, George, Andrew, Patrick, David. I baptize thee in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen. My first great grandson, the future king of England, Little David. The longest of England's royal lives came to a close in 1901. Edward VII, already middle-aged, ruled only nine years. George V ascends the throne amid the first mutterings of the storm that four years later sweeps all the nations of the earth into red disaster. 1914, England's first hundred thousand pour out their lives on Belgian soil. But amid the agony of no man's land, the sons of England lift their voices in exultant defiance of death. There is but one task for all, for each one life to give. Who stands if freedom falls? Who dies if England lives? 1915, Ypres, Liège, Amontier. I have a rendezvous with death at midnight in some flaming town when spring trips north again this year, and I to my pledged word am true, I shall not fail that rendezvous. 1916, the Somme, they're done. If I should die, think only this of me, that there's some corner of a foreign field that is forever England. 1917, Ymiridj, Pashendal. Take up our quarrel with the foe. To you from falling hands we throw the torch. Be yours to hold it high. If he break faith with us who died, we shall not sleep. Though poppies grow in Flanders field. 1918, Ara, Massime Ridge, Amiens. Peace. Home to England from France, from Mesopotamia, from Turkey, though the soldiers and sailors of England, a handful of the gallant men who held their lives so cheap that England's mean. Back from France goes Edward, Prince of Wales, who take up the task of preparing himself to rule. In January 1936, the summons comes. George V is buried at Windsor. Three months later, Edward VIII sits before a radio microphone in St. James's Palace, whose courtyard once echoed to the dancing hoofs of the horses and medieval kings. It now falls upon me to succeed my father to carry on his work. I'm better known to most of you as the Prince of Wales, the man who, during the war and since, has had the opportunity of getting to know the people of nearly every country of the world under all conditions and circumstances. And although I now speak to you as the King, I am still that same man who had that experience, and whose constant effort it will be to continue to promote the well-being of his fellow men. May the future bring peace and understanding throughout the world, prosperity and happiness to business people, and may we be worthy of the heritage which is ours. And now our steamer awaits us in the bustling harbor of Liverpool, where high over St. George's Hall shines a bronze replica of one of the extinct birds known as livers that gave the city its name. This modern industrial city with its great schools of medicine, engineering and law, contrasts strangely with the green fields and thatched cottages of the countryside to which we have just come. But the soft wind blows from the hedges and mingles with the salt of the sea to say that all this is the gallant heart of England. We're homeward bound once more from another journey to Port sub-call. We invite you to join us again next weekend this time as we journey to another of the world's fascinating Port sub-call.


If you're somebody who does a lot of traveling or goes on rough streets, definitely get these. If your stock wheels aren't that good, definitely get these. Hey, what's up guys? It's Josh here. Today I want to do a review on the cloud wheel donuts. It's going to allow you to put cloud wheels on your hub motors before, I guess they were only for build drive boards. So these have actually sold out quite a bit. Initially, I bought some build drive kit. I'm not sure. And it came with four of these. And so I ended up putting two of these on the back wheels because they are not hub motors. And then when I was trying to get the donuts, the actual things that I need, they only had them in orange. So I have orange in the front and red in the back, but I don't really care as long as they're the same size and they're the same wheel. And I'm colorblind too. So it doesn't matter as much to me. But anyways, guys, this is a very interesting product. I had no idea really what to expect. A buddy of mine, Ryan had these, but he had them on his little X-Way mini board. I had really never tried the board with and without it. Very interested to see just what some premium level wheels would do. I mean, if you're looking into some aftermarket wheels, these are probably one of the top ones that pop up when I see little videos and stuff. Most of the time people are using these cloud wheels.  I'll try to put some footage in here while I'm doing this review. So again, I ordered the wrong thing. I don't know if you buy the donuts. If you have to buy two more, I don't know how that even works because I only bought the two donuts after I bought this four. So I just wanted to put that in there. The setup of this was a little bit rough, a little bit infuriating, but eventually I did get it. It was interesting because I wanted to set these up so bad, but I was in such a frustrated mood. It was like I almost knew that if it wasn't going to be super, super easy that I was going to be frustrated. So it ended up taking me probably about an hour and a half to two hours of this. I almost gave up a few times, but I had just one more thing that I thought it could be. I double checked and eventually I got them going.  I mean, even if you cleared off a workspace pretty good, but there was other cluttered things in the room. If you smack one of these things, it's gone. So it actually did take a long time to set up. It was a little bit frustrating, but now pretty much got it. I think some people need to do a tutorial of it. Maybe I'll do a tutorial. I'm pretty sure there's going to be some out there, but when I looked it up, I could not find one. Without further ado, let's jump into the pros of these wheels. The pros is that it is pretty much great for mild to moderate kind of street conditions. These are labeled as all-terrain wheels, but I really wouldn't classify them that way. They're kind of more of light street wheels in my opinion. It is very nice because most of the time when I use these, when I'm just traveling places, you know, maybe eight to nine out of 10 times, the road is not smooth. You know, it's rough, whether it's cracks, whether it's anything, you know, anything in the road, it is mostly rough. So having something that kind of smooths out the roughness and makes it feel more just smooth overall is really, really nice. I really do appreciate this. Great for street wheels, not insane street. If your street is completely beat up, again, these are not all-terrain wheels. These are not for like the sand or the grass or anything like that. In my opinion, they're just for mild to street wheels. I did notice definitely some less chatter. It definitely feels more smooth. They have like a dampening core in there. I don't really know how damp they can get the donuts because the donuts are kind of like a sleeve. They don't have the full dampening core like these do, but so far everything feels good. I was noticing a lot less problems with rocks. When you go under rocks, it is going to shoot it under your board. It's not like it's going to just negate rocks altogether, but I would notice on my normal street wheels when I was going, if I would hit these little star-shaped rocks, any sort of slow speed, it could completely stop my board and I have to jump off and it was really, really annoying and so far that has not happened with this. It just seems to generally handle rocks a lot better because it doesn't have that one smooth surface to stop it. I do really appreciate that. The main pro of this is that most streets aren't smooth. When you're traveling places, it's just probably a little bit nicer, a little bit more cushiony to use these and they're a little bit bigger than most size wheels. These are the 105s. They do make like the 120s, I think. I would only want the 120s if I had like a really, really powerful board, but I do really like those 105s. They are very, very nice. So jumping into the cons of these wheels, most funny before I get into the cons, somebody on my Instagram, I think his name is like Eastgate Boys or something. I'll link his Instagram there, but I posted online that I was ordering these and he wrote me just paragraphs and paragraphs about why these aren't that good and all the little problems that you have with them. And I do kind of see where he's coming from, but I just thought it was funny. It's like, oh, I pulled the trigger and somebody has all these issues with him right away. I'll try to put what he was saying on Instagram on this video. It'll be pretty funny. I'll try to link him down there as well. But for the cons that I noticed so far, it is less smooth when the streets are really smooth. So if the streets are perfect, this is going to feel like you're all, you're going over a little bit of something a little bit rough. So I did notice that and I was kind of like weird right away, you hop on it and it's like, oh, wow, it doesn't even feel as smooth. But that's right away on something perfectly smooth. Like I was saying, if it has any sort of chatter or anything else, it's actually a lot better. So then I also noticed that it uses more battery. Now I do need to test this a little bit more, you know, doing something to where I would barely see one bar off. I was seeing two bars, things like that. I used to think it was a lot. It was taking off my battery, but now it just seems like a decent amount. But I do want to say that it is noticeable. If you're somebody who has a pretty weak eScape battery as it is, I don't know about recommending these because it definitely is going to cut off your battery more. I do want to say on the more expensive brands, the batteries are getting really big. If you can go maybe 15 miles or so on your board, then you should be able to be good with this. But if you're somebody who's like struggling for range, this is definitely something to consider. There was less acceleration. Now I actually fell recently before I was using the cloud wheels, and I kind of have that mental block in my head to where it's like, I just don't really want to go fast unless I have full gear on. So I've gone really, really fast in this, but I haven't just been like a speed demon as crazy as I can. I've really been fast, but just not maxed out. Apparently these increase your top speed too. That's kind of crazy, but I haven't been able to test that. And I do notice that the acceleration is noticeably a little bit less. But my board, I have the backfire G3. The backfire G3 already had pretty good power and pretty good range. It doesn't really matter as much. I did want to say that it does kind of mess with the acceleration. So if you're somebody who already accelerates really low, it's going to be worse. So it's something that you considered you have plenty of acceleration and plenty of battery. It's not an all terrain tire, they say it is. But in my opinion, it is pretty far from an all terrain tire because all terrain you think of, you know, grass, you think of sand. This is really just mild street conditions. I've been on streets that are like insanely beat up to where I wouldn't want to take these on it. But any sort of mild street conditions, that's kind of what these wheels are for. Who do I recommend this for? This is going to be very rider dependent. I would say if you ride on a lot of rougher streets a lot, I would definitely consider these. If your stock wheels are kind of cheap, like one of my buddies, I don't only want to save a board you have, but he had a board that was rarely really good. But the wheels seems kind of average. He was kind of unsure. Do I order more wheels? So I just get rid of the board or whatever. In his case, I would definitely buy the cloud wheels. If your entry level wheels aren't that good, but your board is really good. It's got a lot of good specs. 100% pick these up. If your range and acceleration isn't very good, I probably would try and skip on these. But this is a pretty interesting product. I would probably say that I like the purchase. I would say that it has more pros than cons for me. There is a lot to these wheels.  It really is rider dependent. I actually like these. If you're somebody who does a lot of traveling or goes on rough streets, definitely get these. If your stock wheels aren't that good, definitely get these. But anyways guys, that's been my little entry level review trying these for a week or two right now. I'll be on here as soon as I pass a certain like level of miles on my board. I'll definitely come back on here and do a little recap. But anyways, guys, do you like cloud wheels? Have you tried cloud wheels? Have you tried the cloud wheel donuts? Be very interested to see down below. I'm so happy that they gave this option for people with hub motors because for me personally, I just really like hub motors. I know a lot of people really like belt drive, but any of the problems that you're supposed to have with hub motors, I haven't had any problems with. And these are, this is a very interesting product. I'm very interested to see how long they last. Based on that, we'll probably determine whether I'll buy these again. But I could already tell you, I do like the smoothness and I probably will buy these again. So anyways, guys, let me know what you think of the video. Let me know what you think about cloud wheels. I'll be very interested to see down below. We're on the road of 50,000 subscribers and I couldn't do without any of you guys's help. You guys are the best. I'm having a great day out here. Hopefully, having a great day at home. See you all in the next video. Peace. Well, I mean, like, no, no, my bad.  Yeah. But if you're looking for comfort, cloud wheels is way more comfortable.


There are a few more of the hand-its available up front. There are a few more of the activity things that we'll need. But it will definitely work better if we can have groups of people. But if really sitting at the back and watching is your thing, that's OK, too. We'll just give it a minute more before we get started, because it's just turning two now, and people are finishing up from lunch, but we will not wait very long. I have everything that I need for the workshop. I have a bottle of water. The tech is all set up. iPad helps. All good. No, no, don't need that for here today. Thank you. So is everybody feeling good and lively after having had a nice big lunch? Sleepy. Oh, excellent.    I was feeling a little sleepy myself earlier today. It's been here for about a week and a half, and there's been a lot going on, a lot of participating in the conference, a little bit of partying in the evenings. So I'm going to be waking myself up as well, which means I try to wake myself up. I wake up all of you. OK, I think we will get underway. So welcome. Thank you for coming to attend my session. My name is Ellen Grove. I am an Agile coach from Ottawa, Canada. I'm also one of the organizers of Agile India. I'm really thrilled to be back in Bangalore. This is my second time at Agile India, and I've been having a ton of fun here. The session, what we're going to spend the next 90 minutes together exploring, is games for learning about conflict resolution. These are games that, as people who work with teams, you can take back to your organization to help people to start to explore conflict resolution and the nature of conflict. I would like to open this session with a poem by one of the modern masters of American literature, Dr. Seuss. One day making tracks in the prairie of cracks came a north-going Zaks and a south-going Zaks. And it happened that both of them came to a place where they bumped. There they stood, foot to foot, face to face. Look here now, the north-going Zaks said. I say, you are blocking my path. You are right in my way. I'm a north-going Zaks, and I always go north. Get out of my way now and let me go forth. Who's in whose way, snap the south-going Zaks? I always go south, making south-going tracks. So you're in my way. And I ask you to move and let me go south in my south-going groove. Then the north-going Zaks puffed his chest up with pride. I never, he said, take a step to one side.  If I have to keep standing here 59 days, and I'll prove to you, yelled the south-going Zaks, that I can stand here in the prairie of Prax for 59 years, for I live by a rule that I learned as a boy back in south-going school. Never budge, that's my rule. Never budge in the least, not an inch to the west, not an inch to the east. I'll stay here, not budging. I can and I will. If it makes you and me and the whole world stand still. Well, of course the world didn't stand still. The world grew. In a couple of years, the new highway came through. And they built it right over those two stubborn Zaks and left them there standing, unbudged, in their tracks. Beautiful poem about the nature of unresolved conflict. Thank you. Happy to bring Dr. Seuss. This is what happens if we don't deal with conflict head-on, though. Rather than using all of that energy to help grow our organizations, we concede, we make compromises, we find workarounds, and we end up in this kind of tangle. This is not a good place to be. Having said that, we need to expect that there will be conflict in our organizations. Because we want, this is how growth has achieved, we want to be in a state of productive disequilibrium. Because living systems, when they are in equilibrium, they are dead, right? So what we want to do is in order to grow as organizations, in order to evolve new ideas, in order to make sure that we are bringing, building diversity of thinking and a whole range of ideas and tour organizations, we need to expect that there will be conflict. But we want to try to achieve a state of productive disequilibrium rather than the standoff where everybody has to navigate around it because we can't figure out how to get along. So to start our investigation of conflict resolution this afternoon, I would like to pick a massive fight in this room. Do you play rock, paper, scissors here? Is this a game that people are familiar with? Okay, because I know they played on the Big Bang Theory and I've seen the Big Bang Theory on TV many, many times, but just give me an idea of the depth into which I have to go with the instruction. So rock, paper, scissors is a very simple game. One, two, three, and then you throw. You throw scissors and scissors beats paper. You throw paper, paper beats rock. You throw rock and rock smashes the scissors, okay? So it's a very simple face-to-face game to people stand face-to-face. One, two, three, throw. And whoever is the victor is the victor. What we're going to do in this room is we're gonna have a rock, paper, scissors competition where we're gonna start off in pairs. Any people will compete. One person will be the winner.   They go on to find another competitor in the room. So say, sorry, your name is Nitesh. So Nitesh and I play, Nitesh wins, and then I become Nitesh's follower. And I cheer, Nitesh, Nitesh, Nitesh. As he goes on to fight Stelio and then Stelio vanquishes Nitesh and then we find the next competitor until there are only two standing and then there will only be one. So what I'm gonna ask you to do is I'm going to ask you to find a partner to begin with, introduce yourselves. You might wanna start off with a polite handshake. And then the competition will begin. It is okay to be loud. I have already warned Angle that we are going to kind of disrupt his thing for a couple minutes, that's okay. I want a lot of energy. I want a lot of enthusiasm. I want you to cheer for your champions. Everybody ready to go? Excellent, find a partner and we begin. So you will need to stand up. Stand up. Okay, so it's, yeah. Okay, sorry. So it's one, two, three and then you throw either scissors or, moment and I'm gonna pick on Steve. Where did you go? Hey Steve, can I borrow you for a second? I need to be conquered.  So one, two, three and scissors cuts paper, so he would win. If we do, I'm gonna throw rock. You throw scissors. One, two, three. I threw rock, rock smashes scissors. Paper beats rock. So it's a very simple game. One, two, three and then throw. If you happen to throw the same shape, you just do it again. For the first round, we're just gonna do one game. When we get to the last two people standing, we'll do the best two out of three. Anybody have any questions about this? Okay, now let's go. Thank you. We have a new champion. Sorry, I was trying to read your name tag. Sebastri, now you find somebody else. Sebastri, Sebastri, Sebastri. Okay, there you go. I think there's, yeah, okay, so. Okay, so who's the winner now? Stuff. Scissors and the stone. Stone beats scissors. Stone beats scissors. Can we just ask the what is, the noise coming out of the side? Because that room can't be heard at all. Okay. So just ask them to just go with the sound. Yeah, then your paper. Paper beats stone. Okay, oh, oh, okay. Okay, okay. Sorry, great. Apparently we need to cheer a little more quietly. I did warn Angle this was gonna happen, but we're having so much fun that they can't hear anything. So it'll be like, Sebastri, Sebastri, Sebastri. And we'll finish the battle, because it's really important to finish the battle. There can be only one, okay? But what? Okay, so who is, who's left standing at this point? Mayuri? Okay, come on up. Mayuri, Mayuri, Mayuri, Mayuri, Mayuri, Mayuri. Okay, so this, you guys were the last two standing? We'll make this a two out of three. Oh, okay.  Okay, is there one more competitor who's still in the game?  So, Sebastri, Sebastri, my, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. So yeah, two, three, whoa, yeah, whoa. Okay, last one in. Clearly everybody's feeling a little more enlivened after lunch. We also have now created a situation where there was one true winner, Puneet.  The loser really, really sucks, right?  And so as we are thinking about how do we sort ourselves out when we find ourselves in a conflict situation, I want you to think a little bit about that feeling of being the winner and being the loser. Because the goal that we're trying to accomplish when we're trying to resolve difficult situations is to find one win-win situations so that nobody ends up feeling like they come out of it as losers. So I mentioned previously that conflict is really important. Living systems, high-performance teams experience a lot of conflict. It's natural, it's expected, it's important if you wanna have an organization that grows and changes and thrives and survives. The trick is how to help teams navigate conflict rather than founder in conflict. Because teams that have learned to navigate conflict together successfully, they have stronger relationships. They're more confident about their abilities to take on challenges. They have open communications because people aren't afraid to say what they think. People aren't afraid to disagree with each other because they know how to handle it. They will disagree in a respectful, constructive way rather than I'm right and you're wrong. And I say this as somebody who's custom being right. It makes teams more productive when they can figure out how to resolve differences quickly. And when people know that their team, that their environment, that whatever their container is that they know that they can handle conflict, it lowers the stress level overall because people realize that it's okay. We know that the going will get rough because that is the nature of life but we know how to deal with it. So I don't have to be stressed about the possibility of avoiding conflict. There are many of us who through our life experiences are more attuned to I don't want to be part of conflict. I don't want to confront conflict. If conflict is happening, I want to try away from it. So having that confidence that it's normal, it's expected, you know how to deal with it can help create a more constructive communication for everybody involved. If you don't work with your team, with your organization to build up new conflict resolution skills, what happens is your organization will clown to it, right? Relationships get damaged. People build up, they become defensive and there are hidden agendas and lots of politics and gossip and things. People waste incredible amounts of time and money and energy building all those highways around those two zacks that are there standing off rather than getting things done. Blame storming happens. People have hard feelings and people feel stressful and hostile and chaotic. These are obviously not good things, especially if you're trying to move forward at high speed, right? We don't want to be foundering. So we want to start talking in our teams and organizations about conflict and we'll start doing that before it happens. The next, the first game, second game I guess that I'd like to have happen is we're going to do a very simple exercise to explore our perceptions of conflict. Now the people sitting at the table already have one of these little baggies. If you're not at one of the tables, what I'm going to ask you to do is if you can form yourself into groups of five or six and you'll need one of these little baggies for your group. In the baggies, there are just different colored pieces of cardboard and what I would like you to do is pick the color that for you represents conflict. We're going to take 30 seconds in your group. You each pick your own color, okay?  I would just like you to go around your circle and share with each other why you chose the color you did. Just tell a brief, give a brief explanation, not a long narrative, but just, you know, a short explanation of I picked this color because this is what conflict represents to me, okay? I'm going to give about five, actually these are big tables. I'm going to give about eight minutes for this to happen because it's going to take a little, yeah, yeah. If you can pass those on to the other groups, if you're sitting at a table, grab your bag, dump out the colors, pick your colors and then when everybody's picked, share your story of how that color represents conflict to you. Yeah, the tables are larger than yours so I'm going to give it a couple more minutes. Conversation at their table. Okay, I'm going to assume from that that everybody had a chance to go around. So just quick show of hands in the room. How many people picked black? Few people did, okay. How many people picked dark blue? Few people did, interesting. Green, lots of green. Yellow, I saw a lot of yellow. Maybe the yellow just kind of glows in this light. Red, how many people picked red? A lot of people, but definitely not everybody. Silver, gold, not so many gold. So interesting because I do this exercise and people ask me, well, doesn't everybody pick red? Doesn't everybody pick black? Anybody want to share just a quick share? Why did you pick the color that you picked? Maybe we can hear from two or three people. Oh, come on. Why did you pick red?  Somebody else want to share? Okay, okay, so you picked green because it kind of represents direction and for you conflict is about two people or more people coming together and going, but my way is right, but my way is right. We must go that way. Excellent, I'll pick, okay, beautiful.  And usually in any situation where there's conflict there are many, many, many shades of gray that we maybe need to explore because there is no clear this is my way, this is your way. I offer this to you as an exercise that you can use with a team really, really easily and it can provoke some very interesting conversations about how different people on your team view conflict situations. The amount of information and the surprising diversity of perspectives that you will uncover is really worth the investment. You can do this 10 minutes quickly in a meeting and I think it really helps a team, a group of people that are coming together to get to know each other. Just learn a little bit more about each other and about how they approach conflict. Hopefully before they are in a situation where there is conflict because that may help them to adjust how they work together. It may help them shape some working agreements on their team, help them to understand a little bit better about how other people on the team might react when the going starts to get rough. Absolutely. So I want to talk a little bit now about some of the things that drive conflict and share a model with you that I encountered when I was putting this talk together, and this is not working, come on. Oh dear, sorry, I'm having, there we go. That talks about the different things that drive conflict and how you might use an understanding of conflict drivers in order to help address conflict situations that you're in. So if you're at the table, you have a handout on the table and there's a space for this model if you want to make notes as you go to help you remember. If you don't have a handout, there are a few more of them up here and we will be doing a couple of other exercises based on the handout. So maybe I can ask, we can just sort of spread them around the room if you can pass them around the room so that people can get them. So if I can just hand you this pile and pass it that way. So this model comes from a, he's actually a Canadian academic and mediator called Gary Furlong. And in Furlong's circle of conflict, he identifies several different drivers for conflict situations. In the top of the circle, we have things, we have values, we have relationships, we have external things, external situation things or internal things like moods, right? When we have differing values or goals, for example, if in your organization, the goals of the security department or the ISO compliance department versus the goals of the product organization might be very, very different and hard to reconcile.  Those kinds of things make it very hard to work together. Externals or moods are environmental or personal issues. Things that are going on unrelated to whatever the conflict is but that are helping to set the tone of the conflict. Maybe around the organization or around that specific conflict, the organization is having difficulties, there's economic troubles, there's layoffs or something and people are generally feeling horrible about that and that energy is going into whatever the specific disagreement they have or that people internally are just having what I like, you know, a bad hair day. Your bad hair day can be a personal thing, everything is wrong. Some of the organizations have bad hair days. The drivers in the bottom of the circle of conflict are different sorts of things, data, information, conflict caused by too much information, not enough information, the wrong information, misleading information being shared, information being controlled in inappropriate ways, information being shared in inappropriate ways. Interests where people have different wants or needs which is different from having different values, right? Or structural things. When there are limitations on resources, people don't have all the stuff they need to get their job done. The way your hierarchical structure is and authority is distributed through the organization, that's a structural problem. The interesting thing about this model, the way you might wanna use this model when you're in a conflict situation is what Gary Furlong says is that the drivers in the top of the circle are really hard things for individuals to manage usually. Those are big situational things that are difficult for people to influence. The stuff that's in the bottom of the circle is something that usually people have more control over. So if you find yourself in a conflict situation with another party or your team and another team is in a conflict situation, what you might choose to do is try to find a way to reframe the conflict so that it's about one of the things in the bottom of the circle rather than one of the things in the top of the circle. Even if it really is about one of the things in the top of the circle, simply because if you can work something out, if you can sort of take part of the problem and reframe it as an information problem or reframe it as a structural problem and resolve that, that might give you the momentum that then will allow you to take the next chunk of the problem and the next chunk of the problem and really address the underlying issue. But often a lot of the times when we get into difficult situations, it really is about things that are in the bottom half of the circle anyway. So if you can identify what kind of problem this is, you can take the steps to help address it. Sorry, if you want to see if there's anything else in there. You know, just, yeah. Focus conflict resolution effort on the drivers that are in the bottom of the circle is likely to be more successful there. Next I want to explore a little bit about how people react to conflict, how people feel on a personal level when they're in a conflict situation. Because quite often we like to think that we are rational beings who deal with things coolly and calmly and can talk our way through anything. And the reality is humans are much more complicated and messier than that and you cannot discount the effect of emotions. So I want to play a little bit, I want to do a little role playing exercise where we are going to explore how conflicts escalate. So what I'm going to need you to do is pair up at your tables. One person in the pair will be the north going zacks. One person in the pair will be the south going zacks. And I'm going to give you a little role play to do. And I'll, we're just going to spend like 30 seconds, 45 seconds doing it. Take whatever stance you want in the role play, but I want you to notice as you're playing at this scenario, what's happening? What's happening in your body? What's happening in your mind? What do you see the other person in the conversation doing, okay? So everybody find a partner at your table, figure out which one of you is going to be the north going zacks and which one of you is going to be the south going zacks. Let's do that really quickly and then I'll give you the scene. To do is stand up and get back to back. Probably a script, because this is more of an improv kind of scene.  I'll show lights, camera, action, and then you will turn around, you will start your improv. As I said, it's only going to be about 30 seconds because that's usually all it takes one another fight to break out in the room basically. Okay, so here are the roles.  Pick whatever motivation for your character you would like. The south going zacks, you're going to be that, yeah, people are like, I think I've been here. The south going zacks will be the manager who is really concerned about an upcoming release who is going, you cannot possibly have time off at this time. Is everybody clear on their parts? Okay, back to back, lights, camera, action. Action, thank your partner. Okay, just sorry, first of all, quick sound check. Can everybody hear me? Is it, am I too loud? Yes, sorry, can you hear me now? Okay, can everybody in this room hear me? Because there's always a problem balancing out can you be heard in this room without being heard in the next room? I'm also trying to be really conscious of let's not drown out Angle sessions if I cut after 30 seconds. Okay, so I want you to just think about that a little bit. What were the things that you noticed happening in the conversation as hopefully that was enough time to help you feel a little bit agitated about what was going on? Somebody give me an example of what they noticed going on in their body, in their emotions as this conflict happened. Sorry, sounds fabulous, but okay. So what was his body language like if you were trying to be open and there's ideas? What did you see him doing? Okay, so you saw incremental, did you notice a different kind of reaction? Sorry. Okay, so what was the tone of your conversation? What was the emotion? Okay, so you're going to need some a little bit of, I'm going to put a couple of labels on it, maybe kind of like a little bit of anger, certainly a sturdiness, right? This is what I want. It's about me. Did anybody see fear or retreat, sorry, what did you say? Yeah, I didn't have a notion of fear. I thought it would work, yeah. I saw it going towards a sort of sort of an empty body. Oh, yeah. But I thought it would work, it didn't shoot. Yeah. That's talking in a little bit of a context. Okay, and it had a, in the mind. He started comfortable being a position of authority using that tone in his people. Interesting. Sorry. Okay. So, he demonstrated positive constructive sorts of behaviors, oh, oh he was, he was, he was at the other extreme, okay, I don't, I'm not sure I want to hear any more about that, we don't want to scare people in the room. The point of this exercise is to help people notice what their natural reaction to conflict is. How do we solve this problem is what happens to me when the going starts to get rough, right? What is the stance that I take? Because there are a number of different positions that people tend to fall into. And at different times and different contexts, you may fall into each of these, but often we have a position that we are most comfortable falling into. Whether that's depending on how, we talked about assertiveness, because you talked about expressing your assertiveness. This is one dimension in the Thomas Tillman Conflict Model. And the other dimension is cooperativeness. How much am I inclined towards being, it's about what I want to get out of this situation versus I want to try to work with the other person to come to something that we can agree, you know? And at the top of the assertiveness scale, it's about me. It's I need to win, you need to lose, I need to get my way. The bottom of the scale is let's not deal with this at all. Let's run away, let's not talk about it, maybe it will sort itself out in time.  No, no, no, no. It doesn't work out very well in the long run. For small things, sometimes time will sort itself out. For bigger things, this is a really poor strategy in my experience. At the other end of the cooperativeness scale, we have accommodation.  That makes the conflict disappear, but that leaves the person who's doing the compromise thing, who's doing the, we'll do it your way, I want to make you happy, I don't want to fight about it, that leaves them feeling like losers, right? So where we want to try and be when we're entering into a conflict situation is somewhere in the middle, ideally compromising where we're both kind of bending over to make things happen and we can live with the solution or collaborating to achieve a mutually agreeable solution where we're both getting what we want out of it. But in order to get to this place, you have to pay attention to what is my orientation towards the conflict, because if your natural inclination is to avoid, it's going to be hard to climb that ladder towards how do we work together. And if you notice that you're thinking, well, hey, it's all about me, I need to be really right in this, again, difficult to get to that ladder. So role playing is a great exercise that you can do with your team, just to help people notice these things about themselves, right? In a playful kind of way, because sometimes if you can draw people's attention to how they act in a non-threatening kind of circumstance, they will figure, they'll start to think through for themselves. Oh, yeah, I really am a conflict devoider. This is maybe not helping me get what I want out of life. I should do something to learn about that. I want to do another short exercise to talk about the emotional effects of behavior on conflict situations. And I'm going to set up this scenario. I don't know how it's going to work in this room, but we'll try it. We'll see. We are going to pretend that we are quietly at a networking event, such as happens in the hallway at the end of the day. What I'm going to ask you to do is I'm going to ask you, everybody, before we get up, I'm going to ask you to close your eyes.  The negative inspector general's job will be to be having a very, very bad time at this event.  If you get caught by the negative inspector general, you assume a position of negativity as well. It doesn't have to be the same position. Maybe whoever's negative starts off with crossed arms and angry face or something or do what seems natural to you.  Staring at the ground will make it hard to infect other people. But I leave it to your creativity to figure out how to project negativity. So this is all we're going to do in this scenario. It's going to be very simple. I'm going to ask you to close your eyes. I'm going to walk around the room. I'm going to pick one or two people to be the negative inspector general. And we're going to see how long it takes the entire room to be infected. After I've picked people, I'd like you to just sort of stand up, mingle, chat quietly, and do this for like 45 seconds. And we'll see how far the negativity spreads. So if I can ask everybody to close their eyes. I've got to walk around and pick two people. I have to walk farther than this. If I stop here and go back to the front, everybody will know who I picked. And just keep walking around the room, walking, walking, walking. Headed back to the front right now. And I am almost at the front.  And the negative inspector general, as you can start infecting people, everybody who isn't infected yet, just chat for a couple of seconds. It's been infected by the negative inspector general. Just, I must have picked the happiest people. Okay, so there's definitely a little pocket bit around here. One, okay, couple, couple. It's kind of hard the way this room works because people can't move around very much. I think actually, I'm going to ask you to sit down. I don't think we'll do the second part of the exercise. I'll tell you about it though. Because it's a fun game to play. What happens in the second part of the exercise, usually what you see at this point is that you will see definite pockets of, there will be a whole corner of the room where everybody's like, this is the worst session I have ever been to. What I do in the second round is we repeat the exercise. And I say, but this time I'm going to infect a positivity inspector general.  Difference is the second time I don't actually pick anybody.  And you see how quickly the positivity also spreads through the room.  It takes like two minutes. The space kind of has to be right for it. And this room's a little crowded a little. So this is why I'm sort of calling it and we're going to move on to the next one. But it's an interesting exercise that you can play with the team to help them show how much their emotions and their emotional stance will contribute to the behavior of other people. Because if we are exuding negativity, if we're in a conflict situation and we're being super negative about how much this sucks and how much those guys are wrong and we are right and this is going to be so difficult to work out, that attitude will spread through everybody who is involved, right? If we take the other approach and sometimes it's difficult because when emotions are running high, when we feel we're being treated unfairly, it's hard to put a positive face on it. But if we take a more positive orientation towards whatever the subject of conflict is and say, this is going to be difficult but we can work it out and we will be stronger as a result. We need to focus on achieving a mutually beneficial end. We need to focus on being respectful to each other. We need to focus on whatever good behaviors you want to encourage and you actively sort of help people notice is that the stance we're taking or are we sort of sinking into negativity? It can make a really big difference. So this is just, as I said, this is just a silly little game but it's kind of fun to play because if you get, I think it has a lot to do with the shape of the room actually. You get it right. You can show very dramatically how quickly emotions get spread amongst a group of people. There will be a list of references at the end of the presentation where if you want to go and look up instructions for any of these games, they're available to you. So the model that I want to talk about in terms of behaviors, just very quickly, sorry, just keeping an eye on the time. I think we're good for the time, is the different levels of conflict and the kinds of behaviors that go with them. This is material that comes from Lisa Adkin's book on coaching agile teams and some of you will be familiar with it. And it's from a model that hurt, she took the model from a guy named Speed Lease who does a lot of work with the religious organizations of the United States. And it's a helpful model for understanding what the level of conflict is at because there are different kinds of interventions that may be appropriate. If say there's a conflict within the team and you're the stakeholder or you're the manager of a group and you can see there are problems going, right? There are different approaches you're gonna take depending on the level of conflict. Whereas it's a level one conflict, there's just a difficult problem to solve. People need to share information, people need to figure it out. Level two conflict, when there's a real sort of disagreement going on, I'm right and you're wrong. People's defenses start to go up. It's hard to sit down and have just that factual conversation about this is what it looks like because we're starting to guard ourselves, we're starting to talk about us and them, we're not necessarily having open conversations. Level three, it becomes a contest. It's actually more important for us to be right. We need to win, we need to win this one. We don't wanna work on resolving this with you. And I see, I go into organizations where I run into this situation a fair bit. I think part of it is because I live in a government town and I work with a lot of government agencies but I have worked in situations where, say, between the customer, the business team and the IT team, this is the level of the relationship they're at and it's really, really hard to help them along the path to increased agility when you've got two groups of key participants that aren't even talking to each other. Level four and higher, it gets even more difficult, right? You get into the situation where people all becomes about, it's about us, it's about what we want, what we need. Our way is the most important way, the language becomes more ideological and level five is horrible, destroy the other.  I actually have a client I'm working with right now where there are a couple of teams that are in that situation. The client is so big, difficult, complex project, lots of reasons it's complicated. The IT team is working as hard as they can but it hasn't worked out well and the customers are so frustrated and so they've had it, they've had it. They're like, we wanna hire some bosses off the street because we are tired of working with you. That's kind of level five conflict in an enterprise setting and it's a really difficult kind of thing to deal with and there are definitely different stances that you might take as a manager, as an intervener in the situation depending on the level that you're at. If it's a level one conflict, stay out of it usually or maybe you might take a few facilitative sort of steps to help the participants achieve consensus but you probably don't need to intervene at all. As it gets higher, your role in supporting the people in conflict is going to change because you may need to take a more active role and you may need to take a different focus. At the bottom of the scale, the focus is on let's solve the problem. Let's get the problem, bring the data to the table, let's figure it out. When feelings start to escalate, when things get rougher, you need to sort of worry about creating safety for the people who are in this conflict to give them space where they can express emotions hopefully in a constructive way and as it gets higher, level three, you might have to really do some pretty hard ass kind of facilitation in there to get people to bring actual information to the table.  Let's use some negotiation tactics that we have to figure out about where are common interests really? Let's try and focus on what is it we want that's the same and how can we work towards that rather than focusing on the differences. When you get to level five, you might actually have to spend some time not working with each side of the conflict individually just to get things diffused enough that people can come to the table and have that kind of conversation because when things get that bad, you can say, hey, let's get together, we'll have a big meeting, clear the little air, put all the laundry on the table and it's just gonna be boom, right? If you don't do any pre-work to help calm people down, to help make sure that everybody feels that they're being heard, to help sort of tease out what some of the issues are so you can get to the place where you can have a constructive conversation, you need to be aware of these things. So we're not spending a huge amount of time on this model but I wanted to make you aware of it so you can go and learn more if you're interested. I find this really useful when I find myself dropped in it in a client's site to take a look at what's going on so I can figure, wow, okay, this is my role in this mess and this is how I'm going to approach it and it's been very helpful to me. One of the things when we're in a conflict situation that we really need to focus on is how do we help communication? How do we help people communicate more effectively in difficult situations? Because some of us like to avoid, some of us get tongue tied, we get fixated on issues and especially in sort of, I'd say level two in that model, level two and level three, one of your roles is somebody who's supporting the conflict or if you're a participant in the conflict might be how do we structure the conversation a little bit in order to help focus on what's really going on, what are the outcomes we're trying to seek, how do we get there and acknowledging how people are feeling without wallowing in it, right? So I found this mnemonic, this technique that I really like and there's lots of models out there. This is just one that I like that I'm sharing with you today called clearing the air. And clearing the air is a way of sort of organizing your thoughts so that you can sit down and prepare to have a difficult conversation with somebody. The first step is to agree. Figure out, start by acknowledging what is the thing that we both care about? What are the things? We both want this project to turn out well, right? It's important to us that we satisfy the customer, we meet the deadline, make her boss happy, whatever. The next statement, as you're trying to sort of frame the problem, is how the situation is affecting you. Not, this is what you're doing and it's getting up my nose, but this is what's happening to me. Because of the way things are right at the moment, I'm having a difficult time meeting my deadlines, I'm not getting the information I need, whatever. This is how it's affecting me. It's kind of giving impact feedback where it's focusing on the impact on me personally of the situation without getting into the, it's about what you're doing. The next statement in a clearing the air kind of conversation is about respect, acknowledging the importance of the other person in the situation.  Maybe you don't say it in those words, but that attitude comes out. So acknowledging, actually it's really important that we figure out, I respect you as a colleague, we've worked together really well in the past, I'm sure we can figure this out. And then the last part of a clearing the air conversation is making the request. What do I need from you? What is it that I want? And it shouldn't be phrased as what do I need from you?  That's not a request, right? The request is we need to sit down. Can I have some of your time so that we can figure out how to make the information flow more effectively? What is it that I need out of the situation in order to help move forward? And it's a really simple pattern. It's really easy to remember. And I have personally found it very helpful in when you get into difficult situations to think, am I covering all of these bases? Am I being really clear about what's important to both of us? Am I conveying what the impact is on me? Because that gives me a chance to say how this is making me feel what the effect is on me. But it's really got to be about me. It's not about what you're doing. It's about me. Why is it important that we rebuild our relationship? Because we need to work together. Because I want us to go on together. We're just gonna be good. And what do I need in order to make that happen? So the exercise that I'd like to do with this, it's a little bit of role-playing, but it's, I like to call it role-playing for introverts, actually. This is where you'll need the handout. Because what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna give you a scenario and there's a little comic strip at the bottom here. And what I would like to do you to do is you could do this individually or you could do this in pairs. It's just write out what you would say, what kind of statement you would say for each of these, for agreeing for an impact statement or a respect statement and a request statement for the scenario that I'm gonna give you. And it's a very simple scenario. So it's a little role-play, but nobody actually has to get up and talk to each other. Is there anybody who really, I don't know if there are any more handouts kicking around the room. Are there any that are sitting on a table being unused? Okay.  You've got, okay. There's a handout over there for somebody who wants one. We're just gonna take two minutes. So if you don't have a handout, this is also two minutes where you can just kind of sit and breathe and reflect on your day. Oh, I need to show you the scenario. Yes, thank you. I was like, I started my timer, but. So this is a scenario, very simple scenario. Many of you were agile coaches who have been here. Somebody on the team is like, I've done that agile thing on my last team. And it really, really, really sucked. What do you expect me to do this time, right? So you can approach this from the point of view of being a team member, being the scrum master, maybe being the person's manager, whichever role speaks to you. But I'd like you to sort of walk through what are the four statements that you might use in this situation where you've got your very experienced developer going, this is a waste of my time, I don't wanna do it. Oh, sure, sorry. Just jumping back to the previous slide for the people who don't have the handout. Air, agree, impact, respect, request. So there's four things that you're gonna wanna say. So what I would like you to do now is just find a partner at your table or somebody that you're sitting next to. You may share or not share your comic strip as you feel. But what I'd like you to do is just have a quick conversation with the person sitting next to you about can you think of a time where this structure of conversation might have helped you sort out a problem that you were experiencing.  But I'd like you to sort of think back and talk with a partner about is there a time in recent history that you can think of where actually this would have helped you? So I'll give you two minutes to have that conversation and bring our attention back to the center of the room, please, thank you. So I wanted to share this exercise with you. There's two things about this exercise I'm really hoping that you'll take away. First of all, the fundamental technique because this is really, really super simple, agree, impact, respect, request, right? It is a very helpful formula for how do I approach a difficult conversation with somebody when I am reluctant to talk to them because things are tough, feelings are running high, situations messy, beautiful, simple formula, it can take you a really long way. The other thing that I'd like you to take away from this exercise though is actually the mechanism that we use to do role playing. Because I was one of the people who was getting a little agitated yesterday morning during Noresh's presentation about the dark side of collaboration and when we sort of veered into introverts don't like to collaborate. I kind of think that's a crock. I think introverts actually like to collaborate just as much as extroverts. The issue is that when we set up activities, when we structure our events and conversations, we pick techniques that favor extroverts. We often pick techniques that favor people who sort of help refine their thinking by talking while they're thinking as opposed to, and this is one of the ways that I think there's lots of ways you can define introverts and extroverts, right? But one of the patterns of behavior that I see is extroverts will talk until they get the idea sorted out, introverts, and I'm one of them, I like to go away and think about my response before I'm ready to share it with people. So if you wanna do something where, for example, you want people to role play, it's very challenging for some people to get up and I'm gonna pretend to have this conversation with you. Something like having them do a comic strip, something to sort of think out their ideas on paper before they have to share them with the rest of the group is a much more comfortable way to engage people who are more introverted into this kind of conversation. And it's kind of sort of aside from games about conflict resolution, but this is a conflict I sense brewing in the agile community. I would encourage you to think about when you are setting up activities, when you are facilitating big discussions, try to find a balance of techniques for getting people's participation and getting people's input that allows people who are comfortable with, who have different levels of comfort with different kinds of activities, make sure you have a mix, right? Some people like to get up and shout out ideas and have loud, passionate conversations. Other people wanna go away and think about it and get their ideas out before they share them with the group. Both ways are good, both are equally important to the collaboration, just keep in mind if you are a facilitator structuring these things that you need to accommodate the whole range of preferred ways to interact. Now that I finished my little sermon on that subject, I wanna move on to our last exercise. And part of the stance of the clearing the air is to take whatever the problem is you're addressing away from making it a personal issue to focusing on the problem. Here is the problem, here is the effect on me. This is why it's important for me, for us to solve it together, I'm assuming positive intentions that we do wanna resolve it. This is what I need out of the situation. One of the really important things to keep in mind when you are in a situation of conflict is everybody is right but partially. I know there are some black and white situations where sometimes it really is I am right and you are completely wrong. But more often than not, when people have a vastly different point of view on something that's going on, everybody's perspective has some element of truth to it. Based on people's experience, based on their understanding of the situation, based on the history of the problem and their knowledge of it, that crazy thing that they're saying about how could you possibly believe that is actually rational and founded on something that is true for them, right? And if we wanna take a constructive attitude to resolving conflict, we need to think about this. We need to be aware that it is possible for two people to hold completely oppositional ideas that both of them have some element of truth in it. And so for our last exercise, I just wanna play with that a little tiny bit. We're gonna do, again, we're gonna have the north going Zaks and the south going Zaks. So I'd like you to find a partner at your table. We'll just do this sitting down. Find a partner who you can work with and I need you to identify who is the north going Zaks and who is the south going Zaks. The reason that I need you to identify this is what I'm gonna ask you to do is I'm gonna ask the south going Zaks to close their eyes and I'm gonna show the north going Zaks something that is their belief, something they believe to be true. Then after everybody's had a chance to read it, I'm gonna ask the north going Zaks to close their eyes. I'm gonna ask the south going Zaks to open their eyes and I'm gonna show them something they believe to be true. Then once everybody's had a chance to sort of understand their position, I want you to have a conversation about this idea. So identify the north going Zaks and the south going Zaks at your table.  If you do not have your hand up, close your eyes at the moment. North going Zaks, here is your belief. Don't read it out loud, but here is something that you believe to be true. Everybody had a chance to read it? Okay, north going Zaks, put your hand down, close your eyes and I'm going to ask the south going Zaks to open their eyes and read this belief. This is something that you believe to be true. Okay, I'm now going to ask you to, everybody can open their eyes and I'd like you to have a conversation with your partner about this belief that I have just given you. Let's take like 90 seconds. This won't be a long-winded conversation, but in case it didn't become clear in your conversation, I'll show you the two statements. The north going Zaks, the belief that I implanted in their head was two heads are better than one. And if you're an advocate of pair programming or mobbing, this is probably something you live and breathe daily. The other truth that I gave to the south going Zaks to argue was if you want something right, you better do it yourself. And I'm pretty sure everybody in the room, does everybody in the room, they felt that at one time or another in their lives? Yeah, yeah, it's easier for me to just get it done myself. So how could these things both? How could these things both be true? Yet be so completely opposed to each other? Anybody have somebody, something come up in their discussion that helped them reconcile that cognitive dissonance? Sorry? You want with collaboration? Yeah. Did you, in your conversations, did you find yourself finding examples to support the belief I gave you? Anybody else have anything interesting come up in their conversation trying to reconcile? What, okay. Possible that both of these things are true even though they appear to be mutually exclusive and inherently contradictory. And what happens too is when people become attached to a belief, and this is why I was asking if people sort of found examples in their conversation, found examples from their experience to support the belief that I gave them. Anybody find themselves doing that? Anybody, anybody go, yeah, this happened to me? Or can you add somebody else who was introduced into the situation, you found that to be, it was a challenge, it got in your way. Yeah, and the point is that once we become attached to a belief, once we get handed a belief, I just gave you this one, but once we become attached to an idea, as human beings, it's really easy for us to go back into our memories and our experience and mine for things that support that idea. It's called the hindsight bias, right? If we become convinced something is true, we're really good at convincing ourselves that it is true based on our experience. Humans have very selective memories in this respect and we're really good at convincing ourselves that our current belief is the true belief even though somebody else's belief may be equally true based on their experience, based on where they've been. So the challenge in conversations is how do we find, how can we look past that hindsight bias to see that even if somebody is saying something that we think is completely out of, where the hell did that come from? That there may be some truth to it. And that's another, the last sort of trick that I wanna leave you with, which is something, a very personal trick that works for me that was given to me by a coach at Adjo, a coach camp in the US. He was presenting a paper on something to do with Chris Argyris's work and how do you reframe problems? How do you reframe things? And in this discussion of the session that he was gonna present, he mentioned that when you're in a conflict situation you're trying to figure out where is that from and try and see things from a different perspective. WTF. I know I haven't heard as many people swearing at this conference as I usually do, but that's one of my favorite hashtags on Twitter, WTF. What the fudge is going on, right? It's a word that I may use once in a while. But to be able to reframe that in my head, when I'm having that reaction, when somebody says something to me and I'm going WTF, to rather than going what the, to go where is that from? Why does what that person is saying? Why does it make sense to them? They've just said something completely outrageous and controversial, but it must be coming from a place that it makes sense for them. Because unless they're deliberately trying to stir something up, and that's rarely the case. What they're saying, even if it seems to be to be completely way out, completely goofy, it is true for them in some way. And it's a reminder to myself to sort of pause there when I have that, oh, what, WTF reaction, to stop and think where is that from? So just keep that one in your back pocket in case you need it. My husband actually made me a little necklace with WTF on it as a reminder that I need to engage in that more often. So just to recap where we have been in this session, we took a look at perception. We talked, we gave you, had an exercise that you can use to talk about what is your perception of conflict, and also to sort of think about a model for thinking about what kind of conflict are you engaged in. We did an exercise for escalation so that you can play with, how does it feel when the conflict is mounting? How do I react? And a model to look at the different ways that people react to conflict. We did a little bit of the contagion exercise, it didn't work so well in here, but to examine how moods spread and positivity and negativity can spread unconsciously and you need to be aware of that. We talked about a model for using for having structured conversations in situations where conflict is there, and we played a little bit of the idea with contradiction. How can two mutually exclusive things be true at once? And how can we sort of recognize and overcome hindsight bias? So the last thought that I just wanna leave you with, so everybody got a picture of this, these are on, I'm pretty sure these are on the Agile India website, is that even though conflict is sometimes difficult, uncomfortable, painful, stressful, it is an essential part of human relationship. Great relationships, some people have great relationships where people get along all the time and that's fine, but often the relationships that I'll say are the most productive, the most creative, the things where new big grand things happen are places where people bring different ideas, different experiences, different history to the table and bring those things together to create something newer and bigger and better. So don't be afraid of conflict, don't avoid it, recognize that it's gonna happen and think about how are we going to work with this in our professional lives when we encounter it. On that note, our time is up. Thank you very, very much for your time and participation. I hope you enjoyed this session. I enjoyed being here with you today. I will apologize to Angle for all the noise we made, but thank you again.


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I don't even know when it stops. Some of you might know when's the sale end. It could be tomorrow. Who knows? It could be like three hours from now. But I just wanted to share that. I got a little on my heart today after seeing some of the stories come find. I mean, Tanya, that's just an amazing story.  And she just feels more clarity in her overall mind. That's huge. You know, it's amazing to me is how many people walk around struggling day in, day out just to get through their day when we have something that can make that change, right? When we have something that can make that shift in their life. And what's hard for me is when you know what something is and like scientifically, like literally I can talk to NASA scientists and the top researchers and we know what this is. We know why it works so well. We know why we're getting benefits. And when people still have a resistance to try it, we're always like, dang it. Like if you just knew what it was, you drink it. You wouldn't even, I won't stop this y'all. The science is too clear to what our future is without it. The only alternative is to follow Kijak diet for the rest of your life. And I don't want to do that anymore. I want to actually have some fruit with my kids. I want to enjoy some other things, right? And so it's the best ever. Sign my first customer up this week. Tanya, way to go. Nice job. Congratulations. So y'all, if you're really committed to better and you want to get journey, take advantage of the 27% off right now.  But I'm going to tell you one more. Just commit. Commit to you. You deserve to feel better. You deserve to live better. And it's up to you to want to go further. And then the last thing I'm going to tell you is plug into our community. We're going to give you coaching. We're going to teach you what to do. But we can't teach you if you don't plug in. We can't make you. I can't go make it for you. I can't tell you you have to change everything. I'm not going to tell you to change everything in your diet today. I'm going to encourage you to start getting better. That's what I'm going to do. Because what I know is if you look at anybody that's transformed their life, they had to get started. And then over time, they grew into this. So I hope that makes sense. I think Tanya, yeah, you're actually going down to getting some fruit and Derek, I think. That's pretty fun. But anybody have any questions? I'll take a few minutes for questions. Why you're maybe asking me something or why you're not asking me something that's fine either way. The one thing I wanted to share with you is that I'm going to do a special live on my pages just about how our business works. I don't talk about it very often. I'm very passionate about what I do. And what I'm looking for is people that want to join me that maybe want to help other people that are looking for extra income. And I want you to kind of partner up with me. I want you to team up with me.  Let me teach you some of the things I know. And let's go change more lives together if you're ready for that. Because as I've been doing this for a long time what I realized is that everybody needs their product. That's just the truth, right? They don't know it yet. That's okay. They have to take time for them to figure that out. But more people are stressed about their financial situation than they are about their health situation. Most likely neither one of them are that great. Most likely most of them are struggling in both. So right now if you're struggling in your financial situation then you should take a serious look at what we do. This is not my actual live I want to do on this but I am going to talk about it for a second. Because the reality is people go to me, Dustin I'm too broke to buy our product. I don't have enough money to go to your big event. The largest keto educational event or the best events for entrepreneurship and for people to gain independent financial independence they don't have money to go. Well, that's why they need to go is they don't have any money so that they can make money so that they can never have to worry about money again. And so I just want to have serious conversation if you're looking at your bank account right now and say I can't take, I can't have health products because I can't afford them then we should really have a business conversation with you all. So I'm going to do that. I don't do it often on my pages because I'm very health focused and driven but the reality is what I realize is more people are stressed out emotionally and psychologically because of their financial poor financial situation which is causing poor health. So why not fix them both? And we can do that for you.  Oh, that's amazing. That's such amazing. Her story is just so inspiring. I just love it. I just love it. I mean, 569 pounds. I think is what she said. She went from 569 pounds to 279. 559 pounds to 279 pounds.  Y'all, we get paid to do that. We get paid to help people like that. That's amazing. We get paid to help people be a better dad, a better mom, I mean, I just, I want to go right into it but I'm not going to. Not today, I'm not. So stay tuned. I'll be pumping that live out maybe tomorrow. Maybe I'll do it tomorrow night. I'm going to pump that live out to really get people a true understanding of what it is to be what we do and how we do it because I think more people should look into our business. You know, it's funny I'm practicing now. So I'm practicing my whole life spiel for tomorrow but I've owned my own business for many, many years and I've been stressed and overworked and underpaid for a long time. I will be honest with you. So it's great to now be appreciated and to be rewarded for those that appreciation. And that took some hard work, it took some time but I think anybody, I know anybody can do it. I've seen people that are less knowledgeable than me to make way more money than I do in this. So you got it, I promise. But I find is that people only realize the benefits of owning your own business. They don't realize there's potential tax benefits for you.  Especially if it's a home-based business where it gives you some leverage around utilizing your home and things in your house. It's pretty amazing what's available to you. It's a little nerve-wracking. It takes a little time to learn but the alternative is you have to stay the way you are. The alternative is to be a W-2 all your life and not have those extra benefits that you can potentially get from owning your own business or having a side hustle, right? Or maybe making some substantive income while you're in a retirement phase or maybe retired two years earlier like my mom was able to do. There's just so many opportunities around this that people just don't take an advantage of and it's tough. So last thing I'm gonna say, my tax guy loves me. Mind you, mind you too, we pay our tax guy a lot of money. That's a good sign though, by the way. Pay a lot of taxes and pay your tax person a lot of money is a really good sign but it didn't start that way, y'all.  Get back to whoever invites you to follow me. Say I want this product, I need this product, I need to change my life. Like I said, what do you have to lose you all? What do you have to gain is so much greater than staying the same. What you have to gain is greater than what you have to stay the same. Take a chance, but take a chance on real science.  I get to hear a lot of things that I wouldn't give my animals, I wouldn't give myself, I wouldn't recommend to my mom. Yeah, I've been in the fitness industry for 20 plus years. I've been studying health and wellness since pretty much since I've been eight years old and I've been throwing a lot of things at me. I just a lady, just a little bit ago, say, hey, Dustin, you heard of this? I heard it's the best new wave. I'm like, this ingredient and their product, I wouldn't recommend it to really almost very few people, to be honest. This product does what that product does plus it's all natural bioidentical and way more other benefits. But she's being sold on something that is not that big of a deal, not that significant. Does it help? Probably some people sure might, you might, but it's not this. And so you'll take advantage of this, get back to everybody. Now, if you're following me, hit me up, I'll take care of you. But if you, somebody invited you to please get back to them, we're a big team and wanna make sure we take care of everybody. So with that said and done, y'all, peace. I'm out of here. I gotta get on their champion call right about now. All right, you're out. Facebook's done. How did you take, poor TikTok got lost today. Instagram, you're done. Instagram, bye Instagram. Appreciate you. Bye, YouTube.