SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome to Beat the Prosecution, presented by Northern Virginia criminal defense and DUI lawyer Jonathan Katz, where we are here to regularly present you information and ideas for beating your prosecution as best as possible. Nothing on any of our media sources, such as our podcast or website, is legal advice. John Katz only provides legal advice to current clients or for individuals who have paid for a consultation. And now for your host, John Katz.

SPEAKER_00 0:32

Hello, everybody. This is John Katz at Beat the Prosecution. I am a criminal defense and DWI defense lawyer in Fairfax, Virginia. I am so excited to have our guest here today, Deb Ketz. No relationship, at least no close relationship by last name. I don't think I've had any guests on the show yet who I've asked several times, not through Debs specifically, but through their organization. Hey, can I have you on the show? Jim Detmer is with uh Deb's organization. She'll tell me if I have it right. I just know it is conscious leadership. And I first found out about conscious leadership and uh and Jim Detmer, who's one of the uh folks who started all this, but I can remember in 2015, when I finished court earlier than I thought I would, so I rushed, of course, following the speed limit, because all criminal defense lawyers I'm sure follow the speed limit as well as our clients, to get to the Mindful Leadership Conference over in uh Crystal City, Virginia. And of course, I found that it was sold out and I finagled a ticket, and I ran there to meet uh with Roshi Joan Halifax, who's a great spiritual teacher from Santa Fe. But the uh the fringe benefit I got that day was to find out about a conscious leadership. What does Deb Katz and conscious leadership and Jim Dittmer have to do with beating the uh prosecution, especially with uh my knowledge that uh Deb might not even share how to do that? Well, as you've seen the string of uh things we've talked about with some of the non-lawyers, I've been presenting uh uh discussions about mindfulness, discussions about doing martial arts, uh discussions about peacefulness. Uh we lawyers cannot be better at winning our cases without making ourselves better people. It's just like Jerry Spence said at the beginning of the uh Troy Laura's college. No good having a $10,000 Gucci saddle if you just have an old plug horse is no good. We gotta work on the horse. Well, without further ado, Deb Katz, please introduce yourself.

SPEAKER_02 2:39

Hi, Jonathan. Good to be here with you and all the listeners today.

SPEAKER_00 2:46

Okay, now what is the name of your organization? What do you do with conscious leadership and how did you get there? And what does massage therapy, if that's what you do, have to do with that as well or not?

SPEAKER_02 3:00

That's a funny one. I haven't heard that in a while. Yeah, so I'm one of the senior leadership consultants over at the conscious leadership group. And Jim Detmer is one of the co-founders of the conscious leadership group. And uh what we're doing as an organization is supporting the expansion of conscious leadership in the world, and we have a pretty uh uh specific definition of what conscious leadership is, because there's a lot of um buzz in the professional space these days about conscious leadership. So we're very specific about what we mean by that, and so uh you know, broadly, what we're talking about is uh when an individual, when a leader, um puts attention on themselves and catching, you know, definitionally, that the the definition of conscious is we're suggesting the ability to be here and now in a non-triggered and a non-reactive state, which is not the norm. The norm is most of us humans are walking around in a triggered and reactive state. And some of the research by social scientists suggest more than 95% of us are in a triggered and reactive state more than 90% of the time. So it's our norm, it's our baseline. And so, what is it like to actually have an experience of oneself and how would one move through the world? Uh, what could we accomplish? What could we create if we were in a non-triggered and non-reactive state of consciousness? And then leadership is really something fun to play with in this idea of conscious leadership. And that leadership is we're suggesting, regardless of rank, you know, whether you have direct reports or don't have direct reports, uh, that really a leader is someone who's willing to take responsibility for their impact and their influence. And that can be in their place of business, that could be at home, that could be on the soccer field, that could be in someone's place of worship.

SPEAKER_00 5:26

How did you get to this path? And who came up with this idea or created this idea of conscious leadership, or has the idea always been there?

SPEAKER_02 5:39

Um Well, I think my own um my own life, you know, how I got to conscious leadership is through a path of what I'd call pretty unconscious leadership. And that uh my early career was in the political sphere, and I was highly effective, quite accomplished. And luckily, you know, I considered myself fortunate. At some point, you know, there was an event, and I turned around and saw and saw behind me sort of metaphorical fields of dead bodies behind me, that I was so mission-driven, um, that I just was plowing through people in what I thought was service of the higher goals. And I just didn't know at that time that I was actually a toxic leader because my mission was so altruistic. I thought I was one of the good guys, and maybe I was, but my methods were antiquated. And so I had my own experience of unconscious or toxic leadership to learn from, recover from, spent decades uh exploring those patterns that had me relying on my own default strategies that were good, but they weren't new and they weren't creating new options and possibilities for me or anybody else. And then at some point it became clear I had something to offer to the world of leadership. And so I've been uh teaching, facilitating, coaching uh about 20 years now. And that's how I find my way here, found my way here.

SPEAKER_00 7:31

Well, I really appreciate you shared with everybody your own weaknesses that you had that led you on this path. I don't think people would be uh keeping this show on if they uh had it perfect. Um so who who developed this concept of conscious leadership and uh who are who are the founders?

SPEAKER_02 7:50

Yeah, that's a great question. I don't know the answer to. It's not a new term. Um how we're using it and what what I'm taking a stand for is a very specific niche within that. And that um, you know, the suggestion is, yeah, what is it, Einstein, right? Wasn't he the one that's accredited with saying if you keep doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results, that's a good definition of insanity, right? So what we're suggesting is that a primary distinction between a conscious leader and really a conscious team and an unconscious leader or unconscious team is that the conscious leader is going to put at least as much attention, if not more attention, on what we call context over content. So get into definitions again. The idea is that content is everything we talk about all day long. At the kitchen table, at the boardroom table, we're talking about the who, the what, the where, the when. All of that is the content, the stuff of life. And if we keep double downing on content only, at best, we might come up with some good band-aids for situations in our lives, but we likely won't come up with anything new. How do I know that? Because we're not. And so the idea is if we start to put attention on context before content, that might impact what we're capable of. So context by definition is how am I being with this content, whether it's something that happened at home or something that happens at work, something that happens with your listenership, uh, the different demographics within the legal system of folks that might be listening, is am I being with that issue, that complaint? Am I being it with it from a reactive state, or am I being with that from a non-reactive state? So it's a fundamental shift in focus of attention. Not the thing, the issue, the complaint, but actually, how am I being with that complaint? What are the lenses I'm perceiving through? Are they the lenses of fear, the lenses of um, you know, the the the lenses of judgment? Or am I being with that from a a non-reactive state where I'm open and I'm curious? And we're saying that the lens we look through informs not only what we see, but it informs what we think is even possible.

SPEAKER_00 10:43

So what I know about conscious leadership so uh thus far is limited, it's having read and perhaps not deeply enough, the 15 commitments of conscious leadership, if I've stated the uh the name of that correctly, uh, as well as uh the line being above and below the line. So, what I'd like if is if you could address that, and this is a good time since uh uh to maybe gel it all together, if people even wanted to pause this, is to tell folks uh what the website is that covers your organization.

SPEAKER_02 11:16

Sure. Uh you you did name the book correctly. It is called the 15 Commitment to the Conscious Leadership, and that's available on Amazon as well as our website, which is conscious.is, simply conscious.is. And really what I just described, I tried to do it in layman's terms rather than the jargon, which you just beautifully brought in. So the jargon is there's a system that we call uh whether you're identifying yourself as above or below the line. And in street language, what that simply means is when I'm above the line, the idea is that I'm in that non-triggered, non-reactive state. And when I'm below the line, I'm in a state of reactivity, uh, a triggered state, looking through the lenses of, I like to name it like we all are potentially born with, and then our and then our environments that we grow up in, whatever they are, they kind of are the makings of this playbook, the do's and don'ts of how to be Deb, the do's and don'ts of how to be Jonathan, the do's and don'ts of how to be who you think you are in the world and how to be what you think is a good person or what the world wants from you. And what we're suggesting is that playbook, it's a good playbook. It delivers uh a lot of results for us that are good in our lives. But what it also does is it's baked in a sort of positioned, this is the way to do it. So we'll do certain things and we won't do certain things. We'll allow ourselves to say or think certain things, and then we might not allow ourselves to say or think certain things. And what a conscious leader is willing to do is do some deep inquiry into the veracity, into like uh the positions of our own thoughts, so that we might get access to new thoughts, new ideas, choices. And so it's really coming from questioning that playbook. And the idea is that probably most of the time, that playbook is gonna come from below the line or from that triggered or reactive state, just where we're perceiving that there is a baked-in threat that as a human being, we probably got very, very early on, right? Like in the early days of human, like this is a good berry or this is a bad berry, this is a good berry, it's gonna feed me and my family, or this is a bad berry, this is gonna kill me or my me and my family. That we're still hardwired to perceive and anticipate threat. No problem, humans are gonna do that. But what if that isn't the only lens that we're looking through? And that if we're looking through the lens of perceiving a threat, how might that actually be limiting of the possibility? And so one thing I want to do too is credit uh some of our teachers and where some of this work that I'm referencing comes from uh is Gay and Katie Hendricks over at the Hendricks Institute. And much of our work is based in their work, as well as many other teachers, Byron Cady, um, Hale Dwaskin, uh, the authors of the book, uh Jim Dethmer and Diana Chapman, co-founders of the Conscious Leadership Group, and Kaylee Warner Klemp, I think all three of them would easily say there's not a new idea in that book. Uh uh there are uh uh ancient spiritual traditions also referenced in this book. So just what these three authors were able to do is package some uh good research, human psychology, um, and some spiritual tenets into a package that leaders and teams are finding ways to navigate the dynamics of the complexity of their businesses and their lives in really impactful ways.

SPEAKER_00 15:31

Excellent. So to what extent uh to what extent is there importance in the uh conscious leadership to know when we're above and below the line, and to what extent is it so bad to be below the line that we have to get above the line?

SPEAKER_02 15:51

Yeah, it's a great question. You know, I I like to say what what would happen if we remove, and again, this is this is questioning some deep-seated and potentially in the legal environment, even more, some deep-seated beliefs that we live in a good or a bad world, that there is right and wrong. Conscious leadership is really flipping that on its head and saying we're actually disinterested in the moralistic application here. There's no good, there's no bad, there's no right, there's no wrong. There's just the is-ness, the suchness of life. And then how am I going to be with that? So even being in a triggered and reactive state, it's not bad. It's human. It's utterly human to perceive a threat, to get scared. It's a birthright, in fact, to have the experience of being in a potentially contracted state. So it's not a problem. I love to say to people that I'm working with is if I if if if spending an afternoon with you folks, if the only thing you ever got from spending an afternoon with me was the idea that you're not unevolved, you're not unconscious, you're not unprofessional, you're not immature if you're in a triggered reaction. If you could let go of all of that self-judgment that you're doing it wrong when you get triggered or reactive, and get with, oh my gosh, I'm just being human and turn towards the self with some acceptance for our own humanity, that will loosen the grip of how tightly we are holding on to keeping the reactivity going. It's actually an interrupter.

SPEAKER_00 17:48

Right.

SPEAKER_02 17:49

So that's a win. So I'm asking myself all day long, hey Deb, I mean, literally all day long, somewhere probably between five and eight times a day, I'm asking myself, hey Deb, where am I? I'm just checking because again, the default, the suggestion from gain Katie Hendricks is the default human experience, the default human state is to be in a state of reactivity.

SPEAKER_00 18:16

Right.

SPEAKER_02 18:17

So it's just a given. So the whole game changes. It's like a chessboard. And the availability of possible moves exponentially increases when I make the shift from unconscious reactivity, meaning I don't know, I'm just being Deb, and I think I'm just being Deb, until that moment of awareness hits. And then I realize, oh, I'm not just being Deb. I'm actually Deb who's triggered. I'm in a contracted reactive state. Now, the playing field, the number of options available to me and choices for how I might approach a given situation, um, changes drastically with that first moment of awareness and recognition. Let me take my attention off whatever it is, that judge, off that colleague, off that family member, and sh where I have no control. I don't have control about how other people show up in a given moment. So I take my attention off them or it policy systems, and I put it back onto me where I actually have power. And I go, oh shh, I don't know if I can curse on your show.

SPEAKER_00 19:32

Yes, you may.

SPEAKER_02 19:33

Okay. Or I go, oh shit, wait a minute. I was blaming Jonathan for X, Y, or Z. But now I realize, wait a minute, I'm the one that's in a reactive state. And what that means is I'm actually the agent of change, not Jonathan, not them out there. I'm the act, I'm the agent of the conflict because I'm the one that's triggered. Now we've got a possibility for a different option.

SPEAKER_00 20:03

Okay, so uh what universe of things can we control? Can we control about our own emotions? And because I my recollections when we spoke last week in our pre-discussion, you I think you said something like, if if you want to have an interview about being able to control yourselves, I'm not that interviewee. Um and then let's wrap this in with to what extent does conscious leadership overlap with uh moral from or non-involved, non-duality, also known as uh non-attachment, just being mindful. And I don't know the extent to which you've ever dealt with hoponopono, or my preferred hoponopono approach is self-identity through hoponopono.

SPEAKER_02 20:52

All right, well, I'm hearing three questions in there. So if I get lost and forget one or two of them, bring me back in. Uh so the first one you asked was what? I already forgot.

SPEAKER_00 21:06

What can we control about our emotions and what can we not?

SPEAKER_02 21:09

Good. Okay. So my reading on EQ, on emotional intelligence and leadership studies, and very little, but some reading in neuroscience, is that emotions, feelings, are um involuntary. They are chemical and sensational experiences that happen in and on the body before we ever have a thought. There's a chemical, neurochemical um experience that's being expressed in the body, and that is involuntary. Now, what we do with those emotions, and oftentimes with the thought. We're believing that trigger those emotions, that's different. But the occurrence, you know, if somebody's angry and you tell them they're not angry, they're gonna tell you to F off. And probably rightfully so, because that's their experience. But and so what CLG, what I'm taking a stand for is the value of emotional intelligence, which first requires emotional literacy. We can't be intelligent unless we're literate, meaning we we know we're having a feeling and kids are so good, kids or children are such great role models uh for this, is to become emotionally literate. And I'm taking, we're taking a stand for the value of emotional intelligence as a relevant data set for decision making. Um, my story about this comes sort of from, you know, in the 20th century, I think the experiment was show up at work, show up at your life in your life, as objective as possible, leave your personality at the door, go to work, do your job, and then pick your personality back up uh at the door on your way out. And I think that experiment was very uh illuminating because humans didn't do it. We failed the experiment. Humans um like the elephants we're all riding on are actually our emotions. And so trying to deny, repress, ignore, amputate those, we're not good at that. We're all riding the emotional experience. And we also need our emotional, the totality of ourselves in order to create. And so it's part of the creative life force, it's part of creativity, part of innovation, accessing new ideas also is founded in a whole person showing up to bring their whole person to their endeavor. So we're really taking a stand for the relevance of EQ in data sets for sustainable leadership and decision making. And that requires becoming again first, even allowing ourselves to have emotions and then be with them, learn how to be with them in a way that is of service to the whole. So I'm not talking about something that you or I might have that I might have in my mind about dangerous or toxic emotions. I'm not talking about that. We're gonna learn how to become literate, how to access the data, the intelligence of our emotions, and then decode them for better decision making. So here's a good example. I was working with a team recently, and several folks on the team were experienced expressing frustration around a process that was happening in their team, like in triplicate. And they saw it as a waste of time, they saw it a waste of you know, money for the team and allocation of resources. And it frustration, that was what they reported, many of them are annoyance. Frustration lives in, uh, by definition, in our in our model, in the anger zone. It's a it's a form of anger, boundary energy. I don't like this, you know, was sort of the sense. And so this team actually, what we discovered was they weren't comfortable with being angry. So there was redundancy that continued. Because what we say, the hidden message, the intelligence of anger is something here simply needs to change, stop, or be different. And if a person or a team doesn't have access or maybe has a long-distance relationship with anger, then they won't have the intelligence, the data set that says, hold on a second, something here needs to change, something needs to be different. People tolerate things much longer than maybe is of service when they don't have anger on board that simply says, huh, something needs to be different.

SPEAKER_00 26:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 26:25

Talking about throwing a chair across the room, although somebody could do that if I guess they had to do that. But that's not what I'm talking about. What I'm talking about is like the energy of the dog, when you step on the dog's paw, they're gonna bark you right off.

SPEAKER_00 26:41

Right.

SPEAKER_02 26:42

And the message is delivered, and then they do kind of a shake, and then their tag their tail is wagging and they're done with it. It's clean.

SPEAKER_00 26:50

Dogs, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 26:51

Children and children and animals are just the best role models.

SPEAKER_00 26:56

Okay, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 26:58

So you're talking about EQ.

SPEAKER_00 27:00

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 27:01

And then remind me the other something else that was tagged on there.

SPEAKER_00 27:05

And I asked uh how this all overlaps or diff or differs from or borrows from non-duality, non-attachment, mindfulness, and also if you've dabbled or learned at all about uh hoponopono, that as well.

SPEAKER_02 27:18

Yeah, great. Um, I have I do study with a non-dual meditation teacher, and I have um sat and am in the exploration of what it is to be a a person from the Western world and the mind of a Western world, um where polarity, you know, is is it there's good and there's bad, there's right and there's wrong. Um and the non-dual approach, my gosh, I'm I'm certainly getting a lot out of it, seems like you are too. Is this notion um, and I'm sure I will not do it justice right now as I am as I am in the exploring and practicing of it myself, is the notion of life is simply as it is. And you know, many teachers say the greatest form of suffering comes from arguing with that.

SPEAKER_00 28:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 28:24

And what I liked, what I how I like to add from to that is life is simply as it is, and many folks can say, well, that's gonna lead to inaction. We're just gonna live in a world and and then you have all this kind of privilege and you can avoid doing anything to make the world better. And I remember one time Byron Katie saying to me, Um, Deb, if you like to recycle, recycle because you like it more than you think the world needs it, do it because it turns you on. And it's this it's this idea that from below the line we can think we know how the world ought to be. That would be that would be sort of in the world of right and wrong. But from above the line, when I really can question, can I can I absolutely know how the world ought to be? Now, this is really an existential question. Can I really know with all absolutes how the world ought to be? When I do that inquiry at least, I get a no. I I can't absolutely know in the world of absolutes.

SPEAKER_00 29:32

Right.

SPEAKER_02 29:33

But then where I go is there's still a deb here and it has pref, there's a personality and it has preferences about how I'd like to see the world. And so I can advocate passionately, even from above the line to create a world that I uh want to see and experience and leave for seven generations behind me. But as soon as I get attached to being right that my preference for how I see the world could be more exquisite for more people, as soon as I get attached to being right about that, here I go again. I become the agent of conflict. Because anyone that disagrees with me, uh, I just backed into a corner because I think I'm right. So yeah, so I I was just, you know, gonna finish that up with my what I am practicing in the non-dual approach is letting go of my attachment to thinking I know how life ought to be better than life is showing up. So then life shows up, and I get to have my feelings, my hurt, my anger, my scare, my excitement, my creative energy about however a given situation is showing up. And then I do my work, I take a look in the mirror, and I I gotta be able to argue for all sides in order to release my attachment to being right, which then creates the polarity. Other people are gonna get defensive. So if you got a bunch of defensive people around you like I used to, you got to do your work to take a look at huh, what's the common denominator? Well, I am. How am I showing up so such that there's a bunch of defensive people around me?

SPEAKER_00 31:19

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 31:20

And I don't really have a lot of defensive people around me anymore because I've really nipped that in the bud with all of my righteousness positioned indignation. So it's it's a practice to care deeply without being attached, positioned, or righteousness.

SPEAKER_00 31:39

Okay, well let me loop that in. And then ho-ho Pono Pono, yeah. Oh yes, let me hear that.

SPEAKER_02 31:46

Yeah, you know, I um I I got introduced to Ho'o Pono Pono probably, I don't know, maybe 15 years ago. Maybe 17 years ago. I I noticed my eyes are filling up with water as I reflect on that right now. Uh what a profoundly heart-opening practice that is. Um I I'd say it's in my wheelhouse of practice. Any, you know, anything that allows one to come into connection with their own heart in such a way that they find connection with others, it's a good tool. Now, sometimes connection with others doesn't mean we're gonna be best friends and sit in the same room. But connection meaning the part I see in you the humanity that lives in me and your right to exist. Uh if more and more of us, I think, can have that baseline, we might start seeing the polarities and the canyons of polarities between people start to soften and dissolve. So I I love ho-oponopono.

SPEAKER_00 32:57

Well, as do I. That was uh self-identity through hoponopono was uh our episode just two weeks ago.

SPEAKER_02 33:03

Yeah, it's a beautiful, beautiful, beautiful practice.

SPEAKER_00 33:07

Well, how about this one for size? How conscious leadership could apply and maybe could have made me handle this better. Um, it's really hard, Deb, for me to be on the sidelines and seeing what I what looks to be like a judge or prosecutor running ramshot over an unrepresented criminal defendant who doesn't have a lawyer. I remember thinking fast when I was only within my first one or two years of criminal defense, where uh this judge who was intelligent in many ways in terms of just pure intelligence, but didn't seem to have much of a heart, at least that he showed. So this uh criminal defendant said, I would like a jury trial. This was in a state where if you have a misdemeanor, you can choose to have a trial uh in front of the judge without a jury or go to the higher court with a jury trial. And the judge said, too late. He said, you've already said you waived that. And I said to myself, think fast, because this judge generally liked me. So I said, excuse me, judge, and I was sitting on the sidelines. He said, Yes, Mr. Katz. I said, you know, only as an officer of the court, please let me know if I'm out of line. Uh but I am concerned that I uh no offense to this defendant. I I think some people don't know what wave means. They might just think like waving with their hand, W-A-V-E and not W-A-I-V-E. And that worked. And I helped the judge save face about how Roughshotti sometimes runs over defendants and he let the person ask for the trial by jury. Now, was I uh using any conscious leadership there, or was I doing this right at all, or was that just something totally different that I was doing?

SPEAKER_02 34:48

Well, it sounds beautiful, by the way, what what happened there? That um you know what it what I like about what you're saying is that you chose a strategy that didn't back that judge up against a wall. It sounds like you chose a strategy, whether it's true or not, it appeared that you were um choosing curiosity and didn't get adversarial. And so the judge didn't need to get defensive. You said, Hey, judge, can we take a look at this together? You kind of positioned yourself to be shoulder to shoulder with them, the judge, instead of pointing the finger of blame, and then they get defensive and then they might get positioned. It appears like you said, hey, you've you found the strategy to take the issue out from between you and the judge and put it up on the wall so you could look at it together. Now, whether that was truly your intent or it's just how it happened, or the way you say face, I don't know. But the way we are exploring conscious leadership is to say, what happens if more and more of us see, we question the undercurrent belief that we're adversaries, that we're not on the same team, where we're then we position each other to be adversaries and it becomes personal and people just get dug in, and it's hard to get out of that dig. But what if you and I, and each maybe person listening to this call, could take a moment to realize even when there's disagreement, it doesn't have to be personal. What if we take it out from between us? We put it up on a wall and partner, ally, team, whatever you're gonna relate to, we put it up on the wall and we look at it together, right? Where we don't assume the worst, we just assume hey, maybe there's a piece of missing information. Can we take a look at this together?

SPEAKER_00 37:02

Right.

SPEAKER_02 37:02

And you had a good result with that strategy. And when it comes from the heart, um, I think that has what I mean when it comes from the heart is when we're sincere in believing we actually are on the same team, we I mean all of us, all of us are on the same team. We're all trying to get food on the table, we're all trying to take care of our children, we're all interested in the experience of feeling like we have a contribution to make to a meaningful life, right? Um, that when we're when we have a sense of every single one of us, regardless of our political beliefs or what have you, we're all on that team. We might show up more as agents of collaboration than agents of disconnection and conflict. So I I like it.

SPEAKER_00 38:01

Great what you said there, because um I I I really feel it in my heart so often. And when I feel it in my heart, it takes all the more work uh not to express it in a way that's just gonna hurt my clients. So here's an example. Uh there's a prosecutor, maybe a little too new, and maybe he's trying to strut his own stuff by showing that uh he's one of the more firm prosecutors to negotiate with than some of the other people in his office. So I had a very challenging case, and uh he started talking at me, not even just to me, uh, before I even said hello, and he started saying, Well, I see the case was here two months ago, and and prosecutor Joe Smith gave you such such an offer. Um I'll be nice, and I'll even renew the offer rather than keeping them off the table. I said, Well, you know, by the way, how are you doing, mom? How's the baseball game going, or whatever it was that we had in common? And I said, Well, I understand what you're saying, but you're telling me that without knowing all these great things that my client has done to self-rehabilitate since we were last in court. And I started just burying him in paper. I love doing that. And the prosecutors just take notice. I said, I started putting the stuff on the table, 40 hours of voluntary community service at the food bank, four hours of mental health counseling to not do this kind of thing anymore, 20 AA meetings so he's not using alcohol that probably contributed to this. I said, So I need to tell him what my client's goal is. He's got to keep his job. And the way he keeps his job is not to do any of this going to jail like you're talking about, but it's by C D ⁇ E. I just want to talk about his goals. We can figure out um how we're gonna get there. And he was just very firm, very firm, very firm. And then finally he said, uh, well, I will offer you a Chinese menu. You can have A or B. And B was better than A. I said, okay. I said, I'll come to my client about it. And B wasn't terrible. It was one or two days in jail. My client would have been able to save his job. And when I came back to the prosecutor, he said, I changed my mind. I'm not offering B. I'm modifying B. So, you know, this is a jurisdiction in Virginia. Prosecutors can withdraw their plea offer even after you make a plea deal, usually, even before the judge accepts it. I guess the theory is that since the defendant can back out too, what's good for the goose is good for the gander. So I could have called him every name in the book, which I knew wouldn't work, so I didn't do that. So instead I said to him, I don't know if you've represented criminal defendants, but the mindset of my client is once I told him what you said, that's now seared into his mind. I am not exaggerating, Joe, Bob, whatever uh the euphemism I'm using with the prosecution. I'm not exaggerating, Joe. It can sometimes take two hours, two days, or two months to dispossess my client of being hung up on that, no matter how many ways I tell him. Yeah, I mean a person can change their mind at any time or change their offer. Just like when you go to a used car dealership, uh the the dealer can uh change the offer withdrawal at any time until it's sealed. And now I'm doing the CAD's drone on top of that. Uh my fifth and sixth grade teacher in public school, Mrs. Drummond, would tell me every one or two months, Jonathan, don't be irritating. And I didn't know at the time that uh being not so much being that irritant, but just doing the drone, droning, droning, and droning on and on could help my clients. Because when I'm droning, the other person has one of three choices. They can shut me up by giving me what I want. They can shut me up or not hear me by them walking away or getting the deputy sheriff to throw me out of that room, uh, or else they're they're not gonna shut me up. And uh it's it can be very unpleasant uh for some people to have troubles with. It's not that I'm trying to be annoying, but it's just like another prosecutor said a few days ago to new cop, he said, look, you've got to catch the elements of the crime when you testify, otherwise sticklers like John Katz are gonna hammer you on it. So it was amazing that by my helping him say a face, I didn't yell at him, didn't say anything, then he won't take a take away wrong. Fifteen minutes later, because it was my last case of the day, I was in no rush. He comes over to me, and uh at some point, if I like tell him to shut up, he wouldn't stop apologizing to me. And he went back to letting me have choices A or B. It really, it it was really getting unpleasant and how much he was apologizing, but he had totally turned around. And I'm not gonna say that he had totally reformed from that. But what was interesting is when I saw him about a week ago, once again, before I even got a chance to say hello, he just tonks at me. He said, Here's the deal, take it or leave it. So I said, Well, I I understand that, but you know, you you don't know all the good things my clients done to self-rehabilitate himself. And uh, do you even have witnesses A, B, or C here? And and I said, By the way, I said, guess what? I just found out from witness A. He said, What's that? I said, well, they weren't present when the vial of blood was uh put in the envelope to mail, to mail them out. It was a blood-draw DWI case. And and I knew that probably wasn't going to go very far into the law or with the judge, but I just emphasized it. And um so I had already had my client sign this plea deal sheet. In this court, we can do plea deals by paper and just give the paper to the judge and not have the promise there. And I just gently handed him the piece of paper. I said, this case will settle for this offer right here. And the prosecutor looks at it, and the deal that I offered him was like 100 percent, a thousand percent better than what he had offered. And he takes a glance at it and he says, um, this looks reasonable. Let me talk to the police officer. And usually when they do that, when they say that, they're gonna go along with it. And uh ten minutes later, he comes over with me. With the to me with that blue piece of paper that I'm offered and was already signed, we had a deal. So every time that I withhold uh showing my anger, my upset calling names to anyone directly, doing it indirectly, uh telling uh one of my colleagues uh a choice name that I might have concocted in my uh my mind about a certain judge, always great, doesn't go into the downward spiral of the negative and can just turn things around to the point where really I I've never experienced that before where I felt like telling a prosecutor, well, you just shut up, stop apologizing to me so much now that you've given me what I wanted.

SPEAKER_02 44:36

Right. Well, I hear two important skills in here that you're describing with these stories, Jonathan, is um one is it sounds like you're not taking it personally, you're not taking it personal that, andor making it personal. Oh, this prosecutor ought to know better, the judge ought to know better, or you're not taking the lack of human contact, how you doing, Jonathan, from the prosecutor, but you're not taking any of that personally, which is a high skill to have, by the way. Uh, I've I most people do take everything and make everything personal. And it's most of the time it's not. So you're not taking things personally. And then what I also get is at some level, you know, you're not arguing with the reality that there's gonna be this type of tango, there's gonna be this type of back and forth dance, you're not in um resistance to the process as it's happening. And so you're able to be creative within the process. And that again is a significant skill, I think, in being able to navigate. It's sort of like what you said earlier: like we're not in control of the ocean, but we are in control of how we surf the waves. And that's what you sound like to me is you're aware of how the the waves, the set is breaking, and you're not in arguing, ocean, you should be different, prosecutor, you should be different. You're not doing any of that, but you're reading the room, you're reading the waves as they're coming, and then you're adapting your surf to meet that wave. And it sounds like it's a really effective tool for you, and that is you know part of acceptance. What we said earlier is once we accept reality, then we can advocate without being attached to being right, we can advocate even passionately, as you clearly do, for the outcome you want to see. And then the people we're negotiating, collaborating with, there's just less of a possibility they're gonna get defensive, positioned, and reactive. So you're less positioned, reactive, and that's what you're feeding into that situation is no reactivity here. I'm not taking it personal. Um, and this is how it is, and you're not in resistance, so you're not getting a lot of resistance back.

SPEAKER_00 47:07

Right.

SPEAKER_02 47:08

It's beautiful what you're describing.

SPEAKER_00 47:11

Well, that's when I'm in the zone.

SPEAKER_02 47:13

That's when you're in the zone.

SPEAKER_00 47:15

There's always the challenges about staying in and getting in the zone. And sometimes something as small as just making sure that I'm getting the right diet, rest, and exercise, that I'm doing mindfulness uh practice every day. For me, it's Tai Chi Chuan. Uh, but at least I'm able to catch myself more quickly when I start getting out of the right zone.

SPEAKER_02 47:37

Yeah. And you know, we find that things like meditation, things like um that there are practices and skills that can expand people's capacity. It's not like, well, I'm always reactive and I'm always going to be as reactive as I am or get triggered like do. We can actually expand the nervous system's capacity to tolerate life with mindfulness, with conscious leadership, with um practices that help us to shift our focus of attention, which is sort of how we started the conversation, which is to shift our focus of attention from what's going on out there where we really don't have any control, to what's going on in here inside oneself. And are we being with that from a triggered state? And if so, great, no problem. That's very human. But now that I know that I'm triggered, how do I want to show up?

SPEAKER_00 48:42

Okay, and then we have the leadership word and conscious leadership. And then speaking of criminal defense, we have our clients. So I've already uh mentioned about how fixated clients will get. Uh I had a client in a civil case, I don't do many civil cases anymore. And almost every time I would meet with him, I don't think he was totally mentally ill, he would start from the beginning. He would start, for instance, with this police report is incorrect at lines three, five, seven, nine, twelve. And it it didn't matter for me to say to them, look, I I know you're from uh uh a civil law country where these police reports can come into evidence. The police report doesn't come into evidence. Can we please move on? And it would always be the same thing again and again. And the best thing I get from it is when I spoke with this licensed clinical social worker, Don Clarkson, who's amazing, and he's one of the world's greatest psychodramatists. He said, uh, look, he said, your client sounds very isolated. He sounds like he's very much a fish out of water. As much as you might not uh want to take your time like this, find time with him. Maybe on a Saturday morning or Saturday afternoon, just spend time together at his people, just walk in the park. And at some point say to him, look, you know, you're a great person, you got a great case in many ways, but here's what I'm worried about. I'm worried about that if you talk the same way to the jury like you talk to me, for instance, if I just say to you, What did you have for dinner last night? And you tell me about uh, you know, what's been happening the last five years about you fixing this recipe rather than just answering the question that the jury's not gonna like you and you're gonna lose them. And I I I can't tell you that uh that fixed it, but it made things better. And at least uh when he saw that, when he got off the witness stand, and I was very proud of a lot of what he had done, that I had some tears in my eyes, he handed me his handkerchief and uh he said gato, because uh my Spanish uh uh nickname is Gato, he's a Spanish speaker. He said, uh here's my handkerchief. And and when I dabbed my eyes with it, he said, and I'm gonna save this as a souvenir, as a momento.

SPEAKER_02 50:53

Yeah. You know, there's a lot um a lot of discussion at different levels and different models, get uh questioning like what are basic human needs? And you know, there's of course Maslow and shelter and food and clothing, that type of thing. Um but on the psychological and spiritual level, some teachers suggest there's also a fundamental human need around the experience of being seen, heard, or I call it like gotten, or like what maybe I mean by that is understood. And that sometimes providing what will what we would call conscious listening, deeply listening to a person such that they really get gotten, um, sometimes that makes the issue actually disappear. Yes, and then it's a healing moment, and then the person's defense mechanisms de-escalate a little bit, and then they hear your message a little bit better. Yes, hey, you're gonna lose the jury if you keep talking like this, but you listened in such a way that this person got, oh gosh, got those with me, you know. All right, I don't gotta, I don't gotta bang him over the head with a two by four anymore because he got me, right? So that he could move on to the thing you needed him to move on to. So we often say that deep present, conscious listening, not ad nauseum, you know, where you're getting run over and you're not getting, but like a quality of presence gives a psychology of a person the sense of shit, they're with me, I'm not alone. Okay, I can relax, let me listen.

SPEAKER_00 52:49

Yes. Well, this conversation was so great. I feel like I'm almost almost being petty to ask the next question, but I get burning questions, and uh a lot of people are stunned that I was actually able to enjoy what was it called, a vipassan or Theravada type uh Laura's long weekend, where I was actually able to be silent and enjoy it, except for that we could speak during group discussion and question answer. So I think tell me if I heard you wrong. Are you just gonna say the right way? To what extent is it possible to be above the line and tell the person to F you? And to what extent is it possible to be below the line and still feel that you're feeling compassion or showing compassion for somebody?

SPEAKER_02 53:30

Yeah, that's great. We talked about that in the early call too, which was this idea that, you know, again, in the world of polarity, people will say there's good emotions and bad emotions, negative emotions and positive emotions. And we're saying that is uh that's not the actual case. There's emotions. How we be with those emotions determines whether we're above or below the line. So I could be repressing in denial, ignoring, rationalizing. All of that could be from below the line, a below the line way to be with emotions. So I gave you this example of um we could be below the line and say, I love you from a reactive state. And there's a place where you could say, fuck you, from above the line. So it's not that anger is a below-the-line emotion and love, for example, is an above-the-line emotion. No, no, no, no, no. That it's not that simple. It's not just the action or the behavior, it's where is it coming from? So am I trying to control outcome? And if I am trying to control outcome, which hint, hint, by the way, we're all trying to do all the time. Uh, am I trying to, am I being with my emotions, be they sadness, grief, anger, fear, in order to control outcome? That's likely I'm below the line. Versus am I being with emotions such that I can learn, such that I can um be more in integrity with the moment myself, and access the data that those emotions are informing me and the room of, then it might be above the line. And there could be a place for a fuck you, meaning that there's just a there's a boundary that needs to be expressed, and that from below the line, somebody could be expressing I love you, uh, from a fear-based state.

SPEAKER_00 55:38

Yes. Well, I see we're like one or two minutes away from our hour. If people are interested in knowing more about conscious leadership, is the path to start with the book and then just check out uh the group disc um the the groups and and and the seminars, what what's the best path perhaps for a person to go if they want to learn more?

SPEAKER_02 56:01

Yeah, that's great. Thanks, Jonathan. Uh it just depends on your style. If you like to read, go grab the book. 15 commitments of conscious leadership. If you're a person that uh, you know, all the menu of our services are available on our website, uh conscious.is, and we offer everything from one-to-one coaching uh to group work um both in an organization and then community organization, uh community group works in our forums. We have online uh half day events open to the public to get the basics, our taste of conscious leadership or introduction to conscious leadership. So there's many funnels, depending on learning style and preferred environment, for folks to choose from in order to explore their own state of consciousness and how to be able to meet the moment, your clients, uh, your prosecutors, your judges, your colleagues, such that you create more collaboration and less drama. And that's what we're really here doing is providing that environment less drama, more collaboration.

SPEAKER_00 57:14

Is there anything else you would like the audience to know before we sign off?

SPEAKER_02 57:20

Yeah, I think the one thing I'd say is um the path of conscious leadership is messy. And what I mean by that is whenever we step outside of our status quo, especially as experts, as I imagine your listening, uh your listeners are, is to just get comfortable with the mess of being in beginner's mind and see the mess as I'm experimenting, I'm doing things differently. And welcome to the club.

SPEAKER_00 57:50

Excellent beginner's mind. Deb Katz, thank you so much to clarify. So, what happened for me to get Deb Katz finally on here? The folks over there, conscious leadership are so popular and so busy. It was really just about three or four requests to say, hey, I'm here. Don't you want to come on the show? And I appreciate it so much. Um, one of my martial arts teachers, David Walls-Kaufman, has said, don't let our teachers forget how much we appreciate them. Well, you've become my teacher for the first time starting last week, and you're a great teacher, and I appreciate it so much, Deb.

SPEAKER_02 58:24

Thank you too, Jonathan, and thank you for the good, beautiful work you're doing in the world and the listeners as well.

SPEAKER_00 58:31

Thank you. And everybody who's listening, this is Beat the Prosecution. I am John Katz, a criminal defense and DUI defense law in Fairfax, Northern Virginia. Thanks for listening. Stand by.

SPEAKER_01 58:44

Thank you for listening to this week's episode from Beat the Prosecution. This is a regular podcast giving people a leg up against police investigations and prosecutions. Nothing discussed on our media sources, such as our podcast or website, is legal advice. John Katz only provides legal advice to current clients or to individuals who have paid for a consultation. We welcome you contacting us via email at info at beatheprosecution.com by calling our office at 703 383 1100 or texting us at 571 406 7268.