Speaker 1: 0:06

Welcome back to the Sweet Spot where science meets soul. It's Trust Yourself, thursday, and today we're exploring how respect becomes a superpower in high-performance situations. I'm Dr Derek Sweet, a board-certified psychiatrist specializing in high performance and sports psychiatry, working with elite athletes and executives to unlock their full potential. On the Sweet Spot, we've been discussing the power of restorative practices and how transformative it can be in coping with competitive stress, in building collaborative cultures and unlocking transformative peak performance. So we've talked about the five R's. Remember the five R's that go along with restorative practices. On Making Moves, monday, we talked about the power of relationship. On Take Action, tuesday, we looked at responsibility and Win it All. Wednesday, yesterday, we talked about repair. Those are the three R's that we did. Now, today, we find ourselves in Trust Yourself, thursday, and we're encountering the fourth R of the five R's of restorative practices, and that's respect. So remember these aren't just conflict resolution tools, they're the foundation for creating an environment where everyone in your universe and your world can bring their A-game. It not only empowers you to be a master of restorative practices, it empowers everyone else around you, it gives them permission to do the same. So, by way of example, let me take you inside of a critical moment in a game that I was involved in, where there was a critical turnover and there was a cultural clash between an American player and a Serbian teammate, and so the American player used a culturally loaded slur I'm not going to say the word to his Serbian teammate, and the Serbian player responded immediately, hitting back with a very sensitive political reference at the time. That cut pretty deep. The two players essentially got into it and literally couldn't even look at each other or be in the same room and had to be separated. So, instead of just punishing the players, the coach at the time was a restoratively sensitive coach and asked me to see if there was some way that we could figure out to repair this situation, and so what we did was, instead of just giving punishment out, we went with a restorative process, and here's what it looked like.

Speaker 1: 3:01

The first thing was individual preparation. Right, we prepared each player to reflect on what happened. I challenged them to think through what was going on, what were you feeling at the time, what was going through your mind, what would you have preferred to have done? And really just that process alone, that self-reflective process, was so important, and I'll tell you here's what I learned from both players when I talked to them individually using this restorative relationship building approach. Remember, we talked about the power of relationship on Making Moves Monday. We talked about taking responsibility on Tuesday right and repairing things on Wednesday, on Win it All Wednesday.

Speaker 1: 3:40

So here I was in the situation with the American player and then the Serbian player, and this is what I got from taking them through a restorative process the American player revealed that his own experience with discrimination led him to weaponize the pain that he felt, the anger that he felt in the moment. And the Serbian player he shared how, in his culture, he can't show weakness after being disrespected, because it dishonors his entire heritage. We processed that individually and talked about the pressures that they felt in the moment to react the way that they did and then, using a restorative approach, we created what was called a restorative circle with certain rules. There was going to be no interrupting. You had to speak from personal experience and not accusation, and then you had to state the impact before the intention. You know what happened A breakthrough came in their words, and I'm just going to repeat what I heard.

Speaker 1: 4:47

Came in their words, and I'm just going to repeat what I heard the Americans said when I used that word, I became literally what I hated. That's very powerful. And then the Serbian players said I was thinking about how words could lead to violence and how they often lead to violence in my experience and I own that. And the Syrian player added that my reaction came from watching my father have to defend our family's honor during the war. So when they got into this exchange and sharing their so when they got into this exchange and sharing their unique cultural journeys, what we saw was a bridge being built for them and they didn't hate each other. They wanted to connect and talk. They actually wanted the same thing, but in the heat of competitive stress it was very difficult to see this.

Speaker 1: 5:41

So here's what we did we created shared guidelines for respect, we developed signals for when lines get crossed and we built a system for addressing the tensions early on the team. And the results were spectacular. The team did extremely well. The players became closer, they agreed not to use these kinds of slurs and this approach literally created a win-win situation out of what looked like a horrible conflict just from using a restorative practice. Now here's the other thing it could have been that they were both suspended and they went their separate ways. And that would have been it. We would have had no chance to grow, no chance to collaborate, no chance to emerge better from what we went through. So that's the power.

Speaker 1: 6:34

And lest you think this is only in sports, I recall working with a corporate situation where the same approach transformed a failing American-Japanese merger that I was involved in, where an American CEO called his Japanese counterparts' style passive-aggressive stonewalling and then the other one called her childish. And they went back and forth and boy, $5 billion was hanging in the balance of this exchange. Using the very same framework, we uncovered how the American response and urgency came from shareholder pressure, while the Japanese executives measured pace, reflected a deep cultural value system about respect and decision-making. So, on one hand, you had one that wanted to move really fast and one that was meticulously slow. So guess what? The solution was? To create a bridge, have a clear communication, talk about what the pressures are, talk about why we are doing what we're doing and help them have a context for understanding how we can move forward. And so, within three months of attempting to do this, the decision-making time dropped from 40% to 20% and satisfaction scores between them rose from 15% to 35% and the merger was actually back on track.

Speaker 1: 8:05

So what I'm saying to you here is this Lots of times, there is a solution and if you use a restorative practices approach, take away the punishment, take away the blame and look for what's generating this conflict. And then how can I preserve the relationship, how can I preserve respect, how can I use principles of repairing here and how can I begin that process to help me understand what's on the other side? Boy, do you see results? So I want to leave you with this. I want to leave you this. It starts with getting curious about the cultural values that are at the bottom play on the other side. It then has to go to you creating a space for different perspectives to be okay in the room and then build a bridge. Build a bridge while staying true to your values, but still build a bridge. Remember, when you respect yourself and others, trust follows and performance soars All right.

Speaker 1: 9:08

Now, this is Dr Sweet. We've been really going into restorative practices. I hope you're getting this. I hope you're understanding the power of relationship, the power of responsibility and the power of repair and respect. And tomorrow, on Finish Strong Friday, we're going to look at the last R, which is about reintegration, and boy, we'll be capping off our wonderful discussion about the power of restorative practices. Until then, I want you to trust yourself, trust others, respect yourself, respect others and remember you are more than a conqueror. Today, take care.