Start The Conversation Episode 3 Transcript

Blaise [00:00:01] The most amazing thing with police negotiation is the fact that we stand in the wind with people on darkest days and we just simply listen to them and acknowledge their world and sometimes that's all they need. Connection to me is just the critical component of this whole thing. I think when we talk about connection we're saying getting a connection because we want to build trust and when we build trust we get influence.

Simon intro [00:00:25] The violent extremism landscape is fluid and complex and it can be difficult to navigate. This podcast series has been developed as a means of providing listeners with some thought provoking topics within this context. Personal insights and journeys as well as helpful information that could assist someone who is vulnerable to being involved in violent extremism. The Engagement and Support Unit services focus on early intervention, awareness and resilience against violent extremism. They consult with and support the local community with this information to help mitigate the drivers of violent extremism and raise awareness of the complex factors and vulnerabilities that contribute to these ideologies. Before we begin we would like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the lands and airways on which we are meeting and broadcasting today. As we share our learning we also pay respects to Elders past and present. It is their knowledge and experiences that hold the key to the success of our future generations and promote our connection to country and community. Please note that views expressed are not necessarily representative of the NSW Government. Episodes may contain depictions of violence or sensitive topics that some people may find distressing. For further information please view our episode notes.

Heather [00:01:44] Hello, I'm Heather Jackson, Director of the NSW Countering Violent Extremism Engagement and Support Unit.

Rebecca [00:01:51] And I'm Rebecca Shaw, Communications and Community Engagement Manager. And this is Start the Conversation. Today's podcast episode is all about communication or possibly a lack of communication with our disengaged teenagers. Moods or emotional ups and downs are a part of our life of pre -teens and teenagers just as they are for adults. Moods are a sign that your child is experiencing more complex, mature emotions and trying to understand and manage them. This is an important part of teenage development but as parents we do have a big role to play in helping our children with this part of their journey into adulthood. Moods and changes in behaviour can be for a number of reasons and not all of them sinister. But it's crucial we continue to communicate with our children and in their world so we can understand and know and monitor any potential warning signs and vulnerabilities to dangers. In our line of work our referrals are getting younger and parents are struggling with that communication disconnect with teenagers who are increasingly retreating online for that sense of belonging or understanding. This next clip is quite powerful. It's from Safer Devon UK and it just shows us how teenagers or even children can be very easily radicalised online.

Audio from clip [00:03:18] Hey mate how are you doing? How you feeling about tomorrow? Yeah fine. Come on, remember who you are? You're not a loser anymore. Who even are you? You're a total loser. Everyone doubted you. You should be so proud with how far you've come. This is your moment mate. This behaviour is unacceptable in class. What's going on? We're here for you. We're your real family yeah? You listen to me. I can really talk to you guys.

Audio from clip [00:03:49] You spend too much time on that screen. Don't you walk away from me.

Audio from clip [00:03:55] You guys have got me here. Everyone else have just let me down. Because you're one of us. We really believe it you mate. Thank you. Be strong. Remember everything we've been through and taught you. You make us proud tomorrow right? So are you ready? Yeah. Yeah I'm gonna do this.

Rebecca [00:04:19] So yeah quite a confronting clip really that one. And to help us understand how we can perhaps break down some communication barriers and gain trust and understanding with our kids is Detective Senior Sergeant Blaise Cooper. With 20 years law enforcement experience with Australian Customs Service, Australian Federal Police and more recently with Queensland Police Service. The latter included criminal investigation branch and most importantly for today's discussion, police negotiator. Blaise is currently the manager of Q -Gate, a training arm of the Queensland Police Service responsible for delivering external training to our government partner agencies and creator of the My Path communication model in 2022. The My Path model was originally intended to help on the ground practitioners in communicating with clients but the model really does and can be applied across the board. Hence our discussion today. So welcome Blaise.

Heather [00:05:24] Welcome Blaise.

Blaise [00:05:25] Hello. Good morning. What an introduction. I should say I'm also a parent of two teenagers so.

Rebecca [00:05:32] Ah most relevant for today.

Heather [00:05:33] So I'm sure your police negotiation skills have come in handy.

Blaise [00:05:37] Well they definitely do at home. They don't always work and I certainly empathise with parents because as you can appreciate like kids know most of your nuances don't they. They know your scripts, they know everything so it can be a little bit of a difficult thing or difficult terrain to navigate as a parent. Yeah.

Rebecca [00:05:53] They know how to play you.

Heather [00:05:55] So Blaise we attended your training recently, me and my team and we were just blown away by the delivery and the practical takeaways. My staff are using them every day and in fact one used one on me yesterday. So we want to get this out to as many people as we can because it's so practical, it makes a lot of sense and as your model explains, people in various states of aggression and resistance and reluctance, in crisis or distress, the primary human instinct is that people just want to be heard and understood. And it's a concept that sounds really simple but it just seems to evade so many of us. You know the over talking, the wanting to solve their problems etc. So can you just tell us a bit more about that innate desire for human connection and that need for negotiating in their world?

Blaise [00:06:43] Yeah sure. Connection to me is just the critical component of this whole thing. There's a few but this is definitely one and I think when we talk about connection we're saying getting a connection because we want to build trust and when we build trust we get influence. Connection to me is that moment when two people, say two people involved whether it's parent and child or two people, we suddenly start to see the other person differently. It's no longer a contest, it's a competition, a battle, a winner and a loser. It's not you against me, it's not I have to win this. It goes from being perceived as combative to suddenly being collaborative. That's really important. As a police negotiator, one of the amazing things through the experiences I've had, I never knew any of the people I interacted with. I'd never met them before. So we were literally strangers at ground zero and turning up at a situation. I was lucky if I even knew their name. But if I could get their name, that was a great start, that was the connection. G'Day what's your name? Michael my names Blaise, there's a connection there straight away that we're human beings and sometimes that's really important. All I knew when I turned up at these jobs was that there was a person in crisis and they needed someone to help them, someone to listen to them, someone to connect to. They certainly didn't trust me and certainly from the start they wouldn't do what I asked them to do because there was nothing there, there was no connection. All I had was what I saw and what I heard, which was their emotional world. If I turned up and a lot of the people that I interacted with, they may say nothing for the first hour so it's probably akin to being a parent sometimes isn't it, with their children. You're getting nothing back but you would look at them and go for that emotional world like pacing back and forth, not saying a word, you could draw on that. You knew that they were suffering in some way, they were in pain and so bringing attention to that helped them. I remember one job where particularly a person just had a cut to his knee and that became, he didn't say a word to me for an hour but that became the focus. Hey listen, that must be hurting you, I want to help you. It was trying to find a way, a way to get that connection. When I look back on the jobs, the recurring theme if you want to say is the fact that someone generally had let them down. It would always get to the end and they would say someone let me down or something let me down or an organisation let me down. To me that was always a way because whether you're in my role or you're a parent doing it tough, we all know what it's like when someone lets you down. We know how that feels and so you've got a great opportunity when you're in that moment where someone's being let down that you come along and say, hey listen, I see you're struggling, you're doing a task. I just want to stand here in the wind with you for a period of time and I want to find out what's going on. I might be able to help you. I don't know what you're going through, I'm not going to try and problem solve you but I'm just going to be with you for a period of time. The most amazing thing with police negotiation is the fact that we stand in the wind with people on darkest days and we just simply listen to them and acknowledge their world. And sometimes that's all they need. That's a huge thing. And we talk about being heard understood, it's a simple concept as you said, it's a very simple thing, we want to be heard understood. We want to feel important I think too, we want to be validated if we feel a certain way. We just want someone to say, you know what, I can see you're angry about that, that's okay. The problem is a lot of the time we're trying to influence behaviour and whether it's in my world as a negotiator or a police officer or as a parent, we try to influence behaviour believing that the way to do that is to talk our way through that, to talk people out of things, into things, to tell them what to do. One thing negotiation taught me is that if we're coming into an interaction always about our agenda and what we want, we're making it more difficult for ourselves at times. What we've got to do is the key to it is to make it all about the other person and that's the key I think too for the interaction. What do they want? We always go, this is what I want but what about what they want? That certainly can change, so it's a bit of a philosophy change sometimes and we as parents come in and we're used to that role aren't we, we've got the power as such and that perception of power is that I'm the parent, I'll tell the child what to do. We're used to that but we've got to understand the fact that when our kids are struggling, you know, you've got aggressive, resistant, reluctance, crisis, stress, it helps us if we take that real good listening approach. And you said before about negotiating in their world and that's probably a concept that people have heard before, that's once again we turn up with the mindset that, you know, we want to tell them what our agenda is but what we need to do is take a moment to empathise, think about their world and then use that as a great tool to get in to get that connection. And as we know connection builds trust, we want to get that influence and sometimes that comes with the best way I found in my experience is through the listening process. So for some parents, you know, we talk about getting connection and that's an easy thing for some, we're biologically linked, aren't we? That's the connection immediately but for some of us to be able to reconnect on a particular issue, we need to get past that power and balance, the perceptions of authority and I guess from our children's perspective, they feel like no matter what we say that they're being told what to do. And I know certainly for my mum, if my mum said to me, I want to have a talk to you, believe me that word talk came out, I went this is not a talk, this is my mum telling me what I'm going to do. So I think, you know, we also look at the way we frame the language, I want to hear what you got to say, I want to hear what's going on, I want to listen, you know, and that can be a difference in how we approach.

Rebecca [00:12:23] Actively listen.

Blaise [00:12:24] Yeah, you bet.

Rebecca [00:12:25] Yeah, look, it seems like parents need to start sort of, I guess, waving the white flag when they enter rooms now and sort of like you say, build that trust via common ground or you'll find an interest that they can perhaps discuss in the first instance. But it might also be a situation where as a parent, we need to kind of clear the path to achieve a better outcome for everyone or a better connection. What's your sort of take on that and what are some ways of sort of clearing a path for this better connection?

Blaise [00:12:50] Yeah, good question. It's important that if there's some sort of negativity between the parties and, you know, negative circumstances, it could just be a strained relationship or maybe you've had an argument and now it's your job as a parent to go in and have to deal with that. You know, probably negotiation told me if we're talking about trust, the way we build trust is being fairly honest about things. And that's also being honest with yourself as a parent. Get it out in the open. I think we call it in the police, like the white elephant dance. Everyone knows this white elephant's there. In fact, and I know you both have seen the presentation, the picture of a path with a massive big boulder on it. And I think that's the imagery is think of a path and there's this big boulder and you and your child are on either side of that rock, that boulder, and you're trying to talk to each other around this big rock. And we sort of can hear them, but I can't hear you because we're so far away and both of us know this rock exists. But we just want to get, you know, we both want to acknowledge it and remove it to clear the path as we say. So negotiation told me to build trust and be honest. And, you know, if you as a parent and I've done it, we've said the wrong things at the wrong time with our kids. You know, we fall on our sword. I go and say, you know, last time we had a conversation, I probably said something that I regretted. It didn't end well for us. I don't want that. I'm sorry I said that. I generally want to talk to you about, I want to hear about what's going on. So we're talking about clearing the path. Get out in the open. If it's something that needs to be resolved before you have the conversation and just get it out. Because as we know, as I said before, parents approaching the situation thinking, well, I'm going to go into this. I'm just going to try and forget about what happened the other day. Sometimes getting out in the open is good. It's a good thing because it allows you to start, I guess, in that connection immediately. You know, we're getting rid of those negative connotations.

Heather [00:14:38] And I think there's an element what you talk about there is vulnerability. I mean, we talk about that power balance between parents and children and that, you know, winning the argument, whether you're the parent or child. But what you're suggesting there when you're saying, I know last time things didn't end well between us. I don't want that. It's the parent being a little bit vulnerable to the child so they can sort of reflect that back. Is that what you're sort of trying to allude to?

Blaise [00:15:03] Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I think as parents, we do hold that authority. But it's also important that kids see that when we make mistakes, we also own them as well. And I think we're trying to reflect great qualities in our kids, aren't we? As parents, we want them to be great people and being able to say sorry. You know, the amount of times in a negotiation that I've said the wrong thing and the person has barked back at me and you think to yourself, well, the best way to get past that is to simply say, hey listen, I'm sorry, I said that, I shouldn't have said that. And it's amazing how it takes the steam, the boiling point, it takes it out of it a bit. People sometimes, I guess, mistake empathy for a bit of weakness, if that's fair to say. And I think that's really unfair because to me, empathy is power because you're actually empowering your kid to say life ain't all about winning arguments. It's not about winning and losing and that's a big part of what this is about, isn't it? And I use the term, the phrase, the anger games. It's not an anger game. It's not to be won or lost. No one wins the argument. So for us, our best way to try and cool that and get to a place or get to an environment where we as parents and kids can see the other side because when we start to reflect them, even with any level of emotional intelligence, you know, kids, we don't give our kids enough credit. I think at times they see it in us and so this wonderful sort of contagion effect occurs where we do start to get that connection and suddenly, you know, the defensive walls come down, that wall comes down and you're actually able to have the conversation you wanted to have. And sometimes doing that, you've got to clear the path, you've got to get out of the way. But yeah, spot on. Don't be afraid to be vulnerable. Don't be afraid to make your mistakes. Sometimes we think our kids are going to use that against us. Look, maybe, but in my experience, I certainly many times my kids will attest to it. I said, hey, that didn't go well for me. I probably said something I didn't mean. I think genuineness goes a long way towards getting good connection and a good conversation.

Rebecca [00:16:58] Yeah, that's so true. I'm a busy working mum of three and, you know, in the heat of the moment we all say things we regret and I think my kids really appreciate it when I come to them after the fact, when everyone's cooled down a bit and I apologise and, you know, show that we're all human and vulnerable. I think it goes a long way.

Blaise [00:17:13] Yeah. Amazingly too, when you start to show a bit of vulnerability, your kids actually do the opposite. They actually say, oh, are you okay, mum? Are you okay, dad?

Rebecca [00:17:19] Oh, yeah. It's great.

Blaise [00:17:21] And then suddenly, before you know it, and you're proud of them and you think, oh, I came here and I, you know, you had things in your mind about how you thought the conversation was going to go.

Rebecca [00:17:31] And then you're all disarmed. Yes, I know.

Blaise [00:17:33] It's gone. Yeah, yeah. It takes the heat out it and there's nothing to really argue about.

Heather [00:17:41] So talking about vulnerability and communication and building that trust, there's a lot of emotion attached with difficult conversations or trying to break through that wall. And when we're talking about our own children, there's always big emotions at play, especially as they're getting into that preteen and teenaged angst years that none of us ever want to revisit. You say that the emotional level is an important part of getting real influence with another person. And so what do you think are some of the tools for this one, for the parents out there that are thinking it's impossible to get that connection? I can't get through to them. They won't talk to me. Can you give us an example of how an emotional level response can assist parents? And, you know, you can try us if you want. Bec's emotional.

Rebecca [00:18:29] Thanks, Heather.

Blaise [00:18:31] You're spot on. And look, sometimes it's easy for us as parents to be dismissive of our kids' emotions. And, you know, just to go, oh, they're overreacting or over emotional, melodramatic, you know, and, look we've all been there. But sometimes I guess what we've got to understand is emotions are the window to the soul. They sometimes can be the outside. I call it the big bear when we talk about anger, you know, and things like that. But it's important not to think of emotion just as somebody crying. Emotions drive everything we do. And one thing I learned as a negotiator is the extraordinary power of a person's emotional level. If I ever tried to negotiate a successful resolution by using a problem solving or an analytical or pointing out some logic to somebody, it doesn't work. You know, certainly not immediately. People, when we're faced with our children or another person who's, let's say, emotional crisis, but maybe not. Maybe they're just, you know, frustrated about something at school, something that's going on. Emotion is the reason we would say that's the reason they're in front of you. That's why they're behaving the way they are. And I guess we've got to think of negotiation between parties as an emotional process. We've always got good intentions. We want the best for our kids. And sometimes we think, well, we'll just express some rationale, intellect, logic as a means of getting kids to see reason with our system, their predicament. The problem is we often find ourselves trying to give them some logic, intellect, rationale to try and solve human behaviour, which we know is highly irrational, highly illogical and definitely emotional. We always refer to your favourite sporting team on the weekend if they got beaten in the last minute. You tend to sort of show some emotion that you just connected with them. So emotion is not just about sadness and crying. But look, let's take an example. And I'd invite you both to be part of this. Let's say, I know you're keen.

Rebecca [00:20:23] Not sure about that.

Blaise [00:20:25] Let's say that your child comes home from school. Teenager says that a school friend has just unfriended them. I believe that's the word. I love that word. Unfriended them on social media.

Blaise [00:20:37] So your child will come. They're angry. They're moody. They feel rejected.

Blaise [00:20:42] A school friend has just unfriended them. You know in your own mind, the context of it is that they have 700 other friends on social media. But they're complaining about one. So I guess if we look at the way we deal with this. If I said to you, and maybe I can get Bec or Heather one of you to play the child. If you want to just give me your best angry, moody, feeling rejected, someone just, I've just lost one friend on social media.

Blaise [00:21:09] Maybe one of you could start with that.

Rebecca [00:21:10] Oh God, I'm feeling so upset Mum, I've lost a friend on social media. My life's over. I can't go to school tomorrow.

Rebecca [00:21:18] Something like that?

Blaise [00:21:19] Yeah, absolutely.

Blaise [00:21:21] And that's what our parents say in the middle of their own world. And you knowing, or me being the parent knowing that you've got 700 other friends on social media. A rational response to that might be, Oh well Bec, you've got 699 other friends.

Rebecca [00:21:37] Which could be inflammatory.

Blaise [00:21:38] Yeah, well how does it make you feel if I said to you, it's almost like to get over it.

Blaise [00:21:43] You've got 699 other friends.

Rebecca [00:21:44] Yeah, but maybe that one friend was the very, very best friend on the social media.

Blaise [00:21:48] Could be, could be, could be too. Yeah, maybe they're the one.

Blaise [00:21:52] 699 more friends, yeah. So from a rational point of view, yeah, that's correct. It's not wrong, but does it help our child? Probably not. I mean, we're all probably sitting here now thinking, Oh, what sort of response I would get if I rolled that out to my child. Maybe then you look at an intellectual level. You've read a recent study said that, you know, if you have more than 500 friends on social media, it's quite unrealistic and probably unhealthy reflection of your status anyway. You're using some sort of intellect to try and convince them they should feel better about it. How does that make you feel?

Heather [00:22:25] Makes you just feel unheard, dismissed. That you're dismissing like the issue that they've happened to talk to you about the one out of the 700. And each of those responses you've given is just dismissed.

Rebecca [00:22:38] You're not validated. The issue hasn't been validated.

Blaise [00:22:44] And maybe, and I certainly can say that I probably, you just want to try and call my children when they get upset about these sorts of things. The logical level is, hey, maybe they just got rid of all their friends. So you're just one of the rejects.

Blaise [00:22:58] You know, we try to...

Rebecca [00:23:00] You feel even smaller.

Blaise [00:23:02] Hey, don't feel bad. Look, maybe they got rid of all their friends, not just you. You know, does that make you feel any better? No, it doesn't. It probably won't make them feel better either. So we've had a rational response, intellectual response, a logical response, all logical. The last one we call is the egotistical. Now I know egotistical, we talk about egos, but we're also talking about egotistical and authoritarian type of approach that might be simply saying to the child, you know, don't get upset about it. Stop overreacting. Rejection is just part of growing up. It might be a response that we give them as a parent. Does that make the child feel any better? Potentially not. And so we look at that as the rational, intellectual, logical, egotistical, and we call it the Rile Effect because if you take the first letter of all those,

Blaise [00:23:44] it spells Rile, R -I -L -E.

Blaise [00:23:45] None of those responses, certainly, and Bec, Heather, you correct me, none of those responses actually give you what you really need, is it?

Rebecca [00:23:53] No.

Heather [00:23:53] No, in fact, I think it would just rile me up.

Rebecca [00:23:58] I see what you did there.

Blaise [00:24:01] Riled me up, aggravated me, yes. And I guess it comes down to that thing as parents, our child's presenting a problem, aren't they? Like, oh, you know, I've got this problem. But when we look at a really great communication tool we use,

Blaise [00:24:13] it's to call what we see.

Blaise [00:24:14] As I said earlier, people say, well, they're not talking to me, but call what you see. The child is presenting a situation, but we're going at that emotional level. So rather than trying to solve the problem the child's presented, we actually look for and acknowledge that emotional level. So your child doesn't necessarily want an answer to the problem. As parents, we've faced this many times with a child that says something and we think, well, I could say something to try and solve it, but they don't want that. They're not asking for you to highlight it as a mathematical equation. Oh thank you, 700 minus 1 is 699. They're not asking you to tell them about a study that supports their plight. Like, well, you know, it's actually a really good thing. If you just now have another 200 friends cull you, then you'll be down to probably a healthy level of social interaction. They're not asking that. They don't feel better by the fact that you're now part of a wider reject group.

Blaise [00:25:07] Don't worry.

Blaise [00:25:07] Everyone got rejected, so you feel like that, although there's a life lesson to be learned. What we want there is we talk about that emotional level. So we think about those responses that we potentially could give them and we look at an emotional one, which is we want to really understand that, well, they just want to be supportive, heard, validated, as we just said. You might roll out, you know, hey, I can see how much it's upset you.

Blaise [00:25:30] That's what you roll out. That's different, isn't it? I can see how much it's upset you.

Blaise [00:25:34] So what I've done there is I've gone straight to an emotional level.

Blaise [00:25:37] I'm actually calling what I'm saying.

Blaise [00:25:38] I can see it's upsetting you. And then you might follow that up with a, you know, there must have been an important friend, and you leave it out there.

Rebecca [00:25:46] It's empathy, isn't it, as well?

Blaise [00:25:49] Yeah.

Blaise [00:25:50] And you've done two things there.

Blaise [00:25:51] I can see how much it's upset you. You've labelled, you know, what you've seen. You've called what you've seen. And labelling's great because what we're doing is we're asking them to open up a bit more about the situation. And, you know, then by saying, well, they must have been an important friend, you're not being dismissive. But then what you've done is you've sort of handed the control back to them because the very next response might be, you know, they're not that important. But, you know, and what you're doing is you're supporting, yeah, you're being empathetic. So that emotional level is different to those other ones. Now, those other ones, I'm not saying they don't have a place in the conversation somewhere. We just find no matter what the interaction, whether it's parents, children, people in the workforce, you know, always going for the rational, intellectual, logical, egotistical, authoritarian approach. It doesn't have to be the first thing that comes out. Try and look at the emotions beneath the words, beneath the words. And you've got an angry, moody person that maybe is just really all they want. They don't necessarily want the answer. They just want you to be supportive and say, you know what? I can see you're upset and that's okay. Yeah, so that's our RILE effect. But not forgetting that it's all about the emotional level is where you've got to live.

Rebecca [00:26:58] Yeah. So as parents, we have to remember RILE. I'll be sure to put those in the episode notes for people to remember. Blaise, you touched on this earlier. With your My Path model, you speak about anger being driven by hurt, injustice or fear. Obviously kids have lots of fear, lots of questions. They may be confused by harmful content they see or learn about online or in the real world even. Do you think when they're questioned on that, the angry response is simply them projecting that fear? Like a knee -jerk reaction anger?

Blaise [00:27:31] Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Blaise [00:27:33] Yeah, it's such a scary world for parents. But imagine the kids, the stuff that they can potentially be exposed to is incredibly confronting. I guess, yeah, it's a really good question because we see anger and immediately we just think, oh, you're moody and stuff. But anger actually represents a number of things, doesn't it? And I can tell you in the thousands of interactions I've had as a law enforcement and negotiator, anger presents itself in many different ways. One of those forms is that defensive wall. Sometimes we feel like our kids are putting up this barrier. They're trying to keep you at the distance, making sure you don't get too close. I call it almost like a siege mentality. So I guess if we look at it from, it's like a protective measure to put that distance. But it could also be hurt. You mentioned hurt there. The fact that they've been exposed to something they wish they hadn't. So it's a moment of regret, isn't it? And suddenly they don't feel safe and that's a big one as well. The fear, you know, we're great when we're safe and secure, but maybe someone takes our safety away from us. Maybe someone's contacted them. Maybe they've seen something they shouldn't have. Suddenly their safety's been compromised. And if you think about their situation, the regret that manifests itself in the form of almost that confusion, that they don't know about what to do and how to get out of it. And I guess you can imagine being in their shoes for a moment as we are talking about empathy. How do I deal with what I've just seen or been exposed to as a child? I'm not old enough, mature enough to be able to do that. But the people that can normally help with that is mum and dad. But suddenly to do that, I've got to tell them that I was accessing something I shouldn't have. So then suddenly they're compromised. And so there's that confusion that will do. That could lead to me losing my computer privileges. They might take my computer away from me. They might do this. And they find themselves in this real, I guess a world of confusion and quandary about what do I do? Do I tell mum and dad? But I sort of don't know how to deal and digest and get past this image I've seen or this person that's contacted me. And that's about control. That's the moment of control, where you stand at a pathway going, I need my mum and dad, but by doing so I'm potentially going to lose some of those privileges. So the fear of losing control, there's a fear there that they've lost control of what happened, what happens next for them. So importantly as parents, if we see anger, don't just be dismissive of it as being an emotion of moodiness and your teenagerism. Look at it and dig deeper and ask yourself what's actually driving it? Is there a hurt, an injustice or a fear? What's causing them to not suddenly feel safe? I guess also too, have they lost a bit of control? Is there a bit of control that's been taken away from them in some regards in relation to what they've been exposed to? So all that can contribute to them being, as I say, the big bear on the outside. As parents it's a very, very difficult environment to negotiate and to navigate. I guess just don't be dismissive of what they're presenting. Anger is something else below there and fear is certainly one of them.

Rebecca [00:30:37] Dig a little deeper.

Heather [00:30:37] I think this is a fundamental question, Blaise. I think one of the reasons why we're doing this podcast is to help parents and inform them of different activities in CVE that's happening. One of them we've all been hearing about over the past few weeks is young people online being exposed to really confronting either gore or a lot of misogyny that's happening. Or people being exposed to things that, as you say, they have big regrets seeing. And going back to I'm worried about, I didn't like it, I'd like to tell mum and dad but I am worried about getting into trouble. That's really a fundamental issue that our parents are facing. Earlier you talked about having that trust and that empathy in that relationship. So for children who are continually online, just as we all are, do you think having those conversations with their children etc. or young people about what they're seeing and what they're experiencing before it gets to that big bear issue would be more proactive than trying to recover after that incident has occurred?

Blaise [00:31:47] Yeah I guess there's two schools of thought on that. Definitely you always want to have conversations with your kids. And I think you build that trust up front with them and say, hey listen we're giving you additional privileges, whatever they are. But you want to have that open communication, that's what we're talking about. You want to always feel like they can come to you. Because no matter what score is, and you know what I mean by the score in relation to your relationship, you always want your kid to be able to turn around and if you've had  an argument beforehand to say hey listen I've seen something that's really affecting me. And we as parents are going to go straight into that, I'm here to keep you safe. I think having a conversation beforehand is so critically important. Saying to them that you're responsible now but with responsibility there may potentially be times when you need to talk to mum and dad and you need to come and tell us, okay we're here to help you. That old thing about we'd rather know about it and so we can help you. I know kids sit in the world of I don't want to get in trouble and lose my privileges. But we're talking about safety here, we're talking about them feeling comfortable with being able to go online and use it in a responsible way. But we also deal with their emotions and no one wants to see things that make them unsafe. And that's probably the way to frame it. No one wants to see that or be exposed to that sort of stuff. We've all been there in terms of our world not necessarily online but when things make us feel unsafe immediately we get that defensive wall. We need to say to our kids this might resonate with you now and it may form part of your pre -chat with them by saying hey listen you know when you're online if you get that feeling and you don't feel safe you need to come and tell me. And then we can talk about that. I guess from that you have that pre -chat but if it gets to a point where the child you get a sense that look they're suddenly angry all the time. They're putting up this wall there that we dismiss it as teenagerism but I think what we need to do is say okay you're angry I can see you're angry and you've been a lot more angry lately. I want to find out what's going on like what's happening you know you're doing it from that point of I'm here to look after you it's my job. You're my child I want you to be safe and I mean physiologically safe and psychologically safe as well. And I mean we want to return it back to that equilibrium of them being okay you know I can tell mum and dad and tell mum and dad is it's that whole thing lifting the load together. It's being able to say hey we can get through it together. And that's I guess the recurring theme of communication is make it open let them trust you they got to trust you to do it hey that's the big thing.

Heather [00:34:21] That's definitely the recurring theme I'm hearing and talking with you and having done your program is that transparency and that trust. But let's just say a teen has been gaming for days what a shock and is overtired when you approach them. And I know a lot of people say just turn the machine off or take it away from them which is just not realistic in our technology world. So you've got the overtired teenager that needs some self -care and some rest. What do you think the best way to approach that is and what do you think some of the things that you can say or you should not say?

Blaise [00:34:54] Yeah this would be common just about every household would have issues with this. Yeah it's gaming for days over time. We spoke about the fact that great communication interaction is all about making it all about them. Look if you've got the option this may not be possible if you've got the option of choosing another time that may be available to you as a negotiator. I never got that opportunity to say hey listen I can see you're tired I'll come back tomorrow. But as a parent make it all about them so acknowledge the emotions at play. Once again call what you see. Start there. I can see you're exhausted mate. Start there because by doing the labels and beneath the words sort of stuff what we're seeing we're casting that mirror in front of them so they do. But importantly to hand over some control. I spoke before about fear of control. Sometimes kids that can get their fear going. If now's not the right time we'll then put it back onto them. What do you think would be a good time to talk about this mate? When do you think would be a good time? Suddenly you've given a bit of that. That control back to them which may be. But in terms of the gaming I guess what we've got to look at is you say they've been gaming for days. And gaming we know our children get a lot of gratification from gaming. To them it's potentially two to three days whatever it is periods of time where they're trying to win. They're trying to win this thing and then the reason why they keep going is that fear of failure. So they're trying to win the game now. I guess in the context of us as parents we show up to have a conversation with them. The biggest concern or danger for us is the fact that the conversation then becomes an extension of the game. The game itself is about I need to win and this and suddenly Dad comes in or Mum comes in and says I want to have a conversation with you. And they see that as it's hostility. And they see the conversation as a continuation of the game. It's a contest. Mum and Dad are here to try and beat me. And what we're going to do is try and make them feel like it's a win -win. And the win -win to start with is if you feel like that's not the right moment for it. If you've got to have that conversation then and there then you've got to have it. Start with the emotion. If you can find another time to have that conversation that's good. But by doing so you're saying to them I want to hear what you've got to say. We need to have a conversation. You've got equal hands. I'm not trying to beat you. There's no winner and loser in this. And we know for a fact I know through my own kids they often talk about being targeted in games. And what I mean by that is they play a game and they say oh I lost, I lost, I lost. Because this guy got his mates and they all picked on me. And you can imagine us in the human world away from the non -gaming world. When people pick on us we don't like it. We get that siege mentality. We don't like it. But the pure nature of being targeted online in some respect to the game and that's the feeling that's there. And we come in and we start to say hey listen I want to talk to you about this. They might see that as again another extension of the game. You're just targeting me dad. You're targeting me mum. And so that's hard. But once again the tools we're talking about are those going with empathy. Make it all about them. Make it all about the child. It's about you mum. I can see your tired, you're exhausted. I'd really love to have a chat with you. And we talked earlier about negotiating their world. And this is a good one. You made a great point Heather about the fact that it's easy to just say switch it off. But their world now is all about technology. It's all about the game. It's all about bandwidth. How quick is your internet? What speed do you go at where there's a great little juxtaposition. We talk about speed of internet but communication. We have this thing where the passage of time is the slowness of it. Just building it and slowly chipping away at things. But negotiate in their world. If they play a certain game take an interest in it. Go and research it. I know some of the games that my kids play. I don't know anything about them. But I had to come and talk to them about something or try to get the conversation moving to another area on the back of tiredness and things. I guess I would try and find out something about the game and try and draw a theme from that game and use it. You might try a dad joke out like, hey mate, sometimes I'm like the internet. When it goes down I'm slow, clunky, frustrating to deal with. Those sort of things.

Rebecca [00:39:14] Icebreakers.

Blaise [00:39:19] But you want to get them to a point where they can negotiate in their world. Because as we know, kids are happy to talk about things that they love. Happy to talk about that. It's amazing how if you sit down with the team and watch them for a period of time. I was guilty of that. The time I sat down with my son and started watching. So how did you make that move? Next thing you know, he couldn't stop talking for the next half an hour explaining how he controlled and went here, here, here.

Blaise [00:39:44] So start with that.

Blaise [00:39:46] But the big thing, I guess, the theme we're trying to say here is don't make the conversation an extension of the gaming. Because they are in a win -loss mindset. The more we can make it win -win. And there's no winners and losers here, mate. You and I, this is about you and me together. Not me against you. It's you and me.

Rebecca [00:40:08] You talk lots about emotional response, I guess, in everything that we've discussed so far. And obviously that's very similar to empathy, Blaise. But for people listening, can you give us a bit of a crash course in empathy? And what it means to be empathetic versus simply disagreeing or agreeing with your child or someone in a certain situation?

Blaise [00:40:28] Yeah, absolutely. We've all probably heard the word empathy. And a lot of people say, well yeah, you've heard the things of walking a mile in a person's shoes. We know it from a concept point of view. But to practise it, it is actually one of the most amazing things you can do when you're empathetic. Because it underpins every great communication model in the world. It has empathy because it's a human condition. It plays in line with the way we behave. But also to what we want. We want to be heard, validated, understood. Empathy brings that for us. So we talk about in My Path, and it's not a great visual, but My Path, M -Y -P -A -T -H. That's actually in the word empathy, so that's where it comes from. Empathy, we say, is an investment. And investments is something that we don't just short sharp to the point. Investment means it's sustained. It's a commitment to try and understand the other person's world. That's a great way to look at it. Try and understand their world at that time. The catch phrase or one of the concepts of My Path is about the fact that before I try and get my child or the other person to walk my path, and by that we mean to do what I want them to do, I've got to first understand what path they just walked. What's their path, so to speak. And to do that, I've got to go over and effectively put myself in their shoes for a moment and see it. Understanding their world is not about being dismissive. You know, as they start to tell you things, you dismiss it or you're looking for logical things to argue with them about. You just let it go. You need to listen and then try to get that understanding. So it's not a diagnostic process. It's not about disagreeing. It's about seeing, as we say. It's not agreeing, disagreeing, it's seeing. And the importance of empathy comes through purely listening, you know, listening to understand. Listening, what's the meaning? What am I actually trying to say? I'm trying to understand their world. But to do so, I've got to put all my attention on to the other person rather than listening for a gap. Listening for a gap is that one where you're just nodding and you're waiting for a person to finish. So we're listening for what's driving their behaviour. Yeah, it's trying to understand their world. And I think a great, I call it almost historical empathy. I do it often where my teenagers will say something and I just think, well, why would you do that in my mind? But then I think, hang on a sec, when I was 16, so historical, it's important to have empathy in terms of when I was 15 or 16, would I have been that sharp? Would I have been able to see that? Would I have probably done the same thing? And not only understand the time, I thought, yeah, you know what, I probably would have done the same. So having a historical empathy is great as well. And we talk about empathy and ego, they are mutually exclusive. Empathy means that you're willing to give up that authoritative thing and just go in, as we said earlier, about trying to find equal footing connection. And ego is not going to get us somewhere when we've got someone that's emotionally on the other side, telling them that, you know, they've done the wrong thing. So empathy is everything. Try and leave the ego out of it. As we say in the negotiation world, leave the ego outside, leave him at the door.

Heather [00:43:27] One of the really big things, and you just touched on, that I really learnt from the course is not listening for a gap to insert yourself. And I think people, we talk about people that are really time poor, we've got a lot of things going on and, you know, we're trying to get things done around the house and the kids are talking. And sometimes you sort of find yourself when you're talking to someone saying, well, get to the point. Like, what do you want from me? And so how do we show how our kids, that we are listening? So we are in this time poor environment, but we really do want to genuinely listen to what they want to hear. What tools can we draw on? Like, is there an environmental thing? Is it timing? How do we elicit that golden conversation that we'd love to have with our children?

Blaise [00:44:12] Yeah, and listening is the one thing that I was, when I say poor at, until I became trained as a negotiator, it's a different type of listening. It is different. Like, we have normal social constructs. We will have conversations and we start to switch off and we start to think about what we're going to say next. I guess I encourage parents that when you get into a situation where it's your time to give that to your kids, we have this concept called park the task, and that applies across the thing that sometimes we're so busy and we are time poor, or there's more, we feel like there's more important things that have to be done. Park the task, and that means validate the person before validating your task. Put it to the side and give them your full attention. Make it all about them. Listening, as I said on the negotiator course, taught me about the fact that it's moment to moment stuff. You've got to be there moment to moment. You've got to make it all about them. Put all your focus onto them and listen to what they're saying, but also listening below. Listening beneath the surface, what's going on. We're already starting to understand some of the stuff around emotions. People might say things, but their non -verbal emotions tell us something completely different. Our mindset needs to be we need to talk less, listen more, and that's hard as a parent. You go to a parent world, but that's how our mindset is normally, that we need to talk to our kids. We need to tell them. We need to tell them what to do. Make that commitment to yourself that you're going to talk less and go into a conversation and listen more. Listen to every word they're telling you, and that's a big thing. Park your task. You would have heard of the 80 -20 rule. That has a lot of different implications, but in the communication world, the 80 -20 rule says that as the person that goes into the conversation, as the parent, I am going to try and do 80 % of the listening. That reverses, doesn't it, because normally we're probably going and thinking, well, I'm going to talk. This is what I'm going to say. This is my goal. This is my agenda. But next time you have a conversation or somebody starts to talk, start to practise the fact that I want them to do 80 % of the talking, and I want to do 80 % of the listening. So your 20 % of talking is really just going back and using some of these techniques we've talked about today. There's some great ways we can let the other person know that we are listening, signalling, and that is purely just nodding your head. It just shows to them, hey, I'm engaged. I'm watching you. I'm listening to what you're saying. We use those verbal encourages. Uh -huh. Yep. Okay. Mm -hmm. That sort of stuff with your kids, it's just maybe just giving me a time, a posture of intent. My intent is to listen to you. One of the great superpowers we call it a superpower, is silence. Silence is a superpower. Amazing things happen in silence. Amazing things happen when you leave space for the other person, your child, to fill it in. Silence, we're not great at silence. If somebody stops speaking, we immediately come in. We try and use silence in our world, no matter what that entails, by purely when a person gets to the end of that sentence, then I'm at the end of my sentence, and I'm finished my what I've got to say right now. And generally speaking, when we hear that intonation going down, we come straight in over the top. What we encourage you to do to kids is if they finish the end of their sentence, just give them a couple of seconds. Nod at them. Just nod. And they'll keep talking. And all this is not little tricks in a box. What it's doing is you're giving them the impression, and you are doing it. You're giving them the commitment, as we said, the investment. You're giving them, I'm here to listen to you. And I'm not just saying, yeah, yeah, I'm listening to you, but you're busy doing something.

Blaise [00:47:47] You're giving it to them.

Blaise [00:47:50] Silence is huge. It's a superpower. And a great thing with silence skills, of course, is when a person gets silenced, and they're feeling it, eventually they get to a point where they start to hear themselves. And it's important that our kids hear themselves sometimes, because a lot of it is the outward thing. We sometimes want to make sure that it goes inward as well, where they start to hear themselves. That doesn't come off from cutting them off, talking to them, come through, leaving that space for them to fill it in. So don't lose sight of the fact that silence is a huge thing that you can use as a parent. Another concept is showing that we're listening beneath the words, and that's part of that labelling, which we've done already. So we're listening. If you start to repeat things back to them, you know, I just had a friend drop me on social media.

Blaise [00:48:37] A friend just dropped me on social media.

Blaise [00:48:39] Yeah, can you believe that, Mum, Dad? As soon as you repeat words back, all this wonderful mirroring neurons start to activate in brains, and we have this resonance start to occur where a person who, imagine your child, is always saying, you don't hear me, you're not listening to me. Suddenly we start to repeat it. As soon as we repeat it back, I think, hang on a sec, you are listening to me. So paraphrasing, which is where we repeat back their words in our words, so to speak, but also mirroring, which is a great tool, and that can be when they get to the end of the sentence and they say, you know, I really don't want to go back to Sydney.

Blaise [00:49:13] We just go Sydney.

Blaise [00:49:14] Yeah, I don't want to go back there. Whatever it is, we're just using words, but the whole thing is we are showing them that we're there to listen to them, that the floor is there, and we want to engage with them.

Rebecca [00:49:29] I was just reflecting, actually. I was feeling guilty because quite often my kids will talk to me and they'll say, you're not listening, Mum. And I'll say, yes, I am. And then they'll say, well, what did I just say? And I'm like, damn, I wish I should have done some mirroring. But just going back to that one, I'd like to know a bit more about paraphrasing. Can you sort of give us some examples of paraphrasing in a sort of conversational setting?

Heather [00:49:51] Without making it sound like a parrot?

Rebecca [00:49:54] Exactly, because that's a bit like robot -like, isn't it, I guess, the mirroring?

Blaise [00:49:58] Paraphrasing is a staple diet of negotiators and great communicators use paraphrasing. It's a tool that, as I say, you put it back in your own words. And you imagine the child coming to you going and they unload a paragraph of information. Sometimes the paraphrase is you're just saying, okay, honey, it sounds to me like you've had a bad day. And it's okay for them to go, you know, I've had a bad day, Mum, Dad. That's what you want because part of this whole process of them letting out what's beneath the surface, they're not happy about things. That works for us. We want them to, the beach ball effect, if we know what that is, we want to deflate that beach ball. So paraphrasing is non -judgmental. But also, too, we can also apply the, once again, the emotional level back to that. So paraphrasing has been proven to have wonderful physiological effects. That when a person hears their own words going back into their ears with research, it's shown that it calms people down, it shuts down their amygdala, the fear driver of human conditions. So let's do it. Why don't we have a go at doing a paraphrase?

Rebecca [00:51:08] We've had our practise run. We're ready this time.

Blaise [00:51:11] No, good. And remember, I should say before this one, paraphrasing is great because we are drawn to similar and familiar common things. If we can, if we suddenly repeat it back, that draws that connection again. So let's just say the example we used before, we've got the child coming home. Maybe I'll do this and maybe one of you can paraphrase me. How does that sound?

Rebecca [00:51:34] You can take this one, Heather.

Blaise [00:51:38] I'll be the child coming home. I open up the phone and next thing I know, he's deleted me completely. Like, I've done nothing to him. Nothing. Like, we've had a four -year friendship and he wipes me just like that.

Heather [00:51:49] So what I'm hearing is a pretty good friend of yours has suddenly cut you from their life with no explanation and that's made you feel let down.

Rebecca [00:51:59] Oh, so good, Heather.

Blaise [00:52:01] Yes.

Heather [00:52:01] I felt like my inflexion didn't have it though. It felt a bit insincere.

Rebecca [00:52:05] You didn't want to say that, really, did you?

Heather [00:52:08] Well, it's hard to practise without sounding like a parrot.

Blaise [00:52:11] Yeah, it is, yeah. Importantly, though, we know with this situation, they're opening up about being dropped from social media and that sort of thing. But you acknowledge a good friend has suddenly cut you, I think, years from their life with no explanation. And then what you did very, very, very well, Heather, you then went and you feel let down. So you're actually not only paraphrasing but you're then throwing what the emotion is behind it and you feel let down. And you feel let down and, as you said, the inflexion goes up because what you're doing then is saying, am I right, am I wrong? Does it matter if you get the paraphrase wrong?

Blaise [00:52:49] No.

Blaise [00:52:50] Because they'll then probably correct you and go, no, they weren't a good friend, they were only like a minor friend or whatever it is. Or they might say, well, no, I don't feel let down, I feel humiliated. That's okay. But we continue with those great tools of communication.

Heather [00:53:04] I think that was a worry of mine, Blaise, is what if you use it into your own words and you make that and they go, no, that's not what I was saying and you lose them. But I think what you're saying there is it allows them to correct you and then get back on that path of what you're hearing.

Blaise [00:53:20] Absolutely. And it's okay for them to correct you. It may bring up some more emotion but what you're doing is you're giving them the opportunity to get it out. That goes back to a bit of that control stuff, that you've given them the opportunity to correct it.

Heather [00:53:32] So in terms of, as I say, since doing your course and really thinking about that 80 -20 rule and you talk about the super listener, we talk about hear more and say less. Can you break down what makes us a super listener?

Blaise [00:53:49] Super listeners, they make that commitment to change their approach, their mindset, as we said, to their interaction. Rather than going in with it, okay, I'm going in there with my agenda, it's about me, it's about what I want. The great listener goes in and says, you know what, I'm not worried about what I'm going to say because effectively what I need to say is all going to be in response to what comes back from the other side. We say that the key to a positive interaction is right across from you. You might walk in saying, well, I know how to solve this, this is what I need to do. But if you can see the super listener says, you know what, I'm going to turn up and I'm going to make that commitment to listen. I'm going to let them know I'm listening, I'm going to use that paraphrasing, I'll mirror them beneath the word. You know what, I'm going to give them encouragement. I understand, the super listener understands the fact that listening goes to the very essence, the very heart of human behaviour and that is people want to be heard. They want to be understood, they want to be validated and they want to feel important. You know, we think about, you can just on the example we've used today, the child just wants to feel important. One person's let them down, yeah, they've got 699 other friends, but as you said, it might have been a really good friend. And so we just, as long as we validate, we understand that, okay, well, it's something that's really important to you. I'm going to support you through that. The super listener hangs on to every word the other person says and it's that moment to moment listening, it takes practise. I'm going to say to you, it takes a lot of practise, but it's easy to do because all we need to do is tell ourselves, stop talking. I'm going to listen and at the moment to moment, I'm going to listen to every word right through to the end of the sentence and give the other person that opportunity to be heard. They listen out, the super listener listens for things, they're not just on the words, they're listening for what's beneath the words. And if they hear something that the other person, that they pick up the other person, that's important to the other person, they acknowledge it. And acknowledgement of important things is a huge thing. And from a negotiator point of view, I can tell you that as soon as a person mentions whether it's family, a dog, a pet, whatever, a boat, a car, the minute they bring some sort of essence to something that's so critical to them, something that's important in their life, you acknowledge that. A super listener knows to tuck that one away and that is going to be a key to them unlocking this person and hopefully getting a win in terms of connection and things like that. So don't ever lose sight. I know we talked a little bit about labels. If somebody says something is important or it could be something intangible like manners, it could be just having a whinge about the manners. You say, well, I can see manners is really important, I can see your family is important, I can see mum and dad are important, I can see that your sister is important to you. Acknowledge it. Super listeners do that because they know by doing so, they are creating this wonderful environment of support, empathy, acknowledgement and understanding.

Heather [00:56:48] And I think it's really important what you've said there though, because I was listening, was about that it takes practise though. Quite openly, I have a very short attention span, so it's very much like trying to keep focused and keep listening on what people are saying. I was at a meeting the other day where two people just constantly kept talking over each other and there was no listening and it was about winning their point. Ironically, I found myself almost like the umpire of it saying, well, we've just got to listen to what each person is saying here. But I think it's that whole value of practising it, just because you've given us the skills today doesn't mean tomorrow we're going to have them.

Rebecca [00:57:28] No, we've got to practise.

Blaise [00:57:31] Yeah, that's right. You've got so many opportunities to practise it too because you can just use it tomorrow at the cafe. How's your day going? What's happening today? See what you get back. We're wonderful at asking questions and stuff, but take a moment to think about that other person's world and then listen to it. Just let it sit with you for a bit because you're not only going to hear the words, you're going to hear what's underneath them, which is, as I said, that's our influential level, that emotional level.

Heather [00:58:00] If we bring it back to the main takeaways from today's chat, at the end of the day, the principles of listening are the same in every context, whether it be the workplace with kids or, as you say, the cafe owner up the road. Essentially, what I am hearing from you is people need to feel validated and understood and applying that power of the person's spoken word being paraphrased and repeated back and driving that connection and regulates negative emotions. They seem to be basic principles that we've all heard in different environments, but this has been very real in terms of the examples, et cetera, and it's something that we need to really practise on.

Rebecca [00:58:38] Really practical.

Heather [00:58:39] Do you think we've covered that, Blaise?

Rebecca [00:58:41] In a nutshell.

Heather [00:58:42] Have we heard you?

Blaise [00:58:46] I appreciate you listening to me for the period that you have. You have covered it, and thanks so much. I'll say it again. Being a parent is the hardest job in the world. I take my hat off to all parents. It is a hard job. Don't forget, at the end of the day, to make sure you pat yourself on the back. We have a saying in our world, which is, what does a win look like? You may not win the first one. When I say win, getting your child to a place where you want them to, but when you do, when you get that little bit of a win away from the conversation with your partner, with your family, pat yourself on the back. Be proud of that, and then be ready to start again, knowing that you've done some hard work towards the next opportunity to create that wonderful connection with your kid.

Rebecca [00:59:26] Yeah, and I think also another point there that I'll take away is that it's okay to be vulnerable, and it's okay to be human. And as long as we can admit that to our children.

Heather [00:59:36] And to ourselves.

Rebecca [00:59:37] That can be a good thing. That can be a good thing, you know?

Heather [00:59:41] Can I just say, Blaise, and to anyone who's listening, if any organisation is looking to do a communication course or a negotiation course, please contact Queensland Police for the My Path program. It is one of the best training courses you'll ever undertake. If you can get yourself a spot, shall I say, but thank you, Blaise. It's been a real help for us.

Rebecca [01:00:02] Thank you, Blaise.

Blaise [01:00:03] Thanks very much.

Simon intro [01:00:03] You have been listening to Start the Conversation, a podcast series produced by the New South Wales Countering Violent Extremism Engagement and Support Unit. For more information, please see the episode notes or visit www.steptogether.nsw.gov.au