Tackling Toxicity: From Bystander to Upstander | Mauricio Velasquez

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
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**Mauricio Velasquez** (0:12)
Limit time only. Prices and participation may vary.

**Justin Colby** (0:14)
Prices may be higher for delivery. What is up, The Entrepreneur DNA? This is going to be a hell of an episode. As always, every episode is brought to you by The Entrepreneur DNA Community on School. Go to skool.com/theentrepreneurdna.
This is a community driven by the podcast guests. They're going to teach you their expertise intimately. So go to school skool.com/theentrepreneurdna.
Get in the community and learn directly from people like my next guest. Now this next guest is really special. He is quite literally a worldwide consultant. He is a consultant for the largest organizations in the world, government and even professional sports organizations like the MLS as a name drop. Mauricio Velasquez is here. How are you, sir?

**Mauricio Velasquez** (1:03)
Oh, so glad to be with you, Justin. Fired up to be with you.

**Justin Colby** (1:06)
Fired up. Now you just had a good little worldwide trip yourself. So I feel like you're back, you're rejuvenated and you're ready to go change some lives.

**Mauricio Velasquez** (1:14)
Absolutely. Last two weeks we were in Europe and I cannot believe what was going on in this country the last two weeks.

**Justin Colby** (1:20)
So a little background and I'll let you kind of explain where you've gone for the last 30 years. And this is you are literally a worldwide consultant for the largest organizations, governments, sports organizations, etc. Because they hire you for one specific purpose, which is conflict resolution, how to make the workplace, the marketplace. And I say workplace is like professional sports is a workplace. They are professional. That is their work. Right. And we just had a great story that you talked about.
How to deal with conflict to actually perform better. So give everyone a little bit of background of like what you've been focusing on over the last 30 years and potentially what are you really focusing on in today's world?

**Mauricio Velasquez** (2:02)
Yeah. So, you know, most people are fair. Okay. Fair at dealing with people that are different. I'm sorry, well, people like themselves. They fail on dealing with people that are different. And I think it's because most people are conflict diverse and they believe, you know, if I look the other way, if I turn the other cheek, this conflict, it will resolve itself. Most people are conflict diverse. The problem is that's not how it works. And if you look the other way, turn the other cheek, I call it feeding the monster. You're only giving them more power by giving up power. So you see examples of conflict every day in the media and you see the conflict and you see everyone else looking the other way.
He's not going after me, so I'm not going to say. But the victim watches all that silence and goes, Oh God, nobody wants my back. So every trainer, a consultant, a coach, I've worked in every state of North Dakota, working life has taken me to 75 countries. I've trained in Guantanamo Bay. I've trained for Native American tribes, law enforcement, you name it, the White House previous administration. What we find is most people are not equipped, skilled to address conflict. And instead of, still what?
They just ignore it. And ignoring it allows it to fester.

**Justin Colby** (3:19)
Yeah, you know, I think I've never had a W-2 job, so I can only contemplate how that works. But running businesses, I will see it inside my own organizations, where people don't necessarily get along and they just kind of tolerate each other. What is some best advice when you have someone that is tolerable, but you don't get along? What would be the best advice you can give the individuals to resolve it themselves so leadership doesn't have to get in the way?

**Mauricio Velasquez** (3:47)
They have to be skilled, trained up to deal with conflict. They have to define boundaries, barriers.
And then I call it the stop-start-continue technique. One of the things we have to stop doing immediately that allows for the conflict to be... One of the things we have to start doing and then we've done all along. I'm going to stop ignoring. I'm going to start talking to you. And we're going to continue to have regular meetings. I'm going to stop raising my voice. I'm going to start listening. Active listening is such a critical skill. And most people believe they're good listeners. Most people hear, but they don't listen. So it's like a muscle.