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Anna Lecat, conflict and communications consultant and author of Loving Conflict, talks with Brent Peterson about why the people with the best relationships face conflict instead of avoiding it, and how fighting kindly builds trust in teams, partnerships and companies.
I'm Brent Peterson from the Minnesota chapter of Entrepreneurs' Organization, and I believe every entrepreneur's journey is a marathon worth sharing. EO Visionary Voices brings you raw, honest conversations with founders who understand that building a business isn't about the sprint—it's about strategic endurance.
Each episode, I sit down with EO members, startup founders, and seasoned Entrepreneurs who've learned that success comes from preparation, persistence, and the willingness to adjust mid-race. We dig into the pivots that changed everything, the mistakes that taught the most, and how these leaders use frameworks like EOS to turn complexity into clarity.
You'll hear stories about balancing growth with purpose, leveraging peer learning, and building companies that can go the distance. Because entrepreneurship isn't just about crossing the finish line—it's about how you run the race.
Whether you're starting mile one or approaching mile twenty-six, these conversations will give you the insights and inspiration to keep moving forward. After all, we're all in this ultramarathon together.
Welcome to EO Visionary Voices—where entrepreneurs share the strategies that matter most.
Welcome to EO Visionary Voices, where we tell the stories of entrepreneurs across the globe. My name is Brent Peterson, and this episode is brought to you by Content Cucumber, an Entrepreneurs' Organization, Minnesota. You started your company to build something, not to write newsletter blasts and blog posts at midnight. And when buyers ask ChatGPT about your company, does it even know you exist? Content Cucumber has humans who write for you and your brand, in your voice. We write blog posts, case studies, email, social posts, and more. So your marketing keeps going while your business keeps running. Get your free AI search audit at contentcucumber.com. That's contentcucumber.com. Welcome to this special episode of EO Visionary Voices. Sponsored by EO Minnesota. Today I have Anna Lecat. Anna, go ahead, do an introduction for yourself. Tell us your day-to-day role and one of your passions. I'm a conflict and communications consultant. I'm also a CEO of two companies right now. And I also wrote a book. I'm an author of a book called Loving Conflict, where I talk about, I'm asking people to stop avoiding conflicts and instead having healthy conflicts and developing trust and collaboration. That's perfect. And how about passions outside of work? I'm obsessed about tango dancing. I dance all the time. In fact, this weekend I danced for three days in a row. And I actually use tango as a metaphor for my work. And so it's a very embodied work when we work with communication and relationships and we dance tango together and learn how to lead and follow. Wow, perfect. Yeah. Well, my wife would love that. I know we've been trying to get dance lessons since we were first married and that was more than 33 years ago. So maybe this would be, maybe we should come to Paris, which would be another thing that doesn't matter. We won't get sidetracked here. Anna, before we get started though, you have volunteered to be on the Free Joke Project. And I'm just going to tell you a joke and you give me a rating, eight through 13. So here we go. There were 10 ants living in my kitchen. I built them a little house. Now I'm a landlord collecting rent from tenants. Nice. Thank you. I can tell you got it. Most people would either like, yeah, all right. No, I love it when we play it with words. It's great. Yeah, good. All right. I love it because I actually, I like all kinds of situations where I'm reminded not to take things seriously, not to take myself seriously. And so that was that kind of a moment. So thank you. Yeah, perfect. All right, Anna. So give us kind of your, give us your 10,000 foot view of your life and how you got into what you're doing. So I'm Ukrainian. I was born in Soviet Ukraine and I moved to China when I was 17, studied Chinese, went to Chinese university, learned how to speak Mandarin so fluently that if you talk to me on the phone, you don't know that I'm not Chinese. So I have no accent. And I really went deep into the culture. I understand it really, really understand the mentality, the philosophy, the economics, the all about it. I traveled all over and I built several businesses there. Moved to the United States, San Francisco, 12 years there, built another business there, sold it. And I'm now on my third immigration to Paris, France. So it's been five years that we moved our family here. My husband is French and my three kids are French-American. And so it's like, it's a, it's a, it's a new journey. And so throughout the whole, my whole life, I'm 50 years old now and have built several businesses and moved around and I speak five languages. I kept noticing that people who, who have the best relationships are people who love conflicts. They do not avoid them. They go in them. They know how to, they have the skills of handling them kindly. And as such, they develop trust much better than the ones who avoid. And so I've been researching it. I've been looking at how to be in a difficult conversation long enough to find understanding, how to listen better. And as I, as I've been traveling and running all these businesses, I also have always been a dancer. So I express myself with movement. So I did salsa, bachata, samba. And then 17 years ago, I found tango. It's an Argentinian dance, a fully improvised dance. And so I've been learning both roles, leader and follower for the 17 years. And the more I learned, the more I realized that it's a perfect metaphor for connection. So like in a conversation right now here, we're improvising, right? And you ask me a question, I listen and then I answer and you listen and then something else will come. And as long as we are listening to each other really carefully and pay attention to ourselves, to what matters to us, what's our alignment, why are we here, there is a potential to create something bigger than both either of us individually. And so that's what I'm after in tango or in businesses or in relationship, personal relationships, friendships. How can the two people or two teams or two companies together create something that's bigger than either of them individually? Yeah, that's super interesting. It has taken me a long time to learn to listen before I speak and I think in a relationship oftentimes there's a spouse or a partner that will start speaking over you the moment you start speaking. And one thing my wife is really good at is let me finish. How do you coach people? And I think and I think also that's part of one of the most important things is just to listen, right? Just stop and listen and wait and don't instantly offer a solution and I think in EO we also learn that, right? We don't immediately come back with the solution. We come back with some we re-resonate on that or we think about how is our experience in that. Talk about a little bit how you navigate those specific places where somebody's trying to talk over you or they're not really listening. So your wife is perfect of course so she's right to insist on taking her space congratulations to her and to you having her in your life. Now how do I work with people on that skill because it's a skill that we do not learn so it's it's normal that we do not know how to do it because we do not practice from early on in our childhood. In fact in the northern American culture it's what we do is interrupting each other because that shows excitement over what we're talking about right and it shows our charisma and our persuasion techniques and so what I've noticed now that I've worked with many people all over the world because I take my workshops everywhere in China and Canada United States Europe no matter what country what culture we're in very few of us have this ability to calm down our nervous system to calm ourselves down enough to listen if it's something that really matters to us scares us makes us feel big feelings and so when we work on that skill we go back to the body do you know when you are triggered when you are over flooded with emotions how does it feel in your body and all the mindfulness practices out there that help us recognize notice and then expand that space between stimulus and response it's all that's what it is and so first realizing how important it is to listen right and you've got you're there because your wife told you so right and then now to get that skill it's not enough to just understand that it's necessary it's also if she's saying something that's so important to you and you're so deeply disagreeing or it makes you angry it brings up something very deep and emotional how do you stay calm enough to regulate yourself while you're listening to somebody else it's actually a very difficult task it's not easy that's why I tell people it's like we're not going to do one workshop and then off you go it's a skill it's everyday practice and I also use lots of games in this hacking our brain hacking our system for example me myself I've done something for one year I promised myself that I will let everybody I talk to finish their sentences so it's at the beginning it was excruciatingly painful because we have this idea we have this habit of if you are looking for a word at the end of the sentence and you can't quite find it we always step in helpful to find that last word right so try not to do that and see what happens because it's surprising people usually say something that you didn't actually expect but sitting in the pause sitting in silence while the other person is struggling is something that we just don't know what to do so it's back to regulating in yourself do you do you find as a not as a not first english speaker or first language is not english for you that people will and your command of english language is much better than mine that even though you speak better than me that I would sometimes try to finish because of you have an accent or something like that is that pretty common in your space it's common in general it's not just an accent probably I hadn't done that study you're right probably it's even more so with somebody who looks different or speaks with an accent yeah I'm from the midwest and the midwest is known for being passive aggressive where we don't we don't confront problems and maybe it comes from stoicism or something like that from where our ancestors came from and there's other cultures in the especially in New York City where they're very direct and I find that direct approach to be more it's just more efficient right like you don't sort of you don't sort of let things lie tell us a little bit about how Loving Conflict then will connect with that and help people to be better communicators thank you for explaining to me where you come from and how it shapes your relationship with the conflict and you're right there it's so true that some people avoid it and some people go with into it full speed and do not adjust or edit themselves there's a problem with both of those approaches right so avoidance we understand it doesn't bring things up and so it keeps things keep boiling up boiling up boiling up and the trust erodes that's what we should all be afraid of losing trust in our relationship more than fights because without trust there is no love there is no confidence there is no collaboration and so and then if we go and we fight easily there is a problem that we break each other's hearts by saying something that will offend that will hurt people's feelings and trust erodes this way as well so there is middle ground there is fighting kindly that's what Loving Conflict is all about it's fighting certainly fighting and doing it in a way that there is a framework of Loving Conflict first is staying present with your body what are you feeling what are your nonverbal cues are you coming into the conversation already ready to fight because if you are tense in your body if I'm tense and I'm ready and I'm so confident that you're wrong and I'm right you're going to feel it so you're going on a defensive before I even open my mouth that's already not a conversation that's not fighting kindly that's you are not going to be listening to me to understand you're going to listen to me to prepare to defend yourself right so it's knowing your body knowing how you show up knowing also being a researcher a scientist of what's happening what are the real facts what's real how am I contributing to it what is real about the other person instead of making up stereotyping right we're making things up all the time stories up in our mind and then listening ready to change your mind that's to me that's really the key when you ask somebody a question and you already if you're confident about your opinion and you know that you are certain and you're not going to change your mind there is no need to have a conversation in fact I think it's offensive then it's not a conversation it's a lecture and then see they're consenting to the lecture right so but that's all practice and then the main the most important part I think in all this process of Loving Conflict is what can we do to recognize that the person in front of us is a human being with their own fears with their own values right like what are the rituals how do we sit what do we do together so that we build that trust and what I recommend there just a very simple thing when I argue with my when I fight with my husband for example I don't ask him to sit in front of me we sit together and we say okay we are together we are a team together and in front of us is a problem and we are in it together to solve that instead of me against you okay that's good so you sit next to each other and look out sort of and then have that conversation that helps that direct conflict a little bit is that I think that's what you're saying it helps us to understand that we are not enemies in this and to lower our defensiveness because when we're defensive when we're trying to defend ourselves we're actually coming out of fear we're not going to say anything that's going to be useful for the conversation yeah that's good I have buttons that can get pushed and I find as much as I work on this idea of taking a breath and thinking about before I speak that there's like a tipping point like somebody pushes me over a cliff and just like that I turn into irrational is there techniques that you can coach people on to work on that tipping point so you don't jump into that thing you say that you wish you would have never said that that is great so first of all there is a great book called good anger that talks about the de-shaming anger we've shamed anger so much that now we are not expressing anger until it's too late so when you say you have buttons I would say probably you're irritated long before the button is pushed that last button it's the last button and so it's about and so you avoid it do not be nice to each other this is love agree being agreeable right and so irritation happens and you keep getting warmer and warmer and we're not saying what bothers us and then it's out of control it's too late here it's like with the kids if they are in complete you know if there is a meltdown it's too late we designed the situation wrong right so we have to go back to how did it start when is it that they were not getting attention or right or what is it that was wrong in the design of this so that they got here and just to be kind to yourself and to other people who blow up when I am having an argument with somebody fight and they blow up it's there's no need to punish them it means that both of us were not paying attention to nonverbal cues probably if I am part of that I probably didn't notice that you were already sweating and getting blushing or flushing or tense shoulders or something was already happening to you a long time ago start early and vocalize it oh this made me uncomfortable can we rewind did you what you just said I heard this did you mean that and so for that we need to slow down if you know that at some point you'll blow up which I'm glad you do means you cannot actually avoid conflicts forever it's a great it's like a great mechanism we will find out I think it's great that with you people will find out when they upset you it just how can you notice it early enough so that it's softer and if you said the things you don't mean repair just go back and repair and repairing trust is so valuable because it's like that safety net we keep repairing it and next time you blow up you fall into that safety net they know that you'll come back and apologize and will own what happened yeah I think in our forum group we went through we went through a moderated session and at the time when we went through that I thought that maybe anger was a good mechanism as a leadership tool because in the U.S. we've had leaders who display a lot of anger and people see that as a strength rather than a weakness and I think going through that book I learned that that anger is counter to productivity it's actually destructive to your goals so having more of a firm grasp on it rather than blowing up is a better way to deal with that conflict would you agree with that look I think that the consequences of big anger is that people will start being afraid of you and you don't want people to be afraid of you because then they will not say what they think and they will not push back and then as leaders we will not know the truth right however not showing your emotions and not showing what upsets you not discussing what upsets you is not the way either is just doing it earlier before it gets too loud but still doing it people need to have feedback they need to know when they're doing something that doesn't please you and you know how we learn how to speak from I this is how it makes me feel right maybe you didn't do anything wrong however what happened there this is why it upsets me it's about me and then being very clear about why what happened there it's like I cannot stand when somebody is backseat driving I cannot I cannot drive I'll stop and so it's my button and so I say this to people before they get into my car this is why I'm working on it I'm in therapy this is like I can't take any authority that's why I'm an if you cannot be in the car without telling the driver directions we can drive together it's okay for me but I'm taking your consent here if you want to be in my car we'll be talking about everything but my driving unless you think we're going to get right now in exit you know so I'm very upfront about my triggers and it's not like forever I'm like this no I'm working on it I would like to be able to take some authority recommendations but for now this is not the case you see so being very open about it yeah my grandma who's since passed away owned that and she actually had a driver's license that said back street or back seat driver on our leadership teams how do you see this working so we can be better to our customers because I think what happens is that there's a breakdown in our communications as a team that then goes and reflects on to a customer of what who we are as a company how do you work with a coach with that you mean if we have a conflict within the company yeah yes well it's if you handle conflicts if you love them in your company and you have a culture of facing them resolving them repairing them and getting back to trust customers are going to love working with you because you will be a trustworthy team to work with it's when you have we have conflicts within our team and we don't resolve them and it's like an elephant in the room that's when customers intellectual they know something is up when they are working with our sales team or right something is up people are not loving each other in this team there is a tension there that hasn't been resolved right I'm sure you've seen that many times so if there is a conflict there is a tension in a team go and right and we need to resolve it we to bring it up we go to customers and if customers notice it we can also be upfront about it okay we have tension here we are working on it this is our process so that they know that we're working on resolving it that we are in it together because we're a team if I had one tool or if I could do one thing to make my brand better without buying a new tool what would that be to start repeat the question if I wanted to build trust in my brand and if I want starting with one thing what would be where would I start trust in your brand look to me it's all about being honest with others about who we are because that leads to trust and trust leads to wanting to collaborate that's good so right now we run a company that creates content for other companies and we have something that we think is very unique in the industry we have human beings that write content but in that industry humans writing content has become passe to use a French term that people don't see a lot of value in human content anymore or they assume your content you're creating is created by AI rather than a human what is what would be some signals that I could use to help clients understand both the trust in the human but also that our content is just not human isn't isn't generated by AI there's going to be a human as part of that I think I'm just trying to put a connection with the trust loop absolutely I love that you do it and I really hope that you stay with it because I think that we are going to get back to humans very shortly here because I actually just today I received a message on LinkedIn from my copywriter from my last company and my fashion brand who said she's been an amazing writer amazing fiction and nonfiction writer she wrote for us for five years she just dropped all her content into AI to see if it's been AI written and AI said yes absolutely everything was AI written but she knows that she wrote it herself before the AI and so she asked why do you think that this is written because it's so good yeah that's very true absolutely right and so I think that we can be better than so good humans our creativity now that with all these new tools that we have we can have AI do things that do not delight us and focus even more our creativity on seeing what else we can come up with so I think companies like yours where content is created by humans is going to make better yet better content I think it's a chance for humans to do something even better I see it with musicians I see it with writers it's happening already yeah thank you and I think that just the fact that you stay connected to your I don't know why you decided to do that but if using humans to write content now is aligned with your deepest values and you stay on it and you communicate to your customers on your why why do you think that humans should be writing content people will trust you because trust we trust people when we know their deepest values their why and what they are afraid of because that means that we know them right we see them when we see them we are less afraid of them and then we trust them and so you as a CEO if you are CEO of that company or if you are the voice of the company saying I will do this I'll continue doing this because my why is that that is going to move people to trust in you and wanting to work with you because they see you yeah that's fantastic thank you for that and I appreciate that if you have one thing that you'd like to impart on an entrepreneur who is hiring a team and wanting to get that team motivated and trusting your you as a leader what what sort of advice and I know we're not supposed to give advice in EO but what would you tell them well I'll do experience share okay me when I hire I am as upfront as possible about who I am and why I do what I do so now I'm building this business right there my workshops business Loving Conflict I tell people why that when we truly know how to love each other through fighting kindly we're not going to have so many wars this is my firm belief that we the only people who are not loved enough go to wars and so that's why I'm building what I'm doing what I'm doing so I tell my employees future employees this is what I'm about do you want to do this together so it's my why and then I say what I'm afraid of I'm afraid of blind spots I have a huge fear of blind spots I hate the idea that I'm not seeing something that I'm not understanding something business and so I only can work with people who tell me directly honestly what they seeing without being afraid and who are willing to also hear feedback fully about what I'm seeing so this is the culture that I'm building my value my why my fear and so they already know that if they can't receive direct feedback and if they are scared to talk to their boss clearly directly they cannot belong here they will just opt out themselves and if they don't really deeply care about stopping wars and helping people love each other if this is not their why they should not be joining either so being super upfront about it and being okay with even if an A player doesn't join me because of this I don't mind I would rather not have A players but have people you see who are who agree with my who are aligned with me and then we grow together perfect yeah that's great Anna we have a few minutes left on the podcast as we close out I give everybody a chance to do a shameless plug and all plug your book Loving Conflict but I think that you should plug whatever you would like to plug today what would you like to promote or plug well just first of all I am really bad at this at self promotion it's always been my problem so as long as we talk about my book because it's really something that's very dear to me I really put a lot of thinking into the book and I I'm traveling all over the world giving workshops on Loving Conflict so if it's in your area stop by and I'm on TikTok and YouTube with videos and Instagram so I don't know if you're going to be adding the links but just like if you call me I love talking to other EOers I have several conversations a week I reach out to people all the time I love relationships and connections so I'm open to communication and are you doing any facilitations for retreats with your book and kind of building some material around that for like an EO retreat it's actually yes I have been doing it for several years so I've spoke at GLC at the Women's Summit and I have speaking tours all around the EOR so this November I'm going to Canada I'm doing building now East US tour awesome perfect Anna Lecat it's been such a great conversation her book is Loving Conflict I would encourage you to look that up and how would people get in touch with you Anna I'm on LinkedIn Anna Lecat and I'm there all the time and my website is annalecat.com perfect and we'll make sure those get in the show notes Anna thank you so much for being here it's been such a great conversation thank you so much for having me thanks for listening to EO Visionary Voices find every episode at eovoices.com and follow us wherever you listen to podcasts if someone in your forum has a story to tell send them our way we love to interview founders and other entrepreneurial visionaries EO Visionary Voices is produced by Content Cucumber.