In this episode, Kristi explores how subtle shifts in presence—rather than words alone—can revive a dragging courtroom. Drawing inspiration from a Trevor Noah and Simon Sinek conversation, she reframes how attorneys invite juror participation by distinguishing between niceness and kindness.

The episode then moves into a practical communication tip on using breath to regulate energy in the courtroom, helping attorneys re-engage jurors, manage stress, and intentionally shape the emotional tone of the room without ever calling attention to it.

LISTEN HERE...

In this episode, you’ll learn:

1. The difference between niceness and kindness—and why it matters in jury selection

2. Why performative tactics in voir dire often lose permission with jurors

3. How authenticity builds trust faster than borrowed strategies

4. How the autonomic nervous system naturally shifts throughout the day

5. Why breath is your most powerful, portable regulation tool

6. How jurors subconsciously mirror your breathing, energy, and pace

7. Simple breath strategies to revive focus or calm intensity in the courtroom

Key Takeaway:

You don’t need to force energy or manufacture intensity to regain juror attention. When you regulate yourself—through breath, pacing, and presence—the jury follows.

Favorite Moment:

Reframing juror honesty through the lens of nice vs. kind—and realizing how much more permission that framework creates.

Links & Resources:

Nice vs Kind - Simon Sinek & Trevor Noah https://www.facebook.com/reel/1191213379356118

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Until then, keep fostering your voice.

TRANSCRIPT:

Hellloooo!!! Hello Foster Fam! Welcome back to today's episode where we're talking about How to Revive a Dragging Courtroom Without Saying a Word. If you haven't already, please take a minute to leave a 5-star rating and write a quick review of the podcast—let me know what you're learning and what your takeaways have been.

As you know, I always get started with a Point of Interest, and this week it was a reel of Trevor Noah being interviewed by Simon Sinek that I came across. I've put the link to the reel in the shownotes for you to watch yourself, but essentially, in this snippet, Simon asked Trevor, “How are you defining kindness?” And Trevor flipped the question and approached it from, “What kindness is not?”—and he offered “niceness” as a really good example.

What follows is a great conversation of breaking down the difference between niceness and kindness. Trevor boils it down to this: “Niceness is the performance of kindness, but it’s not necessarily the action.” And then he gives this funny example—telling someone they have something on their face. Not telling them is nice, but the kind thing to do is to say, “Hey, buddy… your face.” Hahaha. Take a minute to watch the clip in the show notes because I just love the easiness of Trevor's presence and delivery. BTW, Trevor Noah's book Born a Crime is awesome. We read it in my book club last fall, and I recommend doing the audiobook so you can hear him tell his own stories of growing up in South Africa. It's excellent.

Anyway, as the excerpt continues, As the excerpt continues, Simon gives the example that “giving someone harsh feedback is kind, but not nice.” And that immediately sent my brain to the “brutal honesty” approach in jury selection.

Now, if you’re an attorney listening, you know exactly what I mean by “brutal honesty.” But for the non-lawyers, here’s the gist...

There is a highly acclaimed and greatly respected attorney who, during jury selection, invites jurors to be brutally honest. He emphasizes that this trial experience requires setting politeness aside and committing fully to honest opinions and responses.

I've seen videos of this attorney doing voir dire, and I think it's a tac that works really well for him.

However, I’ve seen a host of other attorneys try the same tactic, and it just pisses me off.

I’m generally a pretty even-tempered person, but watching attorneys use this approach sends me—and here’s why.

First, it’s not organic to them. It’s a gimmick. They’ve seen it work for someone who is a titan in the field, so they adopt it and hope to get the same result.

As someone who is deeply committed to helping my clients show up as their most powerful selves—in confident authenticity—it bugs me to no end when attorneys insist on parroting someone else instead of trusting their own presence.

And look, it's not the tactic that's a problem necessarily (I'll talk about that in a second), but it's that it comes off as performative and the jury can tell it's a gimmick. They wouldn't know the original source, but they are able to spot when something just feels OFF. I've seen it over and over in mock juries, and it just doesn't go over as well as you want it to, BECAUSE IT'S NOT YOU. You're pretending to be someone else.

It might also be that the way I've seen them all use the brutal honesty approach is to create a distinction between honesty and brutal honesty. And that implies two things I find deeply offensive:

One, that I wasn’t planning to be honest in the first place unless I was told to be.

And two, that my honesty isn’t good enough unless it’s delivered with force.

Then they won’t let it go—polling each juror, pressing for commitment—before a single meaningful question has even been asked. At that point, permission is already gone.

So, I've always been REALLY turned off by the approach, outside of the originator doing it.

I think, as a juror, I would much rather be invited into a nice vs. kind framework—and I didn’t realize that until I saw this interview. When Simon said, "Giving someone harsh feedback is kind, but not nice," all the bells went off in my head and I was like "YES!! THAT'S it."

The honesty vs. brutal honesty framework sets up the wrong paradigm.

It says: Be honest—but only in the way I deem acceptable, and only if I sense you’re committed to it at all costs.

Nice vs. kind is a far more useful distinction in my book and one that will continue to gain permission from me, if I was on your jury. It assumes people are already nice—that they want to contribute, be helpful, and participate honestly. And then it offers an additional invitation for kindness.

Kindness, as Trevor puts it, is the willingness to embrace the discomfort of what isn’t right—and to stay engaged anyway. Invite your jury to be nice and be kind.

—BREAK—

Well, here we are in February already. Do you remember back in the early days of the pandemic how each month felt like it was 10 years long? Time seemed to be moving SO SLOW. Now, we're back up to full speed, and gosh, it just seems like no one is letting up on the throttle. We're full steam ahead 24/7. Are you feeling that too?

January is that “okay, let’s all settle down” month. As December wraps up we say, “We’ll deal with this in January.”

And then January arrives—and suddenly we’re wading through inboxes, getting back to our desks, and sorting everything out.

Phew.

But, January was also a time where resolutions were fresh, mental focus was clear, we could hit the ground running. But then...we reached the shore of those deep waters and some of the verve, drive, and intention necessarily had to go by the wayside as we hunkered down and reprioritized our to-do lists.

To kick off the new year, our sympathetic nervous system was running HOT! And, let's be clear...that's okay. We know our sympathetic nervous system to be our fight-flight-freeze response, which all have kind of a negative connotation, but it's ALSO your get-up-and-go response. It's your super-productive-getting-stuff-done response.

The goal here is not to eliminate or even suppress the sympathetic nervous system but to help regulate it so it doesn't just run hot continuously. And February feels like a good time to help it out.

So, let's just review what a healthy autonomic nervous system looks like. Throughout a normal day, your nervous system is auto-regulating. Think of it like driving a car. Sometimes you need the gas pedal, but stomping on the gas pedal ONLY would be very bad. You need to apply the BREAKS too. For seasoned drivers, you make the shift between the pedals seamlessly, effortlessly, without thinking. Your brain does this too — revving up the sympathetic system (your internal gas pedal) and then subtly breaking (activating your parasympathetic system). About every 90-minutes or so, you do a recalibration and shift from one taking center stage to handing off to the other.

But even within the 90-minute interval, every breath brings some shifts. These aren’t on/off actions, like a light switch. It’s more like a dimmer. Every inhale turns the dial to the right, elevating sympathetic so you’re ready to go, and every exhale turns the dial to the left, activating the parasympathetic to help you settle in and relax. Tiny turns of the dial, back and forth, keeping you balanced throughout the day.

Now, this is on a “normal” day — a day without fights with opposing counsel, another request for discovery, a contentious depo where your client crumbled, having to let someone on your team go, kids bickering in the back seat after school pick up and on the way to soccer practice, etc. You know the days.

On THOSE days, or even if it’s just a couple of extra stressful hours, it’s empowering to know that you can initiate some control to actually help. Have you guessed yet that your biggest ally is your breath? You can get really strategic with your breath to actually activate and up-, or down-regulate whichever response you want at the time.

Super stressed and need to calm things down…? Practice long exhales. A longer exhale will activate the parasympathetic nervous system, and tone the vagal nerve, which is responsible for your relax, rest & digest response.

Or there are other days where everything just feels like a slog. You’re doing the quiet work, by yourself, lost in the details and struggling to focus on any of them. This is when you want to get a little boost. Sure, a midday snack or a 3rd cup of coffee might do the trick to give you that extra jolt, but having a breathing exercise that cycles quickly through inhales/exhales will also give you the rev up that your system needs.

Knowing how to regulate YOURSELF is a superpower. You don’t have to be a certified breath coach, or a yoga guru to learn these techniques. I mean, let’s do a rev up exercise right now, together. We’re going to do 20 sharp, quick exhales through the nose. Just think about the exhale—the inhale will take care of itself. It’ll sound like this. (DO A FEW) Okay? Now, let’s do it together, I'll do the counting. Quick reminder, you should not be driving or in the water for these. Haha! Sit up tall, feet on the floor, close your eyes, and together we "exhale, exhale, exhale" (then do 7 more, then count backwards) "10-9-8-7..." and return to natural breathing. When you’re ready, you can open your eyes. Going through 3 cycles of that type of breathing will help you refocus, and stir up your energy.

I think more often than not though, you’re probably running a little hot, so let’s down-regulate. Let’s boost the parasympathetic system. Go back to that same tall posture, close your eyes, and breathe slowly through your nose for 1-2-3-4, now out through your nose for 8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1. Again, in for 1-2-3-4, out for 8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1. One more, in for 1-2-3-4, out for 8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1. And return to natural breathing. Do 10 cycles of that, and count even a little slower to really activate the rest and digest function. Special bonus for your vagus nerve when you make it audible in the back of your throat with that "ocean" sound you heard me do.

Okay, so how do you do this in the courtroom? Or CAN you? Can you affect the stress levels as needed for the telling of your client’s story and continuing to empower the jury for decision making? Yes. You absolutely can.

You might remember from previous episodes that we all have mirror neurons. Our brains will naturally and automatically sync up with each other and play off the others’ energy and MIRROR the emotion we see. And we do it with our breath as well. When you feel that dreaded mid-afternoon lull—after hours of dense expert testimony—you can sense the room dragging.

Infuse fresh energy. Lift your voice slightly. Use shorter phrases, quicker breath, and smaller, faster movements. Not enough to be manic. Just enough to turn the dial. A few seconds of elevated breath energy will revive you and the jury will follow suit.

When the vibe has been stressed, confrontational, or just intense, lower your breathing...intentionally. Slow things down. Lengthen the amount of time it takes you to exhale. The jury will subconsciously mirror that and together you are calming the sympathetic and up-regulating the parasympathetic system to just get everyone into a more relaxed state.

The takeaway here is that YOU get to control this. Not in a white knuckle, bearing down, dictator way. But by gently, yet intentionally regulating your own breath, the jury will follow along.

Your nervous system is a wonderfully complex response system for you to use throughout the course of your day—as varied and demanding as they are, YOU get to harness the power through your breath to effect how that day unfolds. Give it a try and let me know how it goes.

Until next week, keep fostering your voice.