Bill: Welcome to Not Your Typical Leadership Coaching Podcast. We have a special guest today, Dr. Robert Glover, who is the author of this book, No More Mr. Nice Guy. That's the one. Yeah, you wrote this in 2000?

Dr. Glover: That's a good question to say when I wrote it, I quickly I didn't set out to write a book.

Dr. Glover: I started working with men. I'm, I was a marriage and family therapist by training and I'd already gotten into therapy because my relationships weren't working very well. And my partner says. Problem is everybody thinks you're a nice guy, but you're not you can be mean you can hurt my feelings So you need to go get help?

Dr. Glover: So I luckily landed in some good places that made me start realizing Oh this paradigm of if I just try to do everything right avoid conflict get everybody's approval Not rock the boat then everything in my life will work. Okay, and as a therapist I started hearing guys coming to me for therapy say the same thing So I thought, Oh, I just had started my first like men's groups and let's start a no more.

Dr. Glover: Mr. Nice guy. So I started writing just chapters to give the guys every week over a period of about six to seven years that evolved into a book. They and their girlfriends and wives kept saying, Robert, you should write a book. A lot of people need this. You should go on Oprah. This could be a bestseller, no pressure.

Dr. Glover: Right? So, um, I did keep writing and eventually I found an agent who took them. We shopped it probably for three years. We did get it up as an e book long before e books, long before Kindle readers existed. And then a lot of a lot of editors said, Robert, we like your books, good book, but our marketing department says men won't buy a self help book.

Dr. Glover: Especially a book that tells them they're losers. I go, no, you don't understand. You don't understand the people that I'm writing this for and who want this book. So it took about three years to get it published. The book then came out in print in March of 2003. So 21 years ago, right about now, it came out in print.

Dr. Glover: How long ago did I write it? More years ago than that.

Bill: So Marty, Marty's writing a book and his second book now and about ready to publish it as

Dr. Glover: well. Marty, go ahead. Congratulations. Thank you. Thank you.

Marty: I'm curious in those intervening 20 years, what have you been surprised by about the reception of the book, if anything, or did it go just the way you thought?

Dr. Glover: Oh, there's no way of knowing, the average book doesn't well, back in the day back then, when you went through professional publishers to get a book published, rather than. Put it up on Amazon now, which is what I do with my new books. Back in the day, they said the average book, I think, if it didn't sell within 65 days, it came off the shelves and most didn't publishing companies have always liked the books by the big names, people that are.

Dr. Glover: Household names or already had success at publishing music industry was the same way. Let's just keep, you know, putting the same bands out over and over again. When we got it into print, Barnes and Noble had just gotten into the publishing industry. So they've been through several transitions, including bankruptcy, and they no longer publish books, but they are still in business.

Dr. Glover: Our business model for a brick and mortar stores. But I think they were anticipating, some kind of a blowback, a reaction response. Yeah. You put a book out called no more, Mr. Nice guy. And, there's a paradox to that. We've all probably said that at some time, no more, Mr. Nice guy.

Dr. Glover: I'm not putting up with that anymore, then you go. Why would somebody write a book teaching men to be not nice? There's already enough not nice guys out There's a paradox to it, right? So I think the publisher initially thought There'd be some kind of blowback, people will react to this thing But the truth is the book the book itself is not reactionary and it's not really presenting a model of something that People go that's crazy or that's out there.

Dr. Glover: It's just teaching men to be authentic, to be real, to be honest, to be transparent, to make their needs a priority, to ask for what they want, surround themselves with good people. It's, there's nothing, now everybody's going to just quit listening and go why would I go get that book then?

Dr. Glover: But the thing was, is it didn't have that initial blowback. Reaction to it. Oh, why is this guy writing a book? Teach your men to be not nice. What did happen is for maybe the first I'm, I'm just going off vague memory, maybe 8 to 10 years, it sold the royalty checks, maybe got a little bigger, and that back when I didn't royalty checks yearly and, I remember first time I got like about the 6, 000.

Dr. Glover: Yearly royalty check. Okay good. People are buying it. And then it I don't know if it hit that hockey stick or something, probably 10, 12 years ago, probably a combination of things. The book had just been out long enough. Therapists had found it. We're recommending it. People in 12 step groups are recommending to their buddies.

Dr. Glover: Coaching came onto the scene and a lot of coaches that work with men, their lives got changed by no more Mr. Nice Guy. So they recommend it. That's how I first was introduced to the book was in a men's group. There you go. Men's Group. I, I launched a new company just this last year, Integration Nation, and I hired an attorney to incorporate it.

Dr. Glover: And I'm talking to this woman attorney in Nevada and she said what is the name of your book? And I said it, she goes, That sounds familiar. I think my husband has that book on his shelf. I think he read it in a men's group I think maybe through his church. I don't know. So even this corporate attorney I hired for my new company Her husband had read the book.

Dr. Glover: So just word of mouth began to spread, amazon took off Podcasts like this took off, And so these publishing companies have said men will not buy a self help book nowadays, People listen to a podcast. Podcasts are hugely popular. Who saw that coming? Guys love podcasts. So they hear a book mentioned.

Dr. Glover: They go on Amazon. They find the book. They click it. And then Amazon says people who bought this book also bought the book. They click those books too. So guys do buy books. It's not just women, buying the self help book. So I think a combination of things it, I think it was a good enough book.

Dr. Glover: When I went back and read the audible version about, it's been six plus years ago now. It originally professional voice read the audible version and I didn't. I didn't get a say in that matter, but it'd been out about 15 years. I told my agent, it wasn't, it's only available in North America.

Dr. Glover: And I told my agent, I want the book available worldwide and I want to read it. And he said, okay. So they contacted the the company that had the contract. They said, fine, contract will expire at the end of this calendar year. About two weeks later, my agent sends me an email. He says we strongly suggest you consider accepting this offer.

Dr. Glover: And the same company that had the contract said, we want you to read it. Dr. Glover, no more Mr. Nice Guy or Synonymous. We want it in our evergreen, folder. And we're going to pay you a 75, 000 advance and 5, 000 to come to New York and read it. I go. Okay. I'll take that I wasn't looking for a 75, 000 advance I just wanted to cancel the contract get a new one because I wanted my voice on it And I wanted a worldwide distribution.

Dr. Glover: You know then so this probably was about 2016 maybe 2017 where I went back to New York and read it and you know what i'd not read the book For quite some time, Martin, writing a book, you spend so much time in it. Especially if it takes you a few years, like you're just in it all the time.

Dr. Glover: Oh, yeah. And then finally, when you're done with it, you don't know if it's good. You don't know if it's bad. You don't know if anybody's going to want to read. You don't know because you've been living it. And so 15 years later, after publishing, I'm in sound booth in New York, reading it and I'm reading it.

Dr. Glover: And kind of this answers the question in a roundabout way. 15 years after publication, I'm reading it. I'm getting tears in my eyes remembering people I wrote about. I'm seeing things going, oh, I've slipped. I'm back to doing that nice guy thing again. I'm glad I read the book again. I'm reading it going, this isn't just for nice guys anymore.

Dr. Glover: This is for men. Because everything in there is really for how does a man and your women tell me all the time they love the book, I have women clients reading it. Yeah. And to me, it's not just a niche book for men that identify themselves as nice guy. So I think maybe that's a reason. Another reason why over the last 10 to 12 years, the royalty checks have just taken off.

Dr. Glover: Can add a lot of reasons. But that may be one.

Marty: So getting into the book itself, just a little bit. Whatever you found in all in the intervening time has been the most effective part of what you give us in that book at having people show up more

Dr. Glover: authentically. Okay, that's easy. Actually, the thing that people tell me that they, that I hear most often that people get out of no more Mr.

Dr. Glover: Nice guys, the idea of covert contracts. Okay. I, somehow something came up the other day I was watching some videos of my coach's YouTube page, and he did a video on you talking about covert contracts, just, matter of factly, but that term is out of no more Mr. Nice Guy. I see.

Dr. Glover: So I just Googled covert contracts, and luckily, most of the people that write blog articles about it, at least give me a wave. I think that still helps me to this day. And basically. I'll boil it down even more succinctly than I do in No More Mr. Nice Guy, but nice guys tend to operate by three covert contracts.

Dr. Glover: And by the way, when I talk about nice guys, I'm talking about men that we would probably call codependents. I did not use the word codependency in the book on purpose because I wanted to write to men without having them take a term. Because back when I wrote the book, it mainly applied to people who are in relationship with addicts.

Dr. Glover: And often to women, women who love too much. There wasn't anything written for men about codependency. So that's what it's really about. So that, so these three covert contracts of at least the codependent man that I work with are this number covert contract. Number one, they're all if then propositions and they're all fundamentally manipulative.

Dr. Glover: They have strings attached. Number one is that if I'm a good guy. I will be liked and loved and where I see a lot of men, you know apply that is that oh and then the woman I want to have sex with me or They're gay The guy I want to have sex with me will want to have sex with me and you can go online and find blog articles Written by plenty of women out there beware of the nice guy, he listens to you talk about your problems He does things for you.

Dr. Glover: He's there for he's nice to you treats you well, and then all of a sudden When you don't want to have sex with him, he becomes hostile, he becomes this. And it's true, it happens, it's covert contract. I'm gonna, I'm gonna be a good guy. I'll be different than all the jerks. I'll listen to you talk about your problems.

Dr. Glover: I'll, I'll do all my virtue signaling, whatever that may be. And then you'll like me and love me. And of course you want to have sex with me.

Bill: Robert, that was me. I've been married. I'm in my third marriage right now. My first wife died of a brain tumor, but that marriage was that. That's what that marriage was.

Bill: Was my just number one. I'm sure i'm going to listen to covert contracts. We got two more coming Yeah, i'm sure i'll identify with those as well But that was absolutely me and I was in a box didn't know how to fight my way out of it I didn't know any other

Dr. Glover: way you don't and I and when I share all three i'll pull Let's come back to that.

Dr. Glover: What was the answer? Okay so there's corporate contract number one. If I'm a good guy, I'll be liked. And of course I got the scoreboard up. I'm a good guy. I do all these good things. People should like me and love me. Now, of course, not everybody likes and loves everybody, right? I don't like and love everybody.

Dr. Glover: There's no sure way to make sure everybody likes and loves you, especially when you're the scorekeeper. Covert contract number two is that if I meet your needs, if I read your mind and meet your needs without you having to ask, you will read my mind and meet my needs without me having to ask. All right. and Then this one is so insidious. You're both laughing at us. You're okay. So yeah, I'm going to do all these nice things for you. Cause I think you're going to like it. You're going to need it. You're going to appreciate it and you're going to do nice things for me back. Maybe it's even just appreciate me and be really grateful for everything I did.

Dr. Glover: That's my covert contract. Now remember nobody knows these covert contracts exist. That's why they're called covert The nice guy often doesn't know they exist He's just doing what he's been programmed to do since he was an infant just giving to get So I read your mind. You should appreciate me.

Dr. Glover: You should be grateful. You should never get mad at me Yeah, you should always be thanking me and praising me for all this nice things I did And then you should read my mind and give to me without me having to ask It doesn't work. I mean, I think it's obvious enough to listening that doesn't work covert contract.

Dr. Glover: Number three is that if I do everything, right? Then I will have a smooth problem free world Now, nobody does everything right. Every great philosophical book, whether, it's the Old Testament, Talmud, New Testament, the message of all of them is there's nobody perfect. We need the priest, we need sacrifice, we need the sacrificial blood of Christ, whatever it is.

Dr. Glover: There is no, there's no getting it right. There's no getting it perfect. There's always going to be a shortfall. And, but the nice guy thinks he really can. I can get it all right. And then, everything in life will go smooth, my woman will never get mad at me. My boss will never fire me.

Dr. Glover: God will rain his blessings down on me. And nothing bad will ever happen in my life. I won't get sick. Loved ones, I won't, my loved ones won't die of brain tumors. But it's such a Peter Pan ish attitude towards life. That life is not smooth and problem free, it's chaotic by nature.

Dr. Glover: Creation is chaos and we live in a cosmos that's constantly in a state of creation. These three covert contracts the nice guy has, he's unaware of them. Nobody else knows about them. When he thinks he's given, he's kept his side of the contract. And when other people don't, it tends to lead to a lot of frustration.

Dr. Glover: Sure. Resentment. Rage attacks. My ex wife used to refer to the victim pukes that I would have, a passive aggressive behavior, the indirect anger, all the things that tend to make nice guys not particularly nice. So to answer, you come back to your question, Martin I, I think probably the one thing that, like I said, I put the spotlight on is covert contracts and how nice guy presented, no more Mr.

Dr. Glover: Nice guy presented that model to the world. I remember when that first, that, that whole idea dawned on me, I was in a men's group and I think I was probably talking about. You know my giving to get and I think my therapist in this men's group, you know somehow the term the words all happened in a moment that said covert contract and it's like Fuck.

Dr. Glover: Yeah, that's exactly that I can't think of a better description than what this is. Yeah, so So yeah, that's my number one takeaway if I was reading the book today I go That is worth the price of the book

Bill: Robert i'm looking for Here it is. Let me, so this is what you wrote in roughly 2000.

Bill: And I wonder if you agree that this is still the most accurate description of the nice guy syndrome.

Dr. Glover: Can I read it to you? What

Bill: I write? On page 33, it says,

Bill: Recovery from the Nice Guy Syndrome is dependent on revealing oneself and receiving support from safe people. It is essential, therefore, that men who want to break free from Nice Guy Syndrome find safe people to assist them in this process.

Dr. Glover: I'm glad you read that because on pretty much every interview I do, once we talk about nice guy syndrome, manifestation.

Dr. Glover: You know the interviewers say okay, what's next? What does the nice guy do? You know start breaking free Yeah, number one thing. I always say using say or said it in page 33 in the book early on Don't try to do this alone. I tell nice guys. You did not become a nice guy in social isolation You will not break free from nice guy syndrome and social isolation.

Dr. Glover: It's a social dynamic It is how I show up in the world. It's how I seek value. It's how I seek validation. It's how I get my needs met. It's how I connect, it's how I give and receive love. So it's essential. And this is hard for nice guys because of, Either before or after what you read we talk I talk about toxic shame that every nice guy at a very early age internalized an Inaccurate emotional belief about himself that says there's something wrong with me.

Dr. Glover: I'm not good enough. I'm not lovable. I'm broken We call it toxic shame. It's an emotional state Later, as we get older and we develop language and we become more interactive with the world, we put words and experience on top of it, but it's like the machine language of our nervous system.

Dr. Glover: I'm not good enough. I'm bad. I'm unlovable. Because of that, nice guys spend their entire lives. early on doing two things trying to do two things. Become what I think other people want me to be so that i'll be liked and loved and get my needs met and hide anything about me that might get a negative reaction.

Dr. Glover: Now that's usually our needs our wants, our sexuality, our opinions, our feelings, right? So how are we going to start unhinding Everything we've been hiding. How are we going to unhide? You know the feelings we've kept suppressed the needs and wants we've kept hidden the sexuality that we've kept way out of you Unless we do that out, you know with other people right safe people now for me You know when my ex wife said you need to go get help I thought okay, you're the one that's unhappy all the time, and it's never good enough.

Dr. Glover: And, okay, I'll go get help. And I landed in good places. I'm so grateful. I don't know. Fate, was running the show way back then. I don't know about you guys, but as I get older, I become more of a believer in fate. If you'd asked me just two or three years ago, do I believe in fading?

Dr. Glover: I don't know. I don't know. I'm more and more. I'm going man things just sure keep lining up. Fate landed me in a 12 step group because my ex kept saying you're a sex addict. Just because I wanted to have sex with my wife and she didn't. That made me a sex addict. I quickly learned I wasn't having enough sex to be a sex addict.

Dr. Glover: But I tell you what, that was the perfect place for me to be. It was like eight, nine guys showing up like at five, five thirty once a week. Yeah, I got excited by going there because I would just reveal everything I'd never told anybody. Thoughts feelings behaviors impulses and I grew up in a very fundamental christian church I have two degrees in religion.

Dr. Glover: I was a minister for eight years. So I grew up with this hide everything My father was critical demeaning hide everything I grew up in during the angry as you guys I imagined it angry feminism of the 60s and 70s, erections a sign of aggression Every man's a rapist hide everything I got into this 12 step group, but I just started Revealing everything and the strongest reaction ever got was thanks for sharing robert You know nothing and then I got into with a therapist and got into a men's group And it was so therapeutic to just put this stuff out there and the therapist would just say let's just take a look at that.

Dr. Glover: Let's see what that means. What story behind that I'm going to what you're not going to have a big reaction to it and then I go to my men's group and they go, Oh, Robert, that's normal. Yeah, there's nothing wrong with you. That's just normal stuff. Oh, you mean I've been keeping that repressed thinking that somehow made me bad or evil or unlovable.

Dr. Glover: We, you got to get with safe people to start revealing the toxic shade, letting out the stories you have about you that where you're not good enough and feeling the relief of just, oh, letting that go, it's out now, I'm not carrying it alone and getting the feedback from people that have no agenda, for judging you to just say, they'll say things like, thanks for sharing that or actually, that makes you normal.

Dr. Glover: There's probably a story behind that. Let's explore that. Let's see what, let's see where that goes back to, what, what can we uncover and let go, it's just nobody's reacting negatively to any of it. So that is so powerful. So I'm glad you read that bill of just, I am to go find safe people.

Dr. Glover: Yeah. It can be a therapist, a coach. a minister, rabbi, 12 step group, usually not your mother usually not your wife or girlfriend. I'm not saying they're unsafe people, but they're probably the least people we want to go reveal our dark masturbation fantasy. Well, And they're also

Marty: bought into that.

Marty: What exactly

Dr. Glover: you want to change. Yeah there's usually some kind of fused emotional system. We get deeper into, system dynamics here. There's a system that's been going on for some period of time, and systems do not like change, and people within systems do not like change. Even if it looks like it might be a good change, it's still the unknown.

Dr. Glover: It's still scary. You come home and you tell your mother, your partner, Oh, I've gotten into therapy and I'm starting to deal with my toxic shame. And, our mothers are going. Are you saying you had a bad childhood? Or our wife or our partner is going, oh, he's gonna leave me.

Dr. Glover: I know he's gonna leave me they may want us working on our stuff But if we start working on it, oh, he's gonna work out his stuff and he's gonna leave me So I say people

Bill: robert when I got sober One of the things my first wife said to me was, I liked it better when

Dr. Glover: you were drinking.

Dr. Glover: Again, systems don't like change. Let's go to graduate school 101. I remember in my doctoral program, the first thing you learn about systems, and everybody co creates systems to play familiar roles. We experience system dynamics as children in our family. We grow up and we invite people into our life to help us co create, systems that have similar dynamics. That's why we tend to keep inviting the same kind of people into our life over and over again. It feels familiar, and maybe we can even look at it from a karmic standpoint. Is what we have to go through to clean that stuff out. Systems 101. Is systems like homeostasis, they do not like change and everybody within the system will work together to keep systems from changing fundamentally.

Dr. Glover: Don't even go to therapy. I've worked with couples, my background's in marriage and family therapy. Couples come in and they work with me maybe for months and then something gets revealed that's pretty significant, right? That I should have known like maybe at least by the second session with me and then I'll look at the partner and I'll go.

Dr. Glover: Did you know about this? And they'll go, huh. I said, for how long? X number of years. And I go, neither one of you thought that this might should have been talked about like in our first or second session together? Couples will actually collude with each other. To keep things from changing while going to marriage therapy, or you think that's let's go spend back into our 60 bucks an hour, to go work on changing our marriage, but let's not actually give him the information he needs to help us change because that's too scary.

Dr. Glover: I'll ignore the elephant, if you will. Yeah, let's do that together. Let's just ignore it together.

Marty: Can I press into this a little bit because. So my, the book that I wrote, that's coming out this spring is leadership as relation,

Dr. Glover: because

Marty: what I saw was that the way most books and seminars and workshops talk about leadership is as if it's this guy over here and he's different from the rest, but he's the leader.

Marty: He's got these certain traits and styles and stuff and. Like a Mr. Nice guy. He's different, right? He's an individual. And so the point of my book is about coming from a systems place, seeing that leadership is about how we relate, not how that guy over there is right. And and so change inside of a leadership relationship.

Marty: And this happens very quickly on the soccer field, for example who's got the ball, who's making room for the past? It happens very quickly on a soccer field, but in

Marty: a corporate setting,

Marty: what I'm finding, and I just wanted to see if this checks out with the nice guy syndrome is when you do go back To your people, right?

Marty: You have to go to a 12 step or a counselor or something else first to distinguish this and get in charge of yourself. But when you do go back to your family, or, to your the people that were part of the old fabric that you want to change, it's, it feels to me the best way is to

Marty: show that

Marty: the way that there's a way forward.

Marty: That's beneficial to both of us. It's not that it's not that you mom were wrong in the ways you raised me. But if we started relating this new way, we both get something out of it.

Dr. Glover: Yeah. Ideally, if you can, pitch things that way, but here's, let me take this in a couple directions because I like what you're talking about.

Dr. Glover: We can have fun with it. We can go even deeper into graduate level work here. I'll give you, I'll give you an example of leadership right now in, in, in the program I launched, we'll have periodic challenges. And so a couple of the guys in my program, a couple of the coaches are really into fitness.

Dr. Glover: One owns a gym. And so they started an eight week new year's transformation challenge and I signed up for Because, I'm 68 and, you guys know, the older you get, it's harder to keep the weight off and harder to keep the activity level up. And so I've started this transformation challenge.

Dr. Glover: They give us eight weeks worth of, basic food choices. And I've done fitness programs before, so I know how to eat well. And, a fitness program that we all do, same thing every, each, and then we check in, and we're doing this. And so here I am, at home, and my wife's a gym rat.

Dr. Glover: She's her happiest days are, she'll work out an hour here at our home gym, and then walk up the street to the other gym where they have heavier equipment that she'll do another hour there, so she's a gym rat. So she, and she likes to eat healthy, but she can get away with eating. Some street tacos and stuff like that.

Dr. Glover: Cause she just works out all the time. I can't get away with it as much. All right. My stepson and his girlfriend, she lives with her. They're both 18. They just love. Street tacos they love they bring these giant. I don't know 18 gallon bottles of coca cola home with them and I keep talking to my wife I said I don't want to be like, you know The asshole dad and just ban the coca cola from the house But I said when I watch them just guzzle the coke and then they both have gone from Two years ago, they were both lean and in good shape.

Dr. Glover: They both gotten huge All right, and you have 50 percent of the population in Mexico is diabetic, mainly from street tacos and coca cola and beer. It's just, and I go, they're only 18 years old and they've both gotten huge in two years. And there's this part of me that wants to keep, ban the coca cola from the house, no more ordering, the Uber eats and bringing the tacos by no, and I thought, you know what, that's not going to work.

Dr. Glover: That's not going to be a leadership that actually gets anything done. And even me making snide comments or, giving controlling looks doesn't work. What it doesn't work. But if I stay on my healthy diet and eat healthy and get results, and, my son pays attention he'll notice that you're looking good, right?

Dr. Glover: He'll notice. So by example, now, whether or not that changes him, I don't know, but let's take this now into the graduate level stuff is we can talk about this in terms of what's called first order change and second order change first order change in systems language is I do a.

Dr. Glover: Hoping to get B, right? I yell at the kids about drinking coke. Hopefully, that's A. B is, they quit drinking coke. And, almost everybody just tries first order change for everything. Changing our kids, changing our partners, changing the world, whatever. If I do A, as part of that covert contract even, if I do A, then, B should happen.

Dr. Glover: And so in, in the therapeutic model, when I was learning about therapy, basically what I was taught was most people walk into a therapist, coach's office, because they've been pushing the A button a lot, and B isn't happening. Yeah. Yeah, so they're stuck. They're frustrated. They're resentful.

Dr. Glover: They're at their wits end. They're confused. You hear people say a lot. Yeah they're actually not confused. I don't let my clients use the word confused because I found that giving a confused person more information almost never unconfuses them. My rule of thumb, if a person has some incentive to be confused, they will be confused.

Dr. Glover: So making changes. Oh, I'm confused. I don't get it. Second order change. I love this illustration. And I remember it because it boggles everybody. I remember a professor using this illustration of first order change for second order change. He says, if you take like a baby's mold, old school, not the wind up kind, but just sticks with strings and butterflies and flowers.

Dr. Glover: Yeah. You got a mold. And it's hanging over a baby's crib and you tap one of the flowers you perturbate the system you get it moving He says how can you predict where it will come to rest? And everybody ponders that The engineers go crazy out where you can develop this mathematical code. I work with a lot of engineers.

Dr. Glover: But the answer is really very simple. It's a, it's an illustration of first order change. If nothing fundamental has changed to the system, it's going to come to rest exactly the way it was resting before because gravity brought inertia, it came to rest. And if nothing's changed in the system it'll come to rest exactly the same place.

Dr. Glover: That's what first order change is. It almost always just comes right back to where it began. Second order change is a systemic change where you fundamentally alter the system. And maybe you cut a flower off. Maybe you shorten a string, maybe move a string up on the stick a little bit, perturbate it, you have no clue where it's gonna end up.

Dr. Glover: That's second order change. That is what good coaching, good therapy, good leadership is. You come in. I got to get everybody to be so I got to keep pushing that a button doesn't work. I'll push this a button. And if that a button doesn't work, I'll push that a week because we got to get to be. But what if you come in and say, I'm just going to alter the system in some fundamental way.

Dr. Glover: Maybe just make an observation about the system as simple as when. Parents would come and bring this kid who's been acting out at home and and they tell about all the kids that stuff the kid's doing. I look at the kid and I go, you know what? Everything your parents talk about sounds pretty normal for a kid your age.

Dr. Glover: So I tell the kid, you just keep doing whatever it is you're doing because you're a normal seven year old, 13 year old, whatever. Now just sit back. You can eavesdrop, you can read your book, you can color, whatever. I'm gonna talk to your parents for a little bit. And then with the kid listening. I've already reframed the system.

Dr. Glover: He's a normal kid. I talked with the parents about, creating some boundaries, having some behavior, making a list, having rewards, having consequences. Put it on the parents to where they've got to do a better job of creating structure for the kid. The kid, they come back a few weeks later and go, the kid's doing fine actually.

Dr. Glover: Because we just reframed the system. He came in there thinking I'm gonna get told how bad I am I'm this terrible kid and I don't ever clean my room and I yell at my sister and I do this I don't turn the tv off when I say it and but if you just reframe the system so if in marriage counseling if a couple comes in and if I could just find one way to just Step in and tweak that they're how they view what's going on between themselves, they're complaining about the thing their partner does.

Dr. Glover: And if you just say, what if that was actually a gift. People go, what do you mean. I don't know if it's actually a gift. I don't know what you're talking about. Now all of a sudden they're looking and thinking about it differently. So your leadership thing is the same. If the leadership walks in a room and says, I've decided we've got to get to point B, and by this time, I've had so many friends over the years who are in sales.

Dr. Glover: And it's like sales department treats sales people like they've got to just be the most dumbest. Unmotivated people on the planet. If we don't give you sales quotas and don't, put this thing out there, but this giant carrot, if we don't do it, you won't sell a goddamn thing I'm thinking, oh, come on.

Dr. Glover: And then what happens once the salespeople are successful in the sales model? They revamp, the system of how they're going to, pay the sales people. It's actually our success. So in your leadership, what if you just come in and led by example, tweak the system in some way, reframed, something in some way, other than, Oh, if we don't cut these costs and make this profits, we're going to be broken six months.

Dr. Glover: What's a different way you can frame it that people want to show up and be a part of that journey. Exactly.

Dr. Glover: Bill, you live in Spokane, right? That's right. You ever get to Seattle very much? Yeah. Alright. I'm born and raised in Seattle. My mother still lives in Sam Amish.

Dr. Glover: My son lives over at Colfax, Pullman area, and my first wife lives over in Deer Park. You know the territory. Yeah. So you and Martin just then about no, you, you can ask your questions. No, you better take some questions. You're like two people at a four way stop in Seattle, right?

Dr. Glover: No. You go no, no, you go. No you, you go. And every, and the traffic's backing up because everybody's and nobody will just go through the intersection. So you remind, I thought, okay, you're in Spokane. I can use a Seattle analogy, it's such a nice city, such a nice city.

Bill: I'd like to just bring in the, 15 years ago, Bill, to see how nice he was.

Dr. Glover: Yeah. Okay. The pre recovery, pre sobriety. It

Bill: would have just made you sick. All right, Marty, go ahead. You

Dr. Glover: got another question. What comes after? What's the sequel? Where does the project that you are, Robert where does it go from here? Oh, we're talking second order. I don't know. Life's so interesting. I've had a couple of near death experiences in the last six years, about six years ago, I got really sick. Nobody could figure out what was wrong. Doctors here in Mexico, doctors up in Seattle. Finally, a doctor here ran the right test, CAT scan. I had a tumor blocking my small intestine.

Dr. Glover: And he said, we got to remove that. Right now, they said that could rupture your small intestine. I said, give me 48 hours. Let me hide the porn But I will use that joke and people just try to laugh at that joke I just had to get everything lined up before I went into a Mexican hospital with a doctor I didn't know it was gonna open up my gut, right?

Dr. Glover: I survived it beautifully About a little over a year ago Kovat blew up my prostate won't go into details But I'd have prostate surgery after that Did the whole kind of rotor rooter process that they do. I've been fine ever since. You guys are, putting my age bracket and your mortality is, it's right, it's there, it's real.

Dr. Glover: Carlos Castaneda said, keep death here on your left side. Keep it close and, it seems like every book I've read over the last two or three years, doesn't matter if it's fiction, nonfiction, they've all been about death in some way or another. That's why I said, I'm starting to believe in fate.

Dr. Glover: And I've come to believe that every fiction writer must believe in fate, because they actually know the outcome of the protagonist and how everything's going to end up. So they must believe in fate. So anyway what about three years ago, coming up on three years ago, I thought, I think I'll take a little sabbatical and entertain the idea of semi-retired. I was about 65 at the time.

Dr. Glover: I just turned 68 last December. So I took about three months off in the summer. I had an rv that might've been before I bought the rv. I went camping anyway, and read books and relaxed and got done, there's some stuff out Still some things I want to get done. I want to convert all my courses into video courses I dove into that and then about right about three years ago a guy attending a workshop with me said Robert You should start a membership program for men And you should put all the material, all you've ever created into it.

Dr. Glover: I'd already been working on that idea as a possibility. I've got thousands of hours of content. Written Q& A, forums, video, just thousands of hours. And so we've spent the last three years putting all of that, transcribing everything, where everything can be searched with search engine, everything searchable for artificial intelligence.

Dr. Glover: And so this client said, you should have a men's, men's membership program. They said my wife has a sourdough bread membership program and she's made 750, 000 in the last two years. Wow, you're kidding me. So that sounds like a good idea. I'm swimming in deeper waters than I've ever swam in my life, just in terms of the business model.

Dr. Glover: But so the last three years we've been working on integration nation. I've got seven founding coaches that have worked with me along the way. The great tech team that's been with me for years. We now have several hundred men. We launched in July of 2023. And it's growing and the men just love it.

Dr. Glover: They're just loving it. We have up to nine calls a week they can jump on, all included in the membership price of it. We have a lot of, just a lot of goodies. And. And we're not even close to done. I have so many ideas. So here I am. It's 68 years old Where a lot of guys are retired thinking about retirement Thinking about you know playing a lot of golf and watching a lot of fox news and you know I'm going you know, what's next?

Dr. Glover: How do I build this? How do I, what kind of, consultants do I need to bring in to take this to the next level? And I'm so excited. I, of all these younger guys, I intentionally picked a lot of younger coaches to work with me because, odds are, I'll die before them.

Dr. Glover: And I wanted to leave, it's my legacy. I want to leave not only the content I've created, but I am such a believer that men perform at their best with other men. To have a tribe, to have a team, to just have connection with men. Going it alone, we don't survive. We don't do well. And so I'm just committed to building something that every man on this planet, if he wants to be in a men's program, he can come in.

Dr. Glover: We've got financial need scholarships. They can come in and pick their price point if they're in financial need. And I teach a lesson every Thursday on our calls. We have a call that I'm on every Thursday. We have breakout rooms, Q and a I, I mentioned I was a minister for eight years and I, for a long time that I liked being a preacher.

Dr. Glover: I did I liked teaching and I thought, but no church will ever hire me. 'cause I say, fuck too much . And I thought if I ever did ever become a minister again, I'd have to start my own church. Yeah. And it, or go to that church. It hasn't, skipped my awareness over the last few months that even though I didn't start my own church, I have started a movement in which I get to teach, and I get to talk about love, and I get to talk about men.

Dr. Glover: Loving themselves and opening the love and let and leveling up to the best version of themselves and living their best lives and so So what's next i'm in the middle of that so that's what i'm about these days a legacy of love That's what you're in the legacy of love. What a great way to put it.

Dr. Glover: That

Bill: is beautiful Okay, so i'm going to begin to wrap up. I dropped the name of the book you were looking for in chat there

Dr. Glover: There it is. John irving. He also wrote. World according to Garb. Oh, okay. I remember seeing that years ago. So yeah that, the book for Owen Meany good book, but it's about a guy that has a vision of his own death.

Dr. Glover: He doesn't know exactly the context of how he's gonna die, but he's seen enough of the details and the date. Yeah. That, that he knows how he's gonna die. And then, like I said, right after that, I read um, slaughterhouse Five again, I hadn't read that since high school. I, I. And, and this is a guy that actually can see all parts of his life.

Dr. Glover: Like he's watching a movie reel and he knows how he's going to die. And he's not upset because he can always go back in the reel and just start watching at some other point again. So you know, I'm, I keep watching this stuff and I'm thinking, okay, I don't know how I'm going to die, but I think maybe it's not time for me to die yet.

Dr. Glover: And maybe there's still some things that are on tap that are supposed to come out of me before. I hope you're right about that. It sure feels like there's a lot of life still in you for sure.

Bill: Yeah, I don't understand how you might be as inspired as you are and as inspired, frankly, as I am. I'm your age to Robert.

Bill: I'm 68 and I do feel like I'm just on the ramp to be, to take off.

Dr. Glover: I'm just, we're at our prime. If you think about it, if in prime in terms of the influence we can have on the world, we've been through it all. We've seen it all. We've tried it all. We've messed up, made all the mistakes.

Dr. Glover: And. We know how systems work. We know how people work. Who's at a better position to take a big message into the world? A 68 year old with vision and energy and passion? Or a 28 year old who's watched a lot of stuff on the internet? Yeah.

Bill: Here we go, Robert. I want to ask you a couple things.

Bill: One of them is you said you'd written a bunch of new books or some new books since No More Mr. Nice

Dr. Glover: Guy. What are they? I have, okay, they're all stacked right there behind me. Two dating books after my second divorce, I, in my late forties, early fifties, I got out in the single world, learned how to date and got successful enough that people asked me to teach them how to do it.

Dr. Glover: I'm not a dating guru, but I guess I am a relationship. So I've written two books on Dating Essentials for Men, and another book called Dating Essentials for Men FAQ, Frequently Asked Questions, that's taken from a forum that was attached to a court, the course of Dating Essentials for Men. That's actually my favorite book, the Dating Essentials for Men FAQ, because it's just to the point, about stuff that works and doesn't work, not just about dating, but just a lot about life.

Dr. Glover: And then there's another book in the stack that I co wrote with one of my coaches called The Big Stick, where I, I asked him a few years ago. I said, Tony, I got this crazy idea, and I said, I've got this crazy, I've got all this material, and I don't want to just die and everything end up in a Dropbox folder somewhere, and I, you know, that was before I had the idea, or, some bright guy gave me the idea to start this membership program and I said, Tony, I said, what do you think about I knew he was a good writer already, And I said, about taking all of my material and seeing if you can pull it into one book that makes sense.

Dr. Glover: And he goes, I've been thinking the same thing. That's a match made in heaven or hell. I'm not sure which. Yeah, there's fate. So anyway, the book's been out not quite a year. It's, it seems to be doing well. People tell me all the time. I've read no more. Mr. Nice guy six times and I just I'm halfway through the big stick and it is thick and we called it the big stick because Tony says, Robert, we just.

Dr. Glover: We just had a working title for a while, you, you coming out of recovery, I was calling it the big book just, but I know you can't really call it the big book because the big books, in 12 steps. But he said, Robert, how about we call it the big stick? Because you say all the time, I love working with men, because I can take out the big stick and whack them upside the head and get their attention.

Dr. Glover: And they go, Robert, thank you. That's the best thing that ever happened to me. So I said, I sat with it a while and said, you're right. I like it. Let's go with it. So it's the big stick. I'm so

Bill: relieved to find out that if when you recover from nice guy, you don't turn into an asshole. I've really enjoyed this conversation with you,

Dr. Glover: Robert, and you haven't seen the other parts of me that I keep hitting.

Dr. Glover: You're doing a

Bill: great performance. If that's what you're doing. I'm really enjoyed it. And I'm wondering if you'd be willing to say yes to us inviting you back again sometime. I would be happy to. Maybe we let this do for a few months and then have you back on the show again. Closing thoughts.

Bill: What would you like our audience to know? Our audience of leaders, potential, actual, seasoned, and brand new leaders. What would you like

Dr. Glover: them to know? kind of going Back to what, Martin was talking about really leadership is about you leading you and maybe I mean I'll give an analogy in relation.

Dr. Glover: I talked with men about Setting the tone and leading in their intimate relationships. And when I'm talking with guys often, they'll go. Okay, dr Glover, I understand you say take control. I got no You've never heard me use the word take control, you know I'm not going to tell you to go take control of your relationship take control of your girlfriend your wife your partner I can't I can barely control me let alone try to control anything.

Dr. Glover: That's way out of my control it's Byron Katie says, you need to ask, what was my problem, their problem, God's problem. Or as my wife, my, my dear Mexican wife says in Spanish no son mis changos, no es mi circo. Martin, do you speak enough Spanish? You know what I just said?

Dr. Glover: Yes, not my monkeys, not my circus. I'm not going to try to manage or control anything that's not in my ability to manage or control. But I tell the guys, true leadership and relationship, it might be setting the emotional tone. So if your wife's, gripey or, in a bad mood and you don't have to follow her down that emotional rabbit hole.

Dr. Glover: You can lift the emotional tone, you don't have to tell your wife we're gonna eat this or we're gonna do that You can say hey i'd love chinese tonight. Ask yourself. What do I want? What feels good to me? What would I like to do? You know if you're on the dance floor, I took salsa lessons for a few years the guys has to be constantly thinking ahead or how do I want to lead this person?

Dr. Glover: What do I want to do next? So it's not a control issue, but somebody has to show up And say, hey, let's try this. Somebody has to get the ball rolling. So whether it's leadership and relationship, it doesn't have to be the guy. But I found that in most situations, what I would just, and this is a whole new discussion, we can wait for another, the default masculine in the relationship with the masculine is the person who's most inclined to be the doer.

Dr. Glover: The feminine most inclined to be done too. And that can be man or woman, doesn't matter. But leadership is just. Leading self. Back to Martin's example, we're talking about corporations or businesses or other systems is if that person shows up and says, listen, I'm inspired, here's the direction I'm going.

Dr. Glover: Anybody want to tag along? Let's go do it. Let's get it done. And so that leadership begins with self. Lead self. And and, I don't know, Martin, if you're in, you're working on your book, if you came across Seth Gooden's book on tribes. But he talks in this good book, most of the good books are pretty easy reading But he just talks about people are just wanting leadership in their tribe and it's not in everybody Can fall into that role.

Dr. Glover: Everybody can fall into that role. And he said, we're all just craving, leadership in our tribe. So lead self because people can't follow where nobody's leading. That's right. Somebody's got to lead and people have something to follow. Robert.

Bill: We're moving right up against my hard stop. I'm one more question for

Dr. Glover: you If so, you're gonna ask another question, you should know better man.

Dr. Glover: You should know simple.

Bill: Let's see if you can keep it simple What is the website address to join your

Dr. Glover: men's group it is integrationnation.Net

Bill: Thanks so much for joining us. Dr. Glover author of no more. Mr. Nice guy We'll see you on the next episode that you show

Dr. Glover: up before. Thank you for the invitation.

Dr. Glover: We'll see you soon