Bill: Welcome to another episode of Not Your Typical Leadership coaching podcast. I'm Bill Tierney, and this is my partner, Marty Kettelhut, Martin Kettelhut. Thank you. Good to be here. Hey, today we're going to start out the episode in a slightly different way. We don't have a guest in person here, but we kind of have a guest author and we'd like to read, we'd like to start this episode out by Marty reading from chapter three of a wonderful book called Getting Real by Susan Campbell. And then we'll discuss some of the things that came up for me and come up for Marty when we read this story, we've been talking about doing some episodes around communication, communication skills, what gets in the way of good communication and that sort of thing. And so I just thought this would be a great way to start this series of conversations, was by reading the story.

Bill: So there he is.

Marty: The name of the chapter is Being Transparent, Freedom's Just Another Word for Nothing Left to Hide. Love it. It starts with this story. Jenny and Fred were having a dinner party for a few other couples to celebrate their 30th wedding anniversary. A lovely bottle of champagne was being poured and it was time for toasts. Fred lifted his glass, first to the guests and then to his smiling wife. The end.

Marty: I tried to do research on the internet for something inspiring having to do with 30 years, but all I find was this reference to the 30 years war. At that point, one of the other guests trying to rescue Fred interrupted the toast with another attempted humor.

Marty: So Fred never got to complete his thought. He was planning to talk about how rewarding his life with Jenny was, and how it had been in spite of a few skirmishes here and there, but he never got a chance to say what he planned. All Jenny could think was, he compares our marriage to the 30 years war?

Marty: She felt hurt. And had a hard time making eye contact with Fred as she sat there stunned, trying to be a good sport and enjoy her dinner. She realized she had a couple of options. She could ignore her feelings and fake it for the rest of the party, or she could speak up about her feelings. She decided to speak up.

Marty: Fred, I'm sitting here trying to tell myself that your comment comparing our marriage to the 30 years war was nothing to be upset by. But I'm noticing my heart is pounding. Me? I'm having trouble making eye contact with you. I don't want to carry this feeling for the entire evening. So in spite of the fact that this is our formal dinner party, I want to say I do feel very upset and angry, and I hope you can understand why.

Marty: A hush went over the couple's elegant dining room as the guests waited for Fred's response. After a brief pause, Fred, looking flustered and embarrassed, Did reply saying hey, I'm feeling really awful, too I feel how they must have come across to you those words, but I didn't get to finish my toast I was going to say that in spite of our occasional skirmishes.

Marty: We've had a pretty wonderful life all these 30 years I'm so sorry that hurt you The guests heaved a collective sigh of relief as Jenny gave Fred a warm smile and said, Wow, I feel better now. Thanks, Fred. Thanks, everyone.

Bill: Wow, the courage that took for her, huh? To speak up in that moment, can you imagine?

Marty: Mm hmm.

Bill: Yes. How frustrating it must have been for Fred. Probably nervous. I think in fact, she even writes that he was nervous about it in the 1st place.

Marty: Yeah, it's very powerful. Simple story, but very powerful. You know, just. One thing it shows is how, even though we can get very locked up in our communication, the solution is to keep being real. That's what she did.

Marty: She was like, wow, frankly, I'm not having fun in my own party. And it was because of this comparison. Our 30 years in the war. That's just what Fred needed is to give him the opportunity to get real himself and say, well, I didn't really finish saying what I wanted to say that also got thwarted.

Marty: So both got to be real. And when we're real, the real world is made out of love. It isn't made out of all these, insecurities and incompletions that we bring.

Bill: It's a great world is made out of love. That's a quotable right there, Marty. I love that. It's serious.

Bill: I think you're absolutely right. I think the water we drink, the food that we eat is made out of love. And if it's not, we get sick. But that's another thing .

Marty: I love the way that she expresses it too, this is about being transparent. If I get caught in my own communication, I know what there is to do is to just reflect out what's going on inside of me and that freedom that is provided by doing that.

Marty: It's just another word for nothing left to hide.

Bill: This reminds me of a couple of days ago, I was in a coaching conversation in a group. It was a small group, just me and 2 clients, but still I was working. We had an agreement where I was going to work with 1 client. And then, and for a fixed period of time, and then I was going to work with another client for a fixed period of time.

Bill: And as I was working with the first client, I was feeling the pressure of time coming to a close before the coaching session could. Yeah. Yeah. I'm usually pretty good at what I call speed work. We, given how much time we have to work with, let's see if we can address what the concern is here in coaching.

Bill: I'm feeling this pressure to come to help her to get her insights and get some understanding about what it is that she's struggling with a little bit. And so I asked her what she was getting from the conversation and she shared it with me. And so then I, when I reflected back what she had told me, I added my own insight that I wanted her to get.

Bill: Ah. And, and she said, well, not exactly. I said, okay, please help me understand more. She saw the direction that I was going with my goading, my, my trying to input my insight in for her and she brought some more clarity about it. So then I reflected that back. So what you're saying is, and then I did it again.

Bill: I inserted another version of my insight that I wanted her to get. You're not going to find in any reputable coach manual how to be a coach that you should incite your own. You should input your own insight for your client to get. Every client, every coach does at some point. And for me it just doesn't work very well.

Bill: A coaching client is going to do best when the coach believes in them. Of course. And when I, as a coach, insert my insight, because I, the message is, I don't believe you're capable of getting this yourself. So I'm just going to give it to you. That's not the message I want to convey, but there was a part of me that thought, okay, I have an opportunity to wrap up the session, get it all done, give her the insights, give gift, wrap it for her, put a bow on it, send her away.

Bill: So I can now go to the other client. I feel a little embarrassed as I admit that right now, but that's what happened. And even more embarrassed to tell you that I went one more round with her doing exactly the same thing. And finally, when she said something like, no, it's not exactly like that or however she responded, she was kind.

Bill: She was very generous in her responses and very honest. She I'm so glad that she didn't have a part of her that wanted to please me. She wasn't trying to displease me, but she also wasn't willing to agree with me just to make me feel better So i'm so grateful for that and she said no it's not exactly that either So I said, oh, you know what?

Bill: I just realized is that I brought an agenda into this conversation just now I want to apologize for that I'm going to ask that part of me that wants to bring that agenda if it can just relax and allow me to be here With you She said oh good. Thanks. Don't worry about it and so then I just listened You

Bill: And when I reflected back, I just reflected back what she had told me and what I understood about what she told me.

Bill: And she said, yeah, that's it. That's exactly it. And then I said, well, so what are you getting from this? And then blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. She gives me half a dozen insights that I hadn't even seen myself. It's amazing. It's incredible.

Marty: So there are a couple of things that I just want to keep parking in the margin here that get in the way though, in the story Fred wanted to do a really good job.

Marty: Of the toast and so he was nervous and then when somebody interrupted him he didn't want to continue to flub up so he let it go and didn't express all that there was to express Jenny. She was sitting on my ass do I disrupt this joyous occasion to say, I don't feel good about what just happened.

Marty: So there's another thing that can get in the way, right? It's just, well, I don't think it's appropriate, or I don't want to upset the Apple card or something like that. And in your case, what was it?

Bill: The agenda to punch it to pack a lot of power and punch into the coaching session and do it in this fixed amount of time. And

Marty: you see, these are all really legitimate things. Like I want to do a good job. I don't want to upset people. I want to get it done in a time that those are all great motivations, right?

Marty: So nobody was bad

Bill: here. Oh, no, no. And I didn't interestingly, until you said that just now, I hadn't really thought about that, but I didn't feel shame around any of that. I was delighted to recognize as quickly as I did what I was doing and do a quick repair on it. And which, fortunately, I didn't, hadn't caused enough damage or a breach of trust when I was doing those things.

Bill: For this woman to lose her trust in me and then be triggered off into a different direction.

Marty: Yeah, but that is, I think, you know, where, like, that's the difference between these two conversations, Jenny and Fred's and yours and your clients. And what normally happens is we go down these tunnels of shame and other thoughts than the ones that we want to make transparent and then, the communication is lost.

Marty: Now, we're not connected. We're not communicating. But what you did to turn it around and what Jenny and Fred did to turn it was to just get transparent.

Bill: That's exactly right. That's the word I wrote down here, transparency. And the opposite of that, of course, is withholding.

Bill: And hiding. I'm going to manage this myself. It's going to stay inside here. That means that I need to invest energy into pretending like everything's okay.

Bill: That'll cause a disconnect every time. By the way, my understanding about why this is so important, this, meaning good communication, is so important is because poor communication causes disconnection.

Bill: Good communication causes good communication. Good connection or communication, disconnection, good communication, connection, and communication, commune, community, all the same base word. We have to be able to communicate well to be in community and we need community in order to feel like we belong, to feel safe, to support each other, to, and to love and be loved back to what you were saying.

Bill: The real world is made out of love. We can't. Express and receive love if communications have broken down and we have misunderstandings about each other.

Marty: Yeah. Yeah. I had a very touchy conversation with a friend last night who is Jewish. She lives in the United States and she was calling in on her Facebook profile for people to rally behind Israel right now, because of this terrorist group within the Palestinian world called Hamas has attacked brutally attacked Israelis.

Marty: And so she was like, we need to be pro Israel. Israel, no, sorry, pro Jewish. Why do they, sorry, the other way around. She was like, why do they hate us Jews? We need to be pro Jewish. And I said, I had to get transparent. I was like, well, honestly, I don't like Israel's policies. I can understand why.

Marty: Palestinians would feel trapped. The Gaza people, they're like, just in jail, basically, in the open air. And so I'm not about to just be pro that. No, I don't think that their terrorist group should have attacked Israel, but they didn't do it out of the blue. There's a dynamic here that's not all on one side or the other.

Marty: We have to be open and transparent about. Each side's needs. We can't just like black one out and white the other or vice versa. That didn't go over really well with her, but I said what I needed to say.

Bill: Wow. I'm imagining Martin that took a lot of courage to speak that in the space that she was, that she opened up

Marty: for that kind of thing. One thing that helped was that I didn't raise my voice. I was very just, well, look, here's look, it's like that, just a normal conversational tone, even with sort of some curiosity in it in the tone.

Marty: Like, well, how would this be right like that. That speaks to the power of transparency. You don't have to be louder or more forceful or anything. Just reveal what's really going on and say the truth and you're you don't have to raise your voice. Yeah.

Bill: This your story just really piques a lot of curiosity within me.

Bill: Can I start asking you some questions about your experience? Sure. You had to know that that was going to come in hot for her, or did you? Yes, I did. I did. What happened inside, knowing it was probably not going to land well with her?

Bill: What did happen?

Marty: Before she responded as I was,

Bill: even as you anticipated, you recognize I have an unpopular opinion here. Yes. Yeah. And if I express it, something's going to happen, it might get hot in here, be able to receive it well, I'm imagining you talked about. Going down these holes. I think of rabbit holes, and I imagine that they split off in a million different directions, and that's why we get lost in them.

Bill: So I'm imagining in your mind, you're thinking, well, I either hold this back and then just have to endure and tolerate this situation and survive it. Right. Or I say what's on my mind and risk conflict and upsetting somebody. Right.

Marty: Yes. That

Bill: happened for you.

Marty: Yeah. I felt my head get hot. Yeah. As I chose to move forward, I let Roots grow into the ground, you know, like I'm not going to be, I'm not going to be shaky on this.

Marty: I'm going to be rooted, cool and rooted. And did you stay cool and rooted through the entire conversation? Most of the time there were, there was one moment when she used the word anti Semitic and I got, my dander went up. Like, Don't call me anti-semitic. That's not what's going on here. But I stayed, I stayed cool, but I felt it.

Marty: I definitely felt the fire. Mm hmm.

Bill: And then was this a telephone conversation? I think that you said? Oh, it was on Skype. Okay. Oh, so like almost face to face. You could see her face and she could see yours. She could see how hot your head is getting.

Marty: Mm hmm.

Bill: Maybe. I don't know. So how did it end? How did the conversation end?

Marty: She said she understood where I was coming from and she just thought that now is not the time that right now what was proper and was a, you know, we go bomb the heck out of those people, that's and so I just left that there then.

Bill: Yeah, you both knew where you don't have where she stood she knew where you did.

Bill: Yeah. Yeah.

Marty: That's why we left it.

Bill: That's such a great example. For me, I've got such people pleaser parts.

Bill: I have been trained through my entire life practically, not so much in recent years, but, so much of the foundation of my life was built around how do I continue to maintain the support that I somehow have managed to trick people into give me, what can I do to please them or to avoid displeasing them so I don't lose their favor?

Bill: And those. Beliefs and that conditioning has to be overcome to some degree every single time I'm called upon to have a difficult conversation Yeah, me too.

Marty: Me too. This friend and I have a history of having knocked down, dragged out arguments and coming back and hugging each other afterwards.

Marty: So I guess I had a little confidence going in, but oh, I totally identify with you. I was in my family of origin. That was one of the only tools I had to survive some of the difficult what felt like life threatening situations. Okay, how can I get mom and dad to be happy?

Bill: Well, I think the book, Adult Children of Alcoholics, written by Janet Woititz might be, have been the first time that I saw the different roles in families defined. It was the Lost Child. The scapegoat. The hero. That's right. Which one is the chameleon? She had a different name, but the one that just changes colors, depending on the environment.

Bill: For me, that's I was a combination of the hero and the chameleon, whatever the name that for that was. I was the people pleaser or the outcast. So that's an especially scapegoat. Tell me about the outcast.

Marty: I just run and hide like I'm not a part of this. I'm going to take it to mean that I shouldn't be here.

Marty: I'm going to get away. So hero. I think Janet

Bill: Woititz hits what it called that lost child.

Marty: Okay. Lost child. Very good. Yeah. Yeah.

Bill: In the ACA program, that's really a lot of what we talk about. I haven't been involved in ACA for several years, but was quite, for quite a while there. And we talked a lot about the roles that we played and what IFS, Internal Family Systems, has helped me to understand at a far deeper level is why we took on those roles in the first place, what they were designed to accomplish, and what's at stake for those parts of us that influences to feel, think and act and choose that way.

Bill: So that all comes into communication when a younger part of myself, it's still stuck in the past steps in to communicate in my adult relationships. Coming across as a child, when I'm a 68 year old man, who's being asked to coach people.

Marty: Exactly.

Bill: So I've got a huge responsibility to stay in my adult wise.

Bill: Fully resourced self, rather than let my kids, my, my internal kids take over. Yeah.

Marty: Yeah. You're looking for it. You were looking around there. Well, I have a, there's a story I tell in my book about, and I just wanted to remember all the details, but it's another example of where transparency was the resolution of a communication problem.

Marty: And what the way it went was

Marty: a friend had a wedding in town and one of her best friends flew all the way from France to be at the wedding. She had to leave her sick mom to do it. And I said something, that was noble of you or some word like that. I use and Jenny, who is getting married.

Marty: This is a different Jenny said expletive nobility. She was upset for some reason I didn't know and didn't like seeing me giving these compliments to her friend. I had no idea what the dynamic was, but it really, it upset me that she was, you know, just like smashing me down. And I recognized like, okay, first of all, there's trouble already in the water and I'm very triggered right now.

Marty: And so I stood up. Very peacefully. And I said, I think I need to go take a little break. I'll be back in a few minutes. Everything's fine. And I just left and

Marty: went in the other room and just like steam coming out of my ears and blah, blah, blah. And realize, okay, this really isn't about me. She can say whatever she wants about the word I used to compliment her friend.

Marty: None of that is really relevant here. I need to go back in the room and find out what's going on between these 2 friends before the wedding. She was the maid of honor for Jenny. And so I came back in the room all chill. And I was just like, whoa, what just happened? You guys. Why was that word?

Marty: So triggering? What is going on under the surface here? So that was me solving for my own upset. Like, okay, I got to be transparent here. I'm triggered. I got to get out of the room and solve that before it can be of service. Yeah. Beautiful.

Bill: Terry real and his book, us use this terminology.

Bill: Your wise adult recognized your adaptive child was upset. Who took him by the hand into the other room, calmed him down, put him in the back seat and you took the driver's seat again. And you can't make, you went back as that wise adult. Of course as the coach that you are, and you employed some of the skills that you had and how did that go by the way, when you said, what was that, what happened?

Bill: What's the dynamic here?

Marty: They realized, Oh my gosh they both had pent up stuff and I sat there and while I didn't have to say another word, the two of them, they love each other and that they knew they could see that they needed to talk. I had called on them to do so.

Marty: And so they did and they, they ironed it out. Oh, it's beautiful. Beautiful. What a great story.

Bill: Another word that I wrote down as you were reading this story from Susan Campbell's book getting real was acknowledgement. And I guess it just goes right hand in hand with transparency, but also acknowledging as you did in your story just now, the story where you, you left, helped your adaptive child to calm down.

Bill: Reentered the room as the wise adults, and then just acknowledged something just happened here, helped me to understand what it was. When I was I want to say 10, 11 years old living in Topeka, Kansas. My parents were in the habit of over drinking often.

Bill: My older sister was two years older, so that's about right age wise.

Bill: I think that they started leaving us along with the younger kids when I was about 11 and my sister was 12 and 13 years old. And then they'd be gone till 2 o'clock in the morning, 3 o'clock in the morning. And we'd all be in bed, but I can't speak for my siblings, but I was never asleep. I was just waiting for them to be home. And this particular night they came home and the predictable things happened. They always were angry and fighting when they got home. And often there was physical, slapping and hitting going on. And so I'm in my bed, I'm listening to this happening. And of course I'm fearful, I'm scared, I'm angry at dad, I'm angry at mom, blaming them both for all of this horrendous stuff going on.

Bill: And then one of them I hear fall down the stairs. And then after they had fallen down the stairs, I hear this horrendous crash, glass breaking, and then everything grew silent. And, um, I mean, just silent and, and no other noise, hardly any other noise was made. Just enough noise for me to know there were two sets of footsteps still moving around in the house

Bill: so I stayed in my room. And the next morning, I got up, went downstairs, and the picture window at the bottom of the stairs was completely busted out into the driveway outside. The glass was still out there. I looked around, there wasn't any blood anywhere. I felt relief, picked up the glass, put it all in the garbage.

Bill: Eventually mom and dad get up the next morning. Nobody says a word. Nobody said a word about what happened last night.

Bill: My sister, 13. Me, 11. My brother, Stan, 9. My sister, Cindy, 8. My sister, Angel, 3, I think. We all knew something happened. Mom and Dad knew something happened. Nobody acknowledged it. Nobody said a word. So we got to make up what happened. And we also got to make up what it all meant. that's the dysfunction and the source of it for so much of the communication that I learned how to have and not have.

Bill: And so it's always both scary, the reason nobody said a word was because all hell would have broken loose if we had. Yeah. Yeah. When someone acknowledges the truth, there's still parts of me that get scared.

Bill: And when nobody acknowledges the truth, all of my parts feel anxiety. Yeah. Right.

Bill: No connection there. Nothing but disconnection. No community, no belonging, no safety, acknowledgement, transparency, safety, belonging, connection.

Marty: Those, that's what creates a context for powerful communication is the presence of those things that were absent then.

Bill: That's right. And I just want to acknowledge to speaking with acknowledgement that there are circumstances that where it's not safe to acknowledge the truth and what's going on and great wisdom in not acknowledge.

Bill: Yeah, that's right. And I would just encourage and I do with my clients. I encourage anyone that's in a situation like that where it's not safe to acknowledge the truth. Consider changing their environment if they can. Right. Right. I didn't mean to get all

Marty: dark and, and, uh, no, that's, it's really good. It's a, it's a excellent example of what we're talking about here.

Bill: Yeah, I just landed. It just stirred up that memory. Something you said as we were talking about this stirred up that memory that's what happened. And I've been doing this internal work for long, long enough now. I consider the inner work that I've been doing at the level that I've been doing it to have begun about 2021 years ago, even though I've been on personal

Bill: development path for 40, 41 years now. It's only been in the last 21 years. Now that probably seems like a long, long time to somebody that's 30 years old, but I'm still a kid. I'm 68 years. And so for the last 21 years, I've been doing deep, deep personal work and therapy and personal private work and that sort of thing.

Bill: Lots of healing using the IFS model for myself, learning how to use it to help others. Now it's a little easier, a lot, in fact, a lot easier for me to find the puzzle pieces that fit together. Here I am in my life having this experience right now. Oh, that fits with this puzzle over here from 60 years ago.

Marty: Yeah. Yeah.

Bill: And it's helpful. It's helpful to see that too. In a way, it's an update for those parts of me that that still think it's 1967. That's right. That's right.

Marty: Well, I'm thinking something I said earlier. Toward the beginning about how Jenny and Fred's motivations were pure.

Marty: Yours was pure and so it's it made it seem simple to just be transparent. But I want to acknowledge that there are times when you look at, like, why the communication is happening, it's because you're harboring a judgment or a criticism or, that you're trying to control the other person or something that is totally, clean and clear.

Marty: And to get transparent might not be as easy in those cases, but it is the way home.

Bill: I want to suggest that when you got up in your story at the wedding, when you got up and said, I need to take a little break here or whatever you said. Yeah. That was transparency. You didn't say, I'm really hurt right now.

Bill: I can't believe you would talk to me that way. What are you guys doing? This is a wedding. She traveled all the way from France. You didn't say anything. What's going on? Seinfeld might say, what's up with that? No, you instead, what you did was you said, I need to take a little break and you went to the other room.

Bill: That is transparency. Yes. It's responsible transparency.

Marty: You didn't say,

Bill: I, I think that you're blah, blah, blah. That's not transparency. That's another layer of hiding right there when we focus on what the other person did to make us feel this way, we need to do a U turn. And in order to do that U turn, which is a term that I learned in my IFS training, many times we need to pause.

Bill: And get ourselves out of the boiling water so that we can really see now what's going on in here And that the ability to actually go inside and look as you did And calm yourself that quickly and come back out with such wisdom with one question that allowed these two to connect That was amazing. It was amazing.

Bill: And it's very hard to do when what's going on over here is I have judgment I have an agenda. I have fear I have anxiety

Bill: Or just lack of understanding like confusion. Yeah. Like, what the hell just happened? Yeah. Yeah. So 1 of the things that those of us that are IFS enthusiast and that now we speak IFS to each other what many times we'll do is we'll say, like, I told you in that session from the 1 client where I had a part of me that was trying to figure it all out.

Bill: And insert my insights so that she would gain more power and value from the session, is I'll just own it and own that I have a part that's influencing me in this particular way. Those of us in IFS get that. And there's something great about that. Like, I could say, if this were true, Marty, I might say to you, I, I'm really pissed off at you right now.

Bill: That's going to land a lot differently than if I were to say, wow, I just noticed a part of me. That is feeling angry towards you right now. Yeah I'm gonna spend some time with that part before we continue this conversation much different, isn't it?

Marty: Yeah, but we should and but it's stuff we got to practice at to the way you set up that conversation reminded me of 1, I had a couple of nights ago with a friend.

Marty: She said something that just. Distracted me and kept talking, telling her story and I was thinking about the distracting piece. And so when she got to the end of the story and was looking for my response, I said, I'm sorry, I got distracted way back when you said that. That was being transparent.

Marty: And it allowed her to go back and retell the story. But, you know, so we need to be practicing like watching our own mind and being transparent about what's going on in it. That's one of the best ways to clean it up and get clear and back in your power. By far,

Bill: It is the best way that developing that ability to go inside and get curious about what am I experiencing right now, what's going on in here and doing, and then learning ways to be with whatever's going on in there so that we can come back into presence again. Yeah, I want to I guess we'll probably need to begin to wrap up a little bit now we've been at this for about a half an hour, but if I could I want to read you something from an article that I just posted to my blog. It's almost exactly what you just said.

Bill: This is a dialogue in this article You

Bill: Between two people, Bob and Rose. Let me read a little bit to you. In this article, I'll address how to stay connected in a conversation. Let's explore how easily disconnection can happen by eavesdropping on Bob and Rose, two corporate executives trying to navigate a difficult situation.

Bill: Hmm? Bob: and that's why I think we should start in production. Rose: silence. Bob: did you hear what I said? Rose: yes, I heard you. Bob: well? Rose: I heard you, but you lost me about 10 minutes ago when you started talking about profit, the profit and loss statement. Bob: well, that's what we're here for, right? We need to improve profits.

Bill: Rose: yes, of course. It's just. Bob: what? Rose: I was thinking about all the people, the layoffs are going to hurt. Bob: frustrated. You obviously haven't looked at the P& L lately. We, if we don't do something, we're all going to be out of jobs. Yeah, that was not very good communication was it?

Bill: Now when she said you lost me about ten minutes ago as you did that's great Right, but what happened there?

Marty: Well, Bob is just, I'm making a point and you've got to get it period. That's all he's one dimensional.

Bill: Exactly. So what could Rose have done in that situation? So, so let me just, let's just hear from you first.

Bill: And then I want to read you what I wrote about that. What could Rose have done in that situation? She already did say, you lost me 10 minutes ago. Mm-Hmm. . Mm-Hmm. . But there's a way maybe where she didn't have to get lost 10 minutes ago.

Marty: I can think of a number of things. Let's hear one.

Marty: Yeah. If it's transparency, then I, if I were in her shoes, I might say, look, I'm hearing what you're saying, but I'm not sure that you're hearing what I'm saying. Mm-Hmm. . Mm-Hmm. . Yeah. Or, okay. I'll say yes, so that you can stop trying to put that point through and then could we have a conversation about this?

Marty: That's something I might say. Right,

Bill: right. So here's, here's what I wrote. Bob: by laying off 10 percent of the workforce, and we're picking up in the conversation in a different way now, kind of moving back in time, by laying off 10 percent of the workers, we can save enough to show a profit in quarter three.

Bill: Rose: Bob, before we dive into the math, can we pause to talk more about the layoffs? Bob. Oh, sure. I'm listening. So that's one way. I could have done something different there too. So Bob: sure. I'm listening. Rose says, I'm really upset that this is our own solution, our only solution. I'm concerned about our employees and their families, and I'm worried about the impact this will have on our company culture. Bob says. Well, do you have some other ideas about how to respond to this downturn in business?

Bill: And Rose says, no, not yet. But are you open to talking about it? Let's, I think we should try to find another way. That's a different open, more open conversation. Yes, very much. And one more thing real quickly, what Bob could have done, but so let's pick it up in the middle of the conversation. Again, Bob says, next, I want to take a look at the profit and loss statement, but I want to give you a chance to weigh in on this first.

Bill: And Rose says, Oh, well, thanks, Bob. I'm not sure I would have spoken up, but now that you've asked, I'm going to have a hard time staying focused right now. I'm pretty upset about these layoffs. Bob says, well, let's talk about that. Tell me more. So I, I love these kinds of explorations and having lots of fun with it because they're so important.

Bill: So, so, so important. Coming from. You know, I gave you a little snapshot of the background I come from in my very violent alcoholic childhood. And so I didn't come into my adult life prepared to have meaningful connected conversations with people. Didn't have a clue how to, in fact, I was so scared that I could barely finish a sentence, let alone put together a paragraph.

Bill: And it's taken me years to be able to develop communication. So I'm excited about it. You too.

Marty: Me too. Yeah. Yeah. But just to leave the conversation in a good place and, you know, not that it's not in a good place, but I think that

Marty: there's more trouble. Down the lane of trying to cover up the, and then to just spill the beans, be transparent and then, attend to what just happened. Yeah. Even if spilling the beans causes trouble, even if it's less trouble than you'll have, if you, you know, try and keep this pretense going.

Bill: We're assuming, of course, that we're in a, we're in an environment that is safe enough to do that.

Bill: There are environments where it's abusive. And that's right, that's right enough to do that. That's not what we're talking about here this we're talking about in the course of everyday life in a relationship with your spouse or partner or kids or at work with your boss out on this, wherever you are. On the floor of Congress?

Bill: Yeah. Wouldn't that be nice, huh? To wrap up, one of the things that I'd like to say is that, that one of the most impactful and important things that I've learned in the last couple of years about communication came out of a course that I took, which is a protocol for the IFS model called Intimacy from the Inside Out.

Bill: IFIO. And one of the basic fundamental principles of that is that when two people are communicating, they each should be playing two roles. One is listener and one is speaker. That's not happening. It's called a lecture. If that's not happening, it's a monologue and that's not communication. That's information.

Bill: So as listener, I have a responsibility and that responsibility is to listen in such a way that I can understand my agenda, my motive. As I'm listening is, I want to understand what this person is saying to me. Listen to understand. As a speaker, my responsibility is to speak in such a way that it can be understood.

Bill: And that entails a lot we could do an entire episode just about those two ideas And maybe we should do that next time Any final words before we say goodbye on this episode?

Marty: No,

Bill: um, thank you. Thank you for listening Yeah, thanks. Thanks for listening and join us again for the next episode, which hopefully will end up being Those two points that I just made Speak to be understood listen to understand.

Bill: Let's do it. Sounds great. Thanks Marty.