Bill: Hi, Marty. Hey, Bill. How you doing? Doing good. Have been enjoying our conversation so far and I wanted to hit record before we got into some real meaty stuff and then try to, I don't wanna have to try to repeat something that came as an inspiration. I wonder if other podcasters do

Marty: it like this too.

Marty: Like we just start talking and then it hits one of us. You better press record. We're taught, you know, .

Bill: Right, right, right. I wanted to get a little bit of ahead of it this time we've established a topic. And as soon as I heard it from you, I thought, yes, we need to talk about that.

Bill: I don't have any notes. I haven't really prepared. We haven't done any research. The topic is how to connect deeply with someone you disagree with. So I want to know Marty, what inspired that as a topic? Why did you bring that up?

Marty: I'm confronted by this

Marty: often these days, we live in a time and maybe there have been many of these times where people are very divided and the way we are taught to think encourages that division. just seems like when I was younger, like, there were Republicans and Democrats voting for things and Republicans and Democrats voting.

Marty: It seems like there was more. Like it depended on the issue and like what would really, you know, make a difference and all wasn't really so. Oh, my gosh, if you're on the red side don't say anything blue. And if you're on the blue side, don't say anything. And if you do, then you're disowned. I was it wasn't so starkly divided.

Marty: And so that's my answer is I feel it every day.

Bill: It's the political environment that you're feeling it from.

Marty: There's a sophistication that that it feels like it's not that we're not capable of it, but we're not using our capacity right now to differentiate to just to distinguish more so that we can move forward.

Marty: But it's just like, if you say one thing that I disagree with, then I'm not talking to you. That's it's. That's why there's such a stalemate. I think.

Bill: You use the word capacity. That might be a place to build the conversation around.

Bill: At least a part of

Marty: it.

Bill: You and I have talked, I think a little bit about when I think of capacity, I think of a five gallon bucket representing 100 percent capacity, In any given area or just in my life in general, and that can be represented by this empty five gallon bucket.

Bill: But if there's anything in the bucket that remains that that's incomplete a run result from the past that takes up uses some of the capacity that otherwise I would have access to and so I wonder if, as long as we're talking about the political environment as the catalyst for this conversation.

Bill: Do you

Marty: disagree?

Bill: No, I don't disagree. It feels dangerous to have a conversation with someone that doesn't see the same color as I do. Yeah. Yeah, red or blue. It seems like there's a lot at stake and there's almost for me like a built in resistance to having those kinds of conversations because I have the sense that it's going to require a lot of my remaining capacity.

Bill: And if I deplete what I have left to work with, I won't have anything left for what I really want to be talking about really want to be engaged in. To answer your question. Yes, I can relate.

Marty: I like that analogy. It's very useful because you can have the bucket because you can see how like if we if you get empty some of that bucket, there'd be more room right to face

Marty: confrontations or complexities and I want to also bring in the other way that to use the word capacity, it's Something we have. It's something you're gifted with to be able to do like you have the capacity to run. You have the capacity to write code.

Marty: You have the different capacities in this way. And so I think It's important to know that we do have the capacity. We have the ability right to have an even keeled conversation with somebody who doesn't agree with us.

Bill: Yeah. Yeah, there's 2 definitions and both really apply here. 1 is capacity as ability, and 1 is capacity as bandwidth.

Bill: Yes. Right. There's better words to use, but those will work for now. Yeah.

Marty: I wanted to bring up ability, because and they're both valid in this instance or maybe in every instance, but my point is think it's important to know there is a place to go inside you to connect with that person who you find. So obnoxious. Thanks. There is a place to go inside where you can connect to them.

Bill: There is a place and there is a skill set too.

Bill: Mm hmm.

Bill: Mm hmm. We defer back to our previous podcast episode on agreement that, that will inform that skill set quite a bit.

Bill: Right. Right. Exactly. Let's set up a scenario. What was the name of the movie? I think it was called Don't Look Up. Mm hmm. Did you see the movie? I did not, but I heard of it. Yeah. So the premise is, there's an asteroid that's coming towards the planet. And at first everybody denies that it's going to come anywhere near the planet.

Bill: Yeah, it's up there. It's coming in this direction, but it's not going to hit the planet. I mean, I may be getting this wrong, but this is, this is what I remember about it. And, but because if everybody knew that the asteroid was going to hit the planet, and it's not completely known yet whether it will, then everything's going to fall apart.

Bill: People are going to stop caring about what they look like and care a lot more about what they're going to do in their last couple of months of being alive on the planet. So, it becomes political. Like a binary political party the system and one, one system says, don't look up, just don't look up, don't worry about it.

Bill: And the other system says, yeah, we better look at it. We got to deal with this. And the predominant feeling is don't look up. And if you do look up, then you're the one that's the problem. If you're going to acknowledge what's true, you're a problem because look, what's going to happen to the economy. People are going to get really upset if they think that an asteroid is going to destroy the earth.

Marty: Right.

Bill: Right. I don't know if that's good enough or a useful metaphor for this conversation or not, but let's, let's just play with it and see if it's possible. I'm holding the position of don't look up, Marty. Don't look up. We, yeah, I know you've heard these rumors that there's an asteroid that's going to hit the earth, but what good does it do to look at it and to face the truth?

Bill: Now that would be a difficult conversation for you and I to have unless we have an agreement about how we're going to have this conversation. What kinds of agreements would keep us connected? As bizarre as what you just heard me say is.

Bill: And didn't it land as bizarre? Yes.

Bill: Yeah. If you imagine the real scenario, there's an asteroid coming toward the earth and the policy is just don't look in the sky, then you won't see the asteroid.

Marty: When they were making the movie, I, weren't they making an an analogy to our burying our heads in the sand regarding climate change.

Bill: Well, that was part of it. Yeah. And many, many other things that reflected the current political talk about it. Just don't talk about it. Right. Right.

Marty: Don't upset the Koch brothers. Right.

Bill: Right. And, and I think what was going on when that movie was being made was COVID, you know, COVID is not really happening.

Bill: Yeah. Oh, right. Right. You don't have to, you don't have to wear masks and you just certainly don't have to get vaccinated. And it's all a hoax. It's all a hoax. Right. So that, that was the environment that was going on then. Okay. Right. When this movie was made and, and it was really hard to watch the movie and not draw direct correlation to the, to the major players that were filling the roles of the authorities that were pitching these different ways to approach the, the

Bill: emergency pandemic.

Marty: One of the things that I'm finding lately that's helpful is to really maybe this is totally obvious but to to like really get totally in the skin of the person that I disagree with, like, just to give them the benefit of doubt the compassion. I really want to understand and feel why you think what you think.

Marty: And so explain it to me, take me back, take me into the interstices of where you got this crazy notion. Right. I want to feel what

Bill: you feel. Right. Right, by the way, crazy notion probably is not a very warm invitation for me to open up to you, but I get it.

Marty: Exactly. Well said. Yes, of course. Right. Hey, but I mean, I was listening to a senator talk in a YouTube video the other night, and you know, somebody who I completely disagree with and I just, I kept listening and I was like, Oh, I'm starting to see how he wouldn't be able to make any sense of what I think because of his background, because of his priorities, because of Where his family's money comes from because of his neighbor, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, like, wow, like, we do, in a sense, live in overlapping worlds, but different and so then it gave me a new place to start out to have a conversation like, okay I've been trying to cloak the whole, the actual content, but I'm going to bring it out.

Marty: I was thinking about the new Speaker of the House. I'm a gay person and he's, he thinks I'm the scourge of the earth. I'm like, I'm not and I was like, really listening. If he and I were to go to a seminary together and talk to people who read, study the Bible, and that we really got into what does Paul actually say in those letters to the Romans, and what was his point?

Marty: I think we could, you know, we could get somewhere where it might not be what I want him to think. It might not be what he wants me to think. That would be a place where, because we both read the Bible.

Bill: He's coming from he's basing his position on what Paul had to say in the Bible. Yeah.

Marty: Yeah.

Bill: I see.

Bill: That's why you make good reference to the Bible.

Marty: Okay. And Paul Paul says, look, you know, as because Rome was the Roman Empire was spreading and Paul said as you go conquer these new people, don't rape and pillage and, Give me a word right now. Sodomize them. Exactly.

Marty: Right. That's one of the main passages that people use to say, you see, Jesus was against homosexuality and it's not a clear message at all.

Bill: Yeah, not, no, not, not at all. There's plenty of arguments to be made around I'm sure all of those positions now you've introduced, we're talking about politics, by the way, when I was hired for my very first real job what I will call my real first real job where I had was a W2 employee and I wasn't paid under the table. I was 17 years old and I went to work for a grocery chain in Great Falls, Montana. And I remember part of my orientation was Bill, what they didn't understand about me is I don't talk at all, but they said, Bill, we don't talk about politics and we don't talk about religion and we don't talk about sex with our customers.

Bill: Politics, religions, those are two, those are really hot topics. People hold a lot of really polarized positions and opinions about those things. And we don't want to stand in opposition to our customers. We want to serve our customers. So if you hear someone bringing up a political conversation, a religious conversation, or a sexual conversation, conversation, no matter where you are on the topic.

Bill: We don't talk about that while you're on the clock and working for us and representing because you're a representative of this company. So that's really ingrained in me. I really liked that a lot because one of the reasons I never talked to anybody was because conversations got so, so dangerous so quickly for me.

Bill: Even having a difference of an opinion, given my background and my childhood, that's a real dangerous thing to do. So I loved those rules and those guidelines in the grocery store. And here now, you and I are talking about, and already we've talked about sex, autonomy. We've talked about politics. The Republicans and the Democrats, and we've talked about religion, the Bible, these are dangerous topics.

Bill: These are all topics that people, and I'm not being critical of this at all. I'm glad that we are having a conversation. I'm just saying, these are topics that can make it very difficult to stay connected because it's easy to deeply disagree.

Marty: Right. And, and what I'm, all I'm saying is, it's. It's an example of where, I love the Bible.

Marty: He loves the Bible. Let's talk about the Bible. That's where we could have, you know, we could actually sit down and connect. There's a lot of other issues here. Church and

Bill: state. Why is that hard to do? Why would it be hard for you and another human being who holds a different opinion about what the Bible means and what it has to say?

Bill: Why would that be a problem? What do you anticipate would come up if you attempted to do that?

Marty: Well, what I anticipate is that it would get relativized. Truth isn't truth, Giuliani's thing, you read, you interpret it differently in there, near the twain shall meet. That's what I anticipate would happen.

Bill: Couple of episodes ago, we talked about listening to understand and speaking to be understood.

Bill: You remember that?

Marty: Yeah.

Bill: What if that was the agreement? What if prior to opening up the Bible or the topic about the Bible or whatever it is that So inflammatory.

Marty: I mean, What I imagine is that if I had if Mike Johnson, I were to have this conversation that, you know, he would see.

Marty: And I would see places where we both are like inconsistent on and and the explanation for that would be something personal, something from his background, you know, and something from my background, and then we'd be able to, it would be, there would be more understanding then.

Bill: So what do you think? I mean, if two people in good faith.

Bill: Could make a commitment going into a conversation like that, despite the fact that there's deep differences in opinion, could two people stay connected if they agree to listen, to understand and speak to be understood. Yeah. I mean,

Marty: I, I have clients that bring evidence of this back to me all week long, you know, they have to, they, they come to me and they're like, I have to have this conversation with somebody.

Marty: And I think we just contradictory contradict each other. And I'm like, well give him a full listening, try and get totally in his world and understand where he's coming from, ask if you can do the same, and amazingly, yeah, people come back and say, yeah, we found middle ground.

Marty: We found a way forward together.

Bill: And when that works well, middle ground doesn't especially mean compromise. Nice. And compromise doesn't especially mean like giving in.

Marty: Right.

Bill: Common ground means understanding, and now we have a completely different context around which we can build a conversation.

Bill: And that can happen if people can, in good faith, number one, make a commitment to that, that intention. I'm going to communicate with you in a way that has me understanding you and has me speaking in a way where you, you have the possibility of understanding me. In other words, I'm not going to incite a reaction out of you and at the same time expect you somehow to understand me.

Bill: Right. Right. I'm not going to deliberately, consciously do that. In fact, I'm going to deliberately and consciously speak in a way that I think that you can hear and understand when I'm listening. I'm not waiting just so that you take a breath so I can argue. I'm listening with the intention of really understanding you.

Bill: If I interrupt you while you're speaking and I'm honoring my commitment, I'm only interrupting to let you know, and I did this this morning in a conversation that you've lost me. That I no longer understand or that something happened inside of me that was so activated by what you said that I haven't heard the last two minutes of what you've had to say.

Marty: I have a very, very dear friend. So this isn't just like an acquaintance, but a very, very dear friend of a long time, who during the pandemic was convinced that, you know, there was no pandemic and that, and she got deep into conspiracy theories. And I was like, I don't want to lose this friend, but there was a while there where we had a really hard time being able to talk.

Marty: We said to each other I don't want to lose you this. I don't want this to divide us. And clearly we have, Extremely different views, but let's not let this divide us. So talk to me and you know, and she started to explain to me and I noticed that she sounded a lot like Tucker Carlson.

Marty: And then it's like a, well, what if this was the case and this was the case? And what if this, and what if that on top of it all? And doesn't that mean that we're being spied on through these vaccines? And I was like, well, yeah, if all of those, what ifs were true, I think that would But you've got 10 what ifs.

Marty: She's thought about that. Like, oh, my goodness. You're right. None of those things are proven. They are all what ifs so that wasn't that was and we came to a place where she recognized that she has a vivid imagination. I said, look at how you added all those things that don't add up.

Marty: You added them all up. Like, you have a vivid imagination. That's a great thing. And I admire that. I'm over here very flat footedly going. Well, that point wasn't proven yet. And neither was that. And so you can't add them up yet. And I'm being like analytical and skeptical and everything. And she's like, yeah, but, but if this and that, wouldn't that mean, and like, that's fantastic imagination you have on you, which put it to some other use, because it just doesn't add up.

Marty: And we got to a place where we could talk again.

Bill: Um, beautiful, beautiful. Uh, so it sounds like certainly she gave some ground because your argument, if we could call it an argument, there's nothing wrong with arguments unless they're just argumentative and only that. But so she gave ground. Do you feel like you did as well somehow in that conversation?

Marty: I do. I do because first of all I gave the ground. You have an amazing imagination where I'm being in it. Analytical hole also, another thing that came out of that conversation was she said, well, it's always, you know, what I'm saying, she said, ultimately, is that money is what's making all these choices all these decisions and I, I said, you know, that, that is an insight that I wasn't looking at that money is what's dictating all of this.

Marty: You're absolutely right. We both, yeah, I gave a little and she gave a little.

Bill: What's beautiful about that story to me is that You, you, one of you, maybe both of you at the same time, recognize that what was at stake here was your friendship and that that the friendship itself was more important than any position either of you might hold on the pandemic or whatever it was you were talking about.

Marty: Yeah, there's a nice story. A lot of times I get into this kind of conversation people, people. Another friend of mine, Bill, in fact, pulls out the book Lord of the Flies and says, you're just too optimistic about human beings. You give them way too much credit. If you put a bunch of teenage boys on a desert island and watch what happens, they'll kill each other, like in Lord of the Flies.

Marty: It turns out Lord of the Flies was written by a guy who an English teacher in England, who he had just come back from World War II and he was scared and depressed and all this. And that's the state of mind from which that story was generated. And it is just a story. There's also a story.

Marty: Actual news item of 6 boys getting stranded on a desert on a, on an island in the South Pacific. It actually happened, and they recognized that they needed to band together. They had to get organized together to survive. And so they, they organized, you know, building a fire when planes flew over and they organized rituals for exercise and for sharing in the evenings.

Marty: And they, they, and they had guards and other, you know, they, they started to, there were hunters, they had to get food and, but they got organized because they needed to, to survive it. And so. I think that human, we have this capacity after all.

Bill: We have touched on a lot of topics and we have less than five minutes before we need to wrap up.

Bill: I wonder if we can, the name of our podcast is not your typical leadership coaching. See if we can tie all this together with leadership and coaching. I mean, we've talked about this has been kind of a philosophical conversation and I've loved it. How does this come into play with leadership?

Marty: I think the way I look at it, leadership is that coming together, you can't be a leader by yourself. It takes coming together and then finding that commonality and so I think that anybody who is working on that coming together is being a leader, even if they're most of the time we think of leader would be the one who says, we're going that way and everybody follows.

Marty: Well, that is one kind of lead leading. But, but I think in these, you know, how do I talk to somebody who completely disagrees with me leadership, whether it's coming from their side or yours, is that coming together? That's what needs to happen to go forward.

Bill: I would say in the story that you told about you and your friend.

Bill: What, maybe the first leadership move that, that was illuminated in the story was when either you or both of you agreed, let's have this conversation organized around what's most important, which is our friendship.

Marty: And in the case of me and Mike Johnson sitting down, it would be, let's agree that what's most important is what Jesus actually said.

Bill: What he actually said 2000 years ago is there's lots of debate about that. But what do you suppose he meant? And then how about coaching? How does this play into coaching? How to have, how to stay connected? And by the way, let me just add one more thing.

Bill: Disconnection. It does play into coaching quite a bit. Go ahead. Yeah. So one of the distinctions that I got pretty clear about this year was that connection is our default state. Uh, With another human being and it remains, we remain connected until something is put into the space between us that this disconnects.

Bill: Usually it's an untruth something being, being hidden that creates a disconnection. So in a, in a conversation where, where we disagree right out of the shoot, uh, just because what you say doesn't, doesn't match what I believe to be true. That's that in itself doesn't create a disconnection.

Bill: Okay. It's my judgment. And then my, my need to defend. Against your opinion and my agenda that would have you changing yours. That would create a disconnection.

Marty: Yes, exactly. Great observation because that's sort of what we've been pointing out throughout this conversation is like, you're not going to until you can

Marty: find that place you'd like of, of like, okay, I'm committed to connecting here. Right. As opposed to just being like, no, if you don't agree with me, it's black

Bill: or

Marty: white. No, you've got to be

Bill: committed to as being right. Therefore, unless you agree that I'm right, we're going to, we're going to be disconnected.

Marty: Right. So, yeah. Is it Susan Campbell or somebody else that said you've got to either decide you want to be right or do you want to be in relationship?

Bill: If she didn't, whoever said that was, I think that's right on. That's absolutely right. I've

Marty: heard it different places, but yeah, I think that's right on too.

Marty: So just quickly on the leadership and coaching, I mean, client comes to me and tells me what they want. My job is to help them get what they want. It's not to argue with them. So a lot of times I'm leading them in a direction that they chose.

Bill: What if what they come to you with is okay. I want this.

Bill: You've told me I'm your client and you've told me that coaching is about what I want. So I'm going to bring to you something that I want and I'm expecting you aren't going to argue with me about this. So Marty, today I'd like some coaching around my relationship with my wife. I want her to start treating me better.

Bill: You're not going to argue with me about that?

Marty: No. Really? What

Bill: are you going to do?

Marty: Well, what's there to argue with

Bill: you about? Isn't reality that, that's, that, that's kind of out of our scope as coaches? How do we help, how do we help a client get another person to treat them in a different way than they're treating them?

Marty: We can only work on the, on the person who came for coaching. That's right. The end result could be that they get better treated.

Bill: Very, very true. So, maybe, maybe a redefining of argument in my mind needs to take place here when you say that you, you aren't going to argue with your client. You're going to disagree.

Bill: You're going to bring a different perspective if that's what serves them best. Do I understand.

Marty: Yeah. This opens up a, there's a lot to say about this because there have also been times where I, you know, I start down that lane with getting them what they want. And I realized that this, I don't, I think I know better what they want.

Marty: And then we have to have a conversation about that. You said you want. For your wife to treat you better. But from our conversation, it sounds to me like you want, it's a completely other outcome.

Bill: Yeah, like what you've identified as our objective for today's conversation really is just a strategy to get something else.

Bill: Can we get clear about that?

Marty: Yeah, so there, this opens up a whole other wrinkle, but I was just illustrating sometimes what leadership involves not making people go the way you think that they want. They should. It's helping them get what they want, but as, but the wrinkle is, you know, Sometimes you do differ with them and you say, I don't think that's really what you want.

Bill: Yeah. Right. Right. Let's get to the bottom of what you actually want. Yes. All right. As usual, have absolutely enjoyed this conversation and also as usual, I wish we had more time to expand on it, but for now let's stop and we'll save the rest for another episode. Thanks, Bill. Thank you, Marty.