Episode 59: Completion

Bill: Welcome to another episode of the leadership coaching podcast. My name is Bill Tierney, and I am a results coach and certified IFS practitioner. And, uh, this is my co host, Dr. Martin Kettelhut. I call him Marty. I bet you could too.

Marty: Which is, who is also results oriented coach, but, um, not trained in IFS, but I am an ontologically based coach.

Bill: And if you're just listening today for the first time, IFS, that's internal family systems. It's a therapy model. I'm not a therapist, but I was trained in this model by the, internal family systems Institute when they were still training non therapists. I got my certification in 2021 and earlier this year, 2024, the Institute stopped training practitioners and only trains therapists now. And I've adapted IFS for coaching. And ontological, Marty, what does that mean?

Marty: Well, it's, ontology is the study of being, and in ontological coaching, we notice and appreciate and make use of the way that something bees as a causal agent. Right. Think about a simple example. Think about you're trying to get your wife to go on vacation with you and you want to go to Cancun and who you're being about it is, honey, you got to this is where I want to go. Just do it. You know, change your schedule. You've got to be there with me now. Let's see. That's a certain way of being. It's probably not going to be effective. Whereas you could be. Hey, honey, you know, all the things that you love about vacation are in Cancun. What do you say? We go there notice the difference in the way of being

Bill: I'm going to be sarcastic here and say yes. The first, the first way was coercive and the second way was manipulative.

Marty: right? Exactly. So the point is. That these, the, that is a silly kind of example, but, but the way we are in life makes all the difference in the results we produce. So it's become a crucial distinction in the world of coaching. I know that you use ontology as well.

Bill: I do. Uh, yeah, I rarely use that word, but absolutely. Uh, the impact of using IFS with my coaching clients is that they change who they're being. So that what happens in the world occurs to them differently. And because they're, they are occurring differently, they get different results in the world.

Marty: It's, it's also helpful. Not to get too far down this rabbit hole, but when you're distinguishing consulting from coaching, consulting gets, you know, it's like an expert comes in and gets right to work directly on the mechanics of what's going on. A coach doesn't do that. A coach is going to. look at a bigger picture, the context in which this problem would have even arisen, um, for lots of reasons, so that you could head it off in the future, um, so that you can find the best solution and not just something that happens to work today, like a workaround, and, and lots of other reasons too. So there, there is, this is part of what distinguishes a consultant from a coach as well.

Bill: Yes. Now the listener is maybe wondering. What are we talking about here today? Are we talking about ontology? Are we talking about

Marty: You know, We're still just introducing ourselves and who we are.

Bill: that's right. So, so let's just name that what's just now happened is we've introduced ourselves in a little bit about how we work with, with the clients that we work with, we're both coaches. Um, and so I'm wondering if, if this is a good time to end that section, It's done. It is complete. That's what we want to talk about today is complete.

Marty: Right. Completion. What? Yeah. What is, what is it? Why is it worth discussing? Mm

Bill: So the reason I brought it up this morning is because I had a group this morning with my women's recovery with seven women in this group. And this was the last day for one of those women to be in the group and she's been in the group longer than anybody else. Not that it matters, but because we do this sort of thing every time somebody leaves the group. Hopefully, if they, if they give some notice and leave the group and we have time to do this and I, uh, on the spot, just generated some questions and had the women in the group journal, their answers to these questions, then go into breakout rooms, come back and then I, I asked him some other questions that will help them that would help them to acknowledge the, uh, Participant who was leaving and to help the participant who was leaving to acknowledge the group. And that's what inspired me to bring up, can we talk about completion today?

Marty: Right. Right. Um, and so given that example, you know, generalize from there, like, why would the average listener be interested in us talking about completion?

Bill: Here's how I summed it up with the group after we had completed this process today. And maybe it's a good way to explain why we want to talk about it in the first place in the episode. And that is that for many of us, I'd certainly put myself in this group. I, most of my life experienced beginnings and endings that were not acknowledged and not completed.

Marty: Mm

Bill: So there was a lot of that, that was unresolved. That's another word that might mean in completion, unresolved,

Marty: Very good.

Bill: lots of synonyms for, um, for that word completion. It's not a normal word that we use in the world, but it's one that we hear maybe often in, in ontological coaching.

Marty: Mm hmm.

Bill: I might bring something to you and, and you're my coach today. And after listening to you, me, you might reflect, Bill, it sounds like you have some completion work to do. And the reason that that's so important is because until an experience is completed, it stays in us, incomplete, and continues to burn up energy and attention and, and effort on an unconscious level. And without completion, we begin to deplete our capacity to be with anything, anything new.

Marty: Yeah, and we,

Bill: say?

Marty: well, I just want to underline two things. You said or implied one is that this is a choice. Like you could not get complete. Mostly people don't write. It's an opportunity that we choose. And the reason we would. It's so that we can move into the future without baggage.

Bill: Yes.

Marty: Otherwise we're just creating what's commonly called baggage and it leaves us with limited capacity. We're not as free. So these are the reasons why getting complete with a person or with an event, right, or right there, you can complete with a human being. Like I had a couple. And I'll just, I won't make a big story out of this, but they, they wanted to complete their marriage and they asked me, he was a client. So, as part of his coaching, he asked if I would help lead a conversation for him and his wife to complete their marriage and be able to move into their respective futures with, with clean slates and through the magic of completion. They fell in love again. They like, they completed all of that baggage that they had been carrying around in the marriage. And then it seemed like a great idea again. Like, okay, let's start afresh.

Bill: Hey, I remember now. I like you. Yeah.

Marty: right? Exactly. Um, so now I forgot the general point I was making. I was so happy about that.

Bill: Well, I believe that what you were, the point you were making, unless you'd moved on to another one and I didn't catch the shift, um, was that without completion, we have no room for anything new. Those were my words earlier and you, you said it in your own different way there just now.

Marty: right, right. Exactly. Mean, we come from, we're born complete. Like, there's, there's nothing missing. It's, it's only once we start living these lives with thoughts, right? And, and emotions that get piled on like, like, um, barnacles on a boat, right? Um, that we, that we need to do this kind of work to, to get back to our whole and complete state.

Bill: I wonder if it would be helpful if you and I were to actually use the same questions, or a modification possibly, of the same questions that I used this morning in my group to get complete with these first two seasons, Of the leadership coaching podcast that we, I believe we might've completed, we might've recorded our last session either last week or the week before for season two. And season three will be released, uh, the first week in January. This may be one of the first episodes for season number three. What do you think of, uh, entertaining these questions on the fly without rehearsal and see what we come up with?

Marty: It sounds great. Uh, totally. I'm, I'm up for it. I'm not prepared, but that's even better.

Bill: The only preparation I have is I know what the questions are. And, and like I said, we may need to or want to modify them. And I also want to suggest to the listener, if you have an opportunity and you're in a position right now where you have something that you feel unresolved about, incomplete about, maybe in the process and haven't been able to find your way to the, end zone or the finish line. Um, maybe this would be an opportunity for you to, to take a look and, and join us as Marty and I do completion of the podcast for the first two seasons. So grab something to take some, take some notes with, and you can always pause the podcast and the episode and, uh, and then do some journaling and come on back or just listen. So are you ready for the questions, Marty?

Marty: Sure.

Bill: Okay, so the experience this morning was that one of the participants in the group was leaving. So these questions were for the participants that were remaining in the group about the person that was leaving. So these questions need to be modified then for what is being completed. For the group, it was, they were completing with the participation of this particular group or excuse me, person in the group. You and I are completing with the first two seasons of the podcast. First question.

Marty: me of where I lost my train of thought before I was saying there are different you can complete with a person or a thing or an event. Okay, so that's come full circle. What are the questions?

Bill: Okay. Number one, what positive influence has this experience had on you? I'm gonna write the que Well, I've got the question in front of me, but what positive influence has the experience had on you? And I can start, or you can start, what comes to mind?

Marty: Well, one thing for me is I've gotten to understand I. F. S. Much better. And my parts That's that's been 1 of the things that's come out of this this partnership for me. Um, I think it's also been a positive influence has been that we, we both get to, I'm mostly focused on me right now, actually, is like we know these tunes, so to speak, the, the, these coaching tunes that we've all been trained in and to get to improvise on them here and see like, well, where can we take that and how much validity does that have and how else could you use it? That's been very educational and eye opening for me. I think another positive influence is that, um, people come to me now, whether they're people that I already know who've listened to the, um, Podcasts or people I don't know who are like, I heard the podcast and that's why I want to talk to you, you know, so it's, it's connecting people with our resources. those would be the first 3 things I would say.

Bill: Great. Uh, for me, the first one that occurs to me as a, in terms of a positive influence that the experience has had on me so far, has been the, the, like, the merging of our two coaching styles. Where, and, and the kind of the rhythm that we've established and, and usually find in most episodes for being able to pass back and forth these different ideas, despite the fact that we come from two different, completely different worlds. Uh, directions into as coaches. What I mean by that is you come from your life experience, which doesn't look much at all like my life experience coming into becoming coaches. And then now I'm coming into doing this podcast together. We seem to have found a rhythm that shows up in most of our episodes.

Marty: hmm.

Bill: Actually listening to one that just came out last Friday, and I noticed that that was not one in the first half of it where we had found that rhythm. It took us a while to find it, but we always seem to eventually by the end of the episode we find it for me. But what that was about was that I was. I was kind of, my controlling part was really evident in that conversation and I hadn't noticed during the conversation until I went back and listened to it later. So that's, that's a second thing I'll say, a positive influence of doing this podcast with you is I know that we're going to have listeners. I hope that we have a lot of listeners, but I know we're going to have at least some listeners and I know that a lot of those listeners are my current clients and potentially future clients. It gives me an opportunity to practice being with the parts of me that would be worried or nervous about how I might come across and what, what those people might think of me, what any listener might think of me. So it's been great practice for me to be with my parts and to demonstrate self leadership with a capital S.

Marty: Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Mm

Bill: Uh, what's another thing? Well, it's really pushed me the experience of putting out two seasons of the podcast, which is roughly, I think, 55 episodes has really pushed me to, um, be structured and organized and to learn new technology as well as to trust others to help. I can't, I couldn't do this without you, uh, and I couldn't do it without my virtual assistant. Who does so much of this work for me and it's been a great experience to learn, learn to trust both you and Ari, my virtual assistant. Those are the first three that come to mind for me.

Marty: Awesome.

Bill: You ready for the next question?

Marty: Yeah. And so, and just to step back from our process and make a note to the listener, clearly expressing what happened in the past is key to getting complete, right? What is it we're talking about that you need to lay that down first? What what happened? And so that that is basic to any completion conversation. Thank you. Mm

Bill: The, the fact that you and I just now acknowledge some things, I heard some things that were fresh and new from you that I hadn't heard before. And you probably heard some things that were new from me that you haven't heard before. And maybe, maybe it's also true that I haven't actually expressed certainly on the, on the Recorded episode in a recorded episode. Some of the things I just said, that is a form of completion too. If that's, if that stayed in me, it wouldn't be the same as what it is now that it's expressed.

Marty: Right. That see, this is part of the reason why completion is so important. Even this first step of stating what happened, you come to understand and realize better what actually went down. These are things we haven't said before. They need to be said.

Bill: Yes. And by the way, these first four questions, they're all feel good questions, but that's only 50 percent of completion or 30 percent or 70%. It's there. It's only a part of completion. a couple of questions that I'll bring back. There's, there's a couple of questions I'll bring back in that I call the deeper dive questions. We have to dive a little bit deeper because it gets a little scarier in there when we ask those last two questions that I'll present here in a bit. So, uh, for those listeners, if you think, oh, this is all just about, about the positive, well, these first few questions actually is, but we're also going to create an opening to acknowledge what maybe hasn't been so positive and maybe has been challenging. And might be incomplete. So let's stay with the questions as they are though. Question number two is what do you appreciate about the experience that you've had so far with these first two seasons?

Marty: Say a little bit more how to think about this question differently from the first one. This is what you appreciate, not just what positive things came out of it, but what do you appreciate?

Bill: It's very, it's a very similar question. And what I noticed this morning with the shares that came out of these two, these two questions, the answers were, were quite a bit different. Just, just the opening, the invitation to look at it through the lens of appreciation rather than just positive influence. Yeah. Not to minimize positive influence, invited different ideas and different answers. They are very similar, though. For example, I learned to appreciate the music that we intro and outro with. The season one wasn't quite right, and it could be that season two isn't exactly right either, but the feel of it, I really appreciate the feel of the music that introduces and that helps us say goodbye at the end of every session. I really appreciate the amount of work that my virtual assistant puts into rendering and mastering each one of these episodes before they get released each Friday. It's a ton of work and I appreciate how reliable she is and how much I can count on her to get it done and do a good job on it. And, uh, I, I really appreciate you Marty for keeping our appointments at the same time, on the same day, every single week, and showing up as the best and highest version of yourself for these episodes. Those are the first two for me.

Marty: Um, thank you for that. One of the things that I appreciate about this is that so much of the world that I experience and I can only guess a lot of us experiences is all about efficiency and, uh, you know, calculations, analysis, um, getting as much out of, uh, Every moment is possible. Um, more, more, more, you know, and this conversation is always more of a quality conversation. It's more of a dilating on a topic going deep and it's rich. as as opposed to, you know, efficiently, we're not, that's not what rules the way we do this. I mean, there is a agency to it, but that's not what rules it. It's more of a deep dive into the quality of being human and that's a rare thing in our world. And I love it. So, and I, you know, on the topic of you. And Ari, I mean, I would never be doing this without you guys, that you do all of the mechanics and all of the editing, and I get a pretty free ride, and I'm very grateful for that.

Bill: Thank you. Okay. Does that feel complete? Notice the word we used complete. So you're complete with question number two.

Marty: Yes.

Bill: As, as you were answering and kind of in between, as you were thinking about your answer, it occurred to me again for the listener, this is being recorded on the 18th of December, 2024. We have a lot of things to complete in the United States. And in the entire world, we have a lot, we have one thing in common to completed that, and that is 2024 in two weeks, less than two weeks. Now we're going to be finished with 2024. And we'll be, for those of us that actually still handwrite and write dates, we'll have to get used to writing 2025 instead of 2024. That used to be a thing when I was writing a lot of checks, the first. First few checks I wrote were the previous year's dates on it, and I had to scratch it out, initial it and write the new date in. But there's a lot of things that have happened in the last 350 or what is, would it be amount, fifty three hundred and fifty three days so far in, in this year and, and in a couple of weeks, 365 that, that, that will need to be complete about and. What a great way to begin the process of completing 2024 is to look at what it is, what the positive influence that the year has had on me and what I appreciate about the year and all that's occurred in that year. We also have in the United States, we have the completions coming around the corner of the current administration of presidency and, um, and the new administration that's coming in. And for some of us that it might feel challenging to find appreciation for the new or, or even for the, from the old. So, but it's so important and so necessary so that we can finish this and move on to be with a fresh set of eyes and perspective on the future.

Marty: It's potentially transformational, even like there's a new reality possible. This is, this is, there's a deep shift going on in being to go back to that word ontology when you can, when you really do leave the past in the past and the future, it could be a whole different reality. I mean, obviously you're going to still live in the same house or drive the same car, wear the same clothes. Perhaps, maybe not, but the point is that you will see it differently if you've really completed the past. It's that transformational. It's, it's, it's not a trivial conversation at all.

Bill: Many of the people, the clients that I work with, uh, like me had very challenging young, young lives. Some, some of them could be characterized as traumatic abuse, neglect. A lot of the people that I work with, uh, have turned to substance abuse and addictions, uh, have find themselves struggling in relationships because the past is so incomplete and that past is, is, is so incomplete because as Francis Weller says, the psych and Carl Young says, The psyche has the ability to split off things that are too hard to digest.

Marty: Hmm.

Bill: and emotions and energies that are just too much. We, the psyche has the ability to temporarily split them off. And I use the word temporary because the psyche also is just like a pulsing light that says, still waiting, still waiting, still waiting to complete this. And this is a process. It's not certainly not the only, and they, and I'm not claiming it's the best, but it is a process to begin to press that still waiting button and begin to acknowledge. What is still waiting? What is incomplete? What and and the beginning of completing anything is acknowledging that it's incomplete.

Marty: And, and the completion of how I've been looking at that light such that it keeps blinking, completion of the way I look at the light such that it's still blinking, opens up the possibility that it might, that we could stop. It from

Bill: Yes.

Marty: quick story. Um, I had a completion conversation with a friend on the topic of his, um, getting into an exercise routine and he said that at the beginning of last year of the beginning of 2024 and he's still saying, and so I said, wait a minute, where's the transformation here? And he was like, well, I guess I just have to want it more. I was like, no, that's not the kind of, that's not a completion conversation at all. I said, what if you took wanting out of the middle? Of your commitment to getting into exercise and you're actually being an exercise. Take that wanting out. I went downstairs. There's a friend who is over and I grabbed a couple barbells. I said, stop wanting start start actually exercising now and he got it. He was like, you're right. I've been thinking I need to want it more. That's what needed to be, get complete and to be an action. Just go straight from my commitment to action without having to want it more. I'm not going to want it. He said to me, I realize I'm never going to want it more. I always going to just, that'll just be in the way. So there's, there's

Bill: Wow. Powerful story. What I'm hearing from that story is that the the context that he held around transformation was that he didn't want it enough and you helped him to shift out of that context into either do it or don't do it. Choose or his landmark would say chocolate or vanilla would choose. Okay. Oh, the last thing I wanted to say about the clients that I work with, and I think that my clients represent a good percentage of the population that we have. We're incomplete about our childhoods. We're incomplete about about how we were parented, maybe, or how we were raised or our caretakers. And, and, um, because of that, because there are so many incompletions, The energy required on an unconscious level to manage those incompletions is so great that many of us Wake up into the day every day with a dramatically diminished capacity remaining to be with whatever shows up today. If we, if we think of that in terms of percentages, think, or think of it in terms of a bucket of actually got a graphic that shows a bucket that is completely empty and representing that I have 100 percent capacity to meet the day. that bucket, when I wake up in the morning is half full of incompletions, that means I only have 50 percent capacity remaining to be with the day. Okay. For some people that might be, I only have 10 percent capacity remaining on awakening every morning. And if I didn't get a good night's sleep, maybe it's 5%. Is there any question why I would have a hard day? Why life would be difficult? Why I don't have the capacity, capacity to even tolerate somebody taking my lane when I was, when I wanted it

Marty: Mm-hmm

Bill: or standing, stepping in front of me in line at the bank or wherever that might be. It might explain a lot of road rage. So what there is to do is complete empty as much of that bucket out as possible, but it's not as easy as just emptying it out. It isn't just as easy as let it go. It isn't with some things you may be ready to just let things go, but it might also require a process and a conversation and it might also require support.

Marty: And in the completion process that is in both my books, that is one of the questions that I ask in the complete, in the completion, you know, among my four questions, one of them is, what's keeping you from just letting this go? What is it that has it stuck to you? Right? That gets, and then we can talk about that thing. That's that, right?

Bill: That's, a great question. That is a great question. What is it about this? What comes to mind, what springs to mind for me is the idea of resentment. I'm not ready to let go of this resentment. If I let go of this resentment, I'm letting them off the hook, for example. That's, that's what would have me stuck to a resentment, or one thing that might.

Marty: Mm-hmm . Please.

Bill: So to address that, what do I think I'm getting out of hanging on to this thing that's making me suffer? That, that's a good start too. Really good. Okay, shall we go to question three? All right. What have you learned from the experience? So again, we're talking about completion of the first two seasons of Leadership Coaching Podcast.

Marty: Yeah, well, one thing I learned, uh, just need to grab a prop here, I bought all this equipment and the microphone on this computer, it's an Apple MacBook Air, is quite good. I mean, I could use this, it might be even better, but, um, it's, so that's something I learned on the technical. Um,

Bill: Hey, anybody that needs a microphone, Marty might have one for sale there.

Marty: I got one for sale. Exactly. And it's nice. Um, another thing I've learned is, well, how to listen to yourself when you know that even though they're not right here, there are a bunch of people out there listening, right? I listen. So learn how to be succinct. Learn how to be out in their listening, even when you can't see them and they can't respond right away and and just, you know, to cover the topic in such a way that it's consumer friendly, rather than just, you know, my, my own way of thinking through things and and it helps to have a partner in the conversation, you know, um, you bring that out in me. So that's what I would say.

Bill: Okay. Uh, your, your answers inspired a couple for me. One is, I'm currently writing my book. Who knows when I'll have it completed. But, but, the more, in fact, the more I write it, the less certain I am that I'm even close to being done. But, it's a memoir. And, um, oh, there's something I learned. I learned that it's not memoir, it's memoir. You told me that last week. Thank you very much. I thought I was getting it right and you, you pointed it out to me. I also learned that there's nothing left in me that felt embarrassed when you pointed that out. That is so cool. There was a time not that long ago when if someone corrected my mispronunciation of a word, I felt shame and that would activate a bunch of my parts to try to hide that shame and manage it. An example of that is I used to think that cognitive dissonance It was cognitive dissidence and I wrote a coaching program that mentioned cognitive dissidence and I had, and I had a client say, isn't that dissonance? She was kind about it, uh, but it was, it was Beale Beale. You know who you are. You, you said this in one of my groups and you were kind about it and I appreciate that and I heard that, but what happened inside was a shame bomb. Oh my God. Is she right? I hope she's wrong. I want her to be wrong. I don't want to be wrong. And then I. And I realized, oh no, she's right, dissonance, dissonance.

Marty: it's such a great example of why completion is so important because you got complete with having people contribute to you. You, you, you've expanded your capacity right. To, to learn and to grow. I mean, this is, this is a great example and thank you for being that way.

Bill: Um, okay, you're welcome. Being thanked for that seems just odd. Just because, it's not like I intended to give that to you. Uh, it, it's just what happened as a result of me doing the work that apparently that I needed to do for those parts of myself that, that used to believe that I was stupid and that, that if anybody found out, I needed to be ashamed of it.

Marty: Now I'm incomplete because you didn't accept my appreciation. I appreci,

Bill: Hmm. Okay. That's, that's

Marty: I appreciate that about you. And you said, well, I don't, I don't accept that, so I'm incomplete now.

Bill: not exactly what I said, but I understand you being incomplete.

Marty: What exactly did you say?

Bill: I, first of all, I heard you say, thank you.

Marty: Mm-hmm

Bill: I didn't hear you say that you appreciated that. Until just now.

Marty: There was different words, but that is what I meant.

Bill: Okay. Well, I'm glad you appreciate it. It's very cool that to be appreciated. I appreciate it too. I join you in appreciating that, that it didn't have any, any nasty place to land inside of me that hurt.

Marty: Excellent. Now I'm complete.

Bill: Oh, great. great. Well, and, but you also point out something, uh, just a really great modeling just now. A demonstration of how to not get incomplete in the moment, how to just not shove something down like I did when Beal pointed out it was dissonance rather than dissidence that stayed in me for a while and probably even inspired the work I needed to do using an IFS to help the part of me that thought I was stupid. So yeah, so now this time something activated inside of you. It was a perfect conversation for you to be able to bring it up in the moment. You felt safe in doing so, we acknowledged it, and now you feel complete and so do I. We can move on. One more thing that I learned from this experience is I know how to talk now. That seems like a strange thing maybe to hear or to say, but And it's been a long time. I've been, it's been 42 years since I sat in my second meeting about public synonymous and realized I couldn't complete a sentence. And if I, if I did complete a sentence, I couldn't string a second one together that actually made any sense given the first one. I was so scared of people. I was so, I hated people really, I didn't trust people, of course, like again, that's 42 years, a lot of waters passed under the bridge since that point. And now I'm in a profession where I'm really required to be able to speak clearly, fluidly and even in paragraphs, not just sentences. So it's, it's, I enjoy going back and listening to the episodes. Month or two months after we've recorded and released that release them number one. I don't remember the conversation until I listen to it again. And number two, I'm just so impressed with the conversations that we have. And the fact that I'm I'm part of them and I sound kind of intelligent. So I've learned that

Marty: Awesome.

Bill: I've learned to like people too. And this has helped with that. I've I've liked people for a long time now, probably for 20 years. I switched from hating them to like them. I like, I like liking them better.

Marty: I didn't like him this morning, but this afternoon I like him because it changes quickly with me.

Bill: You change throughout the day.

Marty: I do. Yeah. And that's why I'm needing to do completion work all the time. What's the fourth

Bill: the fourth question is, what will you miss now? I'm not so sure that that applies here, but maybe, maybe there's going to be a missing. What will I miss about episodes or excuse me, seasons one and two, you know, the only thing that's coming to mind for me is the not knowing and the, the risk involved in stepping forward and taking the action and doing it anyhow. There's some thrill about that, about not knowing, is this going to be worth the investment? Is it going to be worth taking the time to do it?

Marty: Got it. Yeah. So, are you okay with saying goodbye to that?

Bill: Yes, absolutely. Yes.

Marty: I think I'm going to miss just the way we've generated topics was pretty ad lib, you know, and we, we got a lot of them, but they were all just like, well, what about this? What about that? And I think that I'm going Miss that as we move into season three and and now this is part of completion is that new possibilities show up right when you're complete with the past. Wow. The future you start to think about what's possible. And so I'm thinking about what's possible in the way of us. You know, going deeper, addressing even more relevant topics of leadership in an even more edgy way, perhaps, um, like we've covered in the last two seasons, a, um, you know, like, uh, what's automatically what's easily there topic wise. And so potentially we might go even deeper and, um, do something. Even more relevant and even more, um, uh, transformational in, in the coming season,

Bill: I like that a lot. Yeah. We, uh, we're, we're hoping we, we do already have some, some ideas about, for example, we want to have more guests on the podcast

Marty: right? Yep.

Bill: and, and, and some of those guests actually might be listeners. Someone that's listening to this very episode right now might be a potential guest. We're interested in talking to people who either are aspiring leaders or actual leaders who would like to tell us about, like to come onto the podcast and tell us about maybe what they're struggling with. Be open to a little bit of coaching live on the podcast as well as established leaders who've found success employing a lot of the principles and ideas that we've talked about here. Leadership is relation, listening.

Marty: Right.

Bill: Yeah, yeah. So

Marty: And also, and also, like, I think of, in saying what I just said about, so another, another way this could deepen and open up the, like you said, the political world that we live in as Americans right now, and world citizens too. They we right. It's there's a kind of standstill, and I don't know about you, but I'm committed that that we bridge those those gaps. We're not going to we need to to move forward healthfully and, um, so, you know, those topics like how do we bridge the gap? What does leadership look like in 2025? That's different from what God has here. You know, I think that's another 1 that comes to my mind.

Bill: beautiful. That's great. I like that. Um, and something you said reminded me of, is it Tracy Goss that wrote the book What Got You Here Won't Get You There? Am I thinking of the right person or is that a different author?

Marty: I know, I, she might have, I know her book, The Last Word on Power.

Bill: getting, I'm getting those books confused. So there's What Got You Here Won't Get You There, an excellent book. That that invites us to look at no matter how successful we've been that got us to this point, if we want to go further, if we want to have a different kind of experience or different kind of excessive success, even beyond what we've experienced before, we have to kind of let go of what got us this far. And be open to what it might take to, to get to the next, to level up.

Marty: I think, I think a lot, you know, a lot of us are recognizing that the way we've been talking, it does divide us, like, we, we, we talk about them, and we talk about how wrong things are, like, all this language has got to, we've got to really start looking at that. Um, because every time we put it back in the space, we create the problem. So there's a lot that I think this is a good top, a good, there's a lot of tendrils to this topic for us in the leadership coaching podcasts to dig into.

Bill: Marshall Goldsmith, not Tracy Goss, wrote that book. My apologies, Marshall, if you're listening. And if you are listening, we'd love to

Marty: Well, And also to Tracy,

Bill: And Tracy, yes. Either.

Marty: right? That book, right? Mm

Bill: love to have either one of you on the show. Just get us, get a hold of us. All right, so I want to just mention these last two questions, which is the other, I'll call it half of completion. I, I'm not going to suggest that we dive into answering the questions. I just want to provide the questions for mainly because we're out of time. And, uh, but I want to emphasize just how important it is to also look at what feels incomplete. And disempowering what feels incomplete that is clearly and obviously going to be maybe not so clear and maybe not so obvious, but it's, but it's likely to be in the way. If we don't get a complete, I mentioned earlier about resentments, if I, if I'm holding something on someone and haven't found my way to get complete with it, it's going to get in the way of me and my progress. So the first question is what feels incomplete about the change? And in this case, it would be what feels incomplete about seasons one and two before we move into season three. And here's some ideas, uh, some ways to potentially think about this and answer the question. What feels incomplete? Are there hopes that were not realized? Are there regrets that haven't been addressed? Are there hurts that haven't been addressed? Are there things in process that still aren't complete yet? And then the second question is logical, and that is, What will you do with what feels incomplete? And I'm borrowing both of those questions from accomplishment coaching where I was trained to be a coach through the International Coaching Federation back in 2015 and 16. Those two questions are from that completion process, which I believe has another 10 questions to it. So some, some clues or helps with what will you do with what feels complete? Will you, and I mean, we mentioned this earlier, if you're able just to release whatever it is, can you just release it

Marty: hmm.

Bill: first place to start? But if not, which is often the case with me, I'm, I'd like to release it, but I can't, I'd like to let go, but there's something stuck to me and I need to do some work to get it unstuck. So do you need to process it in some way, like in a therapy session with a friend, with a coach, with by journaling? By sorting it out in some way to get it resolved. Do you need to communicate something that hasn't been communicated?

Marty: Yeah, that's often the case, you know, the just going back to the person with whom you have incompletion and really having a, you know, a energy. Dialing the energy back and saying, let's just get it all on the table so that we understand each other completely and, um, that's that, you know, that's going to bring completion, um, in an important way.

Bill: Well, and there's a lot of things that would stop you from doing that, which is why it's incomplete.

Marty: Right.

Bill: Fear. How's the other person going to react if I bring this up? What if they don't even know about it? What if they're not even thinking about it? And I bring it up and now it causes problems.

Marty: Right.

Bill: I'm sorry that I spoke about you that way behind your back. Oh, you didn't know that. Uh, another way is to make a request. You kind of did that five minutes ago when you said, and now I feel incomplete. Because I told you I appreciate you, and you didn't accept it. That was a form of a request,

Marty: Yeah,

Bill: as well as good communication. And then what happened right after that was a repair. And, that's another example of what needs to happen, what might need to happen to feel complete. And again, this is not a comprehensive list. These are just some ideas of what might need to happen to complete what feels incomplete.

Marty: So that reminds me that one, one of the modes of completing something with another person besides apologizing, um, acknowledging and all that is forgiveness.

Bill: Hmm.

Marty: You know, we're incomplete. Um, take take a financial one. We're incomplete between us because, uh, you owe me money. And so this is a hypothetical example. And so then. You know, to get it complete. One way to get it complete was say, I forgive the loan. You can have just keep the money and it's then it's complete

Bill: Well, I can't tell you what a relief that is. I was, I'm just going to spend that 12 on Christmas gifts. Thank you very much, Marty. No, you're absolutely right. No, not

Marty: forgiveness. One that it's it's sometimes that's one of those that's hard to conjure up. And that's why we haven't done it. Like, but it might be, but the fact that it would bring completion recommends it

Bill: and forgiveness. That's a whole nother topic. And I don't know if we've had that as a topic. Maybe we, we need to have that as an episode. Forgiveness does not especially mean I'm letting you off the hook. There's a lot more to forgiveness than that.

Marty: right.

Bill: Okay. Marty. Okay. To wrap this up right now, does this feel like a complete conversation to you?

Marty: It does.

Bill: I've loved it right off the cuff. Didn't rehearse it. We never do anyhow, but I think we covered a lot of great things. Thanks for letting me indulge in my new questions that I, that I, that I used in my group all right. Until next time.