Marty: Welcome, we are glad to have you back for not your typical leadership coaching a podcast delivered by Martin Kettlehut myself and Bill Tierney, who is an IFS practitioner. A topic that both of us have had come up quite often in our practices. Is this phenomenon whereby people have adopted a persona that's nice and there's even a book that's come out in the last couple of years called no more.

Marty: Mr. Nice guy, which attempts to address 21 years old now.

Marty: It's 21 years old. My goodness. Yes. Wow. Okay. I stand corrected. And but more and more of this is coming about in part because it's a gen it's. It's a generational thing. There, and Glover doesn't talk about this a lot. He's the author of the book, but there's been a lot of talk about the fact that, after the feminist movement took hold there was, there, there was something of a backlash about on men who had become nice because it wasn't cool.

Marty: It didn't work in relationships anymore to just be masculine with no appreciation for the feminine. And so then some of us got raised by the solely by the women because Back then, the men were at work, and then the feminist movement happened. So we were raised by mostly women, and so we learned how to be in relationship from women.

Marty: And so all of these factors have contributed to this phenomenon where there's a bunch of us. And it's also now with the next wave is that there are also nice women out there now, too. So it's not just about men. It's about These personas that we take on that to which there's a level of disingenuousness.

Marty: We're trying to be light. We're trying to get by. It's a survival mechanism to be nice rather than an authentic self expression. If you're genuinely nice, that's great. But we're talking about the contrived version of it. And some of us don't even know. That's what we're doing. So anyway, Bill.

Bill: Yeah. Before we started this particular episode, as we always do we have a list of mile long of things that we've talked about that we could talk about.

Bill: Marty, you asked me if we're going to do an episode today, what would we talk about? And I told you there's three things that are top of mind. And this was one of them that's top of mind because I currently have a client who has identified as a nice guy. In fact it was like a huge epiphany when I began to describe what Robert Glover describes in his book.

Bill: I stand corrected on that as well, by the way, that was, it was written in 2000. So as of this recording, it's 24 years old already. As the lights have come on for him and he's had this insight and awareness about himself, things are changing for him. Really from the inside out. I read the book years and years ago.

Bill: And it just so happened that with this particular client, every time we'd have a session, I'd be thinking of this book and I finally brought it up to him and now he's reading it along with me and we're discussing it. And because what has him in coaching is problems that it's creating in his marriage and his relationship.

Bill: Yeah. She wants. A genuine, authentic, unapologetic, masculine man, not that he wouldn't ever apologize if he did something hurtful. It's not like that, but to be have that be the default reaction to practically everything that either it's an apology or defense. That's a problem because there's no way to connect with that.

Bill: There's the

Marty: key. That's the key. I think right there, she's not connecting with him, the real him. He's doing what he thinks he should do to be accepted, appreciated all of that. It's not him. So she wants the real him. I think that's an important point to make, because a lot of times people say I want a man, I want a real, Masculine and that might also be a contrivance like what you want is real connection to a real human being, right?

Marty: Because there are we glow Robert Glover could, or any of us could write the same thing about, overly masculine people. People are trying to be. Effective in the world by being super masculine, that's just as contrived. And you could write a book on people who are trying to be harmonious or whatever the, you can, you take any 1 of these sort of disingenuous personas that we take on.

Marty: Because that they keep us disconnected. We're not relating. Nobody gets to the real us. We're being this role that we think we're supposed to play. So we don't know each other. We don't know each other and she wants to know him. Really.

Bill: Meredith Banka is a brilliant marketing consultant who I'm getting supported by right now.

Bill: I'm in a consulting group with her and we met just a couple of days ago. I guess it was just yesterday and she made reference and I've heard this before and maybe I'll do some research and make sure that we link where this comes from once I've, Have figured out but she said we have essentially three different personas.

Bill: This is a way to look at these personas. One is our public persona. One is our private persona and one is our secret persona connection happens when we can expose or allow another person to see our private and secret personas. I like that. As you say in this example, she wants. In she doesn't want this public persona that he's bringing to their marriage, right?

Bill: And he's getting that now and and it's yielding wonderful results,

Marty: right? That's the next thing that I find, because I'm coaching mostly business leaders and the, what they're the, what brings them to the code. This up in coaching is that they're not, if they're not effective they can't produce the results that they want to be inside of this disconnected persona.

Marty: Right? And like I got, I'm working with a guy who leads a team in a high tech company. They're data crunchers of some kind. I frankly don't know, but he came to me because his team is like they don't show up on time. They don't seem to care about their jobs. They talk back.

Marty: They're casual to the hilt. And not professional and they'd rather, complain and rat than, then actually get to work and produce. And he's having the hardest time because he doesn't want to not be nice.

Bill: There it is. Doesn't want them to

Marty: not like him. That's right. That's right.

Marty: So it's also not only, does it make relating difficult, but it relating to results is also difficult

Bill: results, effectiveness, getting the most from my team, being loved, getting respected and by my kids. Being so that it's what we're talking about right now is beliefs who is it a belief that starts with who I need to be is blank in order to get blank.

Bill: Is it that I need to be loved? Who is it that I need to be to get results? Who is it that I need to be more effective? Who is it that I need to be in order to get the most from my team? And if the answer to that question is. The idea that I need to generate a persona that I need to pretend to or act as if I am someone who I am not.

Bill: I'm going to fail. Exactly.

Marty: I'm not, maybe not, this instant, but in the long run for sure.

Bill: Yeah, so that can go on and on those beliefs and exploring those beliefs can yield some great results. If I believe that I have to be nice to be loved. Is it working would be one of the first questions that I would ask.

Bill: Is it working that being nice and if you weren't trying to be nice, what is it that you're covering up by being nice? What? What would be going on? If you weren't trying so hard to be nice, would you be assertive? Would you be speaking up? Would you be speaking for your own needs and preferences and what blocks you?

Bill: What? What has you stop and be nice instead?

Marty: And that will vary from person to person. Good. But there are some general things, like you've already mentioned. They won't be, I won't be liked, right? I won't be accepted. I won't be respected. So something like this.

Bill: And so much plays into that.

Bill: I would like to read a couple of things out of Robert Glover's book, No More Mr. Nice Guy. Can I just give one more example first?

Marty: Please do. This is a client who's a nice woman to make a long story short she had a person on her team who was just not being professional, zoom meetings from her bed on made, coming late, not getting a report or weekly sales report in on all kinds of things.

Marty: And. My client had asked, to have a meeting to discuss this so she could objectively give her some feedback and she can improve and she wouldn't even show up to that. So she fired her. It was like she and then she was in shock. Oh, my gosh, I just buy it. She was telling me in the coaching call.

Marty: I can't believe I did this. I just fired her. Are they going to hate me? And then, the next time she came back, she's like, Oh, my God, they hate me. I did this terrible thing. I would. Why does it always have to be me that it falls on and on like this? And she cried and I heard it all.

Marty: I let it all come. And then I said, so now what? And she said, you know what? Actually. I feel like a new person. I think, I don't think there was anything wrong with my choice. I think I did the right thing. And I, it's just new to me. All that tear shedding was letting go of years of being nice.

Marty: Yes. Yes. And she was, so she recognizes, okay, I'm coming into my own. This is what it's like to be authentically me.

Bill: Oh, what a great story. And as I listen through the lens of IFS to practically everything that you tell me and everything my clients tell me and what that means is, as I listened to the story, I was listening for her parts. Yeah, there was a part of her who for ever it sounds like held the persona of nice as almost as a value and as the most dominant strategy, if I'm not, I may not be correct about your particular client but as I listened, that's what I was, that's what I, how I was thinking about it.

Bill: No, that is accurate. Okay. And so the parts of her that didn't want her to fire her employee, who clearly needed to be fired were afraid of what they thought was going to happen if they didn't do their jobs. If I'm not nice, I'm, then I'm going to be hated. I'm going to be criticized. I'm going to be rejected.

Bill: I'm going to be alone on the street without a house, no money, dying in the gutter. That's where it ends up going.

Marty: And so that came true, by the way, her team was shocked. They didn't think that she should have done that. And she felt very much alone. Yeah but then the next day came and she was still around and things were all right.

Bill: Yes. Yeah, and we train people to, to expect us to show up a certain way. We've done a really good job of selling the act. And so when we break out of the act, of course we're going to get pushback. Hello? Yeah.

Marty: Hello? Yes. Yes. Yeah, I interrupted, you were naming the parts

Bill: that you heard. I'm just enjoying this conversation so much.

Bill: I was thinking about a friend of mine who says,

Marty: hello,

Bill: what did you interrupt? I didn't realize you did. The parts

Marty: you named the part that's been nice so long. The part that knew that she needed to fire the employee.

Bill: And so the part that showed up in the session and cried that you allowed and held space for wonderful, by the way, wonderful that there are times that's just needed.

Bill: And I don't know about you, but as a coach, sometimes I think is this my wheelhouse? Is this where I should be? Not that I can't be with sadness or grief. Or strong emotions. I can be thank God. I can be now. But is this a place for me? Is this a place for this to be happening? The truth, the fact is it's happening.

Bill: Here it is. It apparently it must be the place. I'm okay. I believe that she's okay. Let's just see what happens here. And what happened was to her surprise and probably to your relief. I don't know. I think I would have been relieved. She said, I just feel like a brand new person. So from a parts perspective.

Bill: The part that was afraid of what was going to happen, and then had that happen, it poked that old, unresolved pain of not being liked, of being rejected, of being misunderstood, being whatever that might have been for her. And so there still may be some healing there for her to do, but at the very same time, an update occurred.

Bill: From an IFS perspective, that's an update. Oh, that's right. I'm a, whatever, let's say 45 year old woman, and I have access to resources and skills and qualities. That I don't even have, that I don't have access to when this young vulnerable part of me is so scared of being rejected. I'm gonna go ahead and do it anyhow, not because I don't care about this part of myself, but because this part of myself can't be running my adult professional life right now.

Bill: And now, whether it's in a therapeutic setting or with an IFS trained practitioner like me, the healing can occur and there's a definite process in the IFS model for how to do that, which brings us back to why I wanted to talk about this in the first place the client that I have.

Bill: We're actually reading No More Mr. Nice Guy together. And we came to the traits and the very first trait that we came to just blew his mind. He just, he realized how true it is that he's not being authentic. And that, that hit hard. That was hard because part of being a nice guy is look how authentic I'm acting.

Bill: Keyword acting. Look how authentic I'm being, but really it's, look how authentic I'm acting.

Marty: Which You know, this is a, it gets complicated in exactly the right way. By the way, I'm not saying, life is, it's not simple life being a human being is complicated. And so it's appropriate that we see now okay, so putting on an act of niceness is not working.

Marty: For me, or them, it's not the real me, and they don't I'm not effective in my communication. But is there a way that I can get what I wanted out of being nice by being effective like. Like, how about just being fully disclosed and saying, look, this is really hard for me to say, or, I have some, hard news to break to you or find a way to authentically communicate what just being nice was going to cover up and be, but be present with that and stay present with it rather than putting that in the backseat for the sake of this, seemingly harmonious communication,

Bill: putting it in the backseat reminds me of the metaphor that I use with my clients about the bucket we have.

Bill: The way the metaphor goes is there's a bucket that is empty, and it is designed to hold all that there is for us to deal with on a daily basis. And once the bucket is full, we are out of capacity. So we have to empty the bucket out. We have to process, we have to complete, we have to resolve, whatever we put in the bucket.

Bill: And a lot of that happens even in our sleep the brain just takes care of a lot of that stuff, but a lot of it gets stuck in there, especially when it comes to trauma or overwhelming circumstances, or just really exiling or banishing or not allowing ourselves to feel or experience or speak what is too scary or painful to, to feel or speak.

Bill: So putting something in the backseat in my mind is the equivalent of putting something in that bucket. And then not taking the, taking whatever action is necessary to get it resolved or complete. So that the next morning I wake up and it's still there. I've gotten a good night's sleep, maybe. And it's still there.

Bill: And over the course of a lifetime, my bucket might start out 90 percent full in the morning. While everybody else out there that knows how to do this. And there's not that many that do, but everybody else in the world that knows how to keep their bucket empty so that they have full capacity for whatever comes their way in a day, I compare myself to them and I'm grossly handicapped because I, because let's just say 90 percent of my buckets already full when I get out of bed in the morning, because I haven't dealt with, I have not resolved, haven't completed and haven't healed my past.

Bill: So we put something in the backseat, that's one more thing, and guess what happens? It, there's no place for it to go. The backseat is full. The bucket is full, so it overflows and makes a big mess, and everybody sees. Eventually what happens is it blows up, and everybody that we've been trying to manipulate into thinking how great we are, sees what a mess we are.

Marty: Yeah, so you save the moral of that story seems to me to be you save yourself a lot of stress and blow ups as you point out by just being authentic. The 1st time don't put anything in the back seat. If it feels like you need to. Then really look at what is it you're avoiding and say that,

Bill: and there are times to put it in the backseat.

Bill: There's times to put it in the bucket. I'm not going to say that thing right now, because back to IFS again, maybe there's a part of me that would have me say it in such a way that it would really do some damage. That's not the answer either. Just to let my young, vulnerable or under resourced parts of me that are still stuck in the past step forward and run my adult life for me.

Bill: That's not going to work either.

Marty: No, right? No I was thinking of the transformed communication that says I have this part that's having this reaction, but. But here's what we need to address, I remember working with this woman once we were on the same team, we were working for the same purpose, this was not a client, and she was an arrogant bitch, frankly.

Marty: And you didn't know it all, and talking over everybody, and she irritated the heck out of me. I see that. It was triggering a very young part of me, that the has this has these issues with authorities and she was being authority authoritative, maybe a little bit authoritarian and if I say a word, it's going to come out in a way like you said this is going to be a bad communication. And so I scheduled a separate meeting with her away from the team. And I said, I just told her, I said, look, I'm having a reaction to you and I want to be responsible for that reaction. And it's about, you seem to know so much and to be so well versed in these topics and and I feel small and all of that.

Marty: And it was amazing because I was authentic. She was authentic and she said, wow, you're saying that makes me realize that I've been showing off. And that's not really who I want to be here either. Thank you for showing who you really are because I want to show you that's not really me either.

Marty: And so boom, authentic communicate. It's so I don't, when I say authentic communicate, I don't mean be the upset part. Create a real connection. We've talked, we were great after that, like after that, the two of us were. We, had a great time on that team and everybody looked at us like how did those two come to get along so well?

Marty: It was because we had a, a real connection at that point.

Bill: Like Susan Campbell would say, you got real. Exactly. In her book, Getting Real. Yeah, and truth skills getting real by Susan Campbell. We've actually reached out to her and asked her to be on the podcast and she said yes, but we haven't put that together.

Bill: It'd be cool to get Dr. Glover on that podcast too, wouldn't it? Yeah, I'll make myself a note to reach out and see if he'd be interested.

Bill: They stand on this position in slightly different perspectives, which is great. I think might be better to have them in separate and separate episodes.

Bill: Yeah. Yeah, probably. But both of them really, I think are pointing to the same problem and they just maybe have a slightly different approach for how to deal with it. And of course, I feel like I. I have something different to offer from an IFS perspective than, maybe than any, either of them do is how do you get to getting real?

Bill: That's really the challenge. How do you get to getting real? And the way to do that is to go in and see what's real inside of me. And before I can expect myself to be real with anybody else out there,

Marty: I am just reminded of yet another client.

Marty: And so I want to pull up the notes from this conversation. So he's a nice guy. We haven't talked about in those terms yet, but his job, his boss was not really acting in good faith. They had already decided based on his skin color that he was not going to work out and then in this job. And the.

Marty: They gave him feedback, but it wasn't, it was like, obviously not even appropriate. They were saying, you're not working hard enough. And that was not at all true. So he could tell they're just dismissing me out of hand. And I said to him why didn't you say anything?

Marty: Well, I hate conflict.

Bill: There we go. There's another reason to be nice.

Marty: And so I, I just asked him, I said, okay, he's been fired. So I said, so the next time, this kind of thing happens, a new situation, similar thing happens. How could you be true to yourself and approach that differently?

Marty: And that was, that, that. Got him to think. He said I guess I could ask them to say more about the feedback to come to an objective place where I know exactly rather than cowering in my niceness and, thinking they don't like me and avoiding conflict, I could ask them, say more about my not working hard enough.

Marty: What? What is it that you're expecting that I'm not doing right? Or like that? That gave him a new perspective. He's okay, so there is a way to be me. I don't have to, I don't have to become mean or conflictual. But I could just ask them to say more and then get to an objective place.

Marty: So that's another example from

Bill: your example. I'm going to go back to again.

Bill: It's it sounds like until you helped him see that there was a middle ground. It seemed to him it's one extreme or the other. That's right. Either I'm nice and do everything I can to avoid conflict or I'm aggressive and and I actually cause conflict. And I'm the bad guy in that conflict.

Bill: Exactly right. Yeah. And by the way, that probably gets modeled for us and that's why we draw those conclusions. There's the mom who's nice. There's the dad that's aggressive or the other way around. I've, by the way, I've been married three times. This is a healthy relationship that I'm in now, but my first two marriages, I was the bad guy and she was nice.

Bill: And in my second marriage, she was the bad guy. And I was nice. Neither worked, neither position felt very good. It was very ineffective, very disconnected. So from an IFS perspective,

Marty: we would talk about it that way. Okay, you play the good cop. I'll be the bad cop like that kind of stuff. That should be we shouldn't let that.

Marty: Don't tolerate that. As soon as that happens. Now we're playing roles.

Bill: That's right. That's right. Exactly. Yeah, that persona, that that public, let's say public persona what who is it that I need to be in this given situation so that I can avoid getting hurt, so I can avoid conflict, so I can avoid being blamed, so I can avoid being rejected, and the list goes on and on, and, or so that I can get what I want, get love, approval, and appreciation, as Byron Katie says.

Bill: The pursuit of love, approval, and appreciation, she says, that's the consolation prize. Self love, that's the prize. How do you get to that? So back.

Marty: Another way to get to it, beside I was, that's why I brought out that, that other conversation. Another way, I asked him the same client. I said, what if you were the boss?

Marty: Someday you're the boss and somebody's not working hard enough or whatever and you need he's done it a little bit and I suggested how about invoke the value that's motivating you to deliver the communication. Yeah, we value we, it was about taking too much time off, I said, if you were interviewing somebody and they asked, what's your work life balance policy and it sounds like they just want plenty of time off or something like that.

Marty: It's and he said I would invoke the value of. Having balance between work and life, because it's healthier, the client the employee will stay in the job longer and be happier and be able to work better when they're at work. And so that was okay. Reference of value that we both agree on that brings me to this communication.

Marty: Very nice. So it's not personal. It's not me against you. It's we both agree that work life balance is an important thing. Okay, then go from there.

Bill: This is just the beginning of a lot of really wonderful conversations. I'm wondering if there's anything more to say about this.

Marty: You were going to read something. Do

Bill: you? Oh, yeah. That might just kick it back in gear again. But this is something from the book.

Bill: No more. Mr. Nice guy by Dr. Robert Glover. This is the 2003 edition and, he just, he does a good job throughout the book really describing who he's talking about, these nice guys. These people that suffer from nice guy syndrome, a phrase I believe that he coined. He said, They all believe that if they are good and do everything right, they will be loved, get their needs met, and have a problem free life.

Bill: This attempt to be good typically involves trying to eliminate or hide certain things about themselves. Their mistakes, needs, emotions, and become what they believe others want them to be. Generous, helpful, peaceful.

Marty: Yeah maybe for another discussion would be that seat and you talked about the 3 identities, the public, the personal and the private and secret. That, that's a distinction in my own work. I call it your secret identity. Yes. And it's a bugaboo. It's pretty much, oftentimes it's really running the show.

Marty: It's making all your most important life choices. That might be a topic for the

Bill: next. Let's do it. I think that's a great topic. The next place that I would go in this conversation, if it were to continue, would be to just touch on one, one of these traits, or just at least mention the traits that yeah, to nice guys Glover does a wonderful job of identifying the characteristics that are common to nice guys and then traits. That are common. And he's, I think he distinguishes it that way because the characteristics are what you can expect. And I'm not a nice guy to do what if I'm a nice guy, this I do these things.

Bill: But also the traits are if I'm a nice guy, this is what's true about me. That's behind those behaviors. And one of the nice guys are dishonest and and that can just be a real kick in the gut. That can really just take the air right out of you. No, I am not dishonest. Let's look at it.

Bill: If you, if I'm acting. If I'm performing, if I'm showing up as someone that I am not, but think I need to be in order to get the outcome or avoid, to get the outcome I want or avoid the one I don't want, I'm, that's dishonest. Now, it's not malicious. It's not sociopathical. It's not it's just not completely authentic is the point.

Bill: It's

Marty: your

Bill: base, right? So it's not a criticism of people that are being nice guys. It is but it's something to be aware of. If I want to be able to get real as we talked about earlier in this conversation, you cannot get real while pretending to be someone. I'm not. I have to let go of the pretending.

Bill: And own, as you mentioned in your story between you and the woman that you used to work with where you just got real and said I'm having this reaction. I want to own this reaction. I don't like it. What triggers it is this. I'd like to, I'd to, I'd like to change this in some way. And I just felt like it'd be good to bring it to your attention and then boom, that opened the door for her.

Bill: She saw right through her own. She wasn't aware that she had a persona going on there that she was being a public persona to get. Hey, when I said,

Marty: you seem to know so much, she was like I don't really feel that way. That's what did it. That's what did it. Yeah. Just think about so often for some reason, I flashed on going to a party, you walk into a party and.

Marty: Just look around the room, how people are putting on this show. Everybody's putting on a show. She's trying to be the glamorous one. He's trying to be the successful one. We're all doing these shows and it's inauthentic.

Bill: Yeah, you said you've got at the core of some of your coaching is the secret identity.

Bill: Are there other identities that you've also identified around the secret identity? In support of the secret identity?

Marty: No, that sounds like

Bill: parts work. Actually. Prior to Parts Work before I learned about IFS, I had what I called the shame identity, that's the secret identity, I think would be the same, but also the false identity and I'm not saying that I made these up.

Bill: These aren't mine. I didn't generate these ideas. I don't know where I got them, but they're pretty common to think in terms of there's the shame identity. Who I am is not okay. There's the false identity. Given who I am is not okay, I better present something to the world that is okay. And then there's the true self, the true identity, and that's, this is who I really am, but probably have forgotten all about and actually don't believe that's who I am any, anymore.

Bill: I'm identified with the shame identity, and I'm working really hard with my false identity to keep that a secret, and while I'm working on it to improve it. We do

Marty: identify those three. Yes, absolutely. Yeah, because it's not like your only identity. The secret identity isn't your only idea. There is somewhere else to go.

Marty: Someone else to be that is more

Bill: true. And the good news is that when the parts let's use IFS language, I will use IFS language again when the parts of me that make up that shame identity that identify as I'm not okay. There's something about me that's not okay. When those parts are healed, the parts that have been trying to manage, control, and protect those parts, recognize that, in IFS language, those are called the exiles.

Bill: Recognize that the exiles have been healed. They no longer have to protect, control, or manage them. And all of that begins to relax. What emerges is not effort. It's not trying to be real. It is the ability and access to the ability to be real. What emerges is that true self. And also known in the IFS model as Self with a capital S.

Bill: That's beautiful.

Marty: Makes very good

Bill: sense. I love the vision of not having to try to be me.

Marty: Whenever you're trying, then you're not being you. , maybe that's . It should feel effortless. I shouldn't use the word should. It will feel effort. It

Bill: feels effortless when I'm there and I get to experience that from time to time, more and more all the time.

Bill: In fact, Marty, this has been a great conversation. Maybe a good time to stop it right now and until the next time we, we do our next episode. I look forward to it. I always enjoy it. You too.