Stop Having The Same Argument And Start Building Trust #121

We explore how to stop having the same fight. Greg Stevens shares how repairing 36 past relationships taught him that insight only matters when it becomes a habit.

• why repeated arguments persist without a foundation
• how psychological safety unlocks hard conversations
• mutual respect and mutual purpose as safety levers
• using clarifying questions to reach the real hurt
• defining respect and setting repair agreements
• rapid cleanup with the “stained carpet” mindset
• shifting from nice to effective truth-telling
• work skills that improve home relationships
• men and women as different operating systems
• production vs attraction as a useful lens

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Chapters

• 0:00 Setting The Stage: Why We Fight
• 0:40 Greg’s Path To Communication Mastery
• 2:11 Skills Most People Never Learn
• 4:00 Cleaning Up 36 Past Relationships
• 6:16 From Insight To Practice
• 8:20 The Book And Coaching Model
• 10:35 Work Issues That Spill Into Home
• 12:55 Nice vs Effective: Speak Your Truth
• 14:40 Accountability Starts In The Mirror
• 16:42 Listening To Understand, Not Defend
• 19:27 Clarifying Questions That Reveal The Hurt
• 21:42 When People Shut Down: Safety First
• 24:24 Mutual Respect And Mutual Purpose
• 26:32 Defining Respect Before Accountability
• 28:42 Starting Fresh In Dating And Couples

Transcript

Intro: 0:00

Welcome to the Straight from the Source of Mouth podcast. Frank talk about sex and dating.

Tamara: 0:05

Hello, Tamara here. Welcome to the show. Today's guest is Greg Stevens, a communication consultant and executive coach. And we'll be talking about making complex relationship dynamics simple, actionable, and even fun. Thanks for joining me, Greg.

Greg: 0:20

Thank you so much for having me, Tamra. I appreciate it.

Tamara: 0:23

No problem. Yes, this is always a good topic. Communication is a big issue for a lot of people, and just not being able to, you know, bridge the gap when there's an issue. Like you just spiral and fight and like never get over it and just kind of keep going, different versions of the same fight. So what brought you to being someone that knows about this and doing it well?

Greg: 0:45

Well, that's just it. I didn't know it well at one time. And I started taking some classes and uh uh self-development, human potential, human behavior. Uh got really involved in the 90s with the organization called Landmark Education. And I did a thing called the Forum, and that really changed the way I looked at my life and uh uh took responsibility for the first time about how my life showed up. And as I took that their courses, I I think I took every class you could possibly take with landmark over the next five years. But then I ran into a training program at the time was called Um Path the Dialogue. And later, the people who created it, they actually changed it to Dialogue Smarts. Then they wrote a book called Crucial Conversations Tools for Talking When Stakes Are High. And so when I first took the class, I when it was Path the Dialogue, it changed everything about my communication. I what I found was most people uh I've run into it today into this today. Most people will say, Oh, you need to go have this conversation. But no one's really sat down and taught us the skill sets of how to do that. How do you structure your message? How do you manage your emotions? Uh how do you create psychological safety in the moment? What questions do you ask? What are you looking for? How do you get curious rather than judgmental in the moment? And all of that was actually put into this class. And I took it, went out and applied it, and it really changed how I viewed the world, what I could do in communication. And then I went to the uh people who eventually authored the book, asked if I could become an associate and sell their work and train it, and they allowed me to do that. So while I was doing that, I thought, how can I be the person that actually does what they teach? So I had this crazy idea to go clean up on my past relationships. And when I say clean up a past relationship, you think of someone walking down the hall, and you have two ways to get to your office. One is walking past that person, it's the shorter way, or I didn't want to deal with them, so I went the long way. If I went the long way, that was a relationship I needed to clean up. So I had a list of 36 people, and it took me two and a half years to do that. And I some people say, Do you expect people to do that? No, I wanted to do it because I wanted to stand in front of my classes with an experience about what I was teaching rather than a theory about it. Yes. So I worked with that organization for 24 years. Uh, still kept my independence, was coaching and doing other things. But then I released my book, which is the application and the stories of all the things that I had gone through during those 36 conversations and how I've coached people. And I coach people now how to apply that work over a six-month time frame. Most people will sit in the class and have these aha moments. They have the realization of why the conversation didn't go well. But then they walk out and they don't practice it. And no insight is permanent until you practice it. And so that's what I do now. I work with executives and leaders of groups for about a six-month period. I find in 20 weeks I can actually begin to bake it in where it becomes a consistent practice for people. But it takes time to get there. You can't you can't just do it overnight. It's going to take an application of it. So that's what I do today.

Tamara: 4:30

Okay. And is that your is your book the the what you use to teach them those things?

Greg: 4:37

I I use my book as a background. It's called Build New Bridges: The Art of Restoring Impossible Relationships. And everything that I teach in my classes are about what I've said in the book, but we actually use the crucial conversations online, on demand for people to take while they're going through the class. They they pay uh we we have an uh uh agreement with uh Crucial Learning. They come and take our class, take that class, but we don't spend time teaching it in my coaching class. They come with questions, they come with how do I apply this? And people come in with a list of relationships they want to improve, they want to clean up, they want to complete. And we actually begin working on that list. They don't share their list with me, it's a personal thing. They but they bring it back each week and talk about their insights. And we've had people who haven't talked to family members in you know two to five years. Someone did uh today in my class said they haven't talked to their brother in seven years, and they had a conversation with them this week. And so those are some of the hard work we do. It's not just at work, it's uh personal as well. Most people come in, they want to get better at their work life and how they deal with maybe their co-workers, maybe the board of directors, whoever that is, but it tends to actually bleed over into their personal lives because those are the more difficult ones when you really get down to it. Uh one of my one of my clients told me, he said, what I found is in business there's always money on the other side of these that I didn't realize existed. But it's the ones at home that we tend to avoid, we don't know how to do it, and those tend to be the more difficult conversations.

Tamara: 6:23

Yeah, for sure. I was I was gonna share, I didn't landmark myself the forum. Great.

Greg: 6:28

I love that 13.

Tamara: 6:29

So yeah.

Greg: 6:30

Yeah, I did it in 2005. So did it a while back, and uh to me, it still one of the best, one of the best courses you'll ever take because it allowed me to put my past in the past, and it also uh was the beginning. Some people, that's the only course they take. I took as much as I could, but I I still take courses different courses today outside of landmark. To me, education is is a constant, is a constant uh uh pursuit for me.

Tamara: 7:02

Yeah, definitely. Yeah, same with me. Yeah, and it yeah, definitely like I always say it's like my life before and after Landmark Forum. And I think it's the root of a lot of like all the other people that do anything. They've either learned the same things or taken the forum. It's just not as publicized. It's more of a word of mouth thing. Yeah.

Greg: 7:23

So where where where did you take it? I'm yeah, I'm sure you took it in the live version. Now they only do it online. So where did you take it?

Tamara: 7:31

Uh in the Washington, DC area. DC. Yeah, that's where I live. And yeah, I was in the now, I've done it online too, so it's definitely different, but you can kind of get there. Like a lot of people get a lot out of it still.

Greg: 7:43

Oh, yeah, I've I still have friends I direct toward it. People uh will consistently ask me where I got my start. I'll say it's a great place to start. Uh because it to me it's a foundation. And that's what I love about the Crucial Conversations work, crucial accountability. To me, those are all foundational conversation uh skills because it's a skill set. Most people just don't know how to do it. And people say, Well, here's how you you gotta be nice. Nice doesn't get you where you need to be. You need to be effective. Effective means you're respectful, and so there's a distinction there. If I'm being nice, many times I don't speak up, and we want people to be able to uh speak their truth. One of my tag lines is be bold, be courageous, and respectfully speak your truth. So it takes courage and takes boldness to do that, but also takes skill set to be able to do that.

Tamara: 8:39

Yeah, and you said be accountable, which is very important because a lot of people think, oh, they need to change before I can do anything, or it's their fault, which was me, pre-Landmark. I literally thought my boyfriend at the time was like the issue, the entire issue, and I had no issues. And then as I heard someone speaking, I'm like, oh, yeah. And I called him and he immediately was like, Thank God, like you know, he's like, How did you not know this? But yeah, so yeah, and then like you said, the skill set of actually doing it. Once you know you're the problem, how do you fix it? So, do you want to talk a little bit about some of the skill set, or is that kind of like the proprietary stuff if you're not gonna do it?

Greg: 9:13

No, no, it's fine. Yeah. Uh well that's the biggest thing. Most people want to blame others, and because it's a comfortable place and we don't have to take responsibility. I tell my leaders you should carry carry around a mirror. Whenever there's a problem, you want to look into it because there's the problem. And uh I've got a quote that I I take with me everywhere. It's everything in my life I create, promote, or allow. And one of the things I love about landmark, they talk about go have the conversation. Well, crucial conversations takes it a little bit further, it tells you how to do that. And so what my nothing I say is really proprietary, it's all of the different things I learned in Crucial Conversations, Crucial Accountability, Crucial Influence. The application is the key because that's where I get to hold hands with people and say, you know, are you really looking at this? Because we can have an idea of what it means to go in and have a conversation. But when the rubber meets the road and we have to do it and we have to uh hear some of the hard things it is to hear people, it's one thing saying, Oh, you need to listen to understand. It's hard to listen to understand when someone is everything they tell you about you you disagree with. You know, and our tendency in that moment is to defend. But what if all of a sudden, even even listening to understand, what if all of a sudden I stop being defensive and I'm just get curious? And I say, you know, uh Tamara, why do you think that? What's that based on? Help me understand that. Okay, I'm controlling. What did I do? We but we know all the areas we're not controlling. I, you know, I try to be open, and then they're telling me something completely different, but what they're doing is giving you a gift, they're giving you the gift of what the world looks like from their perspective. That's where the gold in a conversation is. Because when I understand your perspective, a uh a gentleman named Anthony DeMelle passed away years ago. He's a Jesuit priest, and he had his parish in India. But I love what he said. He said, uh when you're speaking with someone and you understand truly what they're saying, there's clarity of perception. You're perceiving clearly what they're saying, you have a greater accuracy of response. But I have a poor accuracy of response until I understand what they're saying. So if I'm rejecting it right away, I can't understand it. But if I absorb it and then I can speak to it, clarity becomes really quickly. And there's something beautiful about truly listening to understand a connection is made when that happens. And so you start to those mirroring neurons kick in and you actually connect with someone at that point.

Tamara: 12:33

Yeah, definitely. Yeah, and I I tend to ask clarifying questions to make sure I'm getting it. And sometimes people are like, Didn't I you already I already told you? Or I'm like, no, I understand like this part, but what about this part? And I think it's a good thing. What what are your thoughts on clarifying questions?

Greg: 12:48

Does that show you don't listen or it shows your oh I think it it shows you uh it shows you're listening when I'm asking clarifying questions. I I tend to think the more questions you can ask, the clearer you can get. It's kind of like a funnel. People hit you with all of this. With each question, it gets sharper and sharper to what's the real point? The real point is when you finally get to it, this happened and I felt hurt. Wow, that's not what my intent was. Now we're somewhere. But I have to understand, rather than say, no, you can't feel that, I have to understand that person's feelings are valid. Their viewpoint is valid. It just may not be complete, just like mine might not be complete. When you start to look at that and start to say, okay, if I look this way through this little hole, I'm gonna see this much. But if I look this way through this little hole, what if I were to see all of this? Well, that's still not even the whole picture. So we're all living in these areas where we're just shutting it down. So the more information I can get, no matter without my judgment about it, the more information I get, the better I am able to respond. And that's the key.

Tamara: 14:05

Yeah. Is there a way to get people that like they're like, I let's just drop it, I want to move on, and they don't want to talk about it. Is there a way to smooth it over enough where they will like listen? Or is it like how does that work? I've definitely come across that.

Greg: 14:18

Yeah, well, when people are doing that, they're wanting to get out of the conversation, and I'm gonna suggest it's a it's an issue of psychological safety. That's all it is. They don't feel comfortable or safe to talk about it right now. So what you see in that moment when people feel that, they either want to get away from the conversation or they're gonna tell you exactly why you're wrong. Both are basic are steeped in fear, and fear always distorts. So I have to deal with that fear, I have to deal with that psychological safety issue. And there are two reasons. Think about this. These are the keys to the kingdom. People either believe you don't care about or respect them, mutual respect, or that you don't care about their goals, mutual purpose. And if Tamara, if I'm sitting and I disagree with you on something, but you truly believe that I care about and respect you, I care about where you're going and your goals, we can begin to talk through our differences. It doesn't mean we'll always agree. We're human beings. That's not it's important that we we don't have to agree. But when those two plate uh pieces are together, then we can begin to talk openly about everything that's going on. And what happens is you fear what my intent is. You don't trust my intent. You think either I don't respect it or that I got a hidden agenda somewhere, or that I want my way more than yours. If those are there, I'm not going to get anywhere because you're defensive and everything shuts down. But if I can stop talking about training where we're trying to go, shift the conversation over to what kind of relationship do you want to have, Tamara? How do we want to work together going forward? What would you like to do about that? Well, we're trying to solve this problem. No, I'm talking about the deeper issue. How do we want to work together? What does respect look like to you? That's one most people in my programs. I have people begin to talk about what respect looks like with their spouse, with their boss. That is an awkward conversation for most people. But here's the thing since respect is individually defined, you probably want me treating you with respect from how you define it, not how I define it. So if that's the case, I better find out how you define it. We even the word love, we define different ways of love. And I need to understand that because and it looks like this. How do you define respect? Well, Tamara, if that's how you define respect, I don't want to treat you disrespectfully. If I do that, would you pull me aside and let me know when it seems that way to you? Because I don't want to. I need to clean that up with you. Wow. Now, I want you to get that's a completely different playing field now going forward. But typically we're dealing with these issues up here. We've never laid the foundation. If you don't want to lay a foundation of a house, it's gonna collapse no matter how great the outside looks. You gotta have that firm foundation. Otherwise, you're sitting in that's another thing in accountability if you don't have that foundation. Every time you try to hold someone accountable, it's like you're in quicksand. Everything goes slow. But if I have agreements about what respect looks like, and we set agreements about how we're gonna operate together when someone doesn't keep their promise or breaks uh breaks a promise, then you can actually come in and say, Hey, here's what we said, here's what we said we do, this didn't happen, what's going on? Then I have a foundation, but until then we have assumptions, and well, I never said that. Well, great, let's start getting some agreements in our relationships. But the first step is talk about what respect looks like to us.

Tamara: 18:25

Yeah. Yeah, I can see where that's like the foundation, like you said, of a lot of people's issues, the different definitions and getting mad the way it should be for them. But of course, no one knows what your thoughts are on it unless you tell them.

Greg: 18:41

Well, yeah, and it's so interesting as I coach people, they'll bring in these problems with the people that they've worked with, and then I say, because we do that when I get when our when I get our group together and we're coaching, that's the first thing everyone does. We talk about what respect looks like. I get them comfortable with it. Then I ask them when these problems come out, they go, Did you ever have the one-on-one conversation with this person what respect looks like? Well, no. Well, you're skipping steps two and three. You need to have a foundation before you go and do have that conversation. Well, I need to get things done. Yeah, you do. And you keep having the same conversation over and over and over, and it's going nowhere. You're wasting time. Go have the first one.

Tamara: 19:32

Yeah. And as for couples or a dating, I don't know which one you want to talk to. Um any tips on like how to either start in a dating relationship or in a within a couple, like how to ones that have gone off the rails. How do you start?

Greg: 19:49

Well, I think there, yeah, there's a couple things. I think if you're just starting out dating, it's a great place to start. But if you're not, if you're you've probably made a lot of assumptions about your significant other. And you are dealing with all these problems up here, but you've never even sat down to talk about what respect looks like. How do you want to fight? That's another one. That's all that's only fair. You are going to have conflict with people especially in closed quarters you're your close quarters like that you're gonna have you're gonna have conflict it's just how it is and that conflict is there for us to grow i tell people all the time do you want a breakthrough in your life most people yes I want to breakthrough well a breakthrough is always preceded by conflict you got to break through something so that's the conflict so if you want breakthroughs in your life that's how you grow you're gonna have conflict so if you don't have conflict I'm gonna suggest you're really not growing but it's laying those foundational pieces out the other thing I think it's important about relationships of significant others you've got a history with other people we tend to drag those from one relationship to another sometimes and we say well I've seen this before in this person the person you're with now is not the other person they're doing it for a different reason than that person probably but you're projecting that thing on them and you're relating with two or three people now not just the person in front of you but the previous two people you dated that were like that. And so you've got this whole skewed view of what's showing up in front of you. And I think there's discernment that you have to say can this person be trusted yet? You don't want to throw all your you know everything in I I I learned to do that really early I tell I would tell people when I met my wife I think it was on a second or third date I said I see this being a possible relationship right now. I said I'm older now I don't have time to waste and here are typically the deal breakers for people and I know I'm putting it out there and this is just how I decided to do it. I laid out all my deal breakers where most people say well I can't have that in my life I can't have that laid it all out and she looked at me she goes it shocks me that you would tell me that this soon and it makes you mean like you a little more because I feel like I can trust you and but here's the thing I had to back those words up I live it every day my wife will tell you I try to live what I teach am I perfect? No and when I mess it up I try to clean it up I heard I I just got through interviewing another person she wrote a book called I Meant Well her name's Heather Lanchenko she's got a great idea in it she said what if your relationships were like stains on a carpet you stain a carpet you don't forget about it and just go about your business you immediately pay attention and go and try to fix that thing. You get it cleaned up but most of us oh that we spill a bunch of stuff on the carpet and we just keep ignoring it keep ignoring it what if we started paying attention to it and went and cleaned it up each time we had a stain on our our carpet or our shirt or something be a different relationship that you would have. Yeah instead of letting stuff fester and then when you do fight it's like a total blowout and say things you don't mean and you're not having one fight at that moment you're having the seven fights you put off and what we tend to do, we tend to hold on to the until we can't hold on anymore. Then we blow it out and then we go oh my gosh I'm not doing that again I want to stay with this person think they're worth it whatever that may be and then you go back to your old pattern till you can't stand it anymore. And that gets real tiring because then you've just got a bunch of think about it your carpet you've got stains everywhere. What do I want to do? Well then you go to a professional right you go to professional carpet cleaner a therapist or someone and you get some help like that. But you get it cleaned and then you go mess it up again because you haven't been working on the skills.

Tamara: 24:24

Yeah. So do you want to talk about how they can work with you or find the classes you've talked about?

Greg: 24:30

Oh yeah uh best way to look for what we do uh my company is called alignment resources but in our in our uh uh how you can find us at alignment dash resources.com. Don't forget the dash got a little dash in there but we talk about the master team programs we put together we work with uh leaders of organizations executives but we also are working with younger leaders now ages 21 to 28 teaching them the tough communication skills that current executives don't have and so and we also have classes for uh if you don't follow in an executive area we've got other trainers that do other things there we've got a whole list of different training programs but my master teams are what I typically spend the time with and uh we've got a great group of people I called my company alignment resources because we have some great coaches some great trainers that train different things throughout so we try to keep everyone happy and uh and uh doing what they do best uh training and coaching okay awesome and then are there any final thoughts or takeaways and I kind of wanted to get in the differences between men and women but I've had a few episodes on that but if you if there's a slight twist of that too or maybe a few well that's a book I'm working on right now. We're uh we're I'm working on a book and I learned a lot of this from a gentleman named John Catalina John and Chris Catalina it's a couple in the San Diego area and uh they were my mentors years and years ago and I used to teach a man-woman relationship class after I started learning how to have the difficult conversations now that I've written my book now I'm looking back at writing a second one on what I've learned around man woman and I really talk about the distinctions with man and woman we're if the easiest way to think about it is women speak two languages man and woman okay men speak one language man now they seem like the same thing because whatever whatever you're talking I don't care if it's uh Chinese English French whatever it is women speak that both man and woman on that men only speak man and so we there's a miscommunication about those two languages in the programs that I teach we break that down so you can understand the language and you can capitalize on your differences rather than beating up each other over those differences or manipulating over those differences. If you have power and you don't understand your power you will naturally manipulate the conversation and it feels bad. You just don't understand your power. And so what we do in that it's kind of the operating system of men and the operating system of women and people say I don't want someone operating me. Yeah you do operating not manipulating because you put gas and a gas tank in a car because that works unless it's electric right but you put electricity in the car so you put gasoline in the car you don't put kerosene you might run a little on kerosene but it's going to mess it up you put gasoline in and that's just it you want to operate the opposite sex and not manipulate them.

Tamara: 27:59

Yeah and yeah just at least understanding their language so you can understand it you know when they're speaking instead of interpreting it in your language versus theirs.

Greg: 28:11

So yeah absolutely and here's the and that's also where our fears live men view the world from what they can produce they get their value or their fear comes from what they can produce. Now women get their fear or value from what they can attract. Now when I say attract I'm not talking about sexuality or anything else I it could be in that but attention to who they are as a human. Women want that that person to see them. A man in some at most levels want you to see what they can produce. Now though there are men out there I know some men who are models they want the attraction because that's their production look at how much time they spend in a gym or working on that that's their production. Women on the other hand they can produce anything a man can produce and more it's just they have a different more expansive view of things it's not just about production for women it's attention to who I am. But when you start to break down how that how that shows up in our world and our society there's some great insights to why things do and don't work when you're in a relationship. Yeah definitely and I know it's like not um it's a little vague but it's you get it like it's just so different that you know well it's a two-day class you can't put it all into one thing and it but one of the things I love when I when I taught that class women would love to come talk about relationships. Guys don't want to but what was so interesting the guys that got drugged there at first by their by their girlfriend or their spouse by two hours into it they're like this is fun this is great because I see what's going on now there's a touch of reality that they just didn't have before and it was so funny because they're trying to get their buddies to come they go what happened if you want to go talk to about a relationship on a weekend come on yeah no it's definitely important stuff and it's yeah it's like I just hope this is intriguing enough to like look into it more so for sure. Yeah yeah I think we're gonna we're we're looking at having our first one I've done in years uh if you're interested in that let me know because we're gonna be doing it I think uh uh here in Austin on um Valentine's Day it's on a Saturday this year and we're looking at having a couple different venues and it'll be for singles and couples but it'll be come talk talk about the distinctions with men and women in relationships.

Tamara: 30:47

Okay. Yeah all right well thank you very much for being on great stuff and if you love this episode be sure to tell your friends about it and rate it as well and thank you again Greg.

Greg: 30:57

Thank you Tam I appreciate it. Bye bye everyone

Tamara: 31:00

all right bye thanks

Greg: 31:01

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