Jeff Dewing
Hi and welcome to Doing the Opposite Business Disruptors, the podcast where you get to meet great people who aren't afraid to stand up and call out bad practice or injustice, people who own their mistakes, thrive over challenges and who ultimately choose only to see the summit, not the mountain. I'm Jeff Dewing. I'm an entrepreneur, the author of bestselling book Doing the Opposite, a keynote and masterclass speaker. Today you're going to meet a good friend of mine, Dr Mark Goulston. Now Mark is a Marshall Goldsmith 100 Coaches Ambassador and he coaches entrepreneurs, CEOs, chairmen all over the world and one of the things that he's incredible at is that he's an international keynote speaker as well a Ted speaker. But he's originally a UCLA professional psychiatrist for over 25 years, predominantly in suicide prevention, and he's very proud and rightfully so that in his 35 years of suicide prevention he's never lost a person, which is incredible.
What’s also very interesting about Mark, he is a former FBI and police hostage negotiation trainer. I mean, where does that take you? I mean, you know, incredible, incredible experience, incredible life.
He's the author or co-author of nine books, with his current book, ‘Just Listen’, being translated into 28 languages across the globe and becoming the top book on listening in the world.
He's also the host of the highly rated podcast My Wake Up Call and the co-host of Out of Our Minds and In your Space on Twitter Spaces, which is a mash up of creative thinkers.
So Hi, Dr Mark, thank you so much for the time that you're giving up to spend time with me today. I know we're completely different time zones, so I really appreciate the effort you've made and welcome to the show.
Dr Mark Goulston
Well, it's good to see you again, Jeff. You're one of my new favourite people and I think that's going to last. I think that's going to stick!
Jeff Dewing
Well, I hope you're right, because I certainly enjoyed our previous engagements and, again, I've enjoyed every moment, hence why I said, ‘please, you need to come and talk to me again’.
So, Dr Mark, listen, we had a fantastic couple of conversations over the last few months and it really sort of inspired my thinking and challenged my thinking, and one of the purposes of this podcast is about disruptiveness. How do we disrupt not for the sake of disrupting how do we sort of challenge the status quo? How do we improve as human beings? How do we continue to go on this journey of improvement? What I'm interested in understanding from your incredible background perhaps set the scene for the audience of the show and try and explain your journey, why your journey is there, what it is that you stand for, what it is that you focus on and what things have you done that perhaps goes against the grain and what the outcomes of that have been.
Dr Mark Goulston
Well, there's been a number of events that have done that. Probably the most pressing event is I have a health issue and my doctor says ‘you're going to live a long life, but probably not as long as you had hoped for’.
So when you get that kind of information, it makes you stop and think - I don't have time to waste. I'll tell you the lesson that I learned is relationships are really important, and I don't have any one in my life that I don't look forward to seeing, and I've kind of cut my losses with people who I didn't look forward to seeing, because they take the energy out of you. So that's kind of a wake-up call. That's the title of my podcast that you were on, but something I want to share with you, which is doing the opposite and something I'm really excited about - it may be launched by the time this airs is disrupting the entire coaching field. So I'm the co-founder of the Deep Coaching Institute, which is a division of On-Global Leadership, which is a global leadership site, and the way we're disrupting it is to go deep into people who are high potential, but something's holding them back inside.
They’ve tried multiple coaching approached. They've tried meditation, they've tried yoga, some of them have tried medication, some of them have tried psychedelics, but something is holding them back, and I'm a psychiatrist by training and one of my specialty areas was suicide prevention and none of my patients died by suicide in 35 years because I went deep into the part of them that was attached to death as a way to take away their pain.
So, one of the first components of the deep coaching training course is what we call ‘Retrofit your life with HOPE’, and hope stands for healing, optimism, perspective and excitement. And the healing part of it is we have people to go back to the most traumatic moments in their life that they didn't think they'd get through, and you meet that part of you. So, for instance, if you were to go back to that part of you that spoke to your company and you had to tell them some bad news and you broke down, which led to a breakthrough, if you went back to that moment before you knew it would lead to a breakthrough and you were to say ‘Jeff’, and you were in a bad place because you just broke down. If you were to say ‘Jeff, would you believe it if I told you that not only will you get through this, it will change everything about the way you lead companies and you are going to attract more people towards you than you ever did by being a top down, having-to-be-right kind of leader’.
And that part of you at that moment would have said ‘what are you crazy? I'm just trying to get through this. I'm crying in front of my people’, but if you could go back there and see the expression on your face and then tell that part of you I guarantee it because I'm you and we're different, so do you follow me? It's an immersion in that, and so for myself, I'll just share this. I dropped out of medical school twice, probably for untreated depression, and the second time I dropped out they wanted to kick me out, but they somehow gave me another chance and I've done this exercise where I go back to me just as I'm about to drop out the second time, so I'm lost. I didn't know I was going to come back because I was dropping out the second time and I get a little emotional, so I hope that's okay.
Jeff Dewing
Of course.
Dr Mark Goulston
And when I see myself there at 25 and I can see my face and I say, ‘if I were to tell you that in the next 50 years, you're not only going to come back and finish medical school, what you're going through is going to enable you to reach many, many people and save a bunch of lives. You don't know it. You're gonna write nine books, you're gonna publish over 1,100 blogs and get this. You're like this persona-non-grata in this medical school. You're gonna be one of the 80 most prominent alumni from it ever.’
When I look at myself and I can see me, that 24 or 25 year old starts crying like ‘you're crazy, Mark, I'm useless’. Do you follow what I'm saying. What happens is I can feel his pain and I'm giving him a dose of healing optimism. By the way, if you're listening or watching this, you can do this for yourself and it's a way of really changing your perspective on life. You can go back to times that you never thought you'd get through from your present status and have that conversation and you'll feel that wounded part of you start to heal.
Jeff Dewing
There's a reason I'm smiling while you're speaking. I went on a event, a retreat, two weeks ago and we had a guest speaker for the day, and that guest speaker was a lady called Jessica and she'd worked in Harley Street for 38 years as a psychiatrist. And she came in with the headline of ‘We're gonna unlock your constrained thinking’ and she took us on a journey, told us her story, which was quite intense, which was great, and she told us that she managed to overcome that.
What we didn't know, because we was unprepared for any of it, is she was actually a hypnotist and what she did was she asked for four volunteers to take four one-to-ones on deep learning and she basically put them under and we're in the room. There's 14 of us, so we're a group of people that have been together for seven years. We trust each other implicitly, so there's never any fear.
Anyway, this person's gone under. She promises you that there's no dark secrets gonna come out. It's all good, positive vibe. Anyway, cut a long story short. What she did was she said it all started with. ‘Tell me what your constraints are, what's your constrained thinking, what are the things that you worry about’ and what this one person said ‘I get very anxious when I'm delivering a project. When we get to the finish line, I'm so, so tightly strung because if this doesn't work, it's the end of the world. I get anxious, I get frustrated, I get angry, I get and there's a fear of something not working at the end.’
So she puts him under. She said right, ‘take me back to the last time you had that feeling’. So he's now under. He's completely conscious, but under. He can't see any of us, but he feels the energy. And she said ‘take me back to the time when you had that feeling’. So he said ‘I'm angry, I'm angry’. Should we tell me about the emotion you have just before you become angry? And it's ‘I'm frightened’. Okay, what are you frightened about? ‘Well, frightened about something not working’. She goes ‘right okay, I want you to focus on that emotion, I want you to amplify it a hundred times, I want you to feel the unpleasantness of that emotion’. And you know, yeah, yeah. And his hands start to shake.
She goes ‘right now, knowing that emotion, take me back further, to another time where you felt that same fear’, and nod when you feel that you've got. You've got something. So he nods okay, where are you? I'm in church. Okay, what's happening in church? I'm in church with my parents. They're signing up to a religion. That's not right. It's just not right.
She said, well, amplify that feeling and don't tell me about it. She doesn't go and say, well, what was your parents doing all this stuff? Because that's intrusive. It was not what it was about. So she said, ‘right, well, now you're at that point, you know you're a grown man. I now want you to tell me, having that feeling and that expression and that position that you're in now and you know you're a grown man from then until now, tell me what that's cost you’. ‘It's cost me relationships, it's cost me happiness, it's cost me…’, and so it goes on. So she said right now you should go to the other end of your life. You're now 95 years old and you're looking back. Now tell me what it's cost you. ‘It's cost me a wasted life’, and so on, and so on and so on. She goes right ‘now, come back to the church’. Okay, you're back at the church.
Yes, there's a little boy in this room and his parents are about to do exactly the same thing. What advice are you gonna give that little boy? And he says ‘it's not your fault, it's not your responsibility, you can't control something you shouldn't need or want to control. Let it go, move on’. So he gives that advice. She goes ‘how do you feel in your body’? And he suddenly starts he was slouched. He suddenly starts to sit up. He goes ‘I feel free’. So she said right, okay. So now I want you to.
You've now given that advice to that little boy, which is fantastic advice. So how are you now gonna behave differently? What are you now gonna do? ‘I'm not gonna worry about it anymore. I'm gonna move on, I'm gonna be free, I'm gonna enjoy life, I'm gonna be happy, I'm gonna do that’. So she said, ‘fantastic. When are you gonna do that’? ‘Right now’. She said that's an excellent answer. So now I want you to go back to the 95 year old person. What does that person say to you now? You said they said ‘thank you, you freed up to enable me to reach 95’.
He came out of that. He was a different man and we spoke to each other and to group has a week after that event and said how you feeling he goes. ‘I can't explain it I have no dark clouds over me anymore – it is unbelievable’, and that's the ritual. I was smiling at you talking because that's exactly the same as principles, where you give yourself permission.
Dr Mark Goulston
Well, you know also what you do is you go back deep to the source of the pain that became coping mechanisms that helped you survive, but you didn't heal from them. You coped but you didn't heal. So what she did, and I'll tell you, you just gave a mini masterclass. This is going to be an amazing episode. No, really you were so descriptive of it.
Can I share an anecdote with you that is doing the opposite, although, if you're viewing this or listening, play back what Jeff just said, that he described it so clearly and you should look up this psychiatrist that he's mentioned, because it was brilliant what she did. But here's an anecdote about the power of doing the opposite and connecting with someone in the core of their pain.
So when I was in training in psychiatry at UCLA, they had one of the leading eating disorder programs in America and, and way back when, when young women would come in and they'd be, you know, skin and bones, you'd have to tube feed them or else they were gonna die you know, and it was rough.
But the point is, if they weren't eating, you had to do that. Couldn't do that at home. And I remember I was on call in the emergency room one Saturday and a young woman came in who was clearly gonna need to be admitted to the unit and there was no one behind her. So I said to her because I got this feeling for where she was stuck, and I said ‘can we try something? And if it's upset you, you can stop me’. And she said ‘yeah, OK’.
I said I want you to close your eyes and I'm gonna count from one to ten and you're gonna put your left hand on your stomach and the left hand is the mommy you want and need. We're not here to bash your parents. And that mommy is saying to you feel the left hand on your stomach, I'm here and I'm not going anywhere, and just feel her saying that and her eyes start to moisten, her eyes are closed. And then I said now take your right hand, put it on top of the left hand, and that's the hand of the daddy you want to need and what he's saying to that your mommy is ‘I'm here too and I'm not going anywhere and we're gonna get through this’.
And then I had her go back and forth from the left hand mommy to the right hand daddy and tears are just coming down the side of her face. Then I get a signal that they're down there ready to take her upstairs to be admitted to the inpatient unit. We count back one to ten or ten to one, and she wakes up. Her eyes are just kind of clicking like this, and they're there to take her upstairs and she looks at me and she says ‘Is the cafeteria open? I'm starved’.
Jeff Dewing
Wow, wow, wow.
Dr Mark Goulston
That's, that's a wow, wow, yeah, I said I think we can do that. And then I looked into her eyes and I said ‘you're gonna get better’, but there can you see how that fits together somehow.
Jeff Dewing
Yeah, of course. Of course it's unlocking that thinking, isn't it? How do you free people from that vision or that pain you would go back to what you said before the pain that you're in. How'd you get people to release the pain?
Dr Mark Goulston
Well, I want to give you and your viewers and listeners something that they can do today. Before the pandemic started, I began a movement called ‘what made you smile today’ #WMYST and the idea is that when someone serves you, they have a name tag, but they're faceless, they're just a function, and when they serve you, if they're not in a rush, if there's not people backed up, you say to them ‘Thank you, Nancy. My name is Mark. I have a question for you. No, no, no, you didn't get into any trouble. What made you smile today?’ And what happens is they will look up and when they look down at you, they are now a person and they're smiling in their eyes.
I turned in a car a month ago and this wonderful woman named Maria did such a great job that, after you know, she took the car in. I said ‘Maria, thank you. I have a question for you. No, you didn't get into any trouble today. What made you smile today?’ And she paused. She looked up at the ceiling and then she looked at me and she said ‘I've had a rough couple days. In fact, in every break I have, I've been going into the bathroom and crying, and this morning I called my dad and my grandpa and they both came in 15 minutes later’.
You can do that. If you're watching this or you're listening, you can do this. You can take invisible people who are somewhere between anybody and nobody and you can make them into somebody. I heard a wonderful phrase from Mr Rogers, who was this iconic figure in America who did this children's shows and I think you're going to like this, jeff. He said we all have the power to love someone into being. Isn't that amazing?
Jeff Dewing
That is, I guess, without sounding too cheesy. But when you watch, young children connect with Toy Story and the film, which are just animations. Yet for those kids they are real people, they are real living beings with emotional connection and blah, blah, blah. When you watch children's faces light up on watching something like that they've had this connection with, it's not real, it's not a person, it's a cartoon, it's an animation, it's a fiction. But to the children these are real people that they love to death. And that proves that point, I guess.
Dr Mark Goulston
Well, there's a saying I don't think that children are connecting with the characters. The characters are connecting with the children.
I remember there's a famous anecdote that when FDR Franklin Delano Roosevelt died, people just wept. And then there's a famous anecdote where someone said ‘you're crying so deeply, did you know him’? And the person said ‘no, but he knew me’.
Jeff Dewing
Yeah, it's when you really think about stuff. And this is coming back to the power of thinking right. And one of the things we've had to finish the strategy day today and with my team of 25 senior members and we literally finished half an hour before we had this show and one of the things that came out of the strategy day was an instruction to everybody that says as senior leaders and responsible managers / coaches you have a responsibility to ensure that 25% of your time, your working time, has to be dedicated to thinking, reflecting and talking and connecting, not doing.
And you have to find a way to do that because when you do, you're going to start creating magic and by doing that yourself and realising it's power, you'll then start to ask your teams, to do the same thing. And when your teams do the same thing, the magic happens. And because everyone, your first reaction will be ‘I haven't got time’ will be your first reaction, because that's your natural reaction, that's your comfort zone, that's your belief, and I've given you permission to not believe that anymore.
You've got to find a way and if you were suddenly taken ill and had to go to hospital for the next two days, you wouldn't be in work, would you? And work wouldn't die, would it? The company wouldn't cease to operate. So take your 25% and work out how you're going to do it and declare to me in four weeks time how you're going to do it. But you've got to do it.
And suddenly, because it was no longer a choice is going to happen, and it's in the positive environment which they're excited about. They lit up, they sat up, and it was. It was fascinating, as something like that have that positive impact and it is about the power of thinking, and the power of reflection is one of the most powerful tools that we just underutilize.
Dr Mark Goulston
So can I give you an exercise that I would like you to try? That might, in addition to what you're doing, to help them to reflect.
Jeff Dewing
Please do!
Dr Mark Goulston
There was something that I spoke around the world and it was an exercise I did and I remember I met with 180 CEOs in South Bend, Indiana, which is the home of Notre Dame University. So these 180, you know, middle market, there weren't too many like Fortune 500 CEOs there may be a few and picture this, they're all at tables. And I said ‘I have an exercise, I want you to take two or three minutes and I want you to share a time in your life that you didn't think you would get through but you did. I want you to select a time where someone in particular helped you and that also, that should be a person who's still alive and you could contact today, or their next of kin. So they're in your contact list’.
And so, within minutes, people are using the magic triad of connectedness, vulnerability, courage and gratitude, so they share these incidents of just being so raw and exposed. That's the vulnerability and you think, ‘boy, how courageous that you got through that’. And then they talk about the person who is there and helped them and what they did, and then catch this. I said now you're all going to do a selfie and you're going to send a video to that person or their next of kin or because they're in your contact list and you say ‘I'm here at this program talking about people who made a difference in my life and I thought of you and you're going to give them a power thank you’.
And the power Thank you is this is what you did specifically. They may not remember it, because they did it for all kinds of people. This is what you did. This is the effort you took to do it. You went out of your way and you followed up to make sure I was okay. And then the third thing is this is how it personally affected me, and some of you will be saying you saved my career, you saved my marriage, you saved my child, you saved me. And you're going to do a selfie and you're going to send it to that person and we're going to do something at the end of the day to see how many of you got responses from those people. And at the end of the day, you know, people raised their hand and said I just got a text back from so and so and they said they can't stop crying, they watched my video five times.
But can you picture that in your mind's eye? And then what you'd say to those people? What if you could be that person, to someone who works for you?
Jeff Dewing
Yeah.
Dr Mark Goulston
And then you have them do the same exercise. I want you to go back to your team and you can facilitate it in the same way with all those elements, including now you're all going to send them a selfie and you're going to thank them.
Jeff Dewing
Not only is it a powerful exercise, not only is it rewarding, but at the same time, it absolutely creates an element of deep trust, love, concern, appreciation amongst the team themselves, which, in by default, means they become a stronger team together, which means they achieve their goals as a team. So it's all powerful stuff if you have the courage to do it. And that's the key. How do you break down the barriers and give people the permission to have the courage and to be vulnerable?
Dr Mark Goulston
Well, you know, when you were on my podcast and I hope this is the beginning of a long term relationship… when you shared the anecdote of talking to your people, you hit the trifecta. I'm thinking boy that's vulnerable, that was courageous to just stop yourself and be open and honest with them, and the gratitude that you felt towards your team who said, ‘Jeff, take a few days off, we'll take care of this’. It was ‘you just had me at hello’.
Jeff Dewing
And it's funny we learn these things sometimes. There's obviously we learn these things too late in life, but I don't know what the answer to that is, because you have to have the
knowledge, the wisdom, the experience and so on to make those decisions.
Dr Mark Goulston
So here's a tip. So I was a suicide prevention specialist but I was also a death and dying specialist. So I would do house calls to dying patients and try to help them make peace with their lives. And I remember there was one person I was visiting and he was an icon at a terrible personal life multiple marriages, kids on drugs and he liked that I was direct with him and I met with him and I'll call him Joe that wasn’t his name and I'll say Joe, you look like crap and I don't think it's because you're dying. You've been dying as long as I know you. What's up?
And he looked at me and he said I don't think I've ever done anything important. I said you have a hospital named after you, you've created thousands of jobs and you know and you're beloved out in public. And then he looked at me and he was well known for his rye sense of humor and he said ‘don't con a con man, especially when he's dying. I've got all the love that money can buy and everything I thought was important isn't and everything I thought was unimportant is, and I don't have time to fix that’. So I said to myself, Mark, if you don't learn the lesson he just taught you. You're an idiot.
Jeff Dewing
Yeah. Other exercises I've been lucky enough to be privy to where someone takes you on that journey. They say right, you're 95. You're in your deathbed. I'm sitting next to you. You got 24 hours to live. Just play back to me what you think people feel about you, your wife, your kids, your peers. Just tell me what you think and I'll make this, this story up just because it makes the point. And I think they think I was aggressive, assertive, unforgiving, demanding, and it goes on.
So he said okay, fine, are you happy with that? No, well, how do you want people to think about you? Well, I don't think I was generous and kind. Always put them before me and, okay, great. Well, guess what? I've got some good news. What's that? You're not going to die in 24 hours. So tell me what you're now going to do to behave in a way that means that when you do hit your deathbed, that's what people will think about you, what action you're now going to take. And it helps you just focus your mind. Stuff that we never really think about, because we avoid that type of thinking.
Dr Mark Goulston
Oh yeah, we run away from deep feelings and thoughts into hyperactivity. It can cause us to accomplish a great deal, but frequently we're running from something and a lot of times what I've discovered as a psychiatrist is we're running away from. ‘ it doesn't matter if the important things are missing’. And there's someone I'm coaching now who's very accomplished, wealthy, self-made man and he sent me a video of a billionaire who looked kind of sad and the billionaire was saying do you know what the measure of successes in life? And clearly this billionaire didn't feel it. He said the measure of success in life is when your grown children look forward to spending time with you and it's not because of all the things you buy them.
Jeff Dewing
Correct. That’s one of the things – I don’t know if I’ve ever shared this with anybody outside of my immediate family. But me and my wife we had our children very young and as a result of that we felt very connected, we laugh at the same things, so on and so on.
But what we found is when our kids started to leave at 18, 19, 20 and guys sort of start their lives, they never wanted to leave our side. So we're going on holiday, they want to come on holiday with us, and now the youngest is 34, the oldest is 38. And they still holiday. We can't without being disrespectful - we can't get rid of them! And but the most lovely is that when we're together we behave like we're the same age and we're friends, and it is not something that's artificial, it's just natural because we still know how to laugh, we still know how to cry, we still know how to, we love the same things and it's almost like the generational gap over the last couple of decades has diminished as opposed to what it was when I was a younger child.
Dr Mark Goulston
Yeah, absolutely. While we're on the topic of parenting, some advice I want to give. If you're a parent and you have children, especially if you have a 20-something child who's not launching there's a term ‘failure to launch’, so I'm hoping if this sounds like your family you'll use it is… What I've told These 20 somethings is do you think that your parents are disappointed in you? And they'll often say’ oh yeah’, and I'll say ‘you've got it wrong. I've had a conversation with your parents. They are not disappointed in you, they are worried about you. So if you're resenting them because you think they're disappointed in you, they're worried about you’ and it just has flipped the switch in those relationships.
Jeff Dewing
When you think about it, these things, really, without seeming flippant, these things are quite simple stuff. It's about getting people to feel comfortable holding up a mirror and it's about being comfortable asking the difficult questions. When you find that you've gone through this level of stress, worry, concern about the conversation you've got to have with your loved one, your kids, your parents, whatever, and you then eventually have the courage to address that question. When you come out the other side of it, you go ‘that weren’t so bad’, that you spent all your energy worrying about it rather than just dealing with it and then realising that you've just now become that much more free after having the conversation.
Dr Mark Goulston
A lot of people avoid conflict because they think it'll go poorly. Or people get angry with conflict and make the conflict into a big argument and then it goes poorly. I coach a number of CEOs who are not good with conflict - they will assign it to someone else and that's OK. If you're a gifted CEO or founder and you have invented all the intellectual property, you can bring in a hitman to do those difficult conversations. And investors, as long as you have someone to do them, they'll say, ‘well, it'd be nice if the CEO or founder could have those conversations, but at least they have the COO who can do it for them’. But I'm working with a number of people who say ‘I do it everywhere in my life and I need to stop it’.
An insight that we've discovered in working together is people who avoid conflict have trouble being proactive in interpersonal issues. They can be proactive with strategy, vision and all that, but when it comes to interpersonal stuff they get nervous. They're afraid the other person's going to escalate, and so what I've been coaching them on is, if you are proactive, that person you have problems with will often calm down because you're taking charge of the situation without being controlling. And what does proactive mean? Is you go up to someone that you've been avoiding and you proactively and calmly say ‘our working together has really taken a wrong turn and I think it's time to see how to fix it. I'm not exactly sure what the solution is, but let's set a time to see if we can talk it through, because I want to look forward to seeing you and I don't look forward to seeing you and I want to fix that’. But can you see how proactive and calm that is, as opposed to just avoiding? ‘Oh, if I say something, they're going to snap at me and then I'm going to be all upset’. So the more proactive you can be, people like it. They respect that kind of leadership!
Jeff Dewing
For me, conflict is very healthy when done in the right way, with the right sensitivity and the right care, and so on and so on. But I thrive on conflict, not for a negative connotation, because of the ability that conflict for me isn't about selling somebody, I'm right, you're wrong. Conflict is - I'm curious about why you are doing what you are doing or you're saying what you're saying. I'm just curious, make me understand. And then suddenly you have this flowing, unfiltered conversation. That is very, very, very healthy.
But the problem you've got and you're actually right when you say about people avoid it because - it's like playing tennis. How do you get good at tennis? You have to play it frequently, as you get good at golf, you have to play it frequently. And if you never had the difficult conversation or you avoid the difficult conversation, you'll be worried about it all your life. When you learn and you practice and you do it and you do it, it then becomes natural and you become more powerful for it, because you can deal with the real challenging elements in life in a really great way. That invariably creates a great outcome. We're fearful of our shadows and we've got to learn not to be.
Dr Mark Goulston
Yeah, absolutely, our mutual friend, Garry Ridge. He's the chairman emeritus of WD-40, which everybody in the world loves, and he has something called The Learning Moment. That's now his company, and when he talks about WD-40, he said we don't make mistakes here, we have ‘learning moments’ and our whole culture is so. If something didn't work out, what'd you learn from it, what can you get from it? How can you keep that from happening? What did it teach you about the problem? What did teach you about life? And he really lives that, and so I think it's. I loved what you said, that it's a chance to be curious. It's a chance to ask yourself ‘gee, they seem upset. I wonder what they're upset about. I wonder what, from their point of view, I did or I failed to do that ticked them off’.
Jeff Dewing
And one of the ways we talk about a major in the coaching style is we say to them to go to your teams and uncover the things that matter. And the way you uncover it is you say to your teams, whoever it is individually, one to ones. I'm really curious is there anything I can do differently or do better to help you, rather than tell me what you think of me?
But the key is you have to be strong and humble and your ego has to be in your pocket and you've got to be prepared to listen to it, not justify and respond to it. You've got to listen to it and before you know where you are, people then suddenly go, ‘wow, what a great conversation that was’. And then by default you will, whether you like it or not, even subconsciously start to adjust your behaviour and the only goes from strength to strength, and then you become trustworthy and you become rock solid. You become your person, the go to person, and everybody then says, ‘wow, what can I now do for him’? And it just, it creates this cycle. But somebody's got the courage to start the wheel going and then the wheel will get momentum.
Dr Mark Goulston
You know that's so true. I interviewed a CEO and when he has meetings with his executive team, I thought this was brilliant. He says ‘I start each meeting - we meet every couple of weeks. The first thing we talk about is any elephants in the room’. I just thought that was brilliant. So they have a culture of ‘what is something that is obvious to any of us that we're not addressing. That is getting in the way of our succeeding’, and I thought what a great practice to have.
Jeff Dewing
Listen, I knew it would be incredible conversation and thank you so much for your contribution, because it's going to be wonderful and I can't wait for this to air. But I've got a couple of quick questions I'd like to finish up with, if I may?
Reflecting on your life, your experiences, your ups and downs, all the things you've been through and the life lessons that you've gained along the journey. If you could only say one thing, what would you say you were most grateful for?
Dr Mark Goulston
I collect quotes and there's one quote that knocked all the other quotes off the table and it comes from Dr Shawnee Duparon, who started Project Forgive with Desmond Tutu, and they were nominated for a Nobel Prize. And so what I'd like to leave you and your audience with is ‘forgiveness, is accepting the apology you will never receive’.
Jeff Dewing
Wow. That's great. That's a great quote.
Dr Mark Goulston
That's wow! Learning that helped me make peace with my father, who died in 1995.
Jeff Dewing
Wow, that is powerful. That is powerful the ability to create a solution to something that's bothering you in a simple phrase that creates simplicity and therefore connection. That's brilliant, fantastic, wow, that's the best one we've had yet.
OK, the next one. If there was only one thing again basically your career, your information, your knowledge, your wisdom, if there was only one message you could give to the audience, what would that one message be?
Dr Mark Goulston
Well, you know, my book Just Listen became the top book on listening in the world and it was recently rated as the second-best communication skills book of all time.
And what I'm trying to teach the world is that whoever you're with, whether it's one-on-one, like you and I right now, one-on-five or one-on-500, whoever you're with is listening for something underneath their listening to you. Listening to you is transactional. Listening for something has the potential to be transformational.
So, for instance, I believe that, underneath you listening to me and we going back and forth with our experiences and our little nuggets - and tell me if this is accurate - I think what you're listening for is you want to honour the trust and confidence of your listeners and viewers in you and you want to honour that by not wasting their time.
Can I share a tip that will change everyone's life?
Jeff Dewing
Of course you may, please do!
Dr Mark Goulston
This is what you do if you want to retrofit your intimate relationship with the adoration that you and your partner once felt for each other, if you want to retrofit it with how you felt about each other and looked and loved each other.
Here's the tip. You reach out to the person and you have to say I want to run something by you. And there's three questions. Now there's three parts to it. The first one is ‘have I ever made you feel that I don't respect you or like you’? They're going to go ‘what’, which is a yes. And then you say ‘take me to the time when my not respecting or liking you, where you're hurt, crossed over into anger and resentment’. And then they'll share that with you. And even if you don't remember you and they're going to be crying, by the way, because they're getting this up and out and off their chest and you say look at me. And then you look at them. And here's the third part ‘I did that’, so you got to own up to it. That's what they're living with. That's what they're holding against you. ‘I did that and I've done that on too many occasions. You deserve better than that. I'm going to fix it and I'm sorry’. That will do a hot sink in your relationship and take it out of the sink.
Jeff Dewing
Yeah, well, you're back to harbouring the hurt, aren't you, and not addressing it, and people just constrain it. So, yeah, I completely bind to that. Life's about trying new things and it's about reigniting life, putting the spark back in it at some point somehow, because we all get into the vicious revolution or the vicious status quo, don't we? And I think those who enjoy most in life are the ones that say, well, no, let's turn it up a few years, let's do something good, let's take on some challenges, some responsibilities, some accountabilities. These are all the things that are lovely about how we all evolve as humans, especially when we surrounded by great people that hold us to account.
That's when you start to fly, and I think, yeah, that's been the lessons I've learned over the years.
So listen, Dr Mark, thank you so much. This was an incredible conversation. So, thank you so much for your time, really appreciate it, and I can't wait for our past to cross the game.
Dr Mark Goulston
Well, thank you for the gift of your friendship.
Jeff Dewing
Thank you very much. It's very, very kind.
Wow, I knew Mark was not going to let me down on this. His knowledge, wisdom, charisma is just off the scale and just an incredibly decent and kind human being. I guess the bit that he never, ever fails to deliver is these little thought processes, these little sayings, these little quotes. I loved his quote on forgiveness is accepting the fact that the apology you will never receive. What a powerful quote that was.
And then also, that exactly gave where he sits people together and says ‘right, I want you to go back to something that happened in your life and I want you to reflect on what happened in your life and I want you to think about the person that helped you through that moment and I want you to send them a selfie and explain to them how they changed your life’ and watch how many of them get a text back which just creates another level of connection and relationship. Well, when you think about that, that's about vulnerability, that's about deepness, but if you do it, and when you do it, the impact it has on relationships, your life, your ability to thank someone, paying it forward, for want of a better phrase, I guess it's just incredibly powerful stuff if you have the courage to face all these things. If you do, your life becomes enriched. So that was Dr Mark Goulston. He lives in America, we speak quite frequently and I can't wait for our past to cross one day, because he's fascinating. He's absolutely fascinating.
Of course, you can listen to loads more episodes on my podcast Doing The Opposite. Please listen back to some of the earlier ones. There are so many to choose from, going back to season one with Sir Clive Woodward or Graham Gooch MBE, and we've also got people like Sue Fennessy who has launched WeAre8t social platform to take on Facebook and Twitter.
There's so many incredible stories. It really is worthwhile to get the time to have a listen or download and listen to it at your leisure. And, of course, as always, a huge thank you to my team Nichola Crawshaw at Cloud FM, my PR team Thinking Hat and, of course, my production team, Sam Walker and Michael Blades at What Goes On Media.
Thanks for listening.