Doug Bouey on Caring for Others via Fixing Fractures

Discover how noticing can be your superpower as we chat with Douglas Bouey, an expert in mending broken relationships. Douglas, renowned for his work as a Vistage group leader and mentor, shares his journey and insights from his enlightening trip to Japan. The episode dives deep into the world of leadership and personal growth, revealing the transformative power of cultural insights and the timeless principles of W. Edwards Deming.

In a riveting discussion, Douglas introduces us to the art of Kintsugi, using it as a metaphor for relationship repair, and highlights his book "Fixing Fractures." We explore how embracing the beauty in breakage can enhance leadership skills and resolve conflicts. Alongside his mentor, John Constantouris, Douglas unpacks effective frameworks for addressing fractures in relationships, turning challenges into opportunities for building stronger bonds.

The conversation takes a practical turn as we examine tools like the Relationship Guidance System (RGS) and the eight-step resolution protocol. With engaging case studies, Douglas shows how preparation and dedication are key to transforming conflicts into creative opportunities. From a business conflict between brothers to diverse perspectives in personal connections, we learn how to approach relationship challenges with patience, mindfulness, and a willingness to learn. Join us for an episode rich with insights and practical advice for anyone eager to lead with purpose and foster enduring relationships.

https://www.teleioscn.org/anatomy-of-leadership/doug-bouey-on-caring-for-others-via-fixing-fractures

Chapters

• 0:01 Leading With Purpose and Cause
• 4:11 Mending Fractures Through Relationship Repair
• 15:14 Navigating Relationships With Purpose
• 25:11 Resolving Relationship Fractures With RGS
• 33:58 Navigating Relationship Challenges With Tools

Transcript

Melody King: 0:01

Everything rises and falls on leadership. The ability to lead well is fueled by living your cause and purpose. This podcast will equip you with the tools to do just that Live and lead with cause and purpose. And now author of the book The Anatomy of Leadership and our host, Chris Comeaux.

Chris Comeaux: 0:24

Hello and Welcome to the Anatomy of Leadership. I'm excited. Today Our guest is Douglas Bouey, and so Douglas is an accomplished author and a facilitator of Fixing Fractures, which we're going to get to in just a moment. So Welcome, Doug, it's so good to have you.

Doug Bouey: 0:39

Glad to see you, Chris, and I'm very appreciative of you having me on your esteemed podcast.

Chris Comeaux: 0:45

Well, thank you. Well, let me read from Doug's his bio here. So, Douglas Bouey is a mentor to presidents and a facilitator for groups who aspire to real unity and drive. He was a group leader for tech, which is now Vistage for 32 years, reaching their Pinnacle Award in 2007. His mentee and group leaders have gone on to achieve leadership strength.

Chris Comeaux: 1:07

Now Doug focuses on his writing and is Fixing Fractures, restoring shattered relationships and business and life and I'm holding up. His book has received wide notice as a resource for those facing troubling and costly breaches of trust. In fact, I actually picked up Doug's book on a Saturday and I did not put it down until I finished it in one sitting. It's really good. And so, Doug actually writes a substack. It's actually called Catch and Release. In fact, he had recently just a great kind of series about his trip to Japan.

Chris Comeaux: 1:38

He will shortly begin serializing a new book on later life called let go of the rope, and he also hopes to complete another video course, the Coach's Backpack, a compendium of go-to concepts for coaches to employ as they face with their clients, the complexity of their challenges. And so, Doug lives with his wife, who's an artist, her name is Elaine and they live in Hornby sorry Island on the British Columbia coast, and also he has a home in San Miguel del Allende, Mexico, while preserving his base in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. He also has two grown children, who are both engineers. I find that interesting, Doug. That's very left brain and you strike me as a very right brain human being. So, Doug, what did I leave out?

Doug Bouey: 2:22

I don't know what went wrong there. No, I don't think you've left anything out, except that, as we were just talking, I've got a head full of Japan and I've been writing in catch release about my observations of Japan, which I found electrifying, and I can't urge your people any harder to go to Japan if they possibly can.

Chris Comeaux: 2:50

Yeah, I was sharing with you, and we were doing show prep that my mentor, Dr Lee Thayer, who you and I both knew he was just raved he did a lot of actually work in Japan and I've always been a fan of Toyota and just their amazing leadership concepts. But yeah, your Catch and Release series has made me revisit some of the things that, culturally, Dr Thayer would talk about. They're just very attractive about the culture and just the honor culture and how that seeps and permeates, but then also maybe some of the best of the kind of American capitalistic system that so it sounds like a pretty unique combination.

Doug Bouey: 3:18

They learned an awful lot from Edwards Deming about continuous improvement, and I think we've kind of lost that trail, because I think that what happens is we do something once, build a prototype, and say that's it, it's, it's done, it's now perfect, and of course it isn't. And what happens in Japan is you see so much evidence of things that have been rethought from the user's perspective. Little twists and tinkers have been made and the result is just a completely gratifying experience.

Chris Comeaux: 3:52

Yeah, I'm so glad you. If there's not, there's probably not a week I do not quote Deming at least one time in the work that I do, so that's pretty, pretty affirming.

Doug Bouey: 4:03

He was a dynamite fellow.

Chris Comeaux: 4:05

Absolutely. In fact, Dr Thayer did actually interact with him, and so he had some pretty cool stories there.

Doug Bouey: 4:10

I'll bet.

Chris Comeaux: 4:11

So, Doug, what's your Superpower? This is something I've asked our guest and I left it off a couple of shows, and I'm so glad I asked it because it ends up being so enlightening for me, as then we go through the podcast.

Doug Bouey: 4:22

I think noticing. I'm an observer, I pay close attention. I don't have too much trash in my head that gets in the way of me reporting what I see. So often I see and experience things that I think are very obvious, that other people have missed and funny, but most of those things are quite subtle, but they're extremely significant.

Chris Comeaux: 4:50

That is a really cool superpower. In fact, I was just listening to an Ed Mylett podcast he's become quite popular, kind of like another Tony Robbins and he did a whole segment on slowing down and he said do you even know what your hand looks like? And he was really giving a very tangible way of pointing out what you just pointed out of, like developing the skill set of noticing. And he even he said he said it will spill over into every aspect of your life, even the profitability of your business, just based upon noticing. I never heard anyone frame it that way before Interesting. All right, well, we're going to jump into your book here, so I'm using the framework of my book.

Chris Comeaux: 5:32

I guess we've had a full year now and it occurred to me actually in the very end of 23, right when we just released the book. I'm like I'm an accountant, so you know accountants put things in categories and so if I'm going to write something about leadership, that I guess would be my logical offering to the world. Trying to create a meta framework. If you Google the word leadership, you get six billion hits. Dr Thayer used to rail on the fact he goes, don't you find it interesting? We seem to have less leaders but more leadership material, which was always a little bit of, maybe an oracular of sorts.

Chris Comeaux: 6:04

Well, Lee was such an irascible observer of things. He was very much so. He would rattle people's cages, and he rattled my cage quite a bit. So this is really kind of a meta framework, and so we've been through all the chapters. But as I read your book, I was thinking of theming and maybe titling our show today, you know, Doug Bouey, on curing for others via fixing fractures, is what I was thinking. And you and I met after my podcast with Tom Foster and then and then you and I talked and there's so many cool commonalities but when you talked about your book, fixing fractures, I said, okay, I've got to have you on my show, but I think we need to talk about this. So, tell a little bit more of your story and how exactly did you come to what you're doing now? And I think that'll lead us into your book.

Doug Bouey: 6:48

Well of course it's a long story and we all have complex lives and backgrounds, but I'll speak about how I got to fixing fractures particularly. I had a mentor by the name of John Constantouris and John was a tech chair in San Diego and one of the first tech chairs that I met when I was first being inducted into the tribe. And John had been a commander in the Los Angeles police force when the Watts riots were on and he was just a searcher and a quester and a learner and what he wanted to do was he wanted to be able to take very intractable people and soften them up and make them come together so that they would be in unity. And you know, his framework on fixing fractures is, uh, really developed totally. This framework is totally developed from his framework, and it's been adapted and expanded, of course, as time has gone on.

Doug Bouey: 7:51

But I met him, I heard him speak, I said to him I want to learn that. I did this with lots of tech speakers Well, not lots, but some people who had concepts of real gravity that were timeless, and this was definitely in that category. So I went on to say to John I want to do this, I want to learn this and do it and he's mentored me through my time getting a grasp of it, getting through my first awkward attempts at facilitating people using the framework, and then we refined and discussed it together and we would often get together on the phone after we'd worked on a case and really talk about how magnificent it is to reach through a fracture to a resolution and to have people there in that space that they get into when they've actually closed off something that was really, really bothering them.

Chris Comeaux: 8:56

That's awesome. In fact, I am not going to have the word right, but on the title, the cover of your book. I had just heard about this type of artistry, where I believe it is Japanese right.

Doug Bouey: 9:08

Yes, it's called.

Chris Comeaux: 9:09

Kintsugi. Say it one more time Kintsugi, so, Kintsugi. So on the front of your book here you have a picture of the vase and it's being, and so they put it together. You want to talk about that?

Doug Bouey: 9:21

Sure, I mean what happens, the way they practice this art and this is all Japanese, it's, you know, only they would do this kind of thing. But they take a ceramic vessel and drop it on the floor, and then the art is setting about putting it back together using a kind of a gold glue and obviously a lot of patience. So that's the art form, and when you see the vessels that have been repaired in this manner, they're more elegant and special than they ever were in the first place.

Chris Comeaux: 9:59

Which is such a beautiful and fitting metaphor. And so I was thinking, you know, fixing fractures, and we could have all this great leadership, knowledge, tools in our toolbox, creating a high performance organization, as Dr Thayer would say. But yet it all comes back to relationships, and that is the essence of every part of life, and of course, not just at work. Right, every human endeavor. And I'm a fan of John Maxwell, I've stole his quote, and if I'm leading and no one's following, I'm just taking a walk. You can't lead if you don't have other people. No, that's right. And so, to have a tool in your toolbox and I love that actual visual because it is so true Quite often the deepest and most impactful relationships are those who have gone through trying times, and you come out of it, on the back end, better for it, but it is the road less traveled, maybe more often than not.

Doug Bouey: 10:57

I don't know if you want to comment to that.

Doug Bouey: 10:58

Well, this takes discipline. You know if people love to just do things from the gut and on the fly, this isn't that, and I think that we're talking about fractures. I do encourage people to say you can use it with any break. When you have a break with someone and you know know, a relationship that seems to be cooking along goes cold, or a sales contact that you've been making all of a sudden sort of dries up, you can use this framework in any of those situations disciplining an employee, all sorts of things but where it really has the extreme value is in very broken situations where relationships that have been crucial and central to your life have come apart because of breaches of trust, and that's where this really has legs, so to speak. I broke my ankle in January, and I don't know if you or your listeners have broken limbs, but it is.

Doug Bouey: 12:08

I've actually broken my femur, so I broke the biggest one oh, that's a yeah, that's a real and you know yourself that you can say that you should be over it real quick.

Doug Bouey: 12:18

But it takes a long time and the intervention that has to be undertaken to set and repair a fracture is really, really difficult and it's intense. So I don't think that people who are setting out to repair a broken relationship should they get the will to actually address this, which is so uncommon these days, because people just want to wash them out, write them off, forget about them, and this business of caring for people and I think your heading in your book that this fits within is caring. This is how caring is done extreme caring with people that your ego says I don't know if I want to have anything more to do with this person. The difficulty in that is that you know we've been hurt really badly, fundamentally hurt, and it is so difficult to rise above that hurt and get to the place of caring for the other person, remembering what we had or how powerful we were when we were working together right and getting that as the animating force in setting the situation back to rights.

Chris Comeaux: 13:40

Doug, I noticed when you were while reading your book. I had never even heard the term lexicon until I met Dr Thayer. He was so intentional with his writing. So I am always on the lookout for people that are very intentional with their writing and their lexicon. Almost it's interesting, right, you have two children, engineers now that I think about it. But yet the amazing thing is, while you're intentional, you're also very creative with the book. I'd love you to talk about that. My guess is that didn't happen by an accident.

Doug Bouey: 14:13

Well, you've written a book, Chris, so you know how involving that process is, and when I started off, of course, I thought how hard can this be? But it was a work of. It was my COVID project, oh, wow. And I was sitting on Hornby Island in the dreary rains that accompany our winter there most of the time and working hard with Lois Wozney whose part in making this book can't be understated to distill these words down and also to supplement them in ways that could make them relatable to people, and that was the very much the creative part, along with working with Alejandro and I, who did the, I think, very whimsical and helpful illustrations throughout the book that are involving and fun.

Chris Comeaux: 15:14

Well, here's what struck me. Again, it is a very intentional process. So we're going to jump in just a second into the resolution protocol. So it's very intentional. It's a very methodical discipline process. But yet the reason why you would be involved in this process is because it's a very human relationship, right, brain, spiritual aspect, because if a you know when a relationship's working well, it almost feels like magic, like man, we just get stuff done. But but when you have, so it just struck me like you crafted it very thoughtfully because of what you're actually after with the outcome, so does. And my guess is that, again, that wasn't, that was probably very thoughtful on your part.

Doug Bouey: 15:56

Well, I want people to be able to use this, and I recognize that many, many people won't. In this age of diminished attention spans, we're having difficulty with people being able to pay attention for more than a minute or two, and certainly this requires much more than that. But for the right person and I think that your audience, perhaps, and the people who would read your book, are definitely of this stripe they are not fly-by-nighters, they're not casual. They like to do things deliberately, they like to do things with intent, and so this is meant for people like that, people who recognize that Scotty Scheffler didn't get to be the number one golfer in the world by just showing up at the golf course and flailing away with his golf clubs. That's just not the way it happens, and we know this and we marvel at these people, but we don't emulate them in terms of the dedication that they put in to arrive at this point of supreme skill.

Doug Bouey: 16:56

This is a skill.

Doug Bouey: 16:58

You acquire this skill by learning it, then by practicing it, and eventually you'll be able to do it on the fly, off-the-cuff, and seem like you have all the poise in the world.

Doug Bouey: 17:11

But initially it's going to be awkward, it's going to be fumbling and you're going to have to go back to the framework in the course on video which I sent you the link for that on Thinkific, our course on fixing fractures is now up or go back to the book and you kind of have to catch yourself because you're going to get off course.

Doug Bouey: 17:35

You're going to get off course with the person and we speak of the RGS, the Relationship Guidance System, as a way of knowing when you're on course or when you've fallen off course, and that is again I think it's pairing noticing with action, because people know these things. They know when something has gone off with another person, it's not something that they've never heard of or never felt. This is a matter of learning how to shape, how to frame around that, to say I noticed something in my guts, I knew that we had, I I'd hit on something that was that that had soured this person, even in a minor way, and to be able to say, ah, I want to get back on track and the easiest way in the world is to just ask them what happened there.

Chris Comeaux: 18:29

What went wrong? I want to go there because the RGS is brilliant, but let's just back up for a second, because I think the framework is so important. You lay out the resolution protocol. What is the resolution protocol?

Doug Bouey: 18:41

Well, you know, it is an eight-step process for conducting an intense and deliberate conversation with somebody that you've broken off with. So this is not the kind of sit down and yarn over the back fence kind of thing. You don't do that. You don't just call somebody in and decide, hey, I think I'm going to just sort of whip one off here. You prepare and you follow the outline very deliberately and you'll find out If listeners give it a try and it doesn't work. And if they go back they'll look at it and they'll say, uh-oh, I didn't do this step or that step, because what these steps are is they're not rocket science.

Doug Bouey: 19:30

This is the anatomy of difference. This is where it goes wrong. It goes wrong in one of these categories and if we can do this, if we can stay on one topic, can do this if we can stay on one topic. So we're not dealing with the hail of incidents and trying to fend off this, this ball or that, that tackler, but just deal with one single incident and stay on that topic and keep within watertight compartments. So not messing facts with emotions, not messing what I might have done to contribute to the situation with the role that I'm supposed to be occupying, but being very deliberate to keep them distinct and to proceed through them in order, because if you do, you will get to the bottom of the issue.

Chris Comeaux: 20:25

That fractured you. I remember one time, actually, Dr Thayer shared with me that he was having a little tiff with his wife and she said something like I want to get to the bottom of this issue, and he said, no, I want to get to the top of it, so to get beyond it. I thought that was such a brilliant kind of reframe. I haven't been brave enough to use it with my own wife, though.

Doug Bouey: 20:49

Well, I know what my wife would say don't you fracture me.

Chris Comeaux: 20:55

Oh well, and I've. Actually, I was definitely thinking of my amazing. I'm blessed, I've married up, but just thinking of the power of having this eight-step process not only at work but also at home as well. We're going to include a link because Doug has so many great tools so you can actually see the resolution protocol. But it feels one more thing feels foundational. And then I want to get to the RGS. But you talk about there's some great foundational elements, because I feel like you set the table wonderfully before you start walking people through the protocol. But you talk about a relationship mindset. I'd love for you to talk about that a little bit, because I love that framing of a relationship mindset.

Doug Bouey: 21:33

Well, we all come equipped with egos and our egos are very useful to us. They direct us in our everyday and they're the thing that is in charge of the uh, of the, the operating system, all the time, uh.  So, the ego is great until it isn't. But in fractures, what happens in broken trust situations? The ego gets, gets hurt, and its first reaction is seal that hole off. Like, let's get rid of that situation. Let me make sure that I'm going to compress myself, keep myself within narrow bounds so that I don't have that risk again, because again we've been hurt, really fundamentally badly hurt, and the ego says I don't want any more of that, I don't want to be hurt again.

Doug Bouey: 22:28

So the idea of opening ourselves up and being vulnerable as a way to resolve that situation is very antithetical to the ego. It doesn't like that. So, the relationship mindset which we tap into a number of times in different aspects in the book is really all about ways in which you can kind of go beyond your ego to the greater service and reach something. That is maybe, if Dr Thayer said, at the top, if you want to get to the top you've got to start at the bottom. So, you know you want to put the ego in its place and make sure that it doesn't just make the situation worse, which it will if it's allowed full reign Because it's protective Ego is fundamentally protective.

Chris Comeaux: 23:17

I didn't tell you I was going to ask you this. But how do you define the ego?

Doug Bouey: 23:20

out of curiosity, I think the ego is, the, is the guiding um, the guiding force in in our personalities. It's what helps us decide what to do next, how to handle things, what to do, and it is also our, our protective barrier. It's what keeps us from harm, uh, keeps us on our rails, keeps us from harm, keeps us on our rails, keeps us safe, but it's not always good, even though it's very indispensable to function, and it's very concerned with our integrity. It's not concerned with our greater integrity of keeping ourselves in full accord and concordance with the people that we care about.

Chris Comeaux: 24:04

Ooh that's solid gold right there, Doug. So, then I think about that. So if the ego is kind of driving, so as I was reading your book on that Saturday, I was playing out fractures in my own life and thinking, yeah, but, and then of course I got to the resolution guidance system, the RGS, and I thought that is brilliant, that is a brilliant framing, because now I can actually see the ego being in the driver's seat and you know, maybe the car is all me, but the RGS is kind of that guided system. So, can you talk about that? What is the RGS for our listeners?

Doug Bouey: 24:35

Well, the RGS is this system, if you like, of it just codifies what we know in our guts. So if we are relating with someone and let's say that we've built a long-term relationship with this person and we rely on them, they might be a key component of the executive team or something like that, and we may get sort of the wind up one day and say something and watch that other person just suddenly cool and flinch. And that's how the RGS works. It says something happened there. I notice it and I don't think there's any way you can turn that system of noticing off in the human being.

Doug Bouey: 25:17

We're very, very acutely aware of those kinds of interruptions in flow and when that kind of an interruption in flow occurs, what we're saying with the RGS is pay attention to that, particularly when you're in the depth conversation that we're talking about. Don't go past that point. Get clear on what happened there, because that was a mini break. What you saw there was a mini break when they flinched and you need to know what happened. What did I say? And that's all it takes. It's just a matter of clarifying. But that is the RGS in action and that gets things back into flow, back into concordance, so that you have a chance to get to this much desired resolution that we're talking about.

Chris Comeaux: 26:01

Well, I think this is where Alejandro did amazing, like the picture that he drew I assume that was him, yes of having like the caring is in the sweet spot with the heart, and then to the right you have fear and to the left you have anger, and kind of framing it that way. And then I love how you kind of had the bullets of anger displays as erupting, yelling, sarcasm, fear displays as making nice avoidance, sloughing off. It was just brilliant framing because it gave me a visual of like, okay, because I could even start playing some fractures and maybe attempts at trying to get things back on track and then could even almost see the replaying the movie of that conversation in my mind going God, this would have been so helpful as kind of a guidance system.

Doug Bouey: 26:46

Yeah, that's what it is. That's why it's called the relationship guidance system, is it's what we sort of have as our central cockpit display in front of us as we're flying right and maybe flying is. We use the car and the lane avoidance uh, you know lane deviation system in cars that they have now as a way of kind of making an analogy to the rgs in ourselves. This is a system that is in our it's comes, it's endowed with our, our own bodies, in our own senses. We have acute ability to do this. It's just a matter of, as you say, framing it and saying maybe this could be useful.

Chris Comeaux: 27:29

Because I think we learn in terms of stories, Doug. So what are some stories of people utilizing the resolution protocol and maybe what the outcome of some of those stories were?

Doug Bouey: 27:37

Well, I got called into a number of situations. People knew about this and they didn't, of course, deal with it casually or dispense it casually. But there were two brothers in a city in Western Canada who operated a very, very successful fabrication and supply company, and one was the the. This is pretty typical. You probably run across this in your, in your world. One is the operations guy and the other guy is the relationship guy and so he does the sales and the marketing and the pr and so forth and this guy does the back in the shop organizing the realization of the projects and marching them through. So of the two of them, it had been determined some time back these were brothers that Brother One would be the president and he was the operations guy. Brother Two was very important to things but he was not the president.

Doug Bouey: 28:44

As president, Brother One had gone against the expressed wish of Brother Two, who Brother Two is very culturally sensitive, as you can imagine. Brother One had gone and hired a CEO, Not a CEO, a COO, sorry. And this COO was the kind of person that the other brother, just like he, didn't like him right from the start. He didn't get on with him, he didn't feel he had that kind of sensibility to the culture of the organization and, you know, strangely he was right.

Doug Bouey: 29:22

But when that happened and things played out the way they did, those brothers had a really fundamental fracture and it was so bad that they had offices at each end of this building and that path was never crossed.

Doug Bouey: 29:36

However, when I was called in, I went to speak to brother the president and said if you really care about your brother, if you really want your brother back, then you need to take that walk. And he did, and that took enormous courage for him to walk down to the other end of the building, open the door, wait for his other brother to get off the phone that he was on, and the brother was kind of shocked, looked up and brother president said I want my brother back, Well. And so the other brother said Okay, how do we do that? And brother President said I have a guy. And so that was the start of their voyage back, and they worked through all of their fundamental differences to the point where they were just solid and thank God they had, because a year later there was a terrible recession and they had to really carve that company down. And if they hadn't done that work. There was no prospect that company would have survived. It's doing fine right now.

Chris Comeaux: 30:54

That's amazing. That's so amazing. And you know you alluded to earlier about people's attention spans. I always say we live in the drive-thru culture or like you know the movie would have been. He walked down there and they hugged and they lived happily ever after. It doesn't work that way. That's why the resolution protocol is so important. How long did it take you, Doug, to help walk them through the resolution protocol?

Doug Bouey: 31:19

Well, the process in consulting in this situation was to first of all have a preliminary meeting to say can they come under this discipline, can they agree on a purpose and are they willing to devote time to learning how to do this? And so, once that's established, we've got a baseline to start from, we've got an intersection and with that intersection then in the actual session which we conducted off-site, obviously, we had half a day of learning how the protocol works which is in the book, and then we took the worst, the most fundamental breach of trust and started with that and worked them through that, and it took most of the afternoon to do that, as you can imagine.

Chris Comeaux: 32:12

That feels like another key point that you didn't start with something easy. You actually took the absolute worst to run the actual protocol on.

Doug Bouey: 32:20

I don't recommend that. If you're just reading the book or watching the video course and starting out with this, I think it's best to practice on something that's not quite so fundamental. So, I recommend you kind of get the training wheels. And you know we've all got lots of breaks with people. It's not like this never happens. You know we've come off with people that we care about in big ways and little ways throughout life. It's not like this never happens. You know we've come off with people that we care about in big ways and little ways throughout life. It just happens. And in fact if we can learn this skill you get, so that you can adjust, so that if something goes off course you can fix it and you get better and better at that, so that you're not just trailing casualties behind you Right.

Chris Comeaux: 33:05

That kind of gets to where I wanted to go. Next, Doug, is that you know what advice do you have for others? Like you know, I've now read, I just devoured your book. I just loved it. You kind of just alluded to maybe trial it on some things that aren't like the worst things ever. But what other advice do you have if folks try to go okay, this book's amazing, now I want to utilize it. What just kind of coaching or advice would you have?

Doug Bouey: 33:27

Well, I think the first thing I would say is identify, you know, a fracture. That is, you're not going to do this with something that isn't fairly troubling to you, but something that's bothering you and that's and you know, everybody knows how these things manifest. They keep churning around in the mind. So it doesn't take much say for people listening to this to say, oh yeah, I got a couple of those, you know, here's this one, here's that one, pick one.

Doug Bouey: 33:58

Get the relationship preparation worksheet from the website and work your way through it, because we do advocate that as part of the package that you, you actually prepare. You don't just do this on the fly, you don't wing it. You write out some of the steps before you start. And when you do that, when you get that worksheet and go through it, then you'll get a lot clearer about a whole bunch of things that contributed to the way this came about, and that's a part of the process. What's eventually going to happen is you're going to get clear about everything that caused you to separate and you're going to find and display the will to get back together, because that's natural human drive to say I want to be together with this person, I don't want to be off in the corner pouting and sulking.

Chris Comeaux: 34:51

You alluded to this earlier, because, again, I do think we live in kind of the drive through, like when people see mastery. I've always found it fascinating every time Simone Biles wins all these gold medals. You know, all the gymnastic studios end up like with record setting kind of enrollment, but about six months later it's kind of back to where it was before, like we love watching mastery, we don't want to put the work in, but I do think it's important to kind of have a hope and a vision you alluded to, like this could become like part of your toolbox. Yes, like you know, so eventually you could get where you're using this continually. Can you just talk about that a little bit?

Doug Bouey: 35:29

Well, I don't know about continually, but I I don't think it's rare that we have we jostle with other people or we have differences with other people. I mean, one of the fundamentals that john taught me was that difference is what makes the world what it is. You know, if people were all the same, we wouldn't have any creative outcomes at all. It's when people who are different, with different points of view, come together that we get interesting things popping up and creative things popping up. So I think what people can understand, perhaps listening, is that yeah, you know, sure, I have differences, but I'm not going to let those result in me writing off or washing out a bunch of people that could be very important to me, very helpful to me, and maybe huge contributors to the growth of our enterprise or our work, our firm together.

Chris Comeaux: 36:27

So, starting out, obviously and you do a good job in the book of saying you really need to write out there's certain steps that are actually meant to be written out, let's say, two years from now. I've become really good at that. So I'm using the principles on a day-to-day basis, but I still mean so. Maybe, let's say, 80% of the time. I ended up in the ditch with someone you would. You would think that would be less, but even someone has probably masterful. They would still, at some point, for really tough situations, utilize the protocol the way it's actually prescribed. Would that be accurate, Do you think?

Doug Bouey: 37:01

I've taught it for 25 years and I still use the sheet cool yeah yeah, I totally see that.

Chris Comeaux: 37:09

the other thing I meant to give you kudos on is you told it in the form of a story. That was another brilliant way for a text like. I could still remember the two and you painted the picture of the characters a very straight-laced, put-together person and a tatted young woman who was very creative and very brilliant, and that stuck in my mind. But that is where the beauty of life is working with people that are so different than you. That is the essence. Diversity is very much espoused, very little truly lived in the world that we have today, and I feel like that's a whole nother toolbox for diversity really to be realized, because some of those natural things that repel could create this amazing synergy that didn't exist before.

Doug Bouey: 37:56

I had a fellow that I taught this to and he actually said I love this, taught this to, and. And he actually said I love this because what he looked forward to was when he had one of these kind of tiffs with somebody. He said now I know we're going to get to the bottom of our relationship and make it really durable, because we're going to work through this process, I'm going to know that person a lot better, they're're going to know me a lot better and we're going to have a relationship that's not untested. It's going to be robust, and so we know that it's going to hold up. And we know, too, that if we got offside with each other, we could fix it.

Chris Comeaux: 38:37

That's so key. If we really think in through life, it's our toughest circumstances that have shaped and molded us as humans. But also probably, again, we kind of live in the movies. Oh, you field the dream team and they just run on the field and they perform perfectly Bullshit. That does not happen that way. It's actually in the tough situations where you come out on the but to have a toolbox of tools like this, the tough situations where you come out on the but to have a toolbox of tools like this, to not just leave it to chance, to give it a much better opportunity to fix those fractures. And so I want to thank you. I'll give you the opportunity. Doug any final thoughts that you'd like to share.

Doug Bouey: 39:13

No, I really value the opportunity to spread the word on this, and it's not because anyone as you know, Chris, if you write a book, it's not to make money, because that's not what's going to happen but the idea that I was taught this, I was able to practice it and refine it, and I felt that it was a very fundamental skill that should be universally understood in citizenship today that you know we're going to run into difference, we're going to have issues with people, and we need to make sure that we have ways of dealing with that constructively rather than destructively. So I really wanted to make sure that this concept had legs and air and life and didn't die with me.

Chris Comeaux: 40:03

Well, Doug again, you've done a great job. So, we're going to have a link to Doug's book. It's available on Amazon. It's called Fixing Fractures. We're going to have a link to his website where he gives away a lot of the tools. So, we really appreciate you, Doug, and thanks for being here, and to our listeners.

Chris Comeaux: 40:18

At the end of each episode, we always share a quote and a visual of each episode. We always share a quote and a visual. The idea is we want to create a Brain Bookmark, almost like a brain tattoo, if you will a thought prodder about the subject, to just further your learning and growth and thereby your leadership. And, of course, we're going for stickiness. We want to stick in your brain. Make sure that you subscribe to our channel, the Anatomy of Leadership, so you don't miss an episode. Check out my book if you want to. It's on Amazon the Anatomy of Leadership. Tell your friends and coworkers about this podcast. It's so easy for us to rail against the world and be frustrated by things. Let's be the change that we wish to see in the world. So, thanks for listening to the Anatomy of Leadership. Doug, thanks for being here. Thank you very much for having me, and now we're going to leave you with our Brain Bookmark to close today's show.

Jeff Haffner: 41:02

(Brain Bookmark) “We are going to have differences. The art is finding ways to deal with them constructively, not destructively.” By Douglas Bowie. 

(Ad) Thank you to our Anatomy of Leadership sponsor, dragonfly Health. Dragonfly Health is also the title sponsor for April and November 2024 Leadership Immersion Courses. Dragonfly Health is a leading care-at-home data technology and service platform with a 20-year history. Dragonfly Health uses advanced technology and robust analytics to manage durable medical equipment and pharmaceutical services as part of a single efficient solution for caregivers, patients and their families. The company serves millions of patients annually across all 50 states. 

Thank you, Dragonfly Health, for all the great work that you do.