Episode Description
You can be brilliant, successful, and logical and still feel helpless in the one place that matters most: your closest relationships. In this podcast episode, Dre Baldwin, a former professional athlete turned performance coach, explains why high-achieving people can struggle to make difficult decisions in their relationships, even when they know something needs to change. He explores the mental blocks, rationalizations, and blind spots that can keeps people locked in the same marriage fight instead of confronting what’s really going on.
Dre presents a practical way to approach relationship problems before they turn into resentment. HE also shares how to raise a difficult issue, get your partner engaged in the conversation, and figure out whether you’re dealing with a problem that can actually be solved or a circumstance you may just have to accept … or not.
Dre also explains why waiting until you have complete clarity before making a decision can keep you frozen, and how taking action can reveal information you simply can’t get by thinking harder.
This conversation also digs into a challenge many successful professionals face: the skills that make you a strong leader at work can create conflict when you bring them home.
Dre explores how power, judgment, communication, and curiosity affect connection, and why changing the way you approach a difficult conversation can sometimes change the response you get. Most importantly, he shows how learning to listen for what isn’t being said may be just as important as finding the right words to say.
Show Notes
About Dre
Dre Baldwin is the founder of Work On Your Game®, a performance system for executives, business owners, and organizations. A former 9-year professional athlete, 4-time TEDx speaker, and author of 43 books, his work has reached over 100 million people worldwide. Dre helps leaders install execution discipline, decision-making structure, and executive presence—eliminating inconsistency and improving organizational performance through repeatable systems.
Connect with Dre
You can connect with Dre on Facebook at Work On Your Game University. You can follow Dre on YouTube at @DreAllDay, on X at @DreAllDay, on Instagram at DreBaldwin, and listen to his podcast Work On Your Game. You can also get a free copy of his book, The Third Day: The Decision That Separates the Pros from the Amateurs, here.
If you’re interested in learning more about Dre’s Power Presence Protocol, visit the appropriate link below:
For Leaders & Operators: → http://www.PowerPresenceProtocol.com
For Teams: → http://www.WorkOnYourGame.com/ERI
Key Takeaways From This Episode with Dre Baldwin
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Transcript
You’ve Had the Same Marriage Fight 100 Times. Now What?
SPEAKERS
Karen Covy, Dre Baldwin
TRANSCRIPT
Karen: Hello, and welcome to Off the Fence, a podcast where we deconstruct difficult decision-making to try to figure out what keeps us stuck, and more importantly, how do we get unstuck? I'm your host, Karen Covy, a former divorce lawyer, mediator, and arbitrator turned coach, author, and entrepreneur. With me today, I have the pleasure of speaking with Dre Baldwin. Dre is the founder of Work On Your Game, a performance system for executives, business owners, and organizations. A former 9-year professional athlete, 4x TEDx speaker, and a 43-time author, his work has reached over 100 million people worldwide. Dre helps leaders install execution discipline, decision-making structure, and executive presence, eliminating inconsistency and improving organizational performance through repeatable systems. Dre, welcome to the show.
Dre: Hey, Karen, I'm excited to be here. Thank you for having me.
Karen: I am really excited to have you here because you are a very unique kind of guest for this podcast. You're not specifically a relationship expert or a divorce expert. Yet, I think what you do has so much application to making decisions and how you handle relationships. So, let's start there. How does the work that you do impact the relationships that people have, specifically their personal relationships?
Dre: It's a great question, Karen. So, if we were to boil everything that I do down to one word, the word is execution. And when we execute, usually it involves other people. Even the things that we do for ourselves eventually affect how other people see us, how other people engage with us, and whether or not other people want to be involved at all. So when it comes to the relationships… tell me the question again, let me make sure I'm answering it.
Karen: How does your work impact relationships? I mean, you've got an amazing career as a professional athlete, but we're not talking about athletics or business per se, we're talking about personal relationships. How does what you do affect that?
Dre: Well, the brand is called Work On Your Game, and as a person works on their game, we have to ask what the game is. Sometimes that game is the relationship itself: interpersonal relationships, a friendship, a business relationship, a parent-child relationship, a husband-wife relationship. So, the game doesn't necessarily mean business, and doesn't necessarily mean playing a sport. So, that's one side of it. The other side of it is the foundation of what I do was really started in personal and professional development. How do I grow and develop myself, or how do I grow and develop my career as a working professional?
The reason people want to develop and make themselves better is so that they become more valued to the people with whom they interact, whether that be at home or at the office. So, it always ends up affecting relationships, because people want to get better—yes, so it can benefit them, but also, how does being better affect the other people around them, or the other people who they can have around them, or the other people who will want to have them around? That's how my work ends up affecting relationships, one way or another, and we can get a lot more granular than that depending on the situation.
Karen: Oh, yeah, absolutely, because I'm fascinated by this subject—the idea that your marriage and your personal relationships affect your performance at work, and vice versa. How do you see that? How do someone's personal relationships affect their career and their business performance, because you're all about execution, and vice versa?
Dre: I'm sure you know this very well, having been a divorce coach, a divorce lawyer, and a coach, is that even if someone comes to you saying, "Hey, Karen, help me with my career," eventually, some personal issues are going to come up in those conversations, because whatever is happening in the career is affecting home, and whatever's happening at home is affecting the career. It's the same thing for me with anyone I've ever worked with.
Eventually, something that's happening in an area that is not why they originally showed up is going to come up in the conversation. What happens at home affects what happens at work, and what happens at work affects what happens at home. You can't separate them, and if one is not going quite so well, it's going to somehow find its way into the other, so it needs to be addressed. I've never been a person who ever thought about siloing off one from the other, saying, "Okay, I'll help you with your business, but don't bring up anything that's happening at home," or "I'll help you with the stuff at home, but don't bring up anything that's happening at work."
When I'm working with someone individually, it becomes holistic, even though we don't show up as, "Hey, I'm going to coach you on your whole life." I'm not a life coach. Usually, I'm working with someone on execution, and usually, ostensibly, it's business, but relationships come into it: husband-wife stuff, kids stuff, family stuff. It always ends up coming out in the conversation, and that only comes out if the person trusts you enough to talk about it.
Karen: Oh, 100%. But what about the systems? Because you've created systems and structure as part of your work. Do the same systems and structure that you would implement in a business context to help your performance in business translate into personal relationships to help you there?
Dre: Not always. We can't treat home like a business all the time; we can't run it like an assembly line. I think a lot of men would like it to be like that, but usually it's not. So, not always. I think it needs to be a little bit more framework-ish, if that makes sense. Like at work, you can say, "Okay, from 2 o'clock to 3 o'clock, I'm doing this, then from 3 o'clock to 3:15, I do this, and from 3:15 to 4:45, I'm doing that," and you can stop and move right into the next task.
You can't really do that in a relationship. It usually doesn't work that way unless you're dealing with someone who is just as quote-unquote "robotic" as you are, and if you have two of them, that's probably not going to be compatible. So, you have to have the framework where, "Okay, I know I need to spend a certain amount of time here," or "I'm going to do this," or "I'll just block off this whole day as going to be like this." That has to be more flexible.
Here's the best way I can explain it. What I tell salespeople who do sales calls and sell high-ticket items: there is a framework and a structure to the sales conversation, but your prospect should not feel like you're taking them through step 1, step 2, step 3, step 4. What I tell people is that if you watch one of my sales calls, you would not know that I was following a script. You wouldn't know that I'm following the process; it just sounds like we're talking. But I am methodically bringing them from step 1 to step 8, then I'm introducing the offer, and I'm making the close.
It doesn't sound like I'm following a script at all, because I know the script, but they don't know the script. If you communicate well enough, you can move them along the same way as if you were coloring by numbers. And it's the same thing you can do in a relationship—but don't tell anybody that I told you that.
Karen: Right now, a lot of women out there who are listening are like, "You know, I don't like what I'm hearing." Because it sounds, from a woman's perspective, like you're just being manipulated or being taken down the primrose path, so to speak. So what would you say to the ladies who are listening?
Dre: Let me talk about that word, manipulation. Anytime a person is trying to influence another person, Karen, it's manipulation. It's just a matter of: do you consider manipulation to be negative or positive? If I try to sell you a hot dog, I'm manipulating you. I'm manipulating you to want that hot dog, because it smells good.
If a woman puts on makeup and a pretty dress and she goes on a date, she's manipulating the man to remember her physically, so that he is saying, "Damn, she was beautiful that night," and that's going to stick in his head longer than if she didn't put that same effort in.
Manipulation has been socialized to mean something negative, but anytime any of us does something to influence another human being, we are practicing a form of manipulation, which simply means communicating in such a way as to influence another person's thoughts, words, or behavior. We all do that all day, every day. We're both doing it right now.
Karen: Are we?
Dre: Yes.
Karen: Okay. Yeah, I don't like that either. See, there's just a female part of me coming out going, "I don't know if I like that." Yet, logically, I see the logic of what you're saying.
Dre: Yes, it's a logical point, and sometimes I tend to over-logic, as some women have told me.
Karen: But what would happen—what do you do? Because a relationship isn't just logic, there's a lot of emotion involved in it. And what happens when the emotions throw your logic off course, and all of a sudden, you know, you thought you were going to have a conversation about one thing, or you were trying to say to your spouse, "Hey, let's do this," or go to dinner, or do whatever, and now you're talking about something entirely different and the conversation has taken a bad turn?
Dre: Excellent question. For any person who's highly logical—let's just say a male who's highly logical—you have to be able to turn it off. That's why I said in a relationship, it can be more of a framework rather than a schedule. You can't do a relationship by a schedule; it just doesn't work. Even with a child, you can't do that. So, it can be more of a framework.
For example, after 12 o'clock, my schedule is clear, and we'll do whatever we're going to do after 12 o'clock. Or this whole day on Saturday and Sunday, I'm available, I'm free, whatever we're going to do, we're going to do, instead of: from this time to this time, this time to this time, and everybody has to warm up and get going and be ready, because the time's going to be up at 1:15, and I have to move on to the next thing.
So, with a person who's highly logical, it's using the logic as a framework, a boundary, and a constraint for yourself, so that you know when it starts and when it stops, and be able to go into a completely different mode. Also, it's not just about the schedule or the amount of time, but it's the quality of time and the way that you're showing up in the relationship that matters more to the people around you than just: how much time did I spend, or were they on time, or did we start on time, or did we end on time?
All that's the rational, logical stuff, but it's the energy of the communication, the energy of the exchange that sticks in somebody's subconscious and sticks in your system much more than what actually happened or how long it took.
Karen: Let's talk about that: the energy of the exchange. I see this affecting a lot of relationships, where somebody comes in, but they're dialing it in. They're not really there, and they're not really present in the situation or in the moment. What can they do, or what do you wish they would hear to improve the quality of their relationships? Because I hear people saying, "Look, I'm showing up, I'm there." But they're not really there, and the other person is feeling the disconnect. So how do you bridge that gap and create a real connection, not just, "Okay, I'm here"?
Dre: A lot of communication is nonverbal; it's pre-verbal. It's not what you say, it's how you say it, and it's the amount of energy behind what you're doing, not just what you actually did. That's what people feel. As the saying goes, people forget what you say, but they never forget how you made them feel. That's the energetic exchange.
Are you actually here and showing up? You being here and showing up for 5 minutes is more valuable than you being distant for an hour. That's what most people refer to as quality time. The quality of the time is more important than the quantity of the time. A lot of people in business like to use that phrase all the time: quality over quantity. Well, it's the exact same thing in relationships. There are times when quantity is good, like when you're trying to fill up your pipeline with leads.
But when it comes to relationships, it's much more about quality. You can have a friend who you only talk to twice a year: you talk to them on their birthday, and they call you on your birthday. But they can remain a good friend because of the quality of the exchange when those conversations happen. You can also have someone who you see every week, and there's not much of a relationship there—let's say your next-door neighbor. You see them, you say hi, they say hi, but there's not much there because the quality of the exchange is not as high.
So it's about the energy you put behind the exchange, not so much about how often it happens or how much time you put into it. Is that answering the question?
Karen: Yeah, that makes sense. That makes sense to me, but I'm thinking of what you were saying about the logical, emotional, and energetic aspects of a relationship, and I'm curious, because you help a lot of people with decision making, too, which is what this podcast is about. What have you found to be the reason why smart people, intellectual people, people who are using their logic, still get stuck when they know they have to make a change in their relationship, but they just can't do it? What's going on?
Dre: That's a great question. It really comes down to: if I know what I want to do, but I'm not doing it, what could be getting in the way? Is it a lack of resources? Usually not. Often, it's some type of mental block—and it could be a subconscious mental block that a person has—and that's where someone like yourself or someone like myself comes in to help someone examine: what are you pretending to not see? Because anytime a smart person is not doing something that they know they want to do, there's something they're either pretending to not see, or something that they do see, but they're coming up with really smart reasons to avoid it. It's usually one or the other.
So, it would really be a matter of: let me go into detective mode, and like a doctor or a dentist, let me start asking a bunch of questions and find out what has led to this symptom so we can get to the root cause. If we keep addressing symptoms, especially with a smart person, you can always come up with different ways to address them. The metaphor I like to use, Karen, is that if your nose is running, yes, you can go buy better tissues, but that's not the solution to the problem. We have to find out what's causing your nose to run in the first place. We take care of that, then you won't even need the tissues. So, it's going deeper.
Again, with highly intellectual, accomplished, professional people—especially those who are used to being in charge in everything that they do—you have to be the person that they trust enough that they'll open up, and also the person that they trust enough that you can tell them an uncomfortable reality to their face, and they accept it because they can't render any repercussions to you. You have to be willing to tell them what they need to hear.
Karen: That's interesting, because the challenge is that when you're the fish in the fishbowl, you don't know what water is, because you can't see it, because you're too close to it. Especially for people who are really smart, sometimes they just can't see the answer that is in front of their face. So how do you help them see what they maybe literally can't see themselves that would help get them to that decision point?
Dre: Ideally, after I get through the diagnosis part—I want to find out what's going on, so I ask enough questions. Depending on how open they are about themselves, they eventually see it if you keep asking enough questions. This is called the Socratic method. You just keep asking the questions until the person reveals the truth to themselves, and they say, "Oh, I'm seeing that there." If they don't quite see it, then you can put it in front of them and say, "Okay, well, look at this. I'm seeing it because of this, and this, and this. This is what I see, and this is happening because of that. How do you see it? How are you getting this?"
For any type of communication—whether you're a lawyer, coach, doctor, or anything else—people do not really get things just because you said it to them. They get things when they say it to themselves. Zig Ziglar, an old motivational speaker from back in the day, said, "What you say to you is 10 times more valuable than what I say to you." Even if you hear something from someone else, it can be useful and good, but it doesn't really sink in until you start saying it back to yourself. You have to say that same thing to yourself, and when you see it and reveal it to yourself, you say, "Oh, now I get it. This is happening, that's happening, that's happening."
Our jobs as the people helping someone in a relationship is to uncover what they have to see for themselves. I'm just going to uncover what's there, and once you see it, now you get it. But if I just tell you, you may appreciate it on the surface at that moment, but you're not going to do anything different with it. It burns into the subconscious when it comes out of your mouth, and it goes into your head.
Karen: Well, let's say the person gets it. They see the problem, and they're willing to acknowledge the problem, but that's still a long way from being ready to make a decision and understanding the solution, because they might not have enough information, or they don't know what's going to happen if they decide this way, this way, or this way.
How does somebody know when they have enough information? Because the truth is, you never have 100% certainty about what the outcome of any decision is going to be until you make it and you get there. What do you say to the person who says, "Well, I just don't know enough"?
Dre: There's no such thing as knowing enough, because there's always new information. Most of the information that you're going to gather about a situation that you're unsure of, you're going to get in activity, so I call it activity knowledge. You're not going to get most of your knowledge from observing and thinking about things. You need only about 10% to begin, and then you get the other 90% once you take action.
This is where a good coach comes in and earns their money. The three steps of solving the problem are: number one, identifying, "Hey, there is something that I want to address because something's not going right." If a person is sitting in front of someone else, whether it's a friend, a coach, or a therapist, and says, "Hey, there's something going wrong in one of my relationships," that's the first step: acknowledging there is something, and then verbalizing whatever that something is. You may not even get to the actual thing. You may be noting a bunch of symptoms, but not identifying the root cause, but being willing to talk about it is the first step.
Because if you're in a relationship and there's an issue between you and another person, and you need to bring that issue to that person, the first step is you must get verbal in expressing to the other person that you see an issue. They don't have to agree that the issue is the issue, but they have to accept that you see there's an issue. That's step one.
Step two is, once you've articulated what the issue is, asking them, "Hey, do you understand what I'm saying? Do you accept that I see this as an issue? You don't have to agree that it's an issue for you as well, but do you accept that I see this as a problem?" That's step two. If you get a yes on step one, go to step two; if you get a yes on step two, now you go to step three. Step three is: "Here are the ways that I see we can resolve this. Here's what I need you to do, and here's what I can do. What do you think about it? Can you do this? Do you have any challenges, questions, comments, or any other ways that you're looking at it?"
Once we get through step three, at that point, we should have a plan of action of what's actually going to happen. This is where a good coach, therapist, or attorney can come into place and say, "Hey, okay, now we're going to solve this problem. Here's what you're going to do: I need you to do these 5 things, I'm going to do these things here, and as we follow these steps, it's going to get us to the outcome we want to get to."
Usually, it's deconstructed—what I do, we call it the roadmap in reverse. That's how we get to action steps of things we can do right now as a result of this diagnosing conversation.
Karen: Okay, but let me just push back a little bit. You said if you get a yes on step one, you go to step two, and then if you get a yes on step two, you go to step three. What happens if you don't get the yes? What if the person says, "I don't know what you're talking about. I don't see a problem. I see that you see there's a problem, but I don't agree it's a problem." Now what do you do?
Dre: Well, now you have a personnel issue. That's what we call that. The first one is a process issue: step one, step two, step three. Many people fail to follow the steps; this is where a lot of arguments come from, and they fester. Now, if a person is not willing to hear you out when you say what you see as an issue, that's a personnel issue. If you get to step two and the person doesn't agree that this is an issue at all and it doesn't need to be addressed, but you just told them that you feel it is an issue and needs to be addressed, that is a personnel issue.
And step three: if you're saying, "Hey, here's what I think we should do," and you two just can't get on the same page, that's also a personnel issue, but that could be a process issue as well. Maybe neither of you is that good at figuring those things out, and you need somebody to help strategize. That's where you can have someone come in and help: "Let's figure out what we can do. Since you two can't figure it out, here's how we'll do it: 1, 2, 3, 4." Maybe you just need an independent voice, so step three could be either or.
Now, if you do have that personnel issue, what exactly does that mean? That's when you need to look at the person—you and them—and ask yourself, "Is this sustainable? Can I accept that this issue is not going to be addressed, remedied, or changed, and tolerate it?" If the answer is yes, then you make your adjustments, because now you're not dealing with a problem. Problems have solutions; you're now dealing with a circumstance.
Circumstances don't have solutions; circumstances are just what is. Can you accept this circumstance as it is, or is this a problem that needs to be solved? If it's a problem and the other side doesn't want to solve it, then again, that's a personnel issue, and we may need to make a change. That's the decision matrix.
Karen: Okay, but I see so many people who know there's a problem, they say there's a problem, and their spouse maybe says, "No, I don't see it that way." So it's now turned into a circumstance in your definition, and they know they don't like it. But they accept it anyway, and they don't take action to do anything about it. They just say, "You know what, I don't like it, but I don't think I can change it. That's just the way it is," or what I hear all the time: "That's just the way I am," or "the way my spouse is." Now, how do they get out of that loop?
Dre: Well, there's an alternative here, because in step one, there are a lot of different branches. Let's say I identify that there's a problem, and the other person I'm talking to doesn't believe that there's a problem. I'm trying to let them know there's a problem, they don't like it, and they don't see it. I try to articulate it as best I can, and they don't see it. Well, you can always try a different approach. You can show someone that something is an issue from a different angle.
The word "circumstance" means the circle around which you're standing. So if you change someone's perspective, they can see things from a different angle, and what they didn't see as a problem yesterday, because of the way that you approached it, they can see as a problem tomorrow, because you approach it from a different angle. They could not see it as a problem here, but they do see it as a problem on that day, just based on how they're looking at it. You change someone's perspective, they see a piece of art differently than how they saw it from over there, or they see it differently under different light from the other side of the street. It's about changing your approach, maybe having a different style of communication, or maybe having the message come from someone other than you.
That's another thing: the same message from two different people is received completely differently by the same person. The same material in different formats is valued differently by different customers. It depends on how you're packaging your communication. When did you bring it up? Did you bring it up as soon as your spouse walked in the house and they're tired from a long day? Might not be the right time to bring up a challenging conversation. You bring it up in a moment of levity, when everybody's happy and having fun, or you bring it up in a quiet moment, when you've been talking about things that are a little bit deeper.
All of these different variables can play a role in the way someone perceives a message, even though it was the exact same message yesterday and would be the same message tomorrow. When you find the sweet spot, that's when you have somebody's ears open enough to receive it.
Karen: What do you say to somebody who says, "Okay, Dre, I hear you, but I've had this conversation with my spouse a hundred times, and they never see it the way I do, and that's just the way it is. I don't know what to do"?
Dre: Well, then it's a matter of—this is what I would ask if I'm talking to a client and they say that to me. Karen, what I would say to them is, on a scale of 1 to 10, how important is this to you to get changed from where it is? 10 meaning: "I can't move on without this addressed. This is an emergency level, serious level, can't sleep."
Then let me find out how you've been communicating. What have you brought to your significant other? How did you say it? What did they say back? What was the conversation like? Do they understand how important this is to you? Do you believe that they care how important this is to you? Once I get all that information, in my experience, 8 times out of 10, there's something that the person I'm talking to—their half of the situation—can do differently to get a better response. That's almost always what I've seen; very rarely is it 100% the other person.
In my line of work, I always say this to my audiences: we start and end with the person in the mirror, because I'm not coaching your basketball coach, I'm not coaching your parents, and I'm not coaching your husband or your wife—I'm coaching you. I can't make them change, and neither can you, obviously, which is why we're having this conversation. All I can do is tell you what you can do. I said 8 out of 10, but I should have said 10 out of 10.
Never have I had a person explain a situation like that—it could be with a coworker, a friend, a business partner, or a spouse—where I said, "Damn, you're doing everything perfectly here, so I guess that other person is just messing everything up." That never is the conclusion.
Karen: I like that, and I like that you've pointed out that this is a relationship problem. In my world, I talk a lot about personal relationships: the marriage, the engagement, the relationship with a significant other. But the same kinds of ideas apply to any relationship: it could be your boss, it could be your coworker, or it could be a customer or client.
Relationships are relationships, and they operate in similar ways. But the relationship with your spouse is so personal that sometimes people say, "Okay, I see this problem or circumstance, but I'm afraid to talk to my spouse about it, because what if they say no? What if they don't agree with me? What if this blows up our marriage? Then what?"
Dre: If you go in with a different approach, even after you've gotten outside help, and they're just not for it, well, on some levels, you always have the possibility that this could be a personnel issue. A personnel issue just means a person needs a change in this situation, meaning swapping out people, possibly a person leaving and another person going. That's always a possibility, but in my experience, even if you think a person needs to go, you don't want to get rid of them too quickly.
I've worked with people who have people working for them; they want to get rid of a person, but based on the paperwork and the contracts, they can't, so that person kind of has to quit. How do you not breathe down their necks before they quit so they don't become a jerk and mess up your business before they leave? How can you get them on the same side of the table as you? That's the approach.
Usually, the people that I'm working with are leaders. These are people who have leverage, power, control, status, and experience. So, they have leverage and they can use it, but they often are thinking of using it in unproductive ways. What I'm trying to help them do is use it in a more productive way, where you're on the same team as the person over whom you already have leverage.
Let's get on the same side as them so they're cooperating with you, and you don't have to go into a power struggle with them—which you can win, but it's still a war of attrition. You're going to lose something in the process. You may have a bigger army, but you're still going to have some of your soldiers die. How about we not have that happen? Let's do it in a different way. As they say, the best wars are won without bloodshed, so how do we do it that way?
Karen: I like how you put that in terms of power, because so many times, a husband and wife—especially in a long-term marriage, and especially when one or both of them are leaders in their own right—get into a power struggle. They both may be working outside of the home and be leaders in their business, corporation, or companies, or one is a leader at home and the other one's not. Fundamentally, it's an approach, and what happens is we get entrenched in our approaches.
The way you solve a problem is the way you've always solved the problem, and the fight that you and your spouse have had often isn't the first time you've had this fight—you've had it a hundred times over the same kinds of issues. How do you diffuse that power struggle so that you get the bloodless victory, as you put it?
Dre: That usually starts with the leader—whoever is the person with authority. Knowing the authority and the power that you have, you still have to know when to bend. The metaphor that I use is that the stiffest trees are the ones to break first, because when that wind comes, eventually it snaps the trunk. The trees that are willing to bend last, because when the wind blows, they can give a little bit. They don't break, but they give a little bit.
A person in power needs to understand that power is not about always flexing your muscle just because you have it. It's not about how much you do; power is about what you could do, but you don't do. Over here, we call it threat density: how close you are to something you could affect, and how much you could affect it, yet you don't affect it. When a person is in power, it's not, "I have to do everything just because."
I'll give you a different metaphor that people can understand: if someone is a billionaire financially, they don't go to the mall every day and go on a shopping spree just to remind you and everyone else that they have money. The fact that they have the money is the proof to them; they don't have to go and show it to themselves or to anyone else every single day just to remind them that it's there.
What happens with people in power is that sometimes they flex just because they can. If you do that too often, eventually you're going to stir up too many enemies, and even if none of them individually can beat you, they may all collectively come together to try to beat you. As soon as they get their chance, that's when it happens. Collectively could be several little pinpricks with one person. Eventually, they find a route, a way to get leverage over you and take advantage of you. So, the person in power, the biggest thing you have to remember is that it's not about what you actually do, it's about what you could do, but don't.
Karen: All this talk about power hits me a little bit funny when you're talking about a personal relationship, because if the leader brings that power mentality to their personal relationship at home, it's not likely to go well. Fundamentally, what they're looking for and what their spouse is looking for is connection, not a power struggle. So how do you, even as a powerful person, merge those two ideas so that you've got the connection and your life doesn't end up in a power struggle all the time?
Dre: Yes, I agree with that. It is not about being the power person at home; that's the point that I want to make, if I didn't make it clear enough. When you're at home, you're turning that off. You're not the boss at home. You may be the boss at the office; at home, you're a husband, wife, mom, or dad. That's who you are when you walk into the house.
Of course, there's authority, who has say in things, and who makes decisions on certain things, but it's not, "I'm ruling over everyone just because of who I am." When you're in the house, it is a relationship. Keeping in mind that when you are that person who has a certain level of authority, whether it's spoken or unspoken, people still need to be comfortable. You want people to feel comfortable enough with you that they'll be honest with you. Because if people don't feel they can be honest and open with you, then they won't be, and you are actually cut off from knowledge, information, and insights. Those are things that a person of resources wants.
You need knowledge, information, and insights, and you can't see everything yourself or be everywhere yourself, so you need sources. Those sources can be your spouse, your kids, or the other people around you. But if they don't trust you because you are swinging your power around recklessly, then that power and authority can actually isolate you. That's about your energy, not about you having a title.
Karen: I like this. We've kind of come full circle around to the whole idea of people being willing to open up when they trust you in terms of a relationship. You've got to have had a ton of experience in terms of teams and organizations and building trust, but specifically in a personal relationship, how do you go about building that kind of trust that gives you the basis from which you can build the rest of the relationship?
Dre: Trust is built over time, and that's how relationships are built. It's built over time and over those small, engaging moments, and those moments when either side is vulnerable in some way. How do you respond to that vulnerability? Can you allow somebody to not be perfect in your presence without judging them or making them feel like they're being judged?
One of the biggest things for me as a coach, like we talked about earlier, the reason why people are willing to open up and talk to me about intimate things—again, they may come to me talking about wanting to make more money or sales, which is logic—is because if they do talk about things, they're not being judged by me. I am measuring, observing, and gathering information as necessary, but I'm not judging them. I'm not looking at you like you're bad because you told me you stepped out on your wife, or you stepped out on your husband, or because of anything that happened in business. I don't judge people for that. I'm just looking at it observationally and figuring out what's happening so I can best help you.
It's the same thing you can do in a relationship. If a person feels like they're being judged every moment of a relationship, then they're going to be walking on eggshells, they're going to be a little bit anxious, and they're never going to open up. Your energy—and none of this is verbal, this is not something you announce, you don't announce to somebody, "Hey, I'm not judging you"—they feel it. They feel when they're being judged, and they close up or don't share. If they feel they're not being judged, they will open up and share, because they can feel it from your energy and the way that you're observing and taking in the conversation.
Half of communication is what you observe, not just what you say. That's what causes people to feel more relaxed and open in your presence. As a person of authority, you need to be able to show this, invoke this energy, and have other people feel it about you, because that's what makes them want to follow you, listen to you, and respect your position.
Karen: But how do you do that? What if you are the person who is the leader, used to being the leader at the office, and you come home, and the same behavior that you're used to using now all of a sudden makes your spouse feel judged? You don't even know—in your head, you can say, "I'm not judging you," but the energy is different. How do you even know what to change?
Dre: I say that you be in that position of measuring rather than judging all the time. You can use this at work, too. At work, if I'm running an office with 30 employees, I don't need to judge any of them. "Okay, you didn't make the 10 sales calls, you only made 5. Let me find out why you only made 5. What caused you to only make 5? How can we fix this such that the next time you can make 15 to make up for the 5 that you missed?" But I'm not judging you for not making the 10 calls.
The way that I operate, whether at work or at home, I'm never judging anybody. I'm observing, watching, listening, and taking note, but I'm not making a judgment about you, because I'm not comparing myself to you. I'm not comparing my standards to yours; I'm just looking at what you're doing. If you communicate with me, "Okay, here's what's happening. Why do you think this is?" then I'll tell you what I see. But it's not about me looking at you as good or bad based on the behavior that I'm observing.
Karen: I like taking the "good" or "bad" out of it, because I think that takes a lot of the sting out of whatever a person is observing. What if somebody doesn't know what they're doing wrong, how to change, or what to do? What would you say to that person? It happens a lot because of the whole "men are from Mars and women are from Venus" thing where they're not communicating well, and she's saying, "I feel like you're judging me," and he's like, "I don't know what you're talking about, I'm just telling you what I see." There's a major communication breakdown. How do you go about fixing that structure so that the relationship can repair and survive?
Dre: An important communication skill for anyone, especially an adult over the age of 18: there's an art to communicating what you see. It's not a science, it's an art. Art meaning you have to know what of what you observe you actually verbalize, and how you verbalize it. You don't want to be an open book. Some people like to pride themselves on calling themselves open books, but don't be an open book, because once people have read the whole book, there's nothing interesting left about you for them to keep reading. You don't want to be an open book; you want to open the book, and then you close it back. If people are saying, "I'm just telling you what I see," that's fine, but again, it's not only what you say, it's how you say it.
The majority of communication is how people feel about your aura, your energy, your eye contact, and your tone. They remember that much more than they remember the actual words. They only remember the words if everything else matches up in such a way that affects them very positively or very negatively. What you see is important. Observe everything, but don't communicate everything that you observe.
Karen: Okay, but what do you say to the person who says, "I have no idea what I'm doing wrong. They're complaining about my energy or whatever," because all of this is subconscious? What about the person who doesn't even realize what they're doing wrong, so they can't fix it?
Dre: Why do they think they're doing something quote-unquote "wrong"? Where did they get that from?
Karen: Because they're not getting the result in the relationship that they want, they're not getting the connection, the relationship is breaking down, and they're like, "I don't know what I'm doing."
Dre: Okay, so what kind of results are they looking for that they're not getting, and how long has it been since they haven't been getting it?
Karen: Yep, okay. I see, and that makes a lot of sense, because so many people come to me because they want help figuring out whether they should stay in the marriage or whether they should go, and if they're going to go, how do they do it without blowing up their whole life? But so many people, if they were coming to me early enough and if you asked them an honest question, they'd rather not get divorced. Who wants to go through all that time, money, and upheaval in their lives? But they don't know how to fix it, or they've put up with the problem for so long that they're now stuck.
What do you say to someone who is feeling like that—and this could be in their relationship or in a job? People do it all the time in a job where they've long since outgrown it or don't fit anymore, and it's not making them happy or fulfilled. What do you say to somebody who is in that situation, but they just don't know how to break through, cut the cord, and move on?
Dre: I had a coaching client actually run this by me this morning. He's a male in his 50s, and his issue was that he's looking at a situation like that with his significant other. She's around the same age bracket and is looking at slowing down in life, calming down, and relaxing. He wants to keep going, keep moving, and keep ripping and running. His challenge is, "I don't see if this is going to last another 10 years, because I want to keep moving, and she wants to go sit in a rocking chair. How is this going to work?"
My advice to him is, first of all, there have to be clear lines of communication. For any relationship to work, the lines of communication must be open so that both sides feel comfortable and safe communicating what's happening, why it's happening, how they feel about it, and possibly what could be done differently. The first thing I said to him was about those three steps: you have to open the lines of communication before it becomes a festering issue. The more it festers, if she doesn't even know about it, you just get more angry, annoyed, and frustrated, and it starts leaking out of you in ways that you don't even realize. She's picking up on it, but she doesn't know why, because you're not saying anything. She's not going to initiate that conversation; you have to initiate it. Initiate it now while it's a small thing before it becomes a big thing. Communicate it in a way that speaks about how you see things, but about yourself.
This is something that I tell people often as well: "Here's how I'm seeing it, but I'm talking about me and my experience of it." I'm not putting it on you, and don't project onto the other person. Especially people in authority, they tend to project what they think the other person is doing, or what they think the other person is thinking. As soon as you start doing that, you've lost the beat of the conversation. Don't do that; don't lose the plot.
Once you communicate those things, the key is getting curious. It's not making assertions and declarative statements; it's asking questions. "I'm seeing things in this way. Is this really what you're thinking about doing? Are you doing this because of this? Or do you see things the same way that I'm seeing them? Is this making sense to you, what I'm saying?" Now you open the floor for a discussion. When you ask a question, you're asking for engagement. But if you make statements, they think, "Are you asking me to say something back to that? Are you asking me to combat it?" That's when things can go off the rails, depending on the personalities.
Karen: I love that. That is so classic, and it's what I see with so many of my clients who are over 40, and definitely those who are over 50. There's a mismatch in values at that point, lifestyle choices, or where they want to be in life. Having this kind of a conversation can make a huge difference in where they end up and how they get there. It's a huge deal, and I love your insight. I wish everyone could listen to this podcast episode and hear what you just said, because it's gold. So, thank you so much.
Dre: Of course, thank you for the questions, and thank you for challenging me on a few of these.
Karen: That's my job.
Dre: I can tell.
Karen: Anything else you'd like to leave the audience with—gems of wisdom from your experience coaching leaders and personal relationships? What do you wish people knew?
Dre: The biggest thing is communication. It is a universal skill and a future-proof skill, meaning no matter what technology or AI comes around, communication will always be a differentiating skill if you have it, and it'll leave you behind if you don't.
Communication is not just what you output, what you say, what you write, or getting your thoughts out to others. The other half of communication is what you input and what you take in. What is another person saying? What are they not saying? How are they saying it? What are they trying to get across that they may not feel comfortable saying to you, or they may just not be skilled at saying? Your communication skill as a listener is picking up on that stuff.
If you are a leader, it is your job to notice not only what is actually said, but interpreting it, noticing what is not being said, and then making sure you're on the same page by saying, "Okay, if I'm hearing you correctly, I think you're saying this. Are you saying that?" Sometimes people will push back and say, "Karen, this person's a grown man or a grown woman, why can't they just communicate?" I say, "Well, treat them like a 6-year-old child."
A six-year-old child is not an expert at communication, but when they're trying to get a point across, you give them every benefit of the doubt as to what they're trying to say, and you try to get on the same level with them. Do that with everyone you communicate with, and your relationships will get a lot better.
Karen: I love that, and I can't think of a better place to bring this to a close and wrap it up. Dre, thank you so much for this conversation. If people are interested in learning more about you or getting one of your many books, where's the best place that they can find you?
Dre: The best place they can go is workonyourgame.com. Workonyourgame.com is my main homepage. You can find me on any social media platform, or you can email me directly at [email protected].
Karen: Everything is going to be linked in the show notes. Dre, thank you so much. I really appreciate the conversation.
Dre: Karen, thank you for sharing your platform, and thanks for having me on.
Karen: You're welcome. For those of you who are watching and listening, if you've enjoyed this conversation as much as I have, do me a big favor: give the episode a thumbs up, like and subscribe to the podcast, subscribe to the YouTube channel, and I look forward to talking with you all again next time.
