 We're not angry at someone that we, you know, who's close to us in our relationship, who's blocking some kind of a connection with us if we don't love them. Like, and it's just, we protect ourselves by going to anger and frustration and hurt. We protect ourselves, because then we don't have to be vulnerable and going, wow, I really love you, and it's feeling vulnerable right now because you're not paying any attention to me. Like, that's a very different place to come from. What's up, everybody, and welcome to the show today. We drop great content each and every week, and we wanna make sure that you guys get notified. And in order to do that, you're gonna have to smash that subscribe button and hit that notification bell. And if you've gotten a lot of value out of this, make sure you give us a like and share our videos with your friends. I think the other thing that is important there is if there is not a larger vision that you can attach the values and the work that you're putting into, then it's easier to take any of that criticism personally. If you're along for the vision and the main goal, you can focus on that. You can put aside your hurt feelings in the moment because you understand there's a bigger thing here. And for myself in the last 15 years of The Art of Charm, certainly there's been a lot of growth moments that didn't come without a lot of frustration and fighting and criticism and honesty. And what made it easy to deal with is, well, there's an ultimate vision and goal here that is more important than how I feel in this moment. And I have to push those things aside. But still, it's not easy. Absolutely, Johnny. One of the first questions I ask, and we're actually getting into some of the steps, right? Because the first step is shifting from a critic to an ally. And there's ways of doing that, but shifting from a critic to an ally. The second step is what you're talking about, Johnny, which is to move away from the problem and towards the outcome. One of the first questions I always ask when I'm coaching is someone will come to me and say, I'm struggling with this or this is a problem. And I'll say, well, what's the outcome you want? Like, what are you going for? Let's go for something that's energizing and that's exciting. And if I'm coming to the conversation, I'm complaining about this terrible person on my team. They interrupt, they're aggressive, they won't let something die, they'll raise uncomfortable issues, like they're really annoying. If I just try to solve that problem, the easy solution is, great, let's fire them. No more problem person, no more problem, right? But if you stop and you go, okay, got it, I hear you, I get it, what's the outcome you want? And they say, well, I want this person to stop being disruptive. And that's not really an outcome. I mean, that's an outcome, but it's just the negation of the problem. So you gotta ask for the sake of what? Like for the sake of what? For, you know, because I would like some peace on this team. I would like this team to collaborate and get along. Okay, so if the team just like greed with each other all the time, is that gonna be the outcome? Well, no, I don't want that. You know, what I actually want is a high-performing team. That's what I want, a high-performing team, great. That's exciting. We could get behind this idea of I want a high-performing team, right? So once I get that, and that's what you're saying, right? You're saying, like, let's get to some outcome. Let's get to something exciting, something greater that we want, great. Then we can go back to the problem and begin to solve the problem in light of this outcome that we want. That key distinction between a negative and a positive outcome, I think we have to highlight because a negative, again, comes with criticism and cuts directly into our emotional state. Don't do this, you can't do that. And of course, naturally as humans, we see this in children, when someone's told, don't do something, you're highlighting the wrong thing. You can't possibly get by it. I will eat that pint of ice cream. I will eat that pint of ice cream. Right, we're threatening their agency, their ability to make the choice that they wanna make. So in those moments where we now understand, moving on to step two, and I do wanna double back to Ally, but understanding the outcome piece, I get it with teams, but let's talk a little bit about personal relationships and how that plays a little bit of a different role because outcomes in a company setting, they're usually pretty clearly defined and easier to find the positives, but when it comes to our personal relationships, that's a more difficult challenge. Great, so in personal relationships, and I agree with you, and I think it ups the ante, like in the emotional courage that we need in personal relationships is the greatest, right? Because it feels like our life depends on it. Like this is the person that we're most vulnerable with, or these people, or even friends, that we're like, this is not just a compartmentalized part of my life. This is my whole life. So let's take this step back to the outcome, sorry, to the critic Ally. And let's just take an example that let's say that I'm frustrated that my wife, who's perfect by the way, so this is totally a made up situation. My wife is on her phone often, and I'm frustrated, and we're having dinner and she's checking her phone, and a beep comes and she checks her phone. And so the critic would be like, stop it, like stop it, like we're together, put down your phone, like you can't be away from your phone for three minutes without having to check your phone, like that's really frustrating and annoying, like please stop that, right? Total critic approach, right? So the first thing is to say, okay, so I, you know, like what is my positive intent? Like what do I, I wanna be able to connect with her, and yes, I could criticize, and that will make me feel better than her, and make me feel right, and she's wrong, which makes me feel safe, and is completely and totally ineffective. So, you know, instead of that, let me say, okay, so I wanna help. Like I wanna help in this situation, I don't wanna just attack her, I wanna help. And then the next thing would be, what is her, I have to, in my head, just so that I can understand, what is her positive intent? Like what, like why would, in her mind, why is she doing what she's doing? She's not doing what she's doing in order to be distant and disconnected, like there's some reason that she's doing it, right? So why is she doing, she's checking, she's in charge of the, we have three kids. I'm not checking the emails for the kids in that moment like she is, or she's, or you know, and also like she and I share this, but it's like, if I've got too many things going on, I have to close loops. I'm super uncomfortable with like open loops and you know, if an email comes in, I wanna get to it. So I can understand that. I don't need to be right about it, I just need to understand it so that I've softened my approach to her. And then, and then the third step is what I call the permission formula, which is to empathize, to express confidence and to ask permission. That's the most important part, to ask permission, right? And to be able to say, hey, you know, like I get how distracting, I do it all the time too. I get how distracting phone beeps can be and et cetera. And I know that you're sort of tracking a bunch of things that are going on. I also know that you, you know, at other times are really able to put the phone down and to like really be present to our conversation. Are you willing to, can we talk about this? Like, are you willing to be in a conversation about this? We drop great content each and every week and we wanna make sure that you guys get notified. And in order to do that, you're gonna have to smash that subscribe button and hit that notification bell. And if you've gotten a lot of value out of this, make sure you give us a like and share our videos with your friends. Right? And if she says no, then I have to accept her no. Right? But I've done this a lot of times and I've done this with my kids, especially. And my kids will sometimes say no. No, I don't wanna talk about it. Hey, you know, you just ate an entire plate of chocolate chip cookies. There's a theme in our family, obviously. You just ate an entire plate of chocolate chip cookies. I know that, you know, I could tell by the look on your face that you're feeling a little guilty and not feeling great about that. And I know that you've managed your eating differently in the past. Is this something you wanna think about with me? Do you want, like I have some thoughts. Do you wanna, you wanna talk about it? No, dad, I'm good. All right. Okay, that's your call. I'm here if you ever want to. That afternoon, she came back to me and said, hey, I would like to talk to you about it right now. Which, by the way, is great cause it's her control. If I don't get permission from her, I'm controlling the situation. If I get permission from my wife, if I get permission from my daughter, now we're in a conversation. So that's step one. Then step two is what is the outcome? And this is where, you know, to your point, it's, you know, it's easy to find positive outcomes in business. Is it as easy in personal relationships? I would say absolutely if we approach it as an ally and not as a critic. So at the point in which I could approach it as an ally, I could say what do you want? Like from this dinner, what do you want? Like what do you want from this dinner? Like what's the outcome you want? Like what do you, you know? I really like, we don't go out on dates enough. Like I really wanna connect. Great, I wanna connect too. Now we're totally aligned on the outcome that we want. And then we could problems off, right? Now we can go back to the problem and go how is this, you know, an opportunity? How is this problem of the phone ringing, you know, or beeping every three minutes? How is that actually an opportunity to get closer? And now we're off and running. And, you know, we could talk more about that step also, but the idea is with your personal relationships, you are far more aligned than you think and you can be if you approach it, if you're willing to overstep your hurt or at least not overstep because you have to feel it, but recognize that behind your hurt, behind your anger, behind your frustration, the reason you're feeling those things is because you care, is because you have love, is because you're vulnerable in those places and that that's where frustration comes out of care. We're not frustrated about something we don't care about, right? We're not angry at someone that we, you know, who's close to us in our relationship, who's blocking some kind of a connection with us if we don't love them. Like, and it's just, we protect ourselves by going to anger and frustration and hurt. We protect ourselves because then we don't have to be vulnerable and go, well, I really love you and it's feeling vulnerable right now because you're not paying any attention to me. Like that's a very different place to come from. Peter, I'm curious if you have seen this, when you discuss that there's only, the reason that you're frustrated is that you care and I agree with that, but I wanna offer a caveat and where I've seen the anger and the pushback is also when somebody is trying to create a character or a facade that they want you to see and that facade gets broken or it's coming apart, there's a lot of anger and pushback which they will use to disguise as they're caring about the outcome or whatnot, but it's because the facade that they work so hard and putting together has been disrupted or is coming apart and so now they're angry about that, more so angry at themselves in the situation that they're in. Have you experienced that or is there anything that you could say to that? Yeah, I think that's very, I mean, I think you're articulating something that happens a lot. We have the self-image and any time that we, and this is why coming in as a critic is so hurtful which is if you like this, and by the way, this is the job of a leader and this is actually the job of someone who's gonna be successful in a relationship is to be willing, now this is on the other side, to be willing, this is what a mentor of mine told me once, Peter, you have to be willing to see yourself the way other people see you. You cannot fight to have them see you the way you would like to be seen. You have to see how they see you and you have to have a thick skin around that. So that's part of it. So part of it is to say, I feel misunderstood. I feel like not seen and this is my emotional courage. I have to be willing to feel that because not everyone's gonna use my process, right? So like, they're gonna come at me as critics and if I wanna be successful in that dynamic, I have to be willing to say, okay, they're coming at me as a critic. I can correct them and help them come at me in a more productive way. I could tell them to read my book, but instead I'm just gonna say like, okay, so what's the outcome we want here? For me, I'm gonna skip that step and go to the outcome where I know I could begin to create a collaboration. So that's on the other side of it. And I think the reason I'm proposing here build some skill at coming to someone as an ally as opposed to a critic is to soften the blow to the self-image because when we have a blow to the self-image, we go to shame and the number, shame is the most difficult emotion for anybody to feel and we will do almost anything that to feel shame and the easiest go-tos to avoid feeling shame is denial and defensiveness, right? If I prove you wrong, if that way you're seeing me is wrong, then I have no reason to feel shame because you're just wrong, right? It's your problem, that might. And so one of the things like when we approach as an ally, we bypass the shame and we can get into a real conversation. What's important there is that shame mechanism because if this person that you had worked to be an ally with want to upgrade what they're doing and help them so that they can contribute more to what is going on to this vision, that if they are seen in the wrong way, rather than trying to defend this character that they had put together or this facade that they want you to see, going in and correcting some of the things that they are doing that shows that they are changing how they're operating could contribute to the vision more so. So that they would change certain behaviors that are leading you to see through the facade. Absolutely, that's absolutely right.