Podcast: Play in new window

Subscribe: RSS

Leveraging higher-level communication skills rooted in emotional intelligence helps drive connection, growth, and performance in professional and personal relationships alike. 

In this episode, leadership language expert Krister Ungerbock describes his TalkSHIFT™ System and explores how it elevates communication, morale, performance, and growth. Krister shares how you can hone your emotional intelligence to boost personal relationships and business growth. 

Learning how to communicate more effectively allows us to become better family members, spouses, and friends. When you pay closer attention to your words as well as your actions, you can avoid a communication crisis that could damage your relationships with others.

In this Episode 

5:24 We recognize how many of the principles of leadership communication also apply to partnerships and romantic relationships

14:40 How Krister found transformation personally and professionally and how his experience helps others in their relationships 

20:08 A deeper understanding of the whole person increases the level of communication and gives insight into discovering where we are in our lives and what matters to us

25:28 Krister’s most effective tools for improving communication in our relationships 

31:56 The importance of asking direct questions about what someone needs from you at that moment and how that can help shift perspective in a conversation 

38:28 The difference between being seen and unseen, and the challenge of seeing someone for who they are rather than who they were

Your Check List of Actions to Take

• Recognize that these principles of communication are transferable to any arena and are game-changers in understanding how to communicate effectively
• Take a deep dive to understand current relationships and how they impact your life
• Understand that sometimes it’s necessary to let go of strategies that have worked previously to pivot away from aggression and towards compassionate communication
• Recognize the power dynamic in your relationships and promote engagement to create a cycle of positive action 
• Reflect on situations in your life where you or your partner have felt unseen and whether an apology could support you on your journey to improving your communication tactics

Mentioned

22 Talk SHIFTs: Tools to Transform Leadership in Business, in Partnership, and in Life (Amazon link)

Connect with Krister Ungerbock

Website: krister.com  

Facebook: facebook.com/meetkrister

Instagram: instagram.com/iamkrister/

Youtube: youtube.com/c/kristeru

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/kristeru/

Twitter: @meetkrister

Connect with Dr. Jessica Higgins

Facebook: facebook.com/EmpoweredRelationship 

Instagram: instagram.com/drjessicahiggins 

Podcast: drjessicahiggins.com/podcasts/

Pinterest: pinterest.com/EmpowerRelation 

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/drjessicahiggins 

Twitter: @DrJessHiggins 

Website: drjessicahiggins.com  

Email: [email protected]

About Today's Show

Krister, thank you for joining us today.

I'm happy to be here.

I love being able to talk to people that come from different backgrounds to be able to support in the way of relationship principles. We're excited to talk to you today and all the different things that you're offering. I mean, you're coming from a business background and leadership. You've really recognized how many of these principles apply to partnership and romantic relationships. And just for people that are getting a chance to know you for the first time here today perhaps or want to know you a little bit better, what got you into doing a deeper dive with all of this?

Well, I found myself five years ago now. I was signing up for a gym membership at the YMCA, and I broke down crying when a woman asked me, “Who's your emergency contact?” What had happened is simultaneously in the two to three weeks before leading up to that moment, I walked out of my role as a CEO of a $200 million software company as a result of a business breakup, divorce, I would actually say, with my business partners. And then, two weeks later, my wife walked out on me. And so, I really had no one.

My kids are pretty young. At that point, they're still pretty young—five, six years old. I was involved in a family business. I started looking at all these broken relationships I had. I had all this amazing business success. And so, I went on this journey to try to find, ‘Is there a universal language or a universal tool?' I call it leadership in a relationship. In order to be an effective leader of the business, you have to be a leader of the family.

And so, ultimately, I spent five years and $500,000 going to all these crazy workshops. I was busy surrounding myself with all these things that are the furthest thing from the business that I could ever find. I was looking for what I will find there and how I can translate that into things that will maybe resonate with businessmen a little bit more. Maybe those who would never read a book by John Gottman or something like that, or never read the Five Love Languages, but they would read a book by a CEO of a $200 million software company that just so happened to have a lot of relationship advice tucked inside of the business advice.

So, that's kind of what brought me through it. My real mission is to transform 100 million marriages, leaders, and lives. I think that writing a leadership book for a lot of the men who are like me, who would read 20 business books before they read anything about relationships, or parenting, couching some of these principles that I'm sure that many of your listeners here maybe live professionally every day, couching those in how to be better at your career and be a better leader. It's kind of like the spoonful of sugar that makes the medicine go down for those people who had never picked up a book like many of your listeners probably do.

Yeah. So, what you're saying is the packaging of it makes it really palatable for people that might not directly go to relationship help or self-help. But really, these principles are transferable to any arena and really are game-changers.

Yeah. I mean, they have been for me. I wish I had these tools. I'm certain they would have saved my marriage. I'm also quite certain they would have saved my ‘business divorce' as well.

I am curious about that because in your story, you talked about your father and the difficulty with that, and that he was one of the main people that was preventing you to kind of develop or evolve the business leadership. Are there things that you look back on and say, “Oh, this would have made a really big difference?” Because it sounds like he was pretty stuck in a position. Sometimes we're powerless to changing someone's position.

I definitely spent 20 years feeling quite powerless. Interestingly, my brothers, who were also involved in the business, are like, “You're the CEO. You could make $100,000 decisions.” But I felt powerless because I couldn't make million-dollar decisions.

I think that for me, the parent-child and father-son relationship specifically was probably the biggest one. I look back, and this was after the business divorce, only in the last two or three years that I've really come to the realization that my relationship with my father was doomed kind of when I was 10, 11, 12 years old. It came along because I had kind of an enmeshed relationship with my mother.

And so, while my mother and father never got divorced, they worked together. And that toxicity of their working relationship, which was kind of my relationship with him, kind of mirrored that 20-30 years later, but my mother, as the oldest son, would complain to me about my dad. Before I was even in high school, my dad was already kind of my enemy.

One, in my marriage, we had some of the same patterns that emerged in different and maybe less severe ways as they were between my parents, but also that anger towards my father, just like, you know, a 10-year-old, nine-year-old, 12-year-old child just soaks in that anger.

It's probably ultimately been the biggest challenge for me to just kind of let go of that anger. When I left the CEO job, I spent two or three years where I essentially almost didn't work. Financially, fortunately, I was able to do that. But I knew that if I dove back into work working 60 hours a week, I would never really find out what they think about when I didn't have work. And what I found out is I mostly thought about how angry I was at my father and my ex-wife.

When I didn't heal that, work would have been a distraction to stuff that down subconsciously. I don't know if I would have ever emerged again, kind of a healed person like I did over the last five years.

I have such regard and honor for your bravery to be able to do that work and give yourself that permission, especially from maybe the culture and climate that you're speaking from, it's not necessarily really supported, right? And so, for you to say yes to that call, and for you to do this deep dive and what you were able to glean and learn and really heal and grow in yourself, it sounds tremendous.

Had you just gone and done what you were used to or really good at, you could have just replicated and really created success, but been pretty distracted from these, like you're saying underlying things that really fueled some of these dynamics.

I see so many business leaders and friends of mine, like cellular companies, or something happens, and they just dive into work. I think there's a place for having worked to distract. With everything in my life crashing all at once, I knew that I needed to have six months or so. And I really made this purposeful effort of surrounding myself with all those people that I would have judged as woo-woo, and far out, and weird back when I was CEO.

These places probably wouldn't be overly surprising for people in your audience. Although, I don't know, I think I did so many different things that even friends of mine who are therapists, they're like, “Wow, I've never done that.” Like, “Whoa, that was a little bit awkward even for me.” And I remember I would go on these little excursions and I would read people's books. I'd be just calling like, “Hey, can I just come spend a weekend with you?” Or a day or whatever. And some of these ones were really kind of out there.

My CEO and business friends would just look at me like, “What are you doing?” And I'm just like, “Hey, I read thousands of business books, and I didn't read it back to me.” So, I have to find it. And that was really my intention is to take things out. In many cases, they come from your world, but then repackage those and some of the language in ways that business people can start to practice some of those things that maybe they would learn in therapy. But you have to change the words along the way because you can't necessarily use the same words in a professional setting that you might use with your wife or your children.

And I think it really cuts through. There's so many examples from your book that I was like, I love the ability and how strategic you're framing it so that people can access whether or not it's a deeper need, or this empathetic understanding or the self-awareness or even just scaling and giving people permission, like the scale from one to 10. And there's a lot more room there.

So, before we move on, is there anything you want to speak to that has perhaps shifted the way that you relate not that your father or your mother are different with you perhaps but that you've really found transformation and that potentially could help people in relationship as they’re listening?

Well, there are two things. One of the things probably I'm most proud of is actually my divorce. I certainly had a lot of reasons to be angry and possibly be one of those people who five or 10 years later is still angry about the end of their marriage. I mean, I was fortunate I have great people around me to help me to see that that might not be the best path to take.

But I remember my daughter, she was kind of nine at the time, she was sitting at the backseat of the car with her friend who was also a child of divorced parents. She was saying, “My parents get along. They actually get along really well.” And the girl, her friend, was sitting there and she said, “My parents don’t.” And my daughter was so proud despite the fact that this is divorce. And I'm really proud that we've created a kind of a model relationship despite many, many reasons for it not to be.

I credit these kinds of talk shifts and communication to my former wife. Actually, she has read the book. She read multiple copies of the book before it was published because I wanted to make sure that there was nothing in there that would cause her any kind of bad picture. There were some things removed, which may be put into a future book at some later date, but actually a lot of the first versions of the book before it's published, we're actually much more relationship focused. But being a business person, my editor said, “Hey, you’re not a psychologist. You can't talk about this stuff. You have to maybe establish your credibility with a business audience and maybe pivot to that in a second or third book.”

But my relationship with my father was probably the most powerful transformation. He's 77 years old and he can't read because his eyesight is not very good. There were also some tough things about him in the book. And so, I wanted to read it to him and make sure that he agreed with the things and how I characterized him and our company and things like that. And so, I read it to him out loud over the course of three or four- or two-hour sessions. And about, almost to the end, he said, “I had no idea how my words hurt you.” He's never apologized for any of his behavior. It was the closest thing that we got to. But that gave me the release to kind of start to move on.

I'm curious about your position now having done this work, having also come from such a successful background where you spoke about the tendency to achieve success, right? There's some level of aggressive strategy. Sometimes it's in play when we're learning how to optimize success, and even the bottom line, these types of things, and there's a certain level of success with that. And having learned all of these other relational tools, have you come to a place of integration? Was there ever a process for you, like, coming back into business? It's almost like, things that worked and being willing to let them go for something different that’s unknown, right? Did you ever have any moment of like, “Oh, I have to let go of these strategies that worked really well because they were a little bit more aggressive and I'm really turning towards this compassionate communication and maybe not knowing what that's going to look like in practice.”

Well, I think I started the transformation about the time that I became CEO. And admittedly, while I was CEO I really struggled. I become soft. The results are not there. And so, that was when I was researching the book and writing it. It was really like how can I create a book and read very specific fill in the blank phrases, the 40 soft skills, but they aren't soft. I actually had a bunch of construction crew, or a bunch of entrepreneurs, not like with a big company, who's renovating my basement when I got married. We had two bedrooms for the step kids. I asked him to read the book and I brought a video crew and we did a little video about teaching old guys new tricks because they're all basically retired.

One of the guys said, “I read the book. I thought you're going to be all touchy feely.” But he was like, “This is really hard stuff. It's a tool to really enter into hard conversations. But because they're kind of really easy, simple tricks, like fill in the blank phrases, it makes it easier to kind of have these conversations.” And so, that was really kind of the bridge. Like, if I had these tools today, I would have been able to, in some ways, maybe even push people harder, but do it in a way that they were actually coming along for the ride versus pushing back. So, I think that that really was one of the big challenges that we overcame in the book.

Yes, because we know, as you're talking and I'm listening and thinking about what I read in the book, that so many of the communication tools were really allowing for more information to be shared, and a deeper understanding. And that deeper understanding just increases that level of communication in the sense of really knowing where people are. And then, when you're looking at, okay, if I'm trying to lead, then I have a much better sense of where this person is coming from, what matters to them. And the different nuances there that really help that be that much more clear.

Yeah. Whether it's in a marriage or personal, intimate relationship, or in a business relationship, at least an employer and employee relationship. I mean, I don't know, research is like 20% of employees are engaged. So, what we're really fighting for is more commitment for the people that we’re already paying. I think COVID has made it worse, because now we've got the gig economy, people lost their jobs, many people have spouses, they have a family member, they're helping them out with their side.

And if I'm the person who kind of, you know, has a conversation with an employee, that they're like, “Wow!” Here's what I'm going to get back. I'm not going to quit and go to another company. I'm just going to spend more hours on my side gig, and I'm going to accept your paycheck, so that I have my safety net.

And so, I think that there's this thought that companies who are in businesses that are in a war for talent, like tech, and I think, I don't know what businesses aren't in a war for talent anymore. But having committed employees is not met certainly that different from having committed family members being in a committed relationship. There's a reason why employee engagement has the word engagement in it. And before you get married, you get engaged, right? It's about making a commitment.

Yes, thank you. And if I'm even adding to this, it's that we're continually committing over and over again, and that engagement is so much about relating. And if we're feeling, as an individual seen, understood, that we matter, and that reciprocity. I understand in partnership, intimate relationships, that relationship is more equal than maybe perhaps an employer and an employee. And when we talk about relationships in these relationship skills, it is human to human and there can be this real regard, that when people feel that I think it promotes this engagement that you're referring to, and that then is this positive cycle. And we can do so much when we're working together from this engagement.

There's a little bit of a misunderstanding that I think that there's this power dynamic that happens in a business that doesn't happen in a marriage. And what I spend a lot of time thinking is that the power dynamic is still there, it's different. So, if you're in more of a single wage earner relationship, there's still a very strong power dynamic because if I don't know where I'm going to pay my rent, feed the children for my 50%, I may shut down just like I would with a boss who could fire me. I actually might be better off getting fired saying something to my boss, because at least I can go get another job. But if I'm the person who maybe has the lesser income of two in an unequal income relationship, I may never be able to replace that standard of living that I had. Ultimately, this.

I don't want to gender stereotype but my editor has actually been involved in a lot of relationship books that many of your listeners have read. And so, she helps me. But she helps me with what's a gender stereotype versus what the research says. The research shows that often the way women hold power over men, is often the emotional power. Men are looking for more appreciation, acknowledgement.

That creates also a power dynamic where maybe men are not really talking. Because what they're hoping to get is kind of the emotional payoff, let's say, that's not there if they really speak up.

And I wonder if we even look at some of the conventional or traditional structures of partnership, or even marriage, that we can rely on this. That's some of the things that we do as humans is we rely on what is and what we've always done. And it sounds like you're really calling for more mindfulness, more awareness, and more self-reflection around how we're doing this and the relationship that we're cultivating because the power dynamics are different, you know, it could be culture.

There could be so many things that influence a sense of power. And if we rely on that, then we can be a little unconscious to how we're negotiating or making decisions. But it sounds like through these relational tools, it's gathering this information, being able to have this deeper understanding that then being able to work in this collaborative way.

Well, I'm curious, so we don't lose time with you. And we can give our listeners some real practical examples and takeaways from today. I'm curious, can you give us an example of one or two of your best tools for a relationship and helping people understand what that is and what it looks like?

I think the scale of one to 10 is pretty universal, whether it's business or couples. Any time we are trying to enter into a conversation where it constantly could be a very difficult conversation. So, what happens is, if you were to ask your wife or husband, are you happy in this marriage? Or do you want to get divorce? Those are like, yes or no questions. And if you're that person who's in a state of fear, in many cases, there may be no other answer.

Like, “Do you want to get divorced?” “No!” My answer may be yes but I'm not going to tell you that. Or, “Are you happy in this marriage?” “Yes, I am.” Sometimes the talk shifts give words to those seeking their voice and courage to those seeking their volume. So, what we do is we say on a scale of one to 10, how happy are you in our marriage? On a scale one to 10, how committed are you to getting divorced?

But then the second thing we do, and that's not necessarily new, there's other people like this, the second thing we do is we exaggerate the scale. So, on a scale of one to 10, 10 being we have the best marriage on the planet, like better than the movies, better than everyone we know. One, we have the worst relationship on the planet, worse than the movies, worse than everybody we know. And so now, it's like, “Okay. I could say seven or even six on that scale. And that might not be too bad.” But here's the other thing. I didn't include this in the book so much. It also helps pull us out of the negative.

I may be thinking if you ask me, “Do you want to get divorced?” I may say, yes in my mind and I tell you no. But the thing of the challenge is that that question now, I actually answered the question yes. And it's in my mind, right. You by asking the question have planted the seed that I'm unhappy in this relationship. Or you've watered the seed.

The other side, if I'm unhappy, and I maybe would have answered, I'm unhappy in the relationship. If you say, on a scale of one to 10, one being the absolute worst relationship, I say, “Well, you know, he's not a drug addict. He does a good job.” We start saying, “Okay. Well, yeah.” I'm a four or a five. Maybe a three. But a three is still psychologically for the person who's not happy. It's still better than one. Then we follow up with the question, “Well, so what's the difference between a four and a seven? Or a seven and a nine? Or whatever it is.” And then we can start saying, “Okay, well, these are some things that we could change, and we start to move up.”

How can we turn a five into a seven, a seven into an eight? Because ultimately, getting divorced is, I'm sure you see this all the time. I mean, I was on the dating circuit for quite a while. I mean, like, the reality is that there's a lot fewer choices, certainly when you're 40s or 50s, because the reality is the people who are divorced are divorced for a reason. Most people aren't doing the work, right? And they're going relationship to relationship and like, “This one doesn't work.” But they're never looking at their own stuff.

So, maybe take your relationship from a five to a six, and then a six to a seven, seven to an eight, especially if you do have children that haven't finished school. Maybe that is actually better than starting off with a clean slate and going out on the open market and hoping that you find somebody who's like, you know, somehow have done the work, and not just end up in the exact same marriage just with a new person.

It does sound like the person who is asking the question, it even changes the sender's question, right? If one is in fear, and asking that question, do you want to get a divorce, it already sets it up. You're saying this yes or no question. But it can already be like a provocative question, right? It's a sweaty, 10-minute conversation, no matter how you dice it. And if we can get ground and the person that's asking, there's a level of curiosity, and I know you talk about this, and a level of ground that I do want to have this honest conversation. I really do want to know and have more information. Again, it seems like it's really these nuances that afford for a deeper understanding than just this yes or no that really doesn't say that much to your point.

This is what was for me the most powerful. There's 22 talk shifts, and each one has specific phrases. One of the things that I learned to be a better leader, like 20 years ago, is I found some podcast that just gave me like, these are the phrases to say. Use of his training wheels, and then when you feel comfortable. And I did it. For a couple of years, I started to be a better manager, a better leader, because I had it so I wanted to give people those training wheels.

On a scale of one to 10, blah, blah, blah. Exaggerate the scale, step two. And then the third is, what's the difference between seven and nine? What can I start doing? Or what do you suggest that I start doing or stop doing? That's the difference. So, it’s behavioral. And so that was really for me, because I had this unique opportunity of learning to lead in French and German as an adult after September 11. So, language was really important to me. And I found like, you know, like later in the book, we talked about emotional intelligence and emotional connection. I wanted to really boil that down into specific language that people can ask themselves or other people to create emotional connection, because I didn't see that in the other books that I'd read on these topics. But it all came back from this experience of learning two foreign languages as an adult, is what really helped me to kind of boil these down into very specific reusable phrases.

Nice. I love that. I think it also connects with something you talked about, and another tool, which is asking for support or asking for what you want. And sometimes that just straight-out question of like, what would help you? How can I support you? That can feel like a really big question. And to say, what would the difference between a seven and a nine look like? I think that really does open up and get the mind working on how to solve that or even answer that question, which is a whole different orientation. Okay, great. Do you have one other one that you would like to share with us today?

The last part of the book is about partnership. And I said leadership and partnership, because business people would read about partnership, but less about relationships. But between us, we went back and forth. We call it relationship partnership.

The last six or seven talk ships are all about relationships. And then we kind of make a side reference of how they apply in business. But one of the things I found is really around emotional intelligence and connection. There are two of them around that. One is, what is the language of communicating our emotions and getting others to communicate their emotions. I go into a lot of the science in the book and a bunch of other examples. But the quick one I found are in German and French. English speakers have a little bit harder things because we often say, “I feel like you did that on purpose. I feel that.” I know many people in the psychology relationship world when I say ‘I feel that’ I'm sharing my thoughts. I'm not sharing my feelings. So, it only takes three words to talk about our feelings. ‘I feel’ – an emotional word. Now many people sometimes just have adverse reactions to talking about their feelings. So, you can say, I am sad, mad, glad. And then, I think that the other part is often we ask, so how are you feeling? And people say, fine, great, good. Well, if we just shift the question to, “What emotion are you experiencing right now?” Or someone tells that hard story about something that happened to them. Well, what emotion are you experiencing at that moment? Because if you complete the sentence, “The emotion I was experiencing in that moment was fine, good, great.” But it doesn't complete the sentence.

Now, you'll still find some people will be like, “I felt fine.” And then the second one, which is I think, the third or fourth, the last chapter, is about anger. For those of us who are not great at communicating or being in touch with our emotions, and I was one of them, I would say still something I struggle with, the one emotion that comes up quite naturally is anger.

What really helped me is as I started to really boil it down to ask the question, anytime someone's angry with me, or I'm angry, just asking the question, ‘What is the emotion behind my anger?’ I purposely created it as a multiple-choice question and there's only four choices. I'm sad. I'm feeling regret. I'm feeling embarrassed.

I'm feeling afraid. Maybe 9% of the time it's one of those emotional families that's behind our anger. It's just like picking whichever one is closest. I'm afraid? Maybe I'm just anxious. I'm stressed. That's just in the afraid family.

Regret. That's more on guilt. Maybe I'm angry. I'm not angry at what you did. I'm actually angry because it reminded me of something that I did. Especially people who are divorced or they do something wrong. Whether it's an affair or something like that. Like a lot of this anger actually comes from guilt over our own actions.

Embarrassed? Embarrassing is just a little bit nicer way to say shame. I purposely chose these words to be a little bit more accessible because if you say, “Am I feeling shame?” It's probably less likely that many people are like, “No, I'm not really feeling shame.” But embarrassment? Yeah. Oh, well, that's in the shame family. It's just a lighter version.

I mean, I experienced riding my bike on the street and somebody honks. “Get out of the trail!” And I'm like, wow, that person must have some really tough stuff going on in their life to get angry about somebody who's just riding on an open country road and there's no cars. Like, what's going on in that person's life that they got that angry about a person riding a bike on the road?

Yeah. Well, and to your point, sometimes there is a lot of fear of like, “I didn't see you there and I almost hit you!” And the impulses to get angry and to look at what's behind that. I love that because I agree with you – anger is often a secondary emotion. I also love the emotional question around what emotion am I experiencing.

I wonder. Have you studied any NLP? Because I feel like my brain when you're asking these questions, it's really asking us to think differently and really setting this up. And the brain is working differently when these different prompts are up.

I get asked that question a lot. I did read a book on NLP. I thought it was a bunch of BS like 20 years ago. Well, not meaning it’s a bunch of BS. I was just like, okay, this wasn't for me. Clearly, I picked up the wrong book. But I will admit, we did in the writing of the book and my editor, I think, really, it was like, it’s one thing to read a book, but it's another thing that I often phrase the questions in a way that it draws you to start thinking about them. Because I could say, “Hey, I realized that I should ask this kind of question more frequently.” But you're not necessarily going to start asking that question of yourself. And so, we did that. There was a lot of nuance.

I appreciate what you've done. I can feel how these talk shifts are that much more accessible for people that like to be really efficient or are more business minded, and that this does impact relationships in various sectors and the benefits that it is providing. It gives another voice to the conversation that perhaps isn't as woo-woo or, you know, it's hard to relate to. So, I'm really excited that you've done this, and it makes it just more accessible for people that resonate with this approach. Is there anything that you want to say that we haven't touched on today before we start transitioning out?

I think one of the most important chapters is the last chapter. I wanted to say like, you know, we didn't want to be one of those books that you get like six chapters, and you're like, “Well, I think I've read it. And now the rest of the book is just saying the same thing over and over again to fill up, you know, 250-300 pages.”

The last chapter is about apology. And you talked about being seen and unseen and being seen and things. This is really coming on in one of my next books. But what I realized is that sometimes the real challenge in our relationship is not being seen. It's being unseen. It's where people stop seeing us for who we were, and just start seeing us for who we are.

This really affected me with my father for years. I mean, I was always in my head. “He did this! He did this! He did this!” And somebody said, “When was the last time that he did that?” Well, it was like 10 years ago! But he never apologized. So, I kept holding on to it.

And so, sometimes the bridge from where we are in a relationship to where we want to go requires someone to actually apologize. So many of us feel like, “Oh, well, they did something first. I'm not going to let people walk all over me.” But you know, there was a story about PT Barnum, like he famously walked across the Brooklyn Bridge with like 12 elephants to prove it with sound, right?

People who are leading whether it's in their relationship or in a business, you know, you're a bridge. And what if you allow your partner to walk all over you because you're the only one in that relationship who's strong enough to be walked up? And admittedly after my wife said that she wanted to be divorced I thought about that a lot. I said, “I'm going to let this person do the things that they're doing.” And I know it's not right. But I can be the bridge to get us to a better place. And that better place didn't end up married. But it's certainly all our things equal. It’s a place that I'm still proud of. I think my former wife and my kids are proud of it too.

And what did that take of you? It sounds like you had to keep your eye on the long game, or the bigger vision to tolerate some of that discomfort.

I think that mostly on the day that my marriage broke. The next day, I sat down with my wife. And I do think this was kind of the turning point. It's one of the things that I will be coming to in probably the next book when we do focus more directly on relationships. It was like, marriage breaks. And it's like, “Okay, we're going to go to counselling. Let's try to make it work.” And I just said, I don't know where the story is going to end. But the question that is going to guide my behavior is, what's the story that I want to tell my kids 20 years from now, about what happened from this day and for the next 12, 24 months of our lives.

It probably helped that my wife knows we're going to write a book. That guided her behavior too. She did the work on her side to make sure that when she ended up in a relationship, that she didn't end up with kind of just a repeat and another divorce. And ultimately, I think that while we never spoke about that conversation ever again, and really setting a kind of a big goal. Whenever we tell our children, if we tell them, I assume they'll have relationship troubles at some point in the future, like, “Let me tell you a little story.” And when we tell them that story, I don't want to just be proud of the story myself. I want them to be proud. Not just of how I behaved, but also how their mother behaved. And that, I believe, is probably the greatest gift that my former wife and I have given our children.

This is such a beautiful testament to how these practices transform and are more powerful than even the package of whatever the relationship is, or whatever the form of the relationship is that it's calling us into a level of integrity and character that is really profound. So, I appreciate you sharing and what it means to you and how your children are such an inspiration to calling into this greater way of being and the character and integrity in that. So, I really just appreciate your saying, just even seeing it and then even inviting your ex-wife into it. And the yes to that for both of you. I think it does, you know, so much of I just did an episode. It was with Tracy McMillan. She was talking about a show that she's working on. And really, it's looking at the intergenerational trauma and just how pain is passed down. I think it heals on so many levels. So, thank you for what you're doing.

Okay, well, is there anything you want to say about how people can get in touch with your book, your video book, what you're up to?

Well, the best way to kind of explore the book is to go to TalkShift.com/relationships. They all get the content for the relationship aspect of the book. If you do buy it on Amazon, make sure you get the one that says #1 Wall Street Journal Bestseller on the top, because that's the one that's been updated. Some of the changes kind of further reflect relationships.

We had a lot of people buying it because of relationships. And then they were sending emails like this is a business book. So, we added a little bit more in the early parts of the book to help make the connection that I think I made a little bit better here. But the early versions of the book that were released on Amazon did not have that.

And then, I think by the end of 2021, we're going to have a third edition of the book that's going to come out that's going to have a little bit more structure. There will be more balance between leadership really in the context of business, and leadership in the context of a relationship.

Awesome. I'll make sure to have that link on today's show notes. Krister, do you also provide any other support in a way of coaching or workshops or anything else in addition to the books and the material you're creating?

Yeah. At TalkShift.com/relationships, we actually offer the book for free. You just pay for shipping. It's like $9.95 or something like that by the time we do shipping and handling. And then after that, you have options to get the video book. There are coaching courses. There's courses and coaching.

When I sold my company a couple of months ago, I made a commitment that 100% of the profits from everything that I do are going to be donated to the people who are helping me change the words of the world. So, I really believe that using business and approaching a business audience was partly done because as a business person, that's where the profits are. And if you have more profits, then you can fuel pushing a book out and affecting more lives, right. So, I'm not looking to personally make any money off of this. But I look at investing all the financial gains with the team, who's helping me to do it. And then also some of the organizations that are helping us from a nonprofit side. So that is, you know, being part of the community, being able to help spread the word. Share the book. It is really a big part of what I've made the rest of my life about.

I can appreciate your heart and your passion as you talk about this work and these principles. So, thank you for sharing with us today.

Thank you for having me. I really appreciate it.

Signing Off

If you have a topic you would like me to discuss, please contact me by clicking on the “Ask Dr. Jessica Higgins” button here. 

Thank you so much for your interest in improving your relationship. 

Also, I would so appreciate your honest rating and review. Please leave a review by clicking here. 

Thank you!  

*With Amazon Affiliate Links, I may earn a few cents from Amazon, if you purchase the book from this link.