Ep.42 – Unconditional Power. Guest Steven Gaffney.

@11:00 – Nate Leslie (nateleslie.ca)

Stephen Gaffney, welcome to Leading with Curiosity.

@12:03 – Steven Gaffney (Steven Gaffney)

Thanks for having me.

@12:05 – Nate Leslie (nateleslie.ca)

I got to be honest, when it came across my desk, the opportunity to interview you, what really caught my attention was decades of experience in a variety of industries from private, from big corporations to NASA, to government, to military, a breadth of life experience, and a really interesting personal background as well.

@12:31 – Steven Gaffney (Steven Gaffney)

It’s just an honor to have you here. Thank you for having me. I really appreciate it. Well, and coming from a diverse background, or dealing with different clients, it’s really important because I think there’s a lot of experts that just focus on one industry, and the problem is they suffer from incestuous thinking.

And I think that happens with a lot of industries, right? And instead of realizing that one industry can really help another industry, and I can give you some examples of that, where I’ve said things from another industry, and people said, I…

@13:00 – Nate Leslie (nateleslie.ca)

I never really thought about it that way, but I can give you. Yeah, let’s go there right away. I’m curious about the human element and what you have seen in your time and this work.

@13:09 – Steven Gaffney (Steven Gaffney)

Well, I’ll give you one example. Marriott is a big client of mine and they are founded with the principle that if you take care of employees, they’ll take care of the customer.

In fact, they don’t even call them employees. call them associates. Now, that sounds and it doesn’t mean that Marriott doesn’t care about customers.

They care greatly about customers, but it’s an and not an or. You might say, okay, well, that’s kind of true about a lot of industries, but here’s the big difference.

Many industries burn out employees because they’re so focused on the customer, they forget to take care of the employees.

So by calling, by me, not calling their employees associates and actually treating them in that way. In that way, it’s no action.

They’re the number one hotel chain in the world. So I’m a huge fan of Marriott and that principle is really applicable.

to all of us. So right away we have to ask ourselves, how well do we treat our employees? What do we call our employees?

know, are we always focused on the customer and forget about taking care of our employees? And if we don’t take care of that resource, then ultimately it doesn’t help our customers out either.

@14:16 – Nate Leslie (nateleslie.ca)

That’s an example. Yeah, that’s a great one. I really like that idea that it’s a bold statement to actually be willing to say out loud, customer can’t always come first.

Our people need to be there in order to be in service. Of the customer. Yeah.

@14:32 – Steven Gaffney (Steven Gaffney)

Well, here’s the thing. It’s true about ourselves. Think about it this way. You know, people want to be helpful to other people.

I’ve coached a lot of executives that I like, that are, they don’t necessarily take care of themselves at the sacrifice of maybe employees and customers.

They’re just burning the candle of both ends. I say to them, listen, if you don’t take care of yourself, you cannot take care of other people.

I mean, just think about this how it applies in life and at home. If we don’t take care of ourselves, we can’t help our significance.

@15:00 – Nate Leslie (nateleslie.ca)

and other our kids our friends our family the best thing you can do is really make sure take care of yourself and I’m not talking about like self-love and all that stuff and that’s fine I’m talking about just doing the fundamental how about exercise eating well and just and taking care of issues right you have an issue with somebody get it resolved which we can talk about but the whole idea is we have to take care of ourself we have to take care of the people around us and order for them to take care of and us to take care of other people it was exactly that that only recently let me let go of a guilt I’ve been carrying around for a long time as a self-employed entrepreneur for many many years where we always feel like there’s somewhere we need to be but when I finally gave myself permission to say hey if I can take care of myself I can serve those around me my my wife my children my clients more impactfully which is I was wrestling with in this flexible work environment like me number one my family number two my clients number three

@16:00 – Steven Gaffney (Steven Gaffney)

Yeah, and people can hear, oh, well, won’t that sound selfish what we’re talking about? The answer is no, if you really want to take care of other people, you cannot help other people unless you take care of yourself.

I mean, because then we’re not around. Or if we are around, we’re not dealing with this. Well, here’s an easy example.

You don’t get enough sleep. We don’t get enough sleep. We’re not as quick. We’re not as responsive. We’re not as thoughtful.

We’re not as caring. We’re more short-fused. So we’re really not helping anyone. So you could even look at sleep patterns.

And I don’t mean to make this only personal, but I’m saying really when you’re thinking about work and our work environment, how are we taking care of the people around us and setting up our work environment?

So ultimately, we are in service of the mission and we accomplish those goals. Those are things to consider, but everyone’s focused on the bottom line.

And you can’t focus on the bottom line if you don’t think of your line and the people around you.

@16:53 – Nate Leslie (nateleslie.ca)

So this is a great segue because I’m listening to this environment where people can thrive. It is book unconditional power, a formula for thriving.

Tell us about what’s coming here and how it came to be.

@17:09 – Steven Gaffney (Steven Gaffney)

I’m really excited about it. So soon to be out, it’ll be out September 12. But here’s the key. It’s called unconditional power because I have found out, and through all the work, and I’ve been at this for almost three decades, most people live in a conditional world.

A conditional world is where they say, I can get that done as long as that person comes through, as long as I have more resources, as long as I’m giving more ways to handle things, as long as there’s more money, as long as somebody else behaves in a certain way.

@17:44 – Nate Leslie (nateleslie.ca)

So what we’re doing is we’re powerful, but we’re conditionally powerful.

@17:48 – Steven Gaffney (Steven Gaffney)

The idea of the book and what the book is all about is how to be unconditionally powerful. It doesn’t mean that powerful people and we’re in that powerful mindset and being unconditionally powerful.

It doesn’t mean We don’t recognize the conditions we do recognize the conditions but we focus a hundred percent of our energy on what we’re going to do about it.

Just think about how often somebody will say i’d be happy i can be happy if i had a better boss or you know that person’s making me unhappy well i’m not saying they’re making a thrilled but here’s the thing you gotta take.

You gotta take control of your life but there’s only one key question you can ask yourself what are you going to do about it what how am i going to respond to the situation.

Because here’s the interesting thing when we blame other people which is we all do a time drive we get you know we just blame we get upset you in a moment it might feel better right get to complain and belly ache.

But you’ll notice that that issue crops up again and again and again because we’re giving away our power but if we say what am i going to do about this it shifts the whole focus of the book is about.

How to be unconditionally powerful and there’s nine specific strategies about what we. we can do and how and this is the interesting part for a lot of people.

How do you persuade other people to be unconditionally powerful? Because how frustrating is it to deal with other people who are conditionally powerful?

You’re leaving here and you want people to do something and they say, well, I can get that done as long as I have more resources or as long as that other department comes through, they may be legitimate conditions but they’re focused on others rather than focusing on what we are going to do about it.

So it’s how to inspire other people to be unconditionally powerful.

@19:30 – Nate Leslie (nateleslie.ca)

Tell me about the moment where you realized that this book needed to be written and that you just had this burning message inside of you that you needed to share?

@19:39 – Steven Gaffney (Steven Gaffney)

Well, I’ll tell you, it’s really interesting. It was actually traced back to the early parts of COVID and what happened was I was talking to another consultant of mine and a friend of mine of impact things and I started to be reflective of COVID.

such a horrible experience for so many people. I don’t want to downgrade that experience. But what’s interesting is some businesses pull through and many kind of dealt with the situation by what I would say being unconditionally powerful.

But anyway, we were talking about this, and we talked about mood. full disclosure, I’ve suffered from mood, where something might trigger me and then I get sad.

mean, never very clinically depressed. I don’t mean it that but I get sad and then, you know, and I’ll pull myself out of it.

But I started to realize something and this is what started me on the journey. When we’re in a good mood, we’re smarter.

Have you ever noticed that when you’re in a good mood, when I’m in a good mood, we’re smarter. And so I started to explore what triggers us to be in a good mood and what do we do when we’re not in a good mood to get back into being in a better mood.

And that led to the powerful and unconditionally powerful state. So I started to explore what are the strategies that I use on myself and with others, just kind

kind of instinctively to kind of snap out of that mood. And how do you get people to be powerful?

And that’s how that started on the journey. I mean, the truth is it started a long time ago, but the big trigger was during COVID that I felt like this really needs to get written about and talked about because the whole idea is when we’re in a good mood, we’re smarter, when we’re decisive, we’re on better friends, we’re caring.

So our mood really matters. And that’s the whole thing, matters. So the book is about also around mood mastery.

know, when you think about it, not manipulation, but really jumping, dulting us back into being in a great state, a great mindset.

@21:41 – Nate Leslie (nateleslie.ca)

I’m hearing a correlation too between when we accept that we have the ability to choose how we respond to a situation.

When we focus on those things that we can control, the people in our lives that do that well are often also.

More optimistic more positive you they are acting with that unconditional power speaking of it am i picking up your land down.

@22:07 – Steven Gaffney (Steven Gaffney)

Absolutely choices critical but there’s a step before that i think we over step and forget and that is awareness so sometimes somebody might say i’m going to choose to complain because i think it’s going to be effective or i’m letting people be.

I’m just telling the honest opinion but they’re only saying the negative stuff and so awareness comes into play because we become aware of how this is landing with other people.

So i do a lot of work in the book there is this whole grid around pessimistic and optimism and what we found out is optimistic people are more successful than pessimistic people that may sound obvious but sometimes people think it’s glass of empty have full it’s how you view it.

But actually optimistic people are better and the reason and they are more productive and that’s because when we’re aware that.

It’s important to not only say what’s on our mind, but then also suggest ideas and be optimistic. It’s actually advantageous.

So, awareness comes into play because some people are aware that they can be negative, but they’re not aware of how ineffective that is as a strategy.

So, they don’t choose to be more optimistic because they don’t think that that’s that important. But when they learn things like what we cover in the book and what we’re talking about now, that awareness is a huge aha.

Oh my gosh, I’m bringing other people down. Being pessimistic is not an effective tool. So, if they become aware, then they can choose differently.

awareness is the critical step before choice because otherwise we’re going to make bad choices. So, we’ve got to be really aware of what’s going on.

@23:50 – Nate Leslie (nateleslie.ca)

Connecting a thread here that we picked up in the pre interview, a lot of your work around honesty and hard conversation.

if we can bring this back to an organizational situation where we’ve got We’ve a team and we have the naturally optimistic people who can more readily gravitate to that unconditional power.

then we always have a few who also are getting in the way of that. How, when you work with clients around this topic, you find it effective to be able to have the conversations about naming, being aware of what we’re seeing here and how it’s getting in the way of the team?

@24:30 – Steven Gaffney (Steven Gaffney)

HIGHLIGHT: The biggest problem in communication is not what people say, but what they don’t say. – WATCH

So here’s what I found out. There’s two things I really, two critical points. First, the biggest problem in all communication, all relationships and all teams is lack of honest communication.

But what I mean by honest communication is not the truth or lies. The biggest problem, and if people forget everything out of what we’re talking about, this is the most important point.

The biggest problem is not what people say. It’s what they don’t say to each other. And so it’s really important to get that unsaid said.

And so. It is important when we’re talking about teams, we’re talking about organizations as a whole with communication is to really get that unsaid said.

Then the second primary point is we have to not only just say what’s on our mind, right? But then what’s our suggestion?

Because if you have a roommate, somebody who does get the unsaid said, but they don’t say what they want.

Like, hey, I’m just being honest. I just want you to know this. And like, okay, I appreciate that. But what’s your suggestion?

You know, what do you want? Where do we go from there?

So it’s really important because when you look at situations on this communication is really the backbone of all successful organizations, but it’s really around getting the unsaid said.

@25:43 – Nate Leslie (nateleslie.ca)

It’s really connecting these themes then getting the unsaid said and taking that step to say to be proactive and what we’re going to do about it.

@25:51 – Steven Gaffney (Steven Gaffney)

that right? Absolutely. And then now people might say, how do I be proactive? What do I do? Well, that’s important to think about the other person.

So this There’s these 12 essential elements I figured out and teach around creating high achieving teams. And one of them is be them.

Be them is not our ability to establish rapport. It’s not just about connection. It’s the ability to really be someone else.

So think about it this way. You have somebody who’s really challenging in your life to deal with. We all have those people and we’ll have those people.

Well, often I can’t understand why they’re that way. Well, the first step is to try to understand why they’re that way.

Be them does not mean agree with them. It means our ability to get over in their world and get what might be going on with them.

And that’s why, you know, talking about like our, what we said before we kind of on the air, I and start the podcast, said something so brilliant around listening.

We spend more time transmitting than we do listening. So part of the irony about when I’m coaching people to have difficult conversations is I encourage them to first go ask a bunch of questions.

questions, targeted questions, and really listen so that you can be that other person, because if you can be that other person, then you can connect it, you can resolve issues.

then when you have suggestions going back to, you know, making suggestions, you’re framing the suggestion by not only what’s in it for us, but what’s in it for them.

@27:21 – Nate Leslie (nateleslie.ca)

Listen first, and then finding next steps that are not only self-serving, but also what’s in it for them.

@27:32 – Steven Gaffney (Steven Gaffney)

So I do an interesting exercise that really, when I say I want to say throws people off, in a good way, really jolts their mind.

I’ll say write down somebody who’s having you’re having a difficult time with. Now, I want you to partner up, and I want you to be like you’re in a press conference.

Only you’re the person, I want you to be the person that you’re having a difficult time with. So get out of your world and pretend that you are that person.

And the partner’s job in the session is to ask you a bunch of to questions and see how you can answer it.

And they’re basic questions. And I teach them, I want you to be asked, what are your goals, what are your biggest challenges, what’s most important, things like that.

Just a few things. And you know what, people are stuck.

@28:13 – Nate Leslie (nateleslie.ca)

They’re stuck.

@28:15 – Steven Gaffney (Steven Gaffney)

They start rambling because they realize, I don’t even know what their goals are. I don’t know what their biggest challenges are because we spend so much in our own world.

But yet, if we really want to connect with other people, one of us all of the issues, we got to get over from our world and to other people’s world.

I mean, look at society right now. I actually believe we live in the best time ever. I do, you know, it’s much better than it was years ago and we have medical breakthroughs and all kinds of great stuff.

And still, you know, there’s so many conflicts because people get so regimented to their point of view instead of spending time in other people’s point of view.

But it doesn’t mean agree with them. It means to get them, to be them.

@28:57 – Nate Leslie (nateleslie.ca)

One of my favorite things about leading with curiosity. is getting to hear from super interesting people who are spending their lives thinking about solutions to problems and finding these through lines and connections.

In Jay Shetty’s latest book, Inc. Like A Monk, he talks about the mind being like a studio apartment, single occupancy apartment.

It’s just you, Stephen, living in it. So whatever’s in there, it’s your fault. And I pictured while you were describing how much we don’t think about.

We haven’t thought about what’s in that other person’s apartment. We just know that they’re over there and they’re frustrating us.

And we’re actually letting them frustrate us rather than exploring and thinking, learning through their eyes and finding creative solutions.

@30:00 – Steven Gaffney (Steven Gaffney)

Anyway, I got a What’s last story there? connection do you make between that and your work? Well, so here’s the answer.

love it. So one thing that comes to mind is having worked with lot of admirals, generals, CEOs, top executives.

The best ones when faced with the problem blame themselves first. They take responsibility first. The worst ones blame others.

Right? so when you think about it, it’s well, why people might not like the word blame or whatever. But whatever it is, take responsibility because here’s the thing.

It’s a strategic reason to take responsibility for responsibility for that studio apartment or whatever, you know, our surroundings because we get back in the driver’s seat.

A lot of people going back to this unconditionally powerful book. The way I like to draw the distinction is unconditionally, excuse me, conditionally powerful when I can do that as long as or whatever, is like we’re in the front passenger seat of a car.

But unconditionally powerful and what this person saying that you were describing, and his book and his work it sounds like is getting in the driver’s seat of your car it doesn’t mean i’m going to be traffic jams on pombles there’s got to be a lot of things we got to deal with.

Just don’t we’re not ignoring it but we got to figure out a hundred percent of our energy what we’re going to do about it so if we are back in the driver’s seat of whatever work we are responsible for what we’re creating in our life.

Then we get in the driver’s seat we can do something because the only person we can control is our cell and we just think about it the only thing for sure you can control people might be very spiritual all kinds of things but the only thing you have a hundred percent certainty that you can control.

Is yourself. And people might say but there’s so many challenges out there but there are but there’s so many ways to influence others but the first thing is to influence yourself.

And so taking responsibility for what we’re about and focusing on us about what we’re going to do about the situation.

@31:57 – Nate Leslie (nateleslie.ca)

Practically speaking when you work with a client. How do you integrate work like this into the time you spend with them?

@32:05 – Steven Gaffney (Steven Gaffney)

So a lot of the work I do is with successful organizations. often be here and they say, I bet you get brought into organizations that are really messed up.

Well, and you probably experience this. The people that often need it really the most, they don’t seek it. But, and you might say, well, then what do we do?

people who are really great at what they do or have a high drive for success, and they recognize we all have challenges and they’re always getting better.

I mean, look at the greatest athletes, greatest teams. always have coaches. They always have people that are trying to make it better.

So the work I do a lot is with organizations that are either number one, organizations that want to be number one.

They’re striving to move it forward. So we’ve uncovered all kinds of issues and sometimes they are major, major issues.

But the idea is to help them work through it. So one of the ways we work through things is by people not having to dissect the past, which is an interesting thing.

Because a lot of people think, I’m going to be brought in and we’re going have this team guy come in and he’s going to get us to talk about the past and then we’re going to have to hash out the past.

But here’s the thing. I think people spend way too much time assessing and dealing with the past. Yes, we need to draw the lessons learned.

But here’s the thing. We are where we’re at. What are we going to be moving forward? So let me give you a specific example.

You have a hard time in your life with someone. You could say, I need to talk to you about all the issues we’re having and blah, blah, They’re not going to be that excited.

Or you could say, look, we obviously have some issues. I have my point of view. have your point of view.

We’ve all been upset and there’s challenges. Here’s the key. We are where we are. I’m sorry for whatever I’ve done.

We all were what’s it going to take to move forward? And let’s say the other person is, I can’t forgive you because three weeks ago or a year ago, you didn’t do this and this.

All you have to do is say, I’m sorry. So what would you like to do now? What do we do to move forward and spend way more energy on what we’re going to do.

moving forward rather than reassessing, dissecting, blaming, hashing out the past. If we spent more energy on focusing on the present and the future, we have so much more successes.

And that’s the shift. And I really have found, and I’ve coached all kinds of people, that have worked through and broken through and have breakthroughs with people that they had a really hard time with, because they thought they had to dissect the past.

And if the past is the past, we are where we’re at, what’s it going to take to move forward and focus on that and figure it out solutions, and then actually being accountable to implementing those solutions.

@34:34 – Nate Leslie (nateleslie.ca)

It’s kind of the interesting delineation often between coaching and therapy. And I’m hearing that you often do it in the team setting where you’re helping groups move forward.

the past is important. It has influenced us, and we can’t change it.

@34:47 – Steven Gaffney (Steven Gaffney)

so it adds context, it adds color.

@34:50 – Nate Leslie (nateleslie.ca)

we are future focused to a large extent.

@34:54 – Steven Gaffney (Steven Gaffney)

Would you agree with that? Absolutely. just think about how often people who have gotten to know themselves. That’s a good thing.

We’ll cite them, and it’s an anchor to the past. They’ll say, look, I’ve always struggled with my life. I just don’t appreciate people, whatever.

know I can have anger issues, and I know I can be hard to deal with.

@35:16 – Nate Leslie (nateleslie.ca)

Well, my point is, if you know it, then what are you going to do about it to move it forward?

@35:20 – Steven Gaffney (Steven Gaffney)

For somehow, people sometimes share their past as an excuse. And to me, there’s no excuse. If you learn it, what are you going to do about it?

Sometimes people say, I find it interesting, that certain things that when people say, we don’t really dissect, makes no sense.

For example, time. You know what? just need more time. And I’ll say to people, look, if time really was the solution to getting past things, nobody would be complaining about how they were brought up.

Nobody would ever complain about their parents about whatever issues, and I have great parents. But I’m just saying, but people still talk about their childhood and limit their own success.

And again, it is tough, or whatever. gone through but you are where you’re at and what are going to do moving forward.

Yes, if you understand it, but don’t use it as an excuse and an anchor. You can achieve anything you want by focusing on what am I going to do?

And here’s the other thing. Sometimes our past challenges are actually empower us to be better in the future. Use it as a fuel.

give you an example. I was bullied really badly growing up, really badly. And the thing about it is, you know, and I suffered from anger and all kinds of stuff, but it taught me things about anger, which now I’ve dealt with and I’m really great with and, you know, just learned about like anger is really sourced back to hurt and fear and then being able to move forward.

But the other thing is by being bullied, it helped me. I have a huge appreciation for people who might be kind of socially awkward or people that don’t communicate well.

And things like that. So I say this because, you know, the past can inform us, but we don’t want to use it as an anchor.

I don’t want to say, well, you know, I, you know, I, I, I’m sorry. at reacted this way I was bullied in the past well okay so what are you going to do about it you see what I’m saying so you’re not a cancer survivor so I’ve gone through really tough stuff and I’m saying we all can get cite those things but don’t use it as an excuse or a condition as we’re talking about use it as fuel to move forward and focus you can get anything achieved that you really set your heart on I’m not sure if I have this observation right it’s an it’s not quite right but what’s on the tip of my tongue right now is do you have an ability to be comfortable in the uncomfortable you have convictions around helping people see a new path forward which means a paradigm shift for them is comfortable in the uncomfortable the right word or what what what yeah I love what you said because here’s the thing how many how many times there’s a coach and I’m sure you’ve heard this from people go you know I don’t know I want to do that because I’m not comfortable with that well comfortableness is not a sign to stop it’s often a sign that we need to

go there. Now there are extremes, right? Well, we’re uncomfortable and that’s a different thing. But I’m saying a lot of times people build an excuse and they say, well, I’m just not comfortable with that.

Well, this is not me. Well, get over it, move out. And I mean, here’s how I often will say that people about this.

Have you ever had a coach or teacher that asked you to do something that in the moment you thought was stupid, You reluctantly did it.

And then afterwards, you’re like, my gosh, they’re so brilliant. That was spot on. I feel so much better. I can think of so many things my life.

I didn’t want to do somebody push me into it, so to speak, you know, it’s not comfortable. And I did it.

And I was like, God, they saw something I didn’t see in myself. I’m so glad. So sometimes uncomfortableness is not assigned to stop.

@38:45 – Nate Leslie (nateleslie.ca)

It’s assigned to we need to go exactly in that direction. I think you’re delineating between comfort and safety.

@38:52 – Steven Gaffney (Steven Gaffney)

Just because it’s uncomfortable doesn’t mean we’re trying try. Yeah, I love that. Distinguishing comfortability with safety.

@39:00 – Nate Leslie (nateleslie.ca)

Absolutely. Yeah, as an executive coach, that was a big part of the training is if we see things, if we see and hear things that they kind of skirted around an issue there, that’s exactly to your point, what I need to ask about in an environment, right?

I’m not going to go tell their boss or I’m not going to go whatever, right? It’s a safe environment to do it.

But if you think you should ask about it, you probably should.

@39:26 – Steven Gaffney (Steven Gaffney)

Now, I was going to say, know, and this is so applicable to this life, what you’re just saying and just dealing with everyday folks about that connecting with getting the unsaid said.

So somebody might say, well, I feel like that person’s uncomfortable and should I ask it should I not? I love what you’re saying is that’s probably the question to ask.

And if people get all I get nervous, we’ll say that you can say, look, I’m not sure if I should ask you this.

I’m not sure you’re okay. And you don’t have to answer. But the question that’s coming to mind is X.

And that might be the precise question that they need asked. For example, on the phone, I was coaching this guy one of my clients this morning, and I said, you know, it’s interesting.

I feel like when we’re talking about appreciation, I have a question I want to ask you, it’s pretty kind of pointed.

Do you really appreciate yourself? And have you had a challenging time growing up and just dealing and moving forward in your life with really acknowledging your own successes?

And that led to such a wonderful, robust conversation. Because obviously that’s what he was wrestling with. many people wrestle with that, and even myself, the idea is what are we gonna do moving forward?

So sometimes getting the unsaid said, can soften or put context almost anything. Like if we’re asking why, know, you ask why, ask why?

Well, if you feel uncomfortable, explain why we’re asking the why. So the why behind the why. I’m asking you why because of blah, blah, blah, So we need to ask these questions.

@40:53 – Nate Leslie (nateleslie.ca)

It’s coming back to something in a previous episode that really has my attention right now. around intuition. If your gut is telling, there’s something there.

Our intuition is so powerful, because it’s connected to a lot of the unconscious part of our brain, and it’s exactly where we need to go.

And the ability to trust that feeling, I should, a sense I need to ask this client, this thing that I’m noticing, it’s with the permission to either move on or change the subject, whatever, we’re creating that safe space through that.

But, yeah, that gut instinct in getting the unsaid said is probably a big part of it.

@41:38 – Steven Gaffney (Steven Gaffney)

I want to share a really pointed story and a real serious story, but this is hopefully people will always remember the value of asking a question.

So I was doing a session this is some years ago. And this lady was sharing things and saying things that were just, it seemed kind of dark to me.

But I didn’t, you know, I noticed it or whatever and dealt with the questions and we kind of move forward to the session.

In the session, she comes up to me and she continued to go to that place. And something in the back of my mind thought, I wonder, she’s going to kill herself.

And so, you know, it’s one of those things you ask her, do you not? So I asked her, I said, look, I’m just going to ask you a question.

you thinking of killing yourself? And she heard you back and said, And I proceeded to get the HR, you know, my client was an HR person at the time.

I’m back because she had already left and it’s got security. I walked this lady down to the lobby and it happened to be where her husband was.

And I said to her husband, look, you know, I just want you know your wife. It just told me that she’s thinking about killing herself.

And he looked at me, said, thank you. She’s obviously offer meds. We need to take care of her. And she got help and everything’s fine.

So I just say this because I sometimes share that story, although how serious it is, because I just think in life, a lot of people notice things, but they just

are afraid to ask. And we might be wrong, but it never hurts to ask. I mean, just the other day I was running, I was running by a car and there’s this little kid in the car and the kid looked, you know, passed out like sleeping.

But I thought, you know, with heat, you know, you hear about these things like kids like phones and something bad.

So I circled back and there was a guy close and I said, do you know who his car this is?

And he said, oh, yeah, it’s mine. I said, did you know? And he’s like, oh, yeah, yeah, it’s all taken care of may not hear, but their conditioning’s on.

@43:28 – Nate Leslie (nateleslie.ca)

And I said, okay, and then I kept running.

@43:31 – Steven Gaffney (Steven Gaffney)

But what if, you know, so it’s a good story. So it turned out everything was fine. But the point is, in life, we often see things, but we just don’t ask.

And for some reason, there’s this whole thing of not getting involved. And I think great people, great friends get involved.

They ask the questions. They do what it takes to be supportive. People who really care about other people are really tough with other people.

They ask those questions. And the worst somebody could say is I don’t want to answer it. I always tell people, what’s the worst anybody could ever say to it?

@44:00 – Nate Leslie (nateleslie.ca)

You know the worst case scenario is they say I don’t want to answer it you go okay But you’re never gonna know an answer to a question you never ask yeah, I feel like that’s a great place for us to tie a bow around this conversation Stephen I sense I could go a lot longer and And that’s just a really powerful example of going with your gut stepping into the uncomfortable in service of other people A really powerful story.

Where can people find you find the book the others that you’ve written?

@44:33 – Steven Gaffney (Steven Gaffney)

Yeah, what would you like to share?

HIGHLIGHT: Listeners can get a free e-book by visiting the website and mentioning the show. – WATCH

So probably the easiest ways to go to our website just be honest calm That’s just be honest calm And if they say they’ve listened to the show and and and send us an email and you know say they you know This is what they did with the information or just share something We’ll send them the very first book I ever wrote for free It’ll be the electronic version, but it is the first book is called just be honest and just be honest has the one of the critical distinctions on how do you

get the unsaid said. So I’m not trying to sell anybody on it.

@45:02 – Nate Leslie (nateleslie.ca)

They can get it for free.

@45:03 – Steven Gaffney (Steven Gaffney)

And all they have to do is mention your show and say something like how they’ve used or what they’ve shared about the show.

And and the book unconditional power will come out September 12. And so if they want to get on the list and want to and there’s an article I already wrote about it around this, they can start to use some of the content just again email us and they can find it all by just going to just be honest.com.

@45:23 – Nate Leslie (nateleslie.ca)

I got it just be honest.com listeners.

Stephen Gaffney. I’ve learned a lot and I’ve you’ve invited me into this space of getting the unsaid said, which is really if I’m not doing that as a coach, then I’m not doing my job.

And so I really thank you for that. That’s going to match me forward. And thanks for spending the time with us today.

@45:45 – Steven Gaffney (Steven Gaffney)

Thanks for having me. Thank you.