David Zelman — Designing the Future YOU

Are you thinking about how to grow your business with near and offshore staffing? But you're also wanting to make sure that it's reliable, cost effective and really well done. I think docsa talent is the way to go. Here's why. They don't just fill your jobs. They bring integrity, top talent, and a people first approach that's hard to find. I've known the people at Doxa talent for over 20 years now and I say that you can count on them. I have talent. Talk to Doxatant and you won't be disappointed. Go to doxatant.com Bill G. Again, that's doxatant.com Bill g. One more time. Doxatalent.com Bill G. Check it out today. Oh, there we live again. I love saying that. Live again. Here we are. I get excited when we go live. We're talking to people. Whether you listen now or listen later, I'm always happy to have a conversation. Today's conversation is really about designing the future. You, who are you? Who are you going to be? Who are you going to now? Great conversation with a rockstar. Coach, founder, CEO of a. Of a company that does work in this realm. Author. We'll get to that in just a minute, Everybody. My name is Bill Gallagher, Scaling Coach, host of the Scaling Up Business podcast. Our show comes to you every week for years now with hundreds and hundreds of shows with all sorts of people who deal with the four decisions of Scaling up plus leadership. Who are you at the head of the organization, your department, whatever it is, and how does that relate to the business of growth for you and what you're committed to, what you're lit up about. So all those episodes and more. Wherever you get this Show now or scalingcoach.com scalingcoach.com is our website. We can help you find a coach. We can connect you with all kinds of stuff there or connect you to our guests and their resources, things they shared about. If you can't find it. All right, I'm joined now by David Zellman. David is founder and author of transitionsinstitute.com he's an author. He's got a book out. He's got another one coming out. He's coached and worked with people all over the world in all categories at all levels. And we're talking today about designing yourself for the future of you. And I'm really excited to welcome David to the show. Welcome.

Oh, welcome to you. Thank you very much for having me.

Oh, is it my turn to talk? Yeah. Thanks. Where Are you today, David?

I'm in sizzling Dallas. It's about 104 degrees here and no relief in sight.

Well, insulated buildings, air conditioning, shade misters go out at night, right?

That's it.

Yeah. Well, I'm excited to have our conversation. So many of my friends know David. I'm sure some of our audience knows David. And my wife reminded me recently, you should have David on the show. And so I'm excited to get you on the show. We're going to talk about this before we get into that or kind of. I think it's always foundational, like how the hell did you get into this talk to tell us a little bit of your life story? Because I think it leads us to this work.

All right. Well, I grew up in New York and New York City, actually. And I would say that I had a fairly typical childhood, which is growing up with a great family, but often feeling like I'm insecure and what am I going to do with my life and how are things going to turn out? I had ADD and dyslexia way before those were commonly used terms. And so I was just a problem child in school and I was related to that way and really didn't learn how to read until I was in college. Oh, wow. Yeah. That I got into college was pretty interesting. And I dropped out twice based on the difficulties that I was having. But one day I was was reading a book that my friend had shown up with. He came out over the holidays. I had dropped out of school. I was in San Francisco, and my friend showed up with a textbook from a psychology course that he was taking. I started paging through it and realized I intuitively knew everything that was in the book. So I went back to school, changed my major, started studying psychology and went from being on probation and other terrible terms to dean's list, and then got into a very fine academic institution, University of Wisconsin Madison, for graduate program in psychology and got my PhD in that 1976. So it goes back a little ways. And upon graduating, I went into organizational psychology and had to deal with issues like why didn't I get the corner office or why didn't I get promotion or something like that. And a couple years later, in the mid-80s, the game changed. Coaching started to become a very popular phenomenon in corporate headquarters. And I was invited in to coach CEOs and executives. And I didn't speak corporate at the time. I spoke psychology. And it took me a couple of years to actually speak the language of business. But fundamentally, what the CEO would say is, here's what I want to do. Here's how I'd like to do it. Go make it happen. And I was like, oh, my God. But all of a sudden, we were thrown into the actual game of performance. And ever since then, I've considered myself a performance coach because whether I'm working with a corporate executive or an individual who's trying to change their career, reinvent themselves, design a future, teenagers, kids who are just coming out of school or still in school, it's all about performance. Can we be better at what we do? Can we improve upon ourselves? And that's what the work of the Transitions Institute is all about. It's about helping people improve and become better at whatever it is they intend to do and accomplish in life.

So what happened for you? I mean, I assume you just had been studying things you didn't care about, and then something about studying how people in the mind and thoughts and feelings, work shifted for you. Yes. What is that? Curiosity?

Well, you know, initially, I was studying for business. My father was a businessman in New York. He had his own company. And I just. I just didn't identify with being a glue salesman. It just wasn't my future.

You didn't care about it?

Yeah, I didn't. I couldn't relate. Now, one of the interesting aspects of your parents having a business is you always have a landing pad. So there's safety. There's a safety net there, you know, can always go to work for dad.

There's a job. Yeah, yeah.

You know, and people get married for safety nets. There are all kinds of. People love their safety nets. In a sense, we have them. And one day I just. I just said, you know, the life that I've been living up till this point really sucks. And I want a life that I can enjoy, and I'm willing to go to work to have that. And when I saw that I could actually identify with the material in the psychology book, I gave myself permission to go full out and commit myself 100% to getting to the other side of this dilemma that I'd found myself in. And that's where the title if I can, you can comes from. I literally transformed myself by choosing to, you know, get to work, do what I needed to do to overcome my limitations, including taking remedial reading classes and all that. Turned out pretty good.

So it sounds like that the transformation for yourself was unmotivated dropout to engaged learner, expert student like that.

Pretty much. There was another aspect to it, which was when I was skipping classes and not doing anything meaningful. I was doing what a lot of people do in the 60s was going to parties, getting high, traveling around the country to demonstrations, anti war demonstrations, things like that. And I also realized that that was a dead end. And having the realization that that was going nowhere helped me, I think, develop the commitment to turn things around.

It's funny how I think a lot of people, I work with people from time to time who kind of reach a point. They're like, enough already. It's time to make something happen. I had a career that grew, and then I had a setback, and then I was trying something else and I was struggling and I wasn't winning. And at some point I was like, wait a minute. I had the moment where I saw sort of the extent of my failure, like how much I was sucking in my life at that moment. And I was like, enough. And then I did something really bold to say it's time to cause it. And just that, like, bold commitment, you know, I just. I took on a training program and I spent all my rent money to go be in it. But it could have been almost anything that I did that weekend because I was really committed to causing a shift and a change in my life in that moment. I was just like, oh, my God, this ends now.

I think that those moments, everybody should have them. I think that they're. There's an amazing opportunity that lies on the other side of really taking yourself on and committing yourself to living into your potential. You know, one of the things that I like to say to my clients is dying with your potential intact is. Is a. Not a good idea. So how do you. How do you lean into that?

Right. Lots of potential here.

Yeah, not good. On the other hand, we do have unlimited potential. So the game isn't fulfilling your potential. The game is living into it, leaning into it. And that's part of the trajectory for designing a second life is really about recognizing that we have unlimited potential and then giving ourselves permission to. To really access that. Then the question becomes how. Right. And if you'd like me to speak to that a bit, I'll be happy to.

Well, before. Because I think if we get into the concept and stuff, the how, it'd be useful to share some of the other stories in preparation. You shared about Paul and Susan, Alex and Mike. Talk to us about one of those or.

Sure. You know, I've been doing this for 40 years, so when you asked for stories, it's like, oh my God, where do I go with this?

So we got a lot yeah, yeah, yeah.

This endless.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But Mike was a very successful businessman, international. He owns companies around the world. He's got tens of thousands of employees, works out of New York. And I'm wondering, why is he meeting with me? What do I have for him? Right. So we're having breakfast in New York, and we're meeting each other. And he says exactly that. I have many companies, lots of employees, I have no friends. So here's a person who is extremely successful as a professional, but in his personal life, unsatisfied, not having it go the way he wants, and he's clueless what is going on here. Right. So in the transitions process, what we do is we tend to look at, what are you. How are you thinking? What are you thinking about? How are you acting? Why do you have the world that you're living in? Why is it so. And what we uncovered was that Mike was number one in everything. He was number one in his NCAA sports career. He was number one in Harvard business. I mean, he was at the top of his class. He was number one always. And, you know, one of the funny stories he told me was that he had. He was playing in a tennis tournament, and the person who he defeated for the championship congratulated him and said, you know, he was really glad I won. And I said, you got to be kidding me. Anybody who's that good also wants to win. They weren't happy for you. They might have been very gracious, but everybody wants to be a number one. And if you're going to be the only number one, you're not going to have room for other people around you. You're setting yourself aside from them, above them. So we went, we designed a project for six months in which his job was to create other number ones in business, in his personal life, et cetera, et cetera. And today he's living a completely different existence with lots of people, I'd say, who are close to him. So that's the Mike story.

Yeah. So I love a couple things about that I love. First of all, you're going to what's the pain point? Right. What is it that's uneasy for you and uncomfortable and like, he doesn't have any friends. And then you go to, well, tell me about the rest of your life and how do you look at the world and that kind of thing. And it exposes like, I have to be the best at everything, which maybe wasn't even that conscious for him at the time.

It wasn't. Yeah, it was not. Yeah.

And then you start to look at, okay, but what's the cost of that? What's the other side of that in all these things? And I think that's so great because we don't even notice. Oh, if I have to be that, like, who does anybody else get to be around me?

Yeah. And I mean, you know, there's, like I said, so many stories, but, you know, the Paul and Susan, a couple of people in their 60s who are enjoying a relationship, and Susan wants to get married, Paul says he wants to get married, and they just can't pull the trigger. So what's going on here? And what you see is that there's a flip side of commitment. When you commit to A, you're often eliminating B, and it's along the lines of what you just said. There's a cost, but if you don't commit, you don't get the value that's there for committing. You don't have the opportunity. So a lot of people hedge their bets and try and play both sides of the story. And again, once again, like you said, they do not see the cost of protecting themselves. So a lot of people have a fear of committing. But what I like to tell my clients is you are 100% committed 100% of the time. The only question is, what are you committed to at this moment? And what are you willing to be committed to? Because there's never not a commitment. You know, someone comes into my office and says, I have a fear of commitment. And I say, are you committed to that? You know, it's like, hello, are you sure about that? Exactly. You're gonna hang on to that one.

Yeah, I think that's really clear. So right. To. So to say it another way, which is, I think, what you mean we have unconscious, unnoticed commitments to things.

Absolutely.

We are deeply committed to certain things. But we didn't say, I'm committed to it. We're simply acting consistent with an unconscious commitment.

Yes.

Yeah, yeah. And you're talking about a mature couple who's deciding whether or not to tie the knot to get formally married. But if you think about it, right, our audience is. Is typically business leaders trying to grow their organizations or. And from that context, Right. There are all sorts of things that you don't commit to all the time. Oh, I'm going to be careful about committing to this partner, this customer, or this product direction or this roadmap or whatever. We don't say, yes, I'm in. Let's do that. Because we're trying to keep options open. But then we're committed to not committing or committed to safety or complacency or.

Right, that's right. There's never not a committing question is. And if you want to know what people are committed to, just look, whatever they have, whatever's going on now, that's the expression of what they are currently being committed to. You have a corporate culture. Guess what? You're committed to that corporate culture, even if you're saying things like, I don't like it, and so forth and so on. Often a corporate culture is defined by what people are willing to tolerate, and that's not so good. Yeah, but no one's looking at that. Everybody's looking at the plaque on the.

Wall, how things operate around here.

Yeah, yeah. So I'm, I, you know, stories. Where do you want to go with that one, Bill?

Well, stories are good. Before we move on from that story, though, we were talking about unconscious commitment, which I noticed. Right. So there we got various things that are sort of the default. Like we're. We're kind of trudging along. We don't even notice that we have that commitment going on. But then you can say something, right? Like, will you marry me? I do. Or will you buy from me? Will you sell to me? Like some other kind of a declared commitment that alters our reality now, promising signing on the paper that puts some money in or some money out or ties something to something, and that alters something in that moment as soon as you speak it or write it or whatever it is. Right. Or both.

Absolutely. But here's what you got to be careful about. And you know, 50% greater than 50% of the marriages in our country end in divorce. So there's something else going on. Right. Even when people say they're committed, are they? And I don't think people truly understand the nature of commitment. And I think that it's important to understand that. And here's another aspect that compromises our understanding, our ability to commit fully. So you're standing in front of the judge and he says, do you take this person to be a for until death do us part? And you say out loud, yes, but in the back of your head you hear, unless something happens.

Right.

Unless they get wrong, unless, you know, whatever. Right. They're not going to support me, or whatever the unless is.

They turn out to be like that last one.

And the point I would like to make is that background conversation has a lot more power than people give it credit for. And even though the words came out, yes, I declare, I'm all in Et cetera. What people ultimately listen to is their internal conversation. That's where the action is. You know, I could tell you I'm gonna. I'm gonna be on that call at 2 o' clock and I'm thinking to myself, yeah, but I got one that ends at 2:00'.

Clock.

If it runs over a little bit, big deal, I'll just jump on. But I don't tell you that. I told you I'd be on at 2 o'. Clock. So it's like, you see, we don't have. Our reality isn't clear about where the committing comes from and the nature of it. The seat of commitment is our internal conversation. And you talked about declarations. Very powerful form of committing. Absolutely. Yeah, but do we realize how many times a day we're committing? I'm tired, I'm hungry, I don't want to. She's not the one. I mean, all these conversations we're having internally, those are declarations that I am listening to and are forming my reality. Yeah, uh oh. Oh, no kidding. Uh oh. Now, you know, when I work with people, my job is to make them aware of all of the conversations they're having, all of the commitments that they're making, et cetera, et cetera, so they can start to be a choice about which ones they're going to empower.

Yeah. Which ones are you going to honor? Listen to? Because we have that. I had a coach some years ago when I was really training as a coach and a speaker more formally, and I was getting ready to quit this whole effort, and I said, oh, this is really. These things are irritating me. And I think maybe this is it for me and I'm out. And she said, she said, that's fine. I said, what do you mean by that? She said, you probably tell yourself that kind of thing all the time, don't you? And I said, yeah. And she said, but do you really ever? And I said, almost never. She said, okay, so keep telling yourself, yeah, maybe this is it for me. Maybe I'm out of here and maybe I'm done with this and maybe they can go to hell. She said, but remember, that's not who you are. You're the sort of person who has that and then keeps going and just remember that too. So have those. But then remember, yeah, that's just a thing you tell yourself from time to time and leave room for that. But remember, you're one of the good ones who makes it across the finish line, who doesn't give up. And I thought that was just Genius. And I remember that I still think of that from time to time. And when I get a discouraged CEO, I remind him the same kind of thing. We have all sorts of thoughts, like, powerful, not powerful. I'm like, that's part of me. I want to quit all the time.

Yeah. And again, that internal conversation that's going 24 7, it says a lot of things that we don't want to ascribe value to. And as a matter of fact, not one of us would take the opportunity to put our internal conversations on external broadcasts so everybody else could hear them. Yeah. They're not fit for public consumption. Right. So you have to have a relationship with that whole stream of consciousness, that whole set of conversations. I call them in my work, automatic conversations, because they just. Who knows where they come from? They just show up. Right. It's not like you dialed that one in.

No. And I noticed, for me, anyway, there are things that I've been having a form of, like, my whole life.

Right. They've been there a long time. So. Yeah. We just have to learn how to distinguish the nature of those conversations and then how to, as you said, shift, push them aside and give power to the ones that we intend to.

So I think let's have you share another story, because what you talked about, Alex, and what I thought was interesting about this is I take on a role, and then I resent it or I become depressed about it. And I think a lot of times the leaders we work with find themselves in a place where, like, they wished something wasn't the way that it was, but there it was.

Yeah.

Tell us about Alex.

Well, Alex was a businessman. His family had a very successful apparel company, and he worked with his father, and his mother was a part of the company as well. But his father ran the business, and he had a brother and sister who also benefited from the success of the company. Well, dad died, and Alex had to take over the business. And what no one realized was that the business was in trouble, and the dividends that were being paid to family members were. Were a function of his father going into deeper and deeper debt. So Alex inherited a situation with the irs, with the banks, clients, et cetera, in which he really had to dig deep and dig the company out. And it took quite a while. And all the while this was happening, everybody around him was kind of annoyed because they weren't getting the dividends anymore. He had to stop that. And no one understood what he did to the company so that they couldn't get their dividends anymore. And he Tried to explain the situation to everybody, but fell on deaf ears. There was no appreciation. And one of the things, like it.

Used to be, right?

Yeah, yeah. So one of the things that. Well, he became increasingly depressed and unproductive. And that's when I entered the picture. And I. I just, you know, it's. This is a story in my second book. I said, you know, your father died. There was a lot of grief in the family and a lot of dislocation for people and the family relationships and then the business. And when people had complaints, you were the oldest brother. You are now in charge. Everybody brought all their complaints and problems to you. And he said, that's right. And I said, well, you didn't put the CEO uniform on. You put the garbage man uniform on, and everybody dumped their garbage on you. And he said, yeah, but who else was going to do it? And I said, well, that doesn't mean you have to just because other people have problems. So I think you have to change uniforms. You got to take off the garbage man uniform and put on CEO and go from there. And you have a choice about how you relate to people and how you relate to yourself. And I said, you need to be kinder and more generous to yourself, and you need to do what you can do. Let people know what you can do, let them know what your vision is for the company, your strategy and et cetera, et cetera, and just move forward and take the actions that you can take and let the cards fall where they may. And what was amazing was. And this is so, so typical. It blows my mind. By the end of our two and a half hour conversation, he was. He was like, I'm not doing that anymore. I'm. I got it. I'm. That's me. I've been blaming the circumstance. I've been blaming them. Hey, I've been doing that. No more. And he. He turned it around. And by the next time we met, he said, you know, my relationships are better and that with my family, and I'm happy Guy. And people are saying, it's nice to see the old Alex again. It's just, you know, it's just another story about how we have the power to shape the lives we're leading and where we're going in life. And if you can get to the mechanisms for creating life, see, that's what we're doing anyway.

So.

Whether people recognize it or not, moment by moment by moment, we are creating our lives right now. Bill, you're creating this conversation with me. Your audience is creating their relationship with you and me, everybody's creating whatever it is, moment by moment by moment. But we don't take credit for what we're creating. We think there's a world out there that is an is world and we're interpreting it correctly, et cetera, as opposed to, we are creating our relationship with it. And when you understand that and you start to take responsibility for how you're going to create that world, how you're going to create your life going forward, you just have a different access point to how you live.

Let's grapple with that just for a second, because I think that kind of like, I think I know what you mean by it. And I could be right, could not be right, but, but I. That's pretty weighty. There's an is world versus creating something. So people would commonly think they're listening to us right now. We're talking to each other. We've got, we've done some preparation for the show. We've got somebody in the background watching us and helping us and on ends and, and then we've got people listening or watching. Right. And you're saying they're creating something and they would go, what are you talking about? I think when you say that, what you mean is their interpretation, application and use of what they hear. The, the sounds and, and images being presented to them is the creation. There are sounds and images being presented, but they don't have any absolute value until they're heard, interpreted and applied.

Well said. That is accurate. Right. You know, the way, the way I like to tell, make this point, when I'm in a corporate environment, I'm working with an executive team, you know, I'm saying whatever I say. Yeah. And you're here. Each person is hearing a different story. I mean, I got, there's not just one conversation taking place. If there are five people in the room, there are five different conversations.

Yes, I, I, I, all the time. It's funny, I have a favorite story in this. I'm sure you know it, but a lot of people don't. It's the five. The Blind Men and the Elephant. Right. You know this one, I've heard it.

But I, I don't remember it, to be honest.

Yeah. So. Well, it's, this is an ancient, ancient story. Right. And, and it's gone through many cultures and that kind of thing. But five blind men are led to see an elephant. Right. Which means that each of them will put their hands on the elephant and then describe what they see, because they see with their hands. And each of Them describes a dramatically different elephant and yet all are 100% correct. Right. One says oh, it's like a snake. The other says it's like a great high. The other says like a tree trunk and on and on like that. Right. So too, each of us sees the world, describes it completely differently, reacts to it completely differently, and we're all 100% right.

That's right for ourselves. We're 100% right for ourselves.

Right. But, but then, I mean, taken to ridiculous extremes, we go to war over stuff like this. Right. Like we literally, we destroy relationships, we burn down countries, people kill people over an interpretation they have of something that's different than somebody else's interpretation of it. And they're sure they're right and the other's wrong and there's consequences.

That's the world we live in.

It's crazy. And this is a many thousand year old story, so we've known it a long time, right?

Yeah. I just think that if people can recognize what you just said, especially about the downside of this, you know, the cost going to war, et cetera, or in their personal relationships, go to war.

In your, go to war in your business relationship, in your team, that kind of thing, over a perspective that you have.

That's right. Really the lesson is if I'm unique and I'm the only person with this particular interpretation, then you over there, Bill, Bob, whoever has a different one, if someone tries to take your interpretation away from you, what do you do? You resist. You fight. Right. So perhaps the starting point is listening to each other differently, actually recognizing that they cherish their interpretation as much as you cherish yours. And the first act should not be to try and change theirs, but to appreciate where they're coming from, to appreciate the background against which that interpretation arose for them and not immediately turn that person into an enemy or a bad person. They're just as good as you On a team. You got to work together, you got to harness people's talents and abilities, not figure out who's top dog, et cetera, and who's going to win. Here, it's just a different game.

So I frequently, because it made a huge difference for me in my life and I practice it when I remember to. But of course I'm human. I forget to practice the things that I know that work all the time. But I learned to ask myself, what's it like for them? What's their experience of me, of this situation, of the world? What's going on for them? What are they committed to that they're not even saying to me right now. They don't have the room to say that they haven't even thought of or that they're holding back and just like, be with that question as I listen to the person. And so I frequently use that with our teams as they're working through things, especially when a team is, like, at odds when they're off with each other. And sometimes I'll send people to take a walk and really try to listen a little deeper with each other. And it's really surprising what happens in that. I had a tech team out here in the west, and I had some founding members and then some additional people, and I had one new guy that had a fantastic resume and seemed to always be at odds with them. So I sent him off on a walk and that kind of thing. And they came to understand each other really, really differently. The problem was that they had fundamentally different values and ways of looking at things, and they. They weren't actually interested, so they. They needed to separate. It took them some months longer before because they kept trying to, like, bring the other person over instead of just acknowledging, oh, that's one possible way of looking and working. We have another one. And these two are very much right. So they. They've been in odds of that, but they finally did get the appreciation. Oh, they're coming from there. Oh, they see this like that. Very powerful. And then you have to be willing to, like, act on it.

Yes. And again, people don't always get there.

Yeah.

And, you know, this is not about Kumbaya. This is not about everybody's going to come together and everybody's going to be a match. That's just not realistic.

Not a perfect world. Yeah.

Right. So in an organization, there are times when you hire someone, they have all the right qualifications, but then they. The chemistry is wrong.

Right.

You know, once you realize that, you can try and alter the situation, correct it, but at some point you have to go, you know, it's time to move on. And I think you're doing people a favor when you do that as opposed to, you know, hanging on.

Yeah. Because then there's like, trying to stuff them into a box or they're trying to change you into something, and everybody's miserable because everybody's forcing some outcome on something that just isn't natural.

Here's a fun story that sort of addresses the same thing. It was a success story with this regard. I was working with an international firm, and one of their executives was a woman. Her name was Laurie, and she was Always the smartest person in the room. She just was. And it didn't matter with the CEO, all the other executives, she was always the smartest person in the room. The problem was she always wanted to demonstrate that she was the smartest person in the room. And you can't blame her. I mean, she knew what she was talking about most of the time. And I said to her, lori, listen, I want you to be successful in this company and so does everybody else. Everybody's committed to yourself. Is it possible for us to get 10% less? Lori, just hang back 10%, just kind of, you know, stop. Just 10%. And you know, at first she didn't. What are you talking about? And then she finally got the message and really it transformed her relationship. She became responsible for how she interacted with other people, to let other people contribute besides for her and not to steal the show or try and own the mic or whatever it was. 10% less Laurie was a wonderful success story. Yeah.

Because it gave other people a chance to show up and.

Right.

The whole team to elevate. You know, this notion of being responsible for who you are and how you are is something that's really useful. I frequently try to acknowledge. Right. The way, like, I know there are certain ways that I can be. Often am recurringly. Right. Oh, I'm pretty smart and I'm pretty articulate and I kind of feel the silence and I have a lot to say and I'm kind of salesy and you know, lots of things that I. I might acknowledge, I can be really dominant. And that gets you to a point like somebody being some way and pretending that they're not that way or not even being aware that they're that way is really frustrating to be around. And we all know people who keep talking a particular way and you're like, you look 180 degrees from that. Like you're. What's the deal with that? You're like left with a different internal conversation. So I try to acknowledge that and I've learned that and been taught that, but it doesn't always make the difference. And my wife recently coached me. She's like, you know, the next time you tell people that you're like salesy and you're this and you're. That you're dominant, you're irreverent, profane and that kind of thing, remind them that you're committed to them. That although these are some things you may be from time to time, that your commitment is to them and their success in this relationship. She said that And I thought it was a powerful ad that I said I acknowledge and was responsible for the way that I can be sometimes. But then I reminded people of what I'm committed to and who I am for them and in the process kind of leveled up from that.

What you're pointing at is a distinction that I make in conversation. So I think there are two fundamentally different, different types of conversations. One is called automatic and one is intentional.

Yeah.

One is from the past and it's descriptive. It's, you know, judgmental, but it's descriptive and so forth. And the other is commitment based. It's on behalf of a future.

Yeah.

So when you tell people I'm this way, da da da da da da. That's all very descriptive and it's helpful.

Yes.

But without the set, without the additional piece called and I'm committed to, People don't know what to do with it. Yeah, you tell them what you're committed to. Oh, now I know how to listen to you.

Yes, yes.

So it's very important that you do that. I have another story I can tell related to this, if you will.

Please, please, please.

I was working with a performer, a very successful performer out in Hollywood, and his wife, and they called me because he was having a problem with drinking alcohol. And when he drank excessively, he became abusive and mostly verbal. But, you know, his wife had enough so she wouldn't forgive him. And, you know, the relationship was very, very strained. So they brought me in and we're sitting at a restaurant, we're having this conversation and he's like, I don't understand. I told her I'm sorry. You know, what more can I. Can I say? I told her I regret what I did, etc. Etc. And she's still not forgiving me.

Right.

Can you guess why she didn't forgive him?

Well, there's no design for anything for the future. He's maybe even not aware fully of the impact on her.

You said it. Exactly. All she wants to hear is his commitment never to do that again. Absent that, who cares that you're sorry? I'm still going to have to be, you know, worried about where we're going and how things are going to go in the future. So what? People, people are always living into the future. They're living from the past to a degree into the present. But where we're headed is into the future. You want to have value in an organization. I tell people when they're going for an interview or the company. Look, you know what an interview is. It's very simple. They want to hear who is the best candidate for fulfilling the future that company is committed to. That's the person that'll get the job. Not the best looking, not the best. Articulate. The person who appears to be the most consistent with fulfilling the future that they're committed to. That's the person we want to hire. It's all about the future. So in the present, if I am an agent for the future or designing the future, designing the next expression of me designing how I can contribute to others, I got a pretty good shtick going because I'm focused on the right things rather than where I came from and how I got here. All that stuff. It's interesting, but it's really not the stuff that makes a difference.

So we've talked, we've shared a lot of different stories, that kind of thing. Now I think it's useful to start to pull those things together. Let's talk about your transformational process. How is it? I think it can be heard really well. How do we design the future?

You.

How do we transition?

Okay. There's a fundamental principle that makes a huge difference. The understanding of this shifts the platform from which we operate and think. And I'd like to try and do a demonstration with you, if you will. I do this on Zoom with clients. Okay. So the name of the game is why do people do what they do? See, if once you get that the results you produce are a function of the actions you take, you'll go along with that, right? Take action A. You get.

You get some.

So if the results you produce are a function of the actions you take, then knowing what the source of action is is very important. So I'm going to suggest to you that 99.9% of the people do not have a clue about why they do what they do 100% of the time. So I would like to do a demonstration with you to demonstrate why people do what they do 100% of the time. Okay.

Yeah.

Okay. I have a marker in my hand. I'm going to pretend to give it to you. I'm going to pretend we're in the same room. So I'd like you to pretend to take it. Okay. Thank you. You got it? Okay. Can I have it back, please?

Sure.

Give it back to me. All right. Thank you. So why did you take the marker?

Why did I take. Because you asked me to.

Very good. Thank you. That's what 99.9% of the people say. Live poisonous rattlesnake. Would you take it, please?

No. Thank you.

Look, the point is, and I know this is, you know, we've got two seconds here, and this is a much longer conversation. You and I, our actions are 100% correlated to our internal conversation. We do what we tell ourselves to do, moment by moment by moment. Change lanes when we're driving. Oh, I can't. There's a car coming. Pick up the phone, call somebody. I can't. Or. Yes, let's do it. Time for lunch. Okay, anybody want to go see moment by moment by moment, you and I are telling ourselves what to do. And it's all part of this internal dialogue. Now, sweeten the pie. Not only are your actions perfectly correlated to that internal dialogue, so is your mood, your attitude, your feelings, your emotions, your point of view, your beliefs. In other words, moment by moment, your personal reality is a function of whatever you're listening to internally, your internal conversation. And most people pay no attention to it. Like it is something that you have the power to alter, to choose to ignore. Like you said earlier, to create anew alongside that may lead you differently. So the transitions process is about revealing that and then drilling down deeper into the where did these conversations come from? What's the genesis of these conversations? What's the source of them? Do I have a choice about which conversations I'm going to empower and listen to, et cetera, et cetera? And that's the work that we do. And when people start to operate, then we obviously give people some assignments to deepen the distinction so they can own it. And during the whole process, we give people an opportunity to become masters of the internal dialogue so they have a say about what it is saying to them and they can actually get out in front of it and program that conversation such that it's going to give them much, much better choices than what it historically has.

Well, so you said it a little bit indirectly, but let me make it more explicit for the listeners. You say our actions, so we have certain performance outcomes. They're correlated to the actions we take. And the actions that we take are correlated to the way that we see the world. But the way that we see the world is shaped by this internal convers. You also said you can create a new conversation, but you said before that let's really understand this internal conversation, expose it, see it, dig into it a little bit so that we're really aware of it. Because if you just try to throw a new conversation on top of that other one going on in the background, you're not aware of any of them, then it'll just take over again because it's automatic.

Exactly. And that is the danger of positive thinking. That's what you just described as positive thinking, which ultimately doesn't work.

Cowbell for that one.

Right. We're on the same page, Mr. Bill.

Or icing on a mud pie. Like we're throwing new things on that and just going to grin and fake it till you make it kind of thing. But like if you dig into like oh, there's all this stuff that I do and you start to notice it, then it's like revealed to you, become aware of it. It's hard for it to be in the background anymore. Now you can add something in that's different, invented, created, that actually inspires you. Right.

And just one comment on that and we don't need to do a deep dive and get to the source of why we're having that conversation. The very fact that we're just having that negative conversation is enough a recognition of it, not go try and figure it out. Did it come from daddy or Mommy? None of that. That's not important.

The fact that there create great long careers for a lot of psychologists.

Absolutely dig into that forever. Amen.

Yeah, I love that. Well, listen, if you want to know more about if you've been following along in our conversation today and you love what you hear with David Zellman, you want to go find out more about him. Transitionsinstitute.com is his website. It's there in the crawl. It'll be in the show notes as well. Transitionsinstitute.com I said it too fast. Yeah, sure. And then there's the phone number there. We'll put both those things in and you can get in touch with David and learn about his work and work with him or learn more, read his books and like that. I think it's really awesome. I love it. Love this rich conversation. Totally had me engaged through our whole through our nearly an hour here. So thank you so much for joining us on the show today.

What a pleasure. Pleasure.

Yeah. And so some reminders again if you want to know our old shows, that kind of thing like subscribe, get notifications to get them Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn. We put our shows out in video and audio everywhere. Probably the biggest source of our audiences on Apple podcasts. But Stitcher, Spotify, etc are all places that you can go learn and get all of those back shows we've done now hundreds of them and you'll find them all there. Also scalingcoach.com is our website and if you want to drop us an email, ask a question, follow up, more information, etc. If we can help you find a coach, where you live or with the kind of thing you're dealing with. Info scalingcoach.com is a good email for us, so scalingcoach.com info scalingcoach.com is the email. Big shout out to Vern Harnish, author and creator of the Rockefeller Habits and the Scaling up book that we use every day and got us started. And to Wanda Mitchell in the background producing our show. To the folks at Podfly Productions who get our show out every week. Thanks again everyone for listening for watching. Keep Scaling Up. We'll talk to you again next time. Foreign Are you ready to turn your goals into daily wins? You should check out our Scoreboard software powered by Align. It's the official software for scaling up. With Scoreboard you'll get an AI driven coach for priorities and KPIs and it'll help keep your team focused on what matters most. With Align, you can track your goals in real time and you'll even see results on the go. With their mobile app, you can rest easy knowing that Align has world class onboarding and support to set your team up for success. This is really more than just software, it's what I actually use to manage growth in our Scaling up client teams. Unlock clarity and results with Scoreboard by aligned. To try it now, go to aligntoday.com Bill G One more time. Aligntoday.com Bill G that's aligntoday.com Bill G Check it out and try it now.