15: Bully!: Presidential Communications Throughout the Ages

Last Tuesday, President Trump delivered his State of the Union address, and next week, the nation celebrates Presidents Day. So, naturally, this week, the Confident Communications podcast honors our nation's presidents by highlighting the communication skills they possess to become the leaders they are today. Foreign. Welcome back to the Confident Communications Podcast. I am your host, Molly McPherson. This week, we are discussing presidential leaders and the disclaimer, this is a nonpartisan point of view of the presidential leaders. This episode isn't intended to be politically charged at all. It's merely a conversation about communications and how it's changed over time and how our presidents have used their communication skills throughout the years. I could spend an entire episode discussing our current president and how he communicates. And my guess is that it's much more public because of his activity on social media, Twitter in particular. But it does lead us all to wonder, seeing President Trump and how he uses particularly social media, how would our past presidents, and I mean way in the past, have communicated had they had access to television, websites and social media? Now, in the introduction, I mentioned that President Trump delivered his State of the Union. And it was both very surprisingly bipartisan, but also not surprisingly, somewhat divisive. Over 46 million people turned in to watch President Trump deliver the State of the Union. Now, compare that to Thomas Jefferson in 1801. He gave a written State of the Union address stating that holding a speech was inconvenient and that he wanted Congress to take the time to contemplate the message rather than make it into an event. Quite the difference. Different times at a different approach to communicating with the public. Now, dozens of female lawmakers, and I'm sure many of you saw this on television or at least saw the photographs. They coordinated their attire. They all wore white as a sign of solidarity amongst women. And white is associated with the suffragette movement. That's the reason why they chose that color. But Trump's team knew all of this was coming, at least I assume so. And he was prepared for it. And I noted, and that's just my opinion. Opinion. I didn't see it necessarily picked up anywhere, but I noticed that he used a particular tactic, and I thought it was quite the bully move.

All Americans can be proud that we have more women in the workforce than ever before. Don't sit yet. You're going to like this. And exactly one century after Congress passed the constitutional amendment giving women the right to vote, we also have more women serving in Congress than at any time before.

Listen to all of those cheers. And if you watched, President Trump clearly loved every second of it. Despite the fact that many women and men, I think President Trump has a rather bumpy relationship with the opposite sex. But Trump loves the adulation of women. And even though all these women clad in white in a sign of solidarity for themselves as elected female officials, they were cheering for themselves. They were supporting themselves. I couldn't help but think that President Trump loved every second of it, because in his mind, they were cheering for him, and it really was a masterstroke. And that, my friends, is how I look at president communications, and that is presidential communications in a nutshell. So this week, we're going to focus on a few presidents and some of the tactics that they use. In other words, they took their strengths and they bolstered that strength to help them become a leader, or at least project themselves as a leader. Now, not everyone on the list did make it to the presidency, and I start with the first man, and he's the only one that didn't. But in my mind, and in many people's mind, he likely would have become president had he not been a bastard, orphan, son of a whore, and a Scotsman dropped in the middle of a forgotten spot. Anyway, I will stop right there, but for any person, or probably a parent, that has listened to the Hamilton soundtrack ad nauseam in their car, I'm speaking. Speaking, of course, of Alexander Hamilton. Now, Alexander Hamilton sidebar. I use, ahem, a number of times in my talks because during the peak of his popularity, there was one time, in fact, that I stood up in front of the room and showed a photograph of a young Alexander Hamilton. And no one knew who he was. And I had asked, does anyone know who this is? And then on the stage, and I don't know why I did this, I sang his name is Alexander Hamilton. And then I paused for dramatic effect like I was Lin Manuel Miranda. And then I looked again. His name is Alexander Hamilton. And then there was three women in the. In the crowd that just started laughing because they, of course, got it. Anyway, back to, ahem, Alexander Hamilton. The reason why he made this list is because Alexander Hamilton possessed the skill and was a very strong, hard skill that a lot of leaders need, and many of them do have it. And leaders in general are the ones that know how to write. Alexander Hamilton was a prolific writer. So while his tools were a quill pen and an ink press, in today's vernacular, we would call him a content creator, he also was a powerful leader because he knew how to create that groundswell. And he was our nation's first influencer. He's the One that inspired a revolutionary buzz around his patriotic ideas. Well, and among others. But also he knew how to get things done. He was George Washington's top aide, and he was able to move a ragtag troop of patriots against this entrenched power of the British Empire and win. So today we might call this mobilizing our followers. So that's why I put him on the list, because he truly was a master communicator. And a number of presidents throughout history became leaders because they were able to take a skill that they had, either a hard skill or a soft skill, and turn it into a very positive attribute that showed leadership power. So that's where this timeline starts. Let's look at the other leaders in our country, the rhetoric and the channels that they used and how it helped shape a nation, and the communication lessons that we can all learn from them. Now, I will start off by saying there was a little bit of false advertising on the subject matter of this episode. I wanted to speak about presidential communication skills in honor of President's Day. So naturally, I would want to focus on the two presidents who are the focus of our President's Day, George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. However, I am not going to spend that much time on them because we don't have a lot of evidence of their communication skills. Now, I do know there is a lot of evidence of George Washington's writings. My first gig in Washington, D.C. was in the press and events office at Mount Vernon, Georgia, Washington's Mount Vernon. So I am steeped in knowledge on our first president. However, I wanted to use the skills that really highlighted how they used the communication styles to become a leader. Whereas George Washington was just a good leader and then he was able to build from that. Now, it should be noted that Abraham Lincoln, of course, he is. Well, he's famous for many, many reasons, but notably, it was his address at Gettysburg that many people remember him for, of course, the four Score and seven years ago speech. And it was a good one because it was a short one. And Abraham Lincoln was. Was known to be a very, very good speaker. And he was quoted as saying, whatever you are, be a good one. And that was something that he could do well. He could communicate with the people. And Abraham Lincoln was communicating during a very, very difficult time because, of course, it was during the Civil War and right after. And we didn't have much of Abraham Lincoln after that because, of course, he was assassinated in April at the Ford's Theater. But I'm going to move forward to a recording of a president that we do have. And it's one of the first recordings, and I played it after last week's episode. I'm going to play it for you again here.

The great fundamental issue now before our people can be speaking recently, it is are the American people fit to govern themselves, to rule themselves, to control themselves? I believe they are. My ability, I believe, in the right of the people to rule. I believe that the majority of the plain people of the United States will, day in and day out, make fewer mistakes in governing themselves than any smaller class or body of men, no matter what their training will make in trying to govern.

Now, that, of course, is Teddy Roosevelt, one of my favorite presidents. And the reason why he's one of my favorite presidents is because I love that he kind of came up with this term bully, you know, the bully pulpit. And Teddy Roosevelt was that president that knew how to court the press. So when I use the term bully in the press terminology of it, I tend to tie in Teddy because he knew how to court them well to promote his ideas and to get the press on his side, quite different than what we're dealing with today. Now, how did Teddy Roosevelt bully, quote, unquote, the press? When he spoke and when he communicated and you heard in that recording, he was very clear and he was very concise, almost clipped when he spoke. He was also very quotable. When Teddy Roosevelt spoke, he spoke in quotes. He was also camera ready. There was a reason why, if you envision Teddy Roosevelt in your mind, what is he doing? He's usually doing something. His fist is in the air. He's on an elephant or he's on a safari or he's sitting in the middle of a press scrum. He's always doing and moving. Camera ready is important. He's also very, very authentic. He is real. None of us met Teddy Roosevelt, but if you were to even read a little bit about Teddy Roosevelt, you know exactly what kind of president he was. If you walked into a room, you know, he probably bound out and he'd walk on over, he'd slap you on the back and shake your hand. He was a very, very authentic president. And part of the reason for his popularity is because he did court the press. He knew how to spin and he always had a hook. He was the active president, the nature president. He is the one that wanted to promote natural forestry. He's the one that loved to be outdoors and take it all in. So when you think of yourself as a leader, think about what's your hook. How can you be a bully in a Good sense. Next up, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. He's known as FDR. He was our 32nd president of the United States.

Never before, since Jamestown and Plymouth Rock, has our American civilization been in such danger.

Now, FDR was known as the Great Communicator. And part of the reason why he was known is because he was able to master the medium of his time, and that was radio. Radio was still in its early stages when FDR first ran for President. Part of the reason for his success is because on the radio he sounded strong. But in real life, he was quite the opposite. As we all know, he suffered from polio and spent most of his time in a wheelchair. When we did see him publicly, he was standing up. We never saw his crutches. People would help him up or we would see him sitting vibrantly and vigorously, like in a car and shaking hands. So his optics, his one on one optics that we could see firsthand and in photographs, he looked very healthy. And what bolstered that opinion was how he sounded. And on the radio at the time, he was a very strong leader. He sounded healthy, he sounded powerful. His disability was invisible. When he spoke to the families, he chose the name Fireside Chats. And that is different than a letter. It's different than email. Radio brought news alive. President Roosevelt was brought into the homes of families that were sitting around listening to the radio. Great leadership and great language in the use of it go hand in hand. And that was one of the primary reasons that FDR was able to be perceived as such a strong leader. That fireside moment, it wasn't a Fireside address. It wasn't the state of the fireside, it was a chat. He was simply speaking to the people. It was the power of that moment. Using radio and using radio. During the Depression, when Americans were scared, they were worried. But as he told them, you have nothing to fear but fear itself. And he meant it. And what helped was the radio. So FDR's rise in popularity mirrored the rise of radio. Now, who remembers watching newsreels? I would assume no one. If I were to ask, have you watched them in real time? Many of us, you know, simply weren't alive. But what a powerful medium in the time of President Truman. Let's take a Listen.

As Mrs. Truman and I leave the White House, we have no regret. We feel we have done our best in the public service. I hope and believe we have contributed to the welfare of the nation and to the peace of the world. And now the time has come for me to say good night and God Bless you.

Truman was plain spoken. He was a straight talker. The language of the common man. There was another presidential candidate who used that same slogan, straight talk. The late Senator John McCain. So President Truman was the perfect president for the time of the newsreel. This evolutionary step of using the newsreel allowed President Truman and others of the time to leverage their power of attention. In other words, they had everyone's attention because they were sitting there eating their popcorn, waiting to watch a movie. They had no choice to but to listen. Now, newsreels morphed into arguably the most powerful medium for projecting power and leadership. And this next candidate leveraged it right into the White House.

I think we can do a better job. I think we're going to have to do a better job if we are going to meet the responsibilities which time and events have placed upon us. We cannot turn the job over to anyone else. If the United States fails, then the whole cause of freedom fails.

Now, we all know that President John F. Kennedy knew how to connect with his audience, just like FDR was able to connect with his audience through a fireside chat. President Kennedy was the first candidate, in this case to understand the medium of television. Now, his father, Joe Kennedy, was known to work in the movies, and he also was known to work some actresses in the movies as well, as a side note. But President Kennedy, through his father, knew that there was a lot of power there because a lot of people were starting to watch television. And at the time of his campaigns against and debates against Richard Nixon, it was still black and white television for the most part. So if you were to ever watch the clips from these debates, you'll notice that they were in black and white. And JFK was the term we call telegenic, okay? Those types of images that kind of pop out of the screen. And he was a great speaker. He rehearsed his rhyme rhetoric. That Boston accent was meant to be there because it made him different, it made him young, it made him youthful. Now, compared to Nixon at the time, Kennedy knew how to tell a story. There was always a beginning and an end to when he spoke. He always had the right use of body language, the right use of gestures. He was the first candidate to really use the hand. And when I mean the hand, it was used as a gesture to modulate and articulate his message or think back. If you can envision the newsreel of President Kennedy and how he brings out his hand, he kind of brings out that thumb. It may look familiar because other presidents used it, most notably his fanboy President Bill Clinton, he loved emulating President Kennedy. And the two had very, very similar gestures at the time of their debate. Now, many of us of a certain age know this, that it was said that candidate Richard Nixon had actually won the debate. Many people said that when they listened to the debate on the radio, they thought that Nixon won because based on what his message was. But jfk, you couldn't compete against that because on television, he just glowed and he knew how to reel people in. And he looked polished, his hair looked good. He was tan at the time. He was bulked up, though they say it was because of cortisone shots, because he suffered from Adderall disease and he also had a back problem. But it made him look tan and fit, made him look like a movie star. Richard Nixon, on the other hand, it was said that he was suffering from the flu or a very bad cold, and his face looked rather pinched. It almost looked like he was sucking lemons. He was not comfortable on televisions. The light made him sweat, whereas JFK looked like he stepped off of a centerfold. Kennedy is considered to be one of the best presidential communicators because, again, he mastered the medium of the time, television. That brought people, not just his voice, but the vision of President Kennedy and his leadership in person into the home. Now I'm going to move Forward into the 70s. And for anyone that was alive in the 70s, or they have familiarity with what the 70s were like, they kind of feel a little bit like today. It was a very challenging decade for this country. There were a lot of problems in the country. I'm going to point out a thread with our presidents of the time and what they were dealing with. I'm going to try and connect some dots here. Now, in 1973, we have Richard Nixon, and what Richard Nixon was dealing with were these Nixon tapes. The COVID of NewsWeek magazine in 1973 was just that. It was a set, a real, real tape on top of the White House. Because, as we all know, that Richard Nixon liked to tape all of his conversations in the Oval Office. And these tapes came back to bite them. But during the 70s, if you look at the presidents that we had and the times that we had, it's as if the problems magnified their inabilities as presidential leaders. It's their inability to capture the American public's attention and trust because they couldn't do it in language or in optics. The imagination of the American people came now from video that they saw on television. It came from the magazines, it came from the newspaper they were getting their news someplace else because they weren't trusting the leadership. Now, if we move from Richard Nixon, then we're going to go to President Ford. Now, what is President Ford known for? Not much in terms of his presidency, though if you do pick it apart, he was known to have a decent presidency. But let's think about the optics of President Ford.

I have called upon the networks tonight to make two pressing issues clear to the American public. Number one, the possible default of New York City. And number one, my stand on the Ronald Reagan announcement.

When people think about Gerald Ford, they think about Chevy Chase. And Chevy Chase didn't even try to look like Gerald Ford. He could just capture the bumbling president who was falling through everything. Gerald Ford had an optics problem. It wasn't just one stumble, it was multiple stumbles. And of course, we had television then. So now those video clips, they made an indelible mark that Gerald Ford was just known to be the bumbling president. So that didn't help the time that we were in. Now, moving forward, if we continue this theme of optics, we move to Jimmy Carter. So now we're 1977 and Jimmy Carter gave a chat, his own version of a fireside chat. And if you were to watch President Carter and I will include the clip in the show notes, he was talking about energy conservation and why we all needed to save energy. We should turn down the heat, turn up the fireplace, put on a sweater, and sure enough, President Carter is sitting in a tie in the White House wearing a sweater. Now, there could be a thought that this is a homespun president. This is our president from Georgia, from the South, a peanut farmer, hard worker. He's again homespun. That's worked in the past. Why wouldn't it work now? But we're in the 70s right now. It's a very volatile time. The American people needed to trust their leadership. Having a president come on the air in a cardigan Sweater looking like Mr. Rogers didn't project leadership. So throughout the 70s, all of the issues that we had in the 70s, the end of the Vietnam War, the Iran hostage crisis, the oil and gas crisis, Three Mile island, part of that was because our leaders of the time couldn't capture the attention of the American public. They couldn't capture their trust. But this next president did. Why? Because of communication.

Today marks my first State of the Union address to you. A constitutional duty as old as our republic itself. President Washington began this tradition in 1790 after reminding the nation that the destiny of self government and the preservation of the sacred fire of liberty is finally staked on the experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people. For our friends in the press who place a high premium on accuracy, let me say, I did not actually hear George Washington say that.

President Reagan, the former actor, he leveraged humor to capture the power of the moment. Again, he knew what the public wanted. They wanted leaders. They wanted a top leader who knew how to speak directly to them. Now, humor is a vital skill, and to capture the imagination of people. He ranked high above many of his presidential colleagues simply because he was also known as a great communicator. Great leadership and great communication skills go hand in hand. And if you were to listen about some of the issues that came up in President Reagan's time, specifically the Iran Contra affair, you would really question his leadership style. And you would also question his leadership in the times late in his presidency, when he was struggling with dementia, allegedly, and didn't quite have a grasp of that. But a lot of that is forgotten because he was known as the great communicator. Now, we were moving into the 80s where being able to communicate well worked. In 1992, this is the first time where we saw branding being deployed in a campaign. That is a clip, clip of candidate Bill Clinton on the Arsenio Hall Show. So this was the time of pop culture Arsenio Hall. For those of you the younger that don't know, I guess he's just kind of known as Eddie Murphy's bff. But he had a show at the time on Fox, and it was a big talk show, and it was aimed at the young urban audience. And Clinton knew his audience. He knew what he was doing. He wanted to aim his message to minorities and young voters. Again, he captured the power of the moment. He was playing to an audience that helped him defeat George Herbert Walker Bush. Because if you remember, Bush's problem is he couldn't really connect with people. He was another one that struggled with the camera and his voice and the cadence of his voice and not eating broccoli. Those are the things that we remember about him. But here comes young Bill Clinton, modeled like his idol, jfk, and he was using a medium again, and this time it's television. And this was also the start of cable news. And a lot of the people that were watching television at the time, they were young, and they were watching cable news and cable television. And MTV was another place where President Clinton showed up to answer the question, boxers or briefs? Now, the next president on our list was never high on the list of great presidents. Of all the surveys that I looked at, he was always at the end. And I'm speaking about Bush 43. And like his father, Bush 41, he's not known for being very articulate. But President Bush was able to leverage a moment to show how powerful he was.

I can hear you. I can hear you. The rest of the world hears you.

And the people.

And the people who knock these buildings down will hear all of us soon.

That was the moment that changed President George Bush's presidency. When he stood on the pile of rubble in the days after 9, 11, sitting there surrounded by all the first responders, the firefighters, the people trying to still rescue people. At that time, he was using the medium of television, the medium of cable news television, but also in this case, he was using old school. He was using a megaphone. That prop said everything that needed to be said about George Bush at that time. I am speaking to the people. I can hear you, the nation can hear you. And soon they will hear all of us. That was his moment because it was his authentic moment. You never saw anyone come up and slip him a note. You didn't see Andy Card, his chief of staff, whisper in his ear and tell him what to say. This was the authentic president. It trumped any practice or polish. There was no speechwriter or staffer that guided him to that messaging. He simply played off of the public and what he felt. But sometimes too much authenticity can be a double edged sword. Now, love him or hate him, President Trump has captured this moment on the evolution of the media timeline because he knows how to connect through social media. He embraces the power of the moment. Now, I skipped over President Obama for a moment because I wanted to tie in that authenticity piece that George Bush used so well. Because President Trump, love him or hate him, he knows how to use the medium of his time, which is social media. President Obama was president during the time of social media and he certainly used it to help him become elected to president. But he wasn't the social media president. President Trump certainly is. He knows how to use social media and Twitter in a way to keep his detractors distracted by what he's saying, but also to bolster his base. His base loves to hear directly from the president. This idea of direct to source works. People like hearing directly from the leader. Now, if you think about press conferences, now we do see Sarah Sanders Huckabee, you know a lot. She's at the podium speaking to the press briefing. But nowhere in history have we ever had probably a president overshadow their Press secretary more than President Trump. He truly is a next gen communicator. Now, what are some of the critical communication skills that you need for leaders in the 21st century? Now, I did mention President Obama. Now, President Obama, what he was very, very good at was speaking to the people. He could connect with people. He had excellent branding. He also had excellent timing in social media because he knew how to use Facebook and some of the holes that they had at the time where they were able to connect friends of friends of friends. And so they were able to build the moment of President Obama and talk about that change message. But President Obama was very, very good with gestures. He knew how to use his hands, he knew how to pace, he knew how to speak in a cadence. And using timing that work almost as if he were an actor, people could take his message in quite well. Now compare that to President Trump. He also uses gestures, but they don't necessarily help him a lot because they're very aggressive gestures. He loves to chop his hands. He loves to pinpoint specific things he says by holding up his thumb with his first finger. He always tries to make a point that way. Now, that can be good. But sometimes we see these photos of President Trump using his hands almost too much. Now, I have to admit, I kind of do the same thing, and I'm always mindful of how often I use my hands. But sometimes the hands do work stronger than the message itself. Traditional media versus new media. So for leaders, look back to the leaders in our history for how they were able to capture the movement or the momentum of the time is they use the medium that best suited them. And depending on what medium is good for you, you should use it, and you should use it over and over and over again. If you feel very comfortable on camera, then if you work for an organization that has video, that has a Facebook page, has social media, then you should be a leader that should be on video. If you're not great on video, then it doesn't have to be live video. It could be scripted, it could be edited video, anything to get your message out there. Maybe you're socially savvy, Maybe you're good using LinkedIn, maybe you're good at using Twitter. Then use it. Find a way to directly speak to your audience. Now, to tweet or not to tweet. Twitter is very powerful for leaders because it's a way, as I mentioned with President Trump, it's a way to directly speak to the people. It is a very, very popular social media network right now, and it's a big key in reputation branding. It also gets a lot of people into trouble. So be very careful if you're going to use it. But if you're going to be social, you want to bring in as many people as you can because that's the beauty of social media. You can tag other people, you can tag organizations. It's so easy to spread your word and to kind of go have your message go viral if you do it the right way. Now, of course, there have been politicians that were almost too social because they didn't quite know what they were doing. Anthony Weiner comes to mind. His campaign was derailed because he was tweeting and he thought he was dming, which is direct messaging with a woman that was not his wife at the time. And that got him into trouble. But unbelievably he was able to get out of it and even almost get elected again. But then he couldn't, he couldn't put the phone down. Shall we say when you're speaking like a leader, what the presidents would use were power speak terms. The power speak terms. I will, I can, I will change. They love details. They like to be direct when they speak. They talk about all the things they're going to do. Now it's no coincidence that all of the people on the list that I've mentioned so far were men because men traditionally are better about speaking about themselves in a one up way. They're more direct. They're more direct about talking about the things that they do. They may embellish more, they may talk more about the things that they do, but it helps people to perceive them as a leader. Women, on the other hand, tend to get bogged down in this idea of weak speech. They put themselves down a step. Instead of using the word I, they say the word we. They use a lot of fillers, like perhaps, maybe, I'm not sure. Let me get back to you. They like to say face. They use the word sorry a lot. Try and stop that as much as you can, ladies, and try and speak like a leader. Use the word I as often as you can. Now these are the last three critical communication skills. When you speak as a leader, be specific. Know exactly what your message is. The most powerful presidents we have, the most memorable ones are the ones that had a message. We have nothing to fear but fear itself. Also listen more than you speak. Listen to what people are saying. In the case of many of these presidents, they listened to what the public said, what the public wanted, what they wanted. If it worked, then they kept talking about it. And also notice your nonverbals, notice your optics. What are you doing with your hands? What are you doing with your face? What props are you using? If you're going to be truly authentic, you want to be your authentic self. Just make sure that you're photographed being your authentic good self. Truth, accuracy, authenticity, storytelling. Those are the fundamentals of communication that never, ever change. The only thing that changes is the technology and the way that we communicate and how it's received. But we must keep up with these changes to keep the foundations of the past there. That's how to be a great communicator. That's how to be a great next gen communicator. We know that as technology changes, it will open up new doors for how the President connects with the American public. What will he or she do? I think it's inevitable that the President will embrace new ways to communicate as a means for staying ahead of the opposition. But how effective will it be? Only time will tell. If you want to be on the cutting edge and make sure that you're communicating effectively without ruffling feathers, you'll want to check out my program, Communicate With Power in Less Than an Hour just for you. It's an actionable five module program that will teach you how to communicate more effectively, both online and offline, so you will feel more seen, heard and relevant. So grab the link in the show notes or head to my website@mollymcpherson.com for more information. That's it for this edition of the Confident Communications Podcast. I want to take a brief moment, however, to update you on last week's episode about race with Jeffrey Blunt. Simply put, the response to that episode has been incredible. So many people have reached out to me on social media, email, phone calls to tell me how impactful Jeffrey's words were to them. And just yesterday I had a member of college faculty tell me that she had shared it with her colleagues to share with their students. Now, as the person on the other side of the microphone, I can say I felt the same. The objective for me for that episode was to speak about the issue from a linear point of view. Just talking about race from the perspective of a person of color. And the driver for me really was the linguistics. I wanted to learn how to best communicate about race without sounding like a racist. Specifically, you know, how do you speak about a person of color? Are they African American or black? A lot of people asked me and thanked me for asking that question. Of course they were all white and they wanted to know how do you speak about it? Because no one wants to be perceived as a racist. But the story changed so many people because it wasn't about what to say, but it's about why you say it. This week, I was in Des Moines, Iowa, and I spoke at a conference for a business conference. It was a public relations talk. And as I was leaving the hotel, I was able to grab a shuttle, which was great at the hotel because I was just. I was really tired. And usually when I sit down with the shuttle driver, I'll always chit chat, find out information. In this case, I was really tired and I just said hello, and then wanted to kind of zone out. But the shuttle driver, you know, wanted to ask questions, wanted to know why I was there. So I was happy to share with him everything that I was doing. And then he started talking about his life and the job that he had before he retired, and how he had a big job at a local manufacturer. And he talked about where his dad worked and where his dad went to school. Now, this shuttle driver was, you know, in his early 70s, I would guess, and I thought, why is he telling me all. Normally, I would want to know all these things, but at that moment, I really didn't want to talk about that because then I would talk about my family. And I was just too tired to do that. And I wondered, why is he telling me these stories? And he wasn't telling me in a braggadocio way to boast. He just felt that he needed me to know this. And when he was telling me all this information, it just seemed so measured and so calculated. But then there it was in my fog of exhaustion. Instead of looking at him as a shuttle driver who had a rather impressive resume, I suddenly had the energy to participate in the conversation because this driver was a person of color telling me a story. And I thought back to the comment that Jeffrey made when he told me about people of color walking into a room or any situation where there's a group of white people or one white person. White people walk into the room and they don't think twice about how they'll be received in that room. But someone of color, they are walking in carrying, quote, unquote, what Jeffrey said, the weight of their skin, because they have no idea what they're walking into. They could walk into a room full of people who see you from the inside, or they can walk into a room full of people who are judging you for how you look on the outside. And I'd remarked to Jeffrey that it sounded also exhausting. To always be on guard. And I thought, this shuttle driver is doing the same thing to me. I am a woman, a white woman sitting alone in a shuttle. I suddenly felt that this shuttle driver has spent a lot of his time trying to calm white people down, to let them know that he was okay. Maybe not. But I thought, I'm going to take on Jeffrey's thought of carrying the weight of your skin. I was going to try it on for size. So what I did is started a conversation with the shuttle driver whose name was Freddie, because I asked and Freddie was so nice. And as soon as we pivoted off the discussion about his resume, I asked him about his family and he started lighting up talking about his family. He had two sons, loved talking about his sons. And, and then he showed me photos of his sons. Now I will say we were driving in a sleet storm and made me a little nervous that he was driving with his phone. But Freddie was a good driver. He knew what he was doing. The first set of photos he showed me his son with the two granddaughters. And the granddaughters were absolutely gorgeous. But they looked Asian to me, maybe so they were part black, part Asian. I wasn't quite sure. And I asked, I said, now tell me what race. Is your son married to your daughter in law? Oh, she's Filipino. And I said, we talked about the granddaughters and how beautiful these granddaughters were. Then he showed me a photo of his other son's kids. Three kids, and they were all white. Now that's unusual. Not because there's three white kids and adopted by someone who is black, but that we have an interracial family. And again, I thought Freddie has probably spent the last 10 years, the oldest grandchild was 10, having to explain why his black son had such white looking kids. And then I thought I was going to address the elephant in the room, or in this case, the shuttle. Now, a week ago, prior to talking to Jeffrey, I would have said, oh my gosh, your kids are so cute, they're so gorgeous. I would have just talked about how cute they were. But instead I said it, hey, Freddie, your grandkids, they don't look black. Is your daughter in law white? Now again, not in a million years would I have ever said that. But Jeffrey was in my head. I wanted to take that race issue head on. I did not want to be colorblind. I did not want to completely ignore the fact that I knew that his son was black and his son had white kids. So Freddie, as soon as I said that it was as if I literally, figuratively could see the weight of his skin come off of his shoulders. His face was suddenly at ease and he relaxed. He noticed my deliberate use of the word black and not African American, which again, I never would have done. And that I went head on and asked the most obvious question, the elephant in the room. He couldn't wait to tell me about his son and his daughter in law who happened to be black and how they adopted these three children, not three white kids and, but three kids that were in trouble. And he talked about how one of the granddaughters had a problem with white men. She could never be in a room with white men. Now I think Freddie probably has struggled with that story for as long as his granddaughter has been around. But he knew because I brought it into the shuttle that we could talk about it. And then I asked him, why do you think, do you think that there was a white male in her past that perhaps abused her? Who knows? But this conversation went on and on. And the pride in his voice of talking about his sons, his daughter in laws, his grandkids was there because we were talking about race. It was gone. We were talking about his grandkids who happened to be three different races. And the best thing about it, it didn't matter. Jeffrey was right. He taught me such a valuable lesson. Do not be colorblind. Address it head on, because it's not about you saying the right thing so you don't offend someone. What's more important is to show your humanity, to let a person of color know that you're not going to judge them for their color of your skin. You're going to judge them based on just who they are. And if they're Freddie, a shuttle driver, who's the nicest guy in the world, who's going to get me safely to the airport, unless he's driving while texting, then I'm going to judge him on that and on that alone and also on being a great father and grandfather. So I cannot thank Jeffrey enough for telling me that lesson and showing me that lesson that you don't want to be colorblind. You want to put yourself in the shoes of someone of color and what they are experiencing on a day to day basis. And on this week when we are discussing blackface in the news and not just discussing it, we're seeing it over and over again. I am white and I look at pictures of blackface and it shocks me. My reflexive move is to be appalled by it and to be almost scared by it. But then I think, what if I had children that were black? How would they feel looking at these photos of blackface? That's how you have to approach any of these issues that come up. It's not about necessarily what someone did in the past. It's about how it affects someone now. And how it affects a person who is white is going to be much different than how it affects someone who is black. So if there's anything that you've learned from, from that episode with Jeffrey, because I know I did, I am always going to look at it from that side. The person of color. I'm not just going to look at an Asian American. I'm going to look at a Chinese American, a Japanese American, a Korean American. People who are proud of their race and want you to speak about it. Talk about the elephant in the room, talk about the race in the room. That's the human thing to do. Thanks for listening and I look forward to speaking with you next weekend.