Creating a Valued Environment: The Art of Effective Communication and Connection

Have you ever met an individual and you just knew right off the bat, I mean, when you first talked to them that they were different and they were special? In 1996, I was speaking at an event. Someone walked up to me and said, hey, do you offer training? And I said, no, not really. A few minutes later, the second person walked up and said, hey, do you offer any additional training? I said, no, not really. A few minutes later, a third person walked up and said, do you ever thought about offering any additional training? I said, yeah, it's going to be in August this year. Well, one of the individuals that asked me about that is our guest today. You are in for a real treat. Today we're going universal, we're going worldwide, we're going throughout our continent. And I'm going to be speaking with one of my Canadian friends and one of our human behavior consultants and master trainers, Gordon McFarland.

Welcome to Becoming Wiser with Dr. Robert A. Rome, author and world renowned public speaker as he shares stories and involving his experiences and lessons learned in a good spirited, positive and fun way. Here's Dr. Robert A. Rome.

So today we have as one of our guests on our podcast that we call Becoming Wiser, my dear friend, Gordon McFarland. Gordon is a master trainer. He was actually one of the very first ones who ever went through our training and and learned how to repeat and duplicate the model of human behavior. Gordon, welcome. We're so glad that you're on the call today.

Tremendous to be here, doctor. Thank you so much for asking me.

You're so welcome. Well, I just want to jump right in because this podcast is about Becoming wiser. And the first thing I want to notice is the fact that you have become wiser by using this information, especially in the area of communication. Talk to us about communication a little bit. I know that communication and connecting is your specialty. Tell us how you got interested in that area.

That's a great question, A broad question as well, covers a myriad of subject matter. I love the subject of communicating to connect. A number of years ago I started in coaching in sports and ice hockey here in Canada, of course, and I considered myself to be a good communicator. I was in the industry in sales, was a million dollar roundt sales professional award winner in four different industries. So I'd won awards in sales, so I knew I was a good communicator. And what struck me as interesting is that when I started coaching hockey, the ability to communicate didn't necessarily work as well. So I needed to learn more about my Athletes and communicate a little bit differently than I did in the business world. And so I started to do some training and I did some Dale Carnegie training, and that was really, really helpful as I, I read the book how to Win Friends and Influence People. And that started my quest to really understand this whole connection principle, how to communicate. Not just communicate, but to communicate, to connect with different people. Because I found that not everybody was like me. I'm kind of an upbeat, excited, kind of a high energy guy. And I didn't find many people were like me. So I, I had to tone it down a little bit in some cases to meet with people. But as I did my research and did my reading of many different books, I got involved in network marketing. And we were part of a book of. And we got all these great books on how to communicate, how to be a leader. And so it was just, you know, month after month, year after year, as I started on my quest to become a better communicator and better connector, that it became a just a real obsession for me to be a master communicator. And I went to this event as part of the network marketing field in 1996 in Atlanta, Georgia, and I heard you on the stage about personalities. Now, I been involved in personality somewhat. I did Myers Briggs and jumped on board with that. I just found it really hard to remember and understand. I did colors, and I did another disc program with Inscape Publishing through a church. But when you came on stage and you explained the disc model, the way you explained it, it was like illumination. It was like, oh my gosh, I need to talk to this man. And so after you broke free, he said, you're going to be down the concourse and come down and meet us. And you had a table set up and. And I went down there. I was amazed at all the cool stu you had. It was colorful, it was bright, it was informational. And, and one things I, one of the things I asked was, hey, can I get some training? Because I did Dale Carnegie, I did some other stuff. And you said, no, no, we, we don't have any training. I was, okay, well, I guess I'll just have to keep reading, you know, just keep on going. And lo and behold, a few Years later, in 2001, we met up in Canada. You were doing a certification with jj and JJ was hosting you. And one of my friends who was in Amway and the network Marketing said, hey, Dr. Roma's come to Canada. He's doing a certification training with jj. So I said, oh. So I got Me. He got me in touch with JJ and I registered to come and see you, and we eventually got together. I got certified by you, and you helped me publish my very first book.

It's been a great journey and it's called By All Gone By Way Too fast. One of the things that you teach is that there are rules of communication. I know that you even mentioned the first rule of communication, share with the audience today and those that are listening who want to be wiser, especially in the area of communication. What is the first rule of communication?

Well, you know what, Dr. Rome, the new book I have coming out is called Communicate to Connect. There are going to be nine chapters in that book. And one of the things is the first rule of communication. Without divulging too much of in the book is it you're not going to want to buy the book. To me, one of the first rules of communication is to really understand who your audience is, who you want, who you are wanting to connect to, who you want to communicate to. For me, it's. It's knowing the personalities. It's understanding human behavior. It's really understanding that not everybody's wired the same. We're not all the same personalities. In fact, my personality is only 10%. I remember you telling me in one of the trainings that, well, I, I said, I'm a d. I'm only 10%. He says, yeah, here's what you need to know as a D. 90% of the people don't really understand you and they don't really like you.

Right.

I said, oh, that's not very good. So what I had to do, you taught us to leverage the other personalities that are in our profile. So it's really about not being center focused, being aware of who you are, being aware who other people are so you can build better organizations and better teams. So it's. The first step is to figure. Figure out who you are and using the tools that are available, like personality profiles, to figure out who you are that will help you with other people, understanding who they are so you can build better organizations and better teams.

So really, the secret you're telling us is the first step in communication is learning how to connect with a person in a way that they can receive it, that feels right to them. It reminds me of, I have a friend named Tom and he was in Texas years ago and he was staying at a hotel. And a young Hispanic boy picked up his bags and started walking away with the bags up to Tom's room. And Tom said to him, excuse me, Excuse me, let me get my wallet out of one of my bags. I need to. Credit cards are in my wallet. The young boy kept walking. He said, excuse me, excuse me, I need to get that bag before you take it up to the room. He continued to walk. He said, hey, would you wait a minute? I need to get my wallet in my, out of my, that briefcase, that bag that you're carrying. The guy behind the counter said, sir, he doesn't speak English and I don't think yelling at him is going to help.

And I. What a great story. Because that's what you're talking about, isn't it? Trying to connect with someone in a way they can receive it.

Well. The other thing too is, Dr. Rome, is understanding generational differences too. Because generational differences, the way we were. Like, we were. If you're 60 and over, you're. You're really, you're really kind of used to that baby boom generation, right? Where you're post war. And there was a lot. There was like, we didn't eat at fast food restaurants. We didn't. We ate at home. Like, mom cooked all the meals and dad went to work. And we had a different generational feel for family and communicating. And we were, yes, sir, no, sir. And we were, we learned our P's and Q's. And. But then the generational changes that have happened over the last number of decades have been quite immense. And so understanding the generational differences, right? And then what I learned from my parents was treat people the way that you want to be treated. Well, you taught me that. Well, if, if I'm going to treat everybody like a D, that's not going to go so well. Right? So like a very hard, driven, high energy type person. Well, not everybody's wired like me. So what I learned from you was treat people the way they want to be treated. And so learning the difference of personalities, but also generational differences, how they've been raised, the way they've been nurtured, there's a lot that goes into it. So the more you learn about personalities and character and attitude and behavior, the better opportunity or chance you have to connect with other people.

You know, I was, when I was raised, we learned the golden rule. The golden rule is do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Turns out that it's not such a good idea. We learned the platinum rule. The platinum rule is do unto others as they want done unto themselves. So in other words, when we do our training, we mention these like, results. Eyes need recognition. S is like relationships and Cs like to be right. So when you just learn that people have certain basic needs and you connect with them and meet those needs, it causes them to not only like you but, but also to do business with you. In your upcoming book you talk about the four Cs of communication. And I realize that we're not going to give everybody everything that's in the book because they want to purchase it when it becomes available up in just a few weeks. But what are those four Cs of communication?

Great question. Now the cool thing about that chapter is I talk about the four Cs to learn to do the positive four Cs and there's also what I call the negative four Cs, the dos and don'ts. And when you talk about know having skill with people and communicating and connecting you, you want to make sure that you there's certain kind of outlines or like a, a process that you want to be aware of. And so and let me go back to my Dale Carnegie Dales in the, in the book. If anybody's read the book how to Win friends and Influence People, Dale Carnegie provides the three Cs he taught us in Dale Carnegie the training that don't criticize, condemn or complain, which are great starting points and they were very effective for me it was one of the keys to help me go million dollar round table my first time. But what I learned through the, the multi level marketing business is that we had a lot of people that went fast in that business. We had a lot of people that went kind of mid, mid range speed and others that went slow. Everybody but many people eventually got to their goals. But what the biggest challenge for most people in any competitive environment is that they compare themselves to other people. So I found that if we helped people not to compare themselves to other people that would be a quintessential rule to learn so that they don't put themselves in a negative spot. So we ended up creating what's called the four Cs of communication. Don't criticize, condemn, complain or compare. Now there's also the positive what you want to do. I'm not sure if I should tell you that or should you just get the book and find out what the positive things are to do. But they're in the book as well. But I do cover the four Cs of what not to do for effective communication. But there are four Cs that we must do if we're going to be effective communicators and connect with most people that we that we speak with, you.

Know, speaking of Dale Carnegie and he is probably an icon in the world of communication. His book how to win friends and influence people worldwide. But I never will forget and I think you've heard me share this Dale car my favorite Dale Carnegie story. Dale Carnegie said at the end of a good meal, my favorite dessert is strawberries and cream. He said, I love strawberries and cream. He said, it's just hits my mouth right. It's sweet enough but it's not overly sleep overly sweet. He said, I just like strawberries and cream. He said, you know something else I like to do? I like to go fishing. He said, every once in a while I just like to go out and spend the day fishing. He said, you know what? I've never offered, I've not one time ever offered fish, strawberries and cream. He said, because I don't think they would like that. I offer them worms and crickets. He said, I've discovered that my customer likes worms and crickets. And if I'm going to catch my customer, I need to use what they like rather than what I like. Now that is about as simple as you can get. But that's what we're talking about today, isn't it? Learning how to connect with people with things they like rather than maybe what you like. Have you found that to be important in sales?

100%. 100%. And the subtitle of my of my book Communicate to Connect is the Power of Words Influential communication for coaches, leaders and parents. We all need to know what words are going to trigger someone to action or trigger them to move away from you. So it's kind of like the law of attraction. We want to be able to use words to our benefit, but knowing which words will fall well on some personalities and which words may fall on deaf ears, so to speak, or push them away from you rather than bring them towards you. Does that make sense?

Absolutely. Yeah. You know, one of our trainings we do, I think it's selling with style. We have like 33 different trainings we do. And one of them is we say there are 10 words that you can always use with each of the different personalities. A total of 40 words. And then there's some that you do not want to use. You know, for just example with your personality, a word like powerful or strong or fast, you that, that resonates with you. Or I could say the wrong thing like slow down, take your time, you're going too fast. Well, that's just rubs the, you know, the wrong direction. And that doesn't connect with you at all. You mentioned one of the things that you're real big on is hanging around or being part of places where you're really valued. How can a person find out if they're valued or not and what kind of environment they need to be in in order to prosper?

Yeah, that's a great question as well. That's the chapter where I kind of touch on the disc model of human behavior. And I think it's what I learned and what I've trained my. A lot of my clients is understand what you bring to the table. I call that value proposition. Companies have a value proposition of what they bring to their clients. Well, if you look at meeting someone for the first time, and I tell people, Sandy and I are. We're both certified specialists with you at Personality Insights. And so we've done some marriage enrichment training, and we talk to couples all the time. You know, when you first met each other, let's face it, you were selling. You were, you know, how many. And I always say how many people like to sell? And very few hands go up and. And I said, well, you have to understand something about marriage. I said, you guys pulled a sales job on each other. You. You actually use selling techniques to win your. Your. Your. Your fiance or. And your eventual wife or husband to you. You sold. You. Some of you sold maybe more than you should have, but you basically did sell. You were selling yourself. You were basically laying your value proposition of what you bring to the table, and they're either going to buy from it or they're not.

Known more about the basic needs. During my courtship with my wife, it would have been a lot easier because I would have. I call basic needs. That's one of the most powerful things you taught me with personalities, was understanding the basic needs of the four temperaments, the four personalities, and you had three. I've added an extra one to each one just for. Just for balance for myself and what I've learned over the years. And so when I learned, and there's an expression I have for basic needs. Knowing the basic needs. When you feed the beast, the beast won't eat you. So if you, if you tame the beast, you give them what they're looking for. On a basic need situation, you're gonna. You're gonna have a lot better time connecting with people. You're gonna speak their language, you're gonna understand what they need. And your com. Your. Your ability to communicate, to connect to someone according to their value proposition will be much greater. So that chapter in the book is really referring more to meeting up with them, you know, and also basically, if you speak to their strengths, everybody in, in the personality world, D, I, S and C, no matter what you are or combination thereof, what you bring to the table, your value proposition, if you can celebrate that, people are going to feel celebrated. They're going to, they're going to want to show up. I always tell our leaders, whenever you're building a team or building a business organization or a group of people, if you know the strengths of your people, the value proposition of what they bring, and if they come on a regular basis and you celebr celebrate them, they don't feel like you're tolerating them. So you want to go where you're valued. You want to go where you're celebrated, not tolerated. So that's what that means, is that, you know, you want to look for a place where you're valued and people that understand you for not only what you do, but for who you are. And I think that's the greatest value is. And that I, I read a study from Harvard Business Review they were doing study on why did people leave their organizations and the top two reasons. And people might think it might be because there's not enough money. And that's usually what people. Why do people leave the companies? Well, they're not getting paid enough or the benefit package isn't good. That's, that's not true. The number one and number two reasons why people leave organizations are number one, that they are not valued. The number two reason is the work that they do is not valued. That's been number one and number two for the last over 25 years under the Harvard survey that they do on why people leave organizations. So you got to go where you're valued to feel celebrated, not tolerated.

I noticed that you have mentioned how understanding people, communicating correctly works well in marriage, works well in business. What about in the world of sports? I know you are an former, I'm not going to say ex hockey player, but a former hockey player who probably not only excelled when you were playing hockey there in Canada, but also you've been a referee and a coach. Tell us a little bit about how understanding people and personalities plays out or works in the world of competitive sports.

That's an awesome question. And that's probably where the greatest point of impact, aside from my marriage, has been, is certainly with the sporting world because I still continue to referee at the junior A and senior A levels. I just refereed last weekend as a matter of fact, here at my local arena with some tournaments that were there, but in, in sports. But I'd been coaching hockey for about 20 years by the time I was introduced to personalities per se. And by 1996 I had been like 25 years into coaching and at elite levels. When I got involved in the multi level marketing business, I was coaching at the university level in Canada. I had already coached at the semi pro level. So I was coaching professionally. And so knowing that you had been involved with the Arizona Diamondbacks in Major League Baseball was a very, very big carrot for I was thinking, okay, I got to figure out how he did that, you know, what a World Series with the Arizona Diamondbacks. And so one of the main things that I wanted to do was to get to know how you did that. But I started to apply the very first year that I got certified. I became the performant. That's where my career in performance mindset coaching started at University of Ottawa. I was a goaltending coach the year before, but I got certified in my second year in 2001, 2002, and I took that certification to Ottawa U and I became a performance mindset coach. So this coach asked me, he says, well, if you're going to do this, what do we call you? And I don't know, I talked to my coaching buddy, I said, what do you think I should be called? He says, well, you're like a performance coach, right? He says, well, I said it's his performance, but it's a lot of mindset. So he said, you're a performance mindset coach. And it stuck. So I've been a performance mindset coach for 20, almost 25 years now. And that's where my whole career started in that. But in athletics it was a key point because a lot, a lot of times in sports, and you'll know this from baseball, if you've ever watched the movie Moneyball, everything was about on base percentages, right? It wasn't on the personalities, it wasn't on character. And in baseball, in football, in any sport you can look at professionally or, or even elite or competitive ncaa, you'll notice that they have measurements and statistics so they'll measure, you know, goals and assists and touchdowns and home runs and all the statistical values. And so everybody wants to know, well, are you a good hitter, are you good, are you a good striker, are you good this, are you good that? Based on your actual on field, on court, on ice performance, what was lacking was the area of mental development. So I talk about, and this is a Question I ask my coaches all the time, I said, what percentage of, of of hockey, what percentage of any Sport is mental versus physical? And so is it 50, 50? Is it 60, 40, 70, 30, 80, 20? What is it? Most coaches will say that it's anywhere between 60, 40 and 50, 50. And so what I say to them, I said, well, when you do your workouts with your teams, how much are you. How much mental are you doing with your teams? And there's crickets. Like, they said, well, we're. Well, we're not really doing anything, so how can it be 50, 50, 60, 40? You're not, you're not training them in mental, you're not training them emotionally. So it's really the other way. It's usually 90% or 95% physical and 5% mental. So a lot of teams that hired me to come in as a performance mindset coach, we taught culture personalities. We talked communicate to connect. We talked about setting up a culture where everybody felt celebrated and not tolerated. Everybody had a role. We found something very interesting, that the team collaboration was increased significantly. And all of a sudden we started to win a lot of games. And we were winning, we were making into the playoffs, we were winning championships. I'm going, like, wow, this is like, unreal. Like, I'm onto something here. And so I remember when I was in Atlanta and I got certified level two, I was living in Alabama and we came to Atlanta and we got certified level 2. And I asked you, I said, would you be kind enough to go out to dinner with me? I want to ask you some questions about that Arizona Diamondbacks. So you, you kindly said yes. And so we went to dinner and you showed me and you shared with me how you did that. I started to apply that same principle to all the teams I work with. And lo and behold, you have helped me help teams another 11 teams win championships. So I've got 11 championship rings, two national championships, I've got divisional conference championships. So what you've done in a singular fashion, I've managed to replicate and to 10, 11 times. So I'm very, very grateful for that. You changed the way and the dynamic of how I coach athletes, and I literally coach coaches on how to coach their athletes. So it's, it's, it's pretty cool. And that's why I call my company Coach to connect Performance mindset coaching.

That's so cool, you know? Yeah, I do have a World Series ring that I got with Arizona Diamondbacks. And it's amazing. And I'm. See, I saw that big championship ring on your hand as well. How many times people. What does that ring about? It kind of opens up doors. It gives you an opportunity to share. I'll say something along the lines of, well, I taught them how to work better together so they would have less stress, more productivity, and win a championship. And people say, can you come here to our place of business and teach us how to do that here? So has that opened up some doors of opportunity for you? I'm sure. I mean, I know you've got a couple of championship rings from Notre Dame University. Is that right?

Yeah, the Notre Dame ring is the one that really, really brings some notoriety. Notre Dame ring is one save. What is that ring? Because not many people have a Notre Dame championship ring, especially from the Big Ten championship circle. So we have two of them. So one in 2018, one in 2019. And some of the guys that. That worked with us in developing that whole culture at Notre Dame, they're playing in the National Hockey League even today, and they've been on my podcast. And the. Yeah, they. They. They talked to me about, you know, how that changed the way they became leaders on their teams. And it definitely opens up. Whenever I'm on a flight or I'm in a restaurant, somebody will come up, and especially this one here, because it's. It's got a symbol that's fairly similar to the Montreal Canadiens with a C. So the Montreal Canadiens, it's got a CM that's for the Colby Mules, But I get asked, is that a Montreal Canadiens championship ring? And so that's kind of nice because I'm from Montreal, but it opens up a conversation, so they'll ask me that. So, hey, I run a company. Would you be interested in coming and sharing that with our organization? I said, absolutely. And that's opened up a door for me with a very large company in the US that we worked with for over eight years, that. That never would have happened had I not been wearing the ring. And I don't wear the ring to impress people, but I do wear the ring to impress upon people that what you taught me and what I do and the coach to connect and performance mindset, coaching actually works.

Yeah, it really, really does. Because when you work with someone and communicate to them with words.

That resonate with them, and they kind of give them guidance. You know, I remember a young kid I was coaching years ago, he wanted to become a lawyer, and he was a real high C. Smart kid, but a very low D. And I told him, I said, you've Got the brains to become an attorney, but you don't have the stomach if you're going to get in the world of being a litigator or you know, in, in that world of courtroom and competitiveness. And I suggested, I said why don't you become a sports attorney, represent some of these sports, athletes get them good contracts. Watch out for many times athletes are taken advantage of because they're great athletes, but they're poor business minded people. And he eventually did that and he's just as happy as he can be because he gets good contracts and he helps the players that he is represented legally because he looks out for them, he really does care about them. How would you suggest that if you're talking to someone along these lines and they do not have a good mindset, maybe they're negative or I can't do it or this won't work or they've been in an environment where things have not always been great, maybe they weren't raised in an ideal environment. None of us are. How do you get somebody to go from having a, what I would call a negative can't do, not good enough mindset to having a more of a positive mindset? Is it something that you eat? Is it something that you read? Is it something that you get a good night's sleep and all of a sudden you have a positive attitude? Well, how does that come about?

Wow, that's a million dollar question, Dr. Rome. Certainly one of the things that I like to try and help people do is to change their mindset because mindsets can be changed.

Natural. When I talk about disc and the way over the years, over the last 10, 15 years as well as I work with thousands and thousands of athletes and coaches, I find that there's a propensity for two types of personalities to be more of a fixed mindset and two to be more of a growth mindset. From the book Carol Duke's book Mindset As I studied the growth mindset phenomenon and fixed mindset, I realized that the C's and the S's not always but tend to be more fixed mindset. They're, they're a little more fearful, they want things to be proven, they're a little slower to adjust to that high end movement and energy, whereas Ds and Is tend to but not always be more of the growth mindset. And so I say look, what's the end result? What are you looking to accomplish? And I teach it, teach a lot of my athletes and coaches the term visiting because during the competition During a game when it's highly competitive. If you've got a. I saw your circle chart for the Arizona Diamondbacks, and they were all Ds, or just throw a piece of meat in the center of the room and let them fight for it. But you just don't have the, the opportunity to build a team like that all the time. Many of the teams that I'm going to work with are a combination of Ds, Is, Ss and Cs. So the circle chart is like a, a mixture of all these personalities. I say, well, what we're going to do is we're going to learn. Your personality proposition is we're going to have a centralized culture for what we, what we feel is an expectation for performance. What's that expectation? What are we expecting from you as an athlete? To perform at a high level and with a, with a level of grit and mental toughness. So we're going to have to. If you're not a d personality for 60 minutes or 90 minutes, you got to visit the D quadrant. You've got to learn the temperament of a D. And if I go to school, I can't be a D. I've got to learn the temperament of a C. If I want to have a more of a social time with people, build friendships and build a social club, I want to have more of the temperament of the I and the S. But if it's competitive, you want to practice D personality type, temperament, style, behavior. And so we learn, we, we try to teach our athletes and our, our co, our business workers, anybody that when you're going into an environment, ask yourself this question. What's required of me now? What do I need to be to have success in this, in this particular area? If it's a competitive area where you got to play hard and you got to play fast and you got to visit the D quadrant, you got to be there and, and you gotta, you gotta perform. I can't be a D in the classroom. I've got to be more, more thoughtful and more, more organized. And I have to follow a C type behavior. If you know the disc model, you'll understand what I'm saying. But to me was really about having that performance mindset. So as a performance mind mindset coach, I teach people and it's really what I say. What, what people ask, well, what is performance, performance mindset? It's really about knowing your purpose. What do you want? No. And then having the sheer determination and resolve to pursue it completely without distraction, without, you know, Being facing any adversity, you've got to push through. People tend to quit too soon in everything, in life, in anything. But a lot of what happens is you have to have that key determination and perseverance. And we learn a lot more from the things that we. We've lost. Dr. Roman, let me ask you a question. Did you learn more from your victories or more from your losses?

Yeah. No, absolutely. Losses have taught me much more.

So when we talk to our athletes, when we talk to our coaches, what you've learned in the process of, Of. Of your losses, we take to the next year and we build on those. And, and prosperity is not a good teacher. Adversity is a great teacher. Right. And so we. And I know that for myself because I've had heart issues where I, I nearly died. I've had cancer. I've overcome these things, and I've battled back and I've battled forward. So. And you've heard the expression in sports, no pain, no gain. It's not comfortable to visit a personality or an attitude that's not yours naturally, in your, in your, in your temperament. But you've got to make that, that step. You've got to go somewhere where you're going to feel like, okay, I'm a little bit comfortable. And I say, look, it's. It's okay. You got to get comfortable being uncomfortable. Right? That's why I didn't do well at school. I didn't know how to organize my. I couldn't sit down and listen. School was a terrible time for me. It was just not wired for my personality or I was not wired for it. So I loved what you said when I. Some of the first few lessons I learned from you was create the climate and engineer the environment. We need to create an environment and create. Create a climate and engineering environment. So people, when they come in, they feel like they're home. And if they're not, we say, okay, here's what you need to do to make it feel like home for the next 60 minutes. 90 minutes. Get them to learn to use all of their temperaments when they need them. Asking the question, what's required of me now.

You know, I was reading recently a book by a scholar. His name's Peter Kreft, and he's just a great thinker. And one of the quotes in the book was this. The world is an awful resort, but it is a great gym. And I thought to myself, that is really insightful. It's. We didn't come here to be at the resort, so we could relax and have someone fan us and drop cherries in our mouth while we're taking a nap in a hammock. We've got to kind of get with the program here and get in shape and learn to do the next right thing. Zig used to say, I'm not going to give up, ease up, back up, let up, or shut up until I'm taking up. So he was always working on something new and something different and something better. I want to just kind of, as we begin to wind this down, ask you one more thing here.

I know probably more than anybody I've ever met in my life, you have the excellent character trait of making people you are around feel special. I mean, every time I'm around you, I walk away feeling better than I did when I walked up to you. But I notice you, you're that kind of person. You're always looking to say something better to. To encourage someone to compliment someone. And how did you develop that? What is, what is the value of learning? I. I don't think you do it to schmooze people. I don't think you're doing it to try to, you know, get something out of. It's genuine. With you. I see you really want to leave people better off than they were when you found them. How did you develop that? How can we follow you in that trait?

Well, thank you for that compliment. And.

The final chapter in my book, Communicate to Connect, is how to make everybody feel like they're somebody. Up here in Canada, we used to have a muffler company called Midas and come on in, and we'll make you feel like a somebody. It's not just about your muffler. We want you to feel like a truly important customer to us. And so, you know, I always found that when I was performing the best as an athlete, when I was starting to get better results from my athletes, it was because I. I greased the wheel, so to speak. I would find ways to compliment people, whether it would be what they did, what they were wearing, their attitude, their behavior. When I saw something that was. That was extraordinary, that was special, that some people didn't really do. Normally. I'd make a point to, To. To make a point, I say, hey, I recognize what you did there, and I really appreciate it. That was. That was pretty cool. And I. I do something called a smile challenge with people, because not a lot of people smile a lot. And I like to laugh and I like to smile. And so I issue people the smile challenge. And I said, I want you to try this. I want you to go out today, and then whenever we're doing a two, three day conference, I say, okay. The first session, we say, okay, I want you to practice this. In order for us to be better at connecting, we need to learn to, to just compliment people. See something you like. Don't look for the flaws in people. We're so busy looking for flaws in people. You don't want to do that. Find something that you admire or like and somebody's does something anywhere. And so if you do that, you say, hey, I like your hair, I like your shirt. Hey, those are cool shoes. Hey, what's that ring you're wearing? Right? Just anything you can recognize, even if it's a behavior thing. If you can't see something they're wearing, what's something that they're doing that you can, you can compliment them on? And nine times out of ten, and almost ten times out of ten, when you compliment someone, you're going to get a small little smile. You're going to get a smile and here's what you say. Hey, that's a great smile. And whenever you say that, and I challenge people, I said, go and find somebody, compliment them, and when they smile, tell them that's a great smile. And watch their smile get bigger every time. Every time when you tell someone that's a great smile, they're going to smile bigger. And that's the smile challenge. And so what I try to do is I try to teach people to feel like a somebody. And by doing that, you compliment them, you look at what they're about. Because everybody brings value to the table. Not everybody feels valuable, but everybody has a value proposition. And that's what the personality profiles help. Look what you bring to the table now. Let's clean up your demeanor. Let's clean up your attitude. Let's clean up your behavior. Become a leader of influence. Become a person of influence and start complimenting other people. That's kind of what I do.

That's so good. That's so good. I remember hearing Zig back in the 80s. This was going back almost 40 years now. But he used to say this. There are 5 billion people in the world. Of course now there's closer to eight or nine. But he said, there's five billion people in the world, four and a half billion go to bed hungry for something to eat every night. But all 5 billion go to bed hungry for somebody to care about them, love them and say something nice to them. I'll never forgot that. I never forgot that. Because it's just so true. You know, I never go to bed hungry because we live in a great country and I know there's an abundance of everything we have here. But regardless of whether or not we go to bed hungry for something to eat, we all want to go to bed feeling loved or cared about or that we're important and making a difference. I want to thank you. You are a huge difference maker. You're a balcony person. You're the kind of person everybody could look to to say that's who I want to be like. And I admire you for it. As we wrap all this up, tell us a little bit. I know we've got to go, but you're. You got a book coming out and how can people follow up and get a copy and learn more about what you've taught on this podcast today?

Well, thank you for the opportunity to, to promote that. It's not published yet. It's. It's in the publication finality. I have two books actually. One is called Increase your increase your grit and mental toughness. That one will be on the market probably in the next few days. I'd say by the end of this week. But sometime in the next 10 days. Communicate to Connect. The Power of Words Influencer Influential Communication for Coaches, leaders and parents should be published here in the next 10 days and available on Amazon. It'll be available in hard copy, soft copy, Kindle. And I'm actually going into the studio and doing an audio version of the book as well. The reason I produced that book is because I have a training program called Communicate to Connect. It's a three hour training that goes together with that book to kind of help people to become better communicators and better connectors. So those are the two. And in fact I just wanted to share with you, Dr. Rome, the very last line in the book Communicate to Connect is Zig Ziglar statement or quote, you have to smile so big you can swallow banana sideways.

Zig was special. He always had things a little bit different, but they were always better. So how can someone, if they want to get more training from you or to connect with you, is there some simple way you could tell us?

I have a website, Performance Mindset. Coach.com is where you can find most of my training programs. Communicate to Connect program is on there. How to get a personality profile done through personality insights indirectly through my website. I. All my profiles come from Dr. Rome and all of my, all of my. A lot of my programs that I work are based in the. The training that you taught me as a mentor. So I'm grateful for that. Dr. Rome, it's been over 20 years of wonderful experience. And in fact, I heard you basically 30 years ago. And so it's a. It's changed my life. And it's.

We must have been little bitty children at that time, because 30 years is a long time.

Amen.

Say what is it again?

Thank you very much.

You're well. Performance. Say a little slower.

Triple W performance mindset coach dot com. And I have a personal website, Gordon McFarland dot com. But all of my training mostly is on performance. Mindset coach.com.

That'S awesome. Let me encourage the listeners today to follow up with that. Listen. I have discovered Charlie Jones taught me this in 1975. You will be the same person you are 10 years from now, except for the people you hang around with and the books you read. The two most important things you could ever keep a close eye on is who do I hang around with? Because who you hang around with is who you're going to become and what are you reading? What are you putting into your mind? How are you feeding your thought process in order to become a better person? Gord, you've done a great job today as usual. Promise me you'll come back, do this again sometime in the future.

I would love to. Anytime. Dr. Rome.

Thank you so much. We've been listening to Gordon McFarland share today about having a positive mindset, learning how to communicate better, and learning how to become a successful person at all that you do. I want to encourage you to follow Gordon. He's a dear friend and a great example of what all of us need to do. Learn to communicate better, learn to be a blessing to people, and learn to make sure that we're helping someone have a better day and a better life. I'm Dr. Robert Rome. I hope our podcast today of Becoming Wiser has helped you practice what you hear. Learn to hang around good people, read positive things, and your life will turn out the way you want it to be. Thank you so much for being part of our podcast today. I hope that has made a positive difference in your life in becoming wiser. We hope that you'll join us on another podcast real soon. Thank you so much. God bless you. Bye. Bye.

For more information about this podcast, please visit www.becomingwiserpodcast.com.