How to Be FULLY PRESENT In Your Relationships | Michael Bungay Stanier EP 448

0:00Hi, my name is Lewis Howes and welcome to the Daily Motivation Show.

0:11So the I-thou relationships is about service and relationship with others, right? It's kind of like showing up fully. I have a sense of who you are. You're present with me. I'm not just getting the mask. I've got the mask off. You're not trying to necessarily kind of prove status with each other, kind of one-up each other. but you're just like, I'm seeing the best of you and I'm doing the best I can to bring out the best of you and you're doing the same for me. That's the magic. Yeah. And how does the coaching habit support with I-thou relationships? So most of my work happens in a corporate setting.

0:49I mean, the coaching habit gets read everywhere. I get letters from parents and letters from pastors and letters from sports coaches. So it's transcended that. But I wrote it thinking of this middle manager. Organizations have a way of just setting people up in hierarchy with each other, which is inherently an I-it relationship. Yes. And if you're the boss and somebody comes to you with a problem, lots of us go, my job is to have the answer, which freaks bosses out because they're like, there's so much going on. I don't know the answer. I barely know the answers to the stuff that I'm responsible for, yet alone the answers for the stuff you're responsible for.

1:25Right, right, right. But they're like, this is how I help. This is how I prove value. this is how I prove my authority. And what you're doing in answering a question is you're handing the humanity back to that person, saying, look, I'm going to raise your status and raise your authority and give you the autonomy and the confidence and the self-sufficiency to figure this stuff out itself. And in doing that, you're really saying, I'm giving you your full humanity. I'm not taking it away from you. I think in that moment, you have this opportunity to be human to human as you work together, rather than boss to subordinate.

2:00Interesting. And what are the main questions that every coach should use to effectively empower the person they're communicating with and build a deeper relationship? The kickstart question is what's on your mind? And what's really powerful about that is it's not what's on the agenda, and it's not what we always talk about, and it's not here's what I want to talk about. it says, what's in your mind? What are you excited about or worried about or nervous about or just feel like this is the thing I'm going to talk about? So again, it's this act of giving and sharing of authority and autonomy. And the final question in the series, so if this is the bookends, how to start and how to finish, is the learning question is, what was most useful or most valuable here for you?

2:47In this conversation. In this conversation. You know, I was just speaking at a group of, you know, in front of 500 people yesterday. and at the end of this session, I'm like, turn to the person next to you and like, what was most useful and most valuable for you? And what's amazing is it's never really what I think. When you ask this question, you get three gifts. One is you help them name the thing that they're taking away and they may have missed it otherwise. So they're actually going, okay, I'm actually articulating what was most useful and when they do that, neurons fire and people remember the stuff.

3:19Secondly, and here's the gift, you get to hear what was most useful and most valuable. And sometimes it's different from what you were thinking. Sometimes you're thinking, that wasn't valuable at all, that conversation. I was just jazz-handing my way through the whole thing. But they're like, no, actually, this is what really landed. And that might be powerful for one group, but not for a different group. That's right. When I was speaking to these 500 people, I was like, so tell me some of the things that landed. I'm like, 10 different people, 10 different things they took away from the session with me.

3:48And then what's also manipulative, but in a good way, is that you're not saying, was this a useful conversation? You're saying, what was most useful about this conversation? So you are framing this conversation as a useful, valuable conversation, which makes them find it more useful and valuable, which makes them find you more useful and valuable, which strengthens the relationship. How can an individual be a great coach to themselves without having someone they look up to guiding them? It's tricky because we are very slippery. with ourselves. We get stuck, we get sneaky, it's hard to get out of our own heads around this.

4:25I think there are a couple of things you can think about. One is, you don't necessarily have to be paying money to a coach or a mentor or a guide to kind of get this kind of professional support you might like. You can just go, let me see if I can figure something out with the people I already know and I like in my life. I had a mastermind group for 15 years. Me and five other people. We would check in pretty much daily, like three or four days a week, which is like, here's what I'm up to. We talk on the phone every two weeks. And then once a year, we get together for three or four days to hang out and have fun and kind of go deeper.

5:01And that was free. We're going to support each other in terms of what we can do here. So I do think there's a way that you can be the person who reaches out and says, hey, what if we supported each other? Because I could do with a bit of support and maybe you could do with a bit of support and let's do our best gas to figure this out. If that feels too much, I think that's when you come into the power of something like journaling. Because in some ways, you've got to get out of your own head. When I'm journaling, I have three questions at the start of the day and two questions at the end of the day.

5:30The three questions at the start of the day for me are, what do I notice? So for me, what do I notice is about what am I thinking? And what am I feeling? And what's right there in front of me and what's been bugging me and what was I dreaming about last night and what's out of the window. In some ways, it's about trying to be more present. It's also trying to be a little more connected to my feelings. I'm a head guy and part of the work I'm trying to do is I'm like, there's so much knowledge in your body and your feelings. I wish I could just get a bit more connected to that. So what you notice helps me with that.

6:02What are you grateful for is the second question because that's a silver bullet really. There's so much research that says regular, small acts of gratitude just make you a happier person. And then the third thing I ask is, what's the one thing today? If I have too many to-dos, I'm notoriously overcommitted. You know, I've done 48 of my tasks, just not the two ones that I had to do. Right. And then at the end of that, I go, what was best about today? Sometimes that helps me figure out what progress I've made. So, you know, Teresa Amabile, Harvard business professor, she's like, people get happy by making small progress on stuff that matters.

6:37Sometimes it's not about progress. Sometimes it's like, just what was the thing I most want to be grateful for and think was the best about the day? The fifth question for me at the end of the day is, who do I want to reach out to tomorrow? Not only is there all sorts of research about an increase in loneliness in America and in Canada and across the world, but like, I feel lonely. I feel a bit isolated. I'm like, I know lots of good people and I'm not naturally wired to be reaching out to them. So who do I want to reach out to, to keep being the person who says, let's connect. Let's build those I-thou relationships.

7:08Let me be still present in your life.

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