Latest / The Vincere Project / Episode 9. Silence is a Better Option
Transcript
- Vincent: Podcasting our way into the future and all of the stuff and trying to go to Mars with Elon and and all that stuff. ⁓ am I'm a big proponent. I think space travels awesome. I think it's a good thing. I think it's that frontier kind of thing ⁓ forgot to the Do Not Disturb thing on of course today, but I don't have time to go back and redo this, so we're going with it. yeah, SpaceX. I in all of it, right? So it's kind of like any form of investing or action. If you buy ⁓ one share something, you're part of it, right? So if somebody was ask me, ⁓ hey, Vince, you were gonna buy one share of SpaceX or some form of variation of space travel. ⁓ And why? I would look at it through the lens of I'm helping to put people on Mars. That's what I would do with my hundred bucks or whatever it is. think it's pretty cool. think it's pretty cool. Theonites is America. It rewards innovation and ⁓ frontier, people that are willing to risk and improve and do things. ⁓ I there is a downside to democracy at times, Intersected with capitalism and the idea of it. It's still the best thing among the worst things. So I think that's my vision on that. Man, what a week. Last week, a lot of training, lots of training. I had a training for a not-for-profit client. I had our H-Hour continued education. Got to meet a bunch of clinicians, some expert counselors, intermediate and novice counselors, all at very different ranges of their career. I feel like after an event like that, I think about 30 to 40 percent of the people that attend are candidates to work with HR and HR counseling. And I think one or two definitely will. Maybe three. Maybe three. actually. So yeah, that's small business stuff, right? It's pragmatic. You're looking for top people that want to do things and are passionate and are interested and are looking to become better people, better humans. And that's what Brooke and I are trying to espouse and trying to do. Yeah, powerful stuff, right? And trying to make bets on Elon Musk and then all the right things they're going to do. Hey, in the training, I want to just get into it, right? So the other training was a for-profit. I was up for the B team by Mike. And I say that funny. kind of backhanded but I guess it was the nature of how it fell right is you know just just having the opportunity to kind of step in and be a little bit of that wild card or X factor or variable or not sure what's gonna happen or what are we gonna do. The reality is I did exactly what I said I was gonna do at all the events so the the part though the thread here in all of it whether it was at our H-Hour or continuing education my not-for-profit client of New Jersey or where get called in help support another contract up in Pennsylvania. thread is the communication thing. And something I shared when I was sharing stage with a couple of fellow veterans, we a little panel discussion and we're talking ⁓ to 300 folks and ⁓ kind sharing our perspectives on. of important parts of leadership. What is it? How do you do it? What's the difficulty and biggest challenges and things you face? And it depends on your worldview and the lens you have when it comes to communication. Oh, it's verbal. It's nonverbal. It's this, it's that. It's all true. And situationally, you depend it, right? It depends on how do you communicate. One thing for me, though, I've learned for myself and something I use when I'm teaching communication. And then I draw from all of my experiences and observations at every level of my growth and development. So there's a little bit of my bias. the greatest communicators that the world ever seen are the greatest at active listening. Meaning two things. The first part is when somebody finishes a statement or a question or knowledge of something or state something, a really skilled communicator is gonna pause for two to three seconds before they respond. Maybe it's a breath or two. Maybe it's a countdown in their mind. Maybe it is a... tactile thing, they bring their hands together, whatever their process, the time delay is the important part, because it's advantageous twofold. One is, for the person that's sharing, stating, asking, whatever it allows for them to give you a moment to identify and recognize that you are able to understand and grasp the concepts, right? And allow your brain to do everything it's supposed to do to form some sort of thought or sequence of thoughts. The second part is that for you as the individual in that moment, when you're processing that stuff, it allows you to go a little deeper into the vocabulary bank, right? And find the appropriate language. Because there's a lot of words that are pretty similar in English language and many other languages. The first one is not always the most accurate, precise. It'll get us to the general cluster of the thing, but the more descriptive the better served will be. So if you think about like a radio announcer versus a television announcer, the radio announcer is going to have much more descriptive language and that's advantageous or helpful to other people. In that short delay of silence, the more skilled you get at that thing, the longer you can hold silence for. Which I just modeled right there on the podcast, right? It's an advanced skill and the ability to either fill the room with air or suck the air out of the room. And I think that is the skill acquisition that takes over time because how we do things on an individual basis and one-on-one versus how we present or do things with a group or a larger format, it's always going to look and feel very different. the skill of the communication part is the most important part because it allows people to fill the air and share a relative information to the particular story. So I would say anybody that I've ever seen do this, whether it was in the military, in business, in sports, it's not that they don't say anything. It's not that they're introverted, extroverted, ultraverted, whatever version of type of personality that they have. ⁓ It's along the lines of the decency to allow that person to finish their thought or idea. And it's not so much about power and control, but it is about influencing the flow of how the communication is shared. ⁓ for me, when I get excited, I will rapid fire and machine gun my speech a little bit, especially when I'm teaching in college for whatever the reason, ⁓ passionate about what I'm teaching in the college class. When it comes to counseling and physiological psychology, learning and memory and all that stuff. Yeah. I consider myself like an intermediate to expert level, practitioner of those particular things. And that is what I help people do, whether it's the internal self-talk or the external self-talk. So what's, cool in that is that there has to be a degree of credibility, authenticity, and realness in that. And that's maybe the last part I want to leave everybody with today in a funny, funny, funny way. The authenticity of the Vince and the Vince here project. know, last episode, you know, right at the end, last 30 seconds, I dropped an F bomb in there. And that's my integrity. I got to say that out loud. I got to share it on the podcast because I know that I did it and nobody else caught it or maybe they did it and they're like, Oh, we'll see what happens. So I owe 225 and I'm gonna make a donation. just gotta think about how I'm gonna go to Mary about this so I can get the 225 from her to do it. know, and then I'll. but make it seem like natural, like I didn't really mess anything up, right? And those are old behaviors. So maybe the best way to go is like, hey, I this promise to myself that if I dropped an F-bomb, a D, a C, a P, and it came out in Expression Podcast, I was gonna start modifying my behavior. Now it's to the consequences. And I literally defaulted to like, all right, how do I tap down on this to kind of tell like half of the story? And then it's like, hey, I want to donate 225 to this particular thing. That would be insulting to her because she wouldn't say anything, but she would let me like, yeah, no problem. Like I'll cut the check, we're going multi, right? She'll just do it, right? Or I'll do it, whatever. But she would wait to see if I said anything about how that came about or why that's happening. So on the front end, I'm just gonna share it. Like yeah, messed up. Look, we're seven, eight episodes into this, right? And I promised to do 52. So man, like 18 % of this, 17 % of this thing, something, whatever, carry the one divide by two. closer to being finished with 52 episodes than we are at the start point. I think for the first one, it's not bad. And then I got to follow through and do that particular thing. But I thought it would have happened earlier and it didn't. So that moment in time, our thoughts, feelings, behaviors are all measured and they're assessed. And it's that internal inventory that comes back to the communication thing. So ⁓ on the other day in one of the events, ⁓ know. back to the communication thing. the beautiful thing in it, without anybody knowing, is much of the training with the not-for-profit was kind of the same topics. It was accountability versus responsibility, how they're interconnected, what the differences are. And the big one is delegation. Accountability is that one person, typically the signature authority, responsibility can be delegated throughout the team, right? At every level, every organization, family, however, small, big groups, doesn't matter, right? Accountability is usually limited to one person. Now there's situations, it could be two or three. ⁓ generally it's one, right? So, but with a large group in a for-profit entity that has a very different mindset and worldview on how to get things done, they were all saying the same things. So ⁓ very consistent and I share a lot of the same things through an open lens. And so I'm up on the stage and I'm sharing a little bit of my experience. you know, part of the presentation, they reference and talk about Michael Jordan. And I point to right away how like, yeah, like I love Michael Jordan to represents right? different aspects three years, right by the pistons. I got beat up three years straight to create that version. Right. And so I went on a tangent started filling in the spaces about my relationship with the guys I served with and when things fell apart that like, they typically weren't mad. In many cases, they were just a little bit disappointed and asking for help and raise my hand. you know, it wasn't becoming inconsistent. And then there's other guys that kind of dipped off and that's part of it too. What's magical though in the story of all this, I'm kind of being long-winded about this is I get up on stage and I'm talking about, how do we go about things as a business? What did I learn in the military, on the battlefield? How do I inject these things and introduce these things? And I'm talking about winners win, beating the losers is fun, dominating the winners is better. Paying his mandatory stuff is optional. All these little fun little cliche, Vince-isms that I stole from somewhere else and made better as my own, right? And so we go to dinner that night and we're sitting there and one of the owners chatting and talking with his team or whatever. One thing leads to the next and not. Brick High School comes up where I went to high school many years ago, 30 years ago, guess, right at this point, a little under 30 years ago. him and his brothers on this business, they're all... They're all sons of Bricktown. We start just talking about interconnection, how we know certain people and whatever. One thing leads to the next and there's a dude there that played at Brick High School Hockey. And it's wild with his boss there, he's like, yeah, they're little group of, their team won three public school state championships in a row. I didn't say that, I didn't bring it up or anything like that. I just shared that I played ice hockey, little baseball, dabbled in some other sports along the way, but the focus became ice hockey. And it added instant credibility. It was like, huh. And know, small town, little town, big town stuff, you know those guys will ask a friend in my age group, peer group somewhere in there, hey, do you know this guy? And whatever they're gonna say is accurate based on how they know me, right? Good or bad. The winning thing is 100 % a thing though, and dominating. I speak to ⁓ culture of when you have great ⁓ models around. Something I think my father got right, tying this back to youth sports, leadership, development and growth, and why I think youth sports, ⁓ there's lot of things wrong with it, but I think there's a lot of things right as well. ⁓ And things that are right are the kind of people you might be able to get exposure to or be around, be influenced by. It creates And my father a point to highlight that our Little League coach, me and my brother, he was a, he ended up becoming like a superior court judge. Right? So fast track in his career. We had that guy for six years of rec baseball. Right? Our summer ball coach was a principal in the high school and his brother was an attorney in town. Ironically, I ended up using him for representation in two different issues I dealt with at some point, which is kind of fun. So look, he's wise enough to know he's investing in the kids that are young. That's kind of wild, right? A lot of attorneys. then, you know, with ice hockey, was a lot of successful business people, folks, elected officials, medical ⁓ investors, estate folks. ⁓ All high caliber people that have ways of doing things. And I think I think back to is that as a parent, my father got right as he exposes to people with high character. You know, and I think that part of it just matters a lot is, we're sensitive to the people around and what we do. And a lot of times it's not what's said. It goes back to what I stated before in the beginning of the podcast. It's the silence. It's what's not said. Because leadership in and of itself is, an abstraction in many cases. Yeah, it can be defined and everybody has their way of mincing the words and spinning them around. getting people to do things and motivation inspire, to multiply and create more leaders. It's all good stuff and I love all of it. I geek out all of it. I love all the books. I think me, the thing I reflect on quite a bit though, and this goes back to my youth, ⁓ to adult life, sports, battlefield, the classroom, friends, leadership ⁓ is an expression love. There's nothing more or less to it, right? It's like, I love you enough to sacrifice this for you or I love you enough to be a jerk about it. Whatever the work is that's required, a thing that has to be done. It down to love. I really truly believe it comes down to love and not love in that sense of, you know, intimacy or some homoerotic twisted contorted version. It's just, you know, self-respect, self-worth, expresses love for other people and human beings because we believe in them and we can see them becoming something that they don't see as themselves. And for me, I feel like I look back on that and it was kind of a reflective moment thinking about all the coaches at high school, club coaches I had, travel ball coaches I had, local rec coaches. Never once did any of them see me being mediocre or misbehaving, ending up in all sorts of programs with kids that are head on the behavioral stuff, right? the fact of the matter is that they built really long runways to allow me to grow. And then at some point, you know, the season ends and hopefully you get one value or one line of thinking or one core belief from that experience. And now you have more memories that lead to more beliefs that support those emotional states. that's it. My emotional states, winners win. That how it works. And when you think about the artistic expression ⁓ of silence is the greatest tool. Things aren't going well with somebody, you need to break up with them, go silent. You're in a difficult negotiation and you're trying to squeeze out, navigate a better deal. You silence. Hey, you're in a one-on-one chat or conversation with a child, a parent, a loved one, somebody. And silence, just listen. Folks will tell you everything you need to know, right? And more importantly, they will show you exactly what they have going on over a long enough period of time. And I just think silence serves us. I think silence is a great tool. I think it's the ultimate leverage. in response to most things. And I think that's kind of what we're gonna leave it today. So yeah, a lot of leadership stuff, a lot of talking about the tactics, the techniques of it, how do you get good at it. You had all that training last week, whether it was the not-for-profit, the for-profit, definitely at each hour. Dr. Vince and the folks he's around just seem to keep over-delivering and adding incredible value to organizations and individuals. Back at it though. Yeah, silence is a great tool. Clients that sit down with me on a one-on-one basis, and I'll leave you with this to think about is sometimes there's three, five, seven, 10 minutes of silence on a one-on-one basis. I went 37 minutes silent and running a group program one night. 37 minutes, I heard and saw everything I needed to know. The dynamic part of that is once it happens and you've crossed that threshold that ill at ease or discomfort people may sit with at times, rapport is accelerated in the room. There's a higher culture or a climate, I should say, of respect that informs that longer vision of culture of silence. in a fun way, I will quote ⁓ Powell and Mike Hanson. You're really comfortable with people until you eat a meal with your shoes off. I think there's something to that right there. And nobody likes littering, or maybe good people don't litter. Or maybe it's the bad people do litter. I haven't teased that out of thought about it. So yeah, 225, I owe. I gotta pay. That's the consequences of the behavior. That's my integrity. That's my process. Yeah, we'll keep the show going. Thanks for listening. ⁓