TEA 248: The Leadership Skill Nobody Teaches (ft. Dr. Mark Matthews)

Introduction

0:00SPEAKER_00So a few months ago, I started working with m Dr. Mark Matthews, who I actually have here with me right now. And I want to be really honest with everybody that's going to listen in on this podcast. Mark knows it more than anybody, but when we first met, before I started work working with you, because we've been working together for about three, three, four months now, something like that, somewhere in there. And no signs of stopping. And we meet every single week. And I remember the first time we met, I actually didn't, I almost didn't do it. I yeah, I remember talking to you, and I was like, I said, dude, my life is good. Our business is good. I've

0:31SPEAKER_00never felt better in a place of my life right now. Why do I need to work with like a high performance coach like you to help take me to this next level? And you're and you're like, you have to trust like that. There's a do you believe there's a new level to unlock? And I said, yes, but I don't know what it looks like. And you're like, that's what I'm gonna help you unlock. And here we are, many

Positive Changes

0:46SPEAKER_00months later. And so many good things have happened in our sessions that I didn't expect. And I started showing up a lot differently in my relationship with Kelsey, in my family, and the people around me, in my team. And honestly, my eyes have just like opened to a world I didn't understand and I never saw because I was so in the in our business and in life that I didn't have this perspective that helped my eyes widen to really see things differently.

The Presence Protocol

1:17SPEAKER_00And I'm really excited about this. And it's so hard to explain to anybody listening or watching right now because it's like, what is he talking about? Is this some like woo-woo stuff? It's not. It's literally just the way that I start to see the world has changed a lot since I've worked with you, Mark. And and people feel it around me. I've I've heard that. Like people are telling me that I'm like different in a positive way. And and and every time we get together, I get to ask you a lot of questions. And you have always exuded this to me like your

1:48SPEAKER_00ability to be present in the moment with people and your ability, your leadership capabilities. And there's something about you, Mark, that I'm like, man, I just want that. And let me tell you this. I eventually asked Mark, and and he explained a leadership skill that I think that nobody teaches. And of all our sessions, we've had a lot of sessions together every week for months now. And the one that I want to talk to you about today has

Leadership and Presence

2:08SPEAKER_00been probably the most impactful of everything. And it is something that I think everybody here listening or watching is going to benefit from for the nature of it. It will help them become a better leader in their home, in their business, and really with anywhere they go that they're interacting with human beings, they will be better. But before we dive into that, man, thanks for coming back on.

2:30SPEAKER_01It's a pleasure. I'm stoked to be here with you. And I just echo the same thing. As a coach, you always get to go on a journey with someone. And when I got to see who you were and what you've built here, not just with your team, but with your family, your clients, this community, like we talked about in our first episode, we're in our hometown. And this town has some really serious anchors that are not helping the people here, but you are a bright spot here, and you're willing to create something that helps people not just change their business,

3:00SPEAKER_01not just change their financial future, their family's future, but it really does help them change the legacy they leave on the world. And so I love being here with you, and I'm stoked for another opportunity to serve all the people in our lives.

3:13SPEAKER_00Me too. Me too. And hey, anybody who is just listening for the first time and you're like, who is this Dr. Mark Matthews guy? I did an episode with Mark back in February, February 23rd. You can scroll back, go to episode number 231, where it uh the title is Are You Addicted to Achievement and the Cot the Hidden Cost of High Performance? Most people listening are high performance. They are achievers, they are entrepreneurs, they're founders, they're like ready to get at life and succeed. And that episode, very eye-opening, immense amounts of

3:44SPEAKER_00feedback, especially from clients that I get to hear the feedback loop from. So if you want to dive even deeper after this episode, I encourage you to go watch episode 231. We're gonna include that in the show notes

The Presence Protocol Framework

3:53SPEAKER_00as well. Uh but what I want to do, I want to talk about, I want to talk about something you call the presence protocol, which is a framework for deep presence within leadership and life. And and I want to start off, if that's okay. I actually I printed out paper. I've never had paper on a podcast, Mark. For the first time ever, Josh Coffee has paid physical paper on a podcast, because you sent me this, your your little booklet on this. And this is, I'm gonna open up, I'm gonna read something here, and then I want to get into this. This is what you call the leadership

4:23SPEAKER_00gap that no one talks about. You said most leaders are taught to perform, to strategize, to execute, to optimize, and those skills matter. But there's a deeper skill that separates leaders who get compliance from leaders who earn devotion, leaders who manage people from leaders who move people. And that skill is presence. It's not mindfulness or meditation or just being in the moment. Presence is defined as the capacity to fully enter another person's world, to see what they see, feel the weight of what they carry, and

4:54SPEAKER_00then invite them into a new possibility that they could have not reached alone. Presence is not passive, it is the most active, demanding, and transformative relational skill a leader can develop, and almost no one teaches it. And then you have a little quote here and it says, Focus tells you where to look, presence tells you how to see. All right. With all of that,

Entering Their World

5:17SPEAKER_00I want to talk about presence versus focus before we kind of get into like the phases here that are really, really cool. What is the difference between presence and focus? Because when I say like, when I think of presence, I'm like, I'm just really focused in the moment on the thing. How'd you define those?

5:30SPEAKER_01Yeah, as you're reading that, to me, it's alive in me. Because this is if you want people who will go to war with you, right? If you want a team full of savages who are willing to go change the world, you gotta have this skill. And at the same time, if you want the people in your life to melt into your safety that you create, not into the certainty of what you know or believe, but into the certainty of how you treat them, that you are truly there for them. You want your wife, your children to see you as the safest place on the planet.

6:00SPEAKER_01This is the skill, and we keep missing it. And the thing is, is we think we're doing it because we're focused. So high achievers, high performers that I know, people I coach, they go home with their families, they're there, they're focused. Sometimes they're not, they're distracted, but a lot of them, they are focused. And they're creating opportunities to be with them, they're scheduling the time, they're scheduling the date nights, but they're mistaking thinking that just being focused and here, right, with my eyes looking at you, is the same thing

6:31SPEAKER_01as being as being fully immersed in your world. When I'm fully immersed in your world, all of a sudden we're we achieve what psychologists call a shared reality. Some people like to call it resonance. And when we have that resonance, it feels like I am truly with you in the world that you're in. And now there is no way you could ever feel alone. And given that loneliness is the greatest pandemic that humanity faces right now, true loneliness, that feeling, this is the antidote to that. And it's also the antidote for anybody

7:02SPEAKER_01who feels lonely because when you enter someone else's world truly and authentically, you also get to experience that level of connection. And once you do that, it becomes the most addicting thing you'll do. You have to remind yourself to focus on the tasks, the work that you're doing, and you should. That's one side of performance. But this is the side that you cannot throw out. You can't make it something that you do for a season where you ignore everybody and you go head down. You got to be heart-centered and eyes open to the people in front of you. Otherwise,

7:32SPEAKER_01you're never going to build anything that really lasts beyond you. And the people around you, even if you build something beautiful, they'll never be it, they'll never be inspired by it. And so this is the most important thing that I center my entire life around. And I would bet anybody who does the same will be so grateful for their life.

7:49SPEAKER_02Hmm.

7:50SPEAKER_00It's it is interesting because when you think of presence, you think of being present, and there's like this physical, but then there's also this like emotional, spiritual investment in the person you're with in presence. At least that's what how I kind of see that. And it is interesting because like I would say that I've done a lot of the motions of what presence should look like. Like you said, the date nights, the things, you schedule the things, but in the moment, you're actually not offering true

8:21SPEAKER_00presence. In fact, so many of us have these devices right in front of us. Our phones are with us all the time. And I'll tell you, when I go on date nights, this phone is not with me now. Part of the presence protocol we're going to talk about in a little while, but like the amount of distraction that we have is so great. And it's like we we're we're physically present, but we're not emotionally present. And I think that was just such an opening, eye-opening thing for me that I had to change with some of this along with some of the other steps. But yeah, this is I think this is

8:51SPEAKER_00really going to change anyone's life who takes this seriously and doesn't shrug this off as like, oh, this is just some kind of a thing that people do, but I'm not gonna, I'm just gonna keep doing my thing. I'm successful in life, and I think this is gonna take you to a new level that you didn't realize was possible.

Setting Intention

9:07SPEAKER_00Um, can you talk about, can we dive into so you have like two phases. You talk about two phases. I want to talk about phase one. We get brief on phase two, but I don't want to, we'll be here forever. We talk through both phases. Is that cool?

9:18SPEAKER_01Yeah.

9:18SPEAKER_00Okay. Let's do both. Can you talk through what are what are the two phases of what you call the presence protocol? And then I want to go into the four steps in phase one. I love it.

9:28SPEAKER_01If you're thinking about a relationship with another human being and you're trying to create a relationship where they feel your presence, this is deep presence. This isn't shallow being physical present, like you said. This is like holy crap, you're you're in my world so deeply, it almost feels like you're in my head, which is a gift. And so the first step of the presence protocol is what people always overlook. They think it's something that they just are gonna do. It's something you gotta practice, just like anything else. It's it's a beautiful skill of life. And phase one is entering their world.

9:58SPEAKER_01So as you're talking to me, every time we get on a session, I set this intention. And I literally tell myself in a relationship, the intention is your experience is more important than my agenda. And the reason that I say that is everybody should, if you're a high performer, be coming into interactions with an agenda, with goals, with ideas, even a vision for the person in front of you. Even if it's small, even if you're just gonna have fun and play some pinball, you have a vision of having fun. That's what leadership is. You know the way,

10:29SPEAKER_01you go the way, you show the way, and you go the way. And so you're gonna do that. But when you enter their world, you think, regardless of that agenda, I'm willing to throw it all out for you. Because your experience matters more than the agenda that I have here today. It's a paradox because people are like, well, then how do we get the thing done? Or how do we get the thing accomplished? If you give somebody full presence, they'll go with you easily. They'll follow you. Or maybe you'll even want to follow them because they'll just start going along the path and it's easy. But if you don't give them

11:00SPEAKER_01the presence, then they'll have resistance and you got to use incentives and control to keep them going. And so phase one is I you got to enter their world and know that you're really with them. And when they feel like you're in their world, then you can go to phase two, which is you can invite them into yours. And when you invite them into your world, having been with them and actually walked with them and they feel so deeply understood, they feel like you understand them more than anybody else on the planet in that moment. Then when you invite them into your world, they'll be curious about it. This is that classic

11:30SPEAKER_01for people who've read the science on persuasion, reciprocity. I enter your world and show you that it's wonderful to have me there, then you're curious. Well, if they were so great over here, I want to see what it's like in their world. And then they'll actually do the same thing back to you. And it's actually in giving another person presence that you'll feel so alive in yourself. You'll escape all of your suffering, then you'll be fully with them. And so enter their world, then invite them into yours.

11:55SPEAKER_00I think this is uh I'm gonna give some just very practical situations so you might find yourself that that this is a protocol you have to practice you have to practice and you have to you have to do. So I kind of look at most of my life as business in person. Like I have my business, what we're doing over here. And so I always look at that lens, then I always look at like my relationship with Kelsey, my wife, and then also my son William. And so, and then also other b yeah, other, I guess, other businesses and relationships in church and things like that. And so things I think of like there are things that we have talked

12:26SPEAKER_00about where maybe someone listening is like, hey, I've had all these, you work with team members and there are things that they're doing that you don't understand. I was actually on a dude, I got to pull pull us into a coaching call that I was on yesterday. One of our clients said, I have, she's like, I have one employee, and she is a rock star. She's been with me ride or die. And she's like, But I just, how do you deal with like these conversations that you have you have to have over and over with them? And she takes care of customer support. And on Tuesday, it was Saturday until she responded to the next customer

12:56SPEAKER_00support situation. And I was like, Why did it take you so long? Like, I'm noticing you're just not doing the thing that you were called to, you're supposed to do. And and so she's like, you know, she's frustrated, but she also loves this person and appreciates this person for all she's done. And and there's an and and I was able to tell her, I said, Hey, what what are the reasons you think she may have not been able to do it? And she's, I said, like, so I'm I'm trying to get her to enter the world. And I said, What, what could have made her not do

13:26SPEAKER_00it? Because it sounds like she normally, this isn't a problem, she's a rock star, right? And she said, Yeah. And I said, Okay, so rock stars generally don't drop the ball. So if they do, there's probably some reason. Why would that be do you think? She's like, Well, I guess we were traveling and we were at an event from Tuesday to Saturday. And I was able to say, Yeah, makes makes a lot of sense to me. Why she probably wasn't able to. She probably is she juggling a lot? She said, Yeah. I said, Are you growing and you guys feeling burned out a little bit? And she said, Yeah. And I was like, Okay. If you were in her shoes, do you see how she maybe could have not done that? And so I got to like pull this kind of into like encourage this client,

13:56SPEAKER_00enter the world of this, your team member here. Is there a real what could happen to have that not be the like be the thing that actually gets done? And and so I think that when you think of entering world, I'm gonna encourage everyone, think through your business. What are the situations you arrive in that like you're you judge the situation and or their motive before being able to full and because of that you become frustrated by it, or maybe, and this is just truth, I've had a Kelsey and I are always on different goal lengths, it feels like sometimes in life. And we've talked about

14:26SPEAKER_00this, and I know Kelsey's gonna listen to this. So, Kelsey, I love you because she listened to your last episode and she loved my vulnerability in that. I just want to say this is like we've always been on different goal paths with different goals we individually have, which is totally fine. And there's always like you always want to be on the same goal path, but it's always like it can vary a little bit. And what I realized is I was trying to force her into my world without entering her world and seeing what's going on in her life. She's like, she's a brand new mom. She has so much going on. And I'm trying to like push this performance,

14:57SPEAKER_00I'm trying to push this level of like achievement of who I am and like my go, go, go, go. Before entering her world, and I remember we're talking about it, and you're like, what if you just accepted her for exactly where she's at right this moment? And you said, I support you in all of what you want to do, not what I want you to do or what I think we should do. And I took that and I'm like, you're right. Why am I trying to force this on somebody else? You know, like I want to enter her world. And so that's what I've been, I've been able to practice a lot of that. And I hope Kelsey listening can can feel that a

15:28SPEAKER_00little bit. And so, yeah, I think this is this is really, really big.

15:32SPEAKER_01I want to speak to what you just said because I'm in the exact same boat with everyone in my family. I think I might have mentioned it to you at some point, maybe in the first episode, that I have a vision for every person in my family. There is a poster in my house, and in on that poster is every person in the family, exactly the state of the relationship and how well we harmonize. What you just described is you're aiming for harmony in every relationship. You might have different individual flavors of the goal, but when you harmonize, those goals come together

16:03SPEAKER_01and they create something beautiful together. That's the job of every relationship, it's the job of every team, it's the job of every organization, it's the heart of every movement. How well do we harmonize? And the interesting thing is it's harder to harmonize when you have different styles of voices, but you can still do it. And so that's the beauty. Life, this protocol speaks to how do we unite as people. And you can take that all the way down straight to Kelsey. And what you did there was so beautiful because you said, wherever you're at, I want to sing with

16:33SPEAKER_01you.

16:35SPEAKER_01If you don't do that, then what happens is that say Kelsey gets in, you know, gets on board, gets in the car, and goes where you were trying to go. She'll do that for a little bit, but she'll feel like you don't really want her there. You want a different version of her there. You want her at a different stage, you want her in some different way. And as soon as people know, if you do this protocol right, remember their experience is more important than the agenda. And so if their experience is more important than the agenda, it's like whatever goals you bring to the table, I just

17:05SPEAKER_01want you in the car with me and I want to go there together. I want you singing this song with me, regardless of how it sounds. And when they see that, then you start to play together and you start to create together and you create this openness in the energy where you can actually take them into coaching. You can even people will invite you to help them grow. But if you don't do this first stage, it'll never work. And if you're in any significant relationship and you're not doing this, the cost of it really is you will not get to be the person who meets their needs fully. And they will either not get their needs

17:35SPEAKER_01met or they will find someone else who does. And that that will hurt because I see that all the time.

Use Cases for Presence

17:42SPEAKER_00Well, let's go ahead, let's dive in, man. Let's dive in and then we can talk about like use cases for this. Let's talk about the four capacities of the present. You want to walk through those? Yeah, let's just make it really simple here.

17:53SPEAKER_01Look, for anything you ever do in your life, a lot of people, you if you if I ask them, I say, what's the number one thing you have to do if you have a goal? What's the first thing you have to do when you get ready, you sit down, you're gonna try to accomplish the goal. They always say, You gotta focus. And that's great. That's not true. The way the brain works is that the brain centers itself on a goal. We really are goal-oriented people. So we have a goal that we want to accomplish, and once the brain has it, it'll go towards that goal until it gets either too

18:24SPEAKER_01frustrated and quits, or it accomplishes the goal and it feels good. That's it. You have to set an intention. So step one is you have to set the intention for what your actual goal is. You have to actually tell your brain this is what we're doing. Almost nobody does this. And as soon as they start doing in their life, they're like, oh my gosh, I'm having a completely different life. Oh my gosh. This, if you want to get real, woo-woo for people who are into that, this is what manifestation is supposed to be, right?

18:54SPEAKER_01This is what I'm telling my brain we're doing now, this is what we're gonna make happen now. You have to declare it. And so when you're going for presence, that's why my intention for relationships is always their experience more important than my agenda. I want them to have a great experience. So I've decided I'm gonna enter your world, Josh, and then I'm also gonna make sure that whatever your experience is, that's what matters most. So if we're two steps into this, you know, four steps, and your experience is not going the way it needs to go, I stop.