Speaking Your Truth
Effective communication sounds like such an essential tool for operating successfully in both business and just life in general. But what work are we doing to improve this skill and better understand ourselves and others?
Recently, our CEO, Stacy Jones got to sit down with life coach, David Wood to discuss the topic of having tough conversations with others and how best to navigate them. In this blog post, Hollywood Branded explores the topic of effective communication in tough conversations from the experience and expertise of Life Coach, David Wood.
A Little More About David
Not only has David Wood built one of the world's largest coaching businesses, he's managed that great, magnificent feat of getting to become the number one listing on Google for life coaching. David serves an audience of 150,000 coaches and has spent thousands of hours of his life coaching across 12 countries around the globe. He's the author of Get aid for Who You Are with the foreword by Jack Canfield. David believes that the tough conversations we avoid are doorways to confidence, success, and love. They become the defining moments which shape our careers, our relationships, and our lives.
He coaches high performing entrepreneurs, executives and teams, and also prison inmates to create amazing results and deep connections one tough conversation at a time. In our interview, we discussed how David has overcome his own challenges and learn why tough conversations are so important to him.
Interview Transcript Highlights
Question: Can we start off chatting a little bit about what got you to where you are today? How do you get here?
Answer: I grew up in a country town in Australia and became really good at math. I was good at systems and became good at business, and I went and got a job transfer to New York, which was so exciting for me. At the age of 23, I was an actuary. And for people who don't know what that is, we deal with long term financial projections, statistics, demography. I'm a super geek if that's not becoming clear already. And I thought I had it made, I had an office and they were taking me to Sony music and Chanel and Ford and I'm like, this is awesome. What I didn't know is that I was missing about half of life because I hadn't learned about emotional intelligence, vulnerability, or how to deeply connect with another human.
I had so much baggage that I hadn't dealt with because there was a tragedy when I was younger. My little sister died and I was there and I witnessed it and we didn't know about PTSD back then. We didn't know about anxiety and depression, but I found out about those later in life. Fortunately I discovered personal growth and got into a course that freaked me out a bit because they all wore name tags and they smiled way too much and I'm like, "this can't be real, but I'm going to get in and get out." Well, I never got out. I got in and they cracked my cynicism and my heart opened and I changed somebody's life overnight and I was like, "wow, maybe I can use what I've learned about systems and apply it to people's lives, as long as I can bring in the emotional intelligence this could really be something."
So I spent the last 25 years of my life reclaiming the parts of me that I'd missed out on and learning about what people might call the soft skills, which are not that soft when you get into them. And now I coach people on both business and life. Most people don't come to me just because they want business, they're plenty of business coaches that can handle that. Plenty of life coaches that can handle your relationships, but there aren't that many, I think that straddle both and because of my background in actuarial science and then my quest into what it means to be really human, I like handling all of someone's life.
Question: So when someone is working with you, what is your first approach? How do you unlock those barriers, open the doors and start really drilling down into what might be holding someone back?
Answer: Well, it's simpler than you might think. One of the best questions that I think anyone can ask someone else is, "how could your life be better?" And then some people think, "if my business was doing 30% better, then I could do this financially." And "hey my relationship with my kid is okay, but he doesn't really listen to me. I'd like that to be better." Some people already know, but for other people it takes a few days or weeks to start peeling the onion and then the desires start to come out. "Oh, I didn't really know I could have that." Or "I let go of that 20 years ago" or some tolerations come out. "Hey, it's really bugging me that I'm just not in good relationship with my brother." And it's like, "oh, well would you like to handle that? No, really, let's dig into it."
So it's not really rocket science, at least the beginning. And then I listen and ask myself "do I buy it?" Like is this something that's really going to light this person up? I can often feel it in myself, like "yeah, that sounds awesome, let's get into that." Or "wait a minute, if you had that, what would that give you?" And then we dig deeper. We might find out that more money isn't really what they want. They did a study, someone just told me this number yesterday - $72,000, I don't know where that comes from, but up to a point you need money to have peace of mind and to be able to put food on the table and have some kind of peace. But above that $70,000 chasing the money can be cool and can be fun, but it's not usually what's going to give people a better life.
My highest values are truth, daring and play. I want us to play the game of life, let's play it like it matters and let's go for what really matters to us and not be timid and obviously tough conversations. You need a lot of daring and you need a lot of truth if you're going to go right into those juicy areas.
Question: So when you say tough conversations, that can be something that means something a little different for everyone that you speak with. Can you share a little bit about what some of those tough conversations are for different people?
Answer: Yes, great question. I do a lot of interviews about this topic and we don't spend enough time on like what are we talking about? Because people are like, "oh, I don't have any tough conversations," or "if I need to, I'm willing to speak out". But when we dive into it, you might find a few areas that we've shied away from and there might be a lot of gold in there. So they're big ones and then there are micro tough conversations and then there's everything in between. So some of the big ones for me have been, like I've done some stuff in my life I'm not proud of and some of it has been illegal, I've broken the law. I still sometimes break the law and for example, if I go 10 miles an hour over the speed limit, I am breaking the law.
Question: Part of the tough conversations and part of putting this down on paper and circling and making notes is sometimes the tough conversation is with you yourself. Where you see something that's themed and maybe it's not that the world's out to get you and all of these people are bad and have wronged you and you need to clear the air from their side or from your own side, maybe it's your own interpretation as well. Would you agree?
Answer: I feel so excited hearing you say that, Stacy. The more I go into spirituality and the more I listen to people who I think are wise, the more I think in my most enlightened moments that it's all about me and it's got nothing to do with the other person. And one of the cool things about doing the work on these conversations, even if you decide never to speak to the person, if you decided, which I want to get into in a moment, because there'll be times when I recommend you don't have the conversation, but do the worksheet. Get the clarity, that's having the conversation with yourself. And you can learn so much, like I learned with this podcast host, and I can say his name because we just did an interview and talked about this exact thing and we shared how I raised it with him and how he felt when I said, "dude, I've got an issue about this," is Adam Lewis Walker.
He's got a great podcast himself and I learned, "oh, I have a need to feel respected." And by the way he did it I feel like it's not respected and I had to look, what can I ask for? This was really edgy for me because I'm thinking this guy's going to think I'm a jerk, I'm high maintenance, I'm Not only has David Wood built one of the world's largest coaching businesses, he's managed that great, magnificent feat of getting to become the number one listing on Google for life coaching. David serves an audience of 150,000 coaches and has spent thousands of hours of his life coaching across 12 countries around the globe. He's the author of Get aid for Who You Are with the foreword by Jack Canfield. David believes that the tough conversations we avoid are doorways to confidence, success, and love. They become the defining moments which shape our careers, our relationships, and our lives.
He coaches high performing entrepreneurs, executives and teams, and also prison inmates to create amazing results and deep connections one tough conversation at a time. Today we're going to talk about how David has overcome his own challenges and learn why tough conversations are so important to him. We'll learn what's worked from David's experience, what could be avoided and have some are missing the mark. too sensitive and he's going to bad mouth me to other people. That's what I was worried about.
But when I dove into it, I'm thinking, "what can I ask for?" And I came up with three things that I would need to feel good about giving him a coaching session again. One, I'd like to hear from him that he respects my time, if that's true for him. And this took some time to really create these requests.
Two - I'd like him to get the impact that it had when he didn't show up. The impact was that, that was half an hour of my life that I'm not going to get back. That's it. I was scheduled, I was ready and it's half an hour I could have used for something else. And three - that he was committed to showing up on time if we re-booked it. And I put out those requests and he said, "Yeah, I'm happy to meet all three of those." I wasn't attached to it. He might've said no to any one of those, or he might've said, this is just too much let's just forget about it. He could have done that and he was tempted, but to his credit, he did not. He said, "Thank you, you're right, I was disrespecting your time and I'm so glad you brought it up," and he wants to include it in his podcast now.
So one thing I got from this, and I hope our listeners will get from this is when you are willing to take the risk and share your truth with somebody, that has an impact. Sometimes, many times in my case, in my experience, it's rippled out. And they've actually said to me, I went and had a conversation with somebody that I'd been putting off. So you never know the impact you'll have just by sharing your truth.
Question: David, thank you so much for being here today. Are there any last words of parting advice that you have for our listeners?
Answer: When I speak my truth, I feel better about myself. The fact that I get deeper connection with other people and I generate external results like more money and more customers, that's a bonus. When I speak up, I feel better about myself and I want that for you too.
Check Out The Podcast!
David and Stacy continue an in depth conversation that is worth listening to even further! In the full podcast, David goes into greater detail on how effective communication can improve all aspects of your life. Check it out!
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