In this conversation with communication expert, Bob Paff, you will learn how to truly communicate so everyone wins and each person in the conversation has their needs met and validated.
YOU’LL LEARN:
» How to reframe failure and fear. Bob also makes some interesting connections between common fears, their root cause and what emotions they lead to.
» The importance of not avoiding the important conversations.
» How to improve your relationship with yourself through self-examination, which will impact your relationships with other people.
» Common things that interfere with effective communication and how to overcome them.
» How to really listen while clarifying and verifying so that expectations are understood and trust is built.
Chad: 01:06 Welcome back to the show. If you haven’t already, be sure to subscribe on itunes so you can never miss an episode and go to Youtube and Arrow light TV and subscribe to that channel there because you won’t just get the weekly show each week. You will also receive other videos that I share every week on how to communicate better and how to connect with people and how to grow your career in the way that you want to and take control of your life. So I’m really excited about today’s interview with Bob Paff. He’s a communication expert and he’s going to share with us some really effective tips on communicating to win, but without there being any losers, and that’s also the title of his new book, so be sure to check that out. Bob is a sought after speaker, best bestselling author and radio show host, and he’s been featured on multiple major media including CBS, Fox and mpts money in business.
Chad: 01:58 He’s also done some acting voiceover work and modeling, so as you can imagine, he knows how to communicate and he’s a master connector and absolutely he has lots of experience on connecting his way up to career success and valuable relationships and connect his way up out of problems that he’s experienced in his own life and he is refreshing to talk with because he’ll talk about anything because he understands the importance of communicating and not hiding our problems, not being ashamed of them either and just discussing the hard things that usually people avoid talking about. So we’re going to get more into that later. In today’s episode, we’re also going to discuss some common interferences that get in the way of our ability to connect with people and how to overcome our fears. He shares the importance of connecting and talking with ourselves first and foremost, and how relevant that is in the results in our life.
Chad: 02:53 Connecting with others starts with how you connect with yourself. You’re also gonna learn how to clarify and verify with people what you just heard them say so that people know you’re really listening because sometimes we are afraid to ask for clarification because then we think we’re dumb, but if you don’t ask for clarification, then you’re gonna. You’re going to perform tasks wrong. It’s going to interfere with the relationship and we’re going to get into that later in today’s episode. By the end of today’s conversation, your ability to communicate will jump up a level, so get ready to take notes and join me in welcoming to the show Bob Paff.
Chad: 03:29 I’m glad to have you. You are a communication expert and on this show we talk about how to connect our way up to our career goals and up to better relationships and up to more happiness and it’s all about human connection here. And I wanted to ask you what’s a little bit about your story and what key aspects of it brought you to where you are today and your career and your current passions.
Bob: 03:53 Well, you know, and thank you for touching on the word connect. It’s one of my favorite words and as a business guys, a sales marketing business guys and entrepreneur. Um, I, I just, I don’t like the word networking. Uh, I prefer connecting. Uh, I think we’re all connected through something and so it’s one of my favorite words. I don’t look at myself as a connector to your point about the story and what brought me here is really, and I tell people the book is a transparent look at my live chat. And so when I was on the Steve Harvey show a number of years ago, he asked me what were the three most important things in my life and I said my, my family, my faith and my failures. And of course, what did you focus in on what it is doing it on the failures, right? Tell me about the failure. So the book, I don’t want to say the book is a compilation of earlier, but the story really emanates from my failures. So, um, that’s, that’s really the genesis of the whole thing.
Chad: 04:51 Yeah, that’s a really important because sometimes we see our failures in a negative light, but it seems that the UC or failure, is that a positive, a positive thing you’re able to kind of reframe it for good?
Bob: 05:02 Yes. And it’s not easy, you know, let’s talk to, let’s be realistic here. This stuff is hard and it hurts and I wish it on anybody here what? I want to go through it again, the answer’s absolutely not. Um, but when we’re there Chad, we need to really immerse ourselves. I like to say we need to do the deep dive. Um, we’re here. We, as Abraham Lincoln said, and I think there’s a quote behind me on the shelf. I don’t know if you can see that, but Lincoln said whatever you are, be a good one. And so if you were immersed in that failure, if you find yourself on a particular spot in your life, and I like to think we are where we’re supposed to be. I think the obligation and the challenge is to make the most of that experience and that’s what I try to do and that’s what I try to do here and I’ve tried to sort of pave a road for people to gain that clarity, for lack of a better expression through my story. Remind message.
Chad: 05:56 I like that word. Clarity. Getting clarity is something we all want and we have to communicate with ourselves in various ways to gain that clarity. How do you communicate yourself through clay, through failure to gain clarity?
Bob: 06:07 You are. You are. This is perfect. What I tell people when I speak in a travel is the most important person we speak to Chad is ourselves, right? It’s that. It’s that person you look at in the mirror every morning and every night, whether it’s the brushing your teeth or whatever routine you go through the most, and I cannot emphasize it enough, the most important person we communicate with ourselves, but we don’t really do a very good job of that doing. I mean, I don’t think we do. I’m married and divorced twice. I have six children. The most important verse that I communicate with myself, I need to gain that clarity. Chat. What does it look like? What do I want? What am I done? What have I learned? What have I gained? Where am I going? So it’s a barrage of all these questions that we have to ask ourselves. And again, I’m going to go back to it. The Chinese proverb, there’s great opportunity in pain. This stuff hurts, it really hurts, but we got to keep going. Franklin said, I’m a man up these quotes, if you know what, what is it? If you’re going through hell, keep going, you know, get stuck there. And that’s really what this is about. It’s a journey
Chad: 07:17 in that journey. How has your relationships influenced your success and progress so far?
Bob: 07:22 Um, well first and foremost, I, you know, I, the story I want to say faith based. A lot of people use that word. I like to tell myself I’m a, you know, or others. I’m a practicing Catholic practicing to get it right, to get it better, I guess, but my faith really has gotten me through the deepest in the darkest times and why? Because sometimes we find ourselves alone with, with, you know, with ourselves, our thoughts and, and I believe we have to have something to attach to and look around us, you know, people get involved with addictions, don’t they? So whether it’s drugs or alcohol or other things, we need something. Chad, there are a lot of people out there, the biggest battle that folks face as they get older and we could do a show on this alone as loneliness. And so we do spend a lot of time alone.
Bob: 08:11 Folks move on, people come in and out of our lives. And so we need to be anchored in something. And so for me, while it’s been a struggle and the faith has been challenged and I like to say Ben for never broken, it’s really been my faith that’s gotten me through the, the, the dark times, let’s call them. Um, and I’m always examining. I’m always reading. There’s typically a stack of books anywhere in my house that once I’m inspired to grab this one one night, people think I’m crazy, like how do you read it? Had a chapter from this book and then go to another one. Well, I guess it’s just the way my mind works and it spins.
Chad: 08:45 That’s very powerful. You mentioned something that got me thinking, um, you’re talking about how, you know, there’s times where we are alone and especially if we’re, if we were just hurt or we just had to make a shift in our life and, and disconnect. Is it okay to have times in our life when we just have to disconnect and heal? Do you want to talk a little bit about that?
Bob: 09:03 Yeah, absolutely. And I will tell you, the quiet times can be some of the most difficult times. I’m, I’m, uh, probably you probably would classify me as an extreme extrovert. And so I love people. I love being around people. I love the energy that emanates from people. I’m intuitive and so, you know, I need that. But probably my, some of some of mine, I’m not going to say all my, some of my best growth in moments have been from those periods of let’s call it isolation or periods of quiet periods of being alone because Chad when were put there, were put there for a reason as I just said, we are where we’re supposed to be. And let me clarify that. Where we are, where we’re supposed to be doesn’t mean that we’re where we want to be or where we think we should be, where we are, and we need to embrace that and think about why am I here?
Bob: 10:02 What happened to put me here, how do I get myself out of here? You see, you see, those were all those lessons are. And, and again, you know, this is really difficult, challenging stuff. You need to find the resources. Again, I’m a sociable guy. I’ve got my kids every other weekend when they’re not here. I’m like, Oh, I’m out of that debt notes. So what do I do? I can sit in front of the television, which I don’t do, and he a TV dinner, which I don’t do, or I could go out and a congregate with other people and that’s what I choose to do. So that’s one of those arrows in the quiver that you need to find out as an individual what works for you, what do I need to do?
Chad: 10:38 It sounds like having an interview with yourself as a really important thing. You touched on it a couple of times how when we, when we disconnect and when we have, when we’re where we’re supposed to be, but we’re not where we want to be. We have to have that little interview with ourself or asking yourself those questions of how do I get myself out if you’re, what lesson do I need to learn? And a lot of us avoid those questions so we keep repeating the same problems over and over again.
Bob: 11:02 You know, great point. It’s what you just defined was insanity, right? The definition of insanity, doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. I tell you, one of the reasons I think we fall into those traps is we don’t like where we are and so what do we do? We go back to the familiar, but the familiar may not be where we belong. That’s what makes us a stock in a certain place. Chat, you know these things. Not only are those safe so challenging, I think most people really, sadly aren’t able to make that leap and the cross over that bridge because it’s the devil for the devil. You don’t. Let’s look at it. Let me focus on marriage and relationship for a second and use my own as an example, and I talk about this a lot. The divorce rate in this country is 50 percent for first marriages.
Bob: 11:53 It goes to 65 percent for second marriages and it goes to 73 percent for thirds. So we seem to be getting it, you know, we can hit it and get it wrong and so we don’t seem to learn from that. And so I’ve been single now for eight going on nine years, and one of the reasons that I’ve been single so long as I needed to figure out, okay, what am I learned from those two failed experiences? Why am I here? All right, not a good place for me to be, but why am I here? What am I supposed to do with this? How do I prevent myself from making that mistake again? Whatever the mistake is, Chad, whether it’s in a relationship, whether it’s a business venture, whatever it is, you know, you have to immerse yourself and do that work to figure out, um, you know, what do I do going forward?
Chad: 12:40 Definitely as we’re on the subject of talking about some failures and problems, I’ve heard you talk before about how a, as human beings, we’re not in the habit of talking about our problems directly in our issues and we tend to shove it down until it gets worse and worse. Why do we do that? Why do we hide that? And what’s one thing we can do to kind of overcome that and actually talk about the important things?
Bob: 13:02 Well, it’s great having this conversation with you and he’s looking at you. You’re probably a generation or two below. I’m, I’m, I’m 58. And so I think one of these things, sadly is gender related. I think men are not encouraged, um, maybe we would say not given permission to emote, to not feel things to not express things right. And there are a lot of double standards in the world that all. And I and I, and I really disliked the generalities. All men are this, all women are, are that. And so I think as a culture we need to be more open and more receptive. I don’t look at things as gender specific, like I don’t think it’s a woman’s job to cook and a man’s job to take out the trash. So I think until we get rid of those generalities and were able to open up and effectively communicate, now there’s a way to do it.
Bob: 13:51 And, and typically we don’t do it right. We blame people. Chad, we blame people for things. We hold others accountable for our success, for happiness, for figuring us out, for reading our minds were all of these things that I’m telling you, the best relationship you need to have and you need to. The is with yourself and we are really bad at doing that. We’re really, really bad, myself included, but so, so you called me a communication expert. I think I’m probably better than the average bear, but I work on this every day. Chad, to get better. I make mistakes. I’m going to make mistakes until I leave this earth as will you. It’s owning those mistakes. Say, ah, you know, my kids and I’ll be having a conversation and maybe I’ll say something that really was spur of the moment. I’ll go back to them a day later and say, you know, I’m sorry for that. I was thinking this when I was thinking that we don’t do that kind of stuff, that I look for ways to say, please thank you and I’m sorry we don’t do that enough.
Chad: 14:48 That’s what makes you an expert is not that you are perfect at communication, but that you are working on it every single day and you’re aware of it because that’s the biggest thing is that most of us are not working on our communication. We don’t think we need to. We’re just kind of living day to day communicating in our own habits, but you’re continually trying to figure out how you can better and better and better yourself because there’s an infinity levels to communication will never get to the top level.
Bob: 15:12 Thank you for that. Thank you for pointing that out because you’re right. It’s not that. It’s not the perfection. It’s, it’s the perseverance and it’s the strive for the excellence, right? I mean, that Bar’s always raised so you know, I’m learning new things on a continual basis. You know, some of this pain and the reading that I’ve done. I’m telling you now, I’m a better person this year than I was last year. Ask Yourself, Chad, am I getting closer to what I want out of this life? Am I, am I getting what I want out of this personal and professional relationship, that self-examination, Chad, that we’ve got to do on a constant basis?
Chad: 15:48 Absolutely. You mentioned something about how we need to, uh, am I better today than I was a year ago? You’re comparing yourself to yourself and that’s a good type of comparison. One type of comparison that’s not good as when we compare ourselves to other people and I know that that kind of comparison, it interferes with our ability to form good relationships with people. So do you want to comment on that and what are some other things that interfere with our ability to communicate with people?
Bob: 16:13 Oh yeah. You know, we, we do, right? And, and one of the things that I, that I tell people I, and I do it, I’m guilty of these things. There’s always gonna be somebody who’s more, you know, more attractive, taller, thinner, richer this or that. And so if we spend our lives, I’m expecting to ever get on top of that heat. It’s not gonna happen and you’re going to have a miserable life. And so I think we need to say, you know, are those things we have to assess the importance of things. I tell my kids all the time, think about how things ready for this make you feel. How did they make you feel? And so if you aspire to the fancy car, the big house or whatever it is, why ask yourself why and, and how does that make you feel? How does it make you feel, you know, having that or wanting that and how does that make you feel because you don’t have that or you experience a sense of deprivation.
Bob: 17:11 Like what is it? Why are we always comparing ourselves? And I love that point that you made. We need to compare ourselves to ourselves, not to the Joneses and the smiths and the next door neighbors. So the guy that has this and the guy that has that richness and success and happiness come in many forms. I just did a local talk show and we talked about being happy. You know, there’s this whole discipline now and books about being happy and so what truly makes you happy? What do you want? And sometimes Chad, I think those things involve severing relationships, severing, um, you know, jobs or maybe where you live is not the right place. These are really, really hard things for people to do because we’re creatures of habit
Chad: 17:56 that’s important to understand that there are times where we have to sever certain relationships that we have to know when to disconnect, that if it’s toxic or it’s just not working out. And that’s okay. There’s nothing to be ashamed about having to get rid of certain relationships. I’m glad you mentioned that. And, and, uh, there are lots of things that interfere with our ability to communicate with people and I’m sure in your experience you’ve discovered a few things that interfere with our ability to connect with people. Um, I know and you’re in your book, you mentioned fear and how that can interfere. Uh, tell us a little bit about how fear can and what types of fears can interfere with our ability to connect with people.
Bob: 18:32 Well, you know, here’s a great story about fear and it’s actually on page three of my book, I had this whole fear diagram. Fear really paralyzes us. And the basic fears are failure, embarrassment, rejection and confrontation, failure, embarrassment, rejection and confrontation. And then they leave other things. Confrontation leads to despair. Rejection leads to isolation. Failure leads to immobilization. I failed. I can’t do that. I can’t pick up and go on. Embarrassment leads to anger. And so I think let’s go back again to how we’ll do things, make us feel. And fear is a feeling, right? Why am I feeling this way? What am I afraid of? Why can’t I say to that person? And here’s the challenge though, Chad, let’s talk about confrontation for a second. Let’s focus in on that one. You and, and let’s, let’s put it in a professional context. You and your boss, your supervisor or whatever, see things differently.
Bob: 19:29 Okay? You’re not in agreement. It’s critical for you. How do I confront and I know, confront, we think about it in a negative term. Don’t when, how I can, how do I, how do I attack that situation? What do I need to do? And I tell people all the time, have a conversation with yourself. So what I say to you, Chad, is, you know, we talked about this and you’re expecting this enemy and this is how I’m feeling, okay? But what we do is we say, you told me to do this or you don’t do that for me or this isn’t right or whatever. And then what happens when we do that? What do people become defensive and then the communication and the conversation. What happens to that? It shuts down. That’s when you get into all the stonewalling and that ghosting and the disappearing and all the other things we do.
Bob: 20:17 And why do they do that? Because they don’t have the tools to have that communication. So fears, fear is a bad one. I mean, like I said, God, he said it it, it’s, it’s all about the fears and our lives. Think about children when they start out and they have many fears. No, you know, this is learned behavior. It’s a learned pattern. The older we get, the more mistakes we make and we’re failure. We have little by little by little chat. These things chip away at our self esteem and chip away at our to chip away at our confidence and they chip away at our ability to communicate with our cells. Most importantly.
Chad: 20:54 Absolutely. Uh, I like how you connected those different fears that certain fears like embarrassment leads to anger and how these, these fears lead to other fears and there’s a connection there. And that’s really interesting. What’s one thing that you do to overcome your fears? Like what helps you to face it or to get rid of it?
Bob: 21:13 Yeah. Well, um, and again, it goes back to, uh, you know, working on getting better and better on a, on a, on a daily basis. I’m really much better now at certainly communicating with myself. Bob, why do you feel this way? You know, I walk around the house talking to myself and I’m not afraid to tell you and embarrassed to admit that because listen, if you’re communicating with yourself, you shouldn’t be embarrassed to talk to yourself because at the end of the day, all we have really as ourselves, I’m constantly doing the self examination. I really am trying to stay on top of it, trying to be positive. Life’s tough. Bad things are gonna happen bands and interesting word because I tell people, is anything truly bad if we learn and grow from it, you know when you think about that, it may really hurt and it and we’d want to do it all over again.
Bob: 22:04 No, but was it really bad? You know, just what we learned from it. What have you gained from it, and I do believe, and you’ve heard this a million times, people come into our lives for a reason, season, a purpose of whatever. Not Everybody here, Chad has meant to stay and not everybody will stay, but I suggest and I would recommend to people, get what you can while it’s in front of you. Get what you can while it’s in front of you, while it’s on your lap, while it’s presented itself to you. It’s right there in your face. That’s one of the things I will tell you that I think I’m keenly aware of. So somebody steps on an elevator that I’d been wanting to meet for six months. You better believe I’m going to make that introduction were a lot of times folks will say, oh no, that’s, uh, you know, whoever, that’s Michael Jordan.
Bob: 22:49 I can’t talk to him. I’ve been married. Oh my God. But who am I? You got to make that introduction. The introduction could be, Hey, I, you know, I might embarrass myself, but you’re my hero. Meaning that kind of stuff. So they’re the things haven’t met. Conversation with yourself. Get your elevator speeches down yet your phrases down. One of the things I like to focus on the talk about Chad is integrity, authenticity, authenticity. These beaten up and beaten around a lot. Everybody claims to have it, claims to strive for it. Just get real, get real with yourself. Again, goes back to the communication with yourself. So, um, it is a life long project and a challenge and a struggle for us to do this.
Chad: 23:32 Can you talk about that? There’s nothing, there’s nothing to be ashamed about talking to yourself. I’ve, uh, I was always the guy that, uh, as I was processing something, I’d be mumbling to myself and when I got married, my wife would comment like, what are you saying? Are you talking to me? And I was like, no, I’m just trying to process through something. Yeah. But I was in a space where a lot of my self talk was negative and I didn’t know how to control it and focus it. Now I’m working on trying to use my voice to create my life. And it seems like you’re somebody who is, who is doing that you’re using your voice in a daily basis to create your life, whether it’s with yourself or with other people and you’re not, you’re not afraid to do that. Walk around your house and talk to yourself so that you can be clear. And, um, and I like how you mentioned with our perceptions that we, we can’t control everything that happens in our life, but we can always control our experiences with it. And uh, and how you seem like you’re getting into the habit of talking yourself into switching your perception on something. So that a bad thing isn’t so bad so that it ends up becoming good and that’s, that’s a really important lesson to,
Bob: 24:36 well, you know, thinking about this, you know, I tell people it’s obviously, you know, I’m not, I’m only responsible for what I said. I am not responsible for what you hear because we process things through a room filter. And so, you know, sadly in this world we don’t always see things as they are. We see them as we are, so we see them chat based on our life experiences around whatever’s going on, which can be absolutely totally different. Well it is then everybody else’s experience around that same thing. And so these are the things that we fall into the trap of comparing yourself to other folks and not having that clarity. And No, I tell you one of the most important things that I’ve learned is find the good people in your life. I think it’s chapter 12 of my book is called the whole chapters based on who’s on your team, who’s on your team. So spend a little bit of time, maybe it’s on a daily basis. Maybe it’s, maybe these are one of those exercises you go through on a regular basis. Who’s on your team? Um, who are your go to people who’ve been there for you?
Chad: 25:42 Absolutely. I want to go back to when you mentioned how you can’t control what others here. We can control what you say. How. Let’s talk about listening for a little bit. How on the reverse end do you listen to others and try to listen as good as possible so that you can get the message that they’re trying to send you?
Bob: 26:00 Well, I think one of the best tools that I could give anybody and I tried with myself is, is when someone says something to you, the listening skills, make sure that you have clarity. And so let me give you an example. You say something to me and remember we process things through our own filter. You say something that may trigger something that happened when I was 18 years old. You know, my first girlfriend broke up with me or something. You make a comment and it triggers that whole thing. So what I would do in a situation like that, if you’re having a conversation is to, um, to repeat it back, to play it back chat is this, what is this, what you meant, this is what I’ve heard. Okay, do things there and you know, that what you and what a person, men could be the same but then can be entirely different.
Bob: 26:47 The other thing that factors into those things is inflection, tone, energy. There are a lot of dynamics that are going on around the conversation or around that, that physical interaction. So you’ve got gotta be, you’ve got to be quiet, you know, and, and so listen to that. And then I would, I would just process it that two people, um, you know, ultimately and Carnegie talks with Dale Carnegie talks about this, the sweetest word in the English language is a person’s name. You know, people want to hear their name and so they want that acknowledgement. And so I think that’s one of the greatest gifts as human beings that we can give someone else knowledgement is that respect, is that courtesy and listing is certainly, is certainly one of those. Let’s say we’re having a conversation and you’re on the listing side and I’m on to. I’m on the delivering side.
Bob: 27:40 What I can say to you, Chad, is was I making myself clear now thinking about it this way, here are tier two comments. Chad, was I making myself clear what I said or I can say to you, do you understand what I’m saying? Or were you listening to me? Here are the differences between those two. I’m accepting the responsibility on the first one I’m saying chat was I’m making myself clear, and then you, you know, well Bob, this is what I heard you say, or this is what I think you say said, or this is how I processed what you said. Is that right? Am I right? Oh, no, no, no. I wasn’t meaning that. I didn’t mean to imply. I would’ve said, you know, this is so. That’s how it’s really connecting chat. It’s really listening. It’s taking that time, but put the onus is on. You remember we talked about communicating with yourself, Chad. You can say, hey, it was clear on that. Was that makes sense to you? You know, I was listening to it as I was saying it and I thought, wow, that sounds pretty confusing was that, does that make sense? And that’s real dialogue and the connection happens.
Chad: 28:44 That’s really helpful because I think I’ve noticed that I, I used to have this problem a lot where somebody would say something, I didn’t quite understand what they say, but I was too afraid to speak up and say, can you repeat that? And so coming back to the fear thing, I think of one reason why a lot of times we don’t ask for somebody to clarify as, because we’re afraid of that. But I like, yeah, we’re afraid of that. And I like how you’re just owning it. Like, Hey, and so, but, but by you saying, was I making myself clear? What’s great about doing that on the reverse end is that if the other person is too afraid to ask for clarification, you’re, you’re helping them out by, by basically giving them permission to say, Oh yeah, actually, well, no, it wasn’t too clear. Uh, can you repeat it?
Bob: 29:25 Well, particularly in a professional environment, think about it. You’re called into your boss’s office and your boss tells you they want you to do something. Man, the fear is really kicking in because you don’t want to be that person that says, I’m not sure I understand you. You know, or, or so what happens in cases, you walk away thinking, you understand the message, do you go on and you perform the task, you come back a week later and it’s not at all what was expected. And so what you’re better off doing is say, hey, I really want to be clear that I’m understanding this is what I, this is what I heard. You want me to boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And you need this by Thursday. Did I? Did I get that right? Because I really want to make sure I want to do it. You know, I, I love the, you know, find the, you know, please thank you and forgive me, but also practice self deprecation, practice self-deprecation.
Bob: 30:16 Don’t be afraid to say, you know, uh, again, I really want to make sure I get this right. I want to do a good job for you. And, and this is what I’m thinking, am I on track? Am I on target? Is this what you said? Is this what you want? When I’m hired to do and I do lots of different things, I get hired to do voiceover work. I do some you may have. No, if you look this all myself, I played a Congressman House of cards. When I show up on, on that set, I’m, I’m there to do a job and so I have to put my ego aside and say, was that what you wanted? Was that how you solve a role? Did it sound the way you wanted it delivered? You know, because my ego has to go absolutely out the window. I know I’m bringing the skills and the talent. There’s no question about that, but these are things you know, we all have this where you’re not better than me or you can’t tell me what to do with all that nonsense. You need to let that dribble just go away. Just absolutely let it go. Chat and what it brings into your life as peace and clarity.
Chad: 31:16 Definitely we got a ditch that ego and may have to verify. We have to clarify, we have to verify again and we have to keep doing that.
Bob: 31:23 Absolutely. Absolutely. Ego really just, you know, it, it, it just ruins a lot of things that really, really does. And I, and I have found, I’ve found as I’ve gotten older, the more humble in the more self deprecating you can be, the happier. I mean you just feel better about yourself. I mean, you really. And I tell people the simple things like smiling and good morning complimenting somebody on walking down the street who looks has a particularly nice alpha. We’ve become so sensitive these days, but to see someone and say, that color looks really great on you. Try that and watch the reaction. Not only do they respond to you positively, but I guarantee you, you will feel better as a result of making that gesture, which is instantaneous. I mean, this is not rocket science, but we can do the rocket science all day long. We got a school for rocket science. It’s the basics we get wrong.
Chad: 32:19 Uh, we, we all know we’re supposed to compliment people, but none of us do it and we’re almost afraid to. Yeah, we’re afraid to give those compliments.
Bob: 32:26 We feel secure. We feel like. Why should I tell you that blue is a good color for you, Chad? Because what about me? What about the blue? Immediate, what are you going to give me something back? Forget about it, you know, let it go. Give it away. You know, I like to say give your flowers flowers to people while they’re alive. If the accolades to people while they’re alive instead of saying Joe was such a great guy, I should’ve told him that when he was still here. Now he’s dead. I mean your blood with you, but we don’t do enough of that kind of stuff. And it really elevates our emotional status with people. It’s great capital. It’s great equity.
Chad: 33:02 I wanted to kind of just back up a little bit to when you were talking about how when we go to our boss and were afraid to ask for clarification on things, I think there’s definitely a wrong way to do it where you almost attack them by being like, that doesn’t make any sense. Like, that makes no sense what’s wrong with you? Whereas what you said, those the right way where it’s like, did I get that right and this is what I heard. Did I get that right? So there’s a right way to ask for clarification in a wrong way.
Bob: 33:25 Yes, absolutely. And what it does to it strengthens the relationship because now that person feels like, oh, you’re not afraid to come to me. You’re not afraid to ask for that clarification. You’re articulating right? You want to do a good job. Only good can come from that. The other one, you know, you don’t get it, you mess it up and then let’s say two days go by and you’re doubting what you’re doing, and then you go back and say, you know what? I’ve been working on this for two days, but I’m not sure. I’m not sure I heard you. Well. We had that conversation, so it’s really, you know, Chad, I think that’s a good listing tool that everybody should practice whether you believe you have 100 percent clarity or not. What’s wrong with confirmation? You just said it. The validation. I forget what the. The, the, the verification. What’s wrong with verifying what we think we know what we think we’ve heard. This is what? Even if you’re dead certain, that’s it’s a, you know, I think I got it. I think it got a jet, but can we talk about this a little bit more? Are you talking about ABCD? Did I get that right? And we need to drill down a little bit further because I want to make sure because I really want to do a good job here. That’s a great conversation with somebody.
Chad: 34:35 Wow, that’s really important to double check that. Don’t just think because sometimes we know we didn’t get, but other times we think we got it and we still missed a piece so that that’s, that’s important.
Chad: 34:49 yeah. I’ve had A. I’ve had too many experiences with employers before where I was too afraid to speak up and ask for clarification. I did something wrong and it totally interfered with the relationship and I’ve, I’ve, I did that enough to finally learn my lesson that it’s like, nope, from now on I’m just going to ask for clarification. Once I started doing it, they respected me more for it and it really did up that relationship and when even though before I kept telling myself the store that it would actually interfere, that they would think I was too dumb. Why did I hire this kid? He doesn’t know what he’s. But uh,
Bob: 35:18 well, it’s in the town. It’s in the words that you choose and you know, let’s get back to the self deprecation where you say, hey, again, I think I understand you, but I really want to make sure that I got it right. This is what I heard. This is how I think I’m going to approach this. Is that right? Because then it’s really quite frankly elevating and I’ve been the CEO I’ve and run things and sat on boards and done that. If somebody comes to me and says, Bob, I want to make sure that I heard this right because I really want to do a good job. It’s going to elevate their esteem in my eyes, so I’m going to know when I hand this project out, but you’re going to make sure now it sets the bar and I’m all about keep. We keep raising that bar, but in the future maybe you then become that go to person because they know that they’re going to go to you and there’s going to be clarity there and you’re gonna. You’re not afraid to ask those questions. You know, am I doing this right? And so, and chat, the more we do these things, the more comfortable we are doing these things and the better we are doing these things. It’s practice makes perfect. We don’t practice communication like we practice other things.
Chad: 36:21 Yeah. He practice it like you’re already in the game as you’re practicing it daily, daily basis.
Bob: 36:27 That’s exactly right. Yup. It’s so true.
Chad: 36:29 So I want to, uh, as we kind of close up, I want to first ask you about because the conversation that I think would be interesting and I heard that you have some involvement in, in suicide prevention and mental health in organizations like that. Do you want to mention a little bit about what some of the reasons why there’s things that were uncomfortable talking about and that’s a communication issue. Can you relate that to some of your involvement in, in, in, in, in suicide being this thing that keeps increasing and keeps becoming a problem and then what? And then after that we’ll kind of discuss your book more and.
Bob: 37:03 Yeah. Yeah. And thank you. Um, the, the, the whole suicide prevention for me, I have six children and this is a mental health and challenges around that have affected our family on a, on a very personal level. And so I’ve been looking for something to sort of lend my name and my face and I like to refer to it as my thimble full of celebrity to, to raise awareness. A lot of these things, they’re not sexy to talk about, um, and so we don’t, and unless it’s really a disease or unless it’s something like cancer and God forbid it, I lost my brother and my mom to cancer. So, and I don’t mean to minimize the importance of that, but when things are more psychologically related, right? And so we focus more on the neck down. So if it’s something that people are dealing with, we don’t want to talk about this thing.
Bob: 37:52 So we’re kind of in the closet to use that term. So, um, last year for example, there were 18,000 murders in the country. There were 40,000 suicides. And so, you know, and then believe it or not, what happens is when celebrities like Anthony Bourdain and kate spade commit suicide, a actual percentage of suicide can go up and it can go off because folks, it’s been glamorized, right? And so people were thinking, wow, they, if they thought their last resort with suicide, my life really sucks compared to that because these are people with money and access to good mental health and addiction, whatever they’re struggling with. So if they can’t make it through, then I’ve really lost hope. So, um, I support the American Foundation for suicide prevention. We’ve got an event coming up here in Baltimore in October the ninth to raise awareness there, one of the sponsors on my radio show and I’m so thrilled that they’re doing that and we’re partnering and it’s really a partnership.
Bob: 38:53 Um, I want to get it into some schools have college kids as you know, we’re under a lot of stress these days. And so I think I’ve seen the estimates that one in one in every five college students, students has considered suicide and one in five might say, might not sound like a big deal, but at that one in five is your son or your daughter. It’s huge. Um, and so we got to stop these things. It’s growing and it’s becoming a bigger problem. So, um, you know, I, I’m very excited about doing the work and it does come back to that communication. It does combat to, you know, let’s not be afraid to say I’m struggling with this and where do I get help for this and why am I feeling that way and we need to bring that, uh, again, out of the closet we need to put face on it.
Chad: 39:39 Yeah, definitely. And as, and as we work on ourselves and our ability to communicate with people will be able to build trust with those that are struggling easier and there’ll be more willing to open up to us. And so it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, we need to own that, that it’s our responsibility to become effective communicators so that other people that are struggling will feel comfortable opening up to us. And you’re definitely in the forefront of that.
Bob: 40:00 Thank you. Thank you. Well, it’s tough because people, we label people don’t wait, you know, just like we generalize, we label people so somebody comes forward, are they stigmatized forever because they’ve had struggles around these issues. And so for those people, they’re like, no, no, no, no, I can’t tell anybody. I can’t go forward with that. Um, I was just reading a great article on the level of, um, or the number of physicians who committed suicide and the story was about this very, very prominent surgeon, um, who committed suicide and what he said was, or what the article said was, um, he took some time off of work. He wasn’t sleeping, his psychiatrist retired. He got referred to somebody else who gave them to putting on two medications that really made it worse. He didn’t want to go to his colleagues. Think about it and being personally, you’re like, well, I’m going to, I’m going to go to the surgeon and he’s battling depression and anxiety and he’s having suicidal tendencies. So there’s the career aspect, right? As far as that risk of people knowing that I’m struggling with these things. So what do we do? We, we remained silent inside. It’s really, really a difficult situation and I don’t think it’s gonna get better until we’re able to communicate effectively around it and find those tools. So I, I’d like to be involved in that. That’s really very simple. So many people are doing great work and I’m really just really at the lower end of that level, but I’m trying to help out as much as I can.
Chad: 41:22 Well, I’m sure a great start to get involved in that and become better communicators is by reading her book. And so do you want to tell us a bit about your book, how we can connect with you, how we can get it and about your show as well?
Bob: 41:32 Well, thank you. I, you know, I’m easy to connect with is as I think you know, I’m, I’m all over social media. Linkedin is certainly a big platform for me. Folks are always amazed Chad. I will tell you when I respond to them directly because a lot of people don’t. I don’t have social admin people. Um, you know, I have a team of great folks that not even a team I’ve cobbled together. Some folks may be too help design a graphic or something because technology is not my thing, but I, I am very much involved in. And I’m this book by the way of communicating to win in life. Love and business is a story of my life, so it’s a transparent look at my life. Um, you know, it’s been referred to as the Bible of communication, which I love. And so it reads like a story and so I put myself out there.
Bob: 42:17 There are no names in there other than the dedications, my six children. I talk about my church and my faith in there a little bit at the beginning and what that’s meant to me, but folks can find me on bobpaff.com. They can google me and find me on linkedin. We set up a fan page on facebook for the Bob Paff show. The show is great because people can call in from all over. There’s an 800 number. You can download the APP. The launch date is October the fifth. It’s going to be every Friday night from six to 7:00 PM. So I’ve got a great drive time hour. It’s wcbm680. You can go to the APP store, download the APP, and you can call in from anywhere in the country. Um, and talk to me. It’s Talk Radio Chad. So it’s, I’ve done this before, but it was prebook, so I think the message has grown.
Bob: 43:07 We’re over 12,000 followers on linkedin and growing, and so, um, it’s getting out there. I really, really, really, really want to reach more men. Women tend to really get the message and embrace it for probably multiple reasons, but I want, excuse me, I want men to no longer be afraid to communicate. I could only say, and it’s been people tossed around as a title for another book that I’m working on, real men wear pink. It’s okay to express your feelings. It’s okay to express your pain. It’s okay not to have all the answers, you know, but we really are a village and it’s a community. And so we need to be comfortable reaching out to other people. And that’s the goal. That’s my goal, is to try to do that, to help everyone. And that’s where we’re going off in another direction and we can hopefully chat. Again, the show is going to talk. We’re going to talk about a lot of things. We’re going to push the envelope. I’m going to get into politics. I’m going to get into religion, look what’s going on at the Catholic Church and I’m Catholic and I was molested by a priest so I can relate to those stories. I want to talk about those things. We’ve got to talk about these things job because they don’t go away.
Chad: 44:18 Definitely. Well, that seems like it’s going to be a great show that it’s just going to give people permission to talk about things that we have to talk about so that we can address these problems so that we can start communicating because if we’re getting into it into a time where we’ve got to just get over these communication hesitancies that we have and start talking and listening and forming these relationships and I really thank you for coming on our show and sharing such great wisdom with our audience on how to communicate and why it’s so important. So thanks for coming on. Thank you. I appreciate it. Great talking to you.
