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Up Your Average is the “no nonsense” podcast made for interesting people who think differently. Learn to navigate your life with unconventional wisdom by tuning in to Keith Tyner and Doug Shrieve every week.
If you go into conflict or conversations or communication and think it's all about me, I
think you're gonna have really difficult times in whatever communication you're trying to
do because life isn't about you and probably the conflicts you have are trying to teach
you it's not about you.
Welcome to the Up Your Average podcast, where Keith and Doug give no nonsense advice to
level up your life.
So buckle up and listen closely to up your av.
Doug, happy Friday.
Hey, happy Friday.
Happy October.
October.
It's time for people to switch to pumpkin spice lattes and all those types of things.
The Dunkin' Donuts had the Spice Girls or whatever they're involved in, and they had this
unusual one on their commercial called pumpkin spice.
And she's kind of an awkward spice girl.
It was pretty funny.
I just saw it this week.
Yeah, I'm not a pumpkin spice kind of guy.
I'm not either, but I know a lot of people love it.
Yeah, I think it's funny.
It's everywhere, like at the coffee shops.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And I have to slow down when I say that word.
The the orange thing with the some type of vine attachment.
'Cause it's it's easy for me to be a hillbilly and leave out the Pumpkin?
Yeah.
I like going to a restaurant where the waitress called me the Hey pumpkin.
Yeah.
Somebody called me that recently.
There was they called me like honey or sugar and they were like twenty years old.
Like like when I was twenty and they did I was good, but I have to wrap my Well I think I
told you about that and you what did you say?
Like you emphasized the wrong syllable.
uh And it's fun to emphasize the wrong syllable every now and then.
Like just to just to just mess with my kids.
yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
No, there's a lot of things you can do like that.
It's uh it is a funny thing.
And that's really that's really what I threw out there that we talk about today is
improving our communications because com communications to me are probably the difference
between a wonderful life and a life brought with all kinds of conflict and and you can you
can do it to yourself without even knowing it if you don't even take kind of an
intentional pursuit of how you're communicating.
It's true.
And there's so many levels in different ways to communicate.
Uh in person is always the best when you can sit eyeball to eyeball with someone and see
their nonverbal communication skills.
Yesterday I was bragging about my degree.
Yeah, I like to brag about my degree being a communication studies major.
And as my good friend Franz likes to say, we know how to communicate because we
our communication majors.
But eyeball to eyeball communication is is the best because you're picking up on
nonverbals.
And nonverbal communication, I I learned back then is 70%.
I don't know if it's eighty or ninety or if it's, you know, but it is high.
And so your nonverbal communication skills, that's something that everybody can work on.
Doesn't matter if you're introverted, extroverted, there are all these different
ways that you can sharpen how you listen and how you communicate with your body and and
your positioning.
And um so that's why I like to do it eyeball to eyeball.
So much of what we do is over the phone.
And that that's a little trickier.
It's it's a secondary.
Like if you're thinking of the channels how you do it, do I do it verbally or written?
Definitely want verbally
Overwritten because written is has no context whatsoever besides the sequence of the
words, right?
Yeah.
And the sequence of timing.
They get the letter, they respond, or you're responding to something that you saw, but you
can't get the direct feedback.
Boy, the probably the biggest accelerator in me learning to communicate better was
becoming an employer.
Okay.
Because uh my my bias, and I I I think this is an okay bias.
My bias is if anything comes out of me in the form of communication, is it's gonna be
positive?
Like I don't need to tell people negative things unless I need to.
Like if a waitress gives me okay service, do I need to No, I don't really need to offer
that communication.
But when you become an employer or the parent followed after that, but as an employer, uh
Somebody's gonna go crazy if you don't communicate very well because somebody's gonna
drive you crazy, you're gonna drive them crazy, and you have to.
I don't think those kind of communications can happen in paper.
Like normally in paper, if you get to that point, that's basically writing down the
warning next time you're out of here kind of thing.
But when you're saying, Hey Doug, you could improve upon this, that that I think needs to
be face to face.
I think most people
in my generation probably developed communication skills from watching TV.
I think that's probably great.
It could be, you know, cartoons.
I grew up watching uh Looney Tunes.
I still love the Looney Tunes.
Uh the Three Stooges.
I love the Three Stooges.
and and so your communication skills, you you've learned, you've picked up, you've
observed from somewhere.
Mr.
Rogers, I watched a lot of Mr.
Rogers.
And
on this quest for how am I gonna be a communicator, how am I gonna communicate with
people, I think that's where it starts is what you observe.
And if you've never observed a healthy environment of good communication, maybe your
household had a lot of yelling and a lot of finger pointing, it's it's gonna be really
tough to break through those those curses and get beyond it.
And so to have somebody say, Hey, come alongside me, maybe it's an employer, maybe it's a
school teacher
Um, and say, come alongside me.
I want to walk through life with you.
I care about you.
If someone cares about you, then you'll probably become a better communicator.
That's really good.
That if you did grow up in a place of maybe conflict, there might be a tendency towards
passivity or passive aggressive, or maybe even not saying anything, right?
Like just absorbing it, which can't be very healthy.
And so learning
To be frank or candid and maybe even learn to turn off the emotions is quite a learned
process.
Because if you grew up in a place where the emotions were attached to the communication,
it would make communications very difficult.
Maybe not.
Because the the way I think of communication is pitch and catch with a baseball, that it's
just not me speaking.
It's me listening.
Like you said, listening with your eyes.
listening what's kinda what's going on in the situation and and that isn't always just a
one way there's gotta be some disarmament and if you're in a family that that uh shows
love and affection there's a disarming effect there.
I had the luxury and this is a mega luxury of flying business class recently.
Nice.
And the
The way that the flight attendants would communicate with you up front in the plane is
different.
And they're very disarming.
And it's just a simple Would you like a a a beverage today?
Will you be dining with us today?
And so having someone come to you with a disarming question is a great way to lead into a
first conversation with somebody.
It builds trust.
That's what I was
thinking as I was preparing is if I say, Hey Doug, you always do this, that that's a
declaration kind of looking for a fight.
But if I say, Doug, tell me why you do this, uh it's getting to a similar place, but it's
helping me better understand where you're coming from.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So so like especially in the employer employee relationship, if you say, Hey Doug, you
always do this,
Now I am like on edge.
Like I'm like feel like I'm walking on eggshells and that's probably gonna hurt my my
value I'm bringing you.
And and probably equally would be if I use never.
You never you always forget this or you never do that.
And these are really skills not only in the um workforce that learning to communicate with
family mem members is really critical.
I think, particularly as a young dad, if you're out there or a young mom and you're
You're trying to navigate whether it's the adolescents or the teenage years.
Um, words become really critical, I think, today.
And just understanding that there's gonna be a lot of words.
I don't know how many words like the average uh four year old says or uh the average like
fourth grader says, but there's a lot of So So I think one of the most critical uh steps
in communication is listening.
And if you're a parent and you've got that four year old or fourth grader, you are
listening a lot.
Like that is an exhausting time of your life.
But to be able to take in all these different words and then say, What what is my kid
trying to tell me today?
Well, and and really even if you think of it as a season, because you're gonna hit that
season when they're not gonna talk to you at all, right?
Like and so so to not
be tempted to become impatient and to build that on around that that I am a place where
they can come to and have a conversation.
And one of the things in communication with the kids for me is I tried to be available to
listen to what they told me without sh being in shock what they tell me, because I wanted
to be a safe landing pad for whatever information they had.
And if if I couldn't be that
Then they would have to go somewhere else with that information.
And that's really a type of That's good.
So like what decade of life are you in, maybe is is the is the question to ask somebody.
Is hey, what what decade of life are you in?
Like what is going on in this decade of your life that could be the most important thing
for you?
And if you're in that season of raising young kids, uh a lot of it is going to be
listening and discerning, correcting and aiding and helping.
But you have to listen first.
Man.
Mm.
And then if you cross into that like what decade of life are you in?
Like where am I?
Yeah.
With the people I communicate with, is that what you're saying?
Yeah.
Um, I have
probably adult young adults that I spend a lot of time.
I s I have clients that I spend a lot of time with and I think just try to communicate
with anybody in random ages, you know what I mean?
I'm trying to be available to anybody, but I'm shortly going to be back in that two and
three year old stage, right?
Like that's going to be across my path.
And yeah, that's going to take a whole different set of skills that had have maybe been
They're all on the shelf?
Yeah.
They they haven't been used so much lately and But you still have Yeah.
Like like with Josie, she's what, six weeks old and I can just sit and listen to her make
noises right now, right?
Like they're she's not set.
Okay, so your mother in law, I know is your friend.
Yes.
How has she communicated with your kids?
Like will you take some of her skills and employ them to Josie?
You know how she communicates, I think, really well.
with the kids.
I think she communicates with a frying pan and a game of aggravation.
Okay, frying pan and aggravation can go a couple of ways.
That's your Yeah.
uh So you didn't know the aggravation game with Marvels and Dice.
I don't.
No, it's it's a it's a probably an eighty year old Parker Brothers game.
But it it's one that
just passes through time and the kids will have it.
You each have five marbles and the goals to move them around the board and you roll dice
and mom will trash talk the kids, like no matter what age they are, which builds a yeah a
competition amongst them.
But the frying pan, she will speak their language of what they like to eat.
And she is very um thoughtful in that manner.
Yeah.
That's cool.
Yeah, so those are communication things that we didn't discuss, but learning what speaks
to the hearts of people can do that as well, right?
And so the frying pan, the game, both of those say you matter, you belong here, and I care
about you.
I care enough to spend time being involved, whether I'm making you something or whether
I'm just sitting down with you.
And probably
Even if you have to give bad information to somebody, taking time with them, my my as an
employer, most every time I've had to let somebody go find a new job, um, they acted
surprised.
But I don't think they really were.
I think that's just kind of a div defense mechanism.
And then as the person who had to dispense the bad information, I probably always lost two
or three nights sleep on every person I ever had to do that with.
And and I don't know that my personality would ever overcome that, but it sure is easier
if I've communicated openly and honestly with them.
And if I've withheld information or something
I'm not sure I had to disclose.
Like if somebody was just to a really, really bad fit, I didn't have to disclose how bad a
fit they were.
Yeah.
But if I gave them enough information to help them know that there's a better place for
them, I I felt much better about it.
What's your experience?
Well having to let somebody go from a role that maybe they even enjoyed or they thought
they enjoyed?
Yeah, that that's very difficult.
Um, but I think you follow the energy of stuff.
And so you can follow the energy of a relationship and it's either uh bringing energy to
you or you're bringing energy to them or you're not bringing energy to each other.
And that becomes very evident and very clear.
And that I think the trick is not to fall into just kind of an apathetic view, but to care
enough to help someone get to where they need to be.
So when there's a lack of energy and it's very difficult.
I I think that's probably the obvious time to say, hey, let's do something different.
Well, if that's not addressed, the organization itself suffers because the people that
interact with that organization don't usually get very good attention with what they're
trying to accomplish because there's just a lack of I don't know, energy is a good word
for it, but communication amongst people is there's a there is that apathy or
lackadaisical attitude that unfolds.
And and and that type of energy flow
that that can happen in a long-term relationship or it can happen when you go order coffee
tomorrow.
And and so when you're picking up on somebody's uh energy or lack of energy, uh it it can
be addressed right there.
And it can be a way that you can encourage somebody, hey, how's your day going?
I asked a supermarket checkout lady one time, do you remember this story?
I asked
A uh she she was working at Marsh supermarkets.
They're no longer around.
They're like a Kroger or something like that.
And um I said, Hey, how how's your day going?
She goes, Do you really want to know?
And uh this thought in my head, like I just a microsecond was like, I don't know if I
really want to know.
But I said, Yeah, I really want to know.
That's why I asked you.
And she told me what was going on, and it was something I really didn't want to hear and
made me like kind of scared.
Yeah, just squirm a little.
Uh, but we had some energy exchange.
She knew that I really cared, cared enough where she could tell me what was really going
on with her body.
And and I just I look back on that small interaction as such a big win because I really
listened and she heard me listen.
I think a lot of this idea of us communicating better.
sometimes involves us even thinking more purposefully about life.
Like if my destination is the point of my life rather than maybe the journey, you could
get in the way of my destination and become a kind of a a distraction rather than maybe
the point of my day.
And give me an example of somebody's like destination.
Like what is that thinking like where where have you seen that yesterday
Like I I'm just hardwired personally that I'm gonna get my work done and then when I'm
done, I'm done.
Okay.
So yesterday we had an interruption, probably about this time.
My good friends and neighbors.
Yeah.
And and they'd probab they may or may not have known like my personality and so it was
probably what, 45 minutes?
Yeah.
And so I had to stop what I was doing intellectually, not physically.
Like I had to stop my brain and keep telling myself.
Pay attention, pay attention, don't act disinterested because it it it's just not a strong
suit of mine getting distracted in the middle of my workday.
And so that process is just learning that, hey, they they are the journey.
They're the whole point, maybe why I'm in the office today, but I might forget.
And what was the big win for you?
Well, I need something done that would probably take three or four hours of my life to get
it figured out how to get it done.
Right.
And they do the very thing that I need.
And I didn't have to price it.
I didn't have to go out and show them all like I didn't have to meet with a bunch of
people.
I just You didn't have to say, Do I trust these guys?
Just hung out with them.
And that sort of communication has consistently, as I've matured, helped me to learn to
live for the journey and not the destination.
Cause you just don't know what the real purpose of this day might be.
And if my communication
is short.
It's um kind of shutting people down.
You don't really know what maybe today might have been if you don't learn to communicate
better.
And that's been Man, that's a great example of destination.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Cause you you want to just get on with the work.
Yeah.
But uh you took the windy road.
Well and and and the irony of it is I went to a financial advisor's retirement party a
couple Fridays ago.
And like
What am I trying to get to?
Like w where where is that destination that I can't slow down enough to have a
conversation with whoever?
Like I for me, it's sitting right here by the front door.
Part of the way I train myself to communicate better is if I'm not on the phone and the
mailman or the uh FedEx person or the Amazon person comes, I will go have a conversation
with them to stop what I'm doing, to let them know they matter.
And maybe go get him a soft drink or something.
But that's how I've had to retrain my communication skills for things that previously as a
younger male I didn't think mattered.
That is the disarming first class experience.
Male guy comes and they walk around here, which is really cool.
They're on their feet with a mailbag.
Comes in, hey, may I get may I get you a beverage?
I mean, that is the first class flight attendant experience.
Right.
And that's probably not happening all day for him, right?
Heck no.
Yeah.
No.
No, they're they're fighting off dogs.
Well, let's go the opposite side.
We had uh we have a uh a file right on the other side of the cleaner here that we put
shredder stuff in and we had to get rid of some of that like piled up in the basement
recently.
And that person sounded like they were ripping the stairs out of the like they they
definitely uh got some bad milk in their coffee that morning or something.
And
The the the dialogue going on in here.
Do we say anything?
Because this is part of communication.
What do you do when you have to give negative feedback?
Do you just let it slide or do you let it give you heart problems?
I'm the worst at giving negative feedback.
I don't like to give negative feedback.
It um there's all types of warning sh signals that go across my brainwaves.
Do I say anything?
Should I say anything?
What would I say?
But there comes a point, a spark.
Uh and for some people that spark is a fight.
it's defense.
for some people it's uh sticking up for your friend.
And that spark ignites it and and you cannot not do something.
Well, having grown up in a household that didn't foster healthy conversations or
communication, I had to learn as an adult to be healthier in the way I communicate.
And um and and and probably the I can't think of a better training ground than this
business.
Um that that we get feedback communication on a constant basis.
I don't I I appreciate the positive feedback and communication, but that isn't the part
that really tr tr challenged my longevity in this business.
It was the negative feedback, the the the ton um
Critical feedback and learning what to do with that.
And I I just learn to say I get fired two or three times a year.
People when I tell that they try to negate well, you don't get fired.
They just your clients chose to go s I go, well No, I really do.
Yeah, I get fired.
They just basically say, I don't want to do business with you anymore.
And um most people probably don't get fired three times in their lifetime.
But we may get fired for a variety of reasons.
Client might die, their kids don't want to do business, might have had an underperforming
year, we might have screwed something up somewhere.
And all of those things communicate things that are hard to accept if you've never
accepted them as fitch and catch.
But to get that feedback and to accept it, I think you have to start with a place outside
of communication.
To determine, am I okay with Keith?
Because if I require your acceptance to be able to do what's right in life, then I'm ba
basically have become your servant because I can't take the negative feedback.
So I've had 40 years of it, which if it was only three times a year, that's 120 times I've
had to accept that kind of pitch and catch.
And it doesn't necessarily
becomes simple, it still tempts you to think about things and decide, okay, what's real
and what's not.
But that feedback probably has been as healthy for me as anything.
It's helped to to develop a business because if you get negative feedback, it could be
true, right?
Oh yeah.
My dad has helped me with this.
He's got a a saying that he'll use and he used it on me for years until I picked up on it.
But this
What he what he would say is, you know, you might be right.
And so what he's saying is, uh, y you could have a point, you might not have a point, but
I'm gonna think about it.
And if you are right, then I need to address it.
I need to look deep, I need to make some changes.
Well, and and I guess the positive side of this is Gimbal is better today because it's
happened to him and to you.
Because we we look in the mirror and say, What what needs to be done?
So I sent you communication not in the uh verbal but writing last night.
I sent you communication about something and we both were talking about it last night.
Yeah.
And uh we had two different takes on it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yours was let's let's grow and I was like, Those turkeys?
It's just a way to looking at both sides of a toy, right?
'Cause
I don't think any business grows without negative feedback.
Like 'cause how do you find out what a business opportunity is if you don't get a little
pushback because nobody's gonna say the the most profitable bus businesses aren't on the
free way.
They're not the easy way.
Yeah.
They're where somebody had to go, that didn't work and you have to jump in the midst of
it.
Well, if you can't take that form of communication, you're missing out a l a lot of
opportunity in life.
Yeah, the I think it was the Alger funds we were sitting in New York City.
And one of our our friends there pointed at pointed out positive disruptions.
And so disruptions seem negative, but if you can find those positive disruptions, then
then you can change and make something better.
And and I I'm certain we're doing that here.
uh our different personalities get offended or are quick to react or or whatever.
Uh but after a couple hours or days, probably not a month, but after a few days, uh to
receive some
something negative or critical and look at it with eyes wide open and say, okay, what what
do we need to do?
And that's how you move forward.
And I think really if I were going to throw out a kind of a a golden nugget idea with
communication, if you are able to be genuine genuinely selfless towards the other person,
doesn't mean they get their way, but if you look at the other person and say, what is the
right thing for them?
And how can I help them with that?
Whereas I think most communication is selfish and what can I get out of this?
And you hurt my feelings, so I'm gonna come at you.
If you can learn to be more selfless in what you're trying to accomplish, I think you're
gonna find that that the conflicts will still be there, but you're gonna end up helping
more people than you ever imagined you would, even if they don't get the outcome they
want.
But if you
go into conflict or conversations or communication and think it's all about me, I think
you're gonna have really difficult times in whatever communication you're trying to do
because life isn't about you and probably the conflicts you have are trying to teach you
it's not about you.
One of my friends, he's an engineer, he's a very successful businessman.
He he owns his own company.
But when he was a young uh professional, a couple years out of uh engineering school, the
the guy who owned the business said, Hey, look, you're gonna make three times more money
if you can learn to communicate.
And so what he'd do is he'd just start watching movies and he'd watch how people
communicated and and those were the teacher.
And so I would I would encourage anybody out there, uh, find a teacher.
I don't know if watching Hollywood movies is the best suggestion.
Um, maybe it's hopping on your AI and and asking, maybe it's uh having coffee with Keith,
but but find a teacher.
May maybe it's just asking God, hey, help me communicate better.
Um, but find someone who can mentor you and help you, and then just watch how they do it.
And and a mentor that's available is one of the we've done a couple.
up your averages with them is the Dale Carnegie people.
They can help you, particularly if you're afraid to even kick it off.
It's a good I think it's a safe place to to begin that.
Or or if you're n if you don't don't want to hire them or you're not even sure what that
means, you just go buy one of Dale Carnegie's books.
Right.
Right.
And maybe I haven't ever done the Toastmasters, but they're they may not be as much to do
that, but it's the same idea.
We're going to help you communicate verbally better.
And
And probably learning to communicate verbally is probably a better on-ramp than trying to
improve your texting or emailing skills first.
Because y I I would say when you're trying to decide what channel to use, never ever,
ever, ever, ever use written communication for negativity because you can't get rid of it.
So if you've gotta do something negative in the communication field.
you have to go do it face to face or at least on the phone.
Yeah.
I would agree.
Yeah.
But but there are plenty of ways to do this.
I think I would say this is probably a high priority learned skill that particularly young
people, but even, you know, senior people can learn to do this better because you do want
that grandchild to come around.
Like if you can't communicate well with them, they're not going to sit at the table.
And eat what you cooked up on the frying pan or d what play the aggravation game with you.
But if you're willing to improve your skills, cool things you're gonna have.
So uh I think it was last Thanksgiving and I did we record a podcast on this where you'd
put together some thank questions that people could ask during Thanksgiving.
Yes.
And and so I'm not sure where that podcast is.
Um maybe we could put it in the notes somehow.
But
Keith, I think maybe I threw in a question or two, but Keith came up with a list of
questions that you could ask your loved ones during Thanksgiving.
And so I would encourage you, just have one or two questions in your hip pocket that you
could pull out and try this weekend with somebody.
And after you do that, after you throw that question out, follow the energy of that
conversation.
And if it goes nowhere, that's fine.
Leave it.
Find somebody else.
I I would even throw out there, Doug, if you are um if this is something I mean, it's a
lot easier to do today than ever, but we've got these that we give away to people in the
over in the gimbal drawer over there.
But like here's an example.
What's the most beautiful place you've ever seen?
Yeah, that's great.
You could ask the barista, you could ask the
Mailman, you could ask anybody that and it's gonna change their perspective of the day and
there's there's all kinds of questions like that.
And before you know it, your kids will tell you, Dad, please don't talk to anybody.
Just get back in the car.
Doug, I am going out to dinner with my daughter tonight.
I'm gonna have a good time at Bongies.
I haven't been there for I love that place.
Yeah.
And so that's dinner.
Any big plans for the Shreves this weekend?
I don't think so.
I think I'm gonna water some grass.
Well, I hope you guys can up your average.
I hope your communication skills continue to improve so you broaden your horizons, and I
just appreciate you taking time with us today.