Tony: You're listening to The Present Professional, where we explore the intersections of personal and professional development.

John: To change your experience of life and work with every episode.

Tony: So tune in, grab your notebook, and let's go. Let's go.

John: Welcome to another episode of the present professional today. We're here to talk about presence in partnership. And we were thinking about what we wanted to record. And we were looking at these topics and we were really thinking, Hey, You know, we've really put a lot into our relationships and we feel like this would be a good thing to share with the listeners that it could be really impactful for some at pivotal points in their lives. So we're here to help you invest in your relationship in a way that is going to Keep things new. Keep things interesting. And most of all, allow you to be fully present for the process. And not just present for the process, but grateful for the process. And with that, I'm a little bit more calculated. I like things planned out. I like to have routine check-ins and plans. There was one thing in my relationship that we started right at the beginning. And I came to Jordan and said, I want to do this thing called the partnership check-in. And it started with We each come up with a list of questions on our own, and then we'd come together, refine the list of questions together, and that will be what we sit down each month and ask each other, just to check in, to honestly sit there across from each other and allow one another to share vulnerably how we were feeling. It was interesting the process when we came together, we were able to really think about these questions. We ended up having very similar questions when we sat down to make them what they are today. Just a couple of examples that come from our list is, What could we have done better last month? Or what challenges do you have coming up in the next month, and how can I support you there? Right? It's just open-ended questions where we can touch base on the highs and lows of the previous month. You know, how I could have supported her better, how she could have supported me better. just so we're continuously learning about one another and taking the relationship to the next level. It's something that we, while we may have pushed it back a week here and there, but it's pretty much always the second Wednesday of every month that we sit down and go through this list of questions together. And, you know, when some topic may be more challenging than the other, that always ends up with us feeling closer together, more authentic, and ready to move forward into the next month. So I know I've been excited to share that right off the bat. So I just dove right in. But Tony, give me your thoughts.

Tony: Man, that's pretty powerful the way y'all came up with that idea. and implemented it and have it kind of consistent. That probably speaks to both of y'all's personality and how you want to communicate and what works for y'all's relationship. So that's pretty admirable. I think that it's good to set those kind of boundaries or those kind of like expectations up front in a relationship so that people know get to know even more about their partner. So just kudos to you both for doing that. I think one of the things that Crystal and I kind of realized early on was that we just had different styles and different ways that we wanted to make our relationship work. It was funny, one year, it was actually the same year as Hurricane Harvey, so 2017, Crystal was planning this huge surprise birthday for me, birthday party. And people were kind of communicating with me in weird ways. I didn't realize what was happening, which was they were basically telling me that they were coming in town. It was just kind of strange. And so later, when Hurricane Harvey hit in Houston, if you're familiar with Hurricane Harvey, you can Google it. If not, it was a pretty disastrous hurricane here. It was the same weekend as my birthday that year. After everything went on pause, Crystal came and she told me, ''Hey, I'm so distraught and devastated. I was throwing you this huge party and surprise and all these things.'' I think that moment, a couple of things happened. One is not really related to this, but I'm going to share it in a second. But what happened in that moment for us is that we had a conversation. about how we like to celebrate each other. And what we talked about was, I think I asked her the question, or I made the statement, I said, you have to celebrate people the way they want to be celebrated. And that changed a lot, and not just our relationship, but even the way we looked at friends, family, parents, like, everybody don't want a surprise party. And the reason why it was so powerful for us to talk about that was because she accidentally left people out of the list. And I was like, see, I have friends that, you know, you may not know the depthness of the relationship because I may not talk to you about it as much as you think that I probably should. But I'm present with you talking about our life, your life, you know, goals, dreams, aspirations, all these things. And I have really great relationships. And if I throw this party or you throw this party and all these people are missing. it's going to ruin other relationships. So it was just a funny moment. But I brought that story up because what we realized is that we just had different styles. And so when I throw her a surprise party, she loves it. You know, she goes and she's screaming, oh my gosh, you got me, you know, all that kind of stuff. And I'm like, perfect. I'm so glad you love it. Me, like you talked about calculated. I need to know who's coming. I need to know where's the venue. I need to know what's the budget. I need to know all the things. Because, like, we're going to do this right, you know. So for our relationship, it's funny. We have a thing that we call date night Fridays. So every Friday night is our date night. We have two kids now, so date night Fridays have looked a little different. Even if we don't have a babysitter, we still try to make it happen. We went into a nice restaurant a few weeks ago. Not super nice because we brought our kids, but it was nice enough to where we got decently dressed up and we brought both kids. We had Carsey with the newborn in there, Logan's in his big boy hot chair. We got the iPad, you know, for him to kind of be distracted while we romanticize each other and talk and things like that. But it helps with me because I'm pretty structured too with just saying, hey, Friday night's yours, ours. And then for her, she's able to help plan those too and come up with ideas and come up with a dinner schedule or something like that.

John: So

Tony: For us, I think just realizing that we had different styles was great early on and then just how we kind of come together and communicate our plans to still make sure that we stay in love and have that joy is super important.

John: And I love how you said that kind of gives her an opportunity to plan as well. I know with her creativity, it's, you know, having an outlet for that to be able to, you know, plan a Friday, get together a Friday dinner. Sure. She loves that.

Tony: Right. For sure.

John: And, you know, that's something that I feel we could be maybe a little bit more intentional about. I feel like at this point, just before baby girl gets here, we're pretty much going out with each other any chance we get. And, you know, that's been great. But again, it's when you're there as well. Mm hmm. Like, it's how are you going out together, right? It's when we're there, you know, are you putting your phone even on the table? Like, absolutely not, right? You know, that's, it's the presence in what you've planned as well. And that's something that I try to really focus on is Setting any distractions aside and really just, you know, being present with her in the moment, being present with just learning more about. Her experience and also just keeping it light, laughing a lot. I feel like that's one thing that we do really well is laugh a lot. And that was a big piece of me falling in love with her too, was just like, she helps keep me light. I can be a little cerebral and you know too in my head and you know too pre-planned and calculated and and she's just not like that at all just different types different styles and she's more you know go with the flow and like able to make a joke or a rhyme or a song out of like everything that comes up. And it helps remind me, you know, to not take things too seriously. And that doesn't mean, you know, don't take the relationship or the planning or the intentionality that we have behind the check-ins, behind dates and things, to not take that seriously. But it actually reminds me not to take myself so seriously. And that's what does the number for me, man, like really makes a difference for me in my life. So it's like Jordan was a huge upgrade to my personal well-being in that regard. So it's like that different style is something that I've learned to embrace. And while sometimes my logical mind would be like, oh, come on, why can't you just think of You know, why can't we just come up with a plan? Why can't we make a decision? But then, like, when I drop into, you know, the reality and in my heart, it's like, that's exactly what I needed when I get real with myself in that kind of balance that comes from accepting the differences and putting them out there on the table. So I think that's a great thing that you reminded me of with that story.

Tony: Yeah, it's been helpful. And I think, you know, implementing tools like early on, we did our five love languages test and they might have changed. I don't know. I know that we learned our love languages quickly and I don't know if she does. She might not reference them, but I reference them all the time. So when I think about what I think matters to her based on some kind of data, So I'm very careful with my words or at least I try to be. I think that's one of the biggest things for me is really being cautious about what I'm saying because we grew up totally different. So I grew up in a home that was very straight shooter. Like my mom, dad, like it was like always grown people talking. Like we were like, Hey, like what are you doing? What are you thinking? Why did you do this? You know, just like boom just my parents like just bust you up real quick and get to the point and it's great like that I mean for me it was great and I think being a boy especially it was just it helped me really become the person I am today and I'm able to communicate effectively with any and everybody and Now my wife, she grew up in a much more thoughtful home when it comes to opinions and your voice and what you're saying or even like taking the time to explain and express things or say what's on your heart and just like all the things. Like it's been so many family gatherings since I've been married. You know, it'll be Christmas, Thanksgiving, it could be Easter, I don't know, you pick a holiday. and we go around and everybody says something that's special to them about the holiday. I've never done that in my life. So I started doing that when I got married, and I realized, oh, this is why you are very expressive in your communication style, and I need to be a better listener, I need to be better with my words, because it's like, you say, Tony, give us one thing you're grateful for, you know, here on Thanksgiving. I might have just said back before I got married, you know, turkey, you know, and just move on. Now that I'm married, it's much more of a you know, let me really sit deeply and think about this answer versus just moving on. And that's kind of how we've been able to balance each other with that. And at the same time, my wife appreciates my straightforwardness in different ways. She feels like it's helped her and she'll explain how and why, not me. I don't want to speak up for her, but she's much more calculated in her thoughts before she speaks too. Because when I do speak, I say exactly what I mean. It might be shorter compared to the maybe five minute thought of why I love Christmas.

John: So, yeah, it's funny. Oh, man, you bring up a good point about listening. And, you know, I would say that if you take one thing from this episode and, you know, this conversation, it's increased or better your listening skills in every way possible. And that's like taking this energy of listening from listening to respond, like to be able to have something to say and listening to understand. It's like having these questions in the back of your mind of what's making her say this? How can I learn a little bit more about how she's feeling? What's driving this? Get yourself into this curious lens of listening. And what that's going to help with is your response in the end, right? If you listen, trying to hold a response in the entire time, you're going to end up saying something that's kind of irrelevant to the conversation. So, there's this concept that I recently wrote a blog on, it's called Active Constructive Responding. And you know me, we're going to get into the research a little bit here. And the research shows that the success of relationships comes far more from how you celebrate each other than how you manage conflict. So I'll say that again. You'll be able to predict the success of a relationship more based on how you celebrate versus how you manage conflict now Managing conflict is also important yet at the same time You're likely going to be celebrating each other's wins more than fighting at least we hope And what this looks like is how present you are for the other person's wins. So, you know, when she comes back talking about a promotion or a new project, a new client, something that went well at work. Even if you have completely no interest in what she does for work as it is outside of who she is or who your partner is, but if it was say the scope of work in general, you have no interest. You better dig deep for some interest in whatever that she's doing to help her relive the experience. This goes for either partner. I'm saying her from my side, but this goes both ways. So when you hear about something like that, there are four different ways to respond. I'm going to quickly go through each of them. There's active constructive, passive constructive, active destructive, and passive destructive. Now, starting with active constructive, you help them relive the experience. So you get into, wow, that's great. Tell me a little bit more about that. How did you feel whenever that happened? What made that happen? What do you think was the cause of that? How do you think you could continue reliving something like that? It's kind of like helping them relive the experience and telling to you, you will watch someone's energy just like expand completely. But then you get to active, destructive, and that's where you engage in the conversation, but say something like, you know that promotion is going to come with so much more work. You're going to be spending so much time away from the family. Have you thought about these things? So that's, you're engaged, but it's immediately kind of destructive looking at the negatives potential of anything that she's celebrating, your partner celebrating, right? Passive constructive. is where you're still positive, but you're looking over at your laptop, you're typing an email or you're scrolling through Instagram and you just like nod up and down without even looking at her. Oh, that's great, babe. Like really great to hear. And you just keep scrolling. Might as well been destructive because that passivity just shares like I don't really care, but cool. Then there's passive destructive, which is just a whole different level of just ignoring and saying what we said about the destructive. Have you not even thought about what this is going to do, you know, to the relationship? Oh well, and just kind of like leave the room. Now that's kind of like the whole different level. Now only one of those is going to build your relationship. Only one. And that's active, constructive. And you have to be listening to be able to respond in a way that helps your partner celebrate what they're excited about. I just wanted to make sure that I hammered that concept home because it is critical to the success of relationships.

Tony: Yeah, I'm sure we can all reflect on times where we use one of those in the moment. You know, especially as a male, I think we probably use more of those negative ones more than we think. And then just people, period. I think we're all extremely distracted, so it can happen on accident. You're scrolling on Instagram, somebody's trying to tell you something important, and then it's just a cluster. It just happens to the best of us, even my parents. They'd be on iPads. My dad watches TikTok. So I'm like, what are you doing, man? It's funny. But yeah, I think being present, like you just mentioned about those four things is super important. I've really, really tried to monitor all of that. Not really the vocal piece, but I've tried to monitor my presence with my son especially. He's almost three now. So I can tell he really is thriving for attention. I have to really be mindful of my phone even more, right? Like really monitor, am I actively present with him or am I just physically there? There's two totally different things. And he has a lot of energy. So it's just, y'all pray for me. It's a journey, but we working through it and I'm really just doubling down on that, especially at the nighttime routine. But, you know, I like what you said. I think also another tool I've used is, we've used Strengths. So, you know, I'm a Strengths coach and that's really helped a lot. So, what it did was just kind of put all the data out there for us both. So, I know my Strengths and I talk about them with Crystal's like, well, I want to know mine too. I'm like, oh, perfect. So, she took her test and what we realized, which was super important for our relationship is, We had a lot of similar strengths in a way, or similar domains of strengths, not necessarily exact strength, but similar principles, you could say. Except one particular strength, and that was empathy. So empathy was super high for her, super low for me. And Crystal is a Cancer, so if you follow horoscopes, you know Cancers are emotional, at least the ones I know. So her empathy being super high, I'm like, man, that goes right back to what I mentioned earlier about the different styles of how we grew up, but even to our relationship, me really not, and I know that I have low empathy, so before that moment of seeing her strengths in mine, before that moment, I really didn't care. I don't have that high empathy, you know, sorry. But now I'm like, man, all the times where I've dismissed people, people's feelings, I don't think I've ever dismissed a person and made them, well, I hope I've never dismissed a person and just made them feel invisible. I always try to listen. but sometimes I can find myself not being in it with them, because that's what empathy is, is when I'm telling you something, a story, especially more sad stuff. I'm usually okay about being excited about stuff with people, but if somebody's like really sad, I'm very mindful about my energy, so I'm really careful on how I let that, you know, wear it like a coat. You know, I'm careful about how I put that on me. I'm like, I don't want to be sad because you're sad. But I had to learn like, okay, it's not about being sad when they're sad. It's about being with them when they're sad. So that's the biggest key that I've been focusing on. And my wife, really joyful. So she's rarely sad, honestly, if ever, which I'm grateful for. But even when she is feeling for somebody else, like she might tell me a story about someone else that's going through something and then Now I'm more presently like, I am so sad for her. That is horrible. And that's what my wife needs and feeds on for her communication style. And I'm telling you, before that strength test, man, she tell me a story about somebody else got something going on. I'm like, All right, what do I say? I can't feel it. They're not telling me, you're telling me. Now I'm like, oh. I'm sitting down with my coffee and I'm listening. Leg crossed, I'm all into it. And it's a total different game changer. If anybody out there listening, you ever want to take a strengths test, let me know. Like it's great for relationships. It's perfect for you individually. It's great for corporate teams and all that, but it's really good for relationships. I can attest to that, not just because I'm a strengths coach, but because that has actually changed a lot of our dynamics of conversation.

John: Oh, man. So I look at everything through the lens of the Enneagram, you know, as also certified teacher of the Enneagram and using it with all my clients as well. It gives you very similar understandings of the different types, but then also how they integrate. That's a big part of how it works in relationships too. But before I jump into the Enneagram, the way that you talked about empathy was really, really great. I wanted to see if maybe this helps make it even clearer for you. There's two different types of empathy and it's affective empathy and cognitive empathy. Affective empathy is what you were talking about there with putting that jacket of feelings on. Like I'm going to take on what you're feeling to help understand what you're feeling. And that's the one that's not as effective because when you take that on, it actually stops you from being compassionate. So compassion is empathy in action where you're actually doing something to help alleviate suffering or to help amplify positivity. But cognitive empathy, just like you said, I'm making a conscious choice to help be with even that other person's emotion. A conscious choice to understand it on a cognitive level, not an affective level that's going to affect me. So it's like you really beautifully told the scientific story of what empathy looks like. So I just wanted to kind of bring that up is you found your cognitive empathy, you drop the effect of empathy, and you're able to now utilize it in the relationship and in your life, really. So I wanted to just acknowledge you for finding that. That was beautiful.

Tony: Yeah, thank you for that. And the thing is that it's a couple things, you know. One is my wife is not going to stop telling the stories. You know, she's not going to stop being empathetic. So I had to make a choice, like you said. And I'm also not going to start wearing sad energy. So you can't be neutral the whole time, which is in the middle, which is not caring either way. I'm not going to be sad. I'm not going to listen. So thank you for that. It's been extremely beneficial to both of us. I don't even know if she's noticed. I need to ask her. For sure. Maybe we need some questions on every Wednesday or something.

John: That's a good point. Maybe we'll bring them both on the podcast. For sure. So just picking back up on what I was saying about the Enneagram. So I am a textbook type 3. I score very high in the competitive achiever category in type 3. which type 3 is actually the heart of the heart triad or the feeling triad but the thing is about it's contradictory though because you're so much thinking about being like competitive and achieving that you feel like you suppress those emotions because they're not attributed to success okay that's me She is a textbook type 9 or your peacemaker mediator, like set my own needs aside to make sure the collective peace is upheld. You know, never know where she wants to go to eat. Very indecisive until it gets to something that she really cares about. Or it's like standing up for someone else or planning for someone else when it's someone else's needs. Boom. Right in on it. So this is just the type 9, type 3. Now, the great thing about the Enneagram is there are lines drawn to each type and how they integrate. So we are on the same line. So 6, 3, and 9 are connected. Now, we would need some visuals to share with the audience here. But my biggest growth area as a three is integrating and stretching up to my nine. So actually embracing the qualities of just letting go, being where you're at, like being the peacemaker, mediator, like less attached to an agenda and things like I had another coach described the nine as being able to embrace your inner sloth. And that just immediately brought up, irked me immediately. Like, what do you mean? Why would anyone ever do that? But really, that is the biggest growth area for me. And it's crazy. So it's like becoming more like her and actually embracing that polarity between us is a big thing for my personal growth. And then She understands the things that are like with my needs and she's done a great job of understanding that leaving him to have enough time to be productive, to really dive into his work is actually doing a lot to support me. rather than kind of like not thinking about what's happening. So it's like supporting the competitive achiever, supporting the peacemaker, mediator, has been a really profound insight to our relationships and how each of us operate individually. Again, if anyone wants to learn any more about the Enneagram and their types, I'd be happy to have that conversation as well. So it's cool that we get to bring both of those strong tools to the table here for the audience because there is so much wisdom in each of these assessments. where you can learn more about yourself and how that self integrates with any of the other types. With that being said, I feel like we've unpacked a good bit here and I want to take a moment to just thank each and every one of you that had been listening to us for the past, what is it, a year and a half or so now? It's just been such an amazing journey. We just want to thank each and every one of you that have listened, that have tuned in, that have shared us with your loved ones, friends, co-workers, and especially to those who have left a review. who have left your thoughts and anywhere that you listen to your podcasts, we really appreciate you. If you have any questions or want to shift any topics our way to discuss, we would love to hear from you. So reach out at the presentprofessionalpodcast.com and we will see you next time, my friends.