Unpacked with Ron Harvey
People Always Matter. Join Ron as he unpacks leadership with his guests.
Unpacked with Ron Harvey
Redefining Masculinity and Leadership Through Emotional Vulnerability
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Just Make A Difference: Leading Under Pressure by Ron Harvey
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The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the speakers and guests and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any organization or entity. The information provided in this podcast is intended for educational and informational purposes only and should not be considered as professional advice. Listeners should consult with their own professional advisors before implementing any suggestions or recommendations made in this podcast. The speakers and guests are not responsible for any actions taken by listeners based on the information presented in this podcast. The podcast is not intended to be a substitute for professional advice or services. The speakers and guests make no representations or warranties of any kind, express or implied, about the completeness, accuracy, reliability, suitability or availability with respect to the information, products, services, or related graphics contained in this ...
Welcome to Unpacked Podcast with your host leadership consultant, ron Harvey of Global Core Strategies and Consulting. Ron's delighted to have you join us as he unpacks and shares his leadership experience, designed to help you in your leadership journey. Ron believes that leadership is the fundamental driver towards making a difference. So now to find out more of what it means to unpack leadership, here's your host, ron Harvey.
Speaker 2:Good afternoon, welcome back. This is Ron Harvey, the Vice President and Chief Operating Officer for Global Course Strategies and Consulting. We're a leisure firm based out of Columbia, south Carolina, and most of you that follow us know that already, and those that are new to us welcome to the show Super excited. This is Unpacked with Ron Harvey, and we spent all of our time really on this particular session, having a real in-depth conversation. It's not rehearsed. Our guests never know what the questions are, so we're having a really candid, open, honest conversation. I don't know the next question or the next answer, so hang on for the ride. We will have fun with it.
Speaker 2:Our organization does one thing really, really well, and that is how do we help create a sustainable workforce by the leader getting better. That's what we do every day, all day, and we love it, and so I bring guests from around the world that do different things, and sometimes they do exactly what we do, and we don't call them competitors. We cooperate with them to do better work together, and that's important for us. So I'm excited today to have Marcus on, who I want to always do with our guests. Allow them to share what they wish to share, and then we'll continue to answer and ask questions. So, owen, I'm going to hand you the microphone and let you take us away and tell us a little bit about you and who you are, what you do.
Speaker 3:Thank you, ron. Yeah, I'm known for working with men and this is something I've done for 30 years. Prior to that, back starting in the late 70s. Prior to that, back starting in the late 70s, I got into integrative or holistic medicine and somatic, which is body work, body psychotherapies. I had an integrated medical clinic in Scottsdale, arizona, for like 20 years and then, right before I left, I started doing men's groups, just for myself, really, because I wanted to learn how to be better in my relationships with women.
Speaker 3:And one thing led to another and then 20 years ago, I changed the model of men's groups and men's work when I lived up in North Idaho and I just wanted a group of real guys just to be authentic with and feel they supported me and I would support there.
Speaker 3:Well, that group is still in existence, even though I'm not there. I'm in a satellite Zoom group for expats, but we've had over 500 guys in this group or currently in the group. We have six groups and that way of working with men, which is based on a lot of the physiology of stress and the body which we can get into, is it generated three different businesses, and my current business is called MELD and you can find it at MELD, m-e-l-d dot community and community spelled out, and we work primarily with men, but often I have women as coaching clients or we do some co-ed classes for women or for therapists, where we dive into this. You might call it technology of how do we utilize our body and our physiology that we normally just sort of have operate often in a negative way around stress, and how can we turn it around to ultimately be better leaders, not only for ourselves but for others.
Speaker 2:Yeah, thank you so much for sharing what you do and giving the audience a chance to just understand who's going to be sharing and what are you sharing. And I'm super excited and for our audience you know, I don't know if I've had anyone as a guest to talk specifically because there is an important role that mid-player society and what does that look like and how do we show up? And so there are a ton of questions that's in my head, but I'll first like to start off. You're very, very transparent. You wanted to figure out how do you show up in relationships. What was it because there may be people that are listening, that may be in that spot what was it that made you realize that I need to take care of me? First and I started this thing because of me, but it's growing up to something bigger what was it that you weren't happy with, or just weren't satisfied with about how?
Speaker 3:you well, at the time I was dating a woman. Her name name was Pam, you know, a beautiful woman, smart, successful, and she you know, really cared for me and I'll never forget.
Speaker 3:We were sitting on my couch and she said, owen, I don't feel you. And then I wasn't arguing, I was just trying to convince her. You know, like it was a debate, I'd give her reasons why, you know, I was being emotional, why she should feel me, and then she'd say again, oh, and I don't feel you. And I'd give her more reasons. And then, you know, slowly through my dense head, I got oh, I'm giving her reasons, which are not feelings. I might be using feeling words, but I'm not connecting to her in an emotional way, which is all she wanted. So in that moment I realized what I was not doing and what she needed. And really, I think anyone that you want to have an authentic relationship with needs.
Speaker 3:But I didn't know how to do it and one of the thoughts that popped in my head was oh, maybe, you know, join a men's group. Oh, I don't want to do that, that's for, you know, weak guys. You know all those associations I go. Well, maybe, if I have a charge about not doing it, maybe that's a sign that I should do it. Did a little due diligence, ended up creating a group with probably like 10 guys out of my clinic. It was mediocre, but it gave me enough to spawn me to do more groups and that's what I've been doing for 30 years and it really did teach me and now thousands of other men and indirectly some women, but mainly men. You know, how do we connect to ourselves in a way that's genuine for ourselves, that serves ourselves, but in doing that really serves others.
Speaker 2:Yeah, phenomenal. I mean to be, you know, self-aware enough to know that. Hey, the connection is huge. And for men, we're not taught early age, or at any age sometimes, how to connect with ourselves and we'll be trying to connect with others before we would connect with ourselves. What's the distinction? Because oftentimes you're trying to be in this healthy relationship but you're not really grounded, you're not like even connected with what you like, what you don't like, how you feel, how you express your emotions, and you're trying to connect with another human being, which can be an accident waiting to happen.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean a great example of that and I'll give you a little on how to shift it was my partner is a couples therapist, so we do couples trainings and workshops, and then, you know, we're doing a retreat down in Costa Rica around Valentine's and, you know, the beginning of next year, and so I'll often sit down with a couple when they break off and do like a little exercise, and the guy's really trying to do sort of what I was doing, you know, connect with his wife and she's just getting more frustrated, maybe pissed off or just like, you know, whatever I've heard this before. He's, you know, picking that up and he's trying harder, which only makes it worse. So I say, hey, john, can I help you? He goes, yeah, yeah, please help me. So I sort of channel what I think or feel, he's feeling, and say it to his wife. Often she starts crying because she knew it but she didn't feel it, and he's like dropping his jaw because, yeah, that's what I feel. And then I have him start to do that, and so the problem essentially comes from two things Our stress and trauma that we've had, you know, individually it could be true, you know traumatic incidences, but in most cases it's what I call microtraumas or stressful events, and most of them were in childhood, often around our family and often around what they call attachment issues, which is really to say how well our parents were or weren't connected with us.
Speaker 3:So they really created the foundation of who we are and particularly how we connect to ourselves and others. And then, you know, the other variable is the culture, and particularly for men. You know, we all know all those sayings that we have that sort of operate in the background of. You know, real men don't show their feelings. To be vulnerable is to be weak. You know all those that maybe aren't conscious but are certainly buried in us.
Speaker 3:What I found with myself, and you know all these other men, is often the way out is first through the body, because, like most guys, if you asked me years ago, what do you feel, owen and in an emotional sense I try to find the quickest way out of the room when you know. If you ask me what I felt in my body, as I've asked thousands of other guys, you get a response and even if they don't know what they're feeling, they're not resistant to having you help them. So you work with a guy and what he feels with his body and you point out things that he might be doing, even subtly, with his body as he speaks, and you start to help him make this somatic connection and then, almost inevitably on his own or with a simple question, you ask him what does he feel emotionally? And once he's had that somatic connection, he knows what he feels emotionally and he can share it in a much more authentic way, not from his head but really from feeling it. So you know you might be asking me questions and pointing out that my shoulders are going up and you know my hands are doing this and my breathing's doing this.
Speaker 3:There are all sorts of indications that I might be getting stressed, and so you sort of point all those out which I wasn't aware of. And then you ask me what do you feel? And I might go well, I feel stressed, I feel actually a little scared. As simple as that is. That's a huge shift, certainly for a man to feel it and to say it. And then, when he does it in a group of men which is the essence of what we do our virtual trainings or live trainings or ongoing groups are all essentially peer-to-peer. So when we have a group we get witnesses and these witnesses become affirming. So for a guy, we think that if we we're vulnerable, we're going to be shamed. But in these emotionally safe situations, when we're vulnerable, we're actually honored, which is a huge shift for a guy because when he shares something vulnerably and he sees that other guys are honoring him, that shifts the space in the whole room. Every guy in the room sees oh for me, taking vulnerable risks, I'm going to be honored, and that doesn't happen out there.
Speaker 2:Yes, I love it. I mean, you're exactly right. So, through your practice and all the studies and the research you've done, as you see society, we're taught to be more macho, not to share. How do we help create safe spaces? Because people play sports? I mean, men are in sports and I'm military, you know so my military background, even the military, teaches us to be macho, to be tough. Never let them see you sweat, never let them see you cry. All the things you're taught that was manhood. How did you begin to make that shift where men still get to be men but also be human, if that makes sense, Like you get the yes. How did you start that?
Speaker 3:journey. Yeah, again, by getting guys in the body. But I think you know the simple secret sauce is you create an emotionally safe space, which is really simple. So you know, guys like rules. Be it, you know, these are the rules of engagement for a sport. This is how you play the sport. You know these are the parameters of the field. I mean all those things. That's the goalpost down there, just what you do to the goal. Yeah, oh, okay, I get that, I can play with those rules. Or, as the military in particular, you know, water rules. So guys like rules. So you give them some simple rules like whatever happens here stays here. Confidentiality, you know, and you can opt out at any point. You know simple rules of engagement Guides, get it? Oh, okay, those are the rules. And then, once they see the rules being honored, it's like they're all in playing and we like to play on a field that we understand, in this case, we feel safe in. So that's a big thing.
Speaker 3:Then what happens is you know, this kind of space or experience might be sort of abnormal for most guys, which is fine, but what happens is in these spaces, we teach each other what we didn't get to learn when we were kids and so you know I learned a lot about how to be emotional as a man by watching other men being emotional, yes, and so I remember.
Speaker 3:You know it happens hundreds of times, with one time just popped up several years ago I was in the group. The guy was an attorney. He's in his first group. We have the guy that's new sort of check in or you know speak last. So we're going around the group and guys are just doing their normal thing and saying what they feel being. You know, some are being emotional, and then this guy at the end goes I am just blown away, I just can't believe this. And so it was like a whole shift in his awareness of oh wow, this is how men are meant to be. So we need to see that. So by having guys show it in the safe space that it's like someone just dumped a completely new program into our computer, like someone just dumped a completely new program into our computer.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love where you're going with this, because it's not taught across the board how to show up where you don't want to seem too emotional, and men normally don't hear that, but they don't want to show up that way. I mean it's taught keep it together, keep it together, keep it together, keep it together. How detrimental is that to relationships where you feel like you always have to have it together?
Speaker 3:Well, that's probably the biggest reason that relationships end. I've worked with a lot of men. I've worked with some women, some couples, particularly through Dolly, my partner, and you know, and I know a lot of other couples therapists. If you ask them what was the biggest reason that relationships end's in is because they don't have an emotional connection and it tends to lean more to the man not having it, but it's not his fault because of his trauma and his stress and the culture and all that, but it is, you could say, his responsibility to shift it.
Speaker 3:It's not that there's anything wrong with a guy, and this is one of the first things I tell a guy there's nothing wrong with you. It's just that you had things happen to you that were out of your control and you learned a coping mechanism that was your survival skill, which worked then. But now that coping mechanism is sabotaging, particularly relationships, and then you're not only not trained you didn't see things but you were trained in the wrong behaviors and all that is collapsing to create this situation where, as much as you want to connect with your partner, you're sabotaging it.
Speaker 2:Thank you for sharing the sabotage, overusing something that was a survival skill at one point. Life has changed in front of you, but you're still behaving as though it was you had to protect yourself. How do you work with men that struggle with trusting the process?
Speaker 3:That's a good question. I think you know seeing other guys that are maybe a few steps ahead that we're liking, but you know I've been trusting and seeing benefits as from where. But another way is to get into trust zone experience Cause one of the things that happens with guys is we're told directly and indirectly do not trust your feeling not trust your intuition, do not trust all these soft skills and certainly don't express them.
Speaker 3:And so when I go trust them and I ask your questions that are directing you to connect to those awarenesses and those skills and those feelings, and I'm giving you positive feedback and you're getting your own positive feedback. You're going yeah, this is what I feel. And as you start to feel things, what starts to happen is you literally start to rewire your nervous system and your stress system and guys start to see that so often, quickly, they're being in a stressful situation because they've been doing this work, they're experiencing it differently and consequently, they're behaving differently and consequently, people are reacting to them differently. So, rather than going into the survival, coping, stress mechanism, they're going into okay, maybe I feel this stuff, because it's not repression of the feeling, but the feeling, the energy, the whatever is sort of moving through. And people are actually feeling safe with you because they pick up and we're trained as animals to pick all these subtle cues up to know if that other person is safe.
Speaker 3:And so you could be having, you know, a subtle emotional experience or vulnerability, but still being present and connecting, and the other person will pick it up. So what you might be saying might be quote imperfect, but they will sense that you're leaning into your vulnerability and, almost without exception, people will back off and give you space. And I've seen this you know working with guys where their partners, when their man starts to try to feel and express he might not be doing a good job in the beginning, but his partner sees, wow, rather than going to his head or making it about me or whatever he used to do, he's really struggling with trying to use these new tools. He's not using them too well, but he's trying to be authentic and most people will sense that either unconsciously or consciously, and sort of lean in and relax, because when you're in a stress state, you're in a survival state, which often means you're a threat to the other person. So you flip that and you become someone that's not a predator but another equal.
Speaker 2:Yes, let's shift to the professional side of the lifestyle. So for men that show up in the workplace because you know you show up at home one way and you may show up at work the same way. You may show up different how do you help the leader, that's, the man in the executive position, get through that?
Speaker 3:A lot of different ways. I mean, I can just essentially say how well is that working for you?
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 3:Well, you know, most of my clients are either entrepreneurs or, like C-level executives, and they're usually coming to me because they're successful at work. Yes, they could be more successful, less stressed, but really what they're looking for is how can I be as successful at home as I am at work? So we work on that and that starts to shift within a few months, and then we almost naturally start working applying these principles and skills at work. So we work on that and that starts to shift within a few months, and then we almost naturally start working applying these principles and skills at work and by then they're sort of a convert, and so it's more of a reinforcement. But one of the things I might say is you do like a 360. What are other people saying about you, listen to their feedback, and they're going to have their own projections and some of it's going to be about them. But, as you know, and they're going to have their own projections and some of it's going to be about them, but, as you know, you're going to eventually see a consistent theme and you start going okay, we all have weak spots or skills that we're not good at, which doesn't mean we have to be as good at those skills as we are other things. It sort of means to own it and maybe and this is another one that's hard for us guys is to ask for help.
Speaker 3:Many years ago I was invited to work with Google X, which is our R&D division, and the COO we're talking really bright English dudes and he said yeah, to respond to my question why do you want us here?
Speaker 3:Well, he said these guys are obviously bright, but they don't ask for help. So some of the brightest people in the world aren't asking for help, and how that impacts the bottom line. And so that's just like one example of being a leader, of OK, we're trained to be a leader, not asking for help, not being vulnerable. That we got to know everything, we got to direct everything and sort of be the authority and be authoritarian. And getting into teamwork, which I used to teach years ago, is really being collaborative, and to be collaborative, you got to be connected to yourself. And so the guys that are the best leaders, they lead from within and they're leading from these more subtle, deeper again, maybe softer or intuitive parts and they're being vulnerable and they're willing to make mistakes and by willing to make mistakes they're modeling that for their employees, and so, just as parents teach kids, you know leaders teach their employees.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the days of dictatorship, or command and control, if you will, is no longer working, and there are some people that haven't matured to hey, you got to be collaborative, you got to ask questions, you got to be of service. How do you get us to be in control in order to feel safe?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I might start to frame it as that's what you had to do when you were a kid and it worked. It worked for you as a kid because you survived Congratulations, and it's probably been a key to your success up to this point. Yeah, Not the only thing, but maybe a prominent thing is.
Speaker 3:But now it's starting to backfire you at work and if you're doing it at home, I guarantee you it's backfiring at home, and so usually what I have to do or we have to do is take that guy out of the work situation. It might be what training we do, it might be one-to-one coaching, and you can say it's remedial, whatever, but it's like we don't learn under stress. It's very hard to learn under stress. So he's in a situation that you know as a leader, maybe having you know a successful company, and so some ways he's successful. But to learn this new skill, it's a stress skill. So it's like me telling you to relax. You know, when someone has a gun to your head, it's not going to happen. It's not going to happen, yes.
Speaker 3:So we take the guy out and in these different scenarios, we work with him wherever he's at, and we basically train him and his skills that he didn't get trained in. It's nothing wrong with him. It's like going through school and never getting trained in math. It's not that he's stupid, he never got trained in it.
Speaker 3:So we train him in it and because these are innate skills, pretty much every guy learns a lot more than he thinks he would in these kinds of safe environments and then, because it's innate and because of how he's learning it, he's getting feedback it starts to generalize through his whole life and then he can go back to work and then we sort of help him there and so we go. Look, it's sort of like a bell curve. You might not be really good at the high point, but we're going to work the long tails, and so where the stress is lower, you know we'll work on that so that when the stress gets really big you're in this like flow state. You're not, you know, in a reactionary state. You could be stressed, but you're still more or less connected to yourself and everyone else, and so the outcome is going to be completely different.
Speaker 2:Yes, I love that you're bringing back the connection again and paying attention to what's going on with your body, and quite often as men in my experience we pay attention to everyone else's body and we don't pay as much attention or we'll ignore it. I mean, the warning signs are there, we know it's not well and we'll fake it till we make it or fake it till we break it, but we tend to ignore the warning signs that happen, though, as I probably referenced, there are a lot of oil lights coming out of our lives, there are things that are showing up on the radar that we see, and we just, oh yeah, I got another 3,000 miles before that breaks, so we just try to push through it. How do we get to a place as men to not feel like I always have to just push through it? How?
Speaker 2:do I begin to service it.
Speaker 3:Wow, I saw that in my clinic all the time. I got a lot of friends who are docs and dentists. We all laugh about it. It's sort of a sad laugh about how guys are and I think it's changing for the younger generation, but it's still there. But generally we will not do anything until we have to do it in terms of taking care of ourselves.
Speaker 3:Yes, and I had a good friend a few months ago die because, yeah, he was an athlete but he wouldn't take care, really take care of his stress, but particularly his diet, and he died of a heart attack at sleep. I mean, I was the last person he texted at one in the morning. Wow, and then you know, I get a call the next morning that he had passed away. He had a heart attack and it's because he he like a lot of guys, even though I was telling him wayne, you got to take care of this, don't laugh about it, it's not fucking funny. Yeah, you got to take care of this and he didn't. And that's what guys do, and in my clinic they would hobble in and so it wasn't a life-threatening thing and often their friend or colleague would tell them go see this guy, go there for years and finally they go and after a few sessions they're better and they get upset with their friend why didn't you have me go sooner? And the friend would say I did everything but drag your ass there. So that's how guys are.
Speaker 3:But again, when we can laugh at it about it and put guys in a different kind of scenario, they start revealing it and divulging how they're all like that. It starts to go from being a shame thing to being a funny thing and we start to own it. To get back to your question, I think just getting guys aware of their body, telling them it's a stress response and if you don't deal with it, this is what's going to happen. But here are some tools to how to deal with it so those bad things don't happen and actually you get some positive responses happening for your body and your health, but really for everyone else. And then we're not stupid. After a while we start seeing positive responses, so we get positive reinforcements. And so what I've seen with guys like I got guys that have been in this group for 20 years. What brought them in finished 19 years ago, but they're in it because they want the brotherhood, because they keep working on themselves. They keep improving and honing it through their support of the group.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love it. I love that you say you know we do want the brotherhood, we do need that connection and that support and I don't think there's a man that I know that's alive that doesn't need that, and oftentimes we will pretend that we don't. But men need the emotional support, they need the brotherhood. You know, I watched, you know the right three to do where women will do a lot of women's retreats and women's and men we yeah, you know, and I'm even to the point of where, hey, I'll want to go to two people, but I'm not looking for a man's retreat and women do a good job of connecting and socializing in that space. So, as we begin to come to close to everybody on their own, what will be some steps that you could take, professionally or personally, to do better as men, because your families need you, your communities need you, your workforce needs you, like there are people that have accounted on us to be healthy and be at our best.
Speaker 3:Well, invest in yourself. So one of the things is to just start to realize that the history of your life and the accumulation of stress into chronic stress creates a situation where, to use my metaphor, you're not idling anymore. When you take your rig and you stop at a stop sign, you push the clutch in, the RPNs is not 1,500, it's 5,000 or whatever. You're burning yourself out. And this is what my friend did, and you don't know that because it's been always there. It's been a gradual progression or digression, and everyone around you is doing it. So just get the concept that stress is accumulating and there's a lot of ways to deal with it. The best way you know, there's no drugs that will get rid of stress, but through the body, everything from body work to yoga, meditation, to our work. I mean, there's a lot out there and you'll see more and more guys doing it and that is actually a way to cheat. I like to cheat, you know. I like to find easy, short ways to get results and I've seen a lot of guys go down that path and they just find themselves being more relaxed. So, just in general, it shows up across the board in their medical indices, but also, but also, you know, at home or at work they're just more relaxed, which means they have more resources. Another one is find a group of guys that you can just really be authentic with. And that's a little hard for guys because we get together and we tend to BS or we, you know, we all sort of face the TV and watch a game together and we might do something together, but we're not being real together. Yes, women are sort of better at that. But I'll say this one thing when guys get into this, they get into it and they stay with it much more than women do. So we might resist it, but when we find the right venue or way of doing it, we will stick with it because, you know, we're getting reinforced, we're getting benefits and we're really enjoying it. And so we get guys that come into our retreats.
Speaker 3:I remember a while ago we had this guy that was ex-Special Forces, all tatted up yes, great guy. And we, you know, we do a little check-in and he was like one of the last guys to check in and he says I don't like men and don't touch me. We were like all right, at the end two days later he said I love you all. I want to hug you, call me if you need me. And he came back to another one.
Speaker 3:We all are teddy bears on the inside and we want, and we truly and there's a lot of research that supports this, which you know, goes against you know, or explains why guys are so lonely and how we die of that loneliness but we all want that authentic connection and we're not going to get it at work Probably not. We're not probably going to get it in a lot of other organizations or situations because it's not set up for. So we need to find, you know, use a little courage to find a place where you can get that and not, you know, check a few places out and be willing to take a risk. You get nothing to lose other than a little time and money and if you find the right place, you're going to get a huge return on your investment. Maybe you do it for a little while and maybe you stick with it, but it will change your life. And again, thousands of guys have done that and you know, regularly they start to contact me and thank me from years prior because it, you know, put them in a new direction and then just to go back to something you sort of asked a while ago.
Speaker 3:One of the things that I realized in terms of vulnerability is what I call assertive vulnerability. Women have it, but it's more unique for a man, and what it is is being vulnerable, which is essentially what we think it is. It might not be being vulnerable like a woman crying and all that, but being open, really being open to our own experience and to someone else's experience, and being willing to be affected by their experience, but also being assertive be affected by their experience, but also being assertive. So, rather than collapsing which is what, yeah, as men, we don't want to do and so we just write off vulnerability entirely but because being vulnerable is being weak, and I'm saying and you, I'm sure, saw it in the military with guys being vulnerable, I mean, you know, going into a line of fire to save your buddy is being very vulnerable, yes, but that's a huge act of courage. And that's essentially what I'm talking about.
Speaker 3:Is being vulnerable, feeling a feeling, the fear or whatever else you're feeling and taking action at the same time the chronic stress, or what we call a freeze response by feeling the vulnerability and other feelings and taking action at the same time, and you're showing other people. This is like the epitome of being an effective leader that, oh, he's not a threat. You know, ron's being vulnerable. Maybe he's sharing his feelings, but he's not letting his feelings take him out and he's not being reactionary. He's just being himself and he's not letting his feelings take him out. And he's not being reactionary, he's just being himself and he's taking risks that might not prove out to be successful.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, I mean, you're spot on. I mean that's really you know. What you tapped into just then is how I show up on stages. I'm pretty transparent and I allow my feelings to show up and that I'm human and what was frustrating or what was hurting or what was painful and what was frustrating or what was hurting or what was painful? And people are plucking towards you after that like, wow, you're really transparent. You know, I was feeling that, I was thinking that I had gone through that, but I didn't have the courage to say it in the room like you do. Thank you for the invitation for me to be able to speak to whatever I may be feeling Most men. If you ask them a feeling word, they'll give you an action word, not a filler word, in their response yeah, how are you feeling? Oh, I got to go to work. No, no, not what you have to do. How are you feeling?
Speaker 3:No, don't even care. That's a great question.
Speaker 2:That's been phenomenal. I love the information you share, or is there anything that you're doing for your company or your program that you're running that you can highlight, and how do people locate you or connect with you?
Speaker 3:Yeah, they can find us at meld. M-e-l-d dot community spelled out. We're doing a few things. We have like a introductory 10 week course, which is, you know, a few hours a week. It's virtual, it's guys love it. It's a program I first created 10 years ago and we kept on improving it over the years. They did some significant research on it about a year ago. It took them a couple of years to do. It got published a few months ago in the APA Journal about how effective this program is.
Speaker 3:So that's a great intro for guys. I have group coaching, I have individual coaching, but also we're going back to doing live trainings, which I love doing, our team loves doing and guys just love it. It's always a little scary to show up because in theory, you don't know what you're showing up for. But yeah, we have the ABC News app, one I did a while ago. I mean it's a powerful experience. It's a lot of fun and safe for guys. The bottom line you can learn all this stuff in your head, but you need to put yourself into situations where you have experiences, because it's the experience that's going to teach you.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, I totally agree. Information is great, but implementation of that information is through some kind of experience. So I'm glad that you're out there, that people are getting to. Are you also on LinkedIn or anything else, or is it best just to go through the mail?
Speaker 3:Oh yeah, I'm on LinkedIn, our company's on LinkedIn and Instagram, and, yeah, we're on all that and we post some of the stuff. And we have a free newsletter that's open for men and women that I write every week. It has a lot of different content on it. And then we have free membership for men. We have this community where guys can just connect and right now it's just free for men. Yeah, we appreciate it.
Speaker 2:Well, it has been a pleasure. And to all of our guests that follow us and that pay attention and listen to our podcast, thank you for joining us. I mean, you had a phenomenal time, great information. And for the men, this segment and this session was really speaking to you. So, our women, we'll be back another time that we'll put some focus on you, but today was really focused on what is it. And for the women, that areren shared about the man that you reveal a relationship with. Thank you all for joining us. Again, this is Ron Harvey Unpacked with Ron Harvey podcast. Thank you for joining us and until next time. Y'all have a wonderful day and a wonderful week.
Speaker 1:Well, we hope you enjoyed this edition of Unpacked podcast with leadership consultant Ron Harvey. Remember to join us every Monday as Ron unpacks sound advice, providing real answers for real leadership challenges. Until next time, remember to add value and make a difference where you are, for the people you serve, because people always matter.
