Episode 65
If you’re a parent, you probably wish you had more influence on your children than you do. Especially when they get older and are less likely to listen.
But, how do you make that happen?
Brent Bartel, a certified life coach, and Tina Gosney talk about Stephen R Covey’s Pyramid of Influence in his book, “Principle-Centered Leadership” and how to begin having more influence on the people you love the most. This is episode is part 1 of 2 as Brent and Tina discuss just the bottom level of the pyramid – modeling and what other people see.
The first step is to work on yourself to become a person who is capable of influencing others.
This episode is part 1 of 2.
Want to contact Brent Bartel? Email him at: [email protected]
Full Transcript
Tina Gosney 00:00
You’re listening to the coaching your family relationships Podcast, episode 65, The pyramid of
influence with Brent Bartel, part one.
Did you know The strength of the connection and your
family relationships is one of the biggest measurements of your overall life satisfaction and
happiness. But family relationships can be so tricky. I’m your host, Tina Gosney a family
relationship coach. I’m here to help you navigate through the tricky parts of your family
relationships. When you work on you, everything begins to change.
Welcome back to the
podcast. I am so glad to have you here. This episode will air on October 13. And today, on
October 13, I am holding one of my breathing classes for the month. If you aren’t signed up for
the one today, there’s no worries because I have three more dates that you can sign up. That’s
October 18, the 20th and the 26th. Those will all be held at 11am. Mountain Time. It’s actually
less than an hour, it’s probably like a 45 minute class.
So it’s not a huge time commitment. And
if you can’t attend at 11am, no worries, because there will be a replay that sent out. So you’ll
still be able to watch it later. Now why do you want to do this breathing class, partly because it
will help you learn how to do the things that Brent and I outline in these this podcast today.
We
talk about slowing down by about becoming more responsive and less reactive. Working on a
breathing practice and intentional breathing practice helps you do that it helps you manage
your stress, it helps you recover more quickly, when you get triggered by something that is
upsetting in your life. Those little ones that we encounter every day and the big ones, it just
helps you have more resilience in your own life.
And you know what else breathing does is it
really helps you to feel more grounded. So if you are not signed up for my breathing class, I
want you to go to the show notes, sign up for one of those dates, October 18 to 20th or the
26th. And to make sure you’re getting in on this breathing class, because I won’t be offering
this for a while this is the last ones they’ll be offering for a while.
Now I do want to introduce
you today to my brother in law Brent Bartel. And I do give a more detailed introduction in
when we get into the podcast. And I’m talking to Brent. But I just want to let you know that
Brent is one of my favorite people. And one of the things I love about him is that he loves big
words. And this is something that we all the whole family loves about Brent, we don’t always
understand what he’s saying. But he is a wordsmith. He just loves big words. And he has
learned them and applies them and understands them. And so I just want to prepare you for
that. And you’re going to come to love him too.
You might want to just maybe pause once in a
while and get out of dictionary, because he is just such a wordsmith. And that our discussion
was so long on this podcast that I did divided up into two different sections. So you’re going to
find part one and part two of the same discussion. And be looking out for the next in the series
when we start talking more about the next levels of the pyramid of influence from Stephen R.
Covey.
So enjoy this podcast with Brent and I will see you in part two.
Okay, I’m here today with
Brent Bartel. And Brent and I have full disclosure are related by marriage. We are married to
two siblings. So he’s married to the sister, I’m married to the brother. And we’ve been in each
other’s lives for more than 30 years now. We know each other pretty well. And I think Brent is
one of probably one of the most insightful, educated, just amazing people that I’ve known in my
life. And it’s been a blessing to have him there and and wanting to share him with the podcast
with all you they’re listening in the podcast so that you can start to get to know him, because
I’m going to have him on again, this is not our only talk, and he’s prepared for that.
So Brent,
would you want to introduce what else would you want to say about yourself here? After I’ve
been singing your praises already?
Brent Bartel 04:43
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, thank you. And that is utterly overstated, but I appreciate your
kindness. And I’m really thrilled to be here. So this is my sort of maiden voyage on podcast and
I’m just hoping I don’t break your podcast today.
Tina Gosney 04:58
No, no worries. out there.
Brent Bartel 05:01
I actually didn’t get invited back. But yeah, this is really exciting for me. Anyway. Yeah, I’m a
Family Guy. That’s probably most important. I am married your sister in law, those guys and
he’s produced some really good kids, didn’t they? Yeah, they do. Yeah, four children have two
sets of twins. And that’s a really sort of interesting story for another time. Just retired after 34
years in higher education. I worked in the realm of police management and an organizational
and leadership development. I was a Franklin Covey facilitator there was in my college district
for probably 23 years did a lot of other kind of facilitation and personal professional
development work, which I really enjoy very much. I’m a hopeless exerciser. I have 100 pound
tortoise, I ride a motorcycle.
Tina Gosney 05:53
And all sorts of interesting things going on in your life.
Brent Bartel 05:57
Yeah, yeah. I’ve ever really. I live a really great life. I really do.
Tina Gosney 06:02
Yeah, you just got certified for coaching.
Brent Bartel 06:06
Oh, yeah. Thank you. Yeah, I went through the coach firm. It’s called the mind firm method. I
love it. I think it’s a really robust model of coaching. I call it curricular coaching. So we actually
do have lesson plans and in sort of a developmental framework that kind of builds upon itself.
So I’m excited. Yeah, I’m in the process of business formation right now. I had a couple clients
we’re working with, and this is going to be my next great. The next great adventure.
Tina Gosney 06:38
So yeah, the second half of life. Yes, absolutely. Hey, so we were talking about what to to
discuss today, I really wanted to talk about some of your work with Stephen R. Covey. As far as
like being a facilitator, and what you use to help other people Leadership and Development,
those types of things. And like, how are we approached that those same type of principles and
apply them to family relationships. And so Brent really pulled out, he said, let’s talk about the
pyramid of influence. So he likes that model, tell us more about the pyramid of influence.
Brent Bartel 07:24
Yeah, I love that stuff. You know, and probably some of your listeners aren’t terribly familiar
with Stephen Covey. He died some years ago, I think he was 80 at the time, but has written
some of the most influential books, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People became just
this monolithic work in terms of personal and personal development and relational
developments. And so many other books sort of emanated from that seminal work. And
anyway, I It’s changed my life in some really profound ways.
But there’s so much you could talk
about in this context. But within one of the chapters of a book he wrote called principle
centered leadership to map out and look early 90s. After the seven habits, he has a model, he
says it’s the model of influence. And it’s, it’s in the form of a pyramid and got a few little words
on it. And the implications, I think, are really, really significant. Because we all want to have
influence. And I think we define it sort of as this capacity to have a positive effect upon the
character, and the development or the behavior of someone or something.
So we all want to
have influence, particularly in our intimate relationships. And I think we often struggle to know
exactly how to do that, and not just do that, but do it in ways that really build and strengthen
that relationship in sustainable ways. I mean, we can influence through compulsion, or perhaps
coercion, or even violence or duplicity, deceit lots of ways. But we’re talking about influence
through principle centered methods. So I really appreciate the model of influence, and the
many suggestions that he made about how we develop greater influence within these
relationships, be them personal or even public.
Tina Gosney 09:19
Can we pause just there for just a second and the influencing through you said coercion and
trying to control and manipulate or you name some words there. I think that that’s our if we’re
not careful. That’s exactly where we go to as like a low hanging fruit. It seems like the easiest
thing to do, to try to influence change and per someone as far as like their what they’re doing
or the direction that they’re going. That’s something that we try a method that we try to
influence by, but I’ve seen that type of influence trying to exert that kind of influence actually,
is more costly in the long run, because it’s costly to the relationship. Anytime you are trying to
exert that kind of influence on somebody, you’re sacrificing something else down the road.
Brent Bartel 10:17
Yeah, absolutely. I think that’s a really salient point. And there’s no doubt about it. I think for a
lot of us, we have certain sort of arrows, you know, in our quiver, if you will, in terms of human
influence. I know for me, I would often start out with, say, reasoning, or persuasion, you know,
trying to make sense of something. And then maybe I tried to exhibit some patience. I mean,
that’s a form of influence. Yeah. And then maybe default to fight or flight, or evoke my formal
or positional authority? Well, because I’m the dad, we just do this, because I say we do it. And I
typically didn’t lead with that, but often ended up there. And like you said, there’s other lots of
different other forms of influence. And, and I think we borrow strength, from our position from
our formal authority and things like that. And exercising those methods of influence, generally
are very counterproductive in the sense that it erodes our influence. And we may get short
term returns, yes. If I threatened, if I yell, if I this, if I that, be it in the workplace, be it in the
home place, I may get compliance, but like you observe, at what cost? Do I get that
compliance? Because anytime I think we violate principles, there’s always a cost to be paid.
And if it’s, it’s in the it’s in the quality and the nature of the relationship. So everything we
talked about today, is within this context of how do we make our relationships richer, and more
mutually satisfying, and more beautiful. Right, and we, and we can only get there through
positive methods of influence, where we are actually having an influence on the individual and
contemporaneously we’re building the relationship and regrowing that relationship.
Tina Gosney 12:07
Yes. And when we talk about them, I think it’s going to be just like, oh, yeah, of course, that’s
would build a relationship and build more influence. But it’s not usually where our brain goes,
when we’re frustrated. Trying to get some compliance in the moment, we tend to forget those
things. So I think it’s gonna be great to re just kind of go through this pyramid, and see what
are the things that we need to be aware of, and make sure that we have in place, and there’s a
certain order to this pyramid, too. Let’s go over like that order. And we can put a link to the
show notes so people can see a visual of what we’re talking about, as we talk about it. But
there is an order on purpose to the levels of this pyramid.
Brent Bartel 12:54
Yeah, without a doubt. I think Stephen Covey was brilliant in many in many areas, but one of
them was his understanding of sequence and kind of causation, cause effect relationships,
even his seven habits are meticulously sequenced in such a way that it sort of mirrors the
process of human growth and development. So yeah, he did the same thing here. And like it,
like you said, this is this is not earthmoving at all. I mean, it’s pretty common sense. But like we
say, common sense, is not always common practice. No. I like to use in my coaching this model
of just unlearn. Apply. And then we reflect. And it’s purported that Aristotle, I did not know the
gentleman, but he said something to the effect of to know, and not to do is not to know. So it’s
really not so much what Yeah, I know this stuff. It’s like, well, to what degree are we applying
this stuff to a beneficial and and it’s not ever just we apply it or we don’t there’s a long
continuum of application. And hopefully, we’re continually getting better and be more mindful.
So yeah, so let’s get into this. So the pyramid, as one would expect, is in the shape of a big
triangle, a pyramid. I like just kind of that visual of a pyramid. And they’re very sturdy. They’re,
they’re very grounded. They’re practically movable. I looked this up, the Pyramid of Giza
weighs nearly 6 million tons. Really, 6 million, that pyramid is probably not blowing over in the
store. Right? So I liked the visual, and the pyramid is divided up sort of horizontally and three
levels. The first level? Well, and let me just say that, so within each level, then there’s methods
to leverage or develop greater influence within that particular level. So he has 30 methods of
influence. And sure now we’re not gonna talk about 30 today A, but then there’s about eight or
10, within each of the levels that he explains helps us to develop influence within that level of a
model. So the bottom, that foundational level of the model is to model by example. And this is
what other people see. Ralph Waldo Emerson said, what you ring so loudly in my ears, I cannot
hear what you say. So the middle level of the model would be to build caring relationships. And
this is essentially what other people feel. And the mantra here is, they don’t care how much
you know, until they don’t know how much you care. And then the peak or the top of the
model, would be to mentor by teaching, telling, explaining, etc. So these would be overt
attempts to influence often we start there. And this is what other people, this is what others
here. So essentially, bottom level, model by example, what others see middle level, building
caring relationships, what others feel, and then the top part of the end, or the pyramid would
be overt attempts to influence and what others hear. So I think if we have alignment and
congruence within those three categories, we expand our ability to teach. Sometimes I think we
try to teach, tell, explain, persuade at that top level, we’ve not done the work and the lower
levels of the pyramid to be really effective and have real credibility. So at times, our teaching
telling is at odds with our doing and being. And obviously, if there is a disconnect there, people,
people tend to believe what we are doing and what we are being over what we are saying or
what we are telling.
Tina Gosney 16:57
Absolutely, absolutely. Yeah.
Brent Bartel 17:02
That’s pretty common sense, I think. So I thought just for a few minutes today, we could just
explore four methods. I think there’s like eight methods. He explains within that bottom level of
the pyramid, but I thought that we could maybe just take four. Yeah, we’re going to do a deep
dive around those.
Tina Gosney 17:22
Is there a reason you chose these four?
Brent Bartel 17:27
You know, I’m probably a little biased, I suppose. I, I think these are foundational and
fundamental. I think they’re all really important. And you know, we’ll link it, your readers could
read it for themselves. But I think these four very foundational in terms of how I show up, and
who I impede and how that allows me to have influence with the people around me. Good.
Tina Gosney 17:51
Okay. Let’s dive into this. Number one.
Brent Bartel 17:56
Number one, so choose the proactive response. I think proactive and reactive have kind of
become part of the American lexicon. And we understand these terms pretty well. So if we are
human being, which I assume most of your listeners are, we have a gap between what we know
and what we do. And I think the gap contracts are expands based on our ability to choose our
response deliberately and by design. And not by default, or by conditioning and scripting, and
those kinds of things. So essentially, if I respond to stimulus in my life based on moods, or
physical feelings, or conditions, environment, then I am being reactive. If I respond more from a
place of personal values, or perhaps a vision of who I want to be, or a deep resolve, I am being
proactive. So essentially, can can things like mood or physical feelings, conditions, environment
influence, to some degree how we respond? Absolutely. There’s no doubt about it. But we
intentionally decide what influence we give those things. And I think it’s important to recognize
there’s a huge difference between our response being influenced, and our response being
determined. It’s interesting, The Seven Habits even talks a little bit about sort of determinism.
And I think I became very popular for a time. It’s very convenient, because if I’m determined by
things in my life, I can sort of absolve myself a little bit from responsibility, right?
Tina Gosney 19:40
Like, I don’t have any responsibility here. This is just the way I am or this is my background,
and so I don’t have any ability to control like, my future, is that what do you mean? What do
you mean by determinism? Let’s Yeah. Further,
Brent Bartel 19:56
yeah, and there’s a lot there’s different typologies look at this, but he called out to Three
specifically like genetic determinism. Okay, so you kind of get that from your grandparents, it
sort of comes through the DNA and the genetic code. Well, this is just the way Bart cells are. I
mean, you know, we’ve always been this way and that kind of thing. So I’m less responsible,
because I have certain genetic inclinations. One of them was psychic. And that’s kind of the
way we were raised. I mean, all of us have this 25,000 hour, you know, parenting seminar, as
we were being raised by, by our parents, or by a parent, or grandparents, you know, whatever
it might be. Clearly weird.
Tina Gosney 20:37
Okay, I’ve never heard it called a 25,000 hour seminar. As far as like, training, to be a parent by
watching what happens in your home is a little bit weighty as a parent to think that my kids
were sitting in a seminar watching as they were growing up, and that was how they learned to
be a parent.
Brent Bartel 20:59
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, absolutely. It is. It’s both. It’s both beautiful and really frightening at the
same time. Yeah. And clearly, we are profoundly influenced. But again, we’re not determined.
But if I believe that I am determined, oh, this is the way my dad was, I mean, I want to be this
way. But this is just the way I am or this is what I saw. This is how we disciplined in my home.
This is how we dealt with conflict. Right? You know, those kinds of things. And then the last one
was environmental, you know, we can be influenced certainly by things in our environment. I
grew up in Seattle, Washington, you know, and once upon a time, they have 33, straight days
of rain. I live in Arizona, now, you know, we have three days of rain, and we’re all laying around
in the fetal position. Yes, not quite sure what to do with our lives. So I mean, they get seasonal
affective disorder, it’s a very real thing. You know, because you don’t see the sun for a long
time. So So in via environment can influence us in all kinds of ways. But again, if we cede our
power over to, I don’t have a choice, I’m determined by this, then we become very reactive,
obviously, and not proactive. And that’s kind of what we’re going for here.
Tina Gosney 22:12
Right. So how do you become? How do you move from a person who is less reactive? And more
proactive? I think I’ve talked about that a lot on the podcast recently. But I want to hear your
take on what what does that process look like for you? What would you say to someone? Yeah,
yeah,
Brent Bartel 22:33
that’s a great question. And it’s the meat of this, obviously, this conversation. So I think by by
choosing, and when I say choosing, I’m including the things that we can’t see, like our thoughts
and our feelings, and the things we can see, of course, like behaviors, the choosing, the
proactive response is made easier when we slow down a bit, or when we slow down a lot. And
I’ve heard you talk about this, I really liked it, when you talk about kind of slowing down our
models and creating space, because a lot of what we’re gonna talk about is about creating
space, sort of in our models between stimulus. So this is what happens to us. And our response,
you know, how we respond to what is happening to us. So the more space that we can create,
the more freedom to choose in alignment with our values and our priorities. I think it was John
Whittier, I love poetry. He said, of all sad words of tongue and pen to satisfy these it might have
been, and I know when I react rather than act in that space between stimulus and response, I
have more of those might have been moments, I get a lot of those kind of woulda, coulda
shoulda is in that space.
Tina Gosney 23:50
I think that’s the humaneness in us, though. Because I know that you’ve worked very hard on
being proactive and not reactive. But still as hard as you’ve worked, there’s not going to be
100% of the time that you are a proactive person and not reacting. Absolutely.
Brent Bartel 24:10
Absolutely. You know what, Tina, I get it wrong all the time. And I don’t know if it’s about
getting wrong. It just I’ve learned from it. And like I said, I think there’s sort of gradients of
proactivity too. So I don’t know if there’s a really a destination, I don’t think I’m ever going to
get to a point my life say You know what, let’s have a party because Brent is, you know,
perfectly proactive now. It’s definitely not going to happen. But as we evolve and remindful and
we direct our own change, we become much better at that. And we find that our emotional
lives change, things affect us much less. So absolutely. We are all a work in process for sure.
And this takes time. It’s like building a muscle. I think it takes awareness and it takes practice.
And we’re really all human becomings and women is the mark like I said occasionally and we
missed the mark off. And I love that Nelson Mandela quote, he said, I never lose, I win, or I
learn. So for most of us, there’s lots of opportunities to learn. I think there’s an amazing
principle in life. It’s just says, Learn from living. And it’s amazing how often life wants to teach
me things. And it’s equally amazing how often I learned lessons. Yeah. So if I’m just working on
learning from some of these things, and incorporate that learning, it really becomes an
amazing adventure, trying to develop sort of my proactive self. So to your question, I think a lot
of it is creating space. And being able to slow down when when my first set of twins were little
two and a half, three, maybe we wanted to each kind of a stop thing, do model of three year
olds, cognitively. We just aren’t in that place, you know, but anyway, we were well intentioned
parents. And we taught them they have a pause button, and it’s right in the middle of their
foreheads. And when they were feeling really angry, and when they had strong feelings, when
they were sad, they could push that button. And we could slow down a little bit and kind of
think about things. It was exacerbated by one of our twins was a biter. She was the little twin.
And that was her eat. That was the great equalizer. She was like a tiny T Rex, storm into the
house. And so we did a lot of sort of finding our pause button and not biting our sister kind of
thing. And it was funny, they sort of got it. I mean, and we worked on that. And I saw even with
these little kids, they were able, particularly over time to better understand their own feelings
and how I can stop. I can create some space there. One of our challenges was they always
wanted to push their sisters pause button. Of course, if their sister wasn’t doing something they
like they went for their paws. But yeah, we redirected off. And but yeah, but I think it was
powerful in that even even little people and start to sort of embrace this and create space. Well, even in this,
Tina Gosney 27:17
go ahead. Go ahead, please. Well, I love that because even three year olds, when you made
them aware that they were able to do it, we’re able to start getting some of that space. Yeah,
how often are we not even aware of that, that is something that’s available to us, because no
one’s ever told us that, that you can slow down, you can stop being reactive, there are things
that you can do that will help you to slow down and be more aware of what’s happening inside
your body and your brain that will help you to deal with the things that are hard right now. Yes,
I think that’s you taught it was such a visual for just added that three year old level, like a
button in the middle of your forehead. That’s great. Yeah, we all need a button in the middle of
our foreheads to just, hey, let me stop right now we push my button.
Brent Bartel 28:07
Yeah, absolutely. You know what, and I still I still have my pause button and probably needle
use it a little more often than they do. Sometimes they think we just think that creating space,
or pausing is just about time. Okay, I’m putting myself in timeout, I’m gonna walk out of the
room. I just need some time. And then I’ll come back and be a little better. Beautiful. But I think
there’s more to it than that. So if we think about this space between stimulus and response, Dr.
Covey talked about for human endowments. These reside in the space, their gifts, sometimes
we use them a lot, and sometimes not so much. Let me go through them real quick, though.
Okay. The first one was self awareness. And just recognizing, like you said, What am I thinking
right now? And how is this producing certain feelings? And what behaviors is that going to lead
to? And so we’re not our thinking, we can think about our thinking, we can think about our
feelings, and we can stand back. It’s such a beautiful gift. The second one would be
imagination. And that allows us that resides in the space. So I can imagine being something
that maybe I’m not currently being, I don’t have to work from memory, to just reproduce my
past, I can work from imagination. And imagination is limitless. And we’re so good with it when
we’re five and six. And sometimes we that gift becomes a little dormant as we grow older, but
it’s so critical to be able to imagine a desired state create that sort of mentally and then live
into that the third one was conscience. And that just helps us align with our value system, you
know, to live can grow congruently and in align sort of way and the last one was just
independent will that we can be independent of conditions or circumstances or other people’s
opinions of us. That kind of thing. So if you took all four of those kinds of human endowments,
human capacities, and you sort of, you know, just focused on developing, you know, in those
areas, I think the change can be really profound. And what it does, for me, at least, it really
starts to create that space. And then we become transition figures. You know, we see people
transitioning from very difficult circumstances or environments, and overcoming and becoming
very different. The opposite of that would be, say what we call a transmission figure, maybe we
transmit negative tendencies, from one generation to the, to the next. But, you know, history is
replete with beautiful examples of people that are sort of these transition figures. I hope we
have those people in our lives, I suspect many of your viewers are those very people, that we
are all transitioning from certain disempowering things, and trying to be more in our own life, I
had previously worked with a young man who grew up in a very dysfunctional home. And I
suspect all of our homes are just a little bit dysfunctional. But he had a difficult relationship with
his father. There was some violence in the home. And he was, he was very austere. And so fast
forward many years. And now, you know, he had that 25,000 hour parenting seminar, and now
he’s got a baby and a toddler and trying to figure out what, how does this work. And we kind of
worked in that space, that, for him working just from memory, and duplicating some of the
patterns of the past was not effective for him. Because it’s not how he necessarily wanted to
show up as a father. So now we have to work from more from imagination. And from a place of
conscience and self awareness. Well, how do you want to be, and let’s live in this new reality.
And you can certainly do that. So he’s becoming a transition figure in really beautiful ways, sort
of by using those endowments, slowing down, creating space, you know, in that model, and
monitoring his progress. Yeah.
Tina Gosney 32:26
Sometimes for a lot of people, I’ve noticed the hardest part is just the very first moment of
stopping. Yeah, not being the reactive, like gut reaction, just like immediately reacting, but it’s
the very moment of deciding to stop and slow down before that reaction comes. Right. And I
really think that that that one of the things that plays into that is how practiced, are you at
slowing down? How many times have you tried to maybe go into self awareness or into
imagination, or, you know, some of these things that we’re talking about today? How often
have you been aware of the things that are going on for you, and the more practice you are
practicing those four things that you just outlined? The easier it becomes then to say, Oh, I’m
going to pause for a second. Maybe I need to like, take a step back. And look at what what else
can happen here. And that’s really a nervous system. That’s more I talk about this in my
breathing class that I’m doing. This isn’t that I’m doing in October, but it’s showing like a more
toned, nervous system, being able to be more intentional, in your risk, proactive responses,
then reacting to the things that are going on around you in the moment.
Brent Bartel 33:51
Absolutely, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I love that. I love that. And you’re right. It does take practice, and
it does take repetition. Maybe you write the forehand down, it’s down. And you think about it in
those moments. You know, I asked myself the question like, Well, how do I want to show up
right now? What is the best version of brand right now? And that always slows things down for
me, you know?
Tina Gosney 34:17
Yeah. Another question that I like to ask myself when I’m in that space of already slowing down.
And like, maybe I’ve been talking to someone and it’s not going well, and I just need to take a
step back. And I like to ask myself, Okay, what does this person need right now? They don’t
need me to keep pulling on this rope. And trying to get them to believe what I want them to
believe or to think the way I want them to think that maybe I can just take a step back and let
go of the rope and ask them. Like I asked myself, what do they need from me right now? Or
what looks the most like love in this situation right now. And I found that really helpful. For
myself, and I think it’s it’s kind of the same thing that you were said like, what’s the best
version of Brent right now? Hmm, I think it’s just like a different way of phrasing a question that
gets you probably to the same answer.
Brent Bartel 35:13
Yeah, yeah. I love that though. Because it’s, it’s outward focused, and you’re focusing on the
needs of the other person. And you develop this increasing sense of equanimity. That’s kind of
a big word, but just this sense of, kind of, you’re settled your poise. Just, um, you’re not
reactive, you know, you’re not buffeted about there’s a stability about you. Yeah, and so much
self confidence, you know, comes from that sort of thing to when you can operate in that space,
and you’ve just feel that sense of really control over your own life. Yes, it’s really powerful.
Tina Gosney 35:53
And I think like you said, it gives you felt more, you feel more stable in who you are. Like, you
can have a whirlwind going on around you a tornado going on around you, but you just feel
planted and firm and rooted where
Brent Bartel 36:09
you are. Absolutely, yeah, I love that. I call it you know, deep reservoirs of sort of still water,
you know, a voice on our soil that you can have a lot of surface storms, but down deep, you
know, your palm and you’re still in your center. And yeah, and you can act with integrity in in
these circumstances.
Tina Gosney 36:32
Yeah, it’s a beautiful thing. Absolutely. Do we have anything else that we haven’t gone over
with proactive response?
Brent Bartel 36:40
You know, that’s a lot of stuff there. So why don’t we move on to the next day?
Tina Gosney 36:45
Let’s do the next one. Okay, I hope you have enjoyed part one of the pyramid of influence with
Brent Bartel. I’m sure that you could tell that Brent knows his stuff when it comes to
Stephen R. Covey, and the principles that he taught me invite you to go to part two in here the
rest of our discussion. We’ll see you there.
