PP 656: The Secret to Positive Leadership with Nancy Gordon
“Find a space where you can function in a positive way and share it. Stop, pause, and listen and the answers will come to you.” -Nancy Gordon
What kind of leader are you? Are you the leader that you wish you were? This week, we’re talking about positive leadership. We all need a dose of positivity because we all know that business and life combined already spells a lot of stress (not to mention the anxiety brought by this global pandemic). Nancy shares what authentic leadership means and how to lead positively. Learn the skills needed to create a positive culture together, overcome communication barriers, and connect with your employees’ emotions. You can lead people to what they want and also get what you want in the process. Jump into today’s conversation and find out how to build a system and move it efficiently and smoothly.
Highlights:
03:34 Leadership Development
10:31 Authentic Leadership: What It Means
16:01 How to Handle Stress
21:41 Lead Positively
28:53 How to Listen Like a Leader: Listen Underneath
40:53 Excitements In The Future
Resources Mentioned
Books
Movies
Inspirational Quotes:
07:30 “We have to learn to lead our own selves. We need to be the leaders of our own lives, we need to understand what that means for us.” – Nancy Gordon
12:59 “Authentic leadership means sharing who you are, being able to share the vulnerabilities, being able to do what you’re feeling in a certain way.” – Nancy Gordon
15:50 “We want to see the humanity of the people that we’ve trusted because we’ve entrusted them with our lives.” – Nancy Gordon
19:35 “Breathing is a free thing that brings us right back to the center.” – Nancy Gordon
24:56 “The decisions that can be shared to have a system, move more effectively, function more smoothly- those are things that can be learned.” – Nancy Gordon
45:06 “Find a space where you can function in a positive way and share it. Stop, pause, and listen and the answers will come to you.” -Nancy Gordon
About Nancy:
Dr. Nancy Gordon is a Chairperson and Associate Professor of the Graduate Department of Counseling, Leadership and Expressive Arts at Salve Regina University in Newport, Rhode Island. She began to work in educational systems, working with how to create and develop educational programs that could support people where they are now, but also help them engage in learning that would facilitate growth and change. Nancy applied for a doctorate and wound up in a doctorate in education and administration with a focus on organizational personal and large system change. Her most recent published work is entitled Women and Leadership: An Integrative Focus on Equality.
EPISODE TRANSCRIPTION:
Kim Sutton: Welcome back to the Positive Productivity podcast. This is your host, Kim Sutton. Today, I am thrilled to have our guest, Nancy Gordon. She’s an associate professor at Toby Regina University, and deals a lot with leadership and so much more. But I have to tell you before we even jump into this episode, you’re not going to hear many episodes coming up, or you won’t have heard much about it in episodes prior to this, we are recording right in the middle of stay home, I don’t want to say quarantine. Nancy, what do you feel about the word quarantine?
Nancy Gordon: Probably a better word is responsive to the times.
Kim Sutton: Okay, . Yes. So listeners, you may hear a little bit of kids in the background on my side today. It’s been really quiet on Nancy’s side. But one of the things that we talked about right before I pushed the record was, Nancy said that organic process of life, and I actually added business on because so much of what we do is constantly changing when we try to write a life script or a business script. So often, we find those detours and we wind up on a completely different, I’m not even going to say path, I’m going to say map. We have to figure out where we’re going, what we’re doing and the best way to keep our heads on our shoulders. But before we jump into that conversation now that I have taken a complete detour and probably thrown Nancy. Nancy, welcome so much to the show. I’m so happy to have you here. I know that we both had our little speed bumps that brought us to this day in recording. I know that we were supposed to record today for the conversation that we don’t know what we’re going to have in just a few minutes.
Nancy Gordon: Thanks so much for having me, and working with me through our many, I guess cancellations, so I am delighted to share today with you.
Kim Sutton: Oh, you are so welcome. Nancy, could you share a little bit more about what you do at Salve Regina, and a little bit of your background. What brought you here, and why you are passionate about what you do?
Nancy Gordon: Sure. I suppose it’s been a long circuitous route as it has for many of us. You talked about starting on one map and ending in a different one. Background wise, I’ve always been really interested in social change, especially how to bring equity and change to our communities on our planet. I started out with an interest in international relations, that was where my first map took me. I thought that I would wind up in the foreign service somehow, however, I lived up in Rhode Island, which has no opportunities for any of that kind of work. Then I began to work in educational systems, working with how to create and develop educational programs that could support people where they are now but also help them engage in learning that would facilitate growth and change. And that also brought me to a love of creating educational programs, especially how to design them, how to work with them. I finished that sort of process, decided I really needed more education, applied for a doctorate and wound up with a doctorate in education and administration with a focus on organizational personal and large system change. And that’s really been my home. I’m really, I love the work that helps align people, with groups, with organizations, with larger systems so that things can start to move in some kind of an alignment in an organic way. That got me to Salve Regina University where I started as an Adjunct Professor just learning about the teaching process and things like that.
Little by little as happens to many of us, I wound up as a part time faculty member than a full time faculty member, then I was asked to develop a department. The department name’s Counseling, Leadership and Expressive Arts tells you the interdisciplinary way that we’re functioning now in our educational programs. My own specialty is leadership development, and that’s pretty much where I’ve been focusing, developing my courses. That answer? You need more?
Kim Sutton: Oh, my gosh. I’m just flabbergasted because I told you, and the listeners have heard time and time again, that nothing about the show is pre scripted. Nothing about it. I told you before that the show, I was really going to try to not have it be date specific, nothing about the virus and the pandemic, and then I changed my mind a little bit to talk about the kids. We had no idea that we were going to be recording today. I think we were originally slated to record months ago, and we would have never seen this coming. But everything that you do can be seen as so timely in this situation. And anything similar or not even similar, where we have to make sudden, or maybe gradual change to the way that we lead, to the way that we work, to the way that we live, we have to be leaders of our own lives, and of ourselves, and then we can begin to lead the people around us.
Nancy Gordon: And that is actually the premise on which the leadership program at Salve was developed. We began to think about how we could create a leadership program that really made sense. We started looking at the kinds of folks that apply to our other programs and they were really leaders in their own fields, their own homes, their own communities. My own philosophy is exactly what you say. First, we have to learn to lead our own selves. We need to be the leaders of our own lives, we need to understand what that means for us, and then we need to see, well, how can we take those gifts and translate them into the work that we want to do, or that we love to do? Or the home that we’re creating. Anything that you feel that you can contribute to the world where you are now is what I call leading.
Kim Sutton: I love that. Listening back to old episodes, I’m always amazed by how many times they say, I love that because it’s something that comes out of my mouth in day to day conversation with my family.
Nancy Gordon: Yeah.
Kim Sutton: But I absolutely loved that rape in the pre chat. I’m sorry, I don’t mean to throw you under the bus, I don’t think is really throwing you under the bus. You were talking about a program that you were preparing, and I don’t want to get into specifics about the program, but it was intended at first to be a live program. And then you decided, you were questioning whether or not you’re still going to have it, and then you decided you still going to have it but it’s going to be virtual. AYou said that you owe it to the people, but you also owe it to yourself. That’s something that I’ve had to learn for myself, making promises to other people is one thing, but the promises that I keep to myself, or that I make to myself are the most important. If I say that I’m going to get up and ride my bike in the morning, I have to get up and ride my bike in the morning.
Nancy Gordon: That is so true. It’s such an interesting point. Yeah,. Actually, what we were talking about was that I’m a teacher who really works highly interactively, and I love to do that. This summer, all Salve courses are going to be continued virtual, because we don’t know where we’re going to be in June. At first I was thinking, I don’t know that I want to teach that course, I’m nervous about making that kind of transition. And I decided yesterday, I owe it both to my students and myself to make the transition and to teach it, and that’s exactly what I’m going to do.
Kim Sutton: I’m amazed by the doors that are opening all over.
Nancy Gordon: They really are. They really are. There’s both the challenges of just living today and the opportunities that it affords us to see differently, to function differently and to really see that we are all one planet . There’s something that we’ve been talking about in my program for many years, the interdependence between humans, and all other beings and the planet itself. And now, suddenly people are realizing that’s true. They are interdependent. We are interrelated as human beings on a planet, and that is coming full force.
Kim Sutton: Yeah. Those who are closest to me have seen that. When I get super anxious or stressed, I retract, I don’t know if retract is the right word, but I pull back and I enter my shell. I might as well be like a hermit crab. They know that if they don’t get a response from me within a day, she’s in her shell. I’m really grateful to the people who have called me out on that. I was about to use the four letter word that started with this, but I think y’all, because they have taught me that when I am feeling like that, it’s okay, crucial isn’t even the strongest imperative that I reach out to those who are closest to me, express how I’m feeling and get the support that I need to keep on going forward. But for so long, I thought that if I wasn’t perfect, if I didn’t have everything under control, if I was not okay, then it was not okay. I needed to hide my not okayness until I was okay again. But I realized I realized, especially during this podcasting journey, just by sharing what’s not okay, that I can connect more with other people, I mean, in leadership, there’s that tightrope sometimes . Do I share how I’m human, or do I not share? I mean, it always amazes me to hear that the Emperor of North Korea has his people thinking that he doesn’t poop.
Nancy Gordon: Yeah. Exactly.
Kim Sutton: But we all do. I’m sorry. See? I told you, you never know where to expect on Positive Productivity. But everybody poops. We don’t need to be scared about this, we’re ashamed of the not pretty size of our life.
Nancy Gordon: Of course not. It’s interesting because for years, the leadership, literature was all about the hero. And the hero never shares the vulnerability. They never never talk about themselves. I mean, even to the point of no personal information getting transmitted. And now, the real work that’s being done is called being authentic. Authentic leadership has become sort of the jargon, sort of wording today. I think it means sharing who you are, being able to share the vulnerabilities, being able to do what you described, you’re feeling a certain way, you reach out and you say it. I think that the time, certainly the times of how we lead are lending us to become more humane for ourselves, as well as for those around us.
Kim Sutton: Do you think it has to do with the time that we’re in? Do you think that authentic leadership would have worked as well in the past?
Nancy Gordon: It’s been working. It’s been sort of a balance of, well, in the research world, the theories have been fighting authenticity, no, heroic leadership. It isn’t just happening right now, it’s been slowly and steadily moving. Moving through certainly the higher end of how we develop our leadership models. How it’s been implemented, though, there I think that’s what’s changing. I think that the research was ahead of its time, and now people are realizing that you can’t leave without some sense of what your own personal values are. Your own mission, your map, as you described, it may not be a map that has to be followed concretely because a map never is. But it gives you some sort of compass headway into who you are and how you want to lead. That’s been becoming big for quite a while. Leading through, learning how to do that sort of work isn’t new, but it never took hold completely. Isn’t now? I hope so.
Kim Sutton: I know that he took some flack for it because of health issues. I don’t want to be political, and I’m not going to express which side or sighs I voted for. But one of the things that really connected me to President Obama was when he was in the office, it was uncovered that he was out on the terrorist smoking. That was how he handled stress.
Nancy Gordon: Yes, and he admitted it.
Kim Sutton: And he admitted it. I was like, Oh, my gosh, yeah.
Nancy Gordon: Right out.
Kim Sutton: He’s a person. Oh, my gosh. Again, I am not talking about who I voted for here. But sometimes, I wish that Trump would be more like that. Like, how do you handle stress Dude? I know you drink like 18,000 diet cokes a day, or whatever he drinks, but how does he handle stress?
Nancy Gordon: That’s the thing people want to know. They want to know who you are.
Kim Sutton: Mm hmm.
Nancy Gordon: I know. I know. That’s why I’m saying, I think that this forum has taken hold. We want to see the humanity of the people that we’ve trusted. Because basically, we’ve entrusted them with our lives.
Kim Sutton: Right. How do you handle stress?
Nancy Gordon: I’ve been working for years on that particular thing, just learning how to breathe. Breathing is a huge part of it. When I’m feeling totally stressed out, learning to stop for a moment, to pause, to breathe, maybe to walk, to walk outside, also physical movement helps me a lot. I’m one who is, when I forget and I make promises to myself, just like you described, when I forget to do just simple movements, I can feel the stress moving all the way up and down me. So those are a couple of things, and just trying to stay in balance,. And also to become grateful for where I am and what I have has really helped me a lot to not to worry so much about what I don’t do, but to be thankful for what I am doing, that’s taken quite a while as well. So those are some areas. I must say that my husband reminds me when I’m off, very honestly, and that’s really helpful.
Kim Sutton: My husband and I try to remind each other. Sometimes those reminders don’t go so well. Are you seriously telling me to breathe right now? Because those come out of his mouth a few times. I’m gonna put a link in the show notes which listeners, by the way, you can find at thekimsutton.com/pp656. The link is to my episode with Christina Miller a few years back. While we were chatting, Christina kept on talking about how she had let go of worry. Her faith is of utmost importance to her, my faith is of utmost important to me. But while we were in the middle of that conversation, I was muted the whole time sobbing on my microphone because we were trying to buy the house, which we now have bought, but we were in a rent to own situation and our mortgage wasn’t getting improved. The landlord was, at the point, if you don’t pay me a big lump sum of money to extend your rent to own contract, which was going to go towards the purchase price, I need to put that out there. I’m really gonna have to find a new tenant, or I’m just gonna have to put the house on the market. We were within no joke a day. I was recording this podcast, freaking out, what am I going to do? What am I going to do? Sobbing because she keeps on saying that every time she put the worry aside, that whatever she needed was there.
And after we stopped recording, I just told her thank you. I was sobbing the whole way through and she said: “Kim, how often do you sit still and listen?” I was like: “What do you mean?” She says: “Just sit still, stop worrying and just listen.” I said: “Never.” Because that was the truth. And she said: “Hang up, sit still and listen.” I did and it was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do besides childbirth. I got the answer I was looking for. I knew exactly who I needed to contact and I got the money that the landlord needed to extend us. And by the time, like for the time that they carried us through, we were able to get the mortgage and get our house. But that’s–
Nancy Gordon: A lesson for you.
Kim Sutton: Yeah.
Nancy Gordon: I would simply add, when you find yourself to that, just remember to breathe. Breathing is a free thing. That brings us right back to center because the answers are there. You just described the process beautifully. The answers that we need are really readily available if we stop, we have to pause.
Kim Sutton: I could never meditate either before I started recording. Sometimes with my podcasting friends, my podcast is provided millions of dollars of free coaching. Because I learned so much from everybody. I expressed in one episode that I couldn’t meditate because my head was just always so busy. And the person said: “Well, listen to your heart, or go to your gut. Don’t worry about what’s in your head right now. How does your heart feel at this very moment?” And that shifted for me as well. So sitting still, listening, when I’m not trying to listen to my head for the answers, but when I’m listening to my heart and said, whoo.
Nancy Gordon: It’s such a difference.
Kim Sutton: It is.
Nancy Gordon: It’s transformative.
Kim Sutton: Absolutely. Let’s see what leading positively means to you.
Nancy Gordon: Sort of the things we’ve been talking about, being able to stay present is number one. That’s the big thing in the work that I do with folks now. How do we stay in the moment so that we can be more effective, where we can be more helpful, we can turn things that maybe are tending or tending towards the negative into a positive moment. That’s for me, critical. But to do it, we have to stay present. Then we need to do, in my program, we work with endlessly, which is called a tuning to the moment. So we start with a presence which is about me getting centered, me getting in balance, my students getting in balance and then a tuning to the moment once I’m there. The second piece is exactly what you’re describing. How do I learn to listen actively? We spend a lot of time teaching active listening skills and leadership that has been considered, what do we need that for? And now, all of a sudden, people are realizing that we need it more than ever. If you can’t listen to what’s happening, you can’t make effective decisions, you can’t lead positively. So that’s the second piece of what I consider leading positively to presence attunement, and then learning to move out of our own ego space into a space that’s often referred to as the WE SPACE, the space that we share together. It can be just one on one, the space you and I are creating right now. Or it can be a group space, or it can even be an organization space learning to develop a culture that learns to listen and attune to each other. And then alignment, alignment of how people learn, how groups function, how the system develops policies and procedures that facilitate a positive environment, and environment of learning to lead from a place of positive energy is all part of what I consider in doing my work on. That answer?
Kim Sutton: Oh, yeah. I’m thinking about how all of that can be picked up from the corporate, business and educational space and put right into homes these days?
Nancy Gordon: Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. There is no distinction between a family system and a larger system when you start to look at it from those points of view. How are people functioning together? How are people listening to each other? What are the policies that govern the way that this particular system functions? If it’s a family, is it a sit down family to discuss things? Does one person have the power over the rest of the group? That’s the same in an organization, it’s the same in a classroom, in a marriage, it’s the same thing. Where’s the power distributed? How can we move the power into a way that there is a sharing of it? I’m not saying that all decisions should be shared. I mean, obviously not. But the decisions that can be shared to have a system move more effectively, function more smoothly. Those are things that can be learned. Those all go into what I consider leading positively.
Kim Sutton: My husband is very much an alpha male. Very much. Okay. I am very much the silent giant.
Nancy Gordon: Yeah.
Kim Sutton: So he’ll get all loud in. He has said many times in our own home, and I’m just gonna share it with everybody here. Being a stepparent is the hardest job he has ever had.
Nancy Gordon: Oh, he’s honest.
Kim Sutton: Yeah, my oldest are 14 and 17 year old boys from my first marriage. And for my husband, being their step parent has been a roller coaster.
Nancy Gordon: Oh, I’m sure, especially with your former husband living so close.
Kim Sutton: Yeah. My ex husband, listeners, if you haven’t heard, he lives a walk away from us. And my boys have taken on the best and the worst from him as they have for me. We pass on traits to our children. But this time that we’re in where we’re all in close quarters has been fun. I’m just going to put it like that. It’s been fun. The act of listening has needed to become more present. I mean, I do a lot of reading in the personal development and professional development space. So listening, I hear about it constantly. One of the books that I’m reading right now is How to Win Friends and Influence People, Dale Carnegie.
Nancy Gordon: Dale Carnegie.
Kim Sutton: Yeah, yeah. So that’s one of them. And then the other one is a Tony Robbins book that I can never remember the name of, Awaken the Giant Within, or something like that. The two together are an amazing mix. So Tony is talking about the metaphors that we can use, that’s the chapter I’m in right now. And Dale is talking about listening, and leading people to what they want without even realizing that you’re getting what you want in the process. Sometimes, not only do we need to be still and listen for ourselves personally, but we need to be still and listen to the other person when they’re talking to us. And oh, my gosh, my teenagers and my husband, if you had to rank them from a zero to attend on their skill to be able to do that, they might get a one if I’m feeling generous.
Nancy Gordon: Are they open to experimenting?
Kim Sutton: It depends on the day.
Nancy Gordon: Because one of the things I was thinking, you could have them repeat back to each other what they just said.
Kim Sutton: Oh, my gosh, I would love to do that.
Nancy Gordon: But you have to get agreement from them that this would be okay. Just say, can we try something new here?
Kim Sutton: Yep. Oh, I have Monday and Tuesday, my access on Wednesday and Thursday, we’re recording this on a Thursday, and then we alternate weekends. So the boys will be back here tomorrow. I am experimenting with their permission starting tomorrow.
Nancy Gordon: It’s the permission, that’s the key. When you try something new with people, may I try this? You give people, and if they say, no. Say, okay, we’ll try it again next week.
Kim Sutton: I might even have to try that on my little. I already do without their permission, but I’ll have to do it with their permission. Because usually, did you hear what I just said? Yes. What did I say then?
Nancy Gordon: They did all kinds of couple studies where you’re not listening to me. Yes, I am. And they repeat it back verbatim, but the repeating it back has nothing to do with actual listening.
Kim Sutton: Can you expand on that tomorrow? I mean, I know what you mean, but I love it. I just think it needs to be discussed.
Nancy Gordon: I think that what’s really important is listening for underneath the listening. So you’re listening for words, or you listening for meaning, or you listening for feelings. What’s critical is when a person is speaking. Are you listening for what it is they want to convey? I can repeat back, the word somebody is saying, and then I’ll say, is that right? And someone will say, no. And I’ll say, well, I just repeated everything back to you. I’m quoting all kinds of situations that I’ve heard over the years. Then you’ll say, okay, so say it again. And they say it again, you realize it’s the deepest felt emotion that’s being conveyed. And that requires a different kind of listening, which is empathic listening, which is the ability to highlight the emotions as well as the words or the feelings. So you’re listening for what somebody is conveying rather than what you think you’re hearing. Does that make sense?
Kim Sutton: Absolutely. Where do you see the words I FEEL having a place in leadership, or do they not have a place in leadership?
Nancy Gordon: I think they have a critical place. I think that we really need to think about the different ways that people process. Many people process from the mind and the cognitive, other people process from the emotions. Everyone will tell you in the way they speak exactly where they’re processing from. So if somebody is processing from the emotions and you’re talking about them from a highly structural cognitive level, it’s not going to land. You need to be listening. Some people process kinesthetically, they’re much more into sort of the arena of where the energy flows, and you talk to them cognitively, they’re going to fall asleep, or their eyes are going to close. All of this is what a leader needs to be able to learn to do. To see that people learn differently, people talk differently, people function differently. And my job as a leader is to be able to sort that out and respond in kind. Now, that doesn’t mean you give up who you are. But you can say, you can test it out. If somebody is talking at you and you usually are a cognitive kind of a leader, you have to switch your own gear and say, are you feeling such and such? Rather than, are you thinking about? And the words itself. Are you thinking? Are you feeling? Are you sensing? Those are the words that tell you where somebody else is processing from, and where you need to learn to shift your own gears. And that takes practice. Most of us are very familiar and comfortable in one way of functioning and processing our thoughts, our feelings and our things. And that’s where the training can come in. That’s kind of long winded.
Kim Sutton: No, it’s not. I can be so much more long winded. I’m actually thinking about, my 14 year old has picked up something from me. When we’re talking, we don’t do it to be disrespectful. But when we’re talking and when we’re thinking, we tend to look off to gather our thoughts, and that was a little bit of a struggle with my husband for both of us, because he felt like we weren’t talking to him because we weren’t looking at him. Sound myself, even when I’m on live, like doing Facebook Live, or Instagram Live, or even in training videos that I’m putting together, I’m often looking away from the camera while, and oh, my gosh, I’m sitting here right now talking to you. My hands are moving, and I’m looking all over, like pulling my thoughts together. And it was a struggle for my husband because he felt, specifically with my son, that he wasn’t being respectful, that he didn’t care enough to look him in the eyes and talk to him, that he wasn’t listening. And it’s been something that we both had to talk to him about, this is how our brain works. We’re working to look at you more, but when we’re gathering in our thoughts, it’s like we have a huge insect net, that we’re having to work around the room with our eyes together with those words. I can’t express it anything else than that.
Nancy Gordon: Well, I got it. I think that that’s one of those communication pieces that you just need to work out. Maybe one of the simplest things is just to say, I’m really listening right now, I’m just processing it, how you’re talking, I’m really paying attention. Or you can say, I’m going to practice now, providing a little more support by eye gazing than I’m used to. but remind you that it’s difficult for me.
Kim Sutton: Oh, my gosh, it’s so difficult. It makes me so uncomfortable sometimes.. And I remember actually sitting at the lunch table in 8th grade, and my best friend from middle and high school said to me: “Kim, you never look at me in the eyes when you’re talking to me.” And I don’t know, it was never taught to me in my family. It was never brought up before then. And in that moment I snapped, and I really started working on it. But it’s still a struggle. Sometimes, it’s just as it gets. It puts me outside of my comfort zone. But now that I’m starting to even speak from stages, making eye contact with as many people as I can while I’m speaking from stage, letting them know, yes, I see you, I’m looking at you. My littles by the way are challenging me on this as well because they love to have staring contests.
Nancy Gordon: Yeah. And that’s where you can practice. Just doing it with those, what you said there 5?
Kim Sutton: 6, 5, yeah.
Nancy Gordon: 5 and 6. They’re not going to judge you, they’re just delighted to have you practice so that might be a great way for you to practice how to do it. And then also, the ability to do it on stage means you’re also able to do it off stage. My experience is you can’t just do this, you got to learn it. I spent three weeks at the beginning of the semester with one of my classes, we’re actually practicing, literally that. How do we tune in? How do we look at each other? I would say that this is a laboratory so giggles are fine. Right here, now, you can giggle with this all you want to. But then we have to discuss how much discomfort there is in this for you. Because in the work you’re going to do when you leave here, you’re going to have to know how to do this. You also have to know when it’s not appropriate. It is not appropriate in certain cultures to look people in the eye. So students that have come from other cultures have a demo of a time with it, because it’s just something that is so ingrained not to do it. It’s considered disrespectful. So learning the balance between, where you’re comfortable with it, where it’s appropriate and where it is needed. It’s clearly needed with your husband. It may not be so needed in some of the work you’re doing, and it’s needed with your littles.
Kim Sutton: While you were just saying that, I could see Meryl Streep in the movie, The Devil Wears Prada in my brain. She doesn’t look at people because she put herself on a pedestal, five levels up from anybody else. Unless she thought that they were at the same level or higher than her, then she didn’t have time to look at them. And that’s definitely not how I want my husband to feel, you know, I don’t, I don’t feel at all that I’m at a higher pedestal, you’re at the same pedestal, or on the same level. And we’re being circled by the sharks of our children.
Nancy Gordon: So you’re swimming with the sharks.
Kim Sutton: We totally are.
Nancy Gordon: I think with your husband, it’s a question of just adjusting to the two different ways that you process information together. That is wonderful that he’s able to speak about it, and that you’re able to speak about it, that’s part of the battle. When we don’t, when we submerge it, when we say, Oh, she’s not listening to me, I’m never gonna share another thing with her as long as I live. That’s what often happens in communication, and that’s avoidable.
Kim Sutton: Have you been in our house? Where’s the security camera because those words have come out. You’re not listening to me, I’m not gonna tell you how I’m feeling anymore because you’re just not listening. Listeners, if you experience any of this, please head on over to the show notes and leave a comment, I’d love to know what it’s been like in your house, in your business.
Nancy Gordon: Yeah, me too.
Kim Sutton: Now, or in the past. What strategies have you used to overcome it? And again, the show notes are thekimsutton.com/pp656. I want to share, my first husband and I got married very quickly after we found out that I’m pregnant. We were both raised Catholic, the church wasn’t going to let us get married that quickly until they found out that I was pregnant. But we had to go to pre-cana. I no longer consider myself Catholic. I just, I don’t know why I felt the need to say that. But we had pre-cana, which is before marriage classes, we’re sitting there and one of the teachers, it wasn’t even a priest who was there said: “When you’re in the midst of a heated fight, the best way to break the tension is just start fighting naked. Just take your clothes off naked because the moving body parts will just throw the other person off guard.” I was thinking about the other day, that’s the last thing that I wanted to do because I was not in the mood. But my husband and I were having a little bit of a heated argument., like, I could just use what I learned there. Like, that’s just gonna turn him on and I’m still not in the mood right now. I often try to think of, what’s that thing that can be done to breathe potential in this moment?
Nancy Gordon: Yeah. That’s the thing, the pause, the not getting hooked, and we all do. I mean, please, it’s a normal struggle. But when you can intervene in that hook, the hook that says I’m angry, I’m this and that, that’s when you can make a change towards the positive, but it takes work.
Kim Sutton: A lot of work. It takes a lot of work.
Nancy Gordon: I know, I minimize it.
Kim Sutton: I think they’ve retired from the show now, but Daniel Tiger on PBS is full of all these little life lessons. One of them is, when you’re feeling mad and you want to roar, take a deep breath and count to four. It’s absolutely brilliant. I need to let you all know that my husband has not liked it when I started singing in the middle of arguing. Because sometimes, he’s not as good at just being quiet and listening. I’ve actually said that to him, just to get him to be quiet and listen for a moment, just count to four before you say anything.
Nancy Gordon: You said that he’s the alpha male, that would be hard.
Kim Sutton: Yeah. I know we’re in some challenging times right now, but what are you most excited about in the months ahead besides getting out of your house and going to the grocery store without a mask on.
Nancy Gordon: I think I’m most excited about, really thinking about being back on campus in September, teaching on campus, implementing some of these things that we’ve been planning for so long, like the leadership summit. I’m holding the vision that we’re going to hold it on campus rather than virtual. I’m excited to get back walking again. It’s beautiful now, and that can happen right now. Don’t need to wait on that one. So those are some of the things. Some projects that I’ve been working on for a very long time, in some cases are starting to come to fruition. I’m really excited to really get into designing some of it over the summer. I’m hoping we’ll be back on campus. But if not, that’s okay. I’m going to do it from this little room here. I’m excited to go away with my nieces in July, we’re holding that it’s going to happen.
Kim Sutton: Where are you going?
Nancy Gordon: Every year, we meet in someplace new. This year, we’re meeting in Newport, actually Newport, Rhode Island, just because we want to do it. But we’ve been going every, this is our seventh summer doing it, and we just got together for two nights, the three of us. I imagine later on, there’ll be more nieces that join. But right now, that’s what it is. We just hang out. So I am really looking forward to that.
Kim Sutton: That’s beautiful. Where can listeners connect with you, find you online and get to know more about everything that you do?
Nancy Gordon: The best place right now is nancy.gordon@salve.edu, you can find me there. I think right now, that’s probably the easiest.
Kim Sutton: Okay.
Nancy Gordon: And they can email me, or we can set up conference calls, at all that’s possible now.
Kim Sutton: Absolutely.
Nancy Gordon: I can set up WebEx meetings, which is the major outcome of this last month.
Kim Sutton: Hmm. At the time of this recording, we just went through Easter weekend. My parents divorced when I was young, but both my mom’s side and my dad’s both decided that we were going to do Zoom calls. My mom got up and she can’t figure out how to get her microphone to work, she knows the letters in sign language so she was trying to sign us because she didn’t realize that she could put what she wanted to say in chat. And we tried to do a FaceTime call with her on the iPhone afterwards, like a group FaceTime, and she couldn’t figure out how to answer the phone. So mom, we’re gonna be working with you for the rest of the summer, probably. It’s amazing, I mean, my sister and I are both six to eight hours from her in opposite directions. I see that out of this physical distancing, that we figured out how to be closer.
Nancy Gordon: Yes.
Kim Sutton: But it’s unfortunate that it took this for it to happen because we could have been having family Zoom calls weekly for years now, and we have to see it to continue.
Nancy Gordon: Yeah, those are some of the traditions that can stay and be sustained going forward.
Kim Sutton: Absolutely. Nancy, this has been so lovely. I can see why it was supposed to happen today and why it didn’t happen months ago, so thank you for your patience with me.
Nancy Gordon: Oh, thank you. It was an equal.
Kim Sutton: Absolutely. Do you have a parting piece of advice, a golden nugget that you can leave with the listeners.
Nancy Gordon: Trust yourself, find that space in you that you can function from a positive way and share it, and listen to your own advice by doing exactly what can be said, stop, to stop, pause and listen, the answers will come to you. I guess my real parting is, may we all be safe and healthy.
