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In his work with the Men’s Resource Center, Zach Flood’s focus is on men and their relationships, especially where those relationships are fractured or broken. He helps families navigate the family court system and the turmoil associated with parental alienation and resist and refuse dynamics. He also provides online domestic abuse coaching and counseling for men involved in domestic abuse and those who are concerned about an addiction to sex or pornography. In this segment of the Revealing Men podcast, Zach shares how he helps men build better relationships by expanding their relationship toolbox.
Randy Flood, host of Revealing Men and Director of the Men’s Resource Center explains it this way, “We’re going to talk about men. How they look at relationships and how they look at building and fixing things. And [how we] try to bring a parallel and help men understand that marriage and intimacy and being in a relationship is a specialized process and requires unique tools.” Most of the men they work with will need to build their emotional intelligence while learning how and when to use each new skill and tool. But, as Zach and Randy affirm throughout their conversation, this is an achievable and worthy goal.
Read excerpts (edited for length and clarity) below and find the full conversation on Spotify, Google Podcast, Stitcher, or Apple Podcasts.
The Right Tool for the Job
“We see a lot of guys come in and they talk a lot about the problems they’re having in relationships,” Zach explains. “And the big thing that we see is them trying to fix things, and do things, and always trying to be able to show their work and have something to point to. And so, what we talk about is the idea of having a toolbox. And that the ‘go-to’ for a lot of these men I equate to having just a hammer in your toolbox.
“And when you’re on a project when you’re building something—if you want to just use that metaphor—a hammer is really useful a lot of times. …But a lot of times we see that this proverbial hammer gets used over and over and over again, no matter what is being required of them as men, as partners, as husbands, as friends.
“A lot of times, their intentions are really good,” Zach continues. “They want to help, make things better. It’s just the perspective that they take on how to get there could use some expanding. … And so, what we’re talking about is allowing them to realize that they can use more than just that proverbial ‘go-to’ tool that they have and be able to build something really beautiful; a really close and intimate relationship.”
“Understanding that what you’re building is something important,” adds Randy. “And if you’re building and fixing your dream house, you’re very eager to stay engaged and be part of the stages of the building process. And it’s exciting to see development and growth as you move forward. I appreciate taking that interest in the desire to build and fix and applying it to relationships and seeing that as a worthy pursuit as well.”
Just Being Still
Zach notes that men who are first starting the journey to better relationships and a more enriched life are generally working through some sort of turbulent or difficult situation. “Their options are to use these tools that [they] know how to use or not have any tools to use.” And, for men who want to fix things, he says, the alternative of not having a tool to use is “scary, vulnerability, it’s being unequipped, being less than, being incapable of helping.” When given those two options, he continues, most men will choose the tool they know how to use because they would rather do that than feel vulnerable.
The work is about adding new skills but also about teaching men to sit with the idea that they will feel vulnerable and ill-equipped. They will be presented with things that are scary and things that [they] can’t really control. Zach says, “It becomes a conversation about how do you broaden the bandwidth for that feeling, the ability to be able to sit in that space.” It’s difficult.
The Capacity to Learn
Drawing comparisons between a builder’s toolbox and a relationship toolbox has merit, says Randy because with any of this work first, you need to get a buy-in with guys. “I think that’s part of the work we do is to take things that make sense to them and say, ‘Okay, you wouldn’t go to build a house with just a hammer and a saw. Would you?’ ‘No. No way.’
“Then you help them understand that as we evolve as men in the 21st century, what is a fit male. As a dad, as a husband, as a partner, as a brother, it requires emotional intelligence, requires relationship skills. …. this advanced skill of relationships.”
“I use the parallel of what you would say ‘regular intelligence’ is,” says Zach. “Some people you went to school with, they just like rolled out of bed and did Calculus 2 …There are people that have really good processing skills or memory or they’re just really intelligent.” Or, suggests, Randy, “good writers or speakers, but terrible at math or whatever.”
“Exactly. I think of emotional intelligence as the same thing,” Zach continues. “It’s not something that you’re born with it or you’re not, and so you just throw your hands up and say, ‘Well, I can’t really work on this. I’m just not good at it.’ I talk to guys and say ‘We’ve got to go to school a little bit. We’ve got to learn these things and put them into practice in our life.’ Helping them realize that they’re just not dealt the hand of cards that they have to play is really helpful.”
“I like that parallel of intelligence,” Randy says. “When I was in grad school, I was terrible at math and statistics. I had to be tutored. I couldn’t pass and do well by just going to class and doing my homework by myself. And so, knowing that was a weakness but yet realizing that if I’m going to be a psychologist and graduate, I’ve got to do this.
“For these guys too, it’s like, maybe you struggle with empathy, maybe you struggle with [other things] but see it as valuable. ‘Oh, I can go to school … I can learn these skills.’”
“It’s a lot like growing up,” Zach says, “there’s an emphasis on this [emotional intelligence] not being as important. It’s talked about here and there, but it’s not emphasized that it’s essential. What we’re doing here is just playing a little catch-up. And provide a little hope that it’s not all predetermined.”
Zach’s Four Pillars of Emotional Intelligence
When working with men in groups, Zach refers to the four pillars of emotional intelligence. He breaks these down for Randy.
“The first one,” he says, “is self-management.” “…I don’t like to say ‘controlling emotions.’ I like to say ‘regulating emotions’ … We don’t want to control things. We want to be able to use the levers that we have. And so being able to understand how to communicate, how to behave in certain instances, how to get your message across without being hurtful. Being able to understand how to act in certain situations and regulate yourself.”
Zach continues. “And then I think about self-awareness…Having an understanding of what makes you tick. Where are your weaknesses? Where are your strengths? How do you ingest certain information or certain stimuli? How do you do in certain environments? Are you more of an engineer? Are you more of an artist? Being able to understand who you are and having a real good in-depth look at yourself to be able to know what that is rather than just guess or just be on autopilot.
“I use the idea of autopilot a lot,” he explains. “Our brains are wired to not have to think about every little thing we do. If you think about every single little muscle, every little thing that you have to do to put your shoes on and tie them, if you had to actually think about every single one of those things, you couldn’t get out of bed in the morning. Our brains are wired to be able to take shortcuts. … And if we let that process take over, our shortcuts get really entrenched. The self-awareness is about breaking that down and being able to pay attention as you go…. being able to pay attention to yourself, being able to understand what’s going on with you.”
It reminds Randy of the way guys might pay attention to cars: “The awareness is then connected to the regulation part that you were speaking to earlier. [There’s] a metaphor I use with men, the kind of men that are more of the typical masculinity in like they understand engines, how engines work. It’s like you can’t rev the RPMs up into the red and beyond because that is poor regulation for the engine. And what’s going to happen, is they think of the temperature of the engine and it needs coolant to run at a certain temperature. If it gets too hot, well, you know, you blow the rings, the gasket, … Guys understand that kind of awareness through paying attention to your meters and your lights on your dashboard, and just this inherent understanding that it’s got to be regulated for the engine to work or you’re going to end up at side of the road.”
Zach agrees. “Totally. I try to emphasize that all these pillars are interconnected.”
“The next idea we talk about,” Zach says, “is social awareness, which is being able to read other people and/or empathy, compassion, all these things of being able to connect with someone else’s experience. If you notice someone’s body language, feeling a little down, being able to pick up on that and ask the right questions and being able just to notice stuff. So that’s probably the most straightforward one, but that’s the one that sometimes can be the hardest.
“It’s being able to pick up on cues and again, it goes to the paying attention thing, where you’re not on autopilot and you’re actually aware and you’re present in the room that you’re in and you’re with the people that you’re with and you’re dialed in and you’re being able to pay attention. Trying to use your own experience to connect to their experience and use that empathy to try to put yourself in their shoes can be helpful to try to bridge that gap.”
“Maybe a more traditional manifestation of that awareness is in sports,” adds Randy. “Your primary sport was football; mine was baseball. … You’re paying attention for the purpose of winning and having the competitive edge. Not that relationships are a form of competition but if I’m paying attention to my partner, maybe I’m picking up that she’s sad or he’s sad. Or, you know, ‘you seem stressed.’ That’s a form of empathy awareness.”
Or, says Zach, you’re out golfing with your buddies and the guy who’s usually pretty chipper and is talking a lot is just a little quieter. ‘Hey. What’s going on, man?’ ‘I just noticed that you’re just not your normal self.’ Just being able to notice that rather than, “Ah, you know, he’ll come around at hole four. We’ll figure it out.’ And so yeah, just being able to notice those little cues and being able to pay attention enough to notice them is a big one.”
The final pillar is relationship awareness. “Every relationship that you have in your life is going to be different,” Zach says. “I tell the guys it’s like if you’re at the grocery store and someone’s bagging your groceries, or helping you out or, you know, telling you it’s on aisle seven, that person in your life, you can, of course, be courteous and ask them how they’re doing, but are you going to unload all of your life’s problems on this person? Say, ‘Hey, I need help with all of this innate turmoil in my life. And, here’s something that happened when I was seven.’ They’re kind of like, ‘Uh, you know, I don’t know if I’m your guy!’
“So, understanding the people in your life and what roles they can play for you and being able to understand who’s got the bandwidth to be able to help you versus who you might be overloading. …We’re talking about being able to understand like, hey, your partner is there for you and they want to listen. Or maybe today they don’t have the bandwidth for it. Maybe they had a really bad day and if you’re going to unload on them when they’re having a rough day, that’s going to be inconsiderate, you know, versus like you being entitled to be able to unload on them.
“It’s just being able to read whether or not that space that you’re about to use is there for you.”
“Yeah. Yeah.,” says Randy. “Not to geek out about the Johari window, but if people can, you know, Google it.
“It’s like, not everybody is going to be super close. And it’s having the intelligence to know this is a person that’s my competitor in business or I’m being cross-examined. I’m on the stand and this opposing attorney’s attacking me. That’s a whole different kind of relationship. And you’re not working on being intimate and vulnerable. You want to be able to have your arguments well-defined and be invulnerable and impermeable.”
“I get a lot of guys,” says Zach, “that give me something to the effect of, ‘Well, here are all the examples of all these places that I can’t be vulnerable.’ And I’m like, ‘Yeah, okay, sounds good. Let’s identify those, but then let’s keep going and identify the ones that we can be vulnerable in.’ And then being able to talk about the differences. … What does that mean? What does that feel like to you?’…It’s about being able to understand the depth of that skill and being able to identify the other side of like, ‘Okay, here are all the safe places that I have that I can use when I need to.’”
Being Courageous and Vulnerable
Randy brings up Brené Brown and how she talks about the courage it takes to be vulnerable in a relationship; to open up and share yourself, share your insecurities, your fears, your shame, your struggles. “You’ve got to use your judgment about who you’re going to do that with,” he says. “You don’t want to do that with someone who’s guaranteed to hurt you and shame you. But you want to have relationships, hopefully, where you can have the courage to open up and then manage the emotions that come.”
“To add some layers to this,” says Zach, “there’s the ability to be vulnerable. The courage to go forth and share things and talk about the things that are deep within us. To be able to use emotional language.
“I tell people sometimes, like guys in group, I say, ‘You’re giving me the play-by-play. You’re giving me the Jim Nance. I want the Tony Romo. I want the color commentary.’ It doesn’t matter what time you got home from work before the argument. I don’t need that. I want to know what it was like when you were emotionally fraught and when you were scared. And I want to talk about that. You tell me all the structure around it, but I want to know the emotional underpinning of it. I want all that underneath and then I can take a whack at it and it usually goes a lot better.
The Ability to Do Nothing
“I can usually get guys to see the benefit of being able to go forth and do these things,” says Zach, “because at least the being vulnerable and all that is doing something, which is good. … The tricky part is when I try to get guys to realize they got to do nothing. And so that’s another layer to this. Being able to sit back and listen and being able to receive and to understand what someone else is going through versus trying to fix it.
“To bring it full circle to the toolbox analogy, a lot of times we want to use the tools in our toolbox. We want to be able to do stuff and be able to show progress and be like, ‘Hey, look, I helped. Hey, look, I did this for you!’”
“In terms of taking us back to that metaphor,” adds Randy, “I would say that that notion of doing nothing is involved in building or fixing things too. There are times you run into impasses or struggles; things aren’t working the way you thought they should have. And you can keep forcing something and making and then things get broke, or you get hurt, or whatever. But there’s a time to stop, to pause, ponder, just sit there and scratch your head and study. That’s part of building, too. Doing nothing.
“If this house is about to fall over that you’re building and you’re not sure what to do about it, you might need to just sit there and think for a little bit and be like, ’Hey, what’s my next step?’ Otherwise, you’re hitting something just to hit something. And just to say you did something. That’s what we’re talking about. Being able to leave space for somebody and to be warm and to be able to hold space for another person.
“That’s a really hard thing for men to do when they’re used to using tools and they’re used to doing stuff. And so just being able to work through that with them because it is really hard for them to see that new way of doing things sometimes. …It’s a tough place to explore, but it usually is pretty rewarding when they’re able to find that space and be able to use it.”
A Different Language
“I oftentimes think,” says Randy,” that with guys, sometimes they want to move too quickly into the practical conversations; sometimes the emotional can be like a foreign language. It’s like, ‘just start there.’ ‘You seem like you’re sad. You seem upset. You seem stressed.’ Or ‘tell me more about that.’ That’s moving into the emotional realm and working on that and then, perhaps, transitioning at some point into the practical, pragmatic side rather than starting there.”
“Right,” Zach says. “It’s about understanding what kind of conversation you want to have and being able to have multiple options, but also understanding what kind of conversation your partner wants to have and being able to read that. Not just assuming it’s going to be the practical conversation where it’s just going to be facts and figures and what do we do about it.”
Home Specialists – Marketing Genius
Randy shares with Zach how the metaphor of the hammer and the toolbox unexpectedly came full circle.
“I went for a walk this morning and there’s a neighbor who’s having their house remodeled. I saw the work trailer out in front: ’Home Specialists.’ I’ve never seen that company. So, I looked at it closely. ‘Oh, my gosh!’ It says ‘Home Specialists. Building Quality Relationships.’ And I’m like, ‘Holy cow! This has gone full circle.’
“It’s like this ethos that we’re dealing with, or the zeitgeist of the moment, the spirit of the moment is that relationship skills in this information economy, connection economy, that these business people have figured it out. It’s like these relationship skills create good business. … It’s both energies: this masculine energy and what we would consider, historically, the feminine energy of relationship skills. These guys are putting it on their tool crib shall we say. As their mantra. That’s brilliant!
“I would want to hire them because it’s like I want to see how good the relationship skills are!”
“You’re their target audience,” Zach retorts. “So that makes sense!
“If you want to think about it pragmatically,” he adds, “if that person trusts you, and cares about you. And that person sees you as a safe person to work on your house, they’re probably going to refer you to their friends. You’re probably going to get more business. …Being able to have that skill. And when you’re done talking to that person, you can go be an awesome builder and use your hands and be a wonderful craftsman.
“As we said at the beginning, it’s not about throwing away the hammer. It’s not about getting rid of that, because there’s plenty of times where we have to fix stuff. We have to figure out where we go next. We have to problem-solve. Those are wonderful, beautiful skills. It’s just about when they’re used when people don’t want them to be used, or when they’re just not a right fit.”
Your Very Own Relationship Toolbox
The good news is that it’s possible to build a relationship toolbox, learn the skills, and how and when to use them. “It’s hard work,” says Zach, but it’s rewarding work.”
If you’re interested in acquiring the tools and skills you need to build strong, intimate relationships and to further enrich your life, contact the Men’s Resource Center online or call us at 616-456-1178. You can also connect with Randy, Zach, or other associates through our men’s support groups. If you have questions about this segment, ideas for a topic, or would like to be a guest on the Revealing Men podcast, don’t hesitate to call or email us.
