Check it out, check it out. Welcome to the Art of Coaching Podcast. I'm Brett Bartholomew and at a young age, poor communication nearly calls me my life. Now I help others navigate the great area of social interaction, power dynamics and communication so they can become more adaptable leaders, regardless of their profession, age, or situation. This podcast is for everybody who is fascinated with solving people problems. So if you're in the no-nonsense type who appreciates frank conversations, advise you can put to use immediately, and learning how others navigate the messy realities of leadership, you're in the right place. I'm glad that you're joining us. Let's dive in. Okay, a deep episode for today. This is something that a number of people have reached out about over the last few months. And I think I really just wanted to wait until not for a right moment, but I had to be in the right head space to do this episode because things like this can be pretty heavy. The core of it is how to reach somebody who seems kind of unreachable. Sometimes that might mean despondent down at the dumps, going through a really tough time in their life.

I'm certainly not gonna use the word depressed

because I'm in no position to define or diagnose

whether somebody, especially that I don't know

who reaches out over the internet or anything like that,

is clinically depressed.

So you'll notice in the show notes as we always talk about,

please make sure if you or somebody you know,

you feel like is struggling,

call the appropriate hotlines, do those things.

Now, I've been very open about how,

when I was a teenager, I dealt with some form of depression. I wrote about it in my first book, Conscious Coaching, but my goal here is simply, I've had a lot of people reach out about this, whether it was a family member, whether that was a staff member. So I'm gonna do my best just to give some tips. This is not gonna be some big four hour long episode.

I'm obviously not gonna be able to touch on everything,

but I just wanna be able to give something,

if one thing that I say in this episode gives you a way to reframe how you can help somebody or just think through something, please, let me know. And hopefully that's what I can accomplish for you. I do know this. These things are grounded by my experience. I'm certainly not, you know, representative of everybody, but these are also related to experiences that I know former clients of ours have said that, that have helped them, and whether that is athletes that I've worked with, whether that's executives, anything like that. And it's also for this reason that I think that this was an appropriate time to talk about why so much of this stuff is related to even what I'm talking about in my next book. And when you think about, and it's going to be in this one example that we talk about here in a moment, one of the reasons I decided to write my new book, The Antihero Advantage is a lot of people are told or sold societal narratives on what it takes to be a great person or a productive person or a great leader. And a lot of this stuff is one-dimensional, right? You should be this place in your career. You should have this kind of morning routine. You should be able to accomplish by this, by this age. And it's all very heroic in nature when you hear this stuff. And even if it's how you look, you have to look a certain way. You need to always have a certain amount of charisma or confidence to be a leader in any of that. And inherently there are people like myself and I would imagine some of you that are not always those things. Like there are people like us that have doubts and demons and flaws and fears and skeletons in their closet. And so my new know, my new book, The Antihiro Advantage,

talks about how a lot of those societal narratives, those lead towards burnout and a lot of self-comparrison and non-productive chasing of certain forms of clout or otherwise. And to me, that's not the key. That's not what it means to be a better person. Certainly not what it means to be a more adaptable person, right? think that it's people who learn how to better themselves

and harness and acknowledge those doubts and demons and fears and flaws, they're the ones that actually become the most adaptable leaders, especially during times of chaos. And this is actually, there's a great book I talk about it all the time called The First Rate Madness that talks about it. So essentially my new book teaches people

how to deal with internal conflict, external conflict, how to become more adaptable communicators, deal with the dark side of leadership. Now, periodically we get some people that are like, well, I don't see myself as a leader. And there are a lot of things I used to say to that, but now what I kind of say is, well, why not? You know, I asked somebody this recent,

I go, is it your title?

That makes you feel like you're not a leader.

Is it your actions?

Is it something like that? say to that, but now what I kind of say is, well, why not? You know, I asked somebody this recently, I go, is it your title?

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