Ep01: Welcome to the Conversation IQ Podcast

What to know what happens if you have low Conversation IQ?

 

On this episode, Mike tells his story and explains why he thinks increasing Conversation IQ will save your life.

 

---Transcript---

(Intro)
This is the Conversation IQ Podcast. I'm your host Mike Ford. Are you sick and tired of dealing with social anxiety? Do you want to overcome your fear of feeling awkward or looking silly in social situations? Do you struggle with just saying hello or maybe keeping a conversation going? Well, welcome to our community of communicators where we are on a mission to rid the world of loneliness by sharing tips, tricks, and techniques from some of the world's best conversationalist. Super excited to have you guys on this journey with us. We'll see you on the other side of this episode.

 

(Episode)
All right. This is Mike Ford and thanks for tuning into our first podcast episode of increasing your conversational Iq. So the purpose of this episode really is to talk about what is really the driving focus for me when it comes to developing conversational intelligence and and really why I think that if everyone focused on developing their conversational Iq, if they focused on developing conversational skills, understanding flow, understanding how to connect with people the right way, we could seriously save lives. I really truly believe that I was in the military for 11 years. I'm married. My wife and I had been together for about that amount of time and when I was in the military, I joined January, 2007 right out of graduating high school, 2006 my first duty station was a senator of Texas where I met and married my wife. I deployed my first time to Afghanistan for 12 months and when I was growing up, you know, before I joined the military, you wouldn't have thought that I was going to join the military.

Me and my parents were in the military. My, excuse me, my dad was in the coast guard. My Mom's, she was a correctional officer. I have family members. I have served in uniform marine airmen. Also folks that have been in the army as well. Even though that was kind of floating around as that's the way to go because family has done it. It wasn't necessarily something that I was going to jump into because I wasn't love at the time. Yeah. Anyways, it's another story for another time. But I grew up, you know, getting bullied a lot, right? My childhood, you know, because of the color of my skin, the sound of my voice because I was overweight, you know, I got bullied a lot and you could imagine the things that I carried with me as I continue to get bullied. And so, you know, how was that connected to the conversation piece?

Well, conversational intelligence has a lot to do with an internal game. There's an internal piece that you have to have in order to be able to have effective conversation with folks to really connect with people. And so I was taken on a lot of self doubt, a lot of unworthiness, a lot of just a slight social anxiety, right? Getting around people not wanting to do new things because I felt that I was going to get picked on. Right. Feel like this, someone's going to bully me, beat me up. And a years later I joined the military and I'm still experiencing things like that. You know, I, I was still being bullied in basic training, you know, trying to defend myself and just didn't have the nerve or anything like that. And the crazy thing about the military is that it really allows you to hide behind your rank.

You get promoted and now you're ranked, carries the authority. And I took advantage of that. I took advantage of my rank and unfortunately I started to become the bullying. I started to connect with people creating these negative emotions in people because of the way that I treated them. And I carried myself. And I remember one moment particularly particular, it was an event that life shook me up. You know, like shook me up. I deployed Landon in Afghanistan. Terrified. I mean I left my wife, we just got married, married for less than a year and it was Valentine's Day 2010 that I deployed. I remember getting to a Afghanistan and going through the motions, go through all of the experiences and get into the last two weeks of our rotation. And by this time I was a brand new promoted sergeant in the army. Saw was a first line supervisor.

Essentially I was doing the things that I saw, not so much the things that were the right things to do. And what I mean by that was I looked at people as numbers. I treated soldiers like they, you know, they were just another rank. They were just a lower enlisted versus a human being that deserves to be treated with respect and dignity. And those were the examples that I had around me. You'll find more of those then you'll find people really treating people like they're a value. And so I walked into the office one day, I saw soldier who was working on the computer. I mean, and the guys just kind of doing this thing. And I remember walking up and being like, Hey, you know, soldier were like, Whoa, what, what are you working on? And I turned around and he answered me with attitude.

Right? When I say attitude, I mean he answered like, you know, doing whatever, like don't bother me. And my response was an emotional one. I immediately snapped and I was like, when you talk to a noncommissioned officer, you will be at the position of prayer as you will be regulation, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I'm pretty sure I curse at him a couple of times and I remember walking away from that situation, you know, thumping my chest, like God, you know, I just showed that dude and the next time he talks to knock commission officer, he's going to be blue. He learned his lesson. I became the jerk, the bully that I hated growing up. I became a jerk that same day. A few hours later, I remember being outside, getting ready to go on a run, get my shoes on, stretching and got my earphones on. I hear like this loud, kind of like a popping noise, like a bang.

I turn, I see the guy working on a generator next to me and I look at him and I'm like, what was that? You know what? What was that sound? And the guy looks at me, he's like, I don't know what that sound was. And we have another, I'm just like, okay, whatever. I'm kind of hanging out. I see another guy come from the tent area. We are staying and he's walking up, going into the latrines, right? No, the restrooms, I'm now standing extra calls Wayna for one of my end seals and get out of restaurant for us to go for his run. And now he goes in there, walks in man and uh, and a guy comes out and he's like, you know, don't let anyone in that restroom, someone just went in there and blew their head off. So I'm like, Oh snap.

You know, I'm just waiting to see what happens. He goes away, you know, tell people to know when to go in a restroom. They come back, you know, they'd come to see who, who was that was in there. And I remember they come out and they said, hey, so and so, oh, that soldier was a soldier that I just spoke to before I left. The one that I yelled at, the one that went on was an opportunity for me to identify if something was going on and to really truly connect. That was the soldier that I spoke to him and said, when you speak to a non commissioned officer, you will be at the position parade rest. After that moment, I was devastated. I couldn't, for a while I took on the responsibility of that, that I was guilty for what just happened in there and you know, plenty of people have said, hey, you know Mike, you know, if you really wanted to do it, he would have done it anyways.

If you really want it to, whatever it would have been, it would have happened anyways. That's not your, that's not your fault. I don't believe that. You know, and I lied to myself for a while and really what it comes down to is that I had, at the time I had a very low emotional quotient and a very low conversational intelligence. I remember making a vow to myself that I would never ever talk to another human being in that way, in that fashion, I dedicated myself to personal growth and development. I want it to be a better leader. I want it to be a better influencer. I wanted to understand how to communicate with people meaningfully, have purpose-driven conversation and people start a stepping into my life. I was, I went into this personal growth journey. I met people who have helped me really truly tap into my human potential.

I met folks who helped me turn around and understand my connection between myself and God. That is my belief. I'm a Christian. I believe in God and I believe that we are all designed with a unique purpose to be impactful. It's been three years now of growing in this space of understanding how to communicate the right way and has been absolutely, absolutely amazing. And that has been my motivation for doing that. That has been my motivation for doing that. I'm not there yet. I know I'm still growing. I've got an opportunity to turn around and make an impact and our vision, uh, for my wife and I, we launched our organization, tribe, Gen y, and our vision is that we connect a billion people to their purpose over the next 10 years. Through the process of coaching and mentorship specifically and teaching them how to increase their conversation intelligence.

And there's several ways of doing that and and that's what we'll launch into as we get this podcast show on the road. So I just want to say thanks again. I look forward to hearing from you guys hearing your feedback. I look forward to watching you guys launch out and watch you guys follow again growing with you guys and being a part of this process. I'm also in a process of thrown a book together so as soon as that's all said and done, I'm excited to share that and get that out to folks. So with that definitely look excited or I feel excited and just I'm ready to see you guys on the next piece here. So see you guys in the next one. Thanks.

(Outro)
Thank you for joining us on this episode of the conversation Iq podcast. It's always a pleasure just to spend time and share and to encourage and empower folks to be better conversationalist. If you are picking up things that you can implement and you had positive results from that, please share with us. We'd love to hear about your successes. We'd also like hear about any challenges you are experiencing so that way we can continue to serve the community. We can continue to provide value and continue to equip you with the tools you need for you to be an awesome conversation on this. Please check us out at www.conversationiq.co for an opportunity to be a part of our Facebook group "Increasing Conversation IQ". It is www.conversationiq.co we'll see you guys on the next episode.