Speaking and Communicating Podcast

Welcome back to the Speaking and Communicating podcast. If you are looking to improve your communication skills, both professionally and personally, this is the podcast for you. And when the show ends, please remember to leave a rating and give us suggestions on what you would like us to discuss on this show. Today, I am joined by Terry Tucker, who's from the Rocky Mountains of the United States. He 6 ft 7, are you 6 ft 7?
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6 ft 8, you missed by an inch, but you were close enough. Even taller than a... He is a tall 6 ft 8 giant who used to play basketball in the South side of Chicago. He is the CEO and founder of Motivational Check and he authored a book titled Sustainable Excellence. Before I go any further, let's welcome Terry, hi. Hi Roberta, thanks for having me on. I'm looking forward to talking with you.
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I'm looking forward for you to share a lot of the wisdom that you have prepared for us today. So thank you for being here. Well, thanks for having me. So first and foremost, let's talk about the book. What got you started on writing the book? It's the first book that I've ever, ever read and first book I ever published. It was really a book born out of two conversations I had. One of the jobs that I had in my life is I was a girls high school basketball coach when we lived in Texas.
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One of my players that had moved to Colorado, where my wife and I live now with her fiance, and we had had dinner one night. And I remember saying to her after dinner, I'm really excited that you're living close, and I can watch you find and live your purpose. And she got real quiet for a while, and then she looked at me, and she was like, well, coach, what do you think my purpose is? I said, I have no idea what your purpose is, but that's what your life should be about, finding the reason you were put on the face of this earth and then living that reason.
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So that was one conversation. And then I had a young man reach out to me. He was in college. He reached out on social media and he asked me what I thought were the most important things that he should learn, not to just be successful in his job or in business, but to be successful in life. And I didn't want to give him that get up early, work hard, help others. Not that those aren't important. They are incredibly important. But I wanted to see if I could go deeper with him. So I spent some time and I...
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I thought about it and I wrote some notes and eventually I had these 10 thoughts, these 10 ideas, these 10 principles. And so I sent them to them. And then I kind of stepped back and I was like, you know, I've got a life story that fits underneath this principle, or I know somebody whose life emulates that principle. So literally during my cancer journey, after I had my leg amputated and before I started chemotherapy for the tumors in my lungs,
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while I was healing, I sat down at the computer every day and I built stories. And they're real stories about real people. I built stories underneath the 10 principles and that's how sustainable excellence came to be. You mentioned you had a cancer diagnosis 10 years ago. What is the first thought or feeling that comes to you when the doctor breaks the news? I think I ran the gambit. I was...
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As I mentioned, I was a basketball coach in Texas and I had a callus break open on the bottom of my foot. And initially I didn't think much of it because as a coach you're on your feet a lot. After a couple of weeks of it not healing, I made an appointment and went to see a podiatrist, a foot doctor friend of mine. And he took an x-ray and he said, Terry, I think you have a little cyst in there and I can cut it out. And he did. And he showed it to me. Just a little gelatin sack with some white fat in it. No dark spots, no blood, nothing that gave either one of us concern.
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But fortunately or unfortunately, he sent it off to pathology to have it looked at. Two weeks later, I received a call from him. And as I mentioned, he was a friend of mine. And the more difficulty he was having explaining what was going on, the more frightened I was becoming. Until finally, he just laid it out for me. He said, Terry, I've been a doctor for 25 years. I have never seen the form of cancer that you have. You have a rare form of melanoma.
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that appears on the bottom of the feet or the palms of the hands. And because your cancer is so incredibly rare, he recommended I go to MBA Anderson Cancer Center in Houston and be treated. But when he first said that to me, I think I experienced all the different stages of grief. All the different stages that we associate with grief. You know, I was like in denial. No, this can't possibly happen into me. I did everything right in my life and then you kind of get mad and then you sort of bargain with God and then you get depressed.
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And then you get to a point where it's like, well, these are the cards that I've been dealt. I don't like these cards. I mean, I would prefer not to have them, but I'm going to have to play these cards to the best of my ability and see where they take me and see where it goes. And that was 10 years ago. So I'm still playing that hand of cards and so far I'm still here and I'm still alive. But yeah, I mean, I went through a gambit of emotions when I first found out that I had cancer.
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Does time heal, as they say? Does it heal in the sense that you still deal with these cards and yet the way you look at them, your perspective of the experience, does it get better? I think that depends on you. Yeah, I think that you have a choice of which handle you wanna grab. Do you wanna grab, like for example, when I go to treatment, is it, do I have to go to treatment or do I get to go to treatment?
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Do you have to go see the doctor or do you get to go see the doctor? And I think part of that and something that I learned early on, you know, I started playing basketball when I was nine years old and I played all the way up till I was 21 years old and graduated from college. And I think one of the things that team sports teaches you is the importance of being part of something that's bigger than yourself. Yeah. And you realize that, you know, on a team, that if you don't do your job, not only do you let yourself down,
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But you let your teammates down, your coaches down, your fans, exactly your fans down. And if you think about it, the biggest team game that we all play is this game of life. And so right now I'm on a clinical trial drug for the tumors that I have in my lungs. They're more than likely is not going to save my life, but it may save the life of somebody five years from now or 10 years from now, based on the data that the doctors are gleaning from my blood tests and my scans and things like that.
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That to me is I get to go to treatment. That to me is, yes, I'm gonna go through vomiting and shaking and a fever and all the ugly parts of having this drug administered in my body. But at the same time, this is part of something that's bigger than me. This is something that might help somebody down the road who I'll never meet, who I'll never know. And to me, that's I get to go to treatment, not I have to go to treatment.
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Exactly, we discuss communication and now we'd affects personal relationships on this show relationships have become so tricky and you're married. Obviously you ought know, but dating has become so tiresome. A lot of people just think you know what? I'm just going to be alone. How important were your personal relationships in helping you sustain you through these experiences? That's a great question. I talk about what has gotten me through cancer and I talk about what I call my three F's and that stands for.
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faith, family and friends. I have a very deep faith in God. And I've noticed over my life that a lot of people will start down a path toward a goal, let's say. They wanna start a business, for example. Something will come up that will stop them and they'll quit and they'll give up. They don't just give up, they wanna blame somebody. They wanna blame their parents or their boss or their station in life or whatever it is. Very few people take personal responsibility for their own success and happiness.
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So when I got cancer, people were like, well, who do you blame? What do you mean? Who do I blame? They actually asked you that? Oh yeah, several people asked me that. And I was like, what do you mean who do I blame? Well, you've got to blame somebody. I don't blame anybody. And then they find out I have a faith life and they're like, well, you must blame God. And I sort of joke, I'm like, no, I don't think God got up on a Tuesday morning, check this to-do list and said, Terry Tucker cancer today. Yeah. I don't think that happened. Drop it on him. Yeah, exactly. We're gonna, yeah, we're gonna drop this on him today. See how that goes.
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You know, so I don't think that happened at all. Then the next F is my family. And it's just my daughter and my wife and I. When I had my leg amputated, my doctor wanted to put me on chemotherapy for the tumors in my lungs. And we were eight years into this fight. And I looked at him and I'm like, is it going to save my life? He kind of shook his head and he said, probably not. But it might buy you some more time. And I'm like, well, I don't think I want to do that if the outcome is going to be the same. But I'll go home and talk to my family.
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I remember going home and I started talking to my wife and daughter and my daughter's immediately like, all right, we need a family meeting. I'm like family meeting. There's three of us. It's only got a board here or something like that. You know, we all sit around the kitchen table and individually talk about how we feel about me having chemotherapy. And then my daughter's like, all right, let's take a vote. How many people want dad to have chemotherapy? And my wife and daughter raised their hand and I'm like, wait a minute, am I getting out voted for something that I don't want to do?
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But I remember back when I was in the police academy, that was another job that I had. When I was in the police academy, our defensive tactics instructor, used to have us bring a photograph of the people that we love the most to class. And as we were learning different ways to defend ourselves, we were to look at that photograph because he reasoned you will fight harder for the people you love than you will fight for yourself. So I took chemotherapy not because I wanted to.
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but because I love my family more than I love myself. So they were an integral part of getting me through this. And then finally, my friends. And I think you find out who your true friends are when you're faced with- I think they're tough. Absolutely. And there were people that I thought would be in my corner, would be in that foxhole with me when I went through this, who weren't, who kind of like, no, I can't deal with this. I need to move away.
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And then there were people who I never expected to be there for me that have been there the whole 10 years. So don't think, hey, that person's gonna be there for me or that person could care less. It may just be the exact opposite of that when push comes to shove, when you get something like this. Right, that's why they say life is about relationships. I know we focus on a lot of this outside stuff nowadays, but at the end of the day, life is about relationships. We're not good to be alone. And I-
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You know, go back to the Bible and Genesis. You know, God made man. And then God was like, it's not good for man to be alone. You know, so I'm going to put man to sleep and I'm going to take a rib and I'm going to make woman. And I don't think that was so much about, you know, man and woman or husband and wife as much as it was about the point you just made. Don't be alone. We're not designed to be alone. We're better together than we are alone. Reminds me of this meme that says, please send me 10 million dollars. I just want to see my true colors. You were.
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working for the SWAT team. I was. Negotiator. So when it comes to negotiating, what are some of the key things that you learned when it comes to negotiating skills and communication skills? Yeah, that's a great question. If you think about what a police officer does, 99.9% of what we do is usually face-to-face with another human being, whether we're pulling them over to give them a ticket for speeding, or we're answering a radio run for a fight at a bar, or.
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knocking on your door to tell you to call the hospital because grandma died and the hospital can't get a hold of you. It's a face-to-face situation but as negotiators we were not face to face with that person. A lot of times we were blocks away dealing with somebody on the phone or we were you know behind a locked door behind a ballistic blanket that would stop bullets and things like that trying to negotiate somebody to come out. So it was a whole different dynamic and
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where we spend hours kind of over here talking about something when the real problem was over here and we hadn't even gotten to that. And I like to describe kind of what we did. We've all been, when we were growing up and now we've been to the park and we played on a teeter totter or a seesaw, you know, growing up. And if you think about that teeter totter or seesaw, when we start negotiating with somebody, their emotional side is way up in the air.
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Rational side is way down on the ground. Yeah, and by asking them open ended questions and getting them to talk and burn off a lot of that emotional energy, that teeter totter or seesaw sort of comes to equilibrium. And then hopefully over more time, what happens is the rational part of that person is now in control. They kind of calm down and now they're thinking with their rational brain and their emotional brain is way down on the ground.
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And that's the time we can talk about solutions about putting the gun down about letting the hostages go about coming out, whatever it ends up being. When you're in an emotional state, and you're yelling and screaming, and you're agitated, that's not the time to say, hey, put the gun down and come out. So that's what our goal was, to get to the point where the person was using their rational brain to make good decisions for them. And we did that by, like I said, using open-ended questions. Not yes or no questions.
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you know, tell me about why we're here. Tell me about what got us to this, whatever. And getting the person- Help me understand. Exactly, perfect. Help me understand why we're here. That's a great line. And then getting them to talk. And then also the power of silence. You and I talked about this earlier of getting to a point where they talk and they talk and they talk, and then they stop. Now it's uncomfortable for human beings when we're together. So we would use it to our advantage. We wouldn't say anything.
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And then eventually the person who had the hostages or was barricaded, they would start to talk again. They wanted to fill that silence. So silence was a very important tool that we used. Something else that we used was listening. And everyone said, well, of course listening. That's very important, but it's not listening. Really listen though. Exactly. And that's the point. Do we listen to understand or do we listen to respond? You know, if you're talking, am I really listening to you? Or am I like,
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up Roberto say what you're going to say because I want to get my two cents in there. That's listening while you're talking. I'm like, what's my next question? What's my next question? Exactly. That's I don't hear what you're saying. That's listening to respond as opposed to, oh, okay, Roberta, I may agree with you on whatever we're talking about or I may not, but help me understand where you're coming from. Help me understand what you're saying, especially today in society. We're not doing either of those. We're just screaming at each other, you know, and when we're screaming at each other, I can't hear you and you can't hear me.
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So we can't possibly understand where each other is coming from. So listening was another big part. And then I guess I'll just end it with this. I guess the overarching tenet of this whole thing was trust. We're trying to build a relationship. Just like a husband and wife or a parent or a child or a Boston subordinate, whatever it is, we're trying to build a relationship with the person who we're negotiating with.
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Now this person may be a murder suspect, a homicide suspect. This person may just be somebody who's having a bad day, just locked themselves behind the door with a gun, or they could be anybody in between. And so the importance of not lying to them. And we would have people say to us, hey, I'll come out, but you've got to promise me I'm not going to jail. And we would have to say, well, when you do come out, you are going to go to jail. But we would deflect the conversation to something that was more.
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positive could have lied in order to get the result you wanted, which is how sometimes we manipulate situations. You're right. We could have lied. But here's the thing. There was a very good chance that a year from now or two years from now or three years from now, I would be back negotiating with that same person again, maybe about the same thing, maybe about something different. And if they thought that I lied to them, then I had no credibility. I was not able to build that trust.
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and you were going to have to bring in another negotiator to deal with that because they were like, hey Tucker, you lied to me two years ago when you talked. So why should I listen to anything you say now? Yeah, I'm not listening to anything. I don't trust you. I've lost that trust. And just like if I cheated on my wife, my wife may forgive me, but is she going to trust me? You will never believe anything you say from now on. Exactly. It's not simple. Exactly. Right. So trust was very important in what we did. I always say, I don't know whether I blame social media or social media, it's just a reflection of...
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we've always been, but we are always offended. We don't like it when people have a different opinion. That's why I'm saying, I don't know if whether we've always been this way as humans or social media is just reflecting us back to ourselves. I'm not sure I know the answer to that. I think if you're a person of character, if you have good character, and I'm not saying that there's never a time to lie. I lied a lot as a policeman, probably to keep myself safe. I mean, I'd stop a car with four people in it by myself.
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and the driver was a felony suspect. And I'd say, hey, look, you got a traffic ticket. You haven't paid. Come on back. I would lie just to get them away from their buddies and put them in the back of my car. Did I lie in court? Absolutely not. I would never lie in court or anything where I swore an oath to do that. But what kind of character are you? What kind of an individual are you? If I think you're a person of good character, then I'm probably not going to be offended so much by what you say.
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And the thing that I find hilarious today is that especially among young people, and I'm an old man, so I mean, you can take this with a grain of salt. But so many young people today are like, hey, it's all about me. Like you said, I want to be alone. It's all about me. But then they're upset when somebody says, I don't like the outfit you're wearing, or I think you're ugly, or I think you're stupid, or I don't like your hair color. If you think it's all about you, why would you care what somebody else says?
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Why would you care what somebody else thinks? You should only care about what you think, right? Exactly. We've come to a point where we don't even know how to communicate, and that's why we get offended all the time. Now that's absolutely true. Yeah, the onus is in both parties as well. The one who does the offense and the one who immediately gets offended. They might be misinterpreting what the other person said. It's just a lot going on. There's always a breakdown. There's always a missed connection.
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That's why you see what you see today. Basically you do, but but that's your responsibility. If you don't understand something that somebody is saying, it's your responsibility to ask. I don't understand what you just said. Could you help me clear not in a condescending way, but in a way of I just don't understand. Can you help me? What is that doing? That's doing the same thing that I was doing as a negotiator with somebody who was barricaded. I'm building relationship. Can we trust each other? That's I think the essence of your question.
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Can I trust you? You have to figure that out on your own. And you're right, it is very hard. People have asked me, you know, I wanna be in law enforcement. What do you recommend? Tell them the same thing. Put your devices down and go out on the street and talk to the homeless guy and go up to the penthouse and talk to the rich guy up there. Because if you wanna be successful in law enforcement, you've gotta be able to talk to a cross section of people who are rich and educated.
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versus, you know, I'm homeless and I have no education and I'm a drug addict and all. You've got to be able to talk to those people. You can't text your way through an investigation. You know, you got to be able to talk to people. And you're right, we can't do that. We've got devices that do that for us now. And I'll give you a quick story. Our daughter got my height and she's six foot two. She played basketball at the United States Air Force Academy. And she's an officer in the space force right now.
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And when she made the decision to go to the Air Force Academy, there were other coaches that were interested in having her come to their schools to play. And so I said to her, well, now you need to call those coaches and tell them you've made your decision and then you're not coming to their school. And this is exactly what she said. No, I'll just send them a text. And I'm like, no, you won't. I said, this is about a relationship. You have developed a relationship with these coaches. You are going to call them on the phone and you're going to talk to them. She didn't know how to do that.
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We had to role play how to do that. And that's why sometimes they struggle when the fresh graduates, when they enter the workforce and they're working project teams, that's why they struggle. They do. And that's something I think, another thing I learned being part of a team. One, you've got to hold yourself and other people accountable. Number two, when I communicate with you, I want to look you in the eye. You know, this isn't a...
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Well, you know, I'm going to talk to you about some. No, I want to look you in the eye and I want to tell you the truth again, not in a condescending way, not in a way I'm trying to hurt you, but in a way that we can communicate with each other and make things better. Right. The outcome when you talk about how you listen to understand and not listen to give advice or to respond. Here's what some of us women accuse men of when they listen, they listen to respond and they are.
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defense or their argument is, I don't want things to pile up. You know, us women, we'll tell the long story of, oh, I came to work this morning and this is what happened. By the time I tell you the 10 problems I was having, you're just trying to solve each one of them. You don't want things to pile up. So we accuse men of listening to respond or listening to solve the problem when I just wanted to share my feelings. I don't need advice right now. So how do we bridge that gap? You're absolutely right. We are...
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Men are we're terrible at that. We always want to solve people's problems. Here's another thing that I learned as a negotiator that I think might answer your question. So somebody would talk about whatever they were talking about. And then we would parrot back what they said. Oh, so you had a fight with your mother today. They may talk some more. If they're really, really pissed off, they're yelling and screaming and they're agitated and you say, you seem like you're a little upset. You have...
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totally missed the communication there. You've totally missed what they said. So I think it's important to parrot back what you said, but attach a feeling to it. But it's gotta be a feeling that reflects what that person said. So if they're pissed as hell, and you say, you're a little upset, you totally missed it. And you've lost credibility. We lost credibility. They're gonna be devil's pits now. Exactly. I mean, and that was the hard part of being a negotiator.
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It was mentally exhausting because you had to get down in the weeds. You had to get out in the mud with these people that are just, they're pissed as hell because they caught their son in bed with their daughter. Now they're holding their son at gunpoint and they're going to blow his brains out. But we have to attach an emotion to that. So I guess what I would do as a man, it would be to say, you know, Hey Roberta, here's what I hear you're saying. And obviously you're really upset about this and I'm not solving your problem.
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I'm just letting you know, just read what I say. Whatever you say, just parrot it right back to you. You know, say the same thing and attach an emotion to it. That sounds a lot better because you basically, am I understanding you right when you say? Yeah, you're really pissed off at your mom because she did this. I heard what you said. I'm not trying to solve your problem, but it makes you think and hopefully I did. It makes you understand that I understand what you're saying. I'm not trying to solve your problem.
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But I understand where you're coming from. Terry, this has been very valuable. You've shed some really great wisdom with us. Now, before you go, so first of all, your book, Sustainable Excellence, where can we find it? Pretty much anywhere online. You can get it at Amazon, barnesandnoble.com, Apple iBooks. Anywhere you can get a book online, you can get Sustainable Excellence. And it's in e-book form. It's also in paperback and hardcover. OK. So Sustainable Excellence by Terry Tucker.
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And then do you have a website or social media where people can find you? I do. I have a website called motivational check. I put a thought up for the day every day. And with that thought comes a question about maybe how you can use that thought in your life during the day on Mondays. I put up the Monday morning motivational message. All my social media links are on there. I have recommendations for videos and books to read. So motivational check.com will get you to me. You can also leave me a message there.
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and I respond to everybody who reaches out to me. Okay, Sustainable Excellence by Terry Tucker and motivationalcheck.com. Thank you so much for being here today, appreciate you. Thank you, Roberta, I enjoyed it. One last thing, the motto that you live by. I guess I would say at this point in my life, put more love back into the world. Put more love back into the world. Terry Tucker, everybody.