Fans of the popular Netflix show Ted Lasso might be amazed how art imitates life. One scene in particular illustrates a key message of relationship expert Rick Johnson. Rick teaches about the power people have to build others up or tear them down. In the show, egotistical athlete Jamie Tartt plays for his own glory, because that’s the attitude modeled by his abusive dad. A scene depicts his father verbally berating him after Jamie took a step toward maturity and unselfishly passed the ball to a teammate. In contrast, the coach, who had been encouraging Jamie throughout the season to grow as a person as well as a player, affirms Jamie’s move.

Who can measure the impact of a man’s words or actions? The need for men to step forward and assume their God-given and crucial role to affect society for good is a countercultural message, for sure. But it rings so true it even shows up in secular programming.

The power of a man’s influence forms the bedrock of Rick’s work. He founded the fathering skills program Better Dads and speaks and writes about how men impact their marriages, families and communities.

“We don’t recognize the things we say or don’t say can tremendously impact people’s lives,” Rick said. “One of the things I ‘preach’ a lot to men is that they matter, they are important,” Rick said. “That is not a message our culture gives to men. I lay out what that looks like, and they are shocked. They’ve never heard that before.” 

Rick shared his experience mentoring a fatherless elementary-age boy. When Rick pulled up to the apartment complex to meet his young mentee for the first time, he noticed a playground teeming with children. Without supervision, toddlers were overrun, kids dodged surly teens blaring music with obscene lyrics, and scantily clad girls vied for attention. Shady characters skulked on the perimeter. He also noticed a discernible lack of men. “Where were the men?” he asked. He was told there were no men there – just single mothers trying to raise kids the best they could.

A few weeks went by. Rick returned to meet his young charge at the playground. This time, several men were throwing Frisbees or watching the playground. Gone were the gangsters and their clique. Gone was the foul language and the loud music.

“It was like a ray of sunshine had broken through the clouds and shone on the playground,” Rick said, noting that just the presence of a few men was all it took to make a difference.

Presence. “Despair and hopelessness are found in kids’ lives where men aren’t involved,” Rick said. Lives were different because a few men used their powerful gift from God. Men have the power to bless or harm in ways that will forever be remembered and internalized. 

“I can’t tell you how many elderly people tell me, ‘The only thing I regret in my whole life is that my dad never told me he loved me and was proud of me,’” Rick said.

Rick remembered a woman who showed him a coat hanger she had treasured for years. Her dad had written a message telling her he loved her on the paper dry cleaner insert. Negative words fester and cause wounds that go deep. Words like, “You are no good,” “You will never amount to nothing.” “We carry those things around,” he said.

Rick recounts similar down-to-earth examples in workshops like the ministry’s Father-Teen Daughter retreat or Single Mom/Son weekend. He’s spoken at MOPS International conventions, Promise Keepers Canada events, Design 4 Living women’s conferences, and Iron Sharpens Iron men’s conferences.

Rick was raised in a dysfunctional, alcoholic home. The angry boy grew into an angry young man, he said. He started a successful environmental engineering firm but still felt the despondency of an empty life. He credits his wife for turning his world around.

“It seemed like no matter how much I accomplished or what I did, it was not very gratifying,” he said. “I didn’t want to pass on that bad legacy to my kids.” Looking for role models, Rick researched men in history he admired. He realized the common denominator of the great men he studied was that they were Christians. While his wife had grown up in the church, he did not come from a faith background.

“I was raised that Christians were hypocrites, that Christianity was a crutch for the weak,” he said. I spent a year studying Christianity and finally realized that the words of the Bible were true.” At age 40, Rick accepted Christ, which, “changed everything.”

He desired to make a difference in the world, which he realized would be best accomplished one-on-one through relationships. God led him to found Better Dads to introduce Biblical principles to pre-believers in a non-threatening manner.

“People you would never consider are getting reached, impacted, and lives changed,” he said.

One of his most recent books, Overcoming Toxic Parenting, builds from his own experience learning how to heal the wounds from a destructive home. He outlines three main things to help someone successfully change their life.

First is education. “You don’t know what you don’t know,” Rick said, referring to the learning curve he experienced trying to discern what was normal family behavior. Next, counseling, noting sometimes professional counseling is needed to get over things like physical or mental abuse. Lastly, Rick advocates mentoring, “It’s not enough to eliminate the negative, that leaves a void that without positive influences will be filled with the same.”

He points to the difference a mentor can make to model a positive example of healthy marriage and family life. “As a culture we don’t encourage that process (mentorship). It’s hard to breach that gap of how to connect.” He and his wife found mentors by joining a life group at church, a path he recommends others follow.

“Knowledge is key to people being able to change.” One of the problems with marriages today is that young couples don’t have mentors. If they were not blessed to have parents with good marriages, they are floundering.

“Whether you are a man or woman, you matter to people’s lives. There are younger people looking to you to learn how to have a successful marriage, raise kids,” he said. 

In his experience counseling couples prior to marriage, he’s found “expectations young people bring into marriages are pretty skewed.” He’s seen communication problems when women expected their husbands to instinctively know what to do to make them happy without telling them. Young husbands had unrealistic expectations about sexual intimacy. “It’s a recipe for disaster (without help),” he said.

He related an example of expectations of chore distribution, where the wife was disgruntled because she believed her husband wasn’t doing his fair share around the house. Until one day, she looked out of the window and saw him cleaning leaves out of the gutter in the pouring rain. She revised her complaint, because she realized he was doing a lot of things she didn’t know about. Faith, finances, raising kids — all these hot-button topics are rarely discussed before marriage but can cause division later, Rick added.

Marriage

As Rick’s ministry expanded, he found himself led to address different aspects of family life and relationships. “A man’s ability to step up and lean into a relationship not only changes the legacy, it affects his marriage,” he said.

In 2010, Rick wrote Becoming Your Spouse’s Better Half: Why Differences Make a Marriage Great, which became a bestseller. The book outlines the value of different perspectives men and women bring to marriage.

“We’re both created by God as human beings, but we are biologically developed to be different,” he said. The book educates people so they can be more charitable and empathetic toward each other.

As he notes on his website, “Having a successful marriage is not about finding the perfect person, it’s about loving the imperfect person you married. They say opposites attract – but they can be happily married. Just as a great meal is made of many ingredients – a great marriage is made of different traits.”

“It’s no secret that men and women are different. And it’s no secret that they don’t always get along because of these differences, even when they love each other. …It’s about loving someone in an unselfish, Christlike manner. Whatever we want out of marriage — unconditional love, forgiveness, passion — that is what we have to give to our spouse,” he notes on his website. “Rick shows couples how to go beyond merely tolerating each other’s differences to using those God-given differences to add spice and passion to their relationship.”

The Man Whisperer

“What woman hasn’t taken a look at her man and decided he could use some improvement?” Rick asks on his website. But isn’t the conventional wisdom NOT to try to change your spouse? Rick encourages women to inspire their husbands to their best selves by influencing them in positive ways.

He names the practice a “man whisperer” in his book, How to Talk So Your Husband Will Listen, which shows women how to use words and tone to build a man’s strong points, without nagging, to encourage him to grow in maturity and assume his male role as household leader.

“Men make changes when a woman is supportive,” he said. “Men have a great power God has endowed them with to change people’s lives by what they say and do or don’t. But women have the power to speak positive and encouraging messages into their husband’s and sons’ lives. Women need to realize how absolutely important they are for a man to succeed in life.” 

He explained that a man’s greatest fears are to be incompetent, to fail, to feel inadequate. He shared how those fears applied to his apprehension about becoming the spiritual leader of his household. His wife had grown up in the church, while he had accepted Christ in midlife.

“My wife knew way more about that than I did,” he said. “I was taking a big risk.” But as his wife supported him, he was “amazed at how just showing a mustard seed of leadership,” made such a difference. “My wife and kids were like dry sponges. They had been craving (leadership) for so long. It was relatively easy to fall into that role because the support system was so good.”

In one example of the man whisperer message, Rick said he noticed a young woman in the back of one of his speaking engagements “crying her eyes out.” When she spoke to him afterward, she told him her marriage was holding on by a thread. Rick confessed he didn’t remember the exact words he used to encourage her at the time but was delighted when he came across her six months later. Her changed demeanor reflected her improved situation.

She reminded Rick that he had told her to, “Stop nagging my husband and start praying for him,” (words he hoped he had not spoken quite so bluntly). But, no matter how the message was delivered, those were the words she put into practice. She thought, “What do I have to lose?”  Over the next few months, her husband changed his behavior of avoidance, joined her at church, and grew into leading a men’s study group! Rick cited this example as a reminder to never underestimate the value of the power of prayer.

“Don’t give up. I didn’t come to Christ until I was 40. I’m sure my married life before that wasn’t pleasant. I found out my wife’s grandma had been praying for me for 16 years. You never know what is going to happen.”

Rick and his family have recently moved to North Texas, which allows him a more centralized location from which to travel for in-person events. However, many of his materials are available on-line. His books include free, downloadable guides that groups use to study the material on a more in-depth basis.

Foster Parenting Relationships 

Better Dads ministry also hosts events like the Father-Teen Daughter retreat. He developed the model for the event to connect teen girls with their dads precisely at the time when they tend to try to break away, he said. He described an exercise where the girls are instructed to look in the mirror and write down what they see about themselves. Sadly, almost every one of them believed themselves to be “ugly, fat, unlovable,” he reported. When they shared the comments anonymously with the fathers, he reminded them they are the only men in the world who have the power to change their daughters’ perspectives. He exhorted them to tell the girls they loved them, that they were beautiful, “all the things the culture isn’t telling them by focusing only on their body and sexuality.” The session concluded with fathers blessing their daughters and pledging always to be there for them, once again emphasizing Rick’s belief in the power of words to heal and uplift.

Rick also teaches seminars for single mothers raising boys. He’s noticed that single moms in particular, “tend to rescue their sons too easily and not allow them to suffer.

“Males tend to learn and develop self-esteem by failing and getting up. If they get rescued too much by women, they expect to be rescued and become risk averse,” he said. “A boy who learns to quit easily becomes a man who quits easily. Working at a job you hate to feed your family gets difficult. Staying married, raising a family gets difficult.” He suggests boys need to learn to become men who don’t quit when the going gets tough.

“All men want to make a difference in the world,” he said. “The problems are so huge. How does one person make a difference?”

The answer — Legacy. “I find nothing more gratifying in life than knowing that my lineage will be changed by one thing,” he said. Step up, be present, use your words and your influence for good. Change the next generation, Rick challenges.

Rick is a nationally recognized expert, delivering papers at venues such as the County of Los Angeles Child Abuse Prevention Conference and the State of New York Fatherhood Conference. Rick’s work with men and fathers was recognized when he was invited to the White House as part of the “Champions of Change” ceremony in 2012. He has been featured in many national publications such as New Man Magazine, Crosswalk.com, Christianity.com, Christianity Today’s Men of Integrity, Relevant Magazine, Pentecostal Evangel, Thriving Family, and Proverbs 31 Ministries Magazine. He’s a frequent guest on radio programs and television shows nationwide.