This is the first part of the transcript of an interview we conducted with Dr Richard Bolstad, the original creator of the Transforming Communication seminar. We interviewed him in the summer of 2006 in Bangkok, just after he did a training in Chiang Mai, Thailand. We were lucky to catch him on his way to Japan, and we had to use all the communication skills that are taught in Transforming Communication.

Richard is a master NLP trainer, and we are very fortunate to have trained with him.

Michael: Hello everybody and today I’m introducing Dr Richard Bolstad who is the creator of the Transforming Communication course. So, welcome Richard.

Richard: Thanks, Michael, great to be here.

Michael: Can you tell me a little bit about your background and how you came to be sitting here today.

Richard: Sure. It was quite a journey for me to come to be running the Transforming Communication training and training people to run it because I have several professional backgrounds. I trained as a teacher in New Zealand, and I trained as a nurse in fact and as a psychotherapist.

What I noticed was when I was working with people individually that a lot of the problems that people have in their live stem from the fact that they are not clear on how to create cooperative relationships. And one of the things that we know from the research is strongly correlated with happiness in life is the ability to create those kind of relationships, not just at work but personally of course, intimate relationships that feel cooperative, that work for both people.

Michael: So, this was part of the reason you created the TC, or Transforming Communication course?

Richard: Right. I had some dramatic experiences myself which led me to decide that this was an important thing to focus on, and one of them was that I’ve worked a little in Eastern Europe. I trained for a couple of years, I went over and trained each year in Bosnia Herzegowina, both in Sarajevo, and on the other side in the Republic of Serbska.

And the other place where my material is being used continuously is in training psychologists around the area of Chechnia. And I guess when I first saw those places it was clear to me:

In real life this is one world that we live in, and the quality of our relationships, the quality of what goes on in our organisations around the world is actually of interest to all of us, is important to all of us.

I’m a parent, I’m a grandparent and I feel I have a stake in the future here. And so I’m really interested in creating a world that would be a better world for my grandson to live in as well. And in my own experience, of course, I run a company and previously I’ve worked in a number of large organisations in New Zealand.

And one of the things that became very clear to me there was that the most significant blockage that companies experience when they’re trying to increase productivity, when they’re trying to get ahead in their own field, is the fact that often the people who are good at running their company, or are good at doing the things inside the company, don’t know so much about, again, how to create those relationships that’ll make that work.

So, it’s the arguments, it’s the longstanding unresolved disagreements, those are the things that are holding them up.

Now, that becomes particulary dramatic when you look at a government situation. I’ve worked with several of the organisations that are part of the New Zealand government. And there again, this ability to communicate is crucial to the success of those kinds of public organisations.

Michael: Okay, that’s great. So, what makes Transforming Communication different to say assertiveness training or other similar courses?

[...to be continued...]

And this of course is what we all want to know. What makes Transforming Communication different? Is there a difference at all? How can we use communication skills differently to get different results? We will explain all this in the next part of the interview.

Keep your eyes peeled…

And here’s now the link the the second part of the interview where Richard talks about who this course would be useful to, and, very importantly, what makes this course different from all the other communication skills courses that are out there.