Module 1.2

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[audio:http://www.transformingcommunication.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/1_Track_324.mp3|titles=Module 1.2.mp3]

There are some things that people who are highly successful communicators tend to have in common. People who are good at inspiring and influencing others, good at helping others solve problems have certain things they all tend to do. Some of these things may surprise you. For example, it turns out that excellent communicators tend to tell stories; they explain many of their points using examples and metaphors.
Robert Fulghum is a writer with an interest in the creation of world peace. In the following story, he is writing about a seminar he attended on the island of Crete, studying the history of the search for peace in that land. As you listen you’ll notice that Fulghum has that NLP attitude of curiosity about what works. As we go through this course here, it’s very important to me that you keep this sense of curiosity. Keep checking how these skills could make a difference for you in your real life. Robert Fulghum says…

“Are there any questions?’ An offer that comes at the end of college lectures and long meetings. Said when an audience is not only overdosed with information, but when there is no time left anyhow. At times like that you sure do have questions. Like, “Can we leave now?” and “What the hell was this meeting for?” and “Where can I get a drink?”

The gesture is supposed to indicate openness on the part of the speaker, I suppose, but if in fact you do ask a question, both the speaker and the audience will give you drop-dead looks. And some fool – some earnest idiot – always asks. And the speaker always answers. By repeating most of what he has already said. But if there is a little time left and there is a little silence in response to the invitation, I usually ask the most important question of all: “What is the Meaning of Life?”

You never know, somebody may have the answer, and I’d really hate to miss it because I was too socially inhibited to ask. But when I ask, it’s usually taken as a kind of absurdist move – people laugh and nod and gather up their stuff and the meeting is dismissed on that ridiculous note.Once, and only once, I asked that question and got a serious answer. One that is with me still.

First, I must tell you where this happened, because the place has a power of its own. In Greece.
Near the village of Gonia, on a rocky bay of the island of Crete, sits a Greek Orthodox monastery. Alongside it, on land donated by the monastery, is an institute dedicated to human understanding and peace, and especially to rapprochement between Germans and Cretans. An improbable task, given the bitter residue of wartime.

This site is important, because it overlooks the small airstrip at Maleme where Nazi paratroopers invaded Crete and were attacked by peasants wielding kitchen knives and hay scythes. The retribution was terrible. The populations of whole villages were lined up and shot for assaulting Hitler’s finest troops. High above the institute is a cemetery with a single cross marking the mass grave of Cretan partisans. And across the bay on yet another hill is the regimented burial ground of the Nazi paratroopers. The memorials are so placed that all might see and never forget. Hate was the only weapon the Cretans had at the end, and it was a weapon many vowed never to give up. Never ever.

Against this heavy curtain of history, in this place where the stone of hatred is hard and thick, the existence of an institute devoted to healing the wounds of war is a fragile paradox. How has it come to be here? The answer is a man. Alexander Papaderos.

A doctor of philosophy, teacher, politician, resident of Athens but a son of this soil. At war’s end he came to believe that the Germans and the Cretans had much to give one another – much to learn from one another. That they had an example to set. For if they could forgive each other and construct a creative relationship, then any people could.

To make a lovely story short, Papaderos succeeded. The institute became a reality – a conference ground on the site of horror – and it was in fact a source of productive interaction between the two countries. Books have been written on the dreams that were realized by what people gave to people in this place. By the time I came to the institute for a summer session, Alexander Papaderos had become a living legend. One look at him and you saw his strength and intensity – energy, physical power, courage, intelligence, passion, and vivacity radiated from his person. And to speak to him, to shake his hand, to be in a room with him when he spoke, was to experience his extraordinary electric humanity. Few men live up to their reputations when you get close. Alexander Papaderos was an exception.

At the last session on the last morning of a two week seminar on Greek culture, led by intellectuals and experts in their fields who were recruited by Papaderos from across Greece, Papaderos rose from his chair at the back of the room and walked to the front, where he stood in the bright Greek sunlight of an open window and looked out. We followed his gaze across the bay to the iron cross marking the German cemetery.

He turned. And made the ritual gesture: “Are there any questions?” Quiet quilted the room. These two weeks had generated enough questions for a lifetime, but for now there was only silence. “No questions?” Papaderos swept the room with his eyes. So, I asked.

“Dr. Papaderos, what is the meaning of life?” The usual laughter followed, and people stirred to go.
Papaderos held up his hand and stilled the room and looked at me for a long time, asking with his eyes if I was serious and seeing from my eyes that I was. “I will answer your question.”

And to get those kind of answers, you need to ask the question. As I said, curiosity is very important in learning. In fact, the developers of NLP found that many excellent teachers made a point of always leaving one or two stories not quite complete, when they taught; so their students kept listening for the answer. And you can imagine how curious, and how alert that kept their students!

Living in a family, you probably realise that those who are constantly curious about what succeeds will tend to be more able to discover what makes their relationships more satisfying and more successful. There’s a story from India which demonstrates this rather well.

One day a woman brought her son to see Mahatma Gandhi. At this time, Gandhi was running a campaign to boycott all British imports. The woman explained that her son seemed to have no goals. What was worse, he was constantly sneaking out and buying imported sugar products. She was at a loss how to influence him. Threats, punishments and constantly watching him had failed. She knew that her son admired Gandhi, though, and hoped that if he would only speak to the boy and tell him to stop, the son would do so.

Gandhi met with the boy briefly. Then he met again with the mother, and explained to her that it would take three weeks before he would be able to find the correct way to say this thing to her son. The mother was puzzled, but she agreed.

3 weeks later they came back. Gandhi met with the boy, and in only a few seconds he was finished saying what he had planned to say. The boy stopped eating sugar immediately, and the change lasted. The mother came back in puzzlement and asked Gandhi, “Did it really take all that time to work out how to say those few words?” “Ah,” replied Gandhi, “this is the true secret of parenting.”

You can imagine how much the mother wanted to know…. This course is about the kind of skills Gandhi was using; skills that make parenting and other close relationships work. Starting with the ability to set goals.