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Welcome to Module 8.2 Return to Dashboard
The home task for this week is to share your understanding of Transforming Communication with one other person. The most effective environment for you to use these skills in would be one where others already share your understanding. You may already have thought about who else in your family, work team, or organisation would benefit from these skills. However, when you share these ideas with them, you are attempting to influence their values.
A consultant is a person hired to offer their expert skills and knowledge. There are business consultants, educational consultants, health consultants (everyone from chemists to the Avon salesperson), and so on. You can use the consultant model to influence others’ values. Effective consultants:
- Get prepared – they know the information about their subject. Don’t bother trying to convince your kids about the dangers of drugs if they know more than you.
- Don’t start trying to influence until the other person has agreed to listen (in other words, get yourself hired first). The first statement of every good salesperson is a request to talk to you.
- Explain opinions using I messages in as brief a way as possible. These don’t need to be full three part I messages; just messages that say “This is my opinion” rather than “This is the way it is!”
- Listen to the other person’s opinions using reflective listening.
- Leave the other person to make their own decision.
The following scenario demonstrates both effective and ineffective consulting. I’d like you to imagine that I am a study skills consultant. I came in on the first module of this course, to assist you in taking notes and remembering information. I explained to you that the most effective way to do that was to make Mind Maps of what you’re studying, rather than using lists. Now, I’ve just come back in, and I notice that people haven’t really been using that idea. So I’m going to attempt to consult with you. And the first time through, I don’t intend to use effective consulting skills, so you can feel free not to use your Transforming Communication skills. Just respond, in your mind, as you imagine a seminar participants might:
Poor Consulting:
“I notice you’re resisting that idea about the mind maps. Why? Frankly, ten years from now, you’ll wish you had picked up this idea.”
“Lots of people use this idea now days. In my hometown everyone uses mind maps. I wish you’d be more like them.”
“I’m only telling you this to help you. You need to wise up a bit.”
“You’ll be sorry. Pride comes before a fall, you know.”
“Do you want to turn into a third rate learner? Is that your style?”
“I don’t know how many times I have to tell you this. Mind maps work!”
“I’m really very disappointed. I expected better from you people!”
How do you feel about the poor consulting? Were you persuaded? Were you getting closer to agreement? In this example the attempt to use authority in the sense of influence based on respect had begun to come across as authority in the sense of power. The more power, the less influence. In fact, as a consultant I had been fired! Many parents, teachers and managers have been effectively fired by their “clients”.
Using the Transforming Communication skills, the consulting process would look like this:
Good Consulting
“I notice you haven’t been using the mind map idea I suggested. Can I ask you what you thought about that?”
[I then Reflective Listen the response]
“I realise you need to find something that works for you. My reason for suggesting it was that research in large companies like Boeing suggests mind maps will reduce the time needed to learn something to one tenth or less.” (from Tony Buzan’s Book The Mind Map Book, BBC Books, London, 1993, pi 70)
[Reflective listen the response]
“Okay, well; call me if you want any more help with that.”
At this time, I’d probably back off from consulting. After all, I’d already talked to you about it once before. It may be that the person changed their mind. It may be that they were still disagreeing. The crucial issue is that most people do not change their minds while talking to the person who disagrees with them. They change their minds when they go away and think about it. And what counts then is often how they feel about the consultant. If I annoyed you here, you’re unlikely to start using mind maps, even if you realise that I was right! But if you feel good about our relationship, you’d be more likely to try it out, even if you doubted the truth of what I said.
Identify someone in your life you’d like to introduce Transforming Communication to. Decide what your goal is with that person. It could be to get them to do this course, to get them to use win-win conflict resolution about a specific issue, to get them to learn from you yourself, etc. On the Sharing Transforming Communication worksheet in your workbook, note down what you would say to the person.
The task until the next module is to share Transforming Communication with someone else, using the skills you’ve learned.