Here’s part 14 of the Transforming Communication interview:
So, for example, in one of the large banks in New Zealand I had a manager contact me just three days after the course and he said: look, this is amazing. I only did the first two days of the course and I went back to my office and there’s a woman there who’d been, we thought, creating arguments for years and years in the office. Everyone dreaded going into her office and talking to her. And we all felt, like, whenever we had a meeting she was one who held back things at the meeting.
He said: With one of the skills that you taught us for helping other people solve their own problems, I went in there, I sat down with her, I listen to her, I guided her through that process. At the end of it she sort of sighed and she turned to me and she said: Wow, thanks. You know, no one’s ever done that for me before.
Here’s the interesting thing that over the next day, people came up to this guy and they said: What the hell did you do with that person in there? She’s great, she smiled at me this morning, she’s happy. What went on? How did you that? I want to know how to do that so I can do it as well with people.
Here’s another example. One of the lecturers at Victoria University, which is one of the big universities in New Zealand, he wrote to me two days after his training and here’s what he said: he went into a meeting and he knew that there had been a conflict for a couple of years about this issue that the meeting was about. And he figured he’s in for an afternoon, like four hours plus of conflict, of arguing, and people are going to hold their own positions. But with the two days of training that he had, he took those skills into that meeting and he said: in an hour and a half the whole thing was solved. Everyone felt happy about it. And he though: What am I going to do for the rest of the afternoon? Because he had abandoned the afternoon because of what he knew there.
Here’s another example. I had someone contact me from the United States actually, and this guy contacted me by email, and he said: Last night my partner and I had got to the point, we’ve been married for many years, and we got to the point where I began to think that there’s no longer an Us. And that’s quite a powerful thing, obviously, for someone to start thinking. He said: We’ve had this conflict for a long time. I just had no idea how to resolve it. He said: I got online, I looked up your information on the internet, and when I looked up the information, I read through it, I listened to some things, and I realised what kind of conflict we’d been having. And I went back into the room there, and in ten minutes the conflict was resolved. And he said: The most amazing thing to him was that his wife did not even know what were the skills that he was using, and she didn’t need to learn anything herself.
He could go in there, take charge of it for himself and create that kind of difference. And he said: I just want to thank you for my marriage, for getting my marriage back.
Now, that’s an incredibly exciting thing just to get out of going online and finding out more about this.
Michael: That’s really really powerful.
Richard: And very precious to be a part of.
Michael: Oh yeah. Preserving a relationship which he probably devoted a large number of years nurturing and then it starts to unwind and then having those skills to reknit it, for want of a better term…
Richard: Exactly.
Michael: …must be so wonderful.
Richard: Yeah.
Michael: I don’t know if there’s anything else that you feel that you like to add?
***
Find out in part 15 of the transforming communication interview…