Archive for Connections
January 16, 2010 at 12:17 pm · Filed under Communication, Connections, Next step
Inspired by Joe Vitale, I thought I’d write some “Positive Predictions” for 2010.
- My e-book, Six Practical Ways to Use Clean Language at Work, develops into the central core of a distance learning product which gets people really using the Clean Language they’ve learned. This goes on sale during the spring: more than 200 copies are sold in the first three months.
- As a result, hundreds of people around the world benefit from the technique, getting into closer rapport with their own unconscious minds. They’re naturally curious to learn more, resulting in increased sales of Clean Language: Revealing Metaphors and Opening Minds. There is a further reprint.
- This results in increased demand for me to lead events and training courses. I travel to three different countries to teach X-ray Listening to different groups; I run several telephone and web-based training groups; I deliver in-house courses to business analysts, project managers, web developers, UX experts and others. Things are ticking along brilliantly – I sometimes have to refer interesting work to colleagues because my diary is full.
- I have a regular column in at least one trade and one consumer magazine, perhaps using X-Ray Listening to interview celebrities.
- A major publisher offers me an advance to write the next book, to be delivered in early 2011, and plans some serious launch publicity including media appearances.
- The wedding goes brilliantly: people have fun and some new friendships are formed between guests.
And all of that’s like what? It feels like a sort of clockwork landscape, a Heath Robinson machine made up of brightly-coloured flowers unfolding in sequence, expanding in all directions…
October 1, 2009 at 2:49 pm · Filed under Change, Coaching, Communication, Connections and tagged: David Taylor, ideas, independence, naked coach, potential, recommendations
David Taylor is one of the world’s biggest-selling business authors. His book ‘The Naked Leader’ holds the record as the fastest-selling business book ever and has sold millions worldwide. And now he’s backing me and X-Ray Listening!
I made contact with David a few weeks ago, interviewing him to promote Business Analysis Conference, which took place in London this week. After the call we exchanged books: I imagined mine would languish in his unread pile for months. But something about it grabbed his attention, he read it, and he loved it.
He emailed to say: “Your book is simply outstanding. It deserves far higher sales and attention.”
At the conference on Tuesday, after his keynote, I sidled up to David to introduce myself and thank him. I wasn’t expecting to be hugged vigorously, and pulled aside for an impromptu coaching session.
It turned out that Clean Language had had a major impact on him. He’d taken it with him on one of his regular strategy retreats, and was now using the questions in his coaching sessions with Chief Executives worldwide.
The notion of ‘Clean’ is wildly different to David’s usual style – he’s highly directive, full of recommendations – but he was finding them valuable and could see their potential. And he had a string of recommendations for me and for the future of my business.
Now I have a personal challenge. I can see the solid commercial sense in what he says, I have great respect for him and what he has achieved, I’m very grateful for his time. And his ideas would take me way outside my comfort zone.
Will I follow them? I haven’t decided yet.
But meanwhile, I’m pressing on with X-Ray Listening, offering rapid, 100-minute training sessions for teams at the ‘peopley’ end of IT who want to better insights, better projects, and better products. Find out more here.
September 8, 2009 at 10:16 am · Filed under Change, Communication, Connections, Metaphor, Next step and tagged: Clean Conference, Clean Language, consultant, hypnosis, hypnotherapy, influence, Metaphor, sales, transition
It’s been described as the ‘elephant in the room’ of Clean Language: metaphors elicited using the Clean Language questions can be used very effectively to influence the person they came from. Margaret Meyer and I will be tackling this subject head-on at the Clean Conference this weekend.
I caused a controversy in the Clean world a couple of years ago when I quoted hypnotherapist Eddie Miller in a newsletter. He said: “I’ve got a good way of using Clean Language as the set-up for a hypnotherapy session. When they come and see me for an initial assessment, I do a Clean Language session with them. Then, when they come back for the second session I take them into a nice deep trance using their own material, their own metaphors and their own language. It seems to be working really well – I’m seeing results really quickly.”
Metaphors have been used for many years by religious leaders, statesmen, salesmen, marketers etc as a fast-track to our wallets. Aristotle urged orators: “The greatest thing by far is to be a master of metaphor.”
Entertainers use metaphor. Teachers use metaphor. Healers use metaphor. They do it because it’s a superbly effective way of getting a message across – our brains seem to be hardwired to respond to metaphor at both conscious and unconscious levels.
All the experts agree that to be effective, the metaphor used by the orator must be relevant to the person hearing it. There’s not much point using a metaphor based on American football with an audience of British women, for example.
As we learn Clean Language, we discover that the metaphors we had thought were shared across a particular culture are in fact unique to each individual. And to anyone accustomed to using metaphors to persuade, it’s soon apparent that the most persuasive metaphors of all are a person’s own metaphors for the specific context under consideration.
So, if you’re selling something face-to-face, one-to-one, why would you do anything other than use the customer’s ideas, words and metaphors? Increasingly, that’s what effective salespeople do – it’s called a “consultative sell” and is used in most high-value sales contexts. It’s the source of the definition of a consultant as “someone who borrows your watch to tell you the time”.
Similarly, why would a therapist use anything other than a client’s own metaphors to help them to change? Staying Clean is often more effective than introducing new content.
There’s a paradox at the centre of the thing: the more we seek to deliberately ‘influence’ someone, the less influential we may become. And the more we reduce our deliberate ‘influence’, the more we actually influence.
This is all ‘within limits’, of course.
And those limits connect back to the function of this blog – career transition. We are not influential when we are sitting at home watching daytime TV: we need to be ‘out there’, putting ourselves forward and inviting connection. Only once we have made a connection of some sort does the ‘influence paradox’ kick in.
Judy Rees 