Train of thought…

Today I helped bring clarity to one of my clients.  We are working on building his communications skills.  Our aim is mastery.  We want to build mastery in my clients ability to write, to speak, and to listen.  The third one is the big one for all of us that aim to become master connectors.  Master connectors have developed their antenna to pick up signals that us normal folks just miss.  Most of those signals are around tone and body language.  Some, however, simply revolve around “hearing” the words and what is meant by the words we are hearing.  My client struggles with allowing others to interrupt.  

He doesn’t stop.  He’s afraid of losing his “train of thought,” and, just as importantly, he’s afraid of losing something he cares about even more.  He’s really afraid of losing…

CONTROL.

The result of these communications habits is that he lacks “flow control.”  Once he gets going, he can’t be stopped.  He is very articulate and makes a great, logical presentation of what he’s thinking.  He just doesn’t let us become involved.  He just doesn’t.

Today, in about 15 minutes of building we gained clarity about this habit, why it exists, and what he’s going to do to wire a better one.  After we gained clarity on the why behind this habit, I wasted little time in giving him two new habits to begin wiring.  I involved him but let me be clear that I told him very specifically to practice doing this and doing that.  Here are the specifics.

I told him that in every encounter with his teams, I want him to practice speaking less.   He is to determine a novel “reminder” for this new habit.  Bottom line, stop speaking earlier then you do now.  

Second, he is to immediately stop speaking when anyone interrupts him.  Immediately.  He is to stop worrying that he will lose his “train of thought,” and instead, encourage his teams to STOP losing theirs.  He is going to become interruptable.  He will know he’s reached mastery here when he senses another’s need to interrupt from reading their body language.  

Master connectors encourage the interruption.

They are NOT worried about losing their train of thought.  They welcome their “receivers” involvement and blur the line radically between who is sending and who is receiving.  To those with whom they connect, it appears that they are always doing both.  Yea, BABY.

Master connectors never stop building their tuneage.  They just don’t.

Are you building yours?

Are their certain folks you have a hard time hearing?

Tell me more, my friend.

Tell me more…