Communication Styles:

One of the easiest success coaching stories to describes is how my partner and I integrated  our significantly different ways of relating to the world.

As humans, we all send and receive information by way of sight, sound, taste, smell, and touch.   Taste plays a relatively minor role and smell is important on the subconscious level, but for most conscious and intentional communication we focus on sight, sound, or touch.   For most of us, one of these three modes dominates our communication.   Here's an personal example of how our individual and different ways of communicating affected us:

I am highly kinesthetic, strongly visual, while auditory is a much less important mode of communication for me.   My partner, on the other hand, is highly auditory, moderately visual, and touch is a much less important mode of communication for her.   When I tell her something, she's got it.    When she tells me something, she's often whistling into the wind.   I hear the words but the message inside the words never reaches me.   

I am spontaneous and function intuitively based on what feels right in the moment.  I often have to make major mid-course corrections on my way to my goal.   She plans everything out in great detail before taking any action.   Her mid-course corrections are usually minor.   I will have something already half done while she is still thinking and planning what to do.   For me, mistakes are part of the normal process of life.   For her, a mistake is a major catastrophe, something to feel guilty about.

An example of our different styles in action:   When we meet while going in opposite directions through any area with cramped space, such as in our small kitchen or in a narrow hallway in our home, she will say "excuse me" and walk around me with minimum physical contact.  I, on the other hand, will intentionally touch her, sometimes pause for a hug and, then, without any words at all, move around her in a gliding, almost dance-like movement.

These  differences made our relationship somewhat of a challenge.   Years ago, when we first got together, neither of us was consciously aware of these significant differences between us.   This created endless minor conflicts.  For example when passing in a crowded space, such as that described above, I considered my kinesthetic movement around her to be loving and intimate.  She thought I was being rude and inconsiderate by not saying "Excuse me."   Spontaneous actions that I considered as normal, she thought of as being wild and reckless.   I became bored with her endless planning, and couldn't figure out why she wouldn't simply write her request of me in the form of a note so that I'd be sure to get it done.   Obviously not every request needed a note, but simply verbally telling me the six things she wanted at the market wasn't working for either of us.

We were fortunate to become involved with a consciousness raising group within which the success coaching process brought  these differences to our attention.   With conscious awareness of our own and each other styles, we have each adapted to and now accept the other's ways of communicating.   It's also much easier for us to  allow each other space to be and do as we are.   Our life together is much more harmonious now.

Your Relationships:   

Think of how you relate to others.   For example, if you are primarily vocal and  are you in a relationship with someone who is primarily visual, how do you communicate to them so they actually get your message?  Think about how they relate to you.      Here's a brief description of some common communication styles.

If your intimate partner, or your family, or your business associates operate primarily in a different mode than you  do, we can assist you in bringing much more harmony into your life. 

A Second Coaching  Success  Story

  The Context:  First we need to offer you some background information
                                      so that our example will make sense.

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The Goal:  The goal is to feel good.

The Problem:  The problem is that as a result of some situation in your life, you are feeling bad.

The Challenge:  How do you change your relationship to that situation so that you no longer feel bad.

The Six Alternatives:   1)  Run of to Brazil or somewhere else.  2)  Kill yourself.  3)  Change your behavior.   4)  Continue to feel like barnyard mud.   5)   If someone else is involved, get them to change their behavior.   6)  Change your attitude about what you are experiencing so that the negative feelings stop.

Few of us have the luxury of running away from things;  suicide is not a realistic option;  most of us are not about to change our behavior; unless you love suffering you probably want to feel good; and blaming someone else for how you feel and expecting them to change is simply playing victim.   So that leaves us with only one realistic choice -- to change your attitude about what you are experiencing.

The Solution:   The obvious solution then is to change the meaning of the situation so that you feel good or neutral when it comes to mind.  For some, this is as difficult as changing behavior, but let's consider the possibility below.

How to Implement the Solution   In NLP** terms, changing the meaning of something is called re-framing.   Bandler and Grinder, the team that discovered and developed NLP, offer us a classic example of re-framing. 

The LNP Example of Re-framing:  They describe a housewife and mother that had a very light colored living room rug.  Whenever a family member walked across  the rug, they left foot prints (impressions) in the rug.  When she saw the rug with footprints, the woman felt bad, she called herself a poor housekeeper.  Through counseling, the woman was able to change what the footprints meant to her.   The new meaning was, "When I see the footprints on the rug it means I have a loving family around me and I feel good about that."

Lost Keys:   

Here's an example that most of us can identify with because all of us, at one time or another, have lost or misplaced something important that we deeded to find immediately.

One of the people we associate with was taking this issue to an extreme.  She was constantly loosing house keys, car keys, office keys, etc.  It didn't mater what kind of key it was, she would sooner or later lose or misplace it, and being a person who lived by high emotions, each key loss was a trigger for her to jump into still another emotion swamp, to beat up on herself, to feel worthless and stupid, and to miss appointments and opportunities.

We suggested several techniques to resolve this.  Here's a sample:

tell yourself where you put it      ...

Physical behavior Change:  When you set something down, literally tell yourself where you put it (i.e. I put the car keys on the kitchen counter).  That  just didn't work.   Her behavior was not about to change.   

Making a Duplicate key:  Duplicate keys soon went the way of the original key.

Invoking non physical assistance:  When something important is lost and needs to be found quickly, some people pray to Saint Anthony, the patron saint of lost items:  "Tony Tony turn around, something's lost and must be found. Thank you for helping me find my  _____."   This didn't work either.

Feeling good about a bad situation:  That's not a realistic option because nobody in their right mind wants to feel good about loosing the only keys they have and all the consequences that come from that.

The Solution --  Turn Tragedy into humor:  This being an extreme problem we suggested and extreme solution.   Since losing keys wasn't about to stop,  something was required to take the emotional hook out of the loop and make loosing keys a neutral, a positive or even a humorous event instead of a tragedy.   Fortunately, she had a good sense of humor, otherwise this would never have worked.

Gaining Cooperation:   First we explained our proposed solution and asked if she would participate.  She agreed.  Next, we asked her if she was willing to explain her solution to some of her friends and family and invite them to keep her on track.   She was surprisingly cooperative and obtained to support of two family members,  one neighbor, two co-workers and a close friend.   (The family members  didn't live with her. She lived alone.)  Here's the solution:

The Set up:  She agreed to make seven complete sets of keys, to attach a round wooden disk to each set of keys, and to number the sets from one to seven.  Set number one looked like a normal set of keys, but as the numbers on the wooden tags grew larger so did the size of the disk.  The colors also got brighter so that set number seven had a bright orange disk attached to it that was twelve inches in diameter.   So that she wouldn't simply take the colored disk off the keys, she also agreed that if anybody caught her with a set of keys that did not have a numbered disk attached to it, that she would have to take them and two other people of their choice out to dinner.  

She also made four additional sets of keys and gave one to her neighbor, one to her sister, one to her boss at work, and one she sealed in a jar and hide somewhere outside on her property.

She was asked to put seven hooks on the wall somewhere in her home and hang each set of keys on a hook.   She agree to regularly use set number one, but when that turned up missing she was simply to  use set number two.  If both set one and two were missing she was to use set number three, and so on.  

The Results:   Getting the system set up and in place was a bit of a hassle and required the assistance of her close friend, but even this elaborate set up was much less costly and much less agonizing than the old emotional roller coaster that came with lost keys.   Once the system was in place, lost keys ceased to be a trauma.   When a set did get lost, instead of focusing on the problem and beating up on herself, she was able to focus on how good she was for having a solution in place.  That, along with the above mentioned practice of  telling herself where she put her keys, eventually reduced the incidents of lost keys.

This was obviously a custom-designed solution that applied to a specific individual to deal with a specific problem.   With many other people it simply wouldn't work.   It is; however, an example of how "thinking outside the box" can solve problems.

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