Instant enlightenment?

Even though Gabrielle had just made it to VP, she felt powerless.

It was a new role for her and a new organization.  She was hired to completely transform the organizational culture.  

It was an old industry.  The company was founded in 1899 and had grown massive.  The culture hadn’t changed much in 100 years.  It was polite but stodgy, slow moving, and suffocated new ideas with extreme conservatism.  After many decades of success, the organization was slowly losing its competitive edge.

The CEO wanted Gabrielle to create a swift evolution into a dynamic, innovative and agile organization. 

Making this happen sounded simple and straightforward in her job interview with the CEO. It even felt that way for the first couple of weeks as she walked around shaking hands, meeting everyone and receiving a warm welcome.

Then the reality of an unchanging culture set in.

The CEO was the only senior executive with vision, but was too busy to visibly support her. 

Meetings became increasingly frustrating.  Many executives and employees had been there for decades and were VERY comfortable.  Everyone was willing to discuss Gabrielle’s innovative ideas, but no one was willing to DO anything with them.  She did everything she could to persuade them to act, but discussions grew into polite but stubbornly unchanging debates.

Gabrielle was able to reach some people one-on-one, but when she contemplated the scope of reaching tens of thousands of employees spread out across the country, it looked pretty grim.  She wasn’t getting the senior level or management support needed to make it happen.

She started to feel the time needed for real change to materialize would be measured in lifetimes with a target date of “probably never”.

But it was too late to back out. She had the job. She had made a promise.

How does one person change a whole organization? And do it fast?

It requires a great ability to enlighten others. How do you do that?

First, understand there’s a learning curve that happens whenever there’s any change.  

And there are 5 hidden barriers all organizations (and even all individuals) encounter during this learning curve. If you don’t know what these hidden barriers are and successfully remove them, the learning curve will be painful. 

The confusion, emotion and frustration you’ll have to deal with will drain you. 

Because it’s a learning curve, these barriers prevent learning.  This is an important point. 

A powerful fact about people is that when they learn, they can’t help but change.  With real learning, the change comes from within.  It’s stable, durable, real, powerful, self-directed, intelligent, often brilliant, and happens naturally.

Gabrielle came to one of our workshops (Transforming the Learning Curve) and discovered how to remove the hidden barriers preventing the outcome she wanted.

After the workshop, she had a new approach.

She stopped trying to get the organization to change.  She stopped trying to persuade.  She stopped talking about change altogether.  She never mentioned it again.

She switched over to educating and enlightening the organization.

Persuasion, influence, buy-in, transformation, all of the above are byproducts of new realizations, they’re the results of having learned. 

Gabrielle progressively educated the organization in every meeting she attended.  Every presentation she gave was enlightening.  People stopped resisting and started listening.  They walked out with new realizations, greater understanding.  They were enthralled by what they were learning.

She removed the obstacles on the learning curve, replacing them each time with new understandings, new knowledge.

The organization’s awareness, intelligence, and most importantly their judgement, rapidly grew and hit a tipping point.

Senior executives, managers and employees started to demand a change. They told her why it was necessary!  Even more, without prompting, they created changes in their immediate areas and saw fast success.  They were creative in ways she never expected.

Within a couple of months, Gabrielle was watching a high-speed transformation in the culture happen organically, driven by the organization itself.

In December, we’re hosting another Transforming the Learning Curve workshop. The very same workshop Gabrielle used to transform her entire company in record time.

During this workshop, you will learn how to quickly remove the 5 barriers to your success and develop the ability to create persuasion, influence, buy-in, and transformation on demand.

We’ve limited the number of participants so you’ll get lots of personal attention. 

I’m not sure when we’ll offer this again, so if you want us to hold a seat for you, hit reply and let me know.

Be the cause!

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Transforming the Learning Curve

People don’t like to be sold. They don’t like to be persuaded. They don’t like to be influenced. Often they don’t like to be led.  But they do like to learn.

And that’s why one of the most powerful influences on an individual or a nation is learning.

I don’t mean the kind of learning that happens in school, which to my mind is not real learning.

I made it through University, graduated Magna Cum Laude (with great honors), had a straight 4.0 grade average through my Master’s degree to the point where they waived the requirement for me to write a Master’s thesis, was their first pick into a competitive Doctoral program, was more than halfway through my Doctorate when I firmly decided that real learning happened outside the classroom and I took a leave of absence that’s still going on.

Believe me, I sat through a lot of school. 

Real learning happens out in the world, in our everyday hustle and bustle.  And learning is the primary foundation for positive, impactful change. 

If you want to make big change happen (in yourself or others), you need to cause a whole lot of learning. 

An extremely important principle is that when people feel you can teach them something, when they sense they can learn something meaningful and powerful from you, they listen to you.  And listen more attentively than they do at any other time.  They’re wide open and give you their all.

More than 99% of my business comes by word-of-mouth.  In over 30 years of business, I’ve never had a sales or marketing department because I’ve already been too busy with new clients.

That’s because I really understand learning and I’m an extraordinary teacher.  I’m not saying this to brag. It’s taken me over 30 years to master the science of how people learn and to have a teaching process that always works.   It’s something I love to share.  And people tell others about it. They tell others they will experience a beautiful transformation and learn things from me they will never learn anywhere else.  I take pride in that.

I teach communication skills, from challenging one-on-one conversations to how to communicate successfully to large audiences. 

In addition to that, there are also advanced skills beyond these that I teach.

When clients want more advanced skills to sell their ideas, get buy-in, create organizational change, transform others, lead, or persuade, I take a completely different route than they expect.

Beyond how to communicate effectively, I teach them how to educate, specifically how to enlighten.   

You may not think of yourself as a teacher, but you are.  You are your own best teacher and your success in life depends on your ability to also teach the world around you.

So it really comes down to your ability to learn and to teach.

An even better word for it is enlighten. 

Enlighten means to enable to see more clearly, to enable to see or comprehend truth, to shed light on, to illuminate, as in to enlighten the mind or understanding.

Persuasion, influence, buy-in, transformation, all of the above are byproducts of new realizations, results of enlightenment. 

A person who can enlighten and create new realizations, new awareness, in themselves and others, is valuable.

The best leaders enlighten.  That’s how they create impact and change reality.

I recently had a client who completed one hour of virtual coaching who wrote me:

“Something changed inside of me.  I’m getting much better outcomes.  I don’t even know what I’m doing differently.  Something in me just changed.”

What changed was her awareness. 

If you’re ever in a situation where you feel you can’t persuade someone, what’s happening is that you’re not able to enlighten them.  You haven’t changed their awareness.  That’s what’s keeping them from being persuaded.

The reason for this is because they’ve encountered barriers or obstacles that are keeping them from learning from you.  And you don’t know how to remove them.

I’ve just received a request from a couple special clients for a workshop on how to remove the obstacles to learning to transform the learning curve.  It’s something I’m quite expert in.  I am required to create dramatic changes and transformations in my clients in a matter of a couple of days. 

I’ve encountered every problem learning you can imagine.  And then some. I know what the barriers are, I know how to remove them and I know how to create dramatically powerful learning, transformative learning, in a very short period of time.

That’s what I’m going to teach in this workshop.  I’m going to teach how to dramatically transform the learning curve so you can do it too.

It applies to you if you are working to change the world and make a difference, if you’re trying to make your voice heard, create transformation, lead, persuade, sell, or influence.

It also applies to you if you’re in a situation where you need to rapidly learn or come up to speed yourself. What I’m going to present has helped many people who are drowning in new roles.

And everyone tells me it helps them at home, especially with their kids or grand kids.

I’m going to cover material you’ve never heard before.  I have built my entire success in what I’m going to teach in this workshop.

I’ve delivered this workshop before and I personally have great affinity for it.  It’s always a big hit.  Participants report later they:

• Became leaders

• Created organizational transformation

• Changed the culture

• Increased productivity and quality

• Created a winning team

• Got through to someone who was previously impossible

• Taught others respect

• Taught their kids how to be responsible

• Have husbands who are now romantic

If what I’m writing resonates with you, there are six seats left.  I have no idea when I would ever offer this workshop again, it’s pretty advanced stuff.  I’m doing it as a special favor for these clients.

Whether or not you do this workshop, these are principles that are extremely useful for creating positive change.  Take a look at the problems that you’re having with people, especially if you’re trying to persuade them.  Take a different view of what to do.  Enlighten them and change their awareness.  It will get you a lot further than trying to persuade them.  Enlightening and persuading are completely different activities. Remember that persuasion is a byproduct of having learned.  If they don’t learn, they don’t change.  Don’t try to persuade.  Enlighten, and persuasion will happen organically.

Be the cause!

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The day intention saved a life

Norma works with me and I wish you could meet her.  She’d win your heart in 5 minutes. 

Norma’s from El Salvador. The reason she came to America is because she witnessed 3 men murder her husband’s cousin. They gunned him down in the street while he was standing in front of her, and drove away. Then they realized they’d left behind a living witness and started hunting for her.

Norma received numerous death threats so she left her home for another village.  The 3 men were relentless in pursuing her and were closing in on all of her hiding places.

Norma stopped going outside at all.  She lived in constant terror.  

It was emotional torment beyond endurance.

Finally, unable to bear it, she took her 6-year-old son and, with her husband, WALKED day and night for 3 days, staying off the main roads, through the jungles of Guatemala. She arrived in Mexico with bloody feet and legs that couldn’t carry her further.

Then she asked for and received asylum from the US and came here.

When Norma started working for me, she didn’t speak much English. I hired her because of the look in her eye. 

What I saw was bigger than words. 

I saw a depth of character that is rare. 

At first we used Google Translator to communicate. Then I gave Norma a Spanish version of the training material I use when I teach Learning How to Learn, because I wanted her to know that she could learn ANYTHING. It inspired her to sign up for English classes and she learned so fast, it was like lightning. 

Although Norma had a green card that allowed her to work in the US, becoming a US citizen was a very BIG and challenging goal.  I helped her study for her US citizenship test and she passed it.

Then it was time for the critical interview where it would be decided whether she was given the right to become a US citizen.

I told her I would practice the interview with her. She was still a very shy woman and couldn’t look me in the eye as she answered my questions. She sounded very unsure of herself, even though I knew inside she had all the right answers.

I coached her until she was comfortable, could look me in the eye and speak with real intention.  Not aggressively, but with deliberate intent so her communication would fully reach me and have an impact.

The day came. She looked the interviewer in the eye, unfolded her story and consciously unhurried, said very clearly, very purposefully, “There are 3 men in El Salvador who will kill me if I go back. I walked for 3 days through 2 countries to get away from them.  I am safe in the United States.  I will be an excellent citizen.”

Her interviewer’s expression changed to kindness.

Then, with tremendous compassion, he said, “I am sure you will.”

I stood next to her during the swearing-in ceremony.  It was one of the happiest moments of both our lives.

The reason I do this work of teaching powerful communication is because many times the difference between success and failure is not because the person (or cause) is worthy or unworthy.  Unworthy can win and worthy can lose all too easily in this world.

What powerful communication does is it allows the worthy to win.

The power to transform any situation or any person begins with your ability to assume the cause role in your communications.

Be the cause!

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Why I'm an Educator

Many people think “education” stops with school and is replaced by “training” in business.  They’re missing the true, very uplifting, definition of education.  I thought you might like this exploration of words and their meanings, the precise words that define a very liberating experience.

I’ve been in the business world for over 30 years.  I’ve been called a consultant, trainer, coach, instructor, and instructional designer.  Because I’ve specialized in working with large corporations, the word “educator” has hardly ever been used.  And yet, that is how I see myself.  Let me tell you why.

The word “education” came from “educare”, a Latin word meaning “to lead out”.  Despite many examples to the contrary, it has nothing to do with “depositing information into another person.”

Education’s not a “putting in.”  It’s a “leading out.”

The real definition of “education” can be found in Webster’s New World College Dictionary which says education is the process of developing the latent faculties and powers of a person.  Let’s take these words apart and see what they mean for you.

“FACULTIES” are exceptional abilities or aptitudes.  Think of faculties as a whole package of abilities that combine to create far beyond ordinary competence.

“LATENT” means present but not actualized.  Actualized means “made actual or real.” Latent means these abilities are there … but are not yet revealed or visible.  You can’t quite see them yet.

“POWER” means a great ability to produce a result.

“OF A PERSON” – “Of” means “belonging to” – this means, these abilities and powers already belong to you.

“DEVELOP” means to take from one stage of growth to another.

“PROCESS” means how you do something.

Good education is the process of developing your latent faculties.  It helps you take your latent powers from one stage of growth to another until they are fully visible and under your complete control.

Your latent faculties or powers can be at any stage of development.  What’s important is that they ARE there inside you already; they belong to you even now.  True education just develops them, one stage to the next, until they are fully revealed.

How latent can they be?  Well, they could just be a seed.  If you’re reading this, you’re at least aware of something inside you that could be great.  That’s a seed.

Or perhaps the seed has sprouted and this ability is growing – underground.  It hasn’t broken soil yet where others can see it.  You can feel it emerging, but right now, you’re the only one who sees it.

Perhaps your plant has broken soil and is now a tiny green shoot above ground.

Or perhaps the plant has grown taller and is starting to actually look like something.

Wherever you are in these stages, a great educator takes you from one phase through all stages of development until you arrive at your own sense of, “WOW!”

The important thing to know is that you already have powers, meaning you have great abilities to produce results, whether that power is a seed or a visibly growing plant … you’re capable of all I’ve written here.

Perhaps someone has stepped on and squashed your plant before it had time to grow.  Education helps you with that too.

True education simply helps you keep developing your faculties and powers, leading them out, until you’re unmistakably powerful.

Sincerely,

Ingrid

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