He was a hard-driving senior executive everyone was terrified of.  His criticisms were plenty, immediate and penetrating.

Even so, the people in his division were fiercely loyal. He demanded, and they achieved. They did their best work. An extraordinary level of pride in being the best held their heads high and kept them there. No one was ever tempted to leave, no matter the offer, and most had been with him a long time.

Yet even the ones who had worked with him for years trembled with fear when they were called into his office.

And there I was, sitting in front of him, looking across a vast polished mahogany desk, him in a luxurious swivel executive chair.

Me: “You’re sending people to my classes who don’t want to be there. You can’t send people to me who don’t want to learn.”

He leaned forward and very condescendingly said, “Look, if they wanted to learn, why would I send them to you? If they want to learn, I can teach them myself. If you don’t know how to teach people who don’t want to learn, you’re not a very good teacher.”

I don’t know why, but it made me laugh. I saw his logic and realized this was his way of asking for help.

I explained to him that they weren’t ready to start the training when they arrived. That he would have to finance the time it took for me to work with them, to talk with them individually in advance to establish a real purpose for them to learn before they came. He thought that was fair and agreed.

We worked together for several months, this tough, tough man and I. As he sent more people to my classes, I spent time with him talking about each one, making sure we were in harmony. And they did well.

Our conversations were always short.

One day, it was 5 pm, people were leaving the building, he was explaining to me his broader goals for the division.

I asked him why they were important to him. He told me and I asked him, “Tell me more about your purposes.” He told me more, I acknowledged and asked, “Why is that important to you?” He became deeper, more interesting, and more philosophical.

He talked for 45 minutes. I think it’s something about the way I listened that kept him talking. Somewhere along the line, his face began to soften, and he drifted into telling me about growing up in Western Pennsylvania.

The softened look on his face told me that what he was saying was important.

When he was finished talking about growing up in rural Pennsylvania, a place filled with space and farms, I told him I understood how extraordinary that was and left a long silence. He was looking away, lost in thought. The hard look gone from his face. Relaxed. Happy. I could tell he was dreaming. I could tell he was back there in Western Pennsylvania.

And then he looked at me with eyes that were smiling and told me about being a young teenager and Saturday nights, after a week of hard work on the farm, taking the slow ride, riding their tractor into town with his brother for ice cream. He described the exquisite pleasure of sitting on the tractor by the side of the dark road under the stars, and eating the best ice cream he ever tasted on a hot summer night.

His face looked like he was 12 years old.

I felt I was sitting there on the tractor with him. It was beautiful. Simple. Serene. Overwhelmingly delicious. The comfortable ease of having a brother sitting next to you, feeling the same.

I listened and saw the true essence of this man, I experienced who he really is. A man way beyond his plush executive office and luxurious chair, one whose greatest joys in life happened sitting on a tractor on a Pennsylvania summer evening.

It made him happy then. It made him happy now.

He looked at me, his face so very different. And told me why he had become so tough, what had happened in life to make him take on this tough veneer, and how he believed if he softened even a little, it would weaken his authority and people wouldn’t respect him.

I listened and acknowledged. I didn’t say anything about it. I didn’t tell him it wasn’t true. I didn’t tell him it would engender more loyalty. I knew that was unnecessary. I had seen the transformation, it had happened.

People transform while you’re listening. This is one of the biggest and most unknown secrets in the world.

I simply let him know that I understood, and he looked into my eyes and saw that I did, that I knew.

He saw that I was cold, his office was chilly. He said, “You’re cold.”  He stood up, took off his custom suit jacket, walked around the desk and gently put it around my shoulders, saying, “Here, I can see you’re cold.”  I just said, “Thank you.”

He sat back down, and we finished our conversation about one of the people I was coaching. His face now new.

The next time I saw him in the hall, there was a warmth in his eyes. And then I watched him talking to the others in his division. There was a warmth in his eyes when he talked to them.

They couldn’t help it, their own warmth for him burst forward, and now there was a warmth in their eyes when they looked at him instead of the usual terror.

The warmth people were feeling very naturally built and grew stronger over the next several weeks. He responded warmly and now there was laughter in the halls.

Three of his people came to me and asked, “What did you do to him?”

I smiled, happy, and said, “It’s good, isn’t it?”

They said, “It’s a miracle.”

I said, “I listened.”

They said, “He never talked to us. How did you get him to talk?”

I said, “I wish I could make it more complicated for you, but I listened.”

What this made me realize is that most people don’t know what real listening is. They were too terrified of him to really listen, too terrified to really be there for him.

You’re not hearing anything when you’re terrified. You’re focused on your own survival.

You’ve got to really be there for someone for them to open up.

People don’t terrify me because I know that when you really reach them, no matter how tough the outside, no matter how high up in the organization, what you find in each of them is a very unique humanity that is extraordinary and easy to love.

And listening, real listening, lets you reach them.

I wish I could make it complicated. But that will keep you from being able to do it. It’s really quite simple.

It’s a matter of understanding how much you have to be there, how present, how much affinity you have to have, how well you have to understand, how well you have to acknowledge anything and everything they tell you. How they have to see that you are really there. How they have to see you really understand.

Telling them you understand is not enough. They have to see it in your eyes.

That is what real communication looks like.

It opens the door that you want so much to open. The opening of that door is the transformation you’ve been looking for.

It’s magic. Pure magic.

Be the cause!