“I’m now walking into meetings and making what I want happen. The first thing I noticed was that everyone started listening to me differently. Even my boss. Now people go quiet when I speak and genuinely listen, even my superiors. I hadn’t realized there are different kinds of listening. This is REALLY different. After that, it’s not hard.”
This broke all the rules considering where Agoston was on the corporate ladder. He was young, early in career and had no authority. But he spoke up at meetings, in hallways and conversations. His influence was growing daily. It wasn’t long before he was promoted and began rapidly moving up the organization.
Before he did the Causative Communication workshop, no one listened to him.
What made the difference for Agoston was mastering the skill of intention.
Intention is a very interesting skill. It’s not effort (trying or working hard to make it happen), it’s not force (getting forceful or demanding).
It’s a state of mind of knowing the exact result or effect you want to create, deciding to create it, being very certain about it, with the full expectancy of being successful. It relies on certainty and the absence of doubt.
When you communicate with real intention, it carries your communication across to others in a powerful way, so what you’re saying fully arrives and creates a real impact. Often, it’s a very surprising impact when you see the other person really “get it”.
Almost everyone I coach needs work on this. Some people know this and tell me others “walk all over me”. Even “strong” forceful people, have weak intention. They may be loud or aggressive or strongly assertive. But their intention is weak and it’s intention that makes things happen, not brute force or energy. It’s a tremendously neglected muscle we’ve never been taught to develop.
One of the traps people fall into is, while they’re speaking, they’re holding back a little, waiting to see how the other person is going to react. This disrupts intention. It shows a lack of certainty.
When you’re communicating with intention, you’re not waiting to see how they’re going to react. You’ve decided the effect you want to create, and you simply go ahead and create it.
You are deliberate, straightforward and sure. It looks effortless when you do it right.
Intention is very commanding. But you’re not commanding the other person to do something. When you communicate with intention, you DO command attention, you command interest, and, most importantly, you command understanding. You can have all of those without commanding the other person to do something.
When you command attention, when you command interest, when you command understanding, people listen. And they listen differently. And that opens a big door for you. Once you open that door, you can just walk in and make it happen.
Many of my students have called intention a “Jedi mind trick” because it truly is a state of mind. And it is in the Jedi league of superior skill.
When you want to make things happen, intention is what you need.
It’s one of the secrets of senior executives, one of the things that makes them different. Intention is what gets them to the top and keeps them there when they’re successful.
You will find it valuable regardless of where you are in the organization.
Agoston actually looked and sounded like a senior executive when he learned intention.
After that, it was only a matter of time before he started getting treated like one.
Everyone, including his boss and his boss’s boss, started to listen.
What could happen if everyone started listening to you?
Be the cause!