Valeria had a problem. She’s a passionate woman and it was a passionate problem. “People don’t listen to me. They tune me out. They don’t do what I’m asking them to do. They don’t even give me a response after a while.”
As I was coaching her during the Causative Communications workshop, Valeria emphatically announced:
“It’s not my nature to talk slow.”
It has nothing to do with her nature. If it did, I wouldn’t have been able to help her.
Valeria has talking fast on automatic. She pushes the “Play” button and “Fast” comes out automatically.
That doesn’t mean it’s her nature. Just that it’s automatic.
When something is on “automatic”, it is not under your conscious control. It just happens by itself. I want to put you back in control.
With a little bit of coaching, I got Valeria to adjust her velocity (think of it as her “speed”, how many words she was jamming in) so people could really understand the individual words she was saying.
An amazing thing happened. And it happened very naturally. Valeria used fewer words.
She had been trying to make up in quantity what she was lacking in quality. That is a route to failure.
The route to success is to create quality, and most often you’ll find that you don’t need as many words to accomplish your objective. Simplicity versus complexity.
One well-controlled sentence can do more than a heavy torrent of words.
Valeria became very clear. She communicated her requests with great compassion. She was compelling. Irresistible.
This was also in her nature. It just wasn’t on automatic.
It never goes on automatic. You have to be awake, aware, conscious, in control, the way a good artist is in control of their paint brush – deliberate, you don’t want your brush to fly out of your control and splatter random paint all over your canvas.
And so with your words, each one carrying your idea…with purpose.
True power is never automatic, it is always conscious. It is a moment-by-moment expression of deliberate intention.
Be the cause!