One of my clients, Sharma, is a lower level manager in a huge organization with over 50,000 employees. She has only 17 people reporting to her and many levels between her and the top. She wanted to introduce a completely new company-wide initiative that would impact over 20,000 employees.
This would have seemed impossible to most people. The sheer number of people she needed to get on board, and the fact that she needed the SVP many levels above her to sign off on it would have stopped the average person from even trying. The challenge of just getting everyone’s attention in this crazy busy high-tech organization would have discouraged the average person.
Everything surrounding her said, “No way.”
Being causative means making what you want happen. It means being able to cause the outcome you want at will.
When you are causative, it doesn’t matter what the environment around you is doing, you are the source and the cause of what happens. You are able to cause what you want.
The environment could be your boss, co-workers, your family, or the pandemic. It’s anything outside of yourself. When you are causative, you can stay causative no matter what is happening.
Instead of relying on the environment, you’re able to rely on yourself to make what you want come true.
The catch is that it takes skills to be able to accomplish this. Not just knowledge… SKILLS.
The difference between knowledge and skills is that knowledge is in your head, skills are what you are able to DO. This varies greatly from person to person.
You could have knowledge in your head and know what you’re supposed to do. For example, you know you’re supposed to speak up, or you know you’re supposed to give a great presentation, or have confidence, or you know you’re supposed to get them to buy-in, give you budget or a promotion, to cooperate or do what you’re asking.
Skills are when you can actually do it.
Highly skilled is when you do it extremely well, even in adverse conditions (like if the other person isn’t listening, they strongly disagree, they’re not interested or they’re way higher than you in the organization).
Mastery is when you can do it even when most people can’t, and you can do it in a big way others really notice and admire.
You can never look to other people to see how much ability you should demonstrate. To determine where you want to be on this spectrum, you have to look inside yourself to find the truth of the level of Jedi, Samurai, skill you want to possess.
What happens to many people, unfortunately, (but hopefully not to you), is that they shrink the outcomes they want, and the outcomes they go for, to fit the skill level they have. They don’t possess the skills to make something really awesome happen, so they stop dreaming big.
They start to have goals that sound like, “I just want to survive this year”. Sometimes it’s, “I just want to survive this month.” It becomes, “I just want to deal with what’s right in front of me right now.”
As your dreams get smaller and smaller, so do you. And no one I know really likes being small.
It may seem “safe”, but it isn’t. The smaller you are, the more the world can eat you up. And it will.
The reason I teach communication skills is because I believe (and I see every day with my clients) that, while you can do many things extremely well, these are the skills that matter the most in life. These are the skills that shape your life. These are the skills that define who you are, what you do, what you have.
These are the skills that shape your self-confidence, your self-esteem, your self-respect, your self-pride.
These are the skills the shape your relationship with the world around you.
These are the skills that define your life.
This is what I’ve learned over and over in working with tens of thousands of clients:
You CHOOSE the level you want to be at.
And then you take action to make it so.
That’s the responsibility each of us has. To choose. To develop the skill to act. When we have the skill, nothing stops us from acting. It’s only lack of skill that stops us.
The fact is, there is no limit to how good you can get with your communication. And the better you get, the more causative you are and the more you can make what you want happen, and that enables you to dream bigger and bigger dreams and make them happen.
Sharma just emailed that she is getting unprecedented interest and support for her initiative and that a pilot is currently in progress with everyone enthusiastically predicting it will be rolled out company-wide. She’s doing the happy dance in her home office.
She also said that:
“Without my learning how to communicate causatively, none of this would have happened.”
I believe her. I know how hard it is to get people to listen. Especially now.
And speaking of now, whichever way you do it, now is the perfect time for you to work on your own personal-development and increase your skill level to the level you WANT to be.
Don’t shrink your dreams to match your skills. Increase your skills to match your dreams.
We created the free virtual offerings below to teach you what you need to know to improve your communication.
We created the upcoming Skill Building Summits to transform your knowledge of WHAT to do into real SKILLS. These Summits are normally $997, but to help you build powerful skills during this time, I’m giving you a Promo Code that will reduce the price for you to $297. The Promo Code expires after these Summits. Please use this Promo Code when you register: m6k5sh
Our Skill Building Summits are also available as Live Group Webinars for Teams and Corporations to bring out their true power.
You can have One-on-One Virtual Coaching if you choose to achieve mastery.
Choose the option that matches the level at which you want to operate.
There’s nothing you can’t create, there’s nothing you can’t cause.
It’s an ideal time to become more of your best self.
Be the cause!
Upcoming Online Services
1. Virtual Presentations Skill-Building Summit: 6 hours intensive skill building over the course of 2 days
April 8 – 9, 2020
9:30 AM – 12:30 PM PST each day
Click here for information and to register.
2. FREE Webinar: Building a Foundation for Causative Communications
April 14, 2020
11:00 – 12:30 PST
Click here for information and to register.
3. FREE Webinar: Mastering Virtual Presentations
April 7, 2020
11:00 – 12:30 PST
Click here for information and to register.
4. Causative Communications Skill-Building Summit: 6 hours intensive skill building over the course of 2 days
April 15 – 16, 2020
9:30 AM – 12:30 PM PST each day
Link for information and to register
5. Live Group Webinars for Teams or Employees to Keep Morale High
Click here for information and to schedule.
6. One-on-one Virtual Coaching to Build Life-Changing Skills
Click here for information and to schedule.