“The thing about working in a really large corporation is I’m not very powerful.”
Carla didn’t realize that what she was telling me wasn’t a fact. It was a decision.
Many people don’t get this. They confuse their decisions with “the facts of life”. These only become facts after the decisions that create them. Different decisions create different facts.
Here’s how it played out for Carla and how she did the impossible.
It started with the sentence above as Carla was telling me her goals during her first coaching session. The organization she was talking about has 80,000 employees and, as a manager, she is far from the top.
Her primary goal was “to be heard”, but she told me this with such a look of despair on her face, that I didn’t want to leave it at that. I asked her, “Okay, let’s say we achieve that. What’s the real dream that you have? “
Carla got a dreamy look on her face and I knew we had it. She said, “Well I would love to implement a companywide initiative throughout the entire organization” and then she told me what it was. It was something that would affect just about everyone.
And then she looked at me and said, “Well, you asked for my dream!” with a look on her face that said, “We both know that will never happen, but you asked for it.”
Personally, I thought it was rather impossible. Especially given where she was in the organization. She would have to influence her boss, who would have to go to their boss, who would have to go to their boss, who would have to go to their boss, who would have to go to their boss, and then get the CEO and his senior leadership team to support it. It takes quite a bit of horsepower to make something like that happen.
When I say “It’s impossible”, what I mean is: It’s impossible with the level of skill most people have. It would be like someone who’s an intermediate skier telling me they would like to win the gold medal in the Olympics.
Winning the gold in the Olympics is not impossible if you’re good enough. Someone always wins it.
Carla’s dream told me the level of communication skill she needed. And I knew Carla would only be really happy if she achieved it.
We had our standard. No more intermediate communicator. We were going for Olympic gold. We rolled up our sleeves and got to work.
Carla was willing to do the work and threw herself into it wholeheartedly. She practiced energetically during our coaching sessions and put everything she was learning to use in between. At first, she got used to transforming smaller situations. She went through her day being causative in every conversation she had, even the smallest. At work, at home, everywhere. Carla was diligent.
Her new goal was to causatively fully participate in, and uplift, every conversation and meeting she had. Even the “already good” conversations. To make every exchange count. From emails to meetings. Every single one.
And to do it naturally, in a way that left people feeling a very natural human joy.
She learned the skills for doing this, practiced with me, and began to master them in life.
The first thing that happened was that Carla got happier and happier as she saw that she was making a real difference in every conversation. That alone started to make her feel powerful.
The second thing that happened was that Carla got promoted.
The third thing that happened was that she got promoted again. Way faster than usual for a large corporation. Way faster than she ever expected. She didn’t even ask for it! They also gave her a raise she didn’t ask for.
Carla was inspired and practiced even more purposefully. Our coaching sessions continued to hone her skills and took them higher, higher, and higher.
Carla grew even more causative throughout her day. And now every conversation she went into, she looked for opportunities to transform it into something even more magical. It didn’t matter if she was at Starbucks or in a critical meeting with executives. She kept taking it higher.
She was now being invited to more high-level meetings and everyone was listening to her. Why?
Most people, when they start Causative Communication, want to gain the skills to “get other people to _________ (do something I want).”
People think that power is the ability to get other people to do what you want.
This approach creates resistance, not enthusiasm.
What Carla developed was the true source of power: the power to engage and inspire others, and the power to create a real depth of understanding.
These organically and naturally lead others to not only support you, but to really own it and to feel very inspired about it.
Carla learned not to worry about the outcome. She learned that the very best outcomes happen naturally. She focused exclusively on getting better and better at how rapidly she could engage and inspire others, how rapidly she could create a real depth of understanding. And how deep she could make that understanding go.
At this point, Carla started talking to her boss about the companywide initiative she so passionately wanted. She was now good enough that her boss could really understand it, could envision it in living color. This ignited a flame of interest and then a real liking for the vision. It started to not look impossible. The boss became fully engaged and went to her boss, and that boss went to their boss, and…
Carla was invited to present her idea to the CEO and his senior leadership team. She was ready. Her presentation was 15 minutes long. She had them smiling and nodding. They got the vision as they listened. They could see and feel it, and were inspired.
Carla was ridiculously happy when she emailed me the announcement 2 weeks later signed by the senior leadership team, announcing the companywide initiative was going into effect. She wrote, “My dream come true!”
Many people in the organization were very happy about it because it enabled them to do something that they would’ve only dreamed of doing.
Carla now knows she has the power to make her dreams come true. She’s started dreaming new dreams and now she’s busy on those.
You too have this power. Everyone does.
This power is just like any muscle in your body. The more you develop it, the stronger it gets.
Unlike the muscles in your body, the power to make your dreams come true can keep getting stronger…forever. With real communication, there is no limit to how good you can get and what you can cause.
You just have to make that critical decision that you can, and that you will. That changes everything forever.
Be the cause!