People don’t like to be sold. They don’t like to be persuaded. They don’t like to be influenced. Often they don’t like to be led. But they do like to learn.
And that’s why one of the most powerful influences on an individual or a nation is learning.
I don’t mean the kind of learning that happens in school, which to my mind is not real learning.
I made it through University, graduated Magna Cum Laude (with great honors), had a straight 4.0 grade average through my Master’s degree to the point where they waived the requirement for me to write a Master’s thesis, was their first pick into a competitive Doctoral program, was more than halfway through my Doctorate when I firmly decided that real learning happened outside the classroom and I took a leave of absence that’s still going on.
Believe me, I sat through a lot of school.
Real learning happens out in the world, in our everyday hustle and bustle. And learning is the primary foundation for positive, impactful change.
If you want to make big change happen (in yourself or others), you need to cause a whole lot of learning.
An extremely important principle is that when people feel you can teach them something, when they sense they can learn something meaningful and powerful from you, they listen to you. And listen more attentively than they do at any other time. They’re wide open and give you their all.
More than 99% of my business comes by word-of-mouth. In over 30 years of business, I’ve never had a sales or marketing department because I’ve already been too busy with new clients.
That’s because I really understand learning and I’m an extraordinary teacher. I’m not saying this to brag. It’s taken me over 30 years to master the science of how people learn and to have a teaching process that always works. It’s something I love to share. And people tell others about it. They tell others they will experience a beautiful transformation and learn things from me they will never learn anywhere else. I take pride in that.
I teach communication skills, from challenging one-on-one conversations to how to communicate successfully to large audiences.
In addition to that, there are also advanced skills beyond these that I teach.
When clients want more advanced skills to sell their ideas, get buy-in, create organizational change, transform others, lead, or persuade, I take a completely different route than they expect.
Beyond how to communicate effectively, I teach them how to educate, specifically how to enlighten.
You may not think of yourself as a teacher, but you are. You are your own best teacher and your success in life depends on your ability to also teach the world around you.
So it really comes down to your ability to learn and to teach.
An even better word for it is enlighten.
Enlighten means to enable to see more clearly, to enable to see or comprehend truth, to shed light on, to illuminate, as in to enlighten the mind or understanding.
Persuasion, influence, buy-in, transformation, all of the above are byproducts of new realizations, results of enlightenment.
A person who can enlighten and create new realizations, new awareness, in themselves and others, is valuable.
The best leaders enlighten. That’s how they create impact and change reality.
I recently had a client who completed one hour of virtual coaching who wrote me:
“Something changed inside of me. I’m getting much better outcomes. I don’t even know what I’m doing differently. Something in me just changed.”
What changed was her awareness.
If you’re ever in a situation where you feel you can’t persuade someone, what’s happening is that you’re not able to enlighten them. You haven’t changed their awareness. That’s what’s keeping them from being persuaded.
The reason for this is because they’ve encountered barriers or obstacles that are keeping them from learning from you. And you don’t know how to remove them.
I’ve just received a request from a couple special clients for a workshop on how to remove the obstacles to learning to transform the learning curve. It’s something I’m quite expert in. I am required to create dramatic changes and transformations in my clients in a matter of a couple of days.
I’ve encountered every problem learning you can imagine. And then some. I know what the barriers are, I know how to remove them and I know how to create dramatically powerful learning, transformative learning, in a very short period of time.
That’s what I’m going to teach in this workshop. I’m going to teach how to dramatically transform the learning curve so you can do it too.
It applies to you if you are working to change the world and make a difference, if you’re trying to make your voice heard, create transformation, lead, persuade, sell, or influence.
It also applies to you if you’re in a situation where you need to rapidly learn or come up to speed yourself. What I’m going to present has helped many people who are drowning in new roles.
And everyone tells me it helps them at home, especially with their kids or grand kids.
I’m going to cover material you’ve never heard before. I have built my entire success in what I’m going to teach in this workshop.
I’ve delivered this workshop before and I personally have great affinity for it. It’s always a big hit. Participants report later they:
Became leaders
Created organizational transformation
Changed the culture
Increased productivity and quality
Created a winning team
Got through to someone who was previously impossible
Taught others respect
Taught their kids how to be responsible
Have husbands who are now romantic
If what I’m writing resonates with you, there are six seats left. I have no idea when I would ever offer this workshop again, it’s pretty advanced stuff. I’m doing it as a special favor for these clients.
Whether or not you do this workshop, these are principles that are extremely useful for creating positive change. Take a look at the problems that you’re having with people, especially if you’re trying to persuade them. Take a different view of what to do. Enlighten them and change their awareness. It will get you a lot further than trying to persuade them. Enlightening and persuading are completely different activities. Remember that persuasion is a byproduct of having learned. If they don’t learn, they don’t change. Don’t try to persuade. Enlighten, and persuasion will happen organically.
Be the cause!