Episode 049 – Insights from Dr Ro’s 2021 Communication Workshop. Understanding outcome, authenticity, certainty & engagement. Four coaching case studies to learn from, and more.

Harms: Hello it’s Harms here and welcome to another episode of the Seekardo show, no big formal introduction for myself today. 

I want to dive straight into some insights we gleaned from some recent workshops that Dr Ro ran. These workshops are called Communicating with Impact and they were three workshops and we run a few them and now as we come off the back of the final workshop I want to grab the opportunity to get Ro to share some insights, wisdom, some knowledge that we can extract from the workshops that we can share with you the listeners at home. 

So without further ado Ro over to yourself just to talk to listeners about firstly what is Communicating with Impact for those that have not come across your teachings in this space before, and then maybe talk about the insights and experience that we gleaned specifically around some of the amazing shifts and transformations happening within people who came and attended the workshops themselves.

Dr Ro: Thanks Harms and thank you for listening to the Seekardo show. 

As always, we are hugely grateful for the fact you tune in and listen to the various messages that we’re sharing. I think it’s a good choice actually today because the workshops are put together to give people some key insights into the overall system and we opened up the space and we allowed some coaching to happen.

So in each of the workshops I asked a question and then we chose somebody from the audience. It was done zoom so I could see their faces and out of that came some really, really interesting information. If you’re in a relationship, have kids, job, a business anything within those categories you’ll find this incredibly useful. The system has been developed over 30 years, we launched it live officially about two years ago, three years ago now and Communicating with Impact is essentially 38 components brought together to create a really fluid way to communicate with people. 

People can be your kids right through to a high-level audience of 10, 15, 20,000 people, could be a board meeting, could be a one-to-one in a café. 

Everything we do is communication when it comes to articulating what we’re trying to say and you communicate internally and communicate externally, the system is designed to incorporate three core areas. You, them and the environment and in the workshop we talked about this we basically gave everybody a quick overview to start with and I selected a few components from that. You might think it’s about talking to people. 

Remember, you internally communicate first and then you communicate externally the you is the part of you that comprises everything you’re doing internally and starting to do externally. So, for example, preparation is included here. 

We also then talk about state management preparation by the way is all the things you do in advance of presentation or talk. You might think what if I’m just going to catch up with somebody and there are a few things I want to raise with that person same thing. It comes back to the same thing. 

If you go and chat to them you might come away from that meeting and this was a common response from people they felt frustrated, deals hadn’t gone right, interviews haven’t worked out for them, relationship arguments, because they’ve gone into a conversation expecting what they came out not getting what they expected. 

That was one of the feedbacks we got.

Harms: Put it alongside but also explain the difference between when people think about communication there are some fantastic books and educational pieces.

I’m thinking that one of the big ones is, How to Win Friends and influence People and in recent years we see a lot of publications about how to pitch anything how to sell anything. These are very specific styles of communication, but when I studied these books in previous years I thought fantastic, but then when I came across Communicating with Impact and your system and how detailed it is, can you explain to people the difference between what’s out there and typical books and publications which may be focused on one or two areas of communication for example, specifically influence and how to win friends versus the system that you’re talking about here.

Dr Ro: If you’re in business you might have read a book about how to speak and it’s like don’t do this, do, how to present yourself to an audience. Those of you in relationships you might have read books about how to communicate with your partner, those of you that want to sell something there are countless books on sales out there but what I found was each of those books addresses exactly what you said in a specific area. 

It doesn’t address the overall roundness of somebody’s communication. 

Actually the elements and the stages you go through leading up to communication and when I say communication, please don’t think this is like some formal thing on the phone. It could just be going on a date, but even then these three elements come into play. So it’s a way to round somebody off. It’s like going to the gym. 

You and I can work on our biceps for the next six months, do no other work out and we’ll have incredibly strong biceps, but we’ll look disproportionate. 

This is the same thing as going and having a cake made where somebody has just put too much of one thing in too much sugar or flour and it feels very stodgy. 

The CWI system is a really elegant system that brings all those ingredients together in such a way that no matter what your circumstances, you can just revert back to it and pull on or leverage anyone of the components together. It’s a well oiled system all the cogs work in harmony.

Harms: I like the example of exercise as people can relate to that. If you think about what Communicating with Impact is to communication is what squats and deadlifts are to exercise. The exercise that completely transforms every cell in your body.

Think cross training is very broad, it gives you a nice approach to building your body and working in a certain way that’s rounded.

Then you can take what you’ve learnt in this rounded field in all different areas and then apply it to something really specific whether it’s influence, sales, getting a job interview.

Dr Ro: It is unique, we literally trademarked it a year and half ago. There’s nothing like this out there, which is really exciting. 

The overall system works from the You area which is preparation state management.

Harms: Can you help the listeners at home paint a picture of what it looks like? 

You have a very special diagram associated with it which the people in the workshop would have seen but if the listeners at home can imagine something, how can they visualise all of these components because it’s very in depth.

Dr Ro: Yes, imagine a circle and you’re in the middle of that circle that’s you and then around the outside of that circle there’s another radial and it basically has three elements: you them and the environment, so it’s basically split into thirds. 

That’s the if you like the next radio out. Outside of that radial there are eight components and I think that is as far as I’ll go in terms of the broad description. The eight components are split, three components go against you, three components go against them and two components go against the environment. You being the person delivering so even as we are speaking now, we have to be mindful of the fact that you’re listening to this and how you react to what you’re listening to. 

If I just think about getting the content right, the sound of my voice right , I’ve got to get my energy right, that’s it. If I keep speaking the same way like this constant, constant, constant as I want to get facts out after while the audience will get bored. 

The whole point is you’ve got to understand the difference between these three major areas and the you involve back to the outside of the radial, it involves preparation, which has its own four components. We’ve got state management and if you’ve ever wondered what that means that means how’s your emotional, physical state leading up to talking to someone. Who has got nervous? 

It might have happened to you Harms in your job at your first talk in front of some of your employees you had working for you. What was going through your head at that point? 

What was the initial reaction in your body and your head?

Harms: I think people relate to this at home you feel the nervousness, you get the sweats you get hot under the collar, you can’t physically, the world narrows down. 

Everything you thought you remembered you now can’t.

Dr Ro: Your physiology was it strong or weak?

Harms: Weak, bit of trembling.

Dr Ro: That’s all state management. 

Now the preparation going into that might have been perfect. The content might have been great but if his emotional, physical state was weak then it would have affected the way he presented and that’s common for a lot of people. Then we get the third component on that middle radial which is how we now communicate. 

An example of that we talked about was engagement in the workshop. For example, when you spoke I suspect in your engineering background you delivered content at the time because that was the correct thing to do.

Harms: I didn’t even know that grabbing someone’s attention was important. Let me paint the picture even more vividly I would go on to the stage and people would switch off before I started speaking. They’d look at the phone I’d start talking and people are thinking it’s another one of these talks. 

Safety was a regular talk that we have to do, but now understanding engagement in hindsight that could have been a really exciting impactful talk throughout that made people really appreciate safety is a serious thing, especially in a high-intensity workplace we were in. But I didn’t get that message across.

Dr Ro: People think engagement as the start but it’s not it’s all the way through. 

Having worked on that area and started to develop and outside of state management, preparation and communication there are four specific components attached to each one of those. In total you’ve got 12 around the outside now we’re going across to them. 

Them is the people that we’re communicating with; this would have been your audience at works. 

That starts with connection, so you’ve got to connect with the audience. Ultimately leading to any communication is normally to do with you persuading somebody on an idea, sharing ideas, exchanging ideas but you want them to come and see your perspective so that ultimately leads to you influencing them. 

I think 90% of communication you’re delivering something to somebody else and in so doing you’re influencing them to accept the information and say yes or no or come with you or do something. 

Even if it’s us saying let’s go for a coffee I’m still influencing you to come. When we talk about them the other person’s connection is really important. So did you feel when you were on stage to speak in your engineering background that you connected with them in a short space of time or were you just thinking about the content delivery?

Harms: Considering I know many of these people and I still couldn’t connect with them.

Dr Ro: Was it may be as friends or colleagues we’re talking about a different connection.

Harms: It’s more a corporate hierarchical connection where I have to listen to this person because I’m mandated to versus I want to listen to this person, regardless of what position they hold within the company, two different things.

Dr Ro: That’s the key here talking about communication You get them to connect with you, they start to like who you are. 

The next stage then is you can impact them. 

I remember this in my early days as well I was trying to talk even in my college days getting up and especially younger people they mess around, but once you’ve got the connection you’ve done something so they lean forward and start listening now you grab their attention by getting impacted. 

Impact is about maybe shocking them, giving the facts, giving credibility and I suspect if you are talking about safety for example, that impact comes across maybe with information or data. The style of delivery comes in here. 

A lot of people just deliver facts and you know the four styles of delivery, what would you say your main style of delivery was when you were talking in the work environment?

Harms: The technical answer based on your Communicating with Impact system is called messenger. 

Messenger with me just delivering a message, facts, statements related to what was on a slide deck. If I had a slide deck with four bullet points I would be the messenger between what you can see on the screen and what you hear in your mind as I speak.

Dr Ro: But there was not a great impact in that assumption?

Harms: No it was just me reading the bullet points.

Dr Ro: We see that a lot with Zoom meetings. 

How many times have you watched somebody and maybe they start off pretty well, but then they haven’t got your attention so you start to drift off or watch looking. In the system we talk about for archetypes that is very different. 

This is four delivery styles. 

Was there ever a time when you had to literally tell them look you need to do this? 

Did you ever shift into the commander mode where you’re more assertive?

Harms: For context commander is a different delivery style. 

I didn’t. 

I went up delivered as that’s what everybody was doing. 

Even to the point when I finished my section I was in the audience and I’ll be dulled by the next speaker.

The nerves come away now you’ve been on stage you’ve come off again.

This doesn’t just relate to a safety talk, engineering say to talk to an audience because I could be having this talk one-on-one and would have delivered the same style, the same message and had the same very little impact I had with that particular person or audience. 

If we’re looking at it from a bigger picture my goal here was to impart some safety wisdom, information and data to somebody in order for them to save their life and not get injured severely that was the aim here. 

That was the key. 

Think about this broadly right and I was going on stage thinking this is a talk about safety, but if I didn’t get the message across connect with them, provide impact in delivering and somebody got hurt at the workplace got injured and they went home and have got a missing hand or arm.

Dr Ro: Even phrasing it that way grabs somebody’s attention.

Harms: It gives me goosebumps and I know how impactful it should have been, but there was little value placed on learning how to communicate get the message across. I would be partly to blame if somebody got hurt because I was the messenger of that information.

Dr Ro: If you opened with that to start, think about the attention you would have grabbed with the audience, but it’s only retrospectively knowing the system. 

Just to share with everybody this message came in from one of the attendees. “Sorry to message you late but I wanted to thank you for such an empowering workshop. My head is buzzing, going through this material will revolutionise how we deliver our online training.” 

Think about that is a three-hour workshop giving four key components out of 38 and we have a few of those messages coming in from people. 

The term revolutionise is just a wake up call I think more than anything else. When we talk about them as Harms has quite rightly pointed out the impact actually in his case is like, they realise the consequence on them but also on him if he doesn’t do it right. Only then can you influence people, maybe by then if you drop that in and they are leaning forward now and you’ve got their attention now you can tell what to do. 

The problem is persuading someone to give you money, if you’re in the business of raising money, go on a date with me, kids go do this, or it could be in the workplace a meeting instructing people what to do. If you haven’t connected that whole message to them, they haven’t attached the right meaning to it and now you go to influence them that’s when you won’t get the influence. Influence involves sales, observation, involves using a certain type of language I refer to it as hypnotic language and mind-reading. 

We use a few examples at the workshop the most important thing is you can’t just talk to somebody and get straight to influence you have to have gone through all those other elements, preparation, state management, communication, then connection then impact and now you’ve got them you influence them. If they’re right for you then make a decision if not then walkway. 

I bet there are listeners today that had a meeting and forgotten laptop or forgotten the slides or no power lead. Those sorts of things or the environment was wrong, too noisy, hot. 

What was the environment like? Was it a pretty good environment or was it not really conducive for people being engaged?

Harms: I would say that the environment was very good. The company would hire a hotel room, set up chairs and have all the snacks and stuff so people knew, hey, this is a meeting where you’re going to be presented to and the information will be important.

Dr Ro: That part of the system they did well?

Harms: Yes, and that was handled for us. 

They have here’s the environment, here’s a setting and it’s an optimal setting to get this message across but that was it. In context of what you’ve had we had a very good environment but the you and them part were completely lacking.

Dr Ro: Years ago I remember a friend of mine went on a date but didn’t have a second one with her and he chose this weird like funky club, but it was very, very loud. There wasn’t an area where you could duck away and have a quiet conversation. 

He’s just gone in there because he thought that’s something she liked and he’s literally screaming at her and in the end he partly lost his voice and instead of going let’s relocate it didn’t go any further. 

Even on a date you can get it wrong. 

That’s the system overall and in the workshops we did for those listening we chose four components we looked at: outcome, engagement, authenticity and certainty. Each one of those four if put together very quickly can really take a situation turn it around rapidly any meeting, any conversation.

Harms: That demonstration also occurred with people who live from the audience, we would pull them up alongside you by the zoom system and you would demonstrate this to the whole audience through a coaching session. 

I’m personally a big believer in if I want to get knowledge to enhance myself in any area of my life I’m going to go to an expert somebody who has been doing it for a very long time and communication is somewhere you’ve spent 30+ years in, could you in a compressed format share with the listeners what does 30 years mastering communication look like?

Dr Ro: Malcolm Gladwell says it best, it’s 10,000 hours. It is the study of hours and hours of a specific subject and that’s how you create the outlier impact where you stand aside from everybody else. 

Go back to an 18, 19 year old lad whose father passed away reading loads of personal development at the time and I started to realise there is some really great stuff here. My confidence grew when I was reading to the point where I was just like talking about it to people around me and sometimes just over a coffee or lunch with friends, even at that young age I’d be chatting about this. I talked about beliefs, communication, stuff about values, mindset and how stuff around us impacts us on an internal level. 

I found myself wanting to share it with people more formally so that led to me 19 or 20 going out and speaking in front of small groups of people. I was invited onto these outdoor pursuits type summer breaks, easter breaks parents sent their kids there I would come in and do stuff on canoeing and I’d do some stuff on mindsets. 

Even at that age there would be a 15 minute talk, 10 minute talk, 20 minute talk and that’s how it started. Then I went to university and at university the same thing carried on. I would often go where I could just talk to different people and that led to me a marketing business and I loved it because that gave me a chance to get out in front of more people. I was looking at it from a business perspective, but also lots of materials, reading, tapes in those days and then I started a retail business trying to sell jewellery.

That lasted about six months but every time involved me going out talking and selling. I dealt with rejection at a young age. Influence, I’m doing lectures as my PhD. I was encouraged to talk about my subjects. 

Anywhere I got an opportunity I would go and talk about my PhD subject which is technical and I won a couple of awards during that period with the Institute of civil engineers for presenting. But on the side I am going to colleges, schools and that was like 30 years and consistently reading personal development, listening to audio people like Les Brown and just consolidating and thinking I like the way he did that. 

Making a note of it and gathering all that stuff into a place where it went from being intellectual to actually practising it to practicing again, it became part of my nature and my personality and style blended together and then I got into doing more formal stuff where I charged for it. I was coaching people from the late 90s doing one-on-one coaching. 

I started thinking the reason they’re talking this way is not to do with their communication, it’s their beliefs. 

We started working on the beliefs and that changed their communication and then I found people’s voices were tightening up when they were stressed, fearful their breathing changed. So all these different things I’m pulling in constantly and I started looking and studying human psychology in my late 20s and understood stuff from Carl Jung, for example, the archetypes I thought, okay, what about if I went to a conversation and I tried one of those archetypes. 

Everything found its way into the system fast forward, now 55 is a combination of trial and error in front of thousands of people global stages all over the world, sometimes a small as 1,000 but sometimes as big as 10, 15,000 and having to grab the attention for an hour and half in some cases promote them to go to something else, selling them. 

To put this in perspective I can’t put a number on it, but generate millions of pounds worth of revenue and profit over the years as a professional speaker so it covers the whole gamut from business meetings, raising millions of pounds, to generate millions as a speaker. That’s kind of it in a compressed format and I used to teach people for a fee the system in a broken up format depending on where they were. 

Then I thought let’s put this into a system I can actually share with anybody on a broader scale and you were at the very first event. When you came through that event that was the first time the public saw the whole of those 30 years laid out in a format that was really systematic to follow, not easy because you have to go through it, but then to take something from 30 years to three days. 

As I unloaded what was probably 30 years in about five minutes there, that was a style of delivery, which is essentially a mixture of commander, messenger. If I carry on like that for much longer in any situation, even that level of pace people, it becomes monotonous, but also too much information. 

There’s a lesson that I could have taken and stretched it over an hour and that’s an important lesson here is that you can get something across quickly enough for people to go. I get this. 

I’m still working on the communication and it’s not verbal but written as well. 

Everything comes together. These last workshops have really made me realise that people do not know this, they are not taught it but we undervalue it. Someone will pay thousands to go to a property course, but they won’t pay for five, £600 to go and do a course in communication. Although in my mind communication is more impactful as you can’t build a business unless you communicate, you can’t get into a great relationship unless you communicate. 

People see it as bolt on only after the fact.

If you’ve approached a wealth product or wealth creation education in any kind of sector and you’ve approached that first and you’ve found slow progress in there or maybe felt like it’s not the outcome, it’s not as quick as I expected, not making as much money as I expected, because fundamentally personal development underlies any wealth success. 

In the Seekardo vault for those who are supporters we’ve got a sequence of programs there designed and put in order specifically to work on personal development first and then wealth programs later that Ro has created and it’s in that order for a reason.

Harms: The people who benefited greatly from that experience were those that attended the workshop and had an opportunity to be live coached by you, can we now pivot the conversation into some examples of people who were coached. 

We did mention four components: the outcome was one that a lot of people raised their hand and said they’ve got challenges.

Dr Ro: Those in a business where you raise money, possibly for the start the business might be for a project you’re doing, property investor. and I think the key issues a lady stuck her hand up and pitched to hundreds of angel investors. 

I question 100 by the way I think she may have had lots of conversations but pitching is a different thing altogether. I said what do you want to do, she said raise money and I’ve had a few successes, but mainly people say no. I said what’s your outcome you’re looking to achieve? 

She said I want to raise money and I want to make sure I don’t push people so that was her outcome, so she had two outcomes and there’s an immediate conflict. She didn’t quite get that initially and she goes I’m talking to a lot of people and I go to networking events where I pitch to a lot of people and of course I’m there and they’re trying to promote their thing to me and I’m trying to promote my thing to them. 

I said okay, you’re going to a meeting or you’re going to networking events and you’re trying to pitch them on giving money to your business but you don’t want to push them, she said yes. The conversation went in a circle for a while. She started going off in lots of different directions and it became really clear that there was a conflict here. 

The first conflict was if you encourage them to lend you money, you are at some point going to get them to make a decision and now she’s using the label push I might say, encourage, or just be firm and say are you interested or not? 

But she couldn’t, she was struggling with that and that came out of the body language.

If we look at the component you and then one of the components in the area is outcome she’s got an internal conflict where even inside the mind, she has two outcomes, but those outcomes are in conflict with each other.

So whatever results she’s going to get is not going to happen.

Interestingly when we raised it with her partner who was sitting next to her this started to nod, so he could see that. She was actually initially her head was going up she was still processing what I was saying. 

How can you persuade someone to give you money, if internally you’re saying I don’t want to push them? 

Another word for push is encourage or persuade, sell whatever language you want to give it so she was struggling with that. If you’re thinking oh my god, that’s exactly me, you will internally block so the language you use changes the strength of conviction, authenticity, meaning the way you try to persuade somebody it’s like you’re turning down the volume because inside it’s like you can’t sell to them, persuade them whatever language you’re using. 

Her case was push. 

That was an immediate conflict that was interesting, the conflict there was an internal conflict of outcomes. I said you’ve just got to have one outcome. She said my outcome is I want to get money but I don’t want to push them.

I said that’s two outcomes. 

You’ve got an outcome to avoid pushing them and she really had to think about that first, she said I go to these meetings and they’re trying to persuade me to do something else. I said that’s something different. 

So with the outcome you’ve got to be clear on your outcome in the same way we have here today our outcome is to share a powerful message with you. We’ve also got to be clear on what your outcome is as a listener, so you’re coming to the table and you get some tools and some value that you take away and implement maybe some motivation, but hopefully something practical. What we teach on these podcasts is just purely blurb about something without giving you any practical tools you won’t come back to the next podcast as we haven’t met your outcome, it was the same thing with her. 

She’s got someone trying to pitch her over here to do a joint venture and she’s saying I’ve got a project give me money she’s trying to get an outcome of them giving her money and they’ve got a completely different product or service they’re offering to her, so they won’t listen to her because their head is on the you part of the communication. 

When you’re communicating all you will think about is what you want to say that person is not thinking about what she’s offering she wasn’t thinking about what they’re offering as all she’s thinking about is what she’s offering.

Harms: Let’s paint the scenario for how it should occur. 

The ideal outcome would be I would like to raise money and the other person on the other side of the table would like to lend money, now we’ve got an outcome which is aligned. Whereas what she was having is a conflict about outcomes they want to do X she wants to do Y.

Dr Ro: This is the whole point she hadn’t really considered the environment she’s going into so you’re going into an environment where people are coming to the table with their own agenda, their own outcomes and remember there are 38 components. 

The first one is preparation the second is outcome. Her frustration is she was speaking for 30 minutes and both you and I would have walked away frustrated because you hadn’t got clarity.

But she just goes for it and that’s why she gets resistant to pushing.

Harms: There’s an argument to say she’s felt lots of rejection and she thinks she is pushing the idea. It can go very deep and I think the big takeaway from this first scenario is to understand that you have your own internal outcome. 

Ensure that you have one outcome. If you have a conversation with somebody ensure that the outcome is clear.

Dr Ro: I think adding to that is you might go that’s so logical, it’s not logical any conversation I had during the course of those workshops each person we spoke to, it turned out, even the guy than had a relationship conversation there was just too much going on in the head. In other words, if you’re a heady person you want to be right so she was getting more frustrated. If you start to feel this energy and you’re getting rejected it comes across in your personality, demeanour. 

So she had slightly saw flat energy, she looked frustrated in the way she was describing it, it looked like she didn’t enjoy the idea of what she was doing. It was more like my gosh I’ve got to push somebody to give me money and her approach would have come across like that. That’s what it appeared to me. 

This goes back to the internal, external dialogue as well. So what was she doing in preparation before she got to that meeting? 

Had she really got her headspace right? 

Had she may be worked out how she would deal with someone who has an online business? I can steer the conversation and kept bringing it back to how much money you’ve got, but that still felt like I was manipulating you because I hadn’t already set up the meeting.

What I would say is in that simulation when you asked that question is that a profitable business? 

That is such a fantastic question to open the door to something that somebody may not have realised. We might be at a meeting where you’re given five minute to talk and then both people go away frustrated because the outcome is not achieved by the person.

If this is setting or an environment whether it’s a business networking you’re going to be having this, or she’s going to be having this 30 times depending on how quickly she can work the room and that’s why there’s a feeling of I’ve spoken to hundreds of people, but actually it’s just telling 100 people who have a different outcome to you I want to raise money.

Harms: Two things to remember about anything you go into beyond this podcast: be clear what your outcome is, the outcome is tied very specifically to what you are looking for. It might be a date for example, might be just trying to get somebody interested in your idea so you don’t go too far. 

That’s another thing that I found people going too far, too much information overloading the other person so now they haven’t got the outcome. The outcome they’ve actually got is the other person feels almost too overwhelmed and they’re thinking blimey if this is the first meeting we’re going into detail. 

Don’t go into detail too soon.

Dr Ro: You raise a good point there which can lead us onto the second potential example case study, which is semi-outcome linked but by grabbing somebody’s intention and not too much detail can we class this as an engagement example? If you remember there was a lovely lady who was pitching IT consultancy to universities, what she was struggling with was two things she had lots of outcomes and she wasn’t engaging the University or whoever she was pitching as a client to grab attention. Because of the industry she was in IT it was also information overload.

When I asked her what’s your situation and tell me what your outcome is, she probably spent five minutes just describing, describing and each one seemed to be a different outcome she was trying to achieve. 

When I said what’s your outcome you want to achieve she paused and it wasn’t clear as the picture she painted she couldn’t see that outcome herself. I use the description you’re going down a corridor and you’ve got 10 doors in front of you and each door is a different colour and so that’s like conversation you take somebody into and, of course, once we go down the corridor and I’m with Harms let’s that picture I want to get you to the yellow door. We’ve got a bunch of other coloured doors. Imagine walking down the corridor and shouting out a colour.

Harms: Green, neutral.

Dr Ro: Are you interested in looking into it?

Harms: No.

Dr Ro: Okay so I carry on conversing with him and I say there is this corridor Harms there’s a purple door, bright red door, a yellow door and there’s a really shiny glittery blue door as I’m talking just pick one that interests you. Then there’s another one there that’s like a diamond colour and sparkles.

Harms: I like the idea of that one.

Dr Ro: That’s irrelevant as I want to get into the yellow door I’m just describing along the way. This is the challenge I’ve got, the more I describe to him he might even ask a question after each one. There is also a black with white dots on it as well.

Harms: What does that one do?

Dr Ro: Don’t know but there is this another door and it has stripes red and stripes blue and striped green and slightly open.

Harms: That one slightly open, what is special about the stripey open one?

Dr Ro: Don’t go into it, oh you’ve gone into now what can you see? The yellow door is still in my horizon, but I’m bringing all these conversations to the pot and I am doing this as a metaphor but he’s getting lost. He liked the stripey door. 

But a throwaway comment in the talk about something I’m talking to you about business by the way a friend of mine has this business and you go really? 

All of a sudden you’ve been distracted and that’s not where I want to take you. That’s the danger in any conversation this corridor you’re taking then down anything is a distraction and that’s what happened. She had too much going on and I think the way she described it, it got a bit overwhelming and then she was drawn into conversations with other people and that’s dangerous.

It’s like lighting a fire with lots of people and now they want to talk about the fire, blow on it and it will activate it.

Harms: How do we answer this question because outcome is such a key component to master to start to get people to the yellow door, what if somebody says I’ve got a lot of outcomes. 

I’ve got so many things I need to get across. If they have multiple businesses, if they don’t lend money, maybe they’ll do a joint venture, don’t want to do a joint venture, maybe they’ll be interested in my consultancy work. What do I do in this scenario?

Dr Ro: You have to start with the basic what. 

What is the first outcome? 

I want them to lend me money, we start from that premise there. You go in and you say everything you’ve discussed all the messages and the next component beyond outcome is messages and then of course how many messages do you deliver? Is it emotional, logical? When do you place those messages? 

Timing came into it as well, people were running out of time at the presentations or the meetings, so they were trying to spew everything out. If I’d taken that corridor that could take me 30 seconds to walk down but if there were 10 doors and I spent a minute talking about each one of those doors now it’s 10 minutes and 30 seconds I’ve lost your interest. It’s the same thing with the conversation, each door represents a message and so if you said to me I want them to give me money first, good let’s establish. 

If you said to me categorically no, at that point I now can talk about two other doors. I think someone was nervous about rejection. The conversation came about rejection. If you said no to me I would ask you the question what was the reason you wouldn’t lend me money? You might say nothing to do with you because I don’t understand what you presented to me, that goes back to too many doors, too much information. 

I was so caught up in that stripey door it was amazing and you got distracted. I need to first of all establish if 100% this is not what you’re looking for at which point I shift my focus to my second outcome which I’ve not brought to the table yet, I say what would you want? 

You say I might be more interested in doing a joint venture with somebody. 

Okay if we were to sit down and explain how I could do that with you would that be of interest? The first objective is say yes or no and if it’s a no what do they want? 

That would be the way I would position it.

Harms: That’s such a key question to write down at the point of rejection is to find out why, and I think many people shy away from that because they believe it’s personal. 

That was an example of the coaching example. The lady was getting rejected and she was shutting down, she didn’t like to be rejected versus gaining as much information from that rejection as possible and understanding it’s not personal. It’s something else they are rejected. Could be confusing.

Dr Ro: We got her to rethink what rejection meant to her. 

Rejection just means give me more clarity and she went right. It is not until you absolutely categorically establish that is not what they’re prepared or want to do, it really should come from the preparation stage by the way. If you’d got the preparation right, part of the preparation I teach on the three-day event is first of all, making sure you’re clear in advance of any communication what both parties want to get out of it and then at least when you go into it I know you do want to give me some money. 

Or looking to give someone some money, but if it was completely off your radar and you’re thinking we’ve come to chat about the weather, and we talk about making money. That’s an important point, everybody listening you’ve got to make sure that the person knows and has expectations of what the conversations are going to be. If I met you for a quick meeting and I said there’s one thing on mine in helping people who have got money in the banks as I know it is not working straightway boom, a hook or no hook depending on how you react to it.

If we do it this way, we avoid the first scenario, which we discussed which is a clash of outcomes, that is one the worst scenarios you could be in where you walk in unprepared they think you talk about something else or they want something else, you’re talking about what you want and now you clash nobody leaves that meeting happy.

Going back to your point you’ve got to park it. 

If there are too many outcomes just park it. Just pick up the one that is most important to you now for that particular conversation at that moment in time, you don’t have to fit everything in at the same time.

Harms: We’ve spoken about two and actually a third business example, I’d love to shift away from business and talk about relationships because communication in my mind plays a role personally, professionally and in relationships. 

Relationships is its own category; it’s so impactful. Nothing is more important than the relationships and connections we have so there was an amazing example of a gentleman, which was challenging I must say and the audience were like where is this going to go?

What was your reaction when he came on and started speaking?

Dr Ro: I was grateful that he had put his hand up and volunteered because as the listeners understand this many people are in this situation where I guess they just have potentially no self-awareness of what’s happening in the you part of communication. 

It is a blur when it comes to understanding their own internal communication, so my initial reaction was this will be a challenging one for Ro as you’re always there to coach and serve people but also we’ve got a time limitation. We’re in a three-hour workshop. 

I know that you can get to a result with someone quickly, but how quickly bearing in mind we are running the workshop and everybody has got to be off in an hour and a half. That’s a personal reaction but from a workshop reaction.

This gentleman came on and the slide said who has a challenge in the area of business when it comes to their certainty and engagement. This gentleman came and said I want to talk about communication regards to my relationship with my kids. 

From an observation perspective. Communication is about observing and the observation of them. So if you’re opposite somebody and they’re saying something and you don’t hear what they’re saying that means that all you’re doing is actually conversing with yourself, having internal conversation and you shut out the outside world, so that was immediately a clue to me I was thinking okay, but we were actually framing this specifically for business. 

So I said paint me a picture, he described the situation at home wasn’t really having good communications that he wanted to, the environment wasn’t good. His partner sometimes got a little bit hot under the collar in some conversations and he just felt that if he could improve that that was the most important thing for him. 

Actually that was a true statement that he felt he wanted to improve that however, the same time I said we’re talking about business as well what other areas and he goes, I do this, I do that. 

I talked to these people I deal with lawyers, medical professionals and it was very broad. I said what’s your outcome? He said I want to improve communication internally and then he said, but that’s why I’m here. I’m not exactly sure I know what my outcome is. 

That point there is a challenging statement.

Harms: It was a challenging statement back to you. 

From anybody listening and observing and you asked confirmation of the workshop attendees and they all agreed with this, which was by him explaining actually Ro don’t ask me questions that’s what I’m here to learn, are you not here to teach me this? 

The challenge got more intense, but it was essentially a defence mechanism, maybe I’d never even answer a question like this before so I’m going to close it down.

Dr Ro: Particularly a male can be both but if you’ve got up, pride and ego or your quite specific about you have to be right with things and you’re quite left brain your natural tendency is you want to be right and you don’t like to be wrong. 

There are four personality types in communication, one of which is the analytic one, the driver, socialiser and amiable he was more analytic in the sense that if he got facts right that’s great, but if he didn’t he felt like he was failing. That’s not just him but that’s just human nature in that mindset and this is no judgement, it’s understanding human nature as if you understand a person’s nature you can then help them.

So getting that energy quite quickly I then asked the question okay, so let’s bring it back then because although we’ve been talking about business here you want to talk about family. So how is your communication with your partner? 

What’s your outcome when you go into that?

He started talking about all these different outcomes that he wanted to get when he talked with kids and partners. I said okay, and how do those meetings go? Not very well. They don’t really listen to me, they’re distracted or my wife gets angry. 

I said, but what are you trying to say to them? What are you trying to get across and are you listening to them? We went in circles for a bit. I said what’s clear to me you need a single individual outcome and he said yeah, I want to communicate better. 

I said I understand that. 

But my concern is that if you are not creating trust i.e. if you’re not coming to the table and making it clear because it sounds as though you’re going all over the place in the conversations and I said, where do you communicate? 

He said any time. 

I then asked the question, but where is the place where you communicate most effectively? 

He said well, we don’t have one. 

I suggested that first of all, choose a location where everyone sits down and creates a safe space and they need to trust that you are not going to try and be right all the time. It was one specific thing I said to him, and he came back with a sort of response at which point I said that is you trying to be right again unless you get out of your head into your heart. 

He really did want to communicate with his kids but it was all coming from the headspace and as I was talking a few people commented this is the same thing going on with us. He was trying to logically get information across to his wife and kids and logically and it was all about him being right, I said you have to get out of your head and start talking from the heart. Soften your communication, make your communication about them not about you being right and he kind of didn’t really want to accept that in his body language.

Harms: One of the challenges with that particular personality again no judgement, but it may be a good option to self-reflect, even if somebody else is helping to coach and guide you because that didn’t come from you and it’s not your logical thought process everybody else is wrong unless it’s your particular idea or your solution. 

It’s almost inbuilt to this personality style.

Dr Ro: To the point where when I made a suggestion he almost ignored the suggestion and then started talking about something else and I think I swore at that point. 

He kind of stopped and sometimes you have to break the state of somebody you’re communicating with to try and help them, to make them realise where they’re making a mistake or going the wrong way. 

He literally listened but then commented about something totally different and imagine if you’re his wife or kids and he’s trying to get a sense of how everyone feels and they say this, and that gets ignored and he carries on in the same direction and that’s when it got a bit heated in the sense I was very direct with him. 

I said you have to stop this behaviour and try something different, you have to break the pattern of communication. The best way to do that is physically change the environment in which you’re communicating. 

So, for example, if you’re having arguments in the kitchen don’t ever have those conversations again in the kitchen take it into the front room sit around the table and say right, this is going to be our safe, trusted space where we all are able to share equally and we all equally listen to the other person and be present. He was actually listening more to the voice in his head than he was to the people he was talking to, that was certainly my observation.

Harms: If he’s asked questions to his family and asks how’s everyone feeling? And they said actually it was not a great week it was a bit crappy not the best week and his response is, it was a really good week then fantastic, and then start talking about something else. I think this is one of the challenges that a lot of people have.

Dr Ro: I’ll be the guy who is in his head or the woman. I want to talk about how your day has been?

Harms: It has been a tough, tiring day you know what it’s like with pandemic. Yes, I’m lucky to have my job, but doing three other people’s jobs because they’re at home.

Dr Ro: Can you look after the kids tomorrow because I’ve got to be in a meeting early. Is that okay if you can just look after kids in the morning?

Harms: I mean, I am tired and it’s going to be the same tomorrow, I’m doing three people’s work.

Dr Ro: If you can do that because you know we’re trying to get towards this goal of paying down this debt that’s what I wanted to talk to you about. If we don’t clear that debt in the next six weeks we’ll go onto a much higher interest rate so I’ll get in early, I’ll do some extra hours and see if we can get this cleared off by the end of the month.

Harms: I just don’t know if I can show up tomorrow I’m going to be exhausted.

Dr Ro: We need to get the debt clear, that’s the most important thing here.

Harms: Okay, okay, sure.

Dr Ro: That was a submissive okay, there is another way you could get some kickback.

Harms: By nature I’m a calm person but that said, it’s submissive, or it turns into an argument.

Dr Ro: The point is I’m in my head not listening to you.

Harms: My state is I’m trying to come from the heart I’m just being honest.

Dr Ro: Your outcome is you want to switch off and my outcome is the debt, but I didn’t start with that.

Harms: You wanted me to cover something tomorrow and then you talk about debt and completely dismissive of how I’m feeling which was the opening question.

Dr Ro: With the coaching session, when I said you’ve got to literally switch off the voice and listen to your heart. I gave him a really clear set of things that I know would make a difference . Does that make sense? 

His body language basically said he wanted to say something back to me so it was so clear.

His body language said no, his words said yes and that’s as everyone in the workshop is trying to support, help him and make the shift as well.

We couldn’t take it any further because I think he got the message. Your outcome has to be an authentic outcome. If you want to talk to your family genuinely and I got a sense part of it was because it’s the right thing to do, as opposed to sincerely I want to make a connection, I want to reconnect with my wife, my kids and get them to open up to me just be vulnerable and for a lot of guys that’s challenging a thing to be vulnerable.

Stepping back and allowing even a criticism or something and allow yourself to hear what you’re doing wrong, I think for him and if you’re in that situation first things first break the pattern so do it in a different place, be honest and say I don’t think I’ve been listening to you as a family. I’m in my head doing the work and this year has been tough for people. 

Trying to stay afloat financially keeps that income going if it’s a job, so just be honest and I say I want to start fresh, I want a safe space to talk and I want us to know that when we sit down here you’re not going to get spoken over by myself. What do you want out of these conversations and then you let them talk, then everybody has a neutral zone. I

 think I asked the question for the ladies if a man breaks a trust, how does that feel? Is the most important thing? 

All of them stuck their hands up on the workshop, in any communication if the objective is to create trust the minute you break it is a huge thing and that means not speaking back at that moment when you’ve given them a space for them to be honest.

That voice in your head that wants to be right, has the last word, I think if you often find yourself wanting to have the last word that’s a good indicator. That’s how it felt somebody wanted the last word out of that coaching session.

Had that been on the live event the three-day first of all, in a situation like that I always get permission straight up front from people in writing and that means I’ll go all the way down the rabbit hole to break that pattern.

Sometimes you need someone to push those boundaries and get enough leverage to make a change. The consequences of you carrying on I didn’t go there with him because I didn’t have enough time but what would be the consequence if he carries on like this. Anyone in that situation because an explosive reaction from a partner doesn’t just happen by chance, they’re exploding to something in their communication. 

Equally it might be his wife was bottling things up to a point where she was getting frustrated and she didn’t know how to communicate.

If we were to explain the logic to him that’s actually what’s happening, but then it explodes.

Harms: How many times must someone explode until the true consequences are in and that’s why we were there to help this gentleman with and anyone else watching.

Some people were nodding.

People typed in and said I now understand what I’m doing wrong in my communication with my partner and children. These learnings really do translate and spread amongst everybody experiencing it. There was one final example where somebody has got a challenge and we’ve both experienced this and witnessed this in the workshop, what if somebody has an internal communication challenge whether that’s linked to and we’ve had the amazing Siobhan Birmingham on talking about self-confidence, whatever the root cause of that is, can you share with the listeners from your perspective what was that situation that occurred in the workshop which a magical transformation for everybody watching.

Dr Ro: Without going into a lot of detail essentially, there was a lady that came onto the mic and she immediately couldn’t talk, she was breaking down and her throat was shaking.

Harms: Couldn’t get the words out of her mouth.

Dr Ro: Couldn’t look at the camera and her challenge was just communicating with people in general, particularly when it came to things that were slightly more personal. 

The nutshell is you cannot communicate externally if internally there’s a whole emotional turmoil going on, so for her it seemed to be self-worth, self-confidence and inability to get a message. She talked about words getting stuck and she talked about forgetting what she was saying, and that’s a classic situation where somebody becomes very self-aware and something would have happened to her in the past, some emotional event that triggered a reaction in her body and that affects her communication. 

Those of you afraid in front of audiences, nervous in front of one to ones or just have a bit of a meltdown that will be linked to some kind of shift in your perception of who you are, how you’re perceived by other people and how you come across and how you see yourself on the inside as well, and she was really emotional. 

So long story short, I got her to talk about what she does and it turns out she is a baker, which is wonderful and we just got her to associate communication with baking. I used some tips which are similar to say NLP techniques where she went into a space where she was comfortable and then we attached the concept of speaking to baking. 

I asked her questions about what’s her favourite thing she bakes and it was beautiful to see the shift because, as she talked about it became more confident to the point where I started talking about baking and communication at the same time and she was smiling, her chest came up and helped to restructure the way she associated the emotion of communication. 

She’d attached pain to communication and all we did was we attached enjoyment, fun and her love of baking. We attached that same love baking to speaking and she started to smile and her face glowed. She was communicating openly instead of choking up.

I think what everybody loved to see was when you asked her to describe the process she goes through when baking a cake it was flowing, it was seamless it was intuitive, intuitive, all the technical terms around baking and a specific sequence. 

Harms You then said can you describe what that looks like in communication and explain did you just describe communication or baking and she laughed is lovely because we can see that shift and she did send a message afterward saying, I don’t know how long that had been going on, I don’t know what magic you did last night my communication is still fluid, I’m free to talk to people once again. This translates.

Dr Ro: Isn’t it ironic the start of the actual presentation every time I talk about it CWI say think about a recipe like baking a cake or baking bread where you put the ingredients in the right sequence you can get a great cake or a great loaf. 

If you have not sorted yourself out internally then your external communication will always be filtered through a set of beliefs and values and 

I think that’s why when we created supporters for Seekardo we’ve included in there things of value building, belief building, because that’s so important for anybody I think communicating. 

A closing note, think about any communication you’ve got coming head over the coming days and you put business aside who have you got around you family or friends that you could maybe just change the way you communicate with them, make it more engaging or fun. 

Go there with a clear outcome. 

Maybe go with the outcome of listening to them and being able to give them a chance to share because I think we’re in a world right now where there’s so much frustration and still a little bit of fear in people thinking what’s going to happen next? 

Maybe go with the outcome of just addressing a fear someone has, make them feel comfortable that in itself is a great way to communicate with people. Send someone a text which has got a lovely message in just encouraging them, or write somebody a letter they’re all forms of communication. Do it with pure intent.

Harms: Thank you for tuning into today’s Seekardo show everything we discussed as always will be on the show notes. We’ll see you in the next episode.