We had been working with a large corporate client for about four years and had delivered millions of dollars of training services to their employees over that time.
The Training/Talent Development Director I’d been working with left and they replaced him with a new person, Marie. Marie came in to the job having decided out with the old and in with the new. All existing programs, including ours, had to go.
Marie was uncompromising. She did not even want to discuss it, not with me, not with anyone. She flatly told everyone that, despite the incredibly great results, they had done my programs long enough, it was time for something new.
A good number of people there were pretty outraged. They called me and said, “She won’t listen and there’s nothing we can do. We don’t like it, but nothing we’re doing is working to turn her around. Her boss is saying she’s now in charge so whatever she decides is what we have to go with.”
They asked me to come over and talk with her. Keep in mind I was the last person in the world she wanted to talk to.
They had confidence I could turn it around. So did my staff. They assumed I did also.
I was laughing. There was absolutely no reason for me to have confidence. If someone had asked me if I had confidence I could create the outcome everyone wanted, I would’ve thought they were nuts! I would’ve said, “Based on what? She doesn’t want to talk to me, she’s made up her mind.” I mean, what could I possibly have confidence in? Nothing in the situation for sure.
Since everyone there wanted me to talk with Marie, and my staff didn’t want to lose the account, I agreed to talk with her.
I have a funny viewpoint when it comes to outcomes. I don’t worry about them.
I didn’t know what the outcome would be. I could easily see that Marie would’ve stuck with her original decision and that would’ve been that. I could easily envision she wouldn’t even agree to meet with me.
However, and this is important, there was one thing I went into that situation with absolute confidence in.
I had, and have, absolute confidence in my ability to communicate effectively. That’s not the same as having confidence in the outcome.
There’s a very precise communication formula that I follow and have 100% confidence in my ability to execute, even in a hurricane.
This is the formula that I teach in Causative Communication.
Interestingly enough, it enables me to not even think about the outcome. I know the outcome I want, but I concentrate my attention on the person in front of me and on creating a superior level of communication and understanding.
The reason I don’t worry about the outcome is that what the formula gives me is faith.
I have faith the outcome will be great.
Now that’s a whole philosophical discussion, the difference between faith and confidence. Faith is what you have when you have nothing in the physical universe to support your belief, but you have complete and total certainty in your belief anyway.
Faith in ourselves, and in our ability to create incredibly great outcomes despite challenges, is one of the most powerful internal combustion engines we have to make us succeed.
Marie only reluctantly agreed to meet and insisted it be no more than 30 minutes.
She was as horrible as you would expect. She was nasty, she was unpleasant, she invalidated all our previous work, she made nothing of the results we’d gotten and dismissed all the internal employee and management support we had. She asserted her viewpoint about throwing us out and finding a new program. And that was just how she said, “Hello”.
But 15 minutes into the meeting Marie had changed. She was listening to me. We had rapport. We were getting along. She was laughing and she liked me. I admired her passion, her zeal and a mighty level of energy that’s extremely rare. We were communicating well. We understood each other.
Long story short, Marie never opened up the bidding for the annual contract to any other vendor. She stayed with our programs and became a vocal champion of them. She was always warm and friendly to me.
Why is this important in the new year? It’s important because one of the most valuable, profitable and worthwhile assets you can take with you into your new year is your unconditional confidence in your abilities, especially your ability to communicate effectively.
When you have that, then you can have faith you’ll always create the outcomes you want. This is the essence of being causative.
Twelve months of consistently creating the outcomes we want is what makes a year of our lives truly great.
If you want to learn the same formula I depend on that creates such unshakeable confidence, I’ll be teaching it at the next Causative Communication workshop.
I wish you an absolutely spectacular and causative new year!
Be the cause!
Ingrid