Words Can Change Your Brain (25 page)

1. Before you walk into the operating room, meeting room, or salesroom stop outside the door.

2. Take sixty seconds to yawn, stretch, and relax every muscle in your body.

3. Take a mental inventory. If you feel anxiety, irritation, or are distracted by unrelated thoughts, repeat step two until you are physically and emotionally calm.

4. Focus on your immediate goal and ask yourself: what is the frame of mind I need to be in? Suppress any negativity or doubts and envision yourself functioning at your very best.

5. Rehearse your strategy in your mind (research shows that this improves performance when you carry out the actual task).

6. Focus on the values that mean the most to you as they specifically relate to your job or goal.

7. Relax your body some more, take a deep breath, and walk
slowly
into the room with a gentle smile on your face.

Change Your Words, Change Your Life

In the ventures I’ve engaged in—as a U.S. Army officer during the Vietnam War, a financial executive, a venture capitalist, and an entrepreneur—I have often needed to generate dedication from my troops, employees, partners, or customers. I’ve found that the Compassionate Communication leadership techniques, as described in this book, help me to pull them out of their natural insecurity and help them to focus their creativity on devising new strategies to achieve our mutual goals. Even if there’s only a minute to spare, we can use that minute to ground ourselves in body and mind. Speaking slowly and carefully will open the hearts of those you work with, and it will build good will with others.

I wasn’t always this way. Twenty-five years ago I talked too fast and didn’t give my fullest attention to what other people said. And the stress that caused was overwhelming. So I made a choice and changed my lifestyle, and I teach these lessons to my students. When you artfully apply the principles of compassion and bring it into your dialogues with others—especially in stressful situations—you’ll achieve a better outcome in less time.

Chris Manning, Ph.D.

Professor of Finance and Real Estate

Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles

Even if you only have a minute to spare, stop for thirty seconds to relax and visualize a successful outcome, and do your best to maintain that positive outlook as you attend to the task at hand. If the activity you’re about to engage in requires dialogue, slow down your speech a little bit—just enough so that you can reflect on what you are going to say before you speak. This will promote focused, accurate, and brief communication that will have the greatest effect on those who hear your words.

To establish the best rapport with someone else, you should treat them with respect, pay attention to everything they say, and give them the best care and service you can.
¹⁹
In fact, it’s your empathy—whether you are a caregiver, salesperson, or manager—that will create the greatest degree of mutual satisfaction.

Working in the Land of No

“When the principles of Compassionate Communication, as described in this book, are applied to business management, hiring, recruiting, or selling or integrated into any level of negotiation and work-related projects, superior results are invariably realized.” This is the considered opinion of Stephen E. Roulac, a leading expert in strategic management, capital markets, and real estate investment. As an international business consultant, his clients include Apple Inc., Bank of America, Prudential, and the U.S. Department of Labor. He holds degrees from Stanford; University of California, Berkeley; and Harvard, and has held teaching positions at many universities. He has authored or edited twenty-two books and over four hundred articles. He is currently working with us to bring Compassionate Communication to a wider business audience. In reflecting on his values and career, he asked us if he could share this story with you. It exemplifies how each individual can personalize the components of Compassionate Communication and make it part of their work:

In my experience, having engaged in more than one million communications in virtually every aspect of business management, investment, and corporate decision making, one cannot afford to ignore the principles and strategies of Compassionate Communication. They need to be applied to one-to-one, real-time personal interactions, and they also need to be incorporated into the organizational message of the company. You cannot excel in the business world if you only honor one level of communication but disregard the other, for to do so would compromise the individuals as well as the corporate enterprise.

Some years ago I served as a senior management executive in a very large multinational firm. I regularly received written communications from the national office, which was abbreviated as “NO.” Too often the messages themselves seemed to reflect the negativity of the acronym. Not only were they impersonal, but the content seldom reflected sensitivity. Rarely did they show any respect for, or even an acknowledgement of support to, the staff. The messages basically “barked” at you.

I suggested to the CEO of the firm that he could be more effective in realizing his objectives if he sent his messages from the position of “YES.” I proposed that he relabel the national office as “Your Executive Services.”

In advocating the change from NO to YES, I advised him that his audience would be more receptive to YES than NO. Even if his underlying message was not exactly what people might wish to hear, if he started from YES, he would be far better off than if he started from NO.

I felt that this YES position was particularly important because the main function of the corporate headquarters was to serve the firm’s partners. The message of “Your Executive Services” would be both congruent and consistent with that priority. Since this particular CEO emphasized delivering outstanding client service, the YES framing would reinforce his strategic priority.

Sometimes in life—and especially in business—you learn as much by observing the effects of negativity as you do from positive modeling. This was one of those times, because this particular CEO of the NO school did not implement a positive YES communications positioning. In fact, he didn’t even have the courtesy or capacity to acknowledge the suggestion. But then, what would you expect from the land of NO?

When you disregard the sound principles of Compassionate Communication, you compromise the strategic competence and integrity of the entire group. While this communication exchange—or should I say nonexchange—with the CEO was but one of many warning signals, I felt that it was profoundly symbolic and telling. I soon left the firm.

Our recommendation: take Compassionate Communication into your work and into the highest levels of management you can reach. Show them the research, experiment with your colleagues, and remember: it only takes one effective communicator—one compassionate leader or teacher—to cause a roomful of language-based brains to resonate to the quality of your speech.

And after you’ve introduced these strategies to your group, open the floor for debate. What you’ll hear will move you in ways that you wouldn’t expect, for as one CEO said, after practicing Compassionate Communication with the members of his board, “I never realized before what listening actually entailed.”

C
HAPTER 12

Compassionate Communication with Kids

_W
e highly recommend that you experiment with the Compassionate Communication exercise with a child. Kids love it. For them, it’s a game that puts them on equal footing with adults because the rules are the same for everyone. They especially like talking super slowly, and they’re very good at limiting their conversations to thirty seconds.

When a colleague of ours, a math teacher at a local high school, did the exercise with his nine-year-old son, Nick, and his friends, he changed the rules and had a contest: each person wrote down an action-related sentence like “I’m going to ride my bicycle” or “I want a piece of pizza.” Then they took turns trying to guess what the person was going to say as they spoke one word at a time, leaving ten seconds of silence between them.

Nick, for example, wrote down a sentence and folded the paper in half so that no one could see what he wrote. Then he said the first word: “My.” The rest of the group yelled out sentences like “My stomach hurts.” Obviously, no one could guess from just one word. Then Nick slowly said, “My . . . dad . . . talks.” The responses became more focused: “My dad talks to my mom,” etc. Nick then slowly said, “My . . . dad . . . talks . . . too.” Immediately Nick’s friend jumped in: “My dad talks too fast!” It was true, but not correct, so Nick’s sister chimed in: “My dad talks too long!” Bingo!

Picking up on the cue, Nick’s mom, a therapist, suggested that everyone play a round by starting out with a sentence that began with the name of someone in the room. As the game evolved, everyone learned something about how others perceived them. The game was a little risky, but with the direction of the parents, an atmosphere of fun was maintained, and the kids were able to express positive and negative thoughts about each other in a safe way.

The game also taught the children to pay close attention to the meaning of each word, and if they watched one another’s faces and listened deeply to the tone of voice (the adults introduced these nonverbal communication concepts to the kids), they could be more accurate in predicting what another person would say. They were learning how to become more attentive to the subtleties of conversation and to fine tune their inner speech to stay focused on the meaning of other people’s words.

A Mother-and-Daughter Dialogue

With the feedback we were getting, my wife, Stephanie, and I, Andy, became curious about how our eleven-year-old daughter, Amanda, would react. We talked to her about doing Compassionate Communication, and she seemed interested in trying it out, but, to be honest with you, I think she was more interested in being mentioned in this book! She loves to talk—with us, with her friends, and with other adults—so I thought she would be a natural.

We also had an important issue that we had been struggling with for years: when Amanda becomes hungry, her blood sugar drops. When this happens, she turns from her usual sweet self into a very unhappy person. The solution is simple: eat a snack or some food, but when she’s in this grumpy state, it’s very hard to get her to eat anything. She’ll fight us in every way possible: “I don’t feel like it! I’m not hungry! You can’t make me! Leave me alone!”

Once she has eaten, it only takes about sixty seconds for this sullen, unpleasant kid to turn into an alert and excited person who loves to jabber away about all the things on her mind. But she never seems to remember this when she’s hungry.

We’d discussed this issue with her many times in the past, but we’d never been able to adequately solve the problem. We hoped that the Compassionate Communication technique would help by giving everyone an opportunity to discuss how best to handle this issue together, as a family.

My wife and I agreed that she and Amanda would follow the training instructions on the CD because it was easier than reading the written instructions. I would observe and take notes, writing down what everyone said.

Amanda and Stephanie sat down and began listening to the CD. Amanda picked up the general approach rather quickly and wanted to jump right into it. I was fascinated to see what would happen at the ten-minute mark, after the relaxation and imagination exercises were presented and actual dialogue would start.

Amanda began with a compliment to her mom: “You are the most generous person I know.” Both Stephanie and I were surprised. We had never heard her say this before. Stephanie responded with her own compliment: “I’m really touched by your willingness to play this game. You’re such a wonderful child, and I’m really excited to do this with you.”

Before I describe to you the results of the conversation, I want to point out something I found very interesting. Amanda loved to keep within the thirty second time frame, and she would frequently remind Stephanie to make sure that she did not talk too long. Occasionally, Stephanie wanted to talk more but Amanda wouldn’t let her. Normally, Amanda loves to talk on and on and on, and so we were both intrigued by her willingness to comply with this rule.

After the compliments were exchanged, Stephanie asked Amanda what she thought about the problem of her forgetting to eat and how it affected her mood. Usually, this makes Amanda very defensive. But this time she responded with great calmness. And she really seemed to grasp what Stephanie was saying.

Amanda was actually able to explain to us why she normally found these discussions about her eating so annoying. She said—speaking slowly and briefly and staying within the time limit—that we were not listening to what
she was trying to tell us in those situations.

As the conversation evolved, Stephanie and Amanda came up with some potential solutions. Amanda said that she would try to be more aware of when she is hungry, and both Stephanie and I agreed to be more responsive and to listen more closely to how she is feeling.

Overall, it was a very positive experience, and Amanda really enjoyed it. At the end she remarked that she was now aware that she was really hungry. So we went downstairs to get something to eat right away. No hesitancies, and no convincing, so day one was a success.

It’s been a year since we had this “formal” dialogue, and Amanda continues to be much better about eating regularly, using her moods as a sign of when she needs food. She’s also much better at modifying her mood when she does get hungry. Stephanie and I seem to be managing it much better as well, and we all seem to be listening to each other with greater empathy and understanding.