Unlimited Power - Chapter 15

 

Chapter 15 - Host To Handle Resistance And Solve Problems

 

This chapter is about handling resistance and solving problems.

If there was a keyword in the first half of the book, it was "modeling."

If there's a keyword for the second half of this book, it's "flexibility"-the one thing effective communicators have in common.

Flexibility doesn't necessarily come naturally.

Most of us think of settling a dispute as something akin to verbal boxing.

Much more elegant is not to overcome force, but to align yourself with the force directed at you and guide it in a new direction-the metaphor of the Oriental martial arts like aikido and t'ai chi.

Remember that there is no such thing as resistance, there are once inflexible communicators.

It's important for us to remember that certain words and phrases create resistance and problems.

Let me give you the example of one ever-present, three-letter word- "but." If someone says, "That's true, but...", or worse, "I love you ...but..." what is that person saying? The word "but" has negated everything said before it.

What if you simply substitute the word "and" instead? What if you say, "That's true, and here's something else that's also true"?

Instead of creating resistance, you've created an avenue of redirection.

What would happen if you had a communication tool you could use to communicate exactly how you felt about an issue, without compromising your integrity in any way, and yet you never had to disagree with the person either?

Well, here it is:

it's called the AGREEMENT FRAME.

It consists of three phrases you can use in any communication to respect the person you're communicating with, maintain rapport with that person, share with him/her what you feel is true, and yet never resist that person's opinion in any way.

Here are the three phrases:

"I APPRECIATE AND..." "I RESPECT AND..." "I AGREE AND..."

In each case you're doing three things.

You're building rapport by entering the other person's world and acknowledging his/her communication rather than ignoring or denigrating it with words like "but" or "however." You're creating a frame of agreement that bonds you together. And you're opening the door to redirecting something without creating resistance.

For example, someone says to you, "You're absolutely wrong." Instead of losing rapport by saying, "No, I'm not wrong," respond this way: "I respect the intensity of your feelings about this, and I think if you were to hear my side of it you might feel differently."

Notice, you don't have to agree with the content of the person's communication, but you can always appreciate, respect, or agree with someone's feeling about something.

You can appreciate that person's feeling because if you were in the same physiology, if you had the same perception, you would feel the same way.

You can also appreciate someone else's intent. For example, many times two people on opposite sides of an issue don't appreciate each other's points of view, so they don't even hear each other.

But if you use the agreement frame, you will find yourself listening more intently to what the other person is saying-and discovering new ways to appreciate people as a result.

One way to solve problems-is to redefine them-to find a way to agree rather than to disagree. 

Another way is to BREAK THEIR PATTERNS. I've found that confusion is one of the greatest ways to interrupt patterns.

For example, there was a pattern interrupt in an antismoking campaign of a few years ago. It suggested that anytime someone you love reaches for a cigarette, give him/her a kiss instead

My wife, Becky, and I have an agreement that when one of us feels an argument is become destructive, that partner can say "I hate when that happens," and the other has to let go. It forces us to break the negative state we're in by thinking of something that makes us laugh. And it also reminds us that we do hate it when we do that.

There are two main ideas in this chapter.

The first is that you can persuade better through agreement than through conquest.

The competition model is very limited. I've already talked about the magic of rapport and how essential it is to personal power.

If you see someone as a competitor, someone to be vanquished, you're starting out with the exact opposite framework.

Everything I know about communication tells me to build from agreement, not from conflict; to learn to align and lead rather than to try and overcome resistance.

The second idea is that our behavior patterns aren't indelibly carved into our brain.

If we repeatedly do something that limits us, we're just running a terrible pattern over and over again. The solution is simply to interrupt the pattern.

In both cases, the common ground is the idea of flexibility.