Hi friend,

A few days ago I ran an event called The Art of Transformational Conversation.

My voice was still pretty hoarse after pneumonia, bronchitis and a couple of months of slowly getting better, then worse and then getting better again.

It's been a yoyo of a journey and so running an event for a couple of hours probably wasn’t the cleverest idea in the world. But, I’d already committed and I really wanted to run it, so I decided to treat my voice as part of the experiment.

Could I create more transformation by saying less?

That became the theme of the session - less is more. Less explanation, more listening; fewer answers, more curiosity; less of filling the space and more attention on what was actually happening in front of us. And something quite profound happened.

At one point Grant, one of the participants, reflected that he had always imagined a coach as somebody with all the tools and answers, someone who could reach into an enormous toolkit and drop the right piece of wisdom at a client’s feet.

But he shared that the exercise we were doing felt almost the opposite. Letting the other person do most of the talking.. using their words, staying with their experience and assuming that they have far more of the answers inside them than we could find for them.

Most of us are incredibly good at helping people. Somebody tells us they have a problem and our brain immediately starts searching its own filing cabinet. We might reply... Have you tried this? I read something about that. Here’s what happened to me. There’s a great model for that. I know a resource or solution you could try.

And sometimes that is exactly what is useful, of course. But sometimes we might take somebody out of their world and into ours before we have really understood what is going on for them, or had the opportunity to dig deeper into their unconscious pool of resource.

We live in language like fish live in water. And language shapes every aspect of our experience.

That is why I love creating spaces where we can hear, and be heard, at a completely different level. Because we get to experience the Structure of Magic and transform from the inside out. 

One of the distinctions we explored in the session was the difference between content and structure.

People often give us a lot of content. They tell us stories, give us context, jump from one subject to another, describe what happened yesterday and what they are worried might happen tomorrow. The temptation is to respond to all of that. But beneath all that content, there is something else asking to be noticed.

For example, during our session, one person kept talking about freedom. Another said she wanted to 10X her mind. Someone else was trying to communicate with more honesty. Another wanted to stop giving so much attention to everything happening in the world and put more energy into helping people and enjoying his work again.

The interesting question is: amongst everything they said, where is the energy or outcome? What words keep appearing? What phrase seems to carry more weight than the others? Where is the leverage?

Then stay there...

“Freedom in what way?”

“What kind of honesty?”

“What’s important about that?”

“Anything else about 10Xing your mind?”

“What larger purpose does helping people and enjoying your work again serve?”

These aren’t magic questions. What matters is that they keep us inside the other person’s experience for a little longer before we overlay our own map of the world. We begin to move beneath the surface content and become curious about the deeper structure: their criteria, values, beliefs, identity and perhaps even the larger purpose beneath it all.

You can read more in my book about the difference between the surface and deep structure of language on page 57. Or, for a deeper dive into precision questions, hop to page 179 here.

One of my favourite moments happened with Polly. She arrived late because her morning had gone a bit sideways. Within a few minutes she was talking about wanting the confidence to give talks.

It would have been very easy to turn that into a strategy conversation. Where could you speak? Who could introduce you? What should the talk be called? What do you need in order to feel confident?

Potentially all useful questions. But as the conversation continued, and the questions deepened, something much more interesting began to emerge.

She started describing the woman she would need to be when she gave those talks: calm, confident, focused, clear and slower in her delivery, so that the message really lands. Then we explored why that mattered.

She talked about what would happen if people really understood themselves differently. Their relationships might change. The way they operated at work might change. They might become less hard on themselves. And those changes could begin affecting their families and the people around them.

As she started to see the consequence of showing up in this way, and seeing the effects of that, her state shifted. She described it like throwing a stone into a pond and watching the ripples move outward.

I responded with, “You are the stone in the pond” and something shifted again. Her response wasn't intellectual. Her heart went, “Yeeaah.” Now that interests me far more than giving her ten tips for public speaking which are ideas, rather than an embodied way of being. 

Now nothing external had changed. She still needs to find somewhere to speak, create the talk and eventually stand in front of a room. But her relationship to all of those things had changed.

The conversation had moved from “I need more confidence to give talks” to something closer to “this is who I am... and this is why it matters.”

That, to me, is where transformational conversation becomes interesting.

Perhaps it is simpler than we make it. Focus o the outcome, listen for what has energy, stay in their world, help them discover and access the depth of who they are. And then, maybe the hardest part, get out of the way!

One phrase I used during the session was curiosity before perfection. You don't need the perfect coaching question. You need enough genuine interest in the person in front of you to stay with them long enough that together you might discover something neither of you knew five minutes earlier.

And I don't think this only applies to coaching.

I wonder what would happen in our relationships, businesses, families and friendships if we resisted the urge to fix things quite so quickly.

If we listened beneath the words a little more, stayed curious about the other person's language rather than replacing it with our own, and if we stayed focussed on the structure, rather than seduced by the content. 

My voice forced me to say less that morning. And perhaps that was exactly what we needed. As they say, we have two ears and one mouth for a reason. 

Because increasingly, I think the art of transformational conversation has far less to do with how much we say or know and far more to do with how deeply we can listen.

Whether we notice the word, the metaphor, the hesitation, the outcome, or the thing that suddenly has energy Whether we can resist reaching into our own experience quite so quickly and leave enough space for another person to discover something in theirs.

Perhaps that's the real paradox. The less we need to be the person with the answer, the more space there is for an answer neither of us could have predicted.

So I wonder...

Where in your life might saying a little less allow you to hear a lot more?

Love,
Tristan

P.S. If you'd like to join another Art of Transformational Conversation event in future, hit reply and let me know. And if something here has sparked your curiosity, here are a few ways we can continue the conversation.

✨ Join me for Authentic Enrolment. My next free online experience is on Tuesday 27the October. We'll explore enrolment as curiosity, service and genuine invitation, rather than convincing or selling. Details and booking here.

💭 What would you most love? I'm planning my next series of free experiences for this winter. What question, conversation or topic would you love us to explore? Simply reply and tell me.

📖 Read my book. Download A Personal Guide to NLP: Change Your Thinking, Change Your Life for free below. And watch this space, there's a new book coming this winter. Download the book here.

💬 Or let's have a conversation. If something here connects with what's happening in your own life, leadership or work, I'd love to hear what's going on. Book a conversation with me here.