Can you describe a few practical results from using mutual learning?
I use mutual learning in my own communicating when coaching, counseling and teaching. I also instill mutual learning in my clients so they can achieve better results.
One company wanted me to coach an executive who they thought had some issues. They wanted him to fly down to headquarters and talk to people there and find out what others are saying about him before I started working with him. I could have just said, “That won’t work.” Or I could have said, “They are the client, if that’s what they want to do, I’ll just pick up from there.”
But I suspended judgment, and looked to find what information they had about the situation that I didn’t. I spent some time finding out the reasoning behind the request, what they were looking to accomplish.
They felt it was important for him to know what the situation was, then he would be motivated to change. When we both understood that I knew their reasoning and their end goals, then I could suggest, “shouldn’t I meet with him first, see if we can achieve rapport and understand what the issues are from his stand point? Perhaps he’ll have a better understanding and more tools when we talk about how others perceive him.”
The end result was that the executive did talk to people at headquarters, but he’d been better prepared on how to assess what people were saying and we already had the rapport so that we could work together to improve his capabilities rather than viewing me as someone thrust on him from the “enemy”.
Here is another coaching example. One client works with someone who gives long presentations and turns people off. They had tried to make the person give shorter presentations; they’d had speaking coaches work with him on presentation techniques.
When I worked with him, I asked him what he wanted to accomplish, which was to get through all of the information so that people would fully understand the facts and his reasoning. But after further questions, he volunteered that his end goal was to convince people to take some specific action.
With this as a higher level need, I could suggest that if people were interested they might be easier to be convinced: that two to three pages might keep people’s interest and that it was great to have 30 pages of backup if people asked to see the details. The person said thank you and started giving much more effective presentations. He was open to the suggestion because he understood that I’d been interested in his point of view, that I understood his rationale, and that I was just suggesting alternatives that would help us both. |
