There’s an epidemic going around. I’ve caught it too. It’s the great telling disease. This is the disease where we think we can teach and influence people by telling them something. We think, “If I just tell them this great information I know, they’ll have a break through.” Then we languish in frustration as no one seems to listen or even care what we have to say.
I’m working hard to unlearn this “disease.” And even while I’m aware of it, I still catch myself telling people information thinking that will help them. My instinct is to tell people things, and I have to fight this instinct.
You might be thinking, “What in the world? How can I influence my kids, my peers, and my boss if I don’t tell them anything?” Before I answer this, I have to ask, if you’re a “teller” (one who always tells people what you think they should know or do) how’s that working for you? I could be wrong, but based on my general observations, my guess is it’s not going very well.
So, let’s talk about the alternatives, and by the way, these alternatives aren’t mutually exclusive. You can and probably will want to use them together.
Listen
One thing you can do instead of telling is to listen. I know. This seems really counter intuitive. But hear me out.
One of our deepest needs is to be valued and understood. If we are telling them what they ought to do, you can pretty much count on them not feeling heard. From the receiver’s perspective, if we aren’t listening and valuing them, for whose benefit are we telling them this? We didn’t take the time to really listen to their perspective. We haven’t shown them that we care about them. So they can’t hear what we just said because their inner need to be valued and heard is crying, “foul!”
But what if we listened instead? I mean, really listen. We aren’t thinking about a retort, or a suggestion, or advice or anything. We just listen and try to understand their world, their hurts, their fears, and their dreams. What could happen if we just listened and accepted? It wouldn’t surprise me at all if this person, whom you’ve been trying to influence, came to you for advice after experiencing you being a judgement free listener for several months.
By the way, listening and then telling still doesn’t work all that great (see the next alternative below).
Ask
Another thing you can do is to ask great questions. This works wonders when you are also listening without judgement. But there’s a difference between great questions and cruddy ones.
Questions where you give your advice in the form of a question falls in the cruddy category. Questions like, “Why don’t you just sell your rental and use that money to fund your kid’s college?” is a cruddy question. It’s still advice disguised in the form of a question.
A better alternative might be, “How important is it to you to fund your kid’s college?” This is an open ended question, and it let’s the person evaluate for themselves what they really want. Maybe they decide they’d really rather not pay for their kid’s college, and they seem more value is sending their kid to a camp where they can build character qualities of responsibility, integrity, and self confidence.
But here’s the beauty of it, if they decided to sell the rental to pay for the college, or if they send their kid to camp, it’s their idea. They might choose exactly what you originally had in mind, and they’re not spending any energy resisting your plan for them.
The truth is that it can’t be just your idea. They have to take on the idea as their own, and simply telling them the idea doesn’t transfer to them.
Experience
This final thing is to guide someone through an experience. Note that you can’t do this in every situation. Even in situations where it can work, you probably will need to get their permission first.
Don’t have them experience something and then go, “See? that’s how I feel.” Don’t be vindictive, and don’t do anything harmful. Keep this in the spirit of love and support for the person.
This idea is used all the time in sports. Football players aren’t just told plays and then told to go run the plays in the Superbowl. Instead they practice the plays for weeks and months.
When people have an experience, they experience it first hand. They uncover personal truth’s by experience and discovery. It’s not someone else’s truth for them. They take it on as their own.
Our Practice
At Simply Great Lives we fight the great telling disease. We believe so strongly that telling doesn’t work, that when you come to one of our seminars or work with us individually, we don’t give you advice. We guide you though experiences. We ask what you learned from the experience and how you can apply that to other areas of your life. If you really need us to suggest, we will, but only if necessary and usually only when asked.
We don’t tell you what to do. Instead, we listen. We listen to what you say, how you say it and what you don’t say – all without judgement. Then we ask questions. We ask questions to get to the bottom of what you want, and to uncover self defeating lies and mind sets.
What you discover are the dreams and passions that are already inside you. These are the things that in your heart of hearts, you know you are meant to do – things that the busyness of life and the crappy messages from the world have choked out. You discover that you can do way more than you think. And you can live a way more fulfilling life than you have believed.
So, here are some open questions for you:
- Describe the last time you felt that something was missing in your life, or you felt that you were meant for something more?
- If you had supportive mentors in your life, what is possible – what would you dream of?
- What is the cost to you to stay on your current life’s path?
