Conversations As Campaigns, Not Events

Have you ever heard the phrase, "When the student is ready, the teacher appears"?

Well, there's a corollary. The best teachers lay the groundwork to make the student ready.

Sometimes we're too impatient. Sometimes we think we have to solve all the world's problems in this one conversation. 

It is true that a super powerful reframe can create a pivot in someone's life and completely change their trajectory. In fact, that's a learnable skill (reframing and frame management) that, if practiced over time, can become a habit. Master and habitualize this skill others will be magnetized to you. 

Why? Because every time they're around you, they get better.

Have Realistic Expectations About Conversations

Give yourself some grace. Stop thinking that every single conversation has to be a moment of pivotal transformation. It's not going to be that way. We have such high expectations that we think we have to address all of the issues. We have to change everything right here and now.

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Perhaps you have a friend that's going through something or somebody that has a habit that you want to change. Maybe it's a teenage child of yours or a sibling or an estranged relative, a spouse. There's something you want to change in there and you want to address it and you want to address all aspects of it right now. Perhaps you have a colleague and there's a difficult conversation and or a pattern of behavior. And you want to address all of them.

You don't have to do them all in one conversation. We tend to beat ourselves up when we don't accomplish everything we set out to do.

Reframing Your Own View Of Conversations

Our own lens on conversations needs to reframe. Because your conversations and your interactions are episodes in a series. It's not one-off. It's not one-and-done. It's not "it's not over when the conversation is over."

Your conversations are powerful if you view them not as events, but as a campaign. That particular interaction is but one sliver of that longer-term interaction relationship campaign.

Sometimes conversations might be:

• Establishing rapport (and that's enough... wonderful, in fact)
• Maintaining rapport
• Changing a mood
• Teaching
• Learning
• Listening
• Allowing someone to vent, cry, scream or celebrate
• Allowing someone to plan out loud 
• Etc etc

Conversations have a bunch of different flavors, but overall, they're not one-offs. They are events in the middle of a longer campaign. They are slivers of time on a longer timeline. And when you view them as such, you can see that going back to when the student is ready, the teacher appears. If you're that teacher, you're planting seeds all along the way. You're making the ground fertile for those seeds to grow. That is a better way of viewing your conversations, whether it's you're trying to raise a child or have a great relationship with your spouse or succeed at work or in school.

You don't need to boil the ocean. You don't need to solve all the world's problems. You don't need to convert somebody from left to right or right to left or whatever your position is on something. You merely need to plant seeds. You merely need to make the ground fertile for those seeds to grow.

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[ If you’re a busy professional who wants to have incredible success at work and at home (without neglecting those who matter most), then check out The Influence Playbook at https://www.influenceplaybookmonthly.com ]