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Creating Capacity in Your Listeners

We have just seen how conversation releases energy. But only a certain kind of conversation does so: Pull Conversations. We witnessed how these conversations produced a dramatic turnaround in David’s UK marketing team. Now it’s time to unpack how and why Pull Conversations work. Let’s take a look at the logic of Pull.

Push or Pull?

Every July I return to Manitoulin Island in Lake Huron to the cottage where I spent the summers of my youth. It’s not all fun and games up north. Last year we had to replace the wiring between two of the cottages. Because the new wire was going to be buried, the job entailed running a thick electrical wire through a plastic hose that would protect the wire underground.

How to get 140 feet of wire through 140 feet of plastic hose – that was the challenge. Mike, the hardware store guy, had offered some advice, but it seemed far-fetched and much too time-consuming. My brother Tim and I decided to try what we thought would be a faster and easier method.

First, we uncoiled the wire and stretched it out in a straight line along the beach. Then we tried pushing the wire through the hose. What we thought would be a relatively simple process proved futile. Although the wire was stiff, the friction proved to be too much, getting things to the point where we could no longer push the wire at all.

What to do next? We thought of taking the wire and the hose and hanging them over the edge of nearby East Bluff. Maybe gravity would overcome the friction and the wire would slowly fall through the hose. But it would take a lot of work to roll up the wire and the hose, drive it up to the bluff, unroll it over the edge, slide the wire through the hose (which we weren’t sure would work), roll the hose back up, and drive it back to the lake.

Mike the hardware guy’s method was beginning to look more and more attractive, despite the fact that it would require significant up-front work.

Tim took a little piece of a plastic bag and tied a roll of fishing line onto it. I stuck the piece of plastic bag into one end of the hose and Tim went to the other end and stuck a small vacuum cleaner over the end. He turned on the vacuum cleaner and before we knew it, the suction had pulled the fishing line through the hose and to his end.

We then used the fishing line to pull a sturdy string through the hose. Once the string was through, we attached it to the electric wire. We all watched with amazement as I was able to walk along the beach, pulling the thick wire through the hose quickly and easily.

The lesson was embarrassingly clear to us: when it comes to getting something flexible through a conduit, pulling works a lot better than pushing. Pulling reduces unnecessary friction and enables you to get something through in a shorter time and with less stress.

We had defaulted to a push-first approach because we believed that it would take too long to pull. We ended up wasting all the time we spent pushing, in the end being forced to invest the time on the pull approach anyway.

Do You Push First?

When I worked for Eagle’s Flight, one of North America’s foremost training companies, I conducted hands-on research in my sessions with people from organizations across North America. The resulting statistics showed something very interesting about the various simulations that we conducted with the people we were training. We discovered that two-thirds of them took a push approach when they wanted to make themselves understood.

I often conduct an exercise framed within a real-estate story to illustrate this push-first phenomenon. See if you can figure it out.

A couple purchased a home in one city for $360,000. The wife was offered a promotion that entailed working out of head office, 100 miles away. The couple loved their new home and the wife was loath to commute 100 miles twice a day. Should she accept the promotion or not? They decided to put the house up on the market for $10,000 more than they bought it for. If it sold, that would be their sign that she was supposed to take the new job.

The very next day, an eager young couple bought the house from them for the asking price of $370,000. They packed up their kids and went to buy another house close to head office. The house that appealed to them most was a bit more expensive – they ended up paying $380,000 for it.

Six months later, the kids were complaining about missing their friends and their teachers. The husband hadn’t found another job yet and the wife was getting sick of the politics at head office. They decided to put the house up for sale for $390,000. If it sold, they would move back home.

It sold the very next day for $390,000.

At this point, I say to the participants, “This couple is about to get back into their vehicle and move back to their home city. Did they make money, lose money, or break even? If they made or lost money, how much did they make or lose? And just to keep it simple, you don’t have to take into consideration any of the legal fees, real estate fees, or moving expenses.”

Typically, a portion of the group firmly believes that the couple broke even. Another portion is just as sure that they made $10,000. Another is persuaded that they made $20,000. Yet another says, “It’s simple. They made $30,000.” Other participants have varying answers. What do you believe the answer is?

Then I say to the group, “Your mission now is to try to get on the same page and it would be good if it was the right page. Go and talk to people from a different group. Your task is to make yourself understood in the best way possible.”

What happens next is truly interesting. As people try to make their point of view understood, their natural conversation styles come to the surface. Try this for yourself. Show this real estate problem to a friend, colleague, or family member and see if you can get on the same page regarding the right answer.

I do this for four rounds, or four quarters, if you will. At the end, the group is typically still divided, with people in at least two or three camps. (For the answer, send an e-mail to us at info@juiceinc.com with the subject line “Real Estate.”)

“Think back to the interactions you’ve just had,” I say to them next. “What percentage of the people you interacted with pulled out your rationale before asking you to understand theirs? What percentage pushed their rationale on you before trying to understand yours? And what percentage acquiesced – simply giving in to your point of view without trying to advocate their own?”

The results from polling thousands of people show that when North Americans are trying to get to understanding, 66% of them push, 23% acquiesce, and only 10% pull.

When North Americans are trying to get to understanding, 66% of them push, 23% acquiesce, and only 10% pull.

This means that the chances are at least two to one (66% to 33%) that the people around you are pushing their reality onto you rather than attempting to pull out your reality. And the chances are also two to one that, unless you are exceptional, you’re pushing, too. Our findings mesh with the research of Jack Carew, who studied 30,000 sales professionals and discovered that in any sales interaction the odds are two to one that “the orientation of the salesperson is inwardly focused.” (Go to www.carew.com/wp-the-odds-are-factor.php.)

Look around your professional and personal worlds. Is this what you see? Imagine it otherwise. Imagine what it would be like to walk into a meeting where everybody was committed to Pull Conversations. Imagine what it would be like to have conversations with your spouse or teenager or friends where each side tried to outdo the other in pulling out the other’s reality.

Why Does Pulling First Work So Well?

In the 1950s, Toyota shifted manufacturing from a push to a pull mindset. They began to pull resources into the assembly line as needed, rather than stockpiling huge inventories of parts. It wasn’t long before marketing organizations began to adopt the pull methodology. Media have shifted to a pull approach within the past decade. In several sectors, people are discovering that pull works better than push.

When I ask participants, “What’s the best way to make yourself understood: to push, pull, or acquiesce?” a full 95% respond, “Pulling works best.” I always say, “I believe you, but sell this to me. Why do you believe it works best?” Here’s what they come up with:

• Pulling reduces the other person’s defensiveness and increases respect and trust, making them receptive and willing to understand you.

• Pulling enables you to understand the other person’s conversation style. This enables you to frame your message in a way that’s easy for them to understand and relate to.

• If there is a block or error in the other person’s thinking, Pulling shows you exactly where the point of departure is. Understanding this helps you discover the best way to get them back on the path of logic.

• If you need the other person to buy into your point of view rather than just give cognitive assent to it, pulling does a better job of getting them on board.

• The solution may not be either yours or theirs but a hybrid of the two. If you pull, you make sure that you aren’t forfeiting a valuable piece of the equation.

• If your own logic is wrong, pull will expose where you’ve gone off the path and keep you from embarrassing yourself unnecessarily.

The Push Culture

The dynamics of the wire and hose story play themselves out in organizations and families every day.

Let’s say I’m heading into a meeting. I have a strong point of view about the topic up for discussion. I believe my job is to push my point of view out to others until they get it. As I do so, my team members start getting defensive. I sense their resistance and it triggers in me a need to push more. I have to get my point through to them. They become even more resistant and less receptive to my ideas. Two team members outright stonewall me. Three or four others nod politely and indicate that they will seriously consider my point of view.

Logic, Passion Not Sufficient

Here’s a statement you can take to the bank: People will tolerate your conclusions and act on their own. You may be able to get people to nod their heads by the force of your logic or the strength of your passion. But when they walk away to take action, they will act on their own conclusions, not yours.

Push Nearly Stalls an Implementation

Steve and some of his key leaders are about to meet with their management team. Steve is the leader of a chemical plant and he wants to implement SAP, a technology solution that promises to integrate a broad range of organizational processes and make his people more efficient. Steve and his leadership cadre feel passionate about their point of view. It’s critical to them that the managers understand it. With so much at stake, Steve believes that the best approach is to present the merits of his ideas to others with strength, to passionately push his point of view on the others until they “get it.”

So, rallying all of his enthusiasm, he lays it out to his management team. He outlines all the facts and stats of why SAP is the best way to go. At the end of his presentation, he asks a perfunctory, “Any questions, concerns, or ideas?” However, every manager knows that Steve isn’t interested in feedback; that he just wants to get this thing implemented, now.

Sixteen weeks later, SAP is mired in employee-relations problems. Despite the leadership team’s encouragements, ultimatums, and even threats, people seem unclear about the process and hand-offs are not happening effectively. It seems there is not enough group will to get the project over the inevitable bumps. Worst of all, the employees who are supposed to be benefiting from SAP are overtly or covertly finding ways to sabotage the new system. Spotty compliance has created a mess: an ugly hybrid of reports, processes, and systems that are practically useless because they offer neither the comfort of the old system nor the ease and accuracy of the new.

At this point, Steve calls for help. Group dialogues are facilitated between him, his managers, and his employees. Steve and his leaders receive coaching on a few critical skills:

• How to set aside their own agenda and inquire into the concerns and goals of their managers and employees without judgment or defensiveness.

• How to step into their managers’ and employees’ worlds to see their reality.

• How to reflect back, in their own words, the essence of what their managers and employees are saying so they feel completely understood and respected.

“People almost never change without feeling understood first.”

As Steve begins to pull, he discovers some concerns and objections that have some serious validity – concerns and objections that left unaddressed will sink the entire process. For example, he discovers that he had failed to understand the needs and the fears of his end users. He had mistakenly assumed that operators would immediately see the benefit of the new system and wholeheartedly embrace the change. He did not realize that “people almost never change without feeling understood first,” as Stone, Patton, and Heen put it in Difficult Conversations.

Steve had completely underestimated their paranoia about touching a computer. Seeing this reality helps him understand that the training process for the operators not only was too short, it was rolled out in a way that was guaranteed to turn them off.

As Steve begins to make his employees feel understood, they admit their own part in the failure – that they had not really done an honest job of understanding the leadership team’s desire to make their jobs easier.

Steve had believed that there was no time to pull and so defaulted to push. Pushing cost him dearly. Much of the energy expended in the first sixteen weeks was wasted. In the end, although Steve resorted to the pull-first approach, it took him months to overcome the cynicism, lack of trust, and reluctance that he had created by pushing first.

Let me ask you, do your implementations grind to a halt because the ideas aren’t smart enough or because they run out of energy? Most organizations don’t lack for good ideas, they lack the intelligent energy to implement those ideas. Is the push-first approach sucking intelligent energy away from your implementations?

Putting the Trust = Speed Equation to Work

Understanding produces the one feeling that is most crucial to the success of any organization: the feeling of trust. Here’s another statement you can take to the bank. It’s from the book Values-Based Selling, by Bill Bachrach and Karen Risch: “People don’t trust you because they understand you ... they trust you because you understand them.”

Think about it. The people on your “most trusted” list probably understand you. They don’t misread your motives or misinterpret your intentions. But it’s probably difficult for you to trust someone who misunderstands you. There is an integral relationship between understanding and trust. The deeper the understanding, the more trust is created. Why? Because feeling understood is one of our primal needs. Swiss psychiatrist Paul Tournier puts it this way in his book To Understand Each Other: “It is impossible to overemphasize the immense need we have to be really listened to, to be taken seriously, to be understood ... No one can develop freely in this world and find a full life without feeling understood by at least one person.”

The deeper the understanding, the more trust is created.

When someone meets a need as primal as the need to feel understood, we tend to feel that we can trust that person. And trust is invaluable to productivity. As W. Edward Deming used to say, “Trust = Speed.” When trust is in place, decisions can be made quickly and executed without friction. When trust is absent, people sit across the table from you, recognize your idea as a great one, but say, “We better think about it for a while. We’re not sure it will work as well as you say.” When trust is absent, it can take people days of persuading and fourteen pages of justification just to get permission to buy a photocopier.

Steve’s idea was great. If he had taken the time to understand his employees’ concerns, he could have created trust and trust would have created speed. Luckily, in Steve’s case, all that was lost was money, time, and energy. In some situations, like the one below, the cost of push and acquiesce can be fatal.

A Big Problem with Push

In January 1986, Roger Boisjoly and Arnie Thompson, two Morton Thiokol (MTI) engineers, strongly and passionately advocated to MTI and NASA management not to launch the Challenger space shuttle. They had significant scientific and engineering concerns about the effect that cold temperatures would have on the solid rocket booster seals.

But management would not listen. They marched forward and gave the thumbs up: “It’s a beautiful day, go ahead and launch.” Seventy-three seconds into the launch, the Challenger was destroyed. An O-ring seal in the right solid rocket booster failed, sending seven crew members to their deaths.

How did this disastrous miscommunication happen?

• Were the leaders operating from deeply ingrained assumptions? “Engineers are always perfectionists – they can’t see the big picture. All they can see are the picky little things that could go wrong.”

• Did time pressures win the day with management? “We’ve had too many delays already. If we delay again, we’ll look incompetent.”

• Was management cocky? “Blow-by is not a serious issue. It hasn’t burned us before.”

• Were political pressures driving their decision? “We can’t disappoint the White House or we’ll lose funding.”

• Was it a “sales decision”? Did MTI fear upsetting NASA and losing out on upcoming rocket contracts?

To add insult (and further injury) to injury, despite the sheer magnitude of this tragedy, NASA still did not adopt a pull-first approach. NASA managers hit the replay button in 2003, seven years later, resulting in the Columbia disaster. Once again, the concern of mid-level engineers – in this case about a possible hole blown in the wing by foam – was squelched. And once again the engineers’ concerns were validated. The shuttle blew up upon reentry, and seven crew members were killed.

The final report on this disaster contains this harsh assessment: “NASA’s organizational culture had as much to do with this accident as foam did.”

Wherever you find a strong attitude of push, you will also find the attitude of acquiescence. And that’s the grave reality of North American business: our leaders tend to push and our employees tend to acquiesce. The problem with push and equally with acquiescence? Both create costly fatalities. Great ideas get axed before they can be developed. People’s commitment and engagement get smothered. Important relationships get broken and destroyed. Ultimately, we fail to uncover the Bigger Reality, which means we forfeit the opportunity to release the intelligent energy that produces smart behaviors and great results.

Our leaders tend to push and our employees tend to acquiesce.

But, you may argue, isn’t there a time to advocate your own perspective? Absolutely. And when is that time? After you have pulled first. When pulling has created a willingness and capacity inside the other person, they will be willing to begin pulling from you. You will have earned the right to passionately advocate your point of view.

Mental Muscle Memory

A good friend of mine is a police officer. He tells me that the police academy has had to change the way they train their officers, especially in the area of disarming an assailant. Here’s how they were conducting the training: An assailant points a gun at an officer and the officer executes a swift technique of grabbing the firearm out of the assailant’s hand. Having successfully disarmed the assailant, the officer hands the gun back to the assailant and the cycle is repeated until the technique can be completed flawlessly.

You’re probably anticipating where this is going. There is video footage of a real incident in which an officer catches a crook in the act of robbery. The crook points the gun at the officer and the officer smoothly extracts the gun from the crook’s hand – and then hands the gun back to him! I regret to say that the crook then shoots the officer.

Mental muscle memory (MMM) is a powerful thing. You walk into your bathroom in the middle of the night and reach for the light switch. Without looking, you move your hand to exactly the right spot on the wall and your finger knows whether to flip the switch up or down to turn the light on. When you drive your car to work, you pass through vast portions of streets and highway without taking in what’s occurring. Did I go through a red light? I can’t even remember! That’s because your drive to work is 90% taken care of by MMM.

The problem with MMM becomes clear when we develop habits that make us ineffective, where we figuratively hand the gun back. Many of us have such a long history of pushing first in conversation that we have created MMM that is difficult to recalibrate. As if that were not enough of a challenge, there are at least ten other factors that strongly influence us to take a push first approach.

Top Ten Reasons We Push First

1 We operate from a powerful assumption that there’s not enough time to pull.

2 We feel the need to judge.

3 We feel personal responsibility. There’s so much at stake here, I have to push.

4 We cave in to our ego and pride.

5 We fall into the right/wrong trap.

6 We fall prey to insecurity and fear.

7 We lack modeling.

8 We don’t want to be perceived as a pushover.

9 Our culture seems to demand it.

10 We are steeped in competitiveness.

Police officer training is different now. After the assailant points the gun and the officer takes it away, he then points the gun at the assailant. That marks the end of the cycle. Officers practice this drill until they have fully recalibrated their MMM. And that’s the good news about MMM. Your neural pathways can be recalibrated. With practice you can create MMM that will systematically trigger behaviors that are highly productive.

Pulling Out a $1.2-Million Reward

Bill was a manager whose technical abilities were topnotch, but his inability to pull – to inquire into other people’s realities – was holding him back from the promotion that he desperately wanted.

As an engineer in a nuclear power plant, Bill had no choice but to become much better at working with and through others. Unfortunately for him, his lack of empathy and understanding had effectively alienated him from the rest of his colleagues. No one wanted to work with him. And no one wanted to manage him. Bill’s career was at a standstill and he was ready to go to the human rights commission because he believed that his company was discriminating against him.

Bill’s organization asked me to be his communication coach. After meeting him and interviewing some of his colleagues, I knew I was going to be the person Bill hated for a short time but respected for a long time.

Bill was so deep in denial that I had to be very direct. I set up this aggressive curriculum for him:

• Learn the principles of inquiry, especially the skill of pulling out and understanding others’ reality.

• Practice that skill in a low-risk situation and receive feedback from me.

• Practice in a medium-risk situation and receive feedback from me.

• Practice in a higher-risk situation and receive feedback from me.

In the first Pull Conversation, Bill didn’t “get it.” I had given him the clear mandate of pulling out and understanding the other person’s reality and not giving in to the temptation to justify his behaviors, defend himself, or make himself understood. Time after time I had to halt the process and bring Bill back to his mandate. Time after time he gravitated to pushing.

I gave Bill very candid feedback about his performance. So candid that at one point he looked at me and asked, “Has anyone ever struck you in a coaching session?” Perhaps I had watched too many cop shows, but I checked my rearview mirror as I drove home from that session to see if I was about to be run off the road.

The second conversation wasn’t much better. Bill just couldn’t seem to get the concept of pull. His habit patterns were deeply imprinted with a push-first style of communication. Once again I had to give Bill the very feedback he didn’t want to hear.

Something happened in the third conversation, however. Bill exerted significant effort. At last he was starting pull out the other person’s reality and understand where they were coming from.

Over a period of several weeks, Bill kept working on his curriculum. Imagine how juiced I was when I got a call from the human resources supervisor, who said, “You won’t believe it, but Bill just saved the company two million dollars!”

I definitely didn’t believe it, so I phoned Bill’s direct supervisor and asked, “Is it true? Did Bill just save the company $2 million?”

“Well, we thought it was going to be $2 million, but it turns out the savings is $1.2 million. The Atomic Energy Commission had proposed a course of action that was going to be far more expensive than it needed to be. Bill picked up on the areas of waste.”

The supervisor then, in effect, summed up the nature of Pull Conversations. He reported that in the past, Bill would have come in calling people idiots, getting their backs up. Bill would have pushed the proposal through despite his colleagues’ resistance. This time, the supervisor said, Bill pulled out their reality and understood their interests. Then he framed his concerns in ways that they could understand and buy into. He pulled them into his reality, got them on board, and the company was able to move forward with a modified process and substantial savings.

Communicate Less?

So many people have been battered with the injunction, “Communicate more. Communicate more.” But we’re here to say, communicate less, but with messages that slide right into the listener’s world.

Every minute you spend pulling out someone’s reality helps you achieve the economy of framing your message in a way that appeals to their interests.

The Components of Pull Conversations

Pull Conversations are a blend of two “heartsets” that elegantly combine to get you to reality: inquiry and directness.

Inquiry

Inquiry was made popular in the fifth century B.C. by a fellow named Socrates. It is the drive to deeply understand and be open to another’s reality.

Inquiry goes far beyond showing an interest. It takes interest a step further, into the new terrain of raw need. “I need to know your viewpoint. I need to know what’s going on inside you. I need to find out what you are thinking and feeling.”

Like a magnet, pull powerfully attracts clarity to itself. Pull goes far beyond asking questions: it enables undivided focus, strips away ambiguity, and comes back with the trophy – the essence of what the person was really trying to express. And sometimes more.

Inquiry has an openness to it that makes it a close cousin to humility: the teachability that looks for reasons to be impressed by others’ ideas rather than for reasons to invalidate them. There is a vulnerability to humility – a willingness to be imprinted with someone else’s beliefs and feelings.

Directness

Directness is a strong drive to be real and to get to reality as quickly as possible. It enables you to straightforwardly assert your reality to others face to face, as opposed to by an indirect approach: sending your message through someone else or through an indirect medium like e-mail.

Directness transcends most people’s definition of honesty: telling the truth. It takes you to a place of not withholding what’s going on inside you. Directness means being open to telling your truth and getting it “out there” into the world. Naturally the discernment filter needs to be on. Naturally you need to determine how, when, and what information to share and with whom you should share it.

There’s a passion component of directness that makes an imprint on your listener. It is critical for leaders to go beyond facts and share their emotions through the use of stories and symbols. Consider what Jim Rohn, America’s business philosopher, says in his keynote speeches: “Effective communication is 20% what you know and 80% how you feel about what you know.”

The Pull Matrix

The model below shows how inquiry and directness work together in conversation. If they’re both fully present, two people or groups can:

• Uncover the Bigger Reality.

• Reach a shared understanding.

• Create high levels of trust.

Because conversation means to turn together, it makes sense that both inquiry and directness are required. When you inquire directly, it makes the other person feel that they can turn toward you and share their reality with you. Consider:

• Turning together requires trust and respect.

• Trust is largely created through inquiry.

• Respect is largely created through directness.

Various types of one-way conversations happen in the quadrants where inquiry and directness are not fully present. The only time a Bigger Reality can emerge, however, is when two people or groups show up with both inquiry and directness and neither is functioning at the expense of the other.

Some may assume that inquiry and directness are mutually exclusive. However, note that it is possible for the two to be present at the same time, as the following examples illustrate.

How Inquiry and Directness Work Together

Damian says something offensive in a meeting. Melissa approaches him afterward and says, “Damian, I have concerns about your comment in the meeting, but first I’d like to understand your rationale. Then I’ll share my concerns.”

Melissa is framing the conversation by being direct. (“I have concerns.”) She demonstrates a desire to inquire into Damian’s reality. (“But first I’d like to understand your rationale.”) Then she lets him know that she’s going to be direct about her concerns after she has understood him. (“Then I’ll share my concerns.”)

Kim loses a family member. When she comes back to work, most people skirt her work area, not knowing what to say. Eric picks a time that he believes will be most appropriate and says, “Kim, may I ask how you are doing? I have no idea how you must be feeling but I’d really like to know if there’s anything I can do to help. Would you like to talk?” It takes directness to broach this type of conversation, but Eric does it in way that is fully blended with inquiry.

Jeffrey meets Nicole in a social setting and she expresses a strong desire to have him call on her and do a sales presentation to her group. Jeffrey leaves two e-mails and three voice mails for Nicole with zero response. Finally, he leaves this voice-mail message: “Hi, Nicole. I have no desire whatsoever to waste a minute of your time. I left our conversation at the dinner a few weeks ago with a clear understanding that you wanted me to pursue a meeting with you and your group. To be frank, I must admit that I have become frustrated with your lack of response to my e-mails and voice mails. I would love to understand if your world has just become too crazy to do this or if something has changed for you that makes this meeting unnecessary. I’m completely fine with either a yes or a no – I just don’t want to waste either of our time. Let’s take five minutes on the phone to determine whether this relationship should move forward or not. You can reach me at (123) 456-7890.”

In a meeting that feels like a waste of everyone’s time, Juan does a process check and says, “I have to be honest. This is not working for me. Is it just me, or are we off track right now? Does anyone else here feel we’re getting stuck?” Once again, a blend of inquiry and directness.

What Are We Really Saying Here?

• You can distinguish yourself from two-thirds of the culture by pulling first rather than pushing first when you have a point to get across.

• The most critical preparatory step in getting people to understand you is creating capacity in them through Pull Conversations.

• These conversations are not just about listening more. Although deep and thorough listening is definitely a component of them, Pull Conversations are more than that. They are a very direct, active type of inquiry that slices through assumptions and perceptions because it has to get to reality.

Want to Make This Happen?

• Look at yourself through the eyes of your co-workers and your family and plot yourself on the Pull Matrix. What is your growth edge?

• Do you need to develop your inquiry skills to balance out your directness? (See chapter 4.)

• Do you need to be more direct to balance out your ability to inquire? (See chapter 5.)

Juice at Home

Cody’s Lawn

I once trained members of a large manufacturing company in the southern United States in how to reach their goals by understanding one another. Their goals had for some time eluded them, as departments bickered with each other, wasting time and creating roadblocks.

After I had worked with the company for about two months, Rick, one of the machinists, told me a story of how the training had saved him from blowing it with his son, Cody.

Like many of the other machinists, Rick had been skeptical about this dialogue stuff. He was a nuts-and-bolts, give-me-results-now kind of guy. He had neither the time nor the stomach for sitting around and yakking.

But the Pull Conversation concept stuck with him anyway. It followed him home.

One weekend, Rick’s eight-year-old son Cody cut the lawn by himself for the first time. It was a hot day. Through the window Rick could see Cody pushing hard, sweat trickling off his chin, the dust and grass flying around him.

Forty minutes later, Cody burst through the door, stopped abruptly as he remembered to take his grassy shoes off, then ran down the hallway.

“Dad!” he called, “Dad! Come and see. I finished it. Come and see the lawn!”

Rick grinned at his son’s glistening, grimy face as they headed outside.

But once they were in the yard, Rick was shocked by what he saw. All across the lawn, straggly uncut grass marked Cody’s wayward path. The lawn was going to have to be mowed again. Rick was annoyed. Didn’t Cody know better than this?

Just before Rick laid into his son for doing such a shoddy job, a small memory pulled at him. It was a story that I had told about stepping into my son’s world to pull out his reality, seeing and feeling a situation the way he saw and felt it.

Rick’s instinct was to push a good piece of his mind on Cody, but to his credit, he turned toward his son and chose to first pull out his reality. He tried his best to step into his son’s world, looking at the lawn through an eight-year-old’s eyes. What he saw through those eyes was a great job. He also got in touch with Cody’s need to feel approved and valued.

“Good job, Cody,” he said, giving him a big hug.

There would be plenty of future opportunities to coach Cody on the niceties of mowing. Rick’s split-second insight had transformed the possibility of alienation into the actuality of celebration.