Outwitted
They drew a circle that shut me out,
A heretic, a rebel, a thing to flout.
But love and I had the wit to win,
We drew a circle and took them in.
—EDWIN MARKHAM
Resistance occurs when another person’s communication packets are directed toward you and you are unable to accept those communication packets in your space. For example, the customer says, “I am no longer interested in this piece of crap you call a solution.” This is an emotionally charged packet of data directed toward you.
Based on your conditioning, you interpret what that packet of data, tone of voice, and body movement means. Therefore, you could say that the problem is not what happens; the problem is your interpretation of what happens.
It is that interpretation that doesn’t give space to the other person’s communication because it is a threat to the survival of what you consider to be the truth. Your truth is based upon the accumulation of all your experiences stored in your internal database from the first day of your life to the present time. The other person’s truth, which you are resisting, is the accumulation of data and experiences he or she has stored from birth to the present time.
Both of you are living in a conditioned, conceptualized reality that is disconnected from the real world. In your delusion, you believe your interpretation of the world is true, just as for thousands of years people believed that the earth was flat. You don’t live in the real world—you live in a fantasy world constructed by the mind-made self.
When an exterior event occurs in your field of now, both parties automatically label that event and give it meaning. Once you have established this meaning, then your behavior automatically correlates to that interpretation.
For example, when a communication packet of data arrives into your space from an outside source, you immediately compare it to what you know to be true. If it doesn’t agree, you resist it because it is a threat to your database of thoughts. For example, when Galileo stated that the earth revolved around the sun, that represented a threat to society’s database of thoughts, which said the sun revolved around the earth.
When resisting, you have no space to allow this piece of external data that you don’t agree with to exist in your field of awareness. You resist it because you experience the other person’s communication as a threat to your well-being. You are constantly on the alert to being right and avoiding being wrong. If your mind-made self is challenged, it will automatically react by defending itself, which often includes trying to diminish the sense of self of the person who attacked you. It is an enormous insult to the mind-made self to be seen as wrong.
In resistance, the customer has said something that has diminished your sense of self and you want to attack the other person because obviously he or she is wrong and you are right. However, by understanding the source of resistance, you will be able to begin to transcend the right/wrong game. The essence of this transformation is observing your mental and emotional reactions when someone makes you wrong.
There is nothing else to do. If you can just create a little space between the reaction you are having to the exterior event and the part of you that is observing that reaction, then the tension and resistance will melt away. In its place will be humor, love, and the increased ability to resolve whatever event is presented to you.
Love is giving something the space to be what it is and what it isn’t. By allowing another person’s communication to exist in your space, you are giving space or love to that person.
More importantly, you are not only giving the other person space, you are giving yourself room to accept your own mental and emotional reactions. The giving of space is an act of love and compassion.
Compassion can be defined as sympathetic understanding of another person’s pain. By allowing another person’s communication to exist, you are in the space of compassion.
Resistance is the exact opposite of compassion. Resistance is the absence of love. You have no space for that communication packet to exist in your world.
You will not be successful in managing resistance if you do not allow the customer’s packet of communication to exist in your world. You need to reach a point where anyone can say anything to you and it just rolls off of you like water rolls off a duck’s back. In addition to observing your ego/mind’s mental and emotional reactions, I recommend you explore some useful distinctions.
Why do you want to explore and do research on new distinctions? Because that can free up your ability to view your world in a new way. These new distinctions will dispel the fog from your vision and lead you to greater clarity and understanding of the event that occurs before you. The greater your clarity, the more skilled you will be in realizing your intention in the room and not reacting to events by taking things personally.
The reason you take things personally is that you consider yourself to be the sum total of the data stored in your database. If you no longer considered yourself to be your data, the only thing left is the vast space of emptiness. At first, emptiness might sound pretty lonely, but in fact it is where our true nature lies . . . the space of being . . . the place of universal consciousness, love, and compassion.
Eckhart Tolle expressed it very simply by saying “There are two things in this world . . . space and things in space.” The content of your database, which is who you consider yourself to be, is an example of things in space. The mind’s purpose in life is to ensure the survival of those things it considers itself to be. The I/me/ego survives by resisting anything it views as a threat. The I/me/ego needs things to resist or complain about because it reaffirms its identity. Without resistance, the I/me/ego would disappear, which threatens your identity.
The Wisdom of the Sands
The following wonderful Sufi story describes this transformation from the I/me/ego to the Space of Being.
A stream, from its source in faraway mountains passing through every kind and description of countryside, at last reached the sands of the desert. Just as it had crossed every other barrier, the stream tried to cross this one too. But it found that as it flowed into the sands, its waters simply disappeared. It was convinced, however, that its destiny was to cross this desert as well, and yet—there was no way. Now, a hidden voice, coming from the desert itself, whispered: The wind crosses the desert, and so can a stream. The stream objected that it was only dashing itself against the sands and being absorbed; that the wind could fly, and this was why it could cross the desert, but how can I? By hurtling in your own accustomed way, you cannot get across. You will either disappear or become a marsh; you must allow the wind to carry you over to your destination, replied the desert. But how can this happen? asked the stream. By allowing yourself to be absorbed into the wind, the desert replied. This idea was not acceptable to the stream, after all—it had never been absorbed before, it did not want to lose its individuality! And once having lost it, how was one to know if it could ever be regained? The desert said the wind performs this function. It takes up the water and carries it over the desert and then lets it fall again. Falling as rain, the water again becomes a river. But, how can I know that this is true? protested the stream. It is so! replied the whisper, and if you do not believe it, you cannot become more than a quagmire, and even that could take many, many years. In any case, it will certainly not be the same as being a stream! But, asked the stream, can I not just stop here and remain the same stream I am today? You cannot, in any way, remain the same, whispered the desert sands. Movement is your very nature. It will never cease until your true destination has been reached. When the stream deeply considered this, echoes of the truth began to arise in its mind. Yes, this is true. He understood that this was the only real and intelligent thing to do. And the stream raised its vapors into the welcoming arms of the wind, which gently and easily bore it upward and along, letting it fall softly as soon as it reached the roof of the distant mountains. It was now able to remember its prior dilemma in the desert and now realized the goal of its long journey, its true identity and the deathless nature of its true being. And this is why, it is said, that the way by which the stream of life crosses the desert of this world is written in the sands.
This chapter covers some major distinctions I would encourage you to research. It is better to do your own research by placing the distinctions in the viewing filter of your mind and see whether your experience of living on the planet is more joyful and satisfying. Here is a piece of wisdom given to me years ago: “Something believed is a lie but the same thing experienced is the truth.”
If, by using the distinctions, your experience is more joyful and satisfying, then the distinctions work. They are no longer just beliefs; they are now your personal experience. If your life is not more joyful and satisfying, discard that particular distinction. Eventually, you will end up with some basic distinctions, which you can use to interpret the events that occur in your life. The goal is to have a set of distinctions that allow you to experience joy and satisfaction in each moment of now. You will be able to maintain your balance and centeredness, regardless of what is being said or done to you. This includes any form of resistance from any upset customer or participant in the room.
One of the essential ways to manage resistance can be summed up with this expression: “Stop killing the alligators and just drain the swamp!” Here, the alligators represent all the forms of resistance. The swamp represents spaciousness and, rather than drain spaciousness, you want to increase spaciousness in the room. By increasing spaciousness, you will notice there are fewer alligators and if alligators do appear, they are smaller and more easily managed. Many of the distinctions below require space consciousness to manage the resistance. Creating space and giving someone space is the fundamental tool to manage resistance.
Here are more than 50 different distinctions to support you in managing resistance. They have assisted me on my journey and I hope they will assist you on yours.
1. Communication and physics share the concept that recreation causes disappearance. Two things cannot occupy the same space at the same time. When senders speak, they are encapsulating their thoughts with word symbols and sending those word symbols across the space to the receivers. Those word symbols could be regarded as “things.” Therefore, if you can re-create those “things” with your communication, it will diminish their intensity and energy.
As the intensity is reduced, the space moves from emotional, subjective, and illogical to a more calm, objective, and logical space. In that new space of calmness, a higher quality of resourcefulness is present to resolve the resistance.
2. In psychology, the basic technique for understanding is called active listening, which means repeating what was said to the person who said it so that he or she has the experience of being heard. In Stephen Covey’s The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, active listening is referred to as Habit #5: Seek First to Understand Rather Than to Be Understood. You can diminish resistance from other people by going into their world first via listening skills. If you do this, the people talking to you will have the experience of being heard and will give you information you can use to resolve the issue.
Opposite of a point of view is spaciousness and openness. Openness is not siding with any point of view. You are not siding with the bad and you are not siding with the good. Good and bad are relative. You become big, magnanimous and have compassion.
3. Don’t take it personally is one of the most powerful distinctions to resolve conflict and reduce resistance. Nothing anyone says hooks or plugs you in because it has nothing to do with you personally. In Actualizations, Stewart Emery writes: “Our preoccupation with ourselves, our preoccupation that views everything in terms of what it means to and about us—drives us to take everything personally, when in reality other people’s reactions to us have nothing personally to do with us and everything to do with where they themselves are coming from. The way they relate to us is the way they would relate to anyone who represented to them whatever they have decided we represent to them. Never take another person’s reaction (good or bad) personally because it comes out of his or her conditioned reality. It has nothing to do with us.”
4. Surrender your point of view. Surrendering your point of view in order to listen and establish rapport with another person’s reality is one of the most powerful techniques to manage resistance. The challenge is that the mind is concerned about survival and the survival of whatever it considers itself to be. Momentarily setting aside who you consider yourself to be in order to listen to another person’s communication requires an act of surrender, which is contrary to the design function of the mind. And yet, if you are not able to do this, you can’t accurately hear the other person because the other person’s communication is being interpreted through your database of thoughts.
In Actualizations, Stewart Emery described it very simply: “Communication (i.e., managing resistance) starts with the ability to listen, to listen without judgment. This is the art of disengagement and surrender.”
MANAGING RESISTANCE THROUGH
MOMENTARILY SURRENDERING
YOUR POINT OF VIEW
In resistance each person thinks their point of view is right and the other person’s point of view is wrong. By re-creating the other person’s point of view they will have the experience of being heard. One of the greatest gifts you can give another person is to re-create their communication.
5. Listening for possibility rather than listening to assess, judge, and evaluate is probably one of the most important distinctions you can use to manage resistance. In my experience, it seems like almost everyone listens to judge every event that occurs in his or her field of now. Whatever is said is automatically compared to the listener’s database of thoughts to see if it is right or wrong. The labeling of right or wrong is judging. The joke here is that you are comparing what is said to your database of thoughts, but in the totality of all knowledge in the universe, what you know is nothing. And yet, you live your life and interact with other human beings as if you know something. If you want to have a breakthrough into the vast space of universal knowledge, then you will have to shift to “possibility listening.” When you listen for possibility, you will hear possibility. You want to get to the point in your listening skills that you don’t contaminate your listening by filtering it through your database of knowledge because your database of knowledge is limited by what you know.
For example, if you were listening for possibility centuries ago when Copernicus said that the earth revolves around the sun, you wouldn’t say “That is ridiculous”; instead you would say “I never looked at it that way before. Why do you think the earth goes around the sun?” You are now listening for possibility and are willing to allow the possibility that the earth goes around the sun to exist in your reality.
A clear characteristic of a possibility listener versus a person who listens to judge is that a possibility listener ends sentences with question marks and a person who listens to judge ends sentences with periods. In the first type, the person is coming into the conversation from not knowing; in the second type, the person is coming into the conversation from knowing.
If you look at it logically, listening to assess condemns you to serve a life sentence in the prison of your mind. If you want to break through to new levels of awareness and lead a more satisfying life, begin to practice the art of listening for possibility.
6. Come from not knowing in your listening. This is another way of saying that you want to be a possibility listener. The rise and fall of corporations has a lot to do with how decision-makers listen. For example, years ago, two scientists presented a Swiss watch company with an idea for a digital watch. The decision-makers at the Swiss company said the idea was ridiculous because that was not how watches were made. The scientists went to Japan and met with decision-makers at Casio, who were willing to give their idea a try and invested in the digital concept. It proved to be a tremendous success and the Swiss market share for watches plummeted. The joke was that the two scientists worked for the Swiss watch company.
Observe how you listen to the events that occur around you and you will notice that, in almost every case, you have an opinion that is solely based on your knowing. One of my corporate clients has employees wear name badges that also list the corporate values, one of which is No Technology Religion. This is brilliant because it points to the importance of being open to new possibilities.
7. Defer to the manager. This technique is used during a presentation when someone wants to take the conversation in a different direction. You don’t have to resist; simply turn to the manager and say, “I can address this issue but then I will not be able to cover all the topics in the presentation. Do you want me to spend time answering his question or do you want me to see him offline?” Invariably, the manager will say, “Let’s not deal with this now. Talk to him later.”
8. Defer to the group. This is the same as deferring to the manager, except you ask the group if they want this issue addressed now or handled offline. You don’t have to resist because you are allowing the group to make the decision. The likely result of this technique is that the group will say, “See him offline.”
9. Re-create using mass in front of the person who is challenging you. Lack of mass is one of the barriers that prevents the person from understanding. Therefore, in a situation where resistance is occurring, simply walk over to the person and re-create his or her communication using words (active listening) and physical objects (i.e., mass). The use of physical objects is extremely important in the re-creation process. Almost all IT professionals use only two-dimensional tools like PowerPoint slides, whiteboards, or flip charts to embody the concept they are presenting to the audience. By using physical objects, which I call mass, you are embodying the concept using three dimensions rather than two. The third dimension adds depth to the audience’s understanding of the concept. This doesn’t mean you should eliminate the use of two-dimensional tools. It does mean that, in addition to your PowerPoint slides, flip charts, and whiteboards, you can add mass, which will be a major differentiator from all the other IT presenters.
Eckhart Tolle states one of the greatest gifts you can give another human being is to re-create their communication. Therefore, re-creation techniques using mass and words communicate that you are an excellent listener and that you care that the audience understands what you are intending to communicate because you are taking the time to embody the concept using mass.
10. Build affinity through communication, rapport, and relationships. The greater the relationship you have with the audience, the easier it will be to manage any resistance that comes up in the space. Therefore, you should always be looking for opportunities to build rapport. There are many rapport-building techniques. Here’s a simple formula I learned years ago: Increase communication and it will increase rapport. Just getting the person to communicate pulls a brick out and creates an opening in his or her psychological firewall. The more bricks you pull out via communication, the greater will be the rapport and affinity.
11. Establish common ground. This is closely connected to building relationships and rapport. You want people to feel open and comfortable with you. The more comfortable they feel, the easier it will be to manage resistance. People will feel connected and comfortable if you share things you have in common. For example, let’s say you shake hands, introduce yourself, and find out the person is from Jordan. You immediately go to your internal database and pull up your folder on Jordan. Now, you can mention Jordan-related things such as Amman, Petra, the Dead Sea, etc. The person will feel comfortable with you because you share similar experiences. It lowers the psychological defenses and increases rapport.
12. Being responsible for your interpretation of the event. The major cornerstone of managing resistance is to acknowledge, whether at the moment realized or not, that you are responsible for the way you interpret the events that show up in your moments of now. In The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey lists this as the #1 Habit. Responsibility is not fault, praise, blame, shame, or guilt. All these include judgments of good and bad, right and wrong, better or worse. They are not responsibility because they don’t acknowledge the simple fact that you are responsible for the way you interpret your reality.
Responsibility is like driving a car—either you have your hands on the steering wheel or you don’t. Your chances of controlling your experience of life increase dramatically if you take responsibility and keep your hands on the steering wheel of your life.
13. Be in a constant state of yes to this moment of now. Many spiritual teachers talk about the importance of saying yes to this moment of now. Eckhart Tolle, in The Power of Now, explains it by saying the form this moment of now takes is the best it is going to be. It is not going to get any better than it is right now. Rather than resist this moment, just say yes to its possibilities. Life only occurs in this moment of now; therefore, when you say yes, you are saying yes to life and when you say yes to life, life will say yes to you.
14. Establish a very clear purpose at the beginning of the conversation. Purpose is the context of the conversation. One of the primary functions of context is to hold content. For example, a glass (the context) holds the water (the content). The introduction is the time to declare the purpose of the conversation. You want everyone in the room to know the purpose of the conversation. Once the audience is clear on purpose, it will be easier to determine what is on purpose and what is off purpose. For example, let’s say the purpose of the conversation is yellow. If yellow arises in the conversation, then it is on purpose. If pink, green, or blue arise, you immediately know that it is off purpose. Therefore, clarity of purpose will help manage resistance and you will be able to table or deflect it.
15. Ask “What happened?” There is always a story and sometimes there will be an emotional component. Il a person is expressing emotion, something from the past has probably triggered that response. In order to defuse the emotion, simply reply with something such as “Did something happen in the past regarding (whatever the subject is)?” Once you have a response to that question, reply by saying, “Let me see if I understand what you’re saying.” (Repeat back what the person said). If the emotional response is caused by some painful experience in the past, your job is to allow the person to discharge this pain through communication. This discharging will reduce the resistance.
16. Share yourself as openly as possible—it will diminish the other person’s defenses. If the audience’s firewalls are in place to protect themselves from you, then opening yourself up by sharing stories, experiences, and feelings will make you vulnerable. Once you are perceived as vulnerable, the mind (which established the firewall in the first place) can no longer rationally justify keeping it in place because you are now perceived as harmless. This basic technique will reduce firewalls and resistance in the space of the room.
17. Each person’s point of view is 100 percent accurate; therefore, your reality is no better than anyone else’s. This is a major distinction in managing resistance because if you operate from the point of view that your reality is right and the other person’s reality is wrong, you will not be very successful in managing resistance. It will just cause the other person to dig in his or her heels defensively. A circle has 360 degrees. Each degree represents a point of view. There is no the point of view; all there is is a point of view. However, in resistance, you believe that there is a correct point of view, which happens to be your point of view. There is an old story about three blind men who touched an elephant. Each person was asked, “What is an elephant?” The first blind man, who touched the ear, said, “An elephant is thin, spread out, and flexible.” The second blind man, who touched the tail, said, “No, an elephant is narrow, long, and snake-like.” The final blind man, who touched the leg, said, “No, you are both wrong. An elephant is thick, heavy, and is like a tree.” Each person was 100 percent accurate from his point of view. Therefore, when someone in the audience says, “You and your ridiculous solution suck!” from their point of view, they are 100 percent accurate.
18. Practice the “agreement frame.” Tony Robbins, as part of his work in Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP), says there are no resistant people, only inflexible communicators. There are always ways of communicating that keep people involved and open. The agreement frame, for example, is a tool that allows you to communicate exactly how you feel without compromising your integrity and without disagreeing with the other person. It consists of three phrases you can use in any communication:
“I appreciate and . . .”
“I respect and . . .”
“I agree and . . .”
In each case, you are accomplishing three things:
• You are not negating the other person’s point of view by using but or however.
• You are creating the frame of agreement that bonds the two of you together.
• You are creating an opening through that person’s resistance that allows you to look at alternative possibilities.
19. Turn generalities into specifics. In this form of resistance, the person arguing with you is trying to persuade through the use of a generality. A generality is a statement such as “All the other customers get 24/7 tech support.” Or, “Every time I call, I never get my questions answered.” The words all, every time, and never are indicators of generalities. By using a generality, the person is trying to influence the outcome by adding the weight of established fact to his or her position.
In order not to be manipulated, simply repeat back to the person the generality he or she used. For example, in this case, you would say, “All the other customers?” “Every time you call?” “You have never received an e-mail?” The person will then pull back from the original assertion and say, “Well, not all the customers” or “Well, not every time.” You respond, “Who specifically?” or “When specifically?” You have now moved from a generality to a specific, which takes the wind out of the person’s sails.
20. Communicate with urgency. In a crisis situation, immediate action will be music to the customer’s ears. Once you understand the issue, state clearly what steps you are going to take to resolve the problem. You want to give customers the impression that you will move heaven and earth to solve their problems.
21. “Why is that important to you?” Let’s say that someone in the audience brings up a weakness in your solution in an attempt to make you look bad. He brought it up because a friend of his, who is your competitor, learned he would be attending your presentation, and said, “When he brings up this feature, ask this question and you will see him squirm.” Your response should be something like this: “Let me see if I understand, George, what you are asking” (in other words, re-create the question). George says, “Yes! That’s it.” In response, you should say, “Okay, do you mind if I ask you something first?” George says, “No, I don’t mind.” “George, why is this important to you?” George will say one of two things: (1) “Well, I don’t know” or (2) give you some reason why it is important. If he says, “Well, I don’t know,” then you are off the hook. However, if he is able to give you a reason, I hope you have done your homework and know the strengths and weaknesses of your solution and are able to respond. However, George probably doesn’t have a reason other than that the competitor told him to ask the question.
22. If your solution has a weakness and you think the issue will probably come up in the presentation, one option is to address it up front before the customer brings it up. You have control over the things you can communicate; the things you cannot communicate have control over you. By choosing to address an issue, it takes away the possibility of a surprise attack from the audience. If you have prepared your thoughts, you will be able to sail smoothly through this issue.
23. Do your homework and have responses prepared for competitive weaknesses. If you know against whom you will be competing, understand the strengths and weaknesses of their solutions so if they come up in the presentation you are able to respond easily to the customer’s questions.
24. Defer to corporate resources and say you will get back to the customer. There is no way you can possibly know everything about the concepts you are presenting. Therefore, it is appropriate to tell the customer that you have some ideas and will check back with corporate to make sure you answer this very important question thoroughly. A side sales benefit of this tactic is that it tells the customer that when you do business with us, we have tremendous resources to support you now and in the future.
25. That issue will be covered later on in the presentation. You want to create the impression that you are the leader and in control of the presentation. When someone asks a question or challenges something that will be addressed later, you do not need to deviate from your program to respond. Simply thank the person for the question and say that this subject will be discussed later on in the presentation. Also, if you are unsure of the answer, it will give you time to prepare a response.
26. Parking lot. When someone asks a question, acknowledge the challenge by writing it on the whiteboard or flip chart. This captures the question in the physical world, which is a form of re-creating the person’s communication, and indicates it will be covered later on. People like to see their communication re-created. It builds rapport by making them feel important.
27. End your first response with a question mark rather than a period. When someone attacks, it can throw you off your game. I often describe this using the analogy of a boat capsizing. You need a few extra seconds to regroup and get the boat right side up. No matter what someone says to you, only respond with a question. This tactic has several benefits. First, it means asking for clarification, which provides information. The more knowledge you have, the better you will be able to figure out the appropriate response. Second, it creates a space in which you are able to think of a response. And third, by not ending your statement with a period, you avoid asserting your point of view is correct, which usually annoys the other person and just creates further resistance.
28. Relax your body and take a deep breath. Keeping your physical body relaxed throughout the entire presentation is extremely important. In You Are the Message, Roger Ailes cites being relaxed in front of the audience as one of the key characteristics of a successful speaker. Taking a deep breath allows you to regain your balance and think about an appropriate way to respond to the resistance.
29. Step forward or stand your ground. Do not back away. In front of the room, you are the leader of the conversation. You are the alpha dog. You own the room. The audience wants you to be in charge. They don’t want a beta dog delivering the presentation. They prefer a high-quality show. If resistance arises, stand still or move toward the person as you re-create his or her communication. This will demonstrate that you are not afraid. If you back away, the person will sense that you are afraid and will increase the attack. Here’s another alpha dog technique to communicate that you own the room: If you decide to re-create the person’s resistance using mass, i.e., physical objects, then use the mass in front of the person who is attacking.
30. Pause and take a drink of water. This is another technique that will create space in the conversation in which you can relax and think of a way to respond appropriately to the attack.
31. Ask someone else in the group to answer. Remember that the purpose of the conversation is to expand the audience’s understanding of the subject. Your job is to contribute and be of service to the audience. Usually, you will have the answer to the question, but sometimes you may not. In this situation, relay the question to the audience. Often, someone in the group will come up with a great response. This gives people in the audience a chance to contribute and for you to learn new information. Given that you don’t want to give the impression you don’t know the answer, you can say something such as, “Okay, so you want to know about the benefits of Next Generation Networks (NGN) in your organization. Great, I have some ideas, but first let’s give some of the people in the audience an opportunity to respond.”
32. Encourage potential resistors to participate in the conversation. This technique is intended to build rapport. The attack usually will not come from the person with whom you have rapport. It will come from the person with whom you don’t have a relationship. Therefore, you want to increase the flow of communication from people who might be potential resistors. Every time they participate, they put a little more of themselves into the conversation. This will switch the conversation from a mine to an ours conversation. As it becomes ours, it reduces the chances that they will attack the conversation because if they do, they would be attacking themselves.
33. When talking back, hold eye contact with the person resisting. This is an alpha dog technique. Holding eye contact indicates that you are not afraid. Breaking eye contact will make the attacker feel more dominant and confident.
34. When you are attacked, answer the question the best that you can. However, don’t go back to the person and say something like, “Does that answer your question?” Just turn to someone else and continue the conversation. Why? Because by going back you’re just giving them another opportunity to take a shot at you.
35. You can’t put your attention on something and resist it at the same time. This obvious truth comes from Eckhart Tolle’s work The Power of Now. When you are attacked, your ability to resolve it will come out of your skill to re-create it. In order to re-create something, you have to allow it to be. If you resist it, then you are not allowing it to be.
36. What you resist tends to persist. This is a major life distinction that exists as a universal truth. The opposite of resistance is surrender, and when you surrender, the thing that you resisted disappears. The very act of resisting holds the thing you are resisting in place. Imagine having two people, each with one arm outstretched. Put a tennis ball between their palms. One side of the tennis ball is painted blue and the other side is painted orange. One person pushes on the tennis ball and says it is blue and the other person pushes back and says it is orange. The tennis ball will stay in place. The blue/orange issue will persist. However, if you decide not to resist, you remove your palm and the ball/issue disappears.
37. When you don’t mind being unhappy, then unhappiness cannot last much longer. This is another version of what you resist tends to persist. When you are in a situation where you experience unhappiness, you believe there is something better somewhere in the future, such as more money, better health, larger muscles, thicker hair, longer vacation, sounder relationships, additional education, peace in the world, etc. Because these things are not present in this moment of now, you are unhappy and unsatisfied. In other words, you are resisting the form this moment is taking, which keeps that form in place. However, when you don’t mind the form this moment of now takes, you are beginning to operate your life from the point of view that this moment is the best it is going to get. If it is the best it is going to get, then you begin to be happy. You no longer resist this moment. You begin to say yes and give space to this moment. You now have established a broadband connection to life and the abundance of life’s potential becomes available to you.
38. Eliminate the words but and however from your vocabulary. Replace these words with and. This is part of the agreement frame discussed earlier. Words such as but and however accompany resistance. One person will say something like, “I understand what you are saying but . . .” The word but reduces rapport between people because you are saying that your point of view is better than the other person’s. This just fans the flames of resistance because it causes the other person to defend his or her point of view.
39. Understand the three characteristics of an upset. An upset always contains these three elements: thwarted intention, unfulfilled expectation, and undelivered communication. In your presentations, you are always attempting to create an open space where resistance can be managed effectively. When you are upset, you have an intention that is being thwarted, an expectation that is not being fulfilled, and a communication that is not being delivered. Just by noticing these three elements, the hold the upset has over you is diminished.
40. Side conversations. In this situation, two people are talking and creating a distraction. There are several things you can do. While talking to another person, mention the name of the person who is having a side conversation. This will attract his or her attention. Call on one of the people to see if he or she has a question. Call the person by name, restate the last opinion expressed, and ask for another opinion. Participation is the best cure. Get people involved in side conversations involved in yours. Move your body closer to them. If they have no commitment to your conversation, then ask them to leave in an appropriate manner.
41. Talk to the participant offline. In this private conversation, you are creating an opening for the person to communicate. The person may have issues with you or what you are talking about or may have concerns that have nothing to do with the presentation. In either case, you are building the rapport and relationship with the participant.
42. Apologize or say you are sorry; in other words, get off it. One technique to dismantle another person’s resistance is to apologize (even if it is not true) for the wrongness of your position. The apology is perceived as abandoning your position; therefore, the other person has nothing to resist and begins to calm down and become less emotional. As the person begins to calm down, you can pursue a more rational course of action to resolve the conflict.
In human interaction, you could choose to believe either that people are loving beings or evil at their core. If you chose to believe that people are loving, then whatever their outward expression is must be a bound-up expression of an absolute love for you. If you can master this distinction, you will then be able to generate compassion, which is sympathetic understanding of another person’s pain. When you can generate compassion, you have the ability to recreate the other person’s point of view. The customer, at some level, must be in pain if it means expressing him- or herself in an emotionally dysfunctional manner. However, most presenters are unable to generate compassion because they take an attack personally. And, when you have taken an attack personally, the automatic mind-generated response is to defend your position, which is the exact opposite of compassion.
43. Please send me an e-mail and I will get back to you. Another tactic for managing resistance is to defer it to a later date. You want to address the customer’s issue and there just isn’t enough time to do it now.
44. “Oh, hi . . . What is your name?” Say you are doing a presentation and someone you don’t know throws some resistance at you. Walk toward the person and say, “Oh, hi. Excuse me, what is your name?” After the person replies, say, “Thank you . . . John. If I understand your question . . .” Then recreate that person’s communication using words and mass if possible. This tactic accomplishes two things: (1) you aren’t responding to the question immediately but rather getting on a first-name basis with the person, which builds rapport, and (2) you have asserted your dominance by getting John to answer your question first.
45. State the ground rules for participation during the introduction. For example, in a large public seminar, ask the audience to raise their hands if they have questions. Therefore, if someone is talking without raising a hand, you can ask, “Do you have a question?” This should get the person to stop causing a distraction. If it gets to the point where it interrupts the conversation, ask the person to leave. You are in charge of maintaining the integrity of the space. In an extreme situation, during a public seminar, I have seen a presenter call security and have the person escorted out of the room. In that situation, it was the appropriate course of action. Ground rules also include restrictions on the use of laptops and mobile phones.
46. When you first walk into the room, introduce yourself and shake hands with as many people as possible. You especially want to communicate with the people you do not know. The resistance normally will come from the people who don’t yet know you. Learn the first names of the people in the room. You can do this by having them wear nametags, putting their names on tent cards, using their names from time to time during presentation, or gathering their business cards and create a seating chart.
47. You have noticed that an influential decision-maker is always deciding against your company’s solutions and is a roadblock to your success. One option is to give that person’s name to a headhunter who may hire him out of the company. Ideally, that person’s replacement would be more favorable to your solutions.
48. Your role in front of the room is to be the leader of the conversation. In a small group, you can shake hands with everybody. It is all right to ask the audience to introduce themselves to the group, giving their name, position, and knowledge of the subject matter. In a larger group, you can have participants shake hands and introduce themselves to the people around them. Several things are happening in these scenarios: (a) you are building rapport by increasing communication in the space, so the space gets lighter, (b) you are learning where the subject expertise lies in the room, and (c) you are subtly establishing your alpha dog dominance by directing them to do something. In a manner of speaking, they are performing for you.
49. The more physical contact that takes place in the room, the more comfortable people will feel. The more comfortable people feel, the more they will relax and lower their firewalls. Therefore, you want to be looking for every opportunity to have physical contact take place. Examples of physical contact include handshakes, kisses on the cheek, hugs, pats on the shoulder, slaps on the back, etc.
50. In a larger venue, if you know of a participant who may cause a problem, make sure you introduce yourself beforehand, build rapport, and ask one of your team to sit next to that person.
51. Distinguish between a statement and a question. Often, a person may pretend to ask a question but is, in fact, making a statement. The presenter can just simply say, “Okay (then re-create the statement). Do you have a question?” It then becomes obvious to everyone that the person is just trying to assert an opinion and the presenter doesn’t need to react.
52. The customer may say, “It’s too expensive” or “It is too much” or “Your price is too high.” If there is emotion connected to this objection, a couple of factors may be in play: Either you have not done a good job of creating rapport and space in the room or you have not done a good job of distinguishing the value of your product or service in the eyes of the customer. Here are some thoughts that may be useful. The very fact that the customer is objecting shows interest in your solution. Also, this customer may have attended a sales negotiation class and learned that if he gets angry and says the price is too high, the account manager will automatically knock off 10 percent. In this instance, the counter-negotiation tactic is to hold eye contact and say nothing. Although the customer is expecting a reaction, you don’t react. There is now a space of silence. The silence will be uncomfortable and you will notice that when the customer speaks again, he or she will often will back off from the demand for a lower price. It may turn out that the price is not the highest priority. Often, the reputation of the company, the quality and design of the product, as well as the follow-up service and support, are more important.
You can respond by saying, “Compared to what?” I met a senior sales VP for a heavy-duty Swedish truck manufacturing corporation whose trucks cost more than their competitors’. He is often faced with the “Your price is too high” objection. His response focuses on cost of ownership: “Yes, the initial cost is greater than our competition’s, but our trucks last five years longer. Therefore, when you spread the cost of ownership over ten years rather than five, our trucks actually cost less.”
Finally, you always need to position your solution in terms of value to the customer by putting yourself into the customer’s shoes and answering the question, “What’s in it for me?” How does your solution differentiate you from the other vendors?
53. Here is a Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) technique you can use when someone says “You can’t possibly do that” or “You shouldn’t even think about that.” Respond with a statement like this: “What would happen if you did?” or “What prevents you from doing it?” These questions will cause the person to be more flexible and perhaps modify his or her position.
54. Aikido is a martial art that blends with rather than resists the energy of the opponent. You do not take a fixed position. You are constantly moving and using the energy of your opponent to defeat him or her. The opposite of aikido would be boxing, where you try to knock your opponent down with physical force. The essence of managing resistance is to be like an aikido master. Surrender your position. Listen to the other person’s communication. Re-create it and make it disappear.
55. You do not want to take any action that would offend the audience. As you become more conscious in the space, your ability to be appropriate increases and you make fewer mistakes. In your interaction with the space of the room, you don’t want to do anything that would reactivate or “plug in” people in the audience because they will raise their firewalls and thus reduce rapport.
In conclusion, when you practice these techniques, you will begin to notice that the amount of resistance in your presentations is reduced and you have greater ability to handle resistance when it does occur.