So You Want To Be A Change Agent?! ...

~ from: "The Far Side" by Gary Larson 

I am a change agent. 

I call myself a consultant, but, I am a change agent, an agent for change. I have always loved the Gary Larson cartoon that you can see above, because, in being a true change agent, there will be a colluded understanding, though maybe not conscious, that you are out to transform the status quo. And, no matter how much confirmation you hear from the people who have asked you for your transformational vision, be it corporation, executive, friend, family member, or even your own excited self who has just registered in the next transformational weekend huzzah!, there will be what I like to call "kickback".

So here's a tip, offered from my own getting-up-from-my-face-in-the-dirt experience: practice listening. Like, no talking. Complete authentic facination with the other's point of view, with no attention to your own thinking from the past. Let it all be said, from them to you. All of it. 

The only question you might ask is: "Anything else?" And then: More listening. Eventually, when the person has emptied their world-of-issue into the clearing space of your profound listening, the only thing that will be left is what is truly real: love, affinity, and brilliant insight into the solution.

Anything other than this profound listening brings a world of drama - including our own personal drama - into the mix. Bull's eyes appear all around, visible targets for escalated dominating monologues, designed to take someone down, to protect the righteousness of our own positions.

Well, true interested listening will act as a calming buffer against all that cacophony of verbal insecurity. No kidding. Try it. It's a practice. 

And if you still choose to be a change agent, the bull's eye will be there, a magnet for resistance to change. But if you listen deeply enough, thereby acknowledging the speaker for the validity of their point of view - which you can honestly see if you are willing to stand in their shoes looking at life from their vantage point - you will deflect and dissolve any arrows or barbs coming your way. And they will see something new that frees them up from a previously constrained way of perceiving life experience.

As a true change agent, the bull's eye will always be radiating from you. But deep listening is like, well, the cool tee shirt you wear that covers it from their view.

Onward!