Taking Ownership of Your Communication Inevitably, people are sometimes going to misunderstand your intentions, or react negatively to what you are trying to say to them. When this happens, you can either choose to blame them for their negative reaction, or else you can decide to take ownership of your communication. Effective communication is a skill that requires you to make a connection with the person you're communicating with. Effective communicators are very clear about the message they want to convey, and the response they want to get. If they get a negative reaction, they recognize their failure to effectively communicate, and they work at getting it right. The Effectiveness of Your Communication is Measured by the Response You Get This definition of effective communication puts the responsibility on you. If you accept this responsibility you get better and better with every interaction, because you are continually practicing effective communication. When you consider how many opportunities you have each day to practice communication, it is easy to see how much better you can become over time, by measuring the responses you get from people and trying new methods of getting through to them more effectively. Effective communicators are ready for difficult people. They don't find them to be nearly as "difficult" as others perceive them to be. If you want to learn to be an effective communicator, our coaching programs will put you on a fast-track to success. Don't Blame Others - Challenge Yourself Coaching helps professional athletes to challenge themselves to improve. Without a coach to guide you in your communication challenges, it's easy to blame other people when communication doesn't go your way. You can label the other person as "difficult," and tell yourself you are doing the best you can do. Professional athletes aren't satisfied with doing the best they can do - because their goal is to get better. As a professional, your communication skills are the key to your career growth. Nothing will hold you back like poor interpersonal communication skills. And nothing will enhance your career growth like excellent communication skills. Every difficult person you encounter presents you with an opportunity to challenge yourself. If you think you are doing the best you can and you're frustrated with the way people are responding to you, contact us to get started in a coaching program. Increasing Your Personal Power If you are a manager or supervisor, of course you have authority power. But using authority power on difficult people, without having personal power behind it, often just creates more resentment and hostility. Moreover, if you have sufficient personal power to draw from, you don't need to resort to authority at all: people listen to you and respond well to you by choice. Personal power is your ability to connect with and influence the behavior of people. This is not the same as manipulating or misleading people to do what you want them to do. Manipulation is trickery aimed at achieving personal agendas. But personal power is based on your ability to build true teamwork. These working definitions may seem hazy at first, but what lies behind them is a powerful tool to help our coaching clients attain success. We believe true success comes through teamwork, and we will coach you to help you build your personal power - your power to influence others, away from difficult behaviors and toward teamwork - in order to achieve more than you ever could on your own. Personal power is your ability to turn enemies into allies. Don't Allow Yourself to Be Victimized Difficult people will victimize you if you let them. Really, all it takes to be victimized is to frame the situation so that you see the other person as the oppressor and yourself as the victim. If that's the way you frame the encounter, you will follow through quite well in your role as victim, and the difficult person will play their part as well. Our coaching programs teach you how to frame things differently, and by reframing, how to achieve different outcomes. Reprogramming Your Brain for Power, Influence & Success The best way to improve your capacity to work effectively with difficult people is to begin reprogramming your brain. Drawing from his background in Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP), Roger Reece will provide you with tools for changing your belief structures, reframing your perceptions of people and situations, and managing your emotional states. Your brain and nervous system are continually being unconsciously programmed through your experiences. Much of the programming you received during childhood is still affecting you today. Think of it: you have grown tremendously in spite of some poor programming - how much more could you do if you learned to consciously reprogram your brain for personal power, influence and success? Contact us for a personal telephone consultation with Roger Reece.

Working with Difficult People: Coaching for Success

Effective strategies and behaviors for working with difficult people are often counterintuitive. If your strategies and behaviors aren't enabling you to work effectively with the difficult people in your work life and personal life, you might want to consider getting some coaching. Roger Reece is an effective coach who can help you achieve success in your interactions with the difficult people in your life.

If you would like to improve your interpersonal skills, build better relationships, become more confident in negotiating with difficult people, and enhance your conflict management skills, consider our coaching programs. We offer one-on-one coaching onsite at your location or by telephone or Skype. Roger Reece will work with you to develop effective strategies for working with all the difficult people in your life. In the process, you will develop skills that will dramatically enhance your career and your personal goals.

Don't let the Behavior of Other People (or Your Own Behavior) Sabotage Your Success

Difficult people can make your life miserable. They can make you not want to come to work. They can sabotage your success. But if you can reframe your perception, you will recognize that you play a major role in how the behaviors of difficult people affect you. You can learn to manage your states and not allow other people to put you in unresourceful frames of mind. Our coaching programs are designed to help you to manage your thoughts and emotions and to put you in control of your inner world.

Organizations are able to overcome internal and external barriers and threats by setting and following the right strategies. You, too, can overcome internal and external barriers and threats by developing and following a sound strategy. Without coaching, this can be a difficult process. A training class or self-help book can give you great general insights, but cannot deal specifically with the particulars of your own environment. Our coaching programs are focused not on general insights, but on the specifics you need right now to effectively deal with your internal and external barriers to success. Don't let the behavior of other people, or your own internal and external reactions to that behavior, sabotage your success. Contact us to get your coaching program started today.

Setting Goals & Outlining Strategies for Working with Difficult People

In your first coaching session, you will work with Roger Reece to develop a clear set of achievable goals for the coaching program. The goals will define the outcome you want to achieve in your skill development and in specific relationships. For each goal, you and Roger will outline a strategy together, which will include the approach to each goal as well as specific steps and milestones. These goals and strategies will be your roadmap through the coaching process.

A step in the strategy for working with a specific individual might include an initial conversation during which you will negotiate a behavior change agreement. Roger will help you in planning the meeting and will provide you with tools and techniques for confronting the individual without being confrontational. Your coaching prior to a difficult conversation will keep you focused on the right outcomes, and will prepare you for the various what-ifs that could potentially derail the conversation. This coaching preparation can make the difference between success and failure in the conversation's outcome. Coaching is highly-focused communication with a competent expert who can facilitate your directed, accelerated learning. But the learning isn't complete until you take action and actually use the techniques. As you experience the positive results of coaching, you will gain confidence in the process.

Tools & Techniques for Working with Anyone, Regardless of their Difficulty Factor

"I've tried everything with this person and nothing works." When you think you've tried everything, it's easy to rationalize a strategy of avoidance, resentful apathy, retaliation or victimhood. But with coaching, you will discover that you haven't tried everything, and that there are new, more effective strategies to be undertaken.

Roger Reece is not a difficult people coach. He's a success coach. He will work with you to help you define and visualize well-formed, successful outcomes, and together you will discover the right perspective and actions to achieve those outcomes. Along the way you will be exposed to tools and techniques that you have never used before. You will quickly discover for yourself that you really haven't tried everything.

The effectiveness of your communication is measured by the response you get. This important guideline is not only used to help you to focus on owning your external communication; it also relates to your internal communication: the stories you tell yourself, your beliefs and mental models and the way you frame situations. Your emotional state, your thought-patterns and your stress levels are all responses to your internal communication. Roger will work with you to help you to rewire your brain so that you can experience a level of internal congruence that will make you feel less agitated and more resourceful. When you are in a highly resourceful state and have the right tools and techniques, you can work with anyone - regardless of their difficulty factor.

Tools & Techniques for Building Your Competence & Confidence

Success coaching is about helping you to achieve success based on how you view success. Roger will work with you to define your vision of success, and will help you to take the right steps to get there. In the process of helping you in your interactions with the difficult people in your life, you will be building your competence in effectively handling the difficult situations that used to cause you intense frustration. As you observe the transformation in your ability to work with difficult people, your self-confidence will grow tremendously. The same tools and techniques that are interpersonal skill competence builders are also confidence builders. The goal of success coaching is not to develop a dependency on your coach, but rather to build confidence in your ability to achieve success.

Confronting without Being Confrontational: Don't Shoot Yourself in the Foot

Learning to effectively confront difficult behavior is an art - and most people are not artists. They blunder through conflict, operating from reactive thinking and unresourceful emotional states. As one client once told us, "I'm a doormat or a land mine - depending on how long you've been walking on me." Her pattern was to allow people to "walk on her" - to speak abusively to her and take advantage of her - and she would just take it. Although she seemed okay with the situation, on the inside she was extremely upset; and her thought patterns would take the form of dramatic stories that she would repeatedly ruminate over. The feeling of being victimized and the deep resentment she felt would build and build, until one day, something the difficult person said or did would become the straw that broke the camel's back, At that point, she would explode like a land mine - totally out of proportion to what had just happened at that moment. When asked about this behavioral pattern, she replied, "I've always been this way and I really want to change... but I can't."

Old, deeply-ingrained habit patterns are hard to change, it's true; but doing just that is what our coaching programs are all about. Roger Reece can work with you to identify the habit patterns and unconscious strategies that cause you to sabotage your success. He can provide you with the right tools for changing your thinking and your patterns, replacing them with new patterns that will drive you toward successful outcomes.

Problem behavior needs to be confronted; but many people are afraid to confront, because their experience has show them that when they get confrontational, they get bad results. But you can confront without being confrontational. Roger will help you to stop shooting yourself in the foot through reactive behavior that sabotages your success. Old habits are hard to break, but when you begin using tools that work, you will quickly adopt new habits that achieve the results you want.

Turning Enemies into Allies

You don't need enemies, so why make them? You can use all the help you can get. So why not turn your enemies into allies? Difficult people can quickly become your enemies when you view them as enemies in your mind. What if you could actually use the As-If Reframe to re-envision an "enemy" as an ally? What would happen if you were able to begin thinking about the difficult person as if she/he were your ally? How would your behavior change if, whenever that person exhibited difficult behavior, you acted as if there was a positive intention behind it?

Roger will teach you how to reframe your view of people and actions alike. You will learn the right ways to confront someone, with questions aimed at uncovering the positive intent behind bad behavior. In the process you will find that you are able to influence difficult people toward new, less difficult behaviors; and over time the behavior of those people will demonstrate that they have, indeed, become your allies.

Managing the Ecology of your Life

Ecology is the study of consequences. If we don't take care of the planet, we will all come to pay the price. Likewise, if you don't take care of your own personal environment, you will also pay the price. Along with your external ecology - the environment in which you live and work each day - It is helpful to also think about your internal ecology. Improving your internal ecology is all about becoming more congruent in your thinking and behavior. By recognizing your internal programs, self-defeating beliefs and inconsistent mental models, you can begin to change their negative impact on your internal ecology. And, since changes in your internal ecology naturally result in behavior changes, you will simultaneously begin changing your external ecology: the state of your relationships, your work life and your personal life.

Through coaching, you will learn to change your internal belief structures, as well as your emotional states and the way you frame the situations you find yourself in. You will learn to use new tools to experience success internally and externally. You will find yourself effectively managing the ecology of your life.

Individual & Small Group Coaching Programs

We offer one-on-one coaching programs for individuals, as well as small group coaching programs for leadership teams. Contact us for a free telephone consultation with Roger Reece to explore options, and to outline a program that will meet your needs. Coaching can bring you new insights, new tools and the objectivity you need to achieve success.

Onsite, Skype & Telephone Coaching

We build our coaching programs around your needs. We can offer you a full-day intensive session with Roger Reece onsite at your location, or an ongoing program with one-hour sessions onsite or via Skype or telephone.

An Introductory Coaching Package to Get You Started

If you would like to give coaching a try, we can offer you a 4-hour introductory package consisting of a DISC Behavioral Style assessment and four one-hour Skype or phone coaching sessions (generally scheduled about two weeks apart). Contact us for pricing on this special package. If you are serious about your personal success, get started with a coaching program today.