During a recent trip to Glasgow I had the pleasure of meeting with Dr David Fraser, author of Relationship Mastery:
A Business Professional’s Guide. David is a genuine force for good and his book is a really useful guide to going about improving your relationships - both personal and professional. In this interview David shares some of his thoughts on this fascinating subject.
1. As someone with a
background in engineering and management, how did you get involved in
relationship work?
Well, I learned eventually that being a
good engineer, manager or even leader wasn’t enough: it was how well I dealt
with other people in general that determined whether I was successful or not. It
was my ability (or inability) to handle all the complex relationships involved
that determined the outcome.
2. So what did you see
as the problem?
I felt I had never really received an
education in this. Life most professional people, my training had emphasised
first the technical and later the managerial skills—loosely-speaking, all the
“left-brain” stuff. I felt there was a crying need for a methodical “how to” approach
to the “right-brain,” subjective, emotional side.
3. How did you set
about solving the problem that you saw?
I was fortunate to meet a great teacher of
practical psychology, NLP, mindfulness and other aspects of what I would refer
to as ancient wisdom. Not only did that help me with the issues I had at the
time, I also thought this was much of the answer I was looking for. I gradually
gathered from what I learned over about a four-year period in what I call a
formula.
4. So what is the
formula for relating well to other people?
You can see this as both a family of skill
areas and a series steps in a learning journey. It begins with paying proper
attention to other people—bluntly, getting out of our own heads—then upgrading
our attitude and developing our self-control. Then we have several aspects of
understanding what makes people different and how to tune in to that. Working
with what’s important to people comes next. After that, there’s understanding
what people say at a deeper level, then what’s important to us and how we
balance all that. And finally—the thing that rounds it all off—how we handle
our human interconnectedness. That in the end is the most powerful thing.
That’s the formula in outline. Every element merits learning and practice in
itself.
5. What makes the most
difference at first, do you think?
Well, the first step in the formula is
first for a reason. The thing that makes the most difference most of the time
is being conscious of where our attention is—on ourselves or the other person.
That sounds elementary and yet doing a great job of putting the other person
first takes great skill and discipline, especially when the situation is
difficult. And that’s when it matters most, of course.
6. What kind of effect
can this systematic approach have?
It changes dealing with other people and
the emotional side of that from being a mysterious, nebulous problem to an area
of life that we can understand, enjoy and excel at.
7. How can we learn
these skills for ourselves?
The first step is just to switch on to the
subject. Much useful wisdom is hidden in plain sight. I’ve gather what I’ve
found into my book Relationship Mastery:
A Business Professional’s Guide, which is available anywhere books are
sold. I run workshops and things like that too, of course. More information at http://www.drdavidfraser.com.
No comments:
Post a Comment