Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Eureka it's working now !

Welcome to the Paeon blog. We at Paeon are here to articulate our experiences in the world of Coaching and focus on the idea of Greatness as we say on our Home Page www.paeonpartners.com.

Please be aware that it may appear that I think I know everything. If you see that it is because you are paying attention. That doesn't make it true. We (David and I) will be putting out our experiences and ideas here and hope you will contribute to the conversation.

For now I'd like to start out by talking about power. While I am most specifically interested in Personal Power, it is important for me to see how many situations are power based. While war is the most obvious, it is just the biggest, most obvious example. I'll say more about that later, but today I want to mention what I have been talking to my clients about lately with regard to their Personal Power.

As a human being I have power. It is not a choice, it is merely a fact. And there are three things I can do with this power. I can give it away so that someone else has it. This takes me out of my life, except to be a Victim. I capitalize that because it is an archetypical Victim. I am not making the decisions in my life, someone else is.

Alternatively I may use my power against someone else. I am not referring to self protection here, I am talking about using my power to intentionally hurt someone else. And finally I may use my power for my own benefit.

It is important to recognize that when I use my power to benefit myself, it serves me. And it also serves the people closest to me: my loved ones, friends, co-workers, because these are the people who benefit most from my being powerful. The reasons we are close is because we carry common cause, we are interested in the same things, want the same kinds of outcomes. The people closest want me to make my decisions. And I want the people closest to me to make their own decisions. That way we are living in a world of our making, not a world of someone else's making.

This may sound like everyone gets their own way. Not likely. What it really means is that I make my decisions first without knowing what someone else's decision might be. When they hear of my decision, they get to ask if I have considered a concern of theirs. At that point the negotiation begins to take place. If we both tell out truth, and if we both listen with curiosity and interest, we wind up with the way we want.

One of the powers of relationships is that they create an opportunity to see the world as a bigger place than we can see alone. They also create the possibility to get beyond the space of our own imaginations.

Next time, we'll talk about the various levels of listening in an effort to make our negotiating more powerful and rewarding.

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