Looking Beyond the Mess

The head of sales for a division of a large financial institution told me the following story during lunch one day while working with the senior team. This executive and his wife had really been struggling with their daughter to the point that they were getting some family counseling. Upon coming home from one of the counseling sessions he was in a very reflective place and wanting to do better at connecting with his daughter. One of the many issues he had been dealing with for the past three years was to get his daughter to clean her room. From his perspective everything had been tried (i.e. punishments, rewards, yelling, talking, reasoning and anything else you could think of). While in this reflective state he walked into his daughter's room and he noticed something for the first time. In the past all he ever saw was a big mess. The executive entered the room thinking about what he had learned from the many POS interventions he had experienced and looked for what was right in his daughter's room. He noticed that the book case was kept in great shape with every book in alphabetical order. His daughter loved books and had clearly taken great care of every book she had ever received or bought. Later that day when the executive ran into his daughter he told her that he has focused way too much on what she does wrong and wanted to thank her for how well she had taken care of the many books they had given her or that she had bought for herself over the years. A week later he peeked into her room and noticed that it was a bit tidier than it had been previously. This executive thanked his daughter for tidying up her room. The next week the room that would never be cleaned was now perfectly clean.

It is important to note that this father had success because he was sincere about trying to connect with his daughter and to see what she was doing right. If he would have said the exact same things to his daughter but from a place of doing so just to get her to clean her room she probably would not have responded as she did.

Questions to Consider:

What can you do to change the way you feel about someone you are struggling with?

Why would feeling differently about someone allow you to say the same thing to them but get a more positive result?