Being Yes to Everyone's No

A quote from my favourite blogger, fractional billionaire Richard Koch (BRITISH):

"I now think it is better to glorify the positive history of a nation, a society, or an individual. It is better to unite in pride – even in selective and self-serving pride – than to divide in disdain. It is better to appeal to the highest common factor than to spotlight the lowest common denominator. It is better to imagine a glorious future, grounded in a mythical and benign past, than to take a cynical and realistic view of the present. It is better to engage generous emotion than to split intellectual hairs." (You can read the whole post here.)

This is inspirational to me.

Partly because I have NOT done that.

Sometimes Chancer gets a crick in his neck and flies off about this or that - carelessly offending a whole swathe of otherwise supportive teachers.

If that's something you've felt on occasion?

Well, guilty as charged.

And I don't promise to change - I don't want to. I enjoy ranting too much…

HOWEVER

Being YES about things - rather than NO about things - is central to the teaching technology I advocate these days. People want to know how they are right; in Japan they say:

"The customer is always right; even when they are wrong."

No-one WANTS to be told how they are wrong/broken/mistaken etc. I mean, do you?

How deftly could you reframe a student's (wrong) right into a (right) right?

Cathy Madden - a delightful wordsmith-invention artist - coined the phrase "Yes Plan" to express this artful wordwork. It replaces Alexander's "no plan". Cathy and I are both grateful students of FM's first official training school graduate: Marjorie Barstow.

Marj originated the "yes plan concept" in teaching Alexander's discovery.

Here's how she put it:

"If I ask my head to go forward and up…"

(YOUR YES PLAN)

"…haven't I already inhibited it going back and down?"

(THE NO IS EMBEDDED IN THE YES)

Alexander seemed to make it two steps, Marj segued it into one.

Marj had a wonderful way of simplifying the most complex concepts to a pithy truth that even a 6-year-old could understand. And, as R. John S. kindly pointed out to me recently, Einstein was known to remark:

''If you can't explain it to a six-year-old, you don't understand it yourself."

So messy Chancer - with his rants and raves - bows down today to the power of YES.

YES PLANS are deep policy in the BodyChance's training plan, and they are there in my Corporate Teaching Technology too; a Technology I plan to articulate and advocate starting with my live London workshop, and later online.

If you can, make it YOUR Yes Plan to come along to the London Premier.

https://bodychance.mykajabi.com/p/london1803workshop

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