I received a call last month from an accomplished consultant/author who’d given many successful presentations yet hadn’t spoken in public for 7 years after having what she perceived as a traumatic speaking experience.
She was approached by a few speaking coaches who wanted to advise her for free, and each time she was re-triggered at the suggestion of speaking techniques. Last month she happened upon my video (linked on left) and was struck by that I give absolutely no coaching to the speakers in our program.
That’s because we’ve turned the tables on conventional public speaking coaching. instead of coaching speakers we guide the audience into the kind of listening that brings out the best in each speaker. Over decades of this practice, our experience is that when the audience provides a kind, intelligent listening field, and the person up front practices submitting to that listening as the highest intelligence in the room, magic happens. Over time, sometimes very quickly, each person’s universal humanity and innate knowing emerge naturally with no performance technique to mitigate their essential magnificence.
Michelangelo: “I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.”
The mindful audience sees the greatness and beauty of each speaker, even those who may feel frozen in stone. For the participant willing to hang in up there with whatever they are feeling, this greatness inevitably and effortlessly emerges as the “inner speaker” is set free.
In the video we follow five Speaking Circle participants who went through this life-changing transformation.
The consultant/author who called last month attended the September day-long and let me know how well it landed for her. What works, she writes, is that “the attendees are immediately immersed into standing up in silence or verbosity, but in presence, in seeing the audience and receiving their listening. I feel as though this experience goes beyond speaking and expands into one’s whole life.”
This revolutionary approach to the healing alchemy between speaker and listeners opens an expansive space for rich inquiry, discovery, and clarity. From my perch at the camera over the years, I often see the seeds of TED Talks (or of my emerging vision of LEE Talks: Transmissions that Transform). For those willing to receive them, I share my insights and ideas for how to use Speaking Circle turns to develop such talks.
The Synergy of Professional Development and Spiritual Practice
Speaking Circle practice brings spiritual principles of connection, oneness and mindfulness to the realm of professional development and interpersonal mastery in the “real world.”
This synergy now leads me to frame my life work as forming Luminous Listening Teams to not only solve speaking anxiety but to affect personal and organizational transformation in other areas of endeavor.
I am currently talking with potential partners in business, education, and church communities toward applying these principles and this approach to address the screaming ubiquitous unmet need for people in organizations and families to bring out the best in each other by elevating their listening standards.
Do you know of a more direct path to peace?
“The hearing that is only in the ears is one thing. The hearing of understanding is another. But the hearing of the spirit is not limited to any one faculty, to the ear or the mind. Hence it demands emptiness of all of the faculties. And when the faculties are empty, the whole being listens. There is then a direct grasp of what is right there before you that can never be heard with the ear or understood with the mind.” ~Chuang-Tzu
© Copyright 2017, Lee Glickstein. All rights reserved.
