Blending to Connect

PRACTICE GUIDE – Presencing

What is Blending?

This is an important somatic skill for Life Leaders. It is the way you engage another person so that they feel a strong sense of connection and rapport with you without resisting or feeling pressured by you. The behaviour creates a strong sense of empathy because you are seeking to understand the other person’s perspective by entering their world by feeling their feelings in a way that is demonstrated in your posture, gestures, tone of voice, eye contact, etc. It involves much deeper and more focused listening.

This is what’s known as “limbic resonance” where we experience flow in our body and mind where two feel as one. Humberto Maturana refers to this phenomenon as “structural coupling”, the connection between inside-out and outside-in awareness. Blending is an experience that we seek to perfect through practice.

So What does it mean?

Blending requires us to become more powerful observers of the three components or sets of skills that are needed for blending – agility, balance and coordination that come from observation, centring and attraction. They happen together as an automatic and embodied skill.

See the work of Richard Strozzi-Heckler

Presence is a quality of connection that makes other people feel included so that they will trust and put their faith in you. It’s about being proactive and not reactive in the way you use your body. Being aware of your conditioned and habitual behaviours you are better able to listen and be aware of what you are doing (how you ATTRACT) to seek connection and understanding.

It’s about noticing (how you OBSERVE) the impact of negative emotions on your body and relaxing by opening yourself up to receive and pay attention (how you CENTRE) to present yourself as not resisting or trying to apply pressure in the relationship to find points of connection. The ability to pause and reflect is an important part of being able to “observe” what is really happening, not what your emotional response thinks is happening.

Observing

When you observe you become aware and this gives you choice. Be aware that it is your nervous system that is filtering out what you’re not looking for, so greater awareness will come from conscious scanning to open your focus, allowing you to choose where you pay attention and become more aware of what you were previously blind to. Your ability to become more aware and attentive is enhanced by removing any tension from your body by centring your body to quieten your mind and mood.

Centring

When you are able to “centre” your self-talk, body posture and emotional state you are in the best state to find new insights and make better choices. It involves taking a deep breath and releasing body tension, slowing your breathing and relaxing the base of your spine. Root your feet to the ground and straighten your back (without tension). Feel a sense of being fully present, alert to the sights, sensations, and sounds coming from inside and outside your body. When you feel balanced and at ease, connect with what you care about, and your intention for being in this moment and adopt a state of openness and a readiness to adapt and act.

Attracting

When you attract attention you are prepared to face someone and look them in the eye with your feet planted squarely on the ground. To project your energy and attention you extend yourself gently forward to engage with the challenge and speak slowly with as few words as possible. Do not show tentativeness, doubt or fear, yet speak with respect for the person and their opinions/feelings. If you lose your confidence, adapt, step back, recentre and extend again to face the challenge and make your opinion and feelings clear.

Blending combines these three key behaviours to help you engage and flow in the relationship to remove barriers by seeking to connect through mind and body. The result is that you become a person others feel they can trust. You know what you care about, know how to control your “way of being” and listen so that others will want to communicate openly with you.

As you practice these skills they will create a presence that will help you deal with conflict, negotiate and get commitments from others to act on your offers or requests. Being firm, yet fair in your dealings with others brings respect and trust. But it must be authentic, consistent and sincere.

Now What?

Things to remember

1. Your life is a story that is acted out in a movie. You are the producer, director, and scriptwriter that shapes your emotional life and your leadership responsibilities.
2. Your postures and mannerisms reflect your history. Your life story reflects how you see and hold yourself in everyday encounters.
3. Your ability to achieve an emotional and rational balance depends on how prepared you are to engage, empathise and challenge when needed.
4. You can focus your attention on what is important to you and connect with others to gain their trust and cooperation to serve your intentions. But beware of the context and the stories other people are living in.

Practices

1. Spend some time each day paying attention to what is happening in your body and mind when something happens that captures your attention. You only see what you habitually think you see, so centre yourself on what you are actually experiencing in this very moment.

For example, are you:

• feeling hot/warm/cold?
• sensing aches in your shoulders or calves?
• unable to silence voices of concern in your head?
• open or closed to outside-in stimuli?
• feeling relaxed or contracted and tense?
• judging events or just noticing?

You might want to keep notes of what is coming at you from the outside-in and how you are reacting from the inside-out. Make assessments of your capacity to control your reactions to give you more choice in how you can then act more effectively.

2. Ask a partner or a friend to talk about something they care about. Then give them a summary in your own words of what you understood as their deepest concern and intention.

• Discuss how accurate they thought you were and what you missed
• Talk about what you missed and why that might of happened
• What signs did you pick up on in their posture when speaking with passion or disappointment.

References

The Innovator’s Way by Peter Denning & Bob Dunham. MIT 2010
The Leadership Dojo by Richard Strozzi-Heckler. Frog 20017
Coaching to the Human Soul Vol 1 by Alan Sieler. Newfield Australia 2003
Language and the Pursuit of Happiness by Chalmers Brothers. New Possibilities 2005