Thursday, November 05, 2009

Five Easy Steps To Draw In The Crowd

reading the post Mashable’s 5 Ways to Attract and Empower Your Crowd, something Helen Rubello said in her “Introduction..” post about what her customer wants from her and vice versa (The Shiatsu Zone: An Introduction....), Gina Loree’ Marks’ remark of not being judgmental as a therapist (Grace in Gravity - Better Living Through Shiatsu - Blog - The Morality of Healing) and last not least Rob Blackburn’s “4 quadrants of Wellness” post (Rob's Shiatsu Pages: Four Quadrants of Wellness) gave me the juice of trying to merge it.

Five Easy Steps To Draw In The Crowd

  1. Focus on The Need. What our customer/client/patient wants from us is the bottom line. Nothing more and nor less shall be given. It includes listening with many senses (ears, eyes, hands, ..) and being careful, i.e. respectful of the other person. I’m still thinking with shudders on my first sessions where I had been overwhelming my clients with so much I wished to give yet what they hadn’t been asking for. No need to tell you that those customers usually neither came back nor were “miraculously” cured.
  2. It’s Not You, It’s We. In our school Institut Français de Shiatsu Michel ODOUL reminds us of the importance of the “Carré B”, square B. He uses a 4 quadrant setup very much like Rob Blackburn yet with different analogies. They represent the 4 different relational levels possible between 2 people meeting. The only fruitful one being “Square B” where practitioner and client reside on the same level. No “saviors”, “victims” or “bullies” in this room. Only if I manage to interact with the other person in a way that he/she doesn’t feel neither looked up or down at, I maintain a respectful position for him/her and me.
  3. Determine Your Touchpoints. Easily to be understood in regards to shiatsu, isn’t it. This includes simple questions like 
    1. “who am I in relation with?”, 
    2. “what kind of relationship are we trying to establish here?”, 
    3. “Where will it take place?”, 
    4. “and when?”, 
    5. “how?” and 
    6. importantly “why?”
  4. Set Clear Goals. Summarizing the 3 steps beforehand should give us a clear picture of what we and the customer want to achieve during this session. A “must” for maintaing a healthy relationship with the customer from which finally all parties may benefit. 
  5. Let Go. As usual, the most simple sounding one at the end. Open my heart and let go. Reaching the zen meditation state where limits start to disappear and I touch the other person as much as me. Where I ain’t doing good and just follow the flow without bending.
My challenge to you: I’d love to know from you how you approach your clients, stay centered, being anchor without holding back, guiding hand without squeezing.

2 comments:

onlyhuman said...

Finally getting back to this to comment. I still don't have a clear answer, but I am working with an interesting precept from a book I'm reading.

The context is about the flow of abundance but it can also apply to our relationships with clients. It's like this: giving -> receiving (yang to yin) and offering -> taking (yin to yang) and how our interactions are usually a combination of these dynamics, and understanding the appropriate flow will avoid train wrecks.

I hope to be writing more about this as I come to understand its relevance in dealing with clients.

marcussommer said...

I like your stating of yin and yang as being dynamic, and indeed, as my post had been based on another one from a different field, the flow of qi is always present as another means of "communication" between living things, whether practitioner / patient or not.

Thus the daily work of a practitioner to "stay centered/neutral" is an important aspect of my work IMHO. It enables me to have a "clearer picture" of "what flows where" without pushing my own needs upfront.

Please let me know once you have dug deeper into this book/subject.