Transforming thorny relationships

A few years ago a popular soft drinks company ran a series of ads in the UK featuring the Cactus Kid. The TV ads told a story over time of a misunderstood teenage girl who was madly in love with a strange-looking loner.

Do you work with this person?

Their relationships with police and parents were quite prickly. They were on the road running from what they didn't want in their lives. Curiously the drinks company had its own thorny time with the advertising authorities regarding some of themes touched on in the ad campaign.

Sometimes we can walk away from a relationship that isn’t working. But is this ever possible in a business context? Reputationally, it never turns out well to dismiss your client or blank out your line-manager. There are repercussions such as a loss of income or promotion, not being able to meet critical deadlines and much worse.

In my experience, people try to sit the pain out. Walking away just isn’t an option with work after all. But they’ll tolerate the awfulness of a situation in the hope that something will magically change. To cope they bury their negative feelings to try and escape the pain. Isn’t this similar to how the Cactus Kid and his girlfriend ran away from their thorny issues?

With traditional EFT we can neutralise the negative feelings coming up. However, unless we also shift our thinking about the relationship we might still need to wear thick reinforced steel gloves when dealing with that tricky person. What if we could transform the thorny relationship so that we can thrive?

With Business Energetics we are able to have honest and sensitive conversations with the prickly pears in our working lives. We can do this because we create a safe arena to imagine "meeting" with them whilst having direct open conversations. We tap through the insights that show up and evolve relationships that felt like they would never improve.

At the heart of this new technology is the understanding that we first change ourselves. Then we become more resourceful in nurturing our relationships to change - this is different from a passive sense of hoping things will improve. From that new place of change we allow success and empowerment to flow through our work again.

Article Date: Mon, 31 Jan 2011