6.58am, last Friday, I received a text:
Him: Are you awake?
Me: Of course. Are you?
Him: I just got off the red-eye. Can you talk?
Me: Call me.
This is how it usually goes with him. With almost every client I maintain a somewhat regular schedule, but he is far too erratic for that. Often we go weeks without talking, other weeks we talk three times, almost always unscheduled and at irregular hours.
There is always a lot of drama with him.
Somewhat reluctantly, looking at the screen, I admit my to myself I enjoy the drama. I’m quite addicted to it actually, like stepping in the ring with a new opponent, I like the unpredictable.
With him, it typically goes down the same way. He calls me in some sort of tizzy, I tell him why the tizzy is a good thing, I then help him re-direct his anger / frustration / disappointment / excitement / whatever in a direction that benefits him.
This I call conversational jiu-jitsu, and there are three steps to mastery.
Step 1. Take the weight: When someone comes to you with a problem, you begin by taking the weight off their shoulders.
In his case, he tells me about a dinner he had last night and how this person said this and that and how it made him think, “fuck this.” And now he wants to just do this and that. In taking the weight, I completely agree. I say, “I can’t believe it, what a prick, you are so right to be angry.”
Just in doing this, he feels heard, listened to; his grievance is valid. In jiu-jitsu, taking their weight is the first step to manipulating them…
Step 2. Re-direct their energy: After you have taken the weight off their shoulders, you are ready to re-direct their energy however you choose.
In his case, I begin to “re-frame” the dinner conversation as being a good thing. I talk about how much the information he learned benefits him, and start to strategize about how we are going to take that information and use it to get what he wants.
At this point I have him. All the anger and frustration has been vented and he is now being directed towards a positive end. In jiu-jitsu, this step is where I need him to be before I lock him up.
Step 3. Lock it up: Once you have someone away from their “problem” and where you want them to be, you need to lock-in their new way of thinking.
Now his energy is re-directed to a positive end, I have the opportunity to “program” his future actions, giving him scripts and a visual movie of how he is now going to take all this information and use it to get what he wants.
Now I am basically done. I have moved him from his frenetic place to exactly where he needs to be. Whereas ten minutes prior he was losing it, now he feels completely in control and has a strategy to use what he learned last night to get what he wants.
Done, he finishes with his standard closing comment to me: “You’re the best, thank you!” I respond with my standard closing comment: “You’re welcome, I know you can now see how to utilize this same process in different situations…”
Although I know there will likely be another situation just like this one, I know through practice you can automatically apply this process in every situation.