As part of a pitch, I presented my work and the Process Communication Model®. Immediately afterward, a member of the executive team—let’s call him Jan—reached out to me. He explained that during management meetings with his colleagues on the executive team, exhausting misunderstandings always arise, and his statements are interpreted in a very hurtful way. My client also said that it takes a lot of energy for him to remain respectful in his communication during these situations.
Every time we got together in the meetings was a major source of stress. I was yet to discover just how intense that stress really was.
George Bernard Shaw once said, “The biggest problem with communication is the illusion that it has taken place.”
That’s exactly what Jan and I worked on—solving this problem.
Every PCM training session is based on a detailed personality profile. The PCM profile shows trainees and coachees the structure of their personality based on their self-assessment. It provides valuable practical guidance for self-management and for interacting with others, helping them communicate in a way that is less stressful and less prone to conflict.
Jan is the head of IT at a large company that provides support and care for people. As Jan’s PCM profile shows, he often perceives the world through thinking and relies on logic when interacting with others—which is not unusual for people working in IT. However, the majority of decision-makers on this company’s leadership team are people who primarily perceive their environment through feeling. This means they rely less on numbers and data; they act out of compassion and seek recognition as people themselves. During the PCM training, we simulated specific situations that Jan was able to apply immediately in his day-to-day work.
And that’s exactly what he did: He immediately grasped how effective communication with others can be, especially when we assume that everyone is okay. He also took the initiative to try PCM for himself and was thus able to experience its benefits firsthand. He realized that the decision regarding the attitude with which we approach others lies with him alone.
Now that he’s back in his day-to-day work life, Jan recognizes the warning signs when he or his employees and colleagues start exhibiting negative distress behaviors. He knows how to take care of himself and how to encourage others to move away from these distress behaviors. This makes PCM training an effective way to prevent burnout. After our PCM training, Jan finally sent me three charts of his “stress clock” that very impressively illustrate the progression of his stress levels:
Chart 1: A board meeting before we met: (Orange indicates negative stress; blue indicates periods without stress):
Chart 2: The board meeting after the first day of training. Jan begins to change his attitude toward his colleagues.
Chart 3: A board meeting—two weeks after a second training day during which Jan worked intensively on stress patterns and intervention exercises. Jan is applying what he learned in his practice.
Jan’s personal experience with PCM provides practical and compelling evidence that supports the findings of the 2020 PCM Effectiveness Survey: Understanding my own personality and that of the people I’m talking to changes a relationship for the better. Applying the PCM Toolbox to self-management and communication does so even more. Jan has shown us that this positive change can actually be measured. And: As an “IT person,” he naturally enjoys collecting all the data a “data tracker” can gather and uses it to give himself recognition for the positive results of his successful communication.
Thank you so much, Jan! This is a very special kind of feedback for me, too. Now it’s time to keep practicing so that I can make an even bigger difference in relationships with PCM—every day, in every conversation. I’m already looking forward to hearing about Jan’s experiences during the upcoming PCM refresher training.
