At least once each year, I attend another coaching program. I enjoy getting coaching while I benefit from watching how others work and learn new techniques. Last month I attended a four-day program in NYC that was eye-opening, by definition, because it was my first awareness training.

I was able to do a lot of personal development at the program and will share in this article some of what I learned. First, let me explain awareness training.

Large Group Awareness Training (LGAT)

If you’re not familiar with LGAT, think Tony Robbins.

“LGAT refers to activities usually offered by groups linked with the human potential movement which claim to increase self-awareness and bring about desirable transformations in individuals' personal lives. They are noted for being unconventional and often take place over several days.” (Wikipedia)

LGAT stems back to the mid-60s as a sales training program for one of the first multi-level marketing companies (Holiday Magic) and evolved into several generations of competing programs like est (Erhard Seminars Training), Landmark Forum, and Lifespring.

Some consider LGAT to be a cult. While they are very manipulative, no one is drinking any Kool-Aid. My observations were that it is an honest intent to help people, coupled with a strong push to sell more programming to participants.

The method of training has risks. Over multiple long and late days, they intentionally bring attendees between humiliating lows and exhilarating highs. It is not personalized. Any mental health issues a participant might have are not accounted for in the exercises. In the path to awareness, some people could be damaged.

I went in fairly self-aware and psychologically stable. It was a painful and thought-provoking process. I gained insights, grew and learned about myself, and also picked up some coaching and selling techniques.

There were about 100 people who made it through that training and not everyone fared as well as I. People with traumatic scars had issues surface without any support from properly trained mental health professionals. Others desperately begged fellow participants to help them afford the follow-on training - awareness is only the first step. You then need to adapt new behaviors and then integrate them into your life and community, further commitment and more expensive training.

I would not recommend LGAT or any awareness training to anyone without first consulting a licensed medical professional.

Lessons Learned

The lessons that I share from the program are not an endorsement of the training or an invitation for you to consider attending one. I am not naming the program nor would I share any specifics about what we did in the four days. We all (I) gave the trainer our (my) “word” to the ground rule of not disclosing to anyone anything that we did. If you’re interested in getting a sample of such a program, check out this blog series from a former trainer.

I’m sharing five of the most impactful messages that I learned from the training. Some of those who I coach have already seen me use them in action.

Survival Context

You know what you know. You also know what you don’t know. In the scale of all knowledge in the universe, our knowledge amounts to very little. All opportunities for our growth come from exploring in the area of what we don’t know that we don’t know. We usually refer to staying with what we know as our comfort zone.

You may have heard that growth comes at the end of our comfort zone. (What coach hasn’t ever said this?) In this program, they reframed falling back into our comfort zone as a survival context and gave four reasons that we do it:

To be in control
To be right
To be approved (to look good)
To be safe (comfortable)

Each time you feel that you’re stuck, that your progress might be limited, or you’re not meeting your goals, look at the four survival contexts and become aware of which ones are holding you back at that moment. It’s only with that awareness that we can be ready to grow.

Our Word

Every time people come together, there are ground rules. Some are familiar, some need to be negotiated, or could be unspoken. This program started with its ground rules and asked everyone to give their “word” to follow them all (else you were asked to leave). Each time someone violated the rules, they were called out for not keeping their word, sometimes in a humiliating way. The trainer - and I - defined integrity as doing what you say. If you agree to be at a meeting at a specific time and arrive late, you have not kept your word to others. If you promise yourself you are going to exercise more and do not, you have not kept your word to yourself. If you want to be a person of integrity, then you do what you say.

An interesting part of the ground rules was the concept of being distinct. We could agree that 10:00 is distinct from 10:01, that they are each a different time. If you say you’ll meet at 10:00, and show up at 10:01, then you have not kept your word. A typical reaction to being confronted with not keeping our word is an excuse and an apology, such as “I’m sorry, traffic was bad.” These do not let us off the hook for not having kept our word.

It’s only a minute (excuse). This might seem inconsequential. As the program continually challenged us, if you do it here, then you do it everywhere. (The trainer would ask, “Where else in your life does this show up?”)

Given we’re human and not perfect, the antidote to lapses in our integrity is to do more good and build a balance of goodwill that we can draw from when we mess up. Think of it as an account where you need to make enough deposits to be able to make an occasional withdrawal.

I have heard expressions like “you are your word” or are a “person of your word.” Consider those in the context of your core value of integrity, a foundation of who you are and who you can become.

Everybody Wins

How can you build a store of goodwill? There is a philosophy in the program that states, “Nobody wins until everybody wins.” You might think that’s something a socialist would say (or perhaps a progressive running for political office). I’m probably a capitalist, yet those words formed a basis for my new insights from the program. Nobody wins until everybody wins.

How they taught the lesson was classic LGAT. They divided us into teams and had us play a game. It was just before midnight and everyone was emotionally drained and physically tired. We all lost because the game was designed for that. We were sent home, in silence, thinking about how awful each of us was, that we could have won if we had considered helping the other team win (the moral of the game). We were asked to write an essay about how our actions in the game mirror our life. “If you do it here, then you do it everywhere,” we were reminded. This was another of the opportunities they constructed for humiliation (calculably followed by exhilaration at the start of the next day).

To most of us, “win-win” is not a new concept as we think about business or personal relationships. It is likely already an element of our core value of integrity. In contrast, a colleague once told me that by definition, for someone to win, there must be a loser. I no longer work with them due to the misalignments in our values.

When you frame win-win is as “nobody wins until everybody wins,” it encourages you to see how others can win before you determine how you win. It is difficult to negotiate a mutual win. By looking at how others win first, you remain focused on them. It’s after they’ve won that you consider yours.

This simple reframing has allowed me to achieve better business relationships and help me become a better husband and father. Even in sales, I’m now closing more.

While this approach to win-win might seem altruistic, it brought me back to Adam Grant’s Give and Take where he writes about two types of “givers,” the more effective giver having self-interest and the less effective gives too selflessly. We are effective when we want to see others win because it is a prerequisite to our winning.

Our Choices

We spent a lot of time exploring trust with a few exercises to discover one important lesson: trust is a choice. People don’t earn our trust. It is something that we choose to give or withhold. Most of the factors that influence our trust are based on scripts from our past and superficial. If we’re living in the present (another important lesson from the program), then trust is something we choose in the moment.

We can’t control the behaviors and emotions of others. We can only control our own. Similar to trust, love is also a choice. You may think love is a feeling. Feelings are fleeting. Our giving or receiving of love is something that we choose, a decision that we make.

The trainer shared the story of Amy Biehl, a California Fulbright scholar who, in 1993, was stoned and stabbed to death by an angry mob in South Africa where she was working to register black voters and help end apartheid.

Imagine how you might respond if your daughter was murdered. Mine is 25 now, and it would be my worst nightmare. As devastated as Amy’s parents were, they chose to continue her work and traveled to South Africa for the Amy Biehl Foundation, which they created in her memory. Peter and Linda Biehl forgave her convicted killers, did not oppose the granting of their amnesty, and shook hands with the men and hugged their family members.

Even when you are a victim, you get to choose how you respond.

Like trust and love, accountability is a choice. Choosing accountability, and the positivity that comes with it, empowers us to overcome any obstacle to achieve our goals, as when the Biehls chose forgiveness and carried on with their daughter’s mission.

Context is Content

Context and content is a debate I’ve heard writers and English majors often have. Context versus content. In our awareness training, they taught that context is content.

Content is words or imagery having a definition and, perhaps, an intention. Despite our intention, ultimately, it is the context of those who consume the content that creates meaning. As a result, we always need to understand context before we create content.

As a leader and coach, I’ve used this concept a lot without having such a simple way to describe it. Context is content.

Recently a client shared a debate they had with one of their co-leaders in a direct message thread on Slack. After one sentence each, it was clear to me, from an outside and unemotional perspective, that they were coming from two different places. The remainder of the many words they typed didn’t matter. After those initial two sentences, they should have chosen to continue the conversation live and interactive, in person or on video, to establish context first.

Whether it’s Slack, text message, or email, you probably don’t have context for the person receiving what you’ve written. You need to understand and establish context before creating content.

When communicating with others, you must inquire to get context. Master the art of asking questions. What is their context?

When communicating with yourself - working through your internal content (thinking) - you need to check in with yourself. What is my context?

After establishing context, you’ve done the hard part and the content is trivial.

Putting it together

Four days of intensive training brings a lot of awareness. The program asked us if we’re committed to our goals or committed to survival. Clearly, we all want the former. I’ve shared five of the perspectives that should help enable us to adapt behaviors or develop new ones:

Be aware of survival context
We are our word
Nobody wins until everybody wins
Choices we make
Context is content

Awareness, making behavior breakthroughs, and integrating them into our lives is hard. Really hard. Consider every change you’ve thought of as easy, perhaps something straightforward such as eating healthier or not losing your temper. How challenging was it to put together a plan and follow it? Were you successful and met your goal? Consider it as you angrily eat your next cheesesteak :-) It’s really hard to train ourselves and impossible to coach ourselves. If you want change and growth, and to overcome challenges and achieve big goals, get help.