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Wendy Doig, a drumming facilitator with a long career in banking, recently attended a training day with a difference, delivered by one of Wales’ most inspirational development consultants, Helen Wingstedt. Here, Wendy tells us what it’s like to experience...
THE WOW FACTOR
I met Helen recently in Cardiff where she was giving a short talk on ‘Creative Communication’. I say talk, but in fact she spent the first ten minutes just standing and looking at us, the audience. Inevitably people started shuffling and looking around wondering what was going to happen next.
If you could hear the thoughts emanating from the group, I guess they were mostly along the same line: “What’s going on?” Why isn’t she getting started? Oh crikey, she’s steadily making eye contact with everyone here!” “No, don’t look at me – nothing to see here!” You get the picture.
Those minutes started to feel like hours but no one got up and left, all of us intrigued, captivated and curious. Eventually she ‘broke the spell’ and started talking but what really struck me was her vibrancy and confidence to stand up, firstly saying nothing for so long and then to lead a group of over one hundred strangers into acknowledging their thoughts and changing their opinions in front of the group. Fascinated, I signed up for more and two months later found myself attending The WOW Factor training day.
I arrived at the training day, held in a hotel in Cardiff, and straight away had the feeling this was going to be no ordinary day. In my previous life working in banks I had attended numerous training courses and teambuilding events but they always seemed to have the same format... ‘by the end of this session you will etc’ but boredom would inevitably set in, and depending on how it was delivered I would come out either remembering just enough or having to completely ‘wing it’ as a result of nodding off to prove to line management that their way of ‘Investing in People’ (don’t you just love that phrase) had been money well spent.
So here we all were, having been greeted by Helen and her two beautiful dogs (her assistants as it turned out). We took a seat in anticipation and I noticed that the tables in the room had chairs along both sides i.e. facing towards and away from the flipchart which we assumed was standing at the front of the room. Everyone chose seats facing the ‘front’ or moved chairs to the sides of the tables if necessary so they could see the flipchart. I wondered if Helen had meant to arrange the room like this but didn’t otherwise give it much thought.
As it turned out, this was one of an array of creative ideas used by Helen to disrupt our expectations – we had already unknowingly started to act like a pack and it was that pack ‘energy’ that Helen led and changed frequently throughout the day. Sufficiently outside our comfort zones, finding ourselves in new territory, Helen introduced us to her ‘assistants’.
Other than finding the dogs friendly and playful I hadn’t really given them much thought but now I watched as Helen asked us all to pay close attention to how the fluctuating energy of the group was affecting the dogs’ behaviour. Helen led us through discomfort and anxiety into calm and relaxation and as we felt ourselves change we noticed that the dogs behaviour also changed. As we stood, fascinated, it became clear just how much our thoughts, intentions and the energy we project influenced the behaviour of others around us – even animals. It was a revelation! Suddenly much of what I’d read or listened to other trainers talk about but never quite understood clicked into place.
To say Helen opened my eyes and really made me think is a complete understatement. I thought I’d been thinking my whole life with perhaps even more concentrated thought in the last few years, but WOW, what was this new type of thinking? Just when I thought I’d been there and got the T-shirt, a whole new can of worms were let loose. Early on in the session we were all asked to get up and stand together at the front of the room and Helen sat at one of the desks facing us. She then carried on with her session from the comfort of her seat while we gradually tired of standing. She had already told us at the start that we didn’t have to do anything we didn’t want to do – but did we actually hear it? Apparently not. We had decided, as a pack, that we would stand there, and stand there, and stand there while Helen carried on delivering her training day from the comfort of one of our chairs until, hey, someone decided to sit on the edge of a nearby desk. ‘Damn! Why didn’t I think of that? I’m supposed to be the rebel around here! What did Helen do? She cheered, one of our first lessons learned. Conditioning. Had we listened properly to the instructions earlier? – No. Of course our pack soon started to follow the lead on sitting down again and mostly in the seats we had originally chosen!
I remained standing (I am a rebel after all) asking myself if I should continue standing there clutching on to my big bright rebel’s flag? I compromised by sitting on the edge of the desk but still facing the group. Of course this ‘new me’ is happy facing an audience now (I think). I don’t know when I finally drifted back to my seat, but no doubt Helen noticed.
So what was this training day about? Helen explained early on that her communication work with people and animals (she’s also one of the country’s leading horse whisperers) doesn’t involve learning ‘the technique’ but learning to free the mind of conditioning so that clear, authentic thinking and communication can take place.
Now, she was really talking my language. I loved it and listened whilst she analogised, “Horses and dogs haven’t read the book about ‘the technique’, they only understand and react to the energy that our state of mind produces and projects at any given time”.
This was the message that she put across to us in many ways throughout the day, giving us examples of conditioning and the affect it can have later in life. Childhood events that ‘sit’ in our subconscious, influencing how we react and make decisions over and over again and surprise, surprise, it leads to us generating the same end result! ‘Self-fulfilling prophecy’ I’m thinking to myself.
The WOW Factor reminded me of bingo in years gone by when people having no luck would shout to the caller ‘Shake your balls up love!’ to get their luck to change. Well Helen certainly shook our balls that day! Unlike most training sessions that drag on and are quickly forgotten, this one just kept on working and a week later, I still found myself having daily realisations about how Creative Communication works and why. I also found myself using it more and more to achieve the results I wanted. If you’re the scientific type, I gather it’s the basic action/reaction thing, but look deeper than the action and understand the energy behind it and there you will find the well of potential outcomes that we all have available to us at any time. Or, put another way, by shaking our balls up we can all change our ‘luck’!
The day for me was full of ‘light bulb’ moments. There was so much information to digest, so originally presented but at the same time I realised we’d barely scratched the surface and that Helen had so much more she could teach us. It’s difficult to explain everything I learned from this day but what struck me was that this was the first training day I had ever attended where every member of the group was attentive from beginning to end.
Helen had an amazing ability to follow whatever issue or question came up without any rigid plan for the session, she just gave us, as a group and individually, whatever we needed in order to understand what she was teaching. I found this an impressive skill and one which as a facilitator/trainer, I’m keen to develop.
I arrived home feeling a mixture of thrilled, bewildered and wiser and certainly different! A paradigm shift is afoot. My eleven year old daughter noticed and was interested in my change of ‘energy’ or in her words, “You’re crazy!” - a compliment indeed!
Helen Wingstedt
029 2073 4081
or mobile 07719 345616
helen@helenwingstedt.com
Creative Communication, The WOW Factor, is available to private individuals, Professionals, businesses and organisations in the form of personal sessions, training days or short courses. |
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