Instructor Spotlight: Janet Mahrle

We sat down with instructor Janet Mahrle, Professional Certified Coach and owner of Mahrle Coaching Services, to talk about her popular course, Conversational Intelligence®: Strategies for Effective Conversations. Read what she had to say about the impact of making conversations more effective. 

What draws you to teaching?

There is nothing that brings me more joy than to see people discover new things and have the "ah-ha moment" of insight – of making connections. I love it when a student says, “I just learned something I can apply. This now has meaning for me.” As an instructor, I'm able to bring together content in a way that gives it meaning.

What do you hope students learn from your classes?

I want students to walk away from my classes with hands-on tools they can use in their careers the next day. I want them to have a new perspective they’ve never thought of before and be confident that they can take what they learn and do something awesome with it.

Tell me about a time when you made a difference in a student’s life.

I was training a large group, and on the first day, one student was clearly not interested in the Change Management information I was teaching. Over the course of several days, this student went from resisting the content to advocating for what we were leaning. She took the tools, tried them out, and the results made such a difference with the people she worked with, that she dove in. On the final course evaluation, she was the biggest cheerleader –she said the information she'd learned opened up a “whole new world.”

Why do you think this is an important topic?

In the realm of leadership, the most important thing is trust. The foundational element of Conversational Intelligence is establishing trust. So if you don’t have trust, your leadership will always be compromised. That’s what makes this skill so critical for leaders. I was a senior leader for 25 years. I was very effective and my staff was great. And yet, when I learned about Conversational Intelligence and understood the neuroscience behind it and began combining it with emotional intelligence, the quality of my conversations greatly improved. People who have known me for years say, “Janet, your conversations are so much better!”