pete-wilkins-8-request-elements

I met Pete Wilkins in May of 2005 when I taught a Buzan Licensed Instructor Certification Course in Vancouver. Pete is the founder of the Kosmos Group a consulting company focused on leadership development and team performance. He works with leaders and teams to achieve their goals by bringing awareness to 3 domains of the human observer — Language, Body, and Moods/Emotions. This awareness is important because “You can’t change what you don’t see”.

Pete explains that a “Request” is in the domain of Language. There are 5 main acts in this domain. These speech acts are important because we are linguistic beings. From the time we learn how to talk until we die we live in language. Just as a fish lives in water, we are always living in language. So why is this important according to Pete? Too often we think of language as a passive or descriptive tool. But another more powerful view is language as a generative and creative tool. Too often we aren’t making proper requests of others. Being more conscious of how you are making requests allows a greater possibility of you to influence your future.

Pete’s map depicts the 8 request elements. Thanks for sharing Pete. If you want to see the idea map that Pete contributed to my Idea Mapping book go to Book Maps and click on Figure 6.8. It’s a flip chart-sized idea map of Vanda North’s book titled “Get Ahead”.