Tango: How can we have better relationships with all of those around us, if they are resigned? What can we do with them?

C.L.: We cannot do anything about the people. It’s our interpretation that they are resigned or not. The course is about us, not about other people. It amuses me that, after taking part in the Landmark Forum, people share with us that people in their lives had ‘changed’ after they completed the course. This is something worth thinking about. You complete the course and people around you in your life become different…

Tango: We don’t have to change them?

C.L.: Because you have completed the Landmark Forum and I know that this question is put to me in the context of this interview, you already know the answer, I will tell you: It’s extremely arrogant to think that you must and can change other people. First of all, look how would you think, how would you feel if somebody tells you that you need to change. There would be an immediate reaction of rejection, even if you knew that you wanted to change something. You have wanted to be accepted the way you are and you aren’t, and then to look authentically at the things that are not working properly in the way that you are and, if you choose, to be different. I gather that you wanted to change somebody else too. Did it work out? Perhaps you realise that hoping to change people does not work. Perhaps it is something other than the changing that works, and can make them partners.

Tango: How will you be able to inform everyone in this country about this education?

C.L.: As I have just done: by the other people who have done it and I sharing what this education is. Being already in Romania in 1997, I started to talk about this education. I wanted to change the people who worked in my company: I wanted integrity, partnership and authenticity. We wanted to provide an excellent service and we knew that we could do so through this education. So I started to speak with people. During two years, 40 people went to London, Paris and Frankfurt to participate in the courses. When they came back they sent their friends and their relatives to take part as well.

In 1999, Landmark Education accepted my request to run courses in Romania, mentioning that will be only one. There were various reasons: logistics, economic and social conditions, the small number of leaders that can run these courses (back then there were only 45 leaders – and the course took place all over the world and these leaders were few). The first course in September 2000 was so good that the 200 participants brought over 600 friends and colleagues to the closing night of the course. With this number of requests, Landmark Education had no choice and organised another course in 2001.

Tango: How many courses took place until now?

C.L.: Until now there where 15 courses with over 3,900 taking part in this education, and we are the first ex-communist country to benefit from this.

Tango: Tell me please, about those you have brought into this education.

C.L.: I brought a lot of people, here and abroad. All of my three children have taken part in the Landmark courses. My daughter when she was 14 years old, when she invented the possibility to be the greatest fashion designer of the 21st century, and my two boys at the age of 8, in London. Lately, I made a presentation of Landmark Forum in Beirut and a group of graduates and I intend to bring Landmark Education to Lebanon. People from Hungary, Croatia, Bulgaria, Serbia, Poland, Moldavia, Russia, Turkey and Greece, Italy, Germany have also come and studied the courses here. Bucharest will be the centre of this education in the East and South of the Europe.

Tango: How can we inform the people, if they are willing to take part in these courses?

C.L.: There is a very simple way to find out about the courses and how they work. We give a weekly introduction at our foundation and also on the closing evenings of the main courses or parallel with the seminars.

Tango: What benefits do people say they get?

C.L.: People that were asked they said that they received extraordinary and numerous benefits for themselves and their lives, and I’m going to point out just five of them (all the people asked mentioned them). These are:

• Efficiency in relationships with other people
• Personal productivity
• Self-confidence
• To make proper choices and to continue what is important for you
• To live your live to the full

Tango: Do some of them tend to do psychoanalysis?

C.L.: People are free to choose to do what ever they want in their life, if everything is working for them, making their life fulfilled and improved, its fine.

Tango: In which parts of the world is this education given?

C.L.: Landmark Education was founded in 1991 (buying the courses and the technology from the previous company) and it is the property of their employees. Landmark has over 50 programmes delivered in over 125 countries in the world. This year has seen the first million people from all over the world who have taken the Landmark Forum. In 2002 Landmark Education was recognised by HR.com / James MacNeil as being one of the top companies which provides leadership and self-development training.

Tango: What’s the measurement unit for this success?

C.L.: It’s the extraordinary results which people report that they have in their life and the growing number of those who join the courses.

Tango: How do you solve some problems like you don’t have time, the traffic is terrible and you can’t be in time, that you have many things to do and you have to postpone?

C.L.: I’m not their victim. I’m responsible for my time. Sometimes people ask me: ‘Connie, do you have time for…?’, and I say: ‘Always I can choose, and have some.’ If the thing really matters to us, we can all spare some time. One of the most used distinctions, concerning time, is integrity.

Tango: Do you think it’s important to keep our word?

C.L.: We say that one of the foundation’s exceptional results is integrity: to do what you’re saying, you’re doing, and if you realise that you can’t do something, say it in time and in a responsible way, and make a new promise. And this is the basis of integrity. It is essential to honour your word, if you want good results.

Tango: Who are the trainers?

C.L.: At present there are 6 leaders in the whole world. They are considered to be the best in the seminar industry. They have trained themselves rigorously, for between 3 and 7 years, to be able to show the distinctions of the courses and to lead the conversations such a way that is provocative and also powerful. They are certificated by Landmark Education to run their courses and they practice all the time for a good quality of their courses.

Tango: Is there somebody from our country?

C.L.: No, there is nobody yet, but we have somebody who is leader of the leadership courses, certificated by landmark Education, a very special person who has produced very good results until now. This person is only 24 years old and wants to become a Landmark Forum Leader. She will probably be the first Romanian Landmark Forum Leader.

Tango: What is your position and what do you do?

C.L.: I created and I lead this non-profit foundation, which makes the courses of Landmark Education available in Romania, Eastern and Southern Europe, I run seminars and Landmark Forum introductions.

Tango: How do you think the first Christmas with extraordinary outcomes would be?

C.L.: An extraordinary outcome will be when the Landmark Education will be available in schools for all the children in the world, at a very young age. And that’s the ‘game’ I shall play for the rest of my life. Isn’t it great?

To read the interview in its entirety, go to the Tango Magazine website.