Five Ways to Slam Business Presentations

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In my line of work, I have always believed that crossing lines between art and science, society and business; and between one discipline and another catalyzes personal and organizational development.

Over the years I have mixed and matched theater skills with presentation skills, improvisation and business negotiating, humor and leadership among others.

Yesterday, on a lazy Sunday afternoon in my hometown, I barged into a workshop on Spoken Word Poetry run at the center for literature, GYaN ADAB in Pune, India.  In the past, I had attended presentations, watched scores of videos of Sarah Kaye and Phil Kay and have loved this art form. The possibilities of tapping into the nuances of this genre and using them for business and leadership communications are enormous.

Spoken Word Poetry, or Slam as it is colloquially called, is a powerful blend of creative writing skills and highly engaging delivery skills. It is poetry and storytelling in one and it hits you right between your eyes and can steal your heart away.  It is raw, romantic and unleashes the authentic you to your audiences of one or many.

Don’t start reciting or speaking until your audiences’ attention has turned towards you. Get up on center stage or across the boardroom table, stand silently until it is time to speak. Doing this allows your anxieties to quell and for people to wind off whatever they might be involved with and give you their eyes and ears. This doesn’t take long and that is why it is called the Five Seconds to Start Rule.

Further quell your anxiety and ground yourself deeper into the performance by planting your feet flat on the ground and keeping them still while you smoothen and calm your breathing. You may slowly look around and relax your upper body. This is called Keep your Feet Still for a While.

When you do look around, depending on the number of faces in your audience, make eye contact with an optimum number of people in the room. Do not just glance over people make sure that you let care and warmth ooze from your eyes. Throughout your performance and delivery look at people and let your feeling show through. This works in two ways; they sense your feelings and recognize that you care and you can keep tab on how the transaction and transfer is occurring. The number of smiles, nods and wide-eyed interest are your measures. Call this the New Insights into the Old Fashioned Eye Contact cliché.

As you speak make sure that your voice comes from the depths of your diaphragm and that you roll your “Rs,” stress your “Ts” and “Ss.”  Since Slam is dependent not just on the quality of the content but on engaging delivery too, it helps to Enunciate Your Words and project them far into the back of the room with or without amplification.

Kudos to the workshop facilitator Shantanu Anand! I loved his analogy of how to add pauses to your presentations and end your slam on a high note.  “Have you seen an old-fashioned locomotive come to a halt on steel rails?” he asked. It doesn’t drop down with a thud like a sack of rice and it doesn’t screech to halt like careening motor car. It roars into the railway station and grows larger in sight while chugging to many slowdowns and stops before its huge, iron wheels grab onto the steel structures beneath it. It comes in “chug, chuggh, chuggghh, pause; chug, chuggh, chuggghh, pause; chug, chuggh, chuggghh, thumping halt!”

In this way when slamming down your Spoken Word Poetry or a Business Presentation take time to bring your spiel to a slow, pause and power-filled halt. Punch and Pound out your Last Few Sentences to increase impact. If the sentence is long shorten your pauses and if the sentences are short then lengthen your pauses. Like “ask  not  what  your  country  can  do  for  you  but ask   what   you   can   do  for   your   country!”

Here’s one of my tiny attempt in print and someday I will render it live because that’s the way to slam!

It is time that you let me out. Long have you been in the habit of keeping me in.

You do realize and recognize that chaining me down makes me wanna’ burst out all the more.

An enemy of yours I am not, my love.

When you will, eventually, unleash me you will learn that I am not anger but your true and trusted love, meant only for you, meant only for you, by you.

You, you nincompoop!

________________________________________

There!

That’s a little bit about Spoken Word Poetry and how to Slam all your other Business Presentations.

Above all, have fun! 🙂

Five Ideas to Improve Meeting Productivity

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The whole world is constantly participating in meetings. “Let’s have a meeting,” “I am in a meeting,” “Call you right back after the meeting,”

Five Ideas to Improve Meeting Productivity

They are statements you hear all the time. Sometimes, it makes me wonder if most everyone I know is so often in one meeting or another who then, in heaven’s name, is minding the, proverbial, store? Who is building the bridges and who is baking all the bread in the world?

The truth is that a lot of time, across the world, is being wasted in and during meetings. Should we be able to salvage all the wasted energy from the din and noise generated during meetings then we would have no energy crisis. We’d be cutting down lesser trees, digging up lesser oil and, leaving lesser carbon foot-prints on the face of this lovely planet. The air will be cleaner, the oceans will start cooling down and the birds won’t always have to fly south.

A typical meeting usually starts late and it involves catching up with others, waiting for the late-comer, listening to his excuses and a traffic-report of the city; bringing him up to speed, ordering coffee, re-reading the minutes of the last meeting, plugging the computers, logging onto the net and rushing through the true agenda so as to catch up with the next meeting at another venue…ad nauseam.

If this is even partially true for you then here are five quick ideas to bash up the beast of bad meetings. Five ideas is a good number because it represents the number of sensory inputs and outputs and research in the field of neurosciences has shown that the conscious mind can only juggle and manage seven plus minus two chunks of information at a given moment.

Idea One: Email everyone, a substantial time before the meeting, a five-point agenda that is more illustrative than narrative. Use sketches, diagram and flowcharts because pictures are easier to remember than words. Assign expectations and tasks for every individual. Keep it simple and to the point.

Idea Two: During the meeting issue a little more detailed version of the same illustration to everyone with their roles and tasks color segregated. Allow space for that individual to make and takes notes. Look up Edward De Bono’s ‘Six Thinking Hats’ and use the science behind Five of those hats. Throw out one of the hats or use it as a pan to collect penalties from the late-comers and hecklers in meetings.

Idea Three: Choose one big, hairy goal for the meeting and less than three minor goals to be achieved as outcomes of the meeting. Hang a large sign of the big, hairy goal where everyone can see it before and during the meeting. The large visual aids focus, and like bees to honey, such that everyone will keep directing their conversations to the big, hairy goal. The minor ones will easily fall in place just like dominoes do. You have heard this, “Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff.”

Idea Four: Allow a few minutes before the meeting ends to stamp “Done!”on the big, hairy goal sign and the small illustrative notices that you sent out. Capture the outcomes of the meeting in an illustrative format and sketch out the measures and the next, big hairy goal for the next meeting. Oops, scratch out the last sentence! Your every meeting should be good enough for you and your team never to meet again.

Idea Five: All research, option generation, plans, milestones, measures are elements of cerebral thinking but true choices are made from the depths of our hearts. Treat each other with respect, kindness and empathy so as to nurture their emotional sides and also allow deeper experience and wisdom to evolve. Sure, shoot down the late-comers and the hecklers too!

Practice these five ideas if you like or chuck them out the window. It is best to just roll up your sleeves and bake that bread, build those bridges or chill by the beach instead of participating in meaningless, chaotic meetings.

Here’s hoping your meetings are always lean, mean and the rest of the year be happy, healthy and and very productive for you and your teams!

Raju Mandhyan
www.mandhyan.com
Unleashing Comunication Excellence!

Stories as Drivers of Engagement and Innovation

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Stories may be truths wrapped in roses, rainbows, and rhythm, but they also create the future–that which is possible and which can indeed be beautiful.

When organizations slow down or arrive at a difficult bend in their developmental journey, people within the organization need hope.  They need new dreams and fresh inspiration.  Success stories from the past empower us, but it is the stories into the future–stories yet to be lived–that catapult us into action and success.

Corporate Storytelling by Raju Mandhyan

These words are etched on the mental corridors of workers in this company that supplies milk and milk derivatives to nearly half the world.

Individuals are shaped by different experiences yet our shared values enable us to combine our strengths to make us innovative and successful. There are just four simple truths that guide us: spirit of co-operation, doing what is right, challenging boundaries, and making it happen.

These values are images that are colorful and crystal-clear to the farmers and managers of Fonterra of New Zealand. The clarity and vividness make these values a dynamic living image.  It is the vision and the story that serves as the springboard for creating an unfolding future, a future they continue to create.

Made up of over 400 members, this co-operative has been around for over a hundred years. They have been steadily growing for decades and have consistently and continuously become efficient and innovative.  Why? Because where they have come from is clear in this organization, and where they are heading to, is just as crystal clear.

The vivid, colorful story of the future in their minds drives them to easily implement relevant changes every day. The living, dynamic, future-projected story is a compelling magnet. It becomes a self-driven desire to change rather than something that the organization members need to be cajoled and pushed into. Furthermore, this story of their future is easily communicated and has the potential of naturally turning viral in the organization.

As a leader, in any position, of an organization if you’d like your people to stay engaged, empowered and enthused…

  1. Pick out a colorful incident from the history of your organization. If it was about a person, a member of your organization who drove change then tell it from the perspective of how her beliefs and actions impacted profits of the company.
  2. Pick out the period when one of your companies’ product had made it well in the market-place, then tell the story about the persons behind the ideation, the design, the production and the promotion of the product. Why and how did the product do well because of these people.
  3. Pick out a project from past which succeeded rip-roaringly then tell the story about the values and the purpose of the whole organization that made it such a success.

This is a process of blending two different things to build a story that inspires and drive up the overall performance of your organizations.

Hope you like it. It is taken from my book, the HeART of STORY, and is an integral part of a workshop I run on Corporate Storytelling.

 

Raju Mandhyan

Author, Coach and Trainer

www.mandhyan.com         Unleashing Inherent Excellence!

Listening With a Willingness to Change

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Listening by Raju Mandhyan

It sounds like a mouthful compared to active listening, deeper listening or, even, empathetic listening and yes, it is.

After having had thousands of discussions and practice sessions in communications, coaching, sales and other leadership workshop I realize I can put this in a nutshell.

When wanting to listen and listen well, what do we do? We sit up. We shut off other thoughts. We pay attention to the lips that pour out the words. We turn up empathy and, yes, we smile-nod-twinkle and go uh, uh. Yeah!

Or, again, there are times when we are doing all that externally and internal parts of our self are going “what time is it, I wonder?” “is she wrapping by now?” “this is not what I came here to listen!” “he has no idea what he is talking about!” “I am so much better a thinker-communicator-what have you!”

Active listening is all bright-eyed, big smile and nodding approval kind of a listening. Deeper listening is reading between the lines and “feeling” things rather than just hearing the words. Compassionate listening is, really, getting ready to say “Oh dear, I know exactly what you are going through but let me tell you about the time… yadi-yadi-ya!”

Real listening is all of the above on the surface. Underneath, deep inside you the communicator, leader or a coach needs to be ready to give up all that is bright and beautiful inside you. You need to be ready to surrender all beliefs that you hold dear. You need to forego everything else that you have been planning to bring to the table.

  • You need to surrender your position of listener-leader and be a follower.
  • You need to give up the idea of wanting to offer wisdom, create value.
  • You need to accept, lovingly and respectfully, the thought that what is presented may be better and productive.
  • You need to become ready to let go of all that you think make up you.
  • You need to be listening with a readiness and a willingness to change. Yes, change!

Listening with a readiness and willingness to change from the depths of your thoughts and the bottom of your heart, you need to be ready and willing to change. That is listening.

Any movements towards change can only come about if the cornerstone of our interactions is an honest-to-goodness willingness to change. All this, mind you, happens in fractions of seconds. That fraction of a second will make you a leader that was ready to change.

The Sensitive Speaker

It doesn’t matter whether I do basic presentation skills or advanced executive presence training, one question that constantly pops us is “How do I convert my being sensitive of others into confidence in self?”

My experience and beliefs tell me being highly sensitive of others’ presence, their thoughts, and their opinion isn’t a shortcoming but an advantage.

Think of this, that while conversing, when you mind and monitor what feelings run through their minds is inside information. It is unspoken feedback and you’ve gotten access to it. Isn’t that an advantage?

Decades ago, a stern face or a disengaged audience member would scare and disrupt my chain of thoughts. And, when I’d approach them later, I’d be able to assess that most often than not there were other things on their minds and not just my performance. Soon, I began to challenge my own assumptions about their state of mind. Very soon I began to convert my being disturbed and disrupted into a turnaround in the conversation by creatively engaging the person that scared me by a quick question or by pausing and smiling at them. It was, for me, putting the NLP principle of “the map is not the reality,” principle into practice.

My thoughts and actions gave me an inside view of their state and my state changed for the better.  Not only did the technique change our state but also gave a power boost to whole performance with the larger audience in the loop. My being sensitive of others wasn’t and isn’t a disadvantage anymore but is an ace in my hand.

Being sensitive towards others isn’t a weakness.

To see, hear and feel acutely is the trademark of the alive and compassionate leader-speaker.

Raju Mandhyan

From the HeART series available at Amazon

Designing a Talk

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Designing a Talk

Designing a Talk

No matter how much I know about the subject or how long I have been in the field…

Designing a talk, a facilitation or an intensive workshop is always much more Demanding than Delivering it.

You’ve got to know what your learners need,
You’ve got to know what they might want.
You’ve got to know what the managers/organizers want.
You’ve got to know almost everything about the subject.
You’ve got to know what the learners might know about the subject.
You’ve got to know what other consultants might have shared.
You’ve got to know a lot about parallel fields and subjects.

Then you’ve got to plan, sequence the flow of principles and practices in a novel way.

You’ve got to put in the heavy stuff. You’ve got to place in the applications and the relevancy.You need to consider inclusivity, interaction and the memorability of the program.

At the end of it you’ve got to Deliver a dish that is as filling as steak, light as a salad and yet be finger-licking fun to participate in.

And remember, thunder and lightning will strike you down if you make do as if you’ve worked hard for it and fish for compliments.

 

My upcoming public workshops:http://www.informa-mea.com/hrsummit

Advanced Selling Skills in Vietnam: http://www.hospitalmanagementasia.com/cacnhadienthuyet?page=5

Appreciative Leadership in Vietnam: http://www.vmi.edu.vn/news/pid/49/search/page/1/id/4544

InSpire Like a CEO: http://www.genesistrainingevents.com/Raju/inspire.html

Appreciative Leadership: http://www.genesistrainingevents.com/Raju/AL.html

Corporate Storytelling in Dubai:http://www.hrsummitexpo.com/

Posts on Facebook: https://goo.gl/MXQEqU

Talks on You Tube: https://goo.gl/dVclfm

Choice Clips from the TV Show, ExPat InSights :  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjf3sHaZBSo

 

Humata, Hukata, and Hvrashta!

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My school, the Sardar Dastur Hoshang Boys High School left major impressions in me about kindness, respect for others and personal presence.  The immortal words “Humata, Hukata” were encrypted on our school badges. It is in a language unknown to me but was kindly translated by the teachers. It means “Good Thoughts, Good Words.”

I was in my pre-teens and like most of the boys in school, I assumed it meant we must do away with foul language and vulgarity in our daily conversations and interactions. Not until I reached my 20s did I go back and ponder upon the depths, the simplicity and the precision of the philosophy embedded in those two words – Humata, Hukata.  Upon further research today, I learned that there is a third and more powerful word to complete that immortal affirmation phrase. That word is Hvrashta and the full motto is

.  Translated, it means, “Good Thoughts, Good Words and Good Deeds.”

Humata, Hukata,Hvrashta!

Humata, Hukata,Hvrashta!

Come to think of it, how many times in our lives do we brim with and demonstrate good intentions? No I don’t just mean the random thoughts of kindness flashing through our minds but also the love, the compassion and the desire to create filling our conscious and unconscious thoughts.  It is in our human nature to be made up of these feelings of kindness, compassion and the desire to grow and create the value.

These thoughts and feelings exist in all individuals. But how frequently does the world around us come to know about what individuals think and feel? How many times does the world read our mind and understand our hearts?  The good thoughts in our minds and hearts, or Humata, stay hidden. They lie undiscovered until they take some form of expression.

We can convert emotions and ideas into words, into pitches and presentations for the good we want to contribute to the world, for the value creation we want to bring to our markets, thus raising creativity and innovation to the next level.  Hukata -good words or empowering expressions can be seen, heard and felt. They are at a higher level more tangible than good thoughts, ideas and emotions. And yet, words and empowering expressions that claim competence, offer solutions and promise growth and innovation are rendered cheap and useless unless they can be converted into action, into something tangible which can be measured and accounted for.  Words can inspire hope and draw applause but it is real positive action, Hvrashta, that fills the stomachs of armies and builds the bridges that take us where we want to go and grow.  The pillars that measure success, growth and self-fulfilment are rooted in action.

Action and the execution of plans and goals are paramount both to improving business profitability and to achieving real results in personal development.  Action is where the rubber meets the road and where customer traction is acquired and gained.

Action is of two kinds. The first kind is action taken within the mind such as holding back our impatience, holding back our impulses and managing our anger. These internal “actions” are sometimes referred to as emotional intelligence. The other kind of action is where you roll up your sleeves, pick up the phone and call a hundred potential customers in a day. The power lies in the doing.  It is in taking this action repeatedly, day after day, that the proverbial Mountain begins to roll towards Mohammad.

Sales and the discipline of selling is a numbers game. It is about persistence and perspiration. It is about taking one rejection after another.

The ability to hold back anxiety, the fortitude to face repeated failure is laudable internal action that is sensed and felt, but it is un-measurable and not visible. Getting up and getting out of your comfort zone day after day is action that is physical, external, and visible. It is seen and felt by others. Both types of actions must be performed often and with undiminishing energy so as to grow, obtain results, and achieve massive success. This is what moves mountains and creates change.  When the mountains move, you, the salesperson, can then take a measuring tape and record your success, counting the times you walk into your bank with the fruits of success.

Taken from: the HeART of the CLOSE / Available on Amazon: http://goo.gl/OZSMj8

 

 

My upcoming public workshops:http://www.informa-mea.com/hrsummit

Advanced Selling Skills in Vietnam: http://www.hospitalmanagementasia.com/cacnhadienthuyet?page=5

Appreciative Leadership in Vietnam: http://www.vmi.edu.vn/news/pid/49/search/page/1/id/4544

InSpire Like a CEO: http://www.genesistrainingevents.com/Raju/inspire.html

Appreciative Leadership: http://www.genesistrainingevents.com/Raju/AL.html

Corporate Storytelling in Dubai:

 

Posts on Facebook: https://goo.gl/MXQEqU

Talks on You Tube: https://goo.gl/dVclfm

Choice Clips from the TV Show, ExPat InSights :  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjf3sHaZBSo

 

 

 

Beyond the Gift of Gab

I must confess that I didn’t just wake up one morning and discover that I had the ability to sell, influence people’s minds positively and thus create real value during execution and delivery of promises made.

Subtle Closing Strategies to Soar Beyond Your Sales Targets

The process from a distance seemed easy. It seemed all that you had to do was look good and talk good. In fact, I remember one of my

bosses sending me off to distant lands with a referral note to potential customers and claiming in the note that the carrier of the letter, yours truly, had the gift of the gab! It took me years, if not decades to figure out that selling and creating value was way beyond being just having a gift of the gab. Selling was and still remains way beyond looking good, listening good and speaking well.

 

Selling takes imagination, understanding, empathy, patience, open-mindedness, creativity, honesty, commitment, courage and a deep ability to lead, inspire and create value not just for yourself, but for the customer and the world at large.

After years of beating the streets, so to say, when I figured I had acquired a few of those above mentioned skills and competencies I plunged into a journey of learning the elements of fine communications, human behavior and the dynamics of diverse businesses in the marketplace called the world.

To teach, train and coach others into these principles and practices I dove headlong into the fields of neurosciences, neuro-psychology and discovered how they were all so related and intertwined. How efforts in one area would impact and improve human performance in another area and eventually into the marketplace.

This book waited years to be born and I must confess the labor pains were severe and excruciating. Now, as I lay my eyes on this finished product I feel like bits and pieces of experience, wisdom and the hidden sciences of success that lay in my bone marrow and my heart have taken form and can serve others.

Thus, I place this, the HeART of the CLOSE on the table, on Amazon for you, the reader, to feast upon and then go put on your super sales-person cape and create value in this beautiful world.

Raju Mandhyan

May 2016, Philippines.

 

 

 

My upcoming public workshops:

InSpire Like a CEO: http://www.genesistrainingevents.com/Raju/inspire.html

Appreciative Leadership: http://www.genesistrainingevents.com/Raju/AL.html

 

My books also available on Amazon: http://goo.gl/OZSMj8

Posts on Facebook: https://goo.gl/MXQEqU

Talks on You Tube: https://goo.gl/dVclfm

Choice Clips from ExPat InSights :  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjf3sHaZBSo

Leadership: Trust and Space

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Long ago I heard a fable I heard a fable of a mother eagle laying two eggs. To help them hatch, one she barely pecks at all while the other she helps more than necessary. The baby from the first egg succumbs to the entrapment of her shell while the second loathes flying on his […]

Appreciative Feedback, How to Give It

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The toughest task of any manager-leader is providing critical feedback and doing it in a benign and productive way. The day you master how to provide constructive and corrective feedback without drawing blood is the day you can claim to have touched the shores of leadership wisdom.  Feedback that may appear hard on the surface is actually supportive and developmental at the core.

These five simple attitudinal and behavioural practices for providing feedback will not just build others but inspire them to do better at work, and even life.

  1. View the dropping performance or the floor behaviour as an event.  Do not look at it as something good or bad, but simply as an “event” in a day in the life of an employee and manager.
  2. Refrain from getting emotional, from taking things personally or from becoming personally attached to the outcomes. Practice looking at the “event” from the eyes of the recipient of the feedback and also from the eyes of a third, neutral perspective.

    Appreciative Feedback

    Appreciative Feedback

  3. Our brain is made up of three levels-the Rational, the Romantic and the Reptilian also known as the neo-cortex, the middle brain and the limbic brain. The limbic brain is the seat of strong emotions. Manage your demeanour and the restlessness of your Reptilian Brain, which tends to show its fangs every now and then. Juggle the thoughts, ideas, and opinions about the incident between your Reasoning and the Romantic Brain to calm and cool down your Reptilian Brain.
  4. Describe the event to the feedback recipient objectively and in the simplest possible terms. Don’t say “I think” “I believe”, “I guess”, “I assume”.  Just state the situation and describe what you saw, what you heard and what you understood and felt.
  5.  Wait for the feedback recipient to think through and then respond. It is possible that upon sensing your equanimity, she will take responsibility, suggest solutions and even offer to resolve the issue herself.  If this happens, it can be the end of the feedback session because your colleague has taken responsibility and there is no need to correct further.
  6. You can then discuss what changes need to come about. You can then dialogue about the “how and the when” of the ideas you co-create.  Highlight and detail the measurable but be open to possibilities of challenges that may still come about.
  7.  Finally, end your feedback in a warm and friendly manner. Manage it such as if it were a chat led by the recipient of the feedback rather than by you, the manager.

Many years ago I read a book entitled True Freedom written by an Australian monk living in Thailand. He wrote about a day when he was extremely mad at a junior monk for having messed up on a project. He sent for the monk and had planned to give him a tongue lashing to remember. As he sat there fuming, he realized he did not like the “state” he had driven himself into! Soon he began to think of the many years he had known the junior monk. He remembered the times they had laughed together at other failures and successes. He remembered the times they had struggled and survived through tough periods.  A smile slowly came upon his face just at the time when the junior monk knocked at his door and asked to be let in.

You can guess pretty well how that planned tongue lashing went. At the end of 20 minutes, after they brainstormed ideas and action plans, they parted ways laughingly and with hearts and minds filled with new vigour and hope.

So, whenever you get mad or upset at any of your people’s’ performance, look back at their track record, look back at your relationship and from that perspective, slowly and gently speak up and co-create solutions and plans for growth. The rule of thumb in providing corrective feedback appreciatively is to see the big picture, delete your ego from the equation and mutually find a way forward into growth and success.

Inspired by the book, the HeART of the CLOSE.

 

 

12/14/15 Inspire Like a CEO in Mumbai http://www.genesistrainingevents.com/inspire.html

12/21/15 Appreciative Leadership in Bangalore  http://www.genesistrainingevents.com/Workshops/ai-mail.html

Books on Amazon: http://goo.gl/OZSMj8

Posts on Facebook: https://goo.gl/MXQEqU

Talks on You Tube: https://goo.gl/dVclfm

Choice Clips from ExPat InSights:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjf3sHaZBSo