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the Voice of Leadership

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Do you ever wonder what makes any speaker-leader effective?

What makes her such that she stands taller and brighter than thousands of other speakers?

And, what makes her such that people do not just applaud her but stand up and shout, “Let’s march!” in response to her words?

When I was just but seven years old, my elder sister older to me by fifteen years, used to dress me up in a hand-me-down suit and necktie and send me off to pay a neighborly visit to our English-speaking’ family across our little house in Pune, India. The very large building across our house was full of Jewish families who had made India their home before the war. She used to tell me to play, spend time with Simon and Moshe, two boys who were just about my age then.

people stand up and respond with a “Let’s march to the sounds and dreams in her voice!”

 

“But Didee, I am scared! They are big. They look and speak so differently,” I would plead.

‘That is okay. They are kind people. They will not bite you!

But DIdee, I don’t speak good English. I am shy!

That’s okay, they will understand your not-so-good English. They might even like it.

But Didee, I went there just last Sunday. Why again?

Well, if you go often, you will pick up their ways faster,” she smiled.

So there I was every now and then popping in the lives of the Cohens across our house. Their home was way bigger than our home. It had a bedroom or two attached to the living room and kitchen. They’d let me in and I’d shyly walk in and plop myself at their dining table feeling lost in an alien land. Mrs. Cohen was kind. Simon, the elder kid was polite but Moshe, the five-year-old was a bit wild. Every now and then he’d walk up close and ‘boo’ me in my face.

After several such no-conversation visits, one day I think I asked for a glass of water. Or, maybe I said thank you very much. I do not remember what I said but Moshe screamed, “He speaks, he speaks, Raju speaks!” Then Simon and Moshe began to hope and dance around me excitedly and Mrs. Cohen smiled happily at me, I felt thrilled and like an idiot at the same time.

That, I believe today, was my very first public speaking experience. Ha!

Post that experience, I went on with my life in India and became an engineer at the age of twenty-three. Then a few years later, I left home and traveled the world doing business, raising kids of my own, and becoming a useful contributor in social and business circles until one day.

One day, at the age of forty-something, I headed a business organization in the Philippines, and at a conference; I had to introduce the chief guest, a presidential candidate in the Philippines at that time. I thought it would be easy. In fact, I thought it would be easy peasy, lemon squeezy but when I stepped up behind the lectern the heebie-jeebies hit me. I could not meet the eyes of the 300 odd people in front of me. I stuttered I blabbered, my mouth went dry and I made a total mess of the task. It was an absolute disaster. I was embarrassed that I wanted to bury my head into the ground and stay there for the rest of my living days. Also, that presidential candidate did not even come close to winning that election back in 1996 and I seriously suspect my introduction of him might have been the main cause for his failure.

Anyway, post that day I promised myself I will not such an incident ever occur again in my life. I promised myself that I will learn to face all kinds of audiences, I will learn to speak well in public and I will be able to speak upon different subjects with ease and élan. After that I immersed myself deeply into the paradigms and principles of public speaking and personal development. Over time my knowledge, skills, and confidence began to improve. Very soon instead of just learning it, I also began to coach others in the paradigms and practices of self-development.

Soon I acquired certificates, diplomas, and deeper knowledge of the principles. Over the last twenty years and more, I have run 1000s of workshops, delivered 100s of keynotes, and personally coached c-level executives across countries and cultures. And, it has been a long, happy, and very fulfilling journey in this profession that has gotten hold of my passion. The other day, an organization asked me to share my story and the things that I may have learned along the way. I have learned a lot and here are just three things that I believe make for a good speaker-leader. A ‘speaker-leader’ because I truly believe that the two are inseparable sisters, two sides of a coin which I like to call ‘the Voice of Leadership.’ Here are three little things believe will, eventually, help you find your leadership voice:

Come From Love:

Professional speakers across the world agree that the one thing that makes them be heard, be trusted, and be influential is when their audiences believe that the speaker-leader cares for their people. When leaders have care and respect for their people then connection, engagement, and influence become a cinch.

Every time I have stepped up on the stage, whether it be at the end of a table or behind a lectern, I performed well, I created tons of value when I cared for and respected the audience. Every time I forgot this fact and became excessively self-centered, I hardly delivered any value.

The practice I follow is that on event morning I spend some time meditating and reminding myself that my core objective is to care, respect, and serve. Then, several times before stepping up to the lectern, I remind myself that my core objective is to care, respect, and create value. This habit never fails to create magic.

When you come from love then your leadership voice becomes that of compassion and empathy. People sense and love that and respond positively.

Stand Up Speak Up:

This is about being authentic and true to your feelings and beliefs. It is also about being cognizant not just of the content but also the context of conversations. It is being brave and vulnerable at the same

Many years ago, at another presidential conference, the president of the country was late in coming. So to fill up time and entertain the people in the halls the organizers requested one of the local, popular singers to fill up the airtime. After belting out a few songs, she resorted to calling people up on stage to sing with her. One of her victims was an expatriate to the country who did not know the language or the local culture. Soon through her jokes, she turned him into a laughing stock.

He had no idea what was going on. I understood what was going and I felt bad for him. I turned to a few people in the room and said we should call this out but they just shrugged and asked me to let it pass. I was annoyed, almost angry, and wanted to call out the entertainer for her actions but I did not. I stayed glued to my seat as if my body were filled with cold lead. The moment passed but the ugly feeling it left inside me did not move on.

Post that moment, I began to perceive both the entertainer woman perpetrator and the expatriate victim with kindness and mercy. I figured that because of her lack of cultural sensitivity and lack of political correctness she knew not what she was doing. The expatriate person knew not what was going on. I was the one who could have stood up and spoken up. Since then, to redeem myself, I have not just sharpened my own sense of cultural sensitivities but also coached hundreds of senior executives across cultures to stand up and speak up sensitively and with respect for diversity.

When you make efforts to stand up and speak up in challenging and sensitive circumstances with the right choice of words and demeanor, you begin to exercise your voice of courage and authenticity. People respect that and turn towards you for guidance and direction.

Get Into the Pit Often:

All kinds of talent need nurturing and care. That is why dancers dance, singers sing and writers write with consistency and as a discipline.

For enhancing your communication, skills take and accept every opportunity to present at, to host or to facilitate meetings. Professional speakers will tell you that scores of times they will take up non-paid speaking assignments to keep their skills honed. Those that want to hone their leadership skills will tell you that they will take up responsibilities and risks to be on top of their game.

With repetitive practice and experience, you reach a point where you no longer need to think about what you are doing. You become competent without the significant effort that characterizes the state of conscious competence.

Thus, the way to get into the pit often to seek opportunities where you can get to speak or take charge of an assignment or a project to lead. As and when you have these opportunities make a sincere effort to place your best foot forward, learn, and grow with your successes and from failures. Over time, you will see that your success to failure ratio improves.

When you make getting into the pit often a discipline then your discipline pays off and your voice, over time, becomes known as the voice of wisdom and experience.

Living out and putting these, habits will work at cleansing and strengthening your value systems. You will learn to become more and more authentic in your ways. You will learn to choose, form, and express your thoughts in such that people will easily connect, engage and be influenced by you. When your competencies enhance you will recognize that you think, speak and act from a place that is true and strong for you. You will speak and act in such a way that people will not just stand up and applaud for you but will people stand up and respond with a “Let’s march to the dreams and the sounds her voice!””

Decades ago, my elder sister, Didee was on the right track when she used to run me off in an ill-fitting suit and a necktie to our English-speaking neighbors saying they will be nice, they will accept me as I am and over time I will transform into a better version of myself.

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How Not To Regret Past Choices  

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Man is stuck in a steel-walled room where the walls are closing in on him swiftly. In a matter of minutes, he is bound to be crushed to death. There is no escape. There is no way out and nobody will come for him. He has pushed, pulled, kicked, banged the walls, and shouted out his lungs. Nothing happened. Death is inevitable!

Then suddenly three doors, simultaneously, begin to slide open in front of him. Through the first one he gets a peep at ferocious beasts scrambling to get at him. Through the second one he gets to peep at snakes, scorpions, and other fanged reptiles trying to creep into the room. And, through the third one he notices piles of yucky garbage pouring in from all sides. Meanwhile, the steel walls are still inching in towards him dangerously.

He does his math and leaps into the door that has loads and loads of yucky garbage pouring in from all sides. He is free. He outwitted sure death and oblivion. Thrilled at his choice and his decision-making abilities he, happily, begins to wade through the garbage hoping to find light and freedom.

Hours and, maybe, days go by and the man is still battling his way through the smells, the filth, and the sickness. Soon his spirits begin to drop and he begins to start cursing his luck, his circumstances and spirals down into regret and unhappiness.

Given the resources, at a certain slice in time, we make the best possible choices we can. At the first instant we thrill at the choices we may have made and then atrophy sets in. We begin to regret choices and circumstances totally forgetting the context and the chance moment that influenced the choices we made.

People do this at work, in life when it comes to making decisions about our health, wealth, and relationships. We hang on to the content and, slowly but steadily, let the context dissipate and fade away into the ether. Sometimes, we even blame and are bitter about the person that may have been a guardian or a guide to the doorway that opened up to that garbage street.

And, I am not not guilty of this habit myself. Oftentimes, I find myself lost in reverie thinking about why I chose what I chose to say, do or be. An example is that moving from high school into college, I chose to study engineering even though my heart was in the arts and letters. Studying to be an engineer assured me of a job given that my family needed support. Taking up the arts only assured pleasure and joy. Today, decades later, I am in a way involved in the arts that is because my needs to survive and be safe are not as demanding as they were back in the day.

Thankfully, over the years I have learned how to quickly snap out of that reverie and get realistic not just about the past, but also about the present and the future. This does not mean crossing out using my failures as feedback. Well, as we all say it now, not ‘feedback’ but it is ‘feed forward’ for me.

How exactly do I do it?

Well, our mind is a little crazy, and a little biased when it comes to recalling life incidents. It justifies our actions and our choices in the way it prefers to and then influences us to repeat and rerun its edited version of reality such that over time we forget and forego of the edits and get completely indulged in self-created fiction.

What I do is that I take a drive down memory lane and regurgitate several other facts of that moment or period of time when I took that life-impacting decision. So there were these three influences that tipped me over into becoming an engineer instead of an artist of some kind.

One, the family needed some financial support and quick. Dad had suffered a stroke and Mom had rheumatoid arthritis for years. I felt responsible and I took the route that would increase my chances of getting a job quickly and fetch me a better dollar than that earned by artists and poets at that time. Actually, the poets and the artists at time did not even get jobs flipping burgers because there were no burger stands in India of that time.

Two, my maternal uncle who had dropped out of an arts college, put up an engineering company serving the needs of cinema halls in a rapidly growing movie industry in India of the seventies and eighties. His business was doing really good and he had flashed some of the cheques that he would pick up from his contractual work.  Being of a very impressionable age, the amounts scrawled on those cheques would make my jaws plunge.

Three, I had scored really good at high school and the numbers on my report card were more befitting towards working towards being an engineer than towards being a dream-ridden artist. I gave in to peer pressure. Well, I did say, I was of an impressionable age then.

There! Uploading of such relevant and objective facts about a period in our lives when we make life-impacting decisions helps us get a perspective, become objective and learn to accept and be accountable for the choices in life we make.

The same strategy of looking back at many other, big and small, life choices helps to accept the current consequences with dignity and grace. This is being accountable to yourself about your own life. It is about not letting context wash away and clinging on to just the cold content of things.

Yes, it works and it helps improve my lot a lot. I would like you to think about this. From within this framework look at your lives: your marriage, your career, your business, and all other decisions you make in life. Remember these words that given the internal and external resources we have at a given moment; we make the best possible choices.

Living out this philosophy will never make things go back and straighten them out.  Turning this philosophy a regular practice will not reduce the ups and downs of life ahead but, for sure, it will dampen our habits of regretting past choices.

Take a look at that story of the man trapped in a room whose walls were closing in on him and he chose one out of the three doors that opened up to him. Think of all the times that you have been trapped in a situation where your abilities, resources, and abilities only offered you three possibilities and you chose the lesser evil. Yes, you chose it like you may have done hundreds and thousands of times before. Like you will forevermore.

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Freedom to Choose, Victor Frankl

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For the longest time, I have not just studied this process but over the years I have experienced and played with it a thousand times. The practice has converted the process into a way of life, my life.

The process was born out of Victor Frankl’s words and research as described in his wonderful book, Man’s Search of Meaning. According to Frankl, while the environment that surrounds a person has an impact, he is totally free to choose his own path. Even in the most critical, toxic surroundings, a person always has the freedom to choose his response towards all stimuli, thus towards his life.

What exactly is the process?

Every time, we are exposed to any stimulus, we respond or, often, we react. Not that all external stimulus is harmful and toxic yet responding automatically, quickly and unmindfully we give up control, we end up letting the environment and circumstances take charge and begin to shape our destiny as they please. The external stimulus might be made up of sight, sound, taste, or touch like good music or a beautiful aroma but the moment it grabs and draws us away the future is decided by that stimulus.

On the contrary, every time we are exposed to any such stimuli if we give those oncoming stimuli a moment, a ponder, and take time to mindfully analyze and choose it then we begin to have control over it and, thus, we begin to design our own destinies with faith and confidence.

The process thus involves being mindful of all the stimuli that come towards us and unto our consciousness through our senses without and within. All that comes towards us is really, first, just data. As soon as it hits our senses, we employ cognition and we categorize and label it to be either sight, sound, taste, touch, smell or even a thought-a memory from within. We then check our feelings about this incoming data. Either we like it or we do not or, at times, we make puny efforts to be neutral to it. Finally, once we have sensed and felt it and categorized it we act upon it.

All this happens in fractions of a second; consciousness, recognition, the feeling it derives and the action we take. The actions we take may be verbal or behavioral. The crux of the process lies in expanding this process. That means taking a fraction of a moment longer to recognize sense and then act upon it. Just a wee bit longer every time. This is what those with a monk-like attitude towards life do; this is what great leaders do. Instead of simply, automatically reacting they give incoming stimuli a pause, a breath and an extra thought thus converting most potentially loaded situations to positive and constructive outcomes.

This is human intelligence, our power to choose and gently have an impact on all the interactions and all the moments, ahead of us. Moments that make up for the miracles, we create. By making this habit a consistent practice, we make it our way of life and influence others and our environment.

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Love and Leadership

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A few years ago, at a convention of the Asian Professional Speakers Singapore, the usual topic of what makes a good speaker great came up. And, as usual, words like integrity, service-orientation, professionalism, value-creation, mastery of the craft, etc. were thrown into the discussion.

Love and Leadership

Then out of nowhere a small voice, like from under the table, says “to be able to deliver a really good keynote, one must love the audience.”

And, bang, every other word that was dumped onto the table gets withdrawn back and people go, “Yeah, that’s right. We ought to love the audience, the people we talk to!” “Yep,” adds another, “when we love them then we feel comfortable with them, they feel good in our presence and the creative energy goes aflame!” “We get into the zone, into the flow,” adds the original, small voice happily, still as if coming from under the table.

Over the years, and across the thousands of times I have spoken to an audience large and small, I bring the memory of that conversation with my friends at the APSS to the desktop of my mind every time someone hands me a microphone. “Love the audience, the people Raju,” I say to myself several times over. As many times, I look up, look at the audience make eye contact and connect with someone a smile crinkles my eyes and he or she smiles back. It feels good. It softens me. It eases my spirit, caresses my ego, and, in the bargain, allays all anxiety. As I take the steps up towards the lectern or the red circle, a desire to serve, to be open, to become vulnerable engulfs me. I feel light and happy and empowered all at the same time. The neuroscientists will claim I feel loved, thus a rush of the dope, oxytocin floods my brain cells that is why I feel light, happy and empowered.

When I feel that way with the microphone in my hand on stage, my words, my voice, my gestures, my eyes, my larger bodily movements spark of the same sensations through and across everyone who can hear, see and sense me. The neuroscientists will claim that those are mirror neurons reflecting and mimicking the activities in my neural networks.

I do not care what the neuroscientists say but I am feeling good. I feel, light, happy and powerful. My people, who I love, feel light, happy, and empowered. It becomes a dance. It stays a dance of learning, co-creating, and growing.

This is not true just for people who grab a microphone, step up on stage and make the audience sway to their words. This is true for any individual who wants to serve, lead, and change the world. To connect, engage and influence our worlds we ought to truly care for our worlds, our people. The deepest of our intentions then works for the benefits and betterment of others. Call it to care, call it empathy or call it compassion, it really is love in its agape form.

Most all the time the people we want to connect, engage and influence is usually looking and sensing behind and beyond our appearances, our communication, and our behaviors. They are, usually, looking behind and beyond our skills, our abilities; they are looking at our intentions, our deepest desires towards them and their worlds. Once they hear, see and sense benevolence and good intentions then they not just simply sway with us but begin to march towards a brighter future.

You may have heard this from Mary Lou Angelou many times before and it makes for precision when it comes to public speaking and love. It makes for massive sense when it comes to leadership and love. Here it is, “People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

Beyond your words and well-manicured behaviors, people will always see and sense what exactly is going on in the deepest parts of your heart for them. When they are convinced that what is cooking in the heart-pot of yours they will lick their lips, raise their faces up into the air, and love you back for loving them truly and loving them right.

So on this day of love and love-giving, take a moment to reflect upon what are you trying to change around you and among your networks. Are you changing it out of the true and deep love for the recipients of that change?

Reflect deeply and truly and if the answer from within you is a resounding yes then go, grab that microphone, step up on that lectern, look the ZOOM camera in the eye and state your case. When your case is loaded with love, you shall shine, you shall lead and you shall change your world.

On February 24, inspired by my book-the HeART of Public Speaking, I am running an open to the public webinar on how to connect, engage and influence your world on virtual platforms like ZOOM. Send me a message and I will send you a free invitation.

Live well, love much, and laugh often even if your voice sounds as if it is always emerging from under a table.

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Gumption, Resilience and Innovation for Tough Times

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Back in April 2020, at one of my open to public webinars on Emotional Intelligence, I had more than 2000 attendees and a large number of them were public school teachers. I was happily surprised. You see we had not positioned the webinar towards the teaching community. We had wanted to fill our Zoom room with business executives and business owners. We wanted them to weather the crisis and the oncoming challenges with calm and equanimity. My assumption is that the teaching community turned up in numbers because they wanted to learn the subject since changing times would demand a lot more from them than they had been used to giving in the past.

My suspicions about that are further validated because for the last several months, from across my home, I hear a female teacher conduct online classes. I hear her speak, explain, cajole, and applaud children. She goes on full throttle for hours and hours for several days in a week talking about math, the sciences, and values. It is just amazing and mind-blowing to see her expel so much passion and energy. Hats off to her and hats off to the nobility of her passion and profession.

In Delhi, a former diplomat and his singer wife, Virendra and Veen Gupta, took to the streets and beg

an to conduct free classes for underprivileged children who have little access to electronic devices and the internet. Paper and pencils in hands scores of children walk miles to come sit and learn under a tree in India.

The COVD-19 growth curve has not flattened across the world but it has flattened. Humanity has gathered gumption, garnered the ability to be resilient, and innovate thousands of products and practices in the last six months. Online learning platforms, organic classroom and office-dividers, re-usable and biodegradable masks, and partitions have come up from across the world.  Retailers and malls have turned their stores inside out. A huge amount of business and work gets conducted in open spaces, on streets, under tents and trees.

Our spirits are indomitable. We will go on to, of course, win this war with gumption, resilience, and abilities to come up with new ideas to surge ahead. On November 21, I will be running another free webinar on how to act courageously, with tenacity, and with a focus on innovation and growth in these changing times. Hoping that though they are not business-focused, the teachers who inspire the world will join us for GRI.T². That is gumption, resilience, and innovation for tough times. In the webinar, we will skim over the philosophies but dive deep into the possibilities and practices of changing the world one innovative action at a time.

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R E S P E C T, Earn it by Giving it!

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Respect is an essential currency of exchange with family, at work and with society.

The ABC’s of earning and accumulating respect are quite similar to earning and accumulating financial wealth. You can be born, or get married, or sneak into a position of power and demand respect.

On the other hand, you can honestly work your way up and become a self-made man of respect.

You can also go flat broke at it.

Several years ago, a c-level department head came to me claiming he had lost a lot of respect among his workers. He was the head of logistics, had seven managers and another 200 people working under him.

My people do not like me, engagement has dropped and work is suffering, he said.

He was new to the company, to the culture and the country. After an hour or so of probing, we uncovered the root cause. One time, he confessed, he had spoken harshly to an elderly colleague in the presence of all others. She was hurt and insulted; he had robbed her of respect. Her teammates and eventually the whole department empathized with her. In return, they too turned cold and indifferent towards him.

It has been six months, Coach Raju, what do I do? He cried in pain.

R E S P E C T

Can I go and apologize to the person? Nope, it will not help. It is a shy, relationship-oriented culture.

Can I call them all over for dinner and do some bonding? Nope, it will seem like a bribe and cause more harm.

Go the front end of your logistics department. Work with the drivers, the maintenance and the messenger boys. Treat them with courtesy, care and respect first. Be humble, remember their names and get to know them better, I offered.

He agreed and worked at it diligently. Six months later things began to look up. Slowly, he began to get into the good books of everyone. His respect balance sheet began to glow in his favor. He was getting it back because he was giving it away authentically, truly and humbly. His changed behavior began to influence the company culture. He was a happy man.

With tiny errors such as his our respect, our reputation can come crashing down like a sheet of glass. When it has to be put together, it has to be put together piece by piece, shard by shard. Sometimes, it can never be put back together.

So I use what I call the ABC’s of Respect.

What are the ABC’s of earning respect?

The A is Awareness. Become highly aware of the ambiance, the atmosphere and the accoutrements of respect around you. Watch people, appreciate diversity and understand rituals. Find your place and niche in the world. Your heightened awareness will improve your appearance in the eyes of others. And, they will return that favor to you.

The B is for your Beliefs. Do you believe the world is a lousy, unhappy and a sad place? If yes, then your behavior will follow your belief. Do you believe that it is a dog eat dog world then your behavior will bark at others. Generate an abundant mentality and your behavior will become affirmative.

The C is for Conscientious Communications. Select each letter and word as if you were picking flowers. Morph them positively. Bead them like a garland towards energizing others. My father, a tailor in India, used to say “Son, measure twice and cut once.” The same applies to communicating, think twice and speak once.

Do all this consistently, compassionately and with authenticity. Overtime you will notice that respecting others is a fruitful investment that brings you exponential returns.

Sometimes, money is called the root of all evils. Respect surely is the fruit of all that is good. Yes!

That is true and authentic power. That is how to grow and thrive

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The One, Most Important Thing in Public Speaking

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It did not take me long to think about when I was asked the question, “What is that one, most thing about succeeding at public speaking?”

Well, some people call it the fear of public speaking and the naturally shy people call it nervousness. My choice of the word to represent this malady is anxiety? Most people, whether they are the front-liners or the head honchos of an organization, they are all anxious about having to face an audience.

So, before we go into how to manage it and succeed at the interaction let us consider the source of this anxiety and the cause of this malady.

In my opinion this anxiety is generated from two aspects, two sources.  First, it is generated by the fact that the speaker thinks that the audience may be too good for her. That means, they may be too knowledgeable, way too intelligent and way to classy for her. And, that they may perceive her wrongly and may judge her too harshly. The second source to this is that the speaker may feel that he is too classy, much too knowledgeable and much too advanced for the audience he is to address.

Both these extremes rise from the dimension of a misplaced self-image, a warped self-esteem or the manifestation of a false ego, if I may. This internal misperception and an external behavior that makes an effort to put on a show create a discord, a dissonance and a lack of congruence in the speaker. That lack of congruence is seen and sensed by the audience and thus, they too tune out. When they tune out, the speaker and his performance come crashing down too. This does not just happen on the speaking stage but also occurs on all leadership platforms. Scroll down the history of the world and you will see that leaders came crashing down, when they did not say or do what they meant or meant to do what they had said they would.

How do you manage to survive and thrive through this?

As a speaker just before you speak and throughout speaking you need to be stepping out of your own skin and stay vulnerable. You need to stop excessively focusing upon how good you look or not; how well you speak or not and how perfectly placed your content is for the event and the customer- audience. Your heart, your mind and, sometimes, even your smartphone needs to just living and breathing in kindness and a deep desire for creating value for the audience. To make the customer king, while speaking is to get out of your own way; get out of your own skin.

How is this done?

Considering that you have done all the homework you need to have done before the speaking event, you need to calm down. You need to let go all concerns of not doing a good job. You need, also, let go of the entire negative and excessively brittle and moral self-talk. You need to deflate. You need to bring your attention to how you are breathing. When your breathing stops sounding and feeling like you were pumping iron or when you choked your breath upon the sight of a dog that you were scared. Your breathing needs to even down to like that of a baby at sleep. It needs to go easy in, easy out and through the diaphragm. Rhythmic and calm with your shoulders, eyes and tongue as relaxed as possible.

The moment you deflate, ground and calm down then your attention will stop obsessing with yourself and move towards being present and conscious of your audience’s space, their current state and then their learning needs. It is then that you can and will begin to shine as a speaker, a great communicator and a leader that inspires and makes her world evolve beautifully. At this stage your interaction with your audience becomes a dance of love, of engagement and co-creation.

That which works in public speaking, works in running fruitful meetings. That which works in public speaking works in bringing the best out of others. That which works in public speaking, works in leading your world a brighter tomorrow. This is the one, most important thing in most everything in life; being in the here and now and then taking the world into their future with humility and with compassion.

Attend the one day workshop of The HeART of Public Speaking in Cebu on September 24, 2019. Register Here:

 

 

 

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Wanna’ become a Good Storyteller?

Wanna’ become a good storyteller? Here, five quick steps. Catch!humor-launch-20062

First memorize it like crazy, then forget it for a while. It will have found a hiding place for itself in your deeper brain.

Second make attempts to tell it from memory in your own words, like a casual chat. You will feel like and become OWNER of the new version.

Third, tell it from the perspective of one of the characters in the story. If there are no characters other than you then let any inanimate object, say a chair, from the story tell the story. It’ll help you enhance the drama when you really tell the story next time.

Four, have someone else tell you or read the original or your new script. You will discover new areas where impact and engagement can be increased.

Five, go all out when you tell it. Live your dream-delivery, model your storytelling hero. Enjoy. Unleash yourself unashamedly. Stories are meant to be told so they inspire and motivate others so why hold yourself back? Go! Fly! Shine!

Five point five, buy the HeART of the STORY from Amazon.

Or, catch me here at the Dubai, HR Summit

 

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Five Philosophies of Appreciative Leadership

Most individual and organizations go around carrying a cudgel of “what is wrong and who is to blame,” in all the businesses and the organizations we lead.

This approach of looking for problems may work for complex machinery and systems but fails drastically when it comes to human groups because human relationships are not just complex but are complicated.

Thus, a mechanical+rational+cognitive approach to resolving issues rarely work and barely sustainable. Over the decades, a new strengths-based, affirmative approach, a way of life has been delivering brilliant and beautiful results.

What will work better is “what’s working, what strengths can we employ and who is passionate about taking the lead?”

And, it takes five beliefs that can come handy in driving productive change:

  1. Every individual and organization is a beautiful mystery to be unfolded and unleashed.
  2. In life, and at work there are multiple realities and these realities construct according to how we perceive them collectively.
  3. The strengths and the resources that we most focus upon will grow magnificently.
  4. Every positive, empowering question we ask will simultaneously give rise to affirmative thought followed by action.
  5. When we filter, choose and select every grain, every word in our conversations for success and strengths, we build a beautiful world.

Appreciative Leadership is a personal and organizational leadership program influenced by Appreciative Inquiry, a holistic method and a process to initiate, drive and succeed affirmatively and sustainably all change programs.

Right after the Hospital Management Awards on September 7-8 in Vietnam, on September 09, 2016 sign up for a whole day workshop on Appreciative Leadership organized by the Vietnam Marketing Association.

Should you wish to sponsor, help promote this please call or send an email to Ms. Mai Nguyen (Ms.) | Workshop Project Manager of VMI at

P: +(848) 3507 3575  |  HP: +(848) 908 863 118  /  Email:mainh@vmi.edu.vn  to confirm. Website: www.VMI.edu.vn

Appreciative Leadership

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Appreciative Leadership & Ha Long Bay

Individuals and Organizations are Mysteries to be Explored and Uncovered.

Individuals and Organizations are Mysteries to be Explored and Uncovered.

A few years ago, on a cruise, at early dawn we sailed into Vietnam’s Ha Long Bay. Not just the moment but the whole morning was nothing but magical, majestic.

The dark, dense water seemed to caress and draw the ship deeper into the bay. The giant rocks, strewn with shrubs, seemed to gently glide, bend and bow down inviting us to feel free and awed by the beauty. The sights were amazingly beautiful. The murmuring water was love-giving and the scents from the shrubs nourished our souls.

Today, as I relive the memory, part of me wonders why I didn’t find the dull darkness to be scary. Why didn’t the deep, dense water strike fear into my heart and why didn’t the jagged rocks remind me of the Titanic’s fate? I guess the answer to this mystery might lay in the fact that a part of me was expecting and looking forward to the sights, sounds and the smells of Ha Long Bay being beautiful and awesome. I also suspect that, over the years, the millions who visit and capture this beauty also undergo the same magic and majesty. They all come filled with a sense of wonder and an expectancy to witness the beautiful.

In a similar way, the underlying philosophies of ‘Appreciative Inquiry’ urge us to approach individual systems and organizations in a similar way, with the same wonder and a similar sense of being greeted by majestic beauty.  Appreciative Inquiry, a method of facilitation and developing organizations was first conceptualized by Dr. David Cooperrider of Case Western University in the 80s.

It claims, our default approach in looking at people, looking at teams and organizations made of people is to try and zero in on what is wrong with them and how do I, as a leader, fix that problem. It questions, what if we were to simply flip that first, defaulting assumption of ours and look for strengths, for resources, for successes? Wouldn’t that change our approach, our mind-sets and thus our behavior towards these entities, these systems and these living organizations?

Over the years, across the globe several leaders and change agents have discovered this secret and used it powerfully and fruitfully to turn individuals and organizations from good to great. It’s an approach, a way of life that adds power, beauty and strength into our initiatives to change and innovate.  The philosophical presumption is “individuals and organizations are mysteries to be explored and uncovered.”

On September 09, 2016 in Vietnam, in association with Vietnam Marketing and Management, I will be conducting a whole day, interactive workshop on Appreciative Leadership.  This follows the Hospital Management Awards being held in Ho Chi Minh City on September 7 & 8, 2016. On that day not only will I accompany you on this journey but also guide you into being able navigate your own ships into magic and majestic landscapes like Ha Long Bay.

Vietnam Marketing:  http://www.vmi.edu.vn/

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

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

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

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

Raju Mandhyan

www.mandhyan.com

 

 

 

 

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