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Other Side of the Mountain 

It has been the biggest crisis of our lives. It is visible out on the streets whenever I dare to venture out.

People are walking around as if they were in frenzy. In shops, groceries etc., we look at each other suspiciously. Making as if each one of us was out to harm another.  Even though the traffic congestion is half as bad as before, cars whizz past you discourteously and even aggressively. And, mind you, we are all still nice people, essentially kind human beings.

We have been traumatized by the fear, the facts, and the fierceness of this virus. Consultant friends of mine, over an online meeting, claimed that those in power and the world at large is ignoring the trauma. My response was that the average Joe and Juanita are unaware of how that trauma manifests and how it plays out in the end.

It manifests in the form of excessive boredom, doubt, depression, forgetfulness, and even uncalled for anger over petty things. What constructive things can we do to lessen the impact of this mishap?

Acknowledge the fear and accept the facts: Over an online meeting with fellow coaches and consultants it came up that we as a people are ignoring the trauma caused by the current circumstances. My offer was that way before ignore we need to learn to become aware of it and acknowledge its existence. That, by itself, is half the cure already. Take time out to sit down, mediate reflect or have a gentle, non-melodramatic, chat with family and friends. Discuss your feelings, the facts and the existence of fear. Leave out the news and the toxic gossip that is flooding your phones.

Work your body more than your mind: I do not have to have to tell you how intricately mind and body; body and mind are connected. You know it. Working your body will stretch you healthily. A well-stretched body rests better and sleeps better. It takes you away from dark, fearful and pointless imaginings. It snatches you away from gadgets and indulging in trashy news and information. In the last seven months done I have done more walking, biking, gardening, cooking, meditating, yoga and carpentry than I have done in any other seven months of my life. This does not I read, write, study, facilitate, train, speak or coach less for my profession. Surely, business has dropped but I have kept my shop and services open and sensibly active.

Perk up your faith: Yes, the religious kind and, even the faith in self and the universe. Make a deliberate mental effort to keep your self-talk positive, affirmative and optimistic. Focus on the possibilities rationally and hard just as you would use your neo-cortex, analytical brain to solve a math problem, focus upon thinking positively and affirmatively repeatedly.

There are a hundred other things we can do to traverse through these times but I assure you that these three practices will be at the core of all other suggestions. Take them to your heart and work at them using your head and your hands. We will soon be seeing other at the other side of this mountain.

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Raju MAndhyan

Respect, Renunciation and Resilience in Sales

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It’s sad enough that the world is broken up into so many geographical parts. We have drawn lines of differentiation from the North to the South Pole, from the East to the West. Our beliefs, ethnicities and cultural mindset further influence our attitude and treatment of others, putting them into stereo-typed segments. Effective and successful leaders must strive to rise above all this murk. They have an open and supportive mindset backed by immense tolerance for other people who do not reason, romanticize or react to issues the way they do.

Although the human brain is divided into the three functional segments of reasoning, romanticizing and reacting, every single one of us is a unique individual because of different genetic permutations, diverse backgrounds, and variances in education and exposures. Unfortunately, societal programming leads us into generalizing and stereotyping people at first glance.  Effective and successful leaders respect diversity by accepting that people are different. Their behavior is simply different; not necessarily bad or worse than our own uniqueness. In addition, leaders and successful salespeople profoundly recognize that human circumstances and perspectives are in a state of constant flux. Perceived realities vary and these realities change from moment to moment all the time.

A buyer who shows interest in your product on Monday morning may suddenly have a shift in his circumstances and could change his mind on Tuesday afternoon. The ultimate reality is:  different realities and they are changing all the time. It’s easy to say “different strokes for different folks” or “the only constant in this world is change” but it’s totally another matter to live out these truths. To succeed across diversity and constant change, we must live out these beliefs and practice open-mindedness, flexibility and adaptability… all the time, evert time.

In the world of neurosciences and its application to work, there exists a respected group of consultants who do not at all use the word ‘is’ when describing another person in their communications and interactions. Why?  They believe what ‘is’ means to the speaker is simply that particular speaker’s perspective; not solid fact.  What ‘is’ today may not be what ‘is’ tomorrow. Everything and everyone is always changing.

Raju MAndhyan

Respect, Resilience and Renunciation

Respecting diversity amongst people is a challenging habit to live out and practice. Yet it can grant us the power of being a super sales performer and human being above par.  With this habit we can become active learners, early adapters and resilient Samurais of interpersonal skills in every sales and selling interaction. It keeps our proverbial ‘saw’ eternally sharp and smooth so it can cut, softly and subtly, through the hardest of challenges.

An attitude and mindset like this builds resiliency, help us practice Zen-like renunciation from short-term results and instant gratifications common in the business of selling and driving positive change. So go leap of those cliffs every day and should you fall then get up, dust yourself off and get into the pit again and again.  Remember to respect differences, renunciate from the anguish of failure and keep your spirits bouncy.

Article inspired by The HeART of the CLOSE

 

Raju Mandhyan, Author, Coach and Learning Facilitator

www.mandhyan.com

 

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Raju Mandhyan and Ram Charan

What Your Customer Wants You to Know

In his book, What the Customer Wants You to Know, Professor Ram Charan shares the story of Unifi Inc., a textile maker in Greensboro, North Carolina.  This is a company that rolled in serious trouble in the past caused by low-priced goods from China and India flooding the US markets.  Professor Ram Charan writes about how the CEO of Unifi Inc. placed their Chief Information Officer in charge of sales.

Raju Mandhyan and Ram Charan

What Your Customer Wants You to Know

Instead of utilizing traditional methods to motivate and move sales, the CIO assembled his whole sales team and asked them not sell but to instead just focus on gathering maximum information about their customers.  His sales team studied the business models of each of their former customers and their prospects to learn about their supply chain as well as the businesses of their customer’s customer.  Day after day, the CIO  pushed the sales team not sell but to learn, so they hit the road to learn everything, including the end users’ consumption habits of the textile they made.  Unify Inc. represented, by their sales representatives, figured out how mothers, fathers and children perceived the fabrics and the goods made from fabrics they manufactured.

Professor Ram Charan claims the process was unusual and extremely frustrating for the seasoned business-to-business sales persons. They found it unproductive and tiresome. But after several weeks of information gathering and insight accumulation about the consumers and the end customers, business began to gradually pick up. The customers, dealers and other converters of their raw material were amazed by the unusual approach of the Unifi Inc. sales team and they eagerly offered insights and tips for changing the game.  The learning held relevance across industries, business models and economies engaged in all kinds of textile and fabric.  Information and insights into the customer’s business made up the art of giving value for the customer.  Eventually, business picked up for Unify Inc. and they successfully got out of the red.

Find out what they do and how they do it.  Find out how their business systems work–where and how their products and services reach their users.  Discover the kind of corporate culture they have.  How are decisions made? What type of internal communication is used?  How is the company doing in terms of profitability and growth?  How are they perceived by their customers?

Conduct this probing carefully and diligently.  The more focus and time you give to this aspect, the easier it will be to pin-point your customers’ needs. Employ a combination of Research and Reflective questioning.  Refrain from going, “I know exactly what you need.”  Even if you reach this conclusion about what exactly your customer needs, wait until your customer is willing to see the solution you visualize in your mind’s eye.

Often times, the customers themselves try to blur the need because they don’t want to expose their needy, vulnerable side or show their concern about the change and investment they’ll need to make to resolve their needs.  They could be exercising caution against revealing too much while you are searching deeply for details.  Understand this dance and stay focused only on solving and serving rather than on selling at this stage.

Knowing deeply and thoroughly what your customer needs is more than half the journey to serving your customers delightfully.

 

Raju Mandhyan

www.mandhyan.com

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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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The HeART of Public Speaking

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MANY A TIMES in my workshops on public speaking, sales, negotiations and other soft skills, I have stressed the importance of acutely aligning our internal resources like our mood, our state of mind and most importantly our authentic agenda behind the conversation.

I have also stressed, referring to the 55+38+7 percentage rule of Dr. Albert Mehrebian which highlights the impact of body language, nonverbal behavior and words used in our conversations.. The 55+38+7 percentage rule on impact and effectiveness states that of a 100% impact upon our listeners, 7% comes from words, 35% from tonality and other nonverbal behavior and 55% from our bodily movements and total presence.

Now this is only partially understood by many and completely misinterpreted by many a trainer and coach of interpersonal communications. When Dr. Mehrebian, originally, conducted studies on communication patterns the results of the studies were widely circulated in the press, in abbreviated form, leading to blithe acceptance and generalization of his thesis.

Think, Edit, Speak!

Dr. Mehrabian’s research was to decipher the relative impact of facial expressions and spoken words. His subjects were asked to listen to a recording of a voice saying the single word “maybe” in three tonalities, to convey liking, disliking and neutrality. The subjects were then shown pictures of the faces conveying the same three emotions. Then subjects were asked to guess the emotions portrayed by the recorded voice, the pictures and both combined. The subjects’ assessment of the picture plus voice drew more accurate responses.

In another study, subjects listened to nine recorded words, three meant to convey liking (honey, dear and thanks), three to convey neutrality (maybe, really and oh) and three to convey disliking (don’t, brute and terrible). The words were spoken with varying tonalities and subjects were asked to guess the emotions behind the spoken words. The finding was that tone created more impact and meaning than words alone.

Thus the 55+38+7 rule was born and has been promoted around for years and decades across disciplines and other learning interaction. Years later, Dr. Mehrebian declared he never intended his results to be applied to everyday conversations and public speakers cannot just depend on 55+38% impact alone. The truth is that the spoken word has several intangible components and a flat out application or the assumption of this rule would be a fallacy. All interactions must equally depend on the three factors, i.e., body, nonverbal and the words. The percentages of each may resemble the rule for 100% impact but in reality will vary upon depending on the medium and the context.

What true and heavy impact will really depend upon is the clarity, the purpose and the authentic agenda of the speaker. Through the filters of the body, the tonality, the gestures, the micro-gestures and flowery language what are truly seen, heard and sensed well are the purpose and the agenda of the speaker. Getting an alignment and agreement between what we truly want, feel and need helps make the outward expression of it more viable, acceptable and impact heavy. Alignment of our internal resources: spiritual, emotional, intellectual and physical is guaranteed to create resonance and consensus easily.

In public speaking this is the heart of it. When any speaker or business leader manages to dive deep into her own self and surfaces with valuable insights and resources that will serve and please her audience then she just doesn’t communicate effectively but evokes great emotions and drives transformations. Back in the day, they used to say that when Socrates spoke people claimed “great speech, great speech!” and when Demosthenes spoke people used to get on their feet and claim “let’s march!”

In today’s milieu people experience anxiety, doubt and fear when it comes to facing large audience because we feel we will be judged and truly so. Yes, we will be judged by several pairs of eyes and ears. These eyes and ears and other senses will zero in and probe into what exactly you wish to achieve as speaker and a leader. If you wish to benefit and authentically serve your audiences then most all anxiety, doubt and fear will fizzle away because your heart and mind will move away from being self-focused and more into serving the gift of your knowledge and wisdom to others. The heart of public speaking, as a leader, may be yours but it beats because of your audiences and your world.

#publicspeaking #authenticity #leadership #influence #authenticinfluence

Raju Mandhyan

Author, Coach and Facilitator

www.mandhyan.com

 

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Authenticity and Influence in Sales

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The other day at a business gathering someone asked me, “Raju, what, according to you, has changed in sales and selling over the decades?” Slightly offended by the inclusion of the word decades in the question I quickly brushed it aside by saying “nothing has changed” and moved on. Late at night, I lay wondering and thinking about my experiments and experiences in selling.

At my first honorary job with my father, which was to run errands and try selling for his small school-bag making business, I’d sell nothing at every interaction. I’d walk into his customer’s shops and stand against the wall; tongue-tied praying the shop-owner would leap out from behind his glass counter and beg me to send him school bags. That never happened. I sold zilch. Dad lost hair worrying about my future as a business person.

At my second job, after making it as an engineer, I was assigned to sales. Sales in the engineering company I worked for meant filling up a large wad of papers with numbers, descriptions and a covering letter called proposals. There were templates to follow, listed prices to tally up but there was barely any people to people interaction. The wheeling, dealing and the closing was done by those big-bellied guys called bosses.

At my third job selling futures in pork-bellies, orange juice, barley, copper and gold my then ‘balikbayan’ boss Ricky Ho saw me suffer at selling and called me aside and said, “Hey Raju, recognize this, people sell for two reasons: one to get rid of something and two to make a profit. What do you want to’ do?” I owned nothing and thus nothing had to be gotten rid of, so I supposed I’d had to make a profit. After that epiphanous moment I learned to sell.  The need to survive taught me how to make cold calls, how to qualify, analyze, integrate, pitch, offer, present, solve, offset objections, sooth, meander, negotiate, upsell, cross-sell, resell, negotiate, close, re-open, serve with maximum subtlety and suaveness.

Thus, decades ago, uh-oh, there is that word decades again. Decades ago, or before the turn of the century, the “ABC” selling was, as Alec Baldwin screamed in the 1992 movie Glengarry Glen Ross, was to “Always Be Closing.” But as the previous century began to wind up entered the ‘internet of things,’ and Alibaba, and explosions of access to all avenues of humongous information. The days of just selling to get rid of something or make a profit out of something began to slowly and steadily began to be replaced by terms like relationship selling, consultative selling, solution selling, ethical sales, selling to serve, selling to solve, selling to not just create value but to co-create value. Sales and selling had merged into resolving needs and serving customer desires. No, it really had moved beyond finding solutions and serving needs. The seller and the buyer had to tear down walls of privacy and secrets between themselves. It wasn’t just one against another but both, together, towards a faster, better and a cheaper world.

Individuals and companies which did not adapt to this reset got covered in cobwebs and then in white sheets. Rest in peace names like Kodak, IBM, Mattel, Tower Records, Sears, etc.

Yet there was a certain element of truth to my response of “nothing” to the question, “Raju, what, according to you, has changed in sales and selling over the decades?”

Yes, the sales environment has changed. Yes, the rules of the game in the marketplace are different. Yes, the tools of the trade are niftier and swifter. Yes, even the attitude has taken a turn and is still transforming for the better. What hasn’t changed is that every transaction whether it is to get rid of something, to make profit out of something or to serve a need and find mutually beneficial solutions is that all of them require trust. Trust, raw and unadulterated trust.

The oldest profession in the world requires a certain element of trust. The used car salesman, no matter how sleazy, requires to become worthy of trust. Ricky Ho my former boss, needed to earn a lot of trust to sell bellies of pork upon which all his big time investors never laid eyes upon. The guy who sells Boeing airplanes to the airlines of all nations needs to acquire trust and so does every other sales and service professional that sits behind a monitor and hacks away at a keyboard to sell unseen products to unmet customers.

The why and the how of earning trust from one to another hasn’t changed and might never change till the end of time.

The prelude into earning trust is authenticity. Here, not just the salesperson but every person and every leader needs not just have an attitude but believe and act out of a hutzpah made out of originality, honesty, openness, courage and vulnerability. A person with that kind of a hutzpah stands out because he stands up and steps in the right direction consistently. He now becomes trustworthy. To earn trust he needs to blend consistency with competence and compassion for the customer, for the stake-holders. Overtime such a leader becomes a champion at earning trust.

The obvious postlude to trust is that your people, your followers, your partners, customers gently and surely move in the right directions that you and them take together. That is influence.

In the coming decades and eons all that we see and hear as innovation, may innovate further, but the backbone of all growth and positive change in sales or any service will always be authentic influence.

Raju Mandhyan

Author, Coach and Trainer

www.mandhyan.com         Unleashing Inherent Excellence!

http://twitter.com/RajuMandhyan

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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

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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

 

 

 

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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

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Seven Plus Minus Two from NLP

Have you ever walked into a meeting late, because of heavy traffic en-route, and been unable to concentrate on agenda at hand right away? Does a part of you want to focus on the work while another part of you is still anxious, stressed and testy about the traffic conditions you just recovered from?

Seven Plus Minus Two Principle from NLP

Seven Plus Minus Two Principle from NLP

Or, at times, have you tried to pitch a presentation to an important customer, behind a large desk, who is signing papers, taking calls, punching his keyboard, sipping coffee while politely asking you to keep on talking. He claims he can multi-task and is listening to you but at the end of your pitch you still feel let down.

Meeting maladies similar to these can be resolved by understanding, in depth, another principle of Neuro Linguistic Programming: At any given moment, our conscious mind, can only hold and juggle with seven plus or minus two chunks of thoughts.

For example, while driving through traffic, you are intensely navigating, formulating an explanation for your tardiness, reviewing your planned presentation, pondering upon discussions or activities you may have concluded earlier, reading your messages on your phone, planning the evening, regretting not having eaten a healthy breakfast, thinking of the family, etc;  All this is hyper-mental activity. And, some of the areas that we reactively think about can be switched off to be able to calm yourself and focus on what is crucial. Just like a computer, the desktop of our mind can be faster and more efficient if it is running fewer applications at a given moment.

Your obvious question would be how do I do this? That’s correct. For yourself, you need to become conscious of the fact that you are running in a hyper mode and then zero in on your breathing and focus on it. A few minutes of paying attention to your breathing will shut down several less important issues the desktop of your mind may be juggling. If your mind wants to react, stop and go back to focusing on your breathing. In the long term practice will make you perfect.

How do you handle the customer behind the large desk, who wants you to go on talking when you know he is running in a hyper-mode and may not be giving you a hundred per cent attention? Stop speaking, slow down your presentation, deliberate on your pauses, and politely ask him to finish signing the papers or answering that email. Like: ” I see you like answering off important emails promptly?” That’ll break his trance, his pattern and he will look up and give you attention.

Ask him non-probing questions about the biggest chunk of thought he may be juggling on the desktop of his mind. Do or say anything that you feel will help him switch off some of the activities and give you better attention. A word of caution: Don’t be cheeky or obvious about it because that may embarrass him.

In summary, powerful leadership conversations are also about understanding and managing the subjective state rather than just what is on the surface. Practice these methods and you will find yourself achieving a lot more in half the time and at half the cost.

 

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