Analogy / Parable: The Chemistry of Success.

A useful parable / analogy when training people.

Way back when I went to school, to my chemistry classes… Oh, the fun of it.
Outside the classroom hung a rack of white coats and I would importantly pull one on and step in through the door. Infront of me were rows of dark benches and stools placed before them.
I would pick my stool and settle before the bench.

With great ado and showmanship, I would light my bunsen burner and put a small beaker of water atop of the flame.
Sure enough, within minutes the water would be boiling and steam would rise into the air.
It was very impressive.
For about half a second before I became bored with it.

Then however, I would reach into my pocket and pull out of it a secret.
A tiny, singular crystal.
This I would drop into the water and to the amazement of everyone around me, the water turned a vibrant purple and the clouds of steam billowed forth until there was nothing but wonderful purple powder left in the base of the beaker.

Now I can bring everything with me for your success.
I can provide the white coat and protective glasses.
I can provide the classroom, the bunsen burner and the beaker of water.

What I need you to contemplate is what you can bring to the table.
I need you to bring that single crystal.
That crystal is called ‘Passion’ and if you can bring that with you,
I can make you successful.

Have you got that crystal?

Iran: Pre-text for War.

Today, headlining the BBC is the story that the British Govt is looking to specifically reveal that the British Marines ‘kidnapped’ by Iran were not in Iranian waters.
This is being presented by the British as ‘pulling the rug out from under the Iranians’.

What a load of bollocks.

I’d offer this as perhaps a more accurate representation of the British Govts decision.

The British Govt is acutely aware of the publics complete loss of confidence in their ability to present events in a true manner (I refer as only one example, invading Iraq on the excuse of ‘WMD’ – appalling!)

The BBC and a spokeperson for Whitehall have already admitted that this tactic they are looking to employ today may have no effect on the Iranians.
That is a moot point because releasing such information is not meant to have an effect in that direction. (any effect would be a bonus.)
The information is being released for the sole reason of trying to buoy up the publics confidence in the Govts spin.

Never before in history have I seen such a tactic undertaken and it is a sad reflection on the appalling state of no-confidence the British public – perhaps the World – has of Blairs Government.

Parable: Finding the Good in Anyone.

Edward Longshanks, also known as Kind Edward I of England was a bastard.

However, before he confirmed this with his actions, his life as a child was an interesting one.
His mother had a premonition that when Edward was about seven years old, he had to be at a castle in France.
His mother – Queen consort Eleanor of Provence - didn’t know why Edward had to be there but was intent that it should be so. It was quite a feat for the Queen consort to influence the Royal Court (let alone be heard) but she had her way and the Royal Family made their way to the castle.

According to the story, the family had to be in the garden at a certain time on a certain day and Eleanor made sure it was so.
Young Edward was reputedly bored and therefore to occupy himself, was running around the maze in the garden when quite unexpectedly he turned a corner and came face to face with a seven year old girl.
It was love at first sight and some nine years later the two were married.
Like his mother, Edwards wife was called Eleanor.

Edward went on to conquer Wales and tried to conquer Scotland and was renowned for his visciousness and cruelty.
He is believed to have instigated a rule in Scotland that when any Scotswoman was to be married, she had first to sleep with the local Lord of the Land (ie. raped) on her wedding night before she could be returned to her husband.
(The idea apparently being that by being forced to sleep with an Englishman, the Scottish blood line would eventually be lost.)

He persecuted the Jews and was the first to insist that Jews place small yellow patches of cloth on their clothes to identify themselves – a technique later used by another bastard, Adolf Hitler –  before eventually he threw all Jews out of England.

His wife accompanied him on all his journeys across the Great British isles as he undertook each military campaign. They apparently never spent a night apart throughout their married life.
However one night in Lincoln, Eleanor died.
Edward was reportedly swamped with grief.
He turned his army back toward London as as the enormous group traveled back to the capital, Edward had a huge cross erected to his wife as they stopped and camped each evening.
These became known as the Eleanor Crosses. Twelve of them stretched down across the East coast of England.

The last one was erected at Charing Cross – the very Centre of London.
Charing meaning ‘Queen’. 

For all of Edwards cruelty – of which much I have not even touched upon – for all of his lack of redeeming qualities, like all men, somewhere there is some good. Somewhere there is a heart. Somewhere there is something positive that can motivate…

Sales: Obliterate aggression.

By pure chance today (if one believes in chances / coincidences…) I bumped into an old friend today in the centre of the city.
He’s a young chap and superbly successful; a partner in a sales company.

He had just returned from six months in the Middle East where he had had to ‘re-invent the wheel’ insomuch as re-instating the credibility of his particular industry.
Typically, he had been phenomenally successful.
Further on returning home, his success here has rocketed up (next stop, the moon.)

We spoke about this and I asked him if he had figured out what the key was?
Typically, he had.
He has been in sales for so long; been so successful and been so driven to continue to be successful that he said without realising it, a degree of aggression had slipped into his presentations.
In the Middle East, it damned him. Completely.
Clients shied away from it, blatantly.
He had to re-train himself – take himself back to basics – back to humanity.
Now there’s a turn up for the books!
A sales person who had some humanity!

In returning home, he continued to apply this and voila, his success is climbing to even greater heights.

“In my field Alex, I’ve got to be sure I obliterate aggression or aggression will obliterate me.” he smiled, pleased with his own phraseology and shook my hand as we promised to cross paths again.

Interestingly, I applied his technique directly in the afternoon.
I relaxed and re-focused 100+% on the person and voila!
Success.

Maybe the World is changing

NB. My friends success relies on repeat business. I add this as I can imagine that many people in short term sales perhaps feel that aggressive ‘get the sale’ is sufficient – especially if it is a ‘one off’ result requirement.
I would only add the caution that as we go through life, it’s breath-taking who we bump into – and how people remember us.
Be careful of those bridges

One Minute Vacation.

I seldom have time to post mid-week.
However, today I do and having posted two totally random matters, I thought I’d offer up a stress busting technique that I’ve used for years to great effect (the good old oldies, eh? )

My work is often high-stress. So high stress that people frequently burn out at incredible speed. It takes a great deal of self-management to stay on top and at the top and this is the technique that I use frequently and to this day, still to great effect.

In fact, this technique has proven so successful, that both friends and colleagues have adopted it and if you know what you’re looking for, it’s easily available on the Web.

The One Minute Vacation can be used as either a very basic hypnotic technique (by recording it onto a device and listening to it) or a suggestive technique by allowing your mind and body to follow the instructions as you read it.
Personally, I only ever read it or these days, merely think the process through (I’ve become so familiar with it.)

I believe in the Holocaust but I don’t believe in Global Warming.

“Damning the development of the developing World” 

Oh dear, it seems to be a day of it.
See what happens when I have time on my hands!

The other evening (8th March, I believe) I missed the Despatches “Great Global Warming Swindle.”
I wasn’t that sorrowful about missing it as I have been a strong supporter of Friends of the Earth for a long time – even campaigned for them to raise funds, so concerned had I become about Global Warming.

However, of late, I had met one or two people and in conversations – interesting and balanced – I had started to question the man made aspect of Global Warming…
I was aware, had been aware for quite some time, that the Earths temperatures fluctuated…
Further, on my travels, I had also not been oblivious to what had struck me as ‘damning the development of the developing World’…
Yet who was I to speak out – I am certainly no scientist even if an avid reader of much scientific material…

So today, I sat down and watched “The Great Global Warming Swindle” and lo and behold, the ideas that had been presented to me of late – ideas seemingly too far fetched, too inhumane to be possible or even probable… became just that.

This film is 75 minutes long but worth its time, a lifetime over.
For if what it implies is real, we could all be guilty of lives being lost needlessly.

If the Bird Flu doesn’t kill you, the med’s might…

Bird Flu vs. Tamiflu.

I don’t often blog about news events but every now and then something catches my eye.

In this case, my concern about Tamiflu – the drug being stockpiled around the World to counter a possible Bird Flu pandemic – has been awakened, with a shiver.

Now, I am loathe to be an alarmist – despite my somewhat emotive title of this post – but should there be a Bird Flu pandemic, the idea that the countering drug – that being Tamiflu – could cause ’self harm, delusions and suicidal behaviour’ in young people (under the age of 17 – not to mention the one or two adults who have also been reported to be acting extraordinarily out of character) worries the hell out of me.

Why?

Probably, in part to this: -

In times of stress – such as a war environment or in this instance, a pandemic – people do behave extraordinarily out of character. Those that we would perhaps normally look to to be our guardians may themselves be struggling with rationality in such a situation. In the midst of such pressures, there is then the added concern that this medication could (already is) cause further chaos.
If it has been proven to cause ‘delusions and suicidal behaviour’ then whose judgement is one to trust?

Oops.

 Link to details of Bird Flu H5N1

Links to Tamiflu (Oseltamivir)

What is a delusion? Click here and have a read and therein you may understand the enormity of my concern.

Accept Criticism

It has, to be honest, been a ghastly week.

In the middle of it all, I took quite a knock.
As dreadfully vain as it might sound, I don’t often take knocks professionally.
I am, after all, damn good at what I do. Normally.

However, this week, I wasn’t.
I could blog with zest about all the reasons why I wasn’t a high performer this week but as I read moments ago in the introduction to Aldous Huxleys ‘Brave New World’,

‘you don’t get clean by rolling in muck’.

So I need to address where I am and what I am going to do about it.

I am going to be my own worst critic.
I am not going to shift the blame (as tempting as it most certainly is!)
I am going to accept responsibility.
I am going to find out what I am capable of as I step forward again.

And all of a sudden, I feel empowered!

An Analogy between Success and Failure

I love analogies.

In my work, I use them constantly and more often than not, to great effect.

The following is one of my favourite and I use it when looking to motivate flagging sales professionals.

Imagine a tiny, tiny seed.
Safe in its shell.
Buried some six inches under compact, dark, dank shit.
It has just recently rained, making the soil even heavier.

Now that seed has a choice.
It can stay, safe in its shell.
Or it can reach for the sun.

That seed has no way of knowing how far away, how high above it the sun is.
But it craves it.
So a tiny little fragile stem breaks out from the shell and it starts its long dangerous journey upwards.
It pushes and wends its way through the dark, cold, heavy, wet soil.

Now all too often, I see people do this.
None of us know quite when we’re going to be successful.
What is horrifying; what is heartbreaking is people, who like that tiny little fragile stem get to an inch beneath the surface.
An inch from the sun.
They don’t know it just like that stem doesn’t know it.

But they give up.
It’s been too much of a battle.
It’s taken too much effort.
They’ve lost faith.

So they shrivel and wither and never find the light, the sun. Success.
Yet, another stem, just as fragile, just as weighed down, just as exhausted, pushes on that little bit more.

And breaks through.
Success.

To some, the analogy might seem far-fetched but as one who coaches people to success; as one who watches success and failure take place, this analogy is frighteningly accurate.

Don’t give up.

Say my name.

I had to call someone this week, someone I’d never spoken to before (and therein quite obviously never met.)

It is my habit to listen to people carefully.
To listen to what people say.
To listen to how people say things.

This young lady excelled herself.

Throughout the telephone call there was a great deal of background noise.
Telephones ringing incessantly.
Other voices, strident in the unseen.

Yet the young lady held my attention to perfection.
Simply.

How?

She kept saying my name.
Had she have used the same technique, face to face, it would have been too much.
It would have been ‘odd’ and made me feel uncomfortable but for the purpose of a telephone call, it was perfect.
It let me know that despite all the background noise at her end and all the visual stimulus my end, my attention remained firmly on what she was saying.

If you use the phone alot, try it sometime.
You’ll make the person at the other end of the phone feel special.
You’ll make the person at the other end of the phone feel important.