​As leadership becomes increasingly important in organizations, so does the need to recognize and nurture raw talent. After all skills can be developed over time but attitude requires a bit more, beginning with a “want to improve” desire.
 
Leadership today has also changed phenomenally from decades before. More than anything, resilience with a nimble focus is a necessity to chart uncertain waters.
 
Hence, the journey to becoming an evolved leader involves personal and professional development with a high level of flexibility to embrace change. Today, organizations need to look for organic leaders who already have a deep understanding of culture and are showing clear signs of leadership potemtial.
 
Recognizing new leaders for succession planning needs to emanate from managers who observe the following;
 

• A deep desire to learn whether it be an openness to being coached and mentored / attending courses
• A high level of self-awareness with the ability to acknowledge strengths and weaknesses
• Volunteering for projects showing initiative in progressing the team’s or organization’s outcomes
• Firm but popular with team members displaying a high level of emotional intelligence
• A good decision maker who knows how to think on their feet with pressure and deadlines looming
• Most important of all, a deep sense of integrity in all aspects of work and people relationships

 
While organizations typically attribute a lot of emphasis to personality profiling for suitability of jobs, I personally believe this is stereotyping individuals. We are capable of a lot more than our innate personality affords, as long as we are flexible and adaptable and willing to do a new job.
 
Pushing beyond the boundaries of our minds, we are able to do jobs that are not within our “favorite things to do” but in the list of “need to do”.  Prime Ministers of countries were great leaders despite the fact that their personality profiles did not show natural leadership traits.
 
There are leaders in your organization who are ready to progress to higher levels of stewardship. Harness their potential!

​The most important trait a great leader needs to possess is the ability to make great decisions. How do they do this? By harnessing the power of their unconscious mind.
 
I have worked with leaders like this in the twenty plus years of teaching and coaching NLP techniques. Beyond good decision-making, they are able to tap into their creativity, emotional intelligence and therefore, overall effectiveness.
 
This unique talent in making great decisions comes from their intuition. Once the gateway to intuition is opened, it flows in abundance, extremely helpful especially in high-pressure situations.
 
As intuition is rooted in the unconscious mind, drawing from past experiences is natural and processing information rapidly, allows for swift, informed decisions.
 
Great leaders are also deeply aware of self. Recognizing their emotional triggers and managing them effectively is a huge part of being effective. We can only change ourselves not others!
 
What leaders are able to do with others though is have empathy. Understanding the emotions and motivations of others improves their ability to connect and communicate with others.
 
Beyond these, a great leader needs to be strategic and create a long term vision. In touch with their unconscious mind, these leaders often have a clearer vision for the future. They can see beyond immediate challenges and stay focused on long-term goals.
 
They are able to see and integrate building blocks of information into a cohesive whole, aiding in pulling pieces of the puzzle together towards good planning.
 
Innovative solutions pop up as the ability to make connections between these pieces of the big picture, are a classic tenet of the unconscious mind. This is why great leaders need time alone.
 
Time to contemplate their naval. Time to rest and relax. This may seem like wasted time but to the contrary, it is the time when great ideas come to the fore. 

Recently, one of my students after the NLP Practitioner International Certification course, was raving to a close friend. “You should do this course. It’s so amazing”.
 
Her friend said “Oh no! I am not into that woohoo stuff!” Shocked at this corporate lady’s response, my student’s immediate thought was “How sad that something so human is seen as woohoo”. She left it at that.
 
While most of society are aware they have a conscious mind that drives them, they think this is the only mind they possess. WRONG!
 
The conscious and unconscious minds represent different levels of mental functioning, each with distinct characteristics in shaping our thoughts, behaviors, and experiences.
 
They co-exist and an artful balance of both is required to reach genius.
 
For a start, capacity is unlimited with the unconscious mind. It is able to process a much larger volume of information simultaneously. It handles automatic, routine tasks and complex information without requiring conscious effort.
 
This is why people who have learnt how to work with their unconscious,  process faster, are quick and efficient, enabling rapid responses and actions. Those who use their conscious mind require focus and attention to perform a task, as it can only handle a limited amount of information at any one time.
 
Another major aspect of life is decision making. As many behaviors are influenced by implicit biases and intuition that reside in the unconscious, those who are aware of these make faster and better decisions. Others who require conscious reflection need time to deliberate which often means missing the boat.
 
In my personal journey, my corporate experience taught me how to make logical, rational decisions. Going beyond, as I upskilled to become an NLP Trainer I learnt the art of flowing in balance with my conscious and unconscious minds.
 
The biggest difference you might ask?
 
Today I save a lot of energy. I KNOW. Decisions are easy. My defined personality makes it easy to live life out of the noise and in flow with my surroundings.
 
A totally different way of being. Why wouldn’t you want it? 

Recently, one of my students after the NLP Practitioner International Certification course, was raving to a close friend. “You should do this course. It’s so amazing”.
 
Her friend said “Oh no! I am not into that woohoo stuff!” Shocked at this corporate lady’s response, my student’s immediate thought was “How sad that something so human is seen as woohoo”. She left it at that.
 
While most of society are aware they have a conscious mind that drives them, they think this is the only mind they possess. WRONG!
 
The conscious and unconscious minds represent different levels of mental functioning, each with distinct characteristics in shaping our thoughts, behaviors, and experiences.
 
They co-exist and an artful balance of both is required to reach genius.
 
For a start, capacity is unlimited with the unconscious mind. It is able to process a much larger volume of information simultaneously. It handles automatic, routine tasks and complex information without requiring conscious effort.
 
This is why people who have learnt how to work with their unconscious,  process faster, are quick and efficient, enabling rapid responses and actions. Those who use their conscious mind require focus and attention to perform a task, as it can only handle a limited amount of information at any one time.
 
Another major aspect of life is decision making. As many behaviors are influenced by implicit biases and intuition that reside in the unconscious, those who are aware of these make faster and better decisions. Others who require conscious reflection need time to deliberate which often means missing the boat.
 
In my personal journey, my corporate experience taught me how to make logical, rational decisions. Going beyond, as I upskilled to become an NLP Trainer I learnt the art of flowing in balance with my conscious and unconscious minds.
 
The biggest difference you might ask?
 
Today I save a lot of energy. I KNOW. Decisions are easy. My defined personality makes it easy to live life out of the noise and in flow with my surroundings.
 
A totally different way of being. Why wouldn’t you want it?

Most people answer NO to this question and yet it is the driver that stores our thoughts, feelings and memories. The key point here is that like a hard drive on our computer, it processes everything that is outside our conscious awareness which significantly influences behavior.
 
The biggest domain of our unconscious mind is to protect us. In doing so, it represses memories and emotions so traumatic experiences don’t surface.
 
These are too painful or disturbing for the conscious mind to handle however repressing them does not mean they have been eradicated. In fact to the contrary, these unresolved emotions such as fear, anger, guilt and sadness are very much driving the individual.
 
This is why many people believe that they are born a certain way and have no control over their emotions. I often hear “oh this runs in our family”. But this is a myth.
 
You can change patterns of behaviour by understanding the unconscious mind, as all change occurs in the unconscious.  
 
So imagine if you could master through Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP), the methodology to get rid of conditioned emotional and behavioral responses? How cool would that be?
 
For instance, breaking the pattern of flinching at the tonality of your boss because he resembles your father’s tonality, who you never got along with. Often people who have never delved into learning about their unconscious mind, are unaware of their behaviours.
 
Why do I like / dislike this person so much? Is it a matter of the look they have that reminds me of someone in my past? Instinctive reactions and intuitive judgments often arise from unconscious processing of information and past experiences like these.
 
This is how individuals can help themselves achieve more in life. Eradicating phobias and irrational fears which are rooted in unconscious memories and associations, leave them to create a life that they yearn for.
 
NLP has more than a hundred processes in its toolbox, each designed to attend to either removing past negativity and once done, to create a life that the individual desires.
 
This is where true transformation lies!

“Our background and circumstances may have influenced who we are but we are responsible for who we become” – Barbara Geraci
 
This quote signifies my motto in life. Since reinventing myself from a career banker to an NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming) Trainer, I have taken charge of my life by learning about my unconscious mind and making it work for me.
 
Tapping into my unconscious mind was not a deliberate strategy on my part. Life just took me towards a path of personal growth. I first joined courses that were based on conscious mind strategies. Important to get the ball rolling and then go beyond to the more powerful mind.
 
The unconscious mind influences our behaviors, decisions and abilities but most often since people are unaware of this way of being, operate below what they could achieve.
 
My unconscious mind which helped me access hidden thoughts, feelings, and motivations was a new world. I embarked on meditation practices initially through guided imagery, learning about the visuals I was creating in my mind. 
 
Then went on to 10 day Vipassana meditation retreats to understand myself better. While accessing deeper realms of my mind, I began to become aware of my dreams, many of which were messages about my future Life’s Path.
 
One thing led to another. I was drawn to dance and art, expressions of my creative brain, exploring and harnessing the potential of my unconscious mind. I loved every moment of these new parts of ME.
 
Yoga became part of my weekly practice and out of curiosity, I attended classes on Tarot Reading, Astrology, Palmistry and more. I felt a calling to learn and eventually my Path settled on NLP.
 
Having found my calling, I soared to high performance without trying. I loved what I did. I had become a facilitator of change, pulling all of my vast experience together from my beginnings in corporate.
 
My heart sang in doing this work even though it was long hours of consulting, working with clients to get the desired outcomes.
 
Today, I urge everyone to attend whatever makes your heart sing. Become the person you want to be by upskilling your talents and moving towards your strengths. Allow yourself this bandwidth to find meaning in your life. 
 
High performance will just follow! 

​As a trained Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) consultant, my mind is leaps and bounds ahead of the ordinary man who walks on the street, unaware of the way he operates. What distinguishes me from the masses? My level of acute self-awareness.
 
Freud developed theories about the unconscious mind. He postulated that behaviour is influenced by thoughts, memories and desires, outside a person’s conscious awareness.
 
Exactly like a computer program, the unconscious mind runs based on patterns from data that I have uploaded into my CPU. Daily experiences good and bad are absorbed through a process of osmosis. I see, hear, feel, taste and smell through my day, adding to my library of events already in my memory.
 
When not organized or when negative memories are accepted without consideration, these begin to pose problems for the person. For instance, as an adult I now know to reject anything that does not represent who I am.
 
If I am asked to do a certain behaviour, I have the choice to do it or not. If they don’t align with my values I walk away. If they resonate, I embrace. This is how I choose friends. How would you pick people to walk alongside you in life, if you didn’t know who you were.
 
My decisions and responses are driven by my underlying thoughts and emotions. Most people are unaware that there is a structure to the unconscious mind and all it takes is the desire to learn it.
 
While many modalities are available today, the genius NLP model created by Grinder and Bandler in the late 70’s far surpass others. Why you might ask? Because NLP like a computer, has form and structure, easily learnt through process.
 
Adding A, B and C together results in a specific outcome. It’s easy to learn, isn’t exclusive to people who have fancy education rather is biased towards those who are already in touch with their emotional self.
 
Profound results are at the end of the road. Accelerated results a definite!  In this fast paced world, two tenets of life that breed success. 
 
The unconscious mind, so fascinating a subject for all who want to be ahead of the game!