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A large part of our work at VIA Frontiers is committed to education. We are passionate about helping individuals attain self-management tools, to improve efficiencies and ultimately lead a happy life. The blogs I have written below are testimony to this.
Every blog will add value to the reader and give insights for free. How does an individual shift their focus for a different posture in life that will bring them grace, satisfaction and a life they love. Happy reading! The party was going great guns. Music blaring, there were people on the dance floor. Others drinking, happier to be observer. Sarah was chatting with her ex-client who had completed coaching sessions with her. They were discussing how much she had progressed from when they first met.
Somehow music in the background suited them more. They loved getting into deep and meaningful conversations. It didn’t take them long to revert to the topic of their coaching interactions which had gone on for a year. As interviews with key decision makers ensued, Sylvia and Bala were sharpening their view of strategy they needed to employ. Gathering the team over a drink they liked to keep things informal. Hunkering down with flip charts and I-pads to discuss findings from their numerous interviews, this would pave the way for the entire Culture Alignment program.
“Oh you are so lucky” was the phrase Sylvia heard hurled at her time and again. It incited a tiny bit of annoyance. They hadn’t seen her in the years she was re-designing her life. She thanked her lucky stars she rose to higher consciousness, all from a series of events that had occurred.
A deep feeling of dissatisfaction with her life on every front, though from the outside most would say she had a perfect existence. A great job in the bank, fabulous friends, a wonderful social environment and more. It was precisely that. The perfect life was imperfect. She yearned for more. Conversations ensued with senior management as the culture alignment project was in its first phase of design. Sylvia and her team worked in their usual top-down approach. Making appointments to interview change agents at every level of the organization they were beginning to see a pattern.
Janice the organization CEO was keen to install purpose-driven leadership at all levels. Her belief was that every individual could unleash the leader within to achieve high performance in their domain. She had spotted a lot of talent in the organization. She felt all she needed to do was give her people tools to blitz it. “I haven’t been to a training for such a long time! I am really getting tired of being here. Other organisations are a lot better to their staff. I’m thinking of moving” Bala overheard, as he sat in a cubicle working out a flowchart for the upcoming Culture Alignment meeting.
He was about to meet Sylvia who was heading up the team of consultants. His expertise lie in project implementation. Bala had come from an IT background where he worked at a very senior level for large corporates. After more than 20 years of acquiring knowledge and experience he felt he was bored. Leaving corporate, he started his own business. The Culture Alignment project was in design phase as Sylvia carved out different teams within the organization who had specific needs. She was working on high performers at every level of the organization - creating a mindset to blitz production and fast track their career path.
She reminisced about her mum who was a housewife and a definite high performer though the term wasn’t used then. Some of the things she thought and said to her mum were laughable. Being a very sociable family they entertained frequently. Contrary to general perception, difficult clients are the exception not the rule. Nevertheless, it pays to be prepared as it can be a challenging experience, even for the most professional sales person or for that matter, any professional!
-Dealing with difficult clients requires empathy, patience and putting aside your ego. Remember it is all about what the client needs at that moment, not about who is right or wrong. It does take up a lot of time and energy however and is certainly a stressful situation to be in for all parties concerned. You can avoid this from happening if you simply learn some steps to dealing with difficult clients more effectively. Attending an NLP for selling course for instance could help you gain valuable insights into selling techniques. We were having friends over for dinner again. The lovely aroma of food and sound of the wok clanging was like a cacophony of sounds I was used to. Mum was the ultimate entertainer. She loved to cook and did it effortlessly. It was very usual for our family to have friends and family over for meals.
As a child I looked forward to hearing that my favourite cousins were invited for a sleepover. It was our little reward that Dad afforded us. The deal was that we had to complete our homework for the week, before they arrived on the weekend. That was Dad’s strict rule. As Sylvia carved out the Culture Alignment plan based on Trevor’s needs, a main part of this was to create high performers at every level of the organisation. She was most enthusiastic about this part of the project as it was sexy, challenging with the most bang for buck.
She recalled a day when she drove out to do a keynote address to heads of private banks. Her mind was systematically going through points she had to raise. A talk back radio show was going on in the car. The DJ asked callers to share how they would celebrate Boss’s Day with their superiors. Neuro Linguistic Programming is an epistemology – a model of how we know what we know. Co-founded by a Professor of Linguistics, Dr. John Grinder and a computer scientist, Richard Bandler in the late 70’s, Neuro Linguistic Programming found its roots in psychotherapy.
More recently, corporates have begun to realise the power of conducting NLP certification courses in the workplace. Comprising a series of models, an NLP course would typically be most impactful for the higher echelons of a corporate. As Petra reminisced about how she ended up on a coaching path to help women accelerate to high performance , she was reminded of her love for anything fast. From young she loved fast cars, was fascinated by the Concord invention and gravitated to people who were fast thinkers.
Rising to the top of her career with grace and ease she thought what next? Her effortless ascension and constant inquiry into self was the propulsion to her meteoric rise. Always taking feedback and learning from experience, Petra knew there was something more to her eventual path. She had not clicked in yet but knew she was moving in the right direction. The Culture Alignment program had begun. Starting with the C-suite, John who was the catalyst to introduce NLP into his organisation was identified as Head, Internal Champions Team. His role would be to pick talent from groups who showed promise, at every level. These were employees who took to NLP like a duck to water. Sylvia called them the naturals like “oysters a la natural.”
John sat in the back of the room as an assistant to Sylvia the NLP consultant who was brought in to effect a culture change. Refreshing his memory of what he had been learnt a year ago, he felt elated at the associative memories that returned. It was Norman Vincent Peale who said “Change your thoughts and you change your world.” There is no shortage of advice on how to change thoughts, mind-set, perceptions or even the way your brain is wired; on the internet, in books, seminars, courses and workshops. Whether they work or not hinges on the fact that change has to come from within. Anything otherwise is considered coercion. This was Sylvia’s opener as she began her Town Hall talk to address the organisation at large.
John set his sights on being the CEO of a multinational company (MNC) someday. By the end of his career, he had planned for a successful retirement, one that would have him sitting loftily on financial stability.
He was now in Senior Leadership, the Chief Operations Officer (COO) of an MNC, pretty close to his goals and pretty much on track. Like many others globally, he had not anticipated a pandemic and the chaos that came with it. As news of the Culture Alignment program went through the organisation like wild fire, it was filled with mixed reviews. Some wanted to be left alone while others felt they were open to seeing what the NLP courses were about.
Valerie, Head of Legal was filled with trepidation. She had steered clear of such courses all her life, completely turned off by hype and motivational speakers. She was in the Leadership Team though and this time she thought, not much chance of dodging this one. As the NLP Culture Alignment project in the organisation progressed, more employees began to show signs of a turnaround. Trevor helming HR could see and hear more engagement. Simply seeing people around him smile more than they ever did before. Laughter rang in his ears and business was starting to show positive signs of an uptake.
The merger that their organisation had been through, had pretty much wiped out any semblance of harmony that existed in the previous culture. It was heartening to note that things were turning around and so rapidly too Leonard was a sales manager. He had a team of ten salespeople who were performing well. He wanted to migrate them to the next level. Having been in sales all his life he had heard of many sales programs but NLP seemed to be like the master system that would take them to high performance in a short space of time.
He was in the midst of researching NLP further checking for a fit that matched his team when he received an email from HR announcing an organisation-wide culture alignment initiative. Not knowing if it was serendipity or just plain luck that he had created, he observed this was happening to him more and more these days. As Rose grabbed her coffee and settled down to face her day at work she noticed an email from Trevor which caught her interest. He was the HR Director at her organisation and he was announcing a Board initiative that was scheduled to begin the following month. HR was about to embark on a culture alignment program for the organisation.
Initially filled with trepidation she wondered how this would flow through to her. As she read through what the initiative would entail she began to see possibilities of how some aspects would have great relevance to her role as a Senior Manager in Finance. As the backdrop of war pervaded in the external world, organisations began to see the greater need for employees to live with strong mental health. Covid-19 and the Ukraine invasion dominated. It caused anxiety fears that the very basis of survival, safety, was under threat.
Employees needed to feel safe. The corporate sector was in a global war for talent. Today it was a very different global war we were up against. This one brought everyone down to a most basic level of a human being’s very existence. As Trevor began his rollout of coaching in the organisation, he pondered over the many conversations he and John (his COO) had had. Over Friday night drinks, the two friends talked shop.
While it was deemed as a chill night for both, they were passionate about fulfilling their dreams hence the conversation most often reverted to work and how they were going to make a difference to the workforce As Sara progressed in the NLP Practitioner program, she realized she was in the right place. Her dream to become a coach was coming true. She learnt change models to accelerate success for her clients. It was beginning to get her more and more excited. She could not wait to complete this program and begin working with clients.
She was beginning to see how profound NLP tools were. Short and sharp processes that cleared phobias for instance. Others in the class were eradicating negative emotions like anger and fear in a matter of using a twenty minute process. What was the difference here? Click here toSylvia was Sandy’s NLP trainer. An ex-banker who had reinvented herself she soul searched over five years to find something that would have meaning in her life. As she meandered through her journey she changed people around her, language she used and even the career she had been accustomed to.
Her posture and outlook transformed. Beginning to realise she was also attracting different types of people like Sandy, John and Sara who were also on that same path. Intuitively they knew she would be able to help as everything she said was like music to their ears. They needed guidance from someone like her who had been there done that! edit. As Sandy got deeper into the NLP world with her repertoire of coaching clients increasing through the years, she began to achieve phenomenal results for her clients. Knowing how to navigate through their minds in the shortest possible route, they found themselves in a good space, in a short period of time.
More and more they began to refer to her as a guru or a master. She had heard these terms used loosely in the Learning & Development world when she worked in corporate. She was adamant that she was referred to as a messenger, a conduit of change or something along those lines. With logistics of a new year out of the way, it was time to get the ball rolling. Trevor felt everyone needed to settle in from the last year. He scheduled a start of February for his culture alignment project. He wanted this initiative to work. Focus was important since he was dealing with changing mindsets. His game changer posture was to have all employees feel relaxed rather than stressed. This meant a higher retention rate for what they were about to learn, the perfect landscape to start opening doors in their minds. |
SYLVIA FERNANDES
Sylvia is a qualified Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) Master Trainer. She started her business in Sydney and is now based in Singapore. Archives
December 2024
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