Episode 011 - What is the number one skill to master in 2020?

Hello listeners of the Seekardo podcast, it’sHarms here for another episode and I’ve got Ro with me once again.

The main question we are talking about in today’s episode is:

What is the number one skill to master in 2020?

Because if you’ve been following along, especially episode number 10 we spoke about how to use the power of goalsetting in order to achieve what you want and that’s often to go ahead and achieve something tangible.

But what we didn’t speak about necessarily is sometimes a great way to goal set is to also have a whole bunch of skills that you would like to master. A whole bunch of skills that you would like to acquire and that’s really where we are going to be focusing on today’s episode, that number one skill to acquire and master.

Because once youmaster these handful of skills that we will speak about and namely one in this episode, you will accelerate the process of reaching your goals andthat’s a given. Once you master these that will make sense.

So hi Ro, how are you doing today?

I am super good and I’m really excited about this particular podcast and I know there’s reference to 2020, but if you’re listening to this at some point in the future and you’re winding back over all of our podcasts this can be applied to any year. Because the subject we are going to talk about today is one of my favourite subjects which I won’t say what it is because we will come to it in amoment.

And these are not necessarily, “I want to go acquire this much finances, or I want to have an amazing relationship.” These are the skills which allow you to pursue those in an accelerated way.

I just want to kick off with a few Ro and then if you add to the list. I think number one is communication and this is by no means any order yet.

Number one is communication on my list, number two is critical thinking and number three is collaboration, the ability to work with people. I think with collaboration that’s really changed in today’s world, because you’re not only collaborating with people you know in your office space you’re collaborating with people all around the world through the online communication available to us today.

I think the last one I had on my list Ro was creativity that ability to nurture creativity and without going too deep into it, I think the school system does sort of limit our creativity and then many people spend their 20s and 30s and 40s just trying to unlock that again, after the school system spent a long time trying to keep us in our creative box.

I agree.

Again that is a great subject for a future podcast because I think that’s a subject that’s way overlooked at a young age but even as an adult age actually. Can I add to that?

Yeah.

Just looking up into my mind I’m thinking presence would definitely be another one. Being present with another human being is a fundamental flawI think for a lot of people today when they’re together and I don’t mean it’s a flaw built into their DNA. I think it’s a flaw that’s evolved over time. Just not being present when you’re with another human being.

Another one for me would be self-reflection actually, taking the time to reflect on yourself, your circumstances, what you are doing well in life, what you are not doing so well in life, what you could improve on. Who you can have around you, we are so driven by moving forward and progressing and succeeding and trying to strive that we often forget to self-reflect.

I think that’s a really important one.

I think another one a great skill to learn is getting a dietary balance and I know it’s a little bit out there and it might not feel like it fits into this, but part of our life has to be a skill that we develop is how do we manage our emotional and physical state through what we are eating, what we are drinking. I’ve done this myself we can plough on and plough on and push hard on the business or in whatever we are endeavouring, but we are not looking after ourselves.

It’s a skill everybody should be considering as well. There’s a lot but they would certainly be in my top three or four there.

Okay I love that Ro and if we were to pick one and I am going to ask you this question because of all the amazing stuff you’ve done and all the people you’ve worked with, If there was one which gave you the most value in the output your personal output, which one gave you the most value in whatever way?

Value in a general sense, but which one gave you that the greatest value if you were to pick one from that list what would it be?

This is interesting because you are using the word value. Now if you’ve read Turning Point, which I know you have and those of you listening that may have already done this. The book I wrote Turning Point in 2011, you’ll know that my number one core value is health. It’s looking after my health, but if you’re talking about the value I think or the skill or the characteristic that I think on a personal level has been one of the most powerful through relationships, through business, through career, through just getting out and sharing a message.

Honestly, it has to be communication more than anything else it has to be communication.

Without a doubt.

You might have heard me use the phrase that I think communication is the new currency and I really do believe that. I think it’s, you know, when you and I exchange on an idea that leads to something that may become profitable, there’s a currency of money there. But it might be that you and I go out and help somebody on the street by talking to them and they’re struggling financially, or they may be begging for food and money, and we sit, talk to them maybe help them and take them to a restaurant give them some food whatever.That currency becomes a currency of love, same thing in relationships.

So it’sphenomenal and totally undervalued and overlooked tool, skill, characteristic, quality whatever you want to label it.

I totally agree with that Ro and those listening at home, I already knew that was going to be the answer, but now we go into a more free flow. So that’s almost the planning done. Now we know we are going to be focusing on communication and being able to communicate with impact.

Yeah.

We are answering the main question of the podcastwhich is, what is the number one skill to master in 2020or at any stage.

If we were to say go ahead and master one skill first, it would be communication and being able to communicate with impact with yourself, with people around you it is a phenomenal tool.

Let’s press pause there I think you’ve just basically subtitled or if not brought the subtitle to the top.

Spot on, it’s communicating with impact because we can fumble along through communication whereas we could actually have a communication that grabs someone’s attention, hooks them, gets them interested, gets the message across, leaves them feeling empowered. And you could do that in 20 seconds. So it is with impact. I think that something that is severely lacking today, is people don’t know how to communicate in such a way that leaves an impression, it leaves an imprint, it leaves impact on the other human being that they’re communicating with.

That leads me nicely Ro to my next point. Listeners at home I’m going to spend probably 30 seconds just explaining to you what Ro does and his background because many of you listening have seen Ro inaction or may not have seen him in action. You may have seen he is known on stage as Dr Ro, what does Dr Ro do?What is his true speciality?

If we were to say Ro you specialise in this this, this and this, I think it’s communication being one of your most primary skills Ro. So I will take over for about 30 to 45 seconds just to give the listeners an idea of what you’ve been up to in the last 30 years of mastering the skill and then being able to teach it to people, being able to package it up and teach it to people.

For those listening this is almost a communications bio for Ro and I think it’s important to highlight this because…

I’m looking forward to hearing this…

It is important for those listening at home to understand because it’s almost like we are going to be saying go focus on communication. But as a listener you’re saying okay, but what qualifies Ro and what qualifies you Harms to talk to us about communication.

Let’s start with some of the places you featured on Ro. You’ve spoken on radio on regular occasions, you’ve done television interviews including the BBC, you have a strong social media presence. You have an ability which most people wish they had which is to be able to educate an audience for free through the power of video.

Not only that there’s also audio, so you work with podcasts, you work with the ability to just talk to another person just through sound. So it’s not even as if you’re there. And in that same breath you’ve created audio programs which are hypnosis programs, visualisation programs which take people on a journey to help unlock challenges that they may have or take them to a level of aspiration which is always phenomenal. And I’ve listened to these, I’ve seen your social media videos, we’ve helped processmany of them as well.

You’ve also created video series, so those who are Seekardomembers you would have seen the reams and reams of amazing high content Seekardo video series in the vault. Anything from career transition, life balance, life purpose, time management and many more. And those are almost the production, that’s all the stuff that you’ve done, but along the way you’ve been a public speaker now for 30 years plus to audiences. And it’s in the hundreds of thousands only you will really know how many people you’ve spoken in front of.

You’ve coached, you’ve taken it down a level. You’ve coached not necessarily down a level in terms of value, because I know some of the stories in the background. But you’ve coached people one-to-one and one to many, which is almost over a conversation and even myself, conversation with myself have changed the course, or changed the direction of someone’s life.

That’s a complete communication , that is your bio.

Thank you for the great summary.

It’s almost having done a bit of research and knowing you myself to see what’s Ro been up to. It’s also great for the listeners to understand who is hosting the podcast and to add to that.

I would say something you’ve done phenomenally very recently is that you founded and just recently launched your own communications training. Which has now taught the first 200 people who saw first-hand the whole system and it’s called Communicating with Impact.

I personally attended this if you’re listening and you’re thinking Harms tell me more about it.

Let me flip it on it’s head and say actually if I’m talking to you one on one, I’ll say one of my biggest misconceptions with communication was this, I thought and having looked at people in my old workplace in my career and even in business, that if I was able to be confident and speak to people in front of them, like in an audience. Or speak to a group of 10 people that would categorise me as a great communicator.

Okay.

So that was it for me.

I was already there Ro if I’m being honest, I could speak in front of people. So I thought before I came to the training my misconception was, well actually I’m pretty confident I can speak in front of people, I can sometimes control a conversation or be the host of a conversation with friends, family. Speak to a group ofpeople, I’ve hosted meetings in my career I maybe spoke to about hundred people in my career as a mini lecture sort of thing.

So I thought I had it you know. What more can Dr Ro teach us on this communications training? But then, as we sat there for three or four days, depending on which training you came on, Ro you unpackaged these 38 components whichwhen mastered those were the elements which allowed people to go on to become a public speaker. Those were the elements and the components which allowed people to go on to be a great communicator in the workplace, in their network marketing business, in their property business, in their relationship as well.

That was my big aha moment and a lot of people who attended the training their big aha moment was there’s a lot more than meets the eye when it comes to communication. If you want to master it. If you see it as a powerful skill which will change the world around you, for people and yourself. Then it was like, wow it was a big aha moment.

That’s my summary so for those listening at home, you’ve got an idea of where we are coming from with Communicating with Impact and the power communicating with impact in terms of training but also as a philosophy it has had on 200+ people now. Plus all the other people you’ve interacted with Ro.

Just to add to that quickly before you ask another question.

It’s interesting because over the years I literally pulled together the components through being a great observer of great speakers, of listening to people around me that I thought were good communicators. And just honing in my own skills and realising what my strengths were.

But then I didn’t compartmentalise them, I had the 200 people you refer to is just the people that have come very recently through a formalised training process, which we launched last year. But over the years there’s been hundreds of people that have had in some way shape or form me talk to them, either one-to-one or in a small group given them little tips and tools. It was just never ever brought together in one place.

I remember about 15 years ago or so training up a speaker and I just spewed all over it. I literally did that, for one of a better word I positively vomited all of this information that was in my head and said okay, do that when you go up do that, when you come off after your first break I’ll give you some feedback. And he is an amazing person and he is a very dear friend of mine now but at the time he literally said to me, “I’m overwhelmed. I can’t process what you’ve just said to me. I cando one or two of these, but not all of them.”

So what you saw Harminder last year was the culmination of all that brought into one place, and unpackaged for the first time in history in front of the public. No one had ever seen it like that and the fact that we’ve made a decision to continue now teaching that into the future is really exciting for me, because each time I teach it I get better at teaching it. Because remember the more we teach something the more skilled you become at it and that’s one of things we are going to teach people on the next trainings is, you can take these skills and start to use them on a personal level, but also you can use them to improve the people around you as well.

It is hard to explain to someone you know it because you’ve experienced it, even the way you’re communicating here, the way you’re articulating on this podcast and all the ones we’ve done together, the person I met, four, five, six years ago could never have done it so clearly, so succinctly and with such impact. I’m sure you’d vouch for that as well.

I’d vouch for that and it helps because one of the things that we cover in the training is a system, a process, a structure to the way you communicate as well.

Absolutely Ro, that’s been phenomenal and I’ve seen many students who’ve attended that go on and do fantastic things in social media, within their business, doing public speaking themselves, it’s fantastic.

The value and the result which comes out of mastering this skill is actually endless, it’s really based on how far you want to go with your communication skills.

Yeah and we have talked about it already but if you want to summarise where it can be used, if you’re in a career massively helps you with the teams around you, with your subordinates people that are working for you if you like, or below you in the structure of the company. I don’t like to use that word but it’s how you refer to it in a company structure. But equally to the people above you, asking for pay rises when an opportunity arises for people to go and present part of their subject, their department to another company, most people step back instead of stepping forward. Imagine being able to step up and always be able to do that.

If you run a business whether it’s property, dealing with customer, whether you’ve got partners in your business, network marketing is absolutely huge. If you’re listening to and you’re a network marketer, I’m telling you this is fundamental. It’s the core element of what you do, you communicate. Stakeholders, shareholders in any business, you have to be able to communicate both on paper, verbally, visually.

You talked about it now Harminder, the social media and the millennials there are so many people out there your age group that have got amazing tools but cannot communicate it, or if they are, they’re it doing on social medianot in a waythat’s grabbing attention.

Then you’ve got relationships, i.e. intimate relationships, loved ones, parents, children, if you’re a parent, parenting skills. It is so overlooked as a tool we just take it for granted that we can talk to somebody but talking and communication are two different things altogether.

I think that’s the best way you described it Ro. The misconception is well I can speak, I can speak confidently but being able to talk and just like Ro said communicating is massively different. We had in that event, we had very senior entrepreneurs, business owner, radio presenters and essentially they openly said “Rohan, Dr Ro we cannot believe you have revealed your intellectual property like this and unpackagedyour 38 components to an audience. Basically given away all of your secrets.

So Ro how do you get paid to speak to the public?
How do you communicate online?
How do you coach at the level you coach?

Oh my God you’ve given us all your secrets, what’s up with that?”

And if you look at the ticket price, you’ll be astounded as well. So it’s a phenomenal tool.

On that note as well for me it was important to make it available to people. Because yes you can go to the corporate world and charge thousands and thousands of pounds for an experience like that. But you know me, and this is why we are doing this. The Seekardo was a concept that you and I evolved together with the whole of the team that you work with B Street, who are amazing by the way for those of you listening and you’ll come across them as we talk further and certainly if you come join us in the Seekardo itself, you’ll see them there.

One of the things Harminder said is Ro we have to do podcasts and I was like really? Podcasts? I meanthere’s all the other stuff I’m doing does it really work? Can you get the message out? And then Harminder as a millennial made me aware as a non-millennialthat actually people listen in their cars.They don’t then sitwatch TV, they don’t listen to the radio they listen to podcasts and I do it myself, but I thought it’s just my generation.But no young people are learning through this vehicle, so the trainings were set up in such a way that they’re so affordable we can get more people into a room which means we can help more people communicate, which makes them better parents, better relationships, better business owners.

It’s a win-win for everybody and for me that’s really important at this stage in where the society is.

Yes and I often wonder can we get it to a point where we manage to get politicians at one of your trainings. That would be fascinating.

That would be awesome.

Maybe tell them how to communicate slightly better.

I think this nicely leads into something very tangible that we can give people, so can you talk us through a taster, do have tips for listeners at home on how you approach communication at your trainings.

I think if you just talk about maybe the components, if you start to talk about the components that would be a good start.

Let’s do it this way let me try and share some nuggets that people can use practically having come off today’s podcast because I can describe the training and I’m glad you raised it, but that’s not really the purpose you know the key is to get some of the elements across.

Yeah.

Let me talk from the perspective of get your pens out and see if you can follow me through this journey that we are going to go on.

Imagine a situation where you have to communicate in front of an audience or tomorrow you might be going into a meeting. It might be you’ve got to confront a situation which you feel really uncomfortable about, maybe you’ve got to make an awkward conversation over a phone call. It might be that you’ve got to go and talk to a loved one about a subject that you feel uncomfortable about or you’re confident about it but you don’t how to get it across. It might be you have to pitch an idea to a customer tomorrow or a client tomorrow, might be you’re raising money. Might be you’re going into a business meeting; you’re seeing the property tomorrow and you need to know how to discuss with the vendor.

Whatever it is, what I’d like to do is cover some key elements that you can at least take forward. Would that be okay to do it that way Harminder?

That will be brilliant because then we have a process and actionable step for listeners to start mastering the skill. I think it starts with the first step.

Okay with your permission then before and I’m conscious of time before we finish can I take them through at least an overview of a five-step process when they’re going to meet with somebody face-to-face. I think that would be really useful for them to take away.

Yeah let’s do that.

Okay before we get to that then let me give everybody the big picture of what the 38 components are but not all 38 components. So Communicating with Impact is actually 38 components split into three major subjects.

Three major components.

The first major component is you; the second major component is them, the person that you’re communicating with or the other people that you’re communicating with and then the third major component, remember there are subcomponents under each of these is the environment.

In other words the environment within which you’re communicating. Here we are communicating on microphones on a podcast, but equally you could be communicating in a crowded room, you could be communicating one-to-one across a table.

So let’s back up and start with you and let me try and expand on each one of these a little bit if that’s okay with you Harms. By all means fire away because I get so passion, I’ll just keep talking.

I will jump in and say right let’s move onto the next one.

Okay cool, because remember when we do the trainings for example this is done over three days we break it down so that people are actually practically doing the process, it’s not me teaching it.

Do you remember we did like 50 odd exercises on the weekend you came through. Everything was reinforced with practical exercise and I’ll give them some tools to go and do it when they leave today off the podcast.

So you refers to youthe person that is delivering the message in this case it’s me Dr Ro or it could be Harminder, he is delivering as well. It’s you the individual that’s actually delivering that. Now you are made up of all these different amazing things such as your beliefs, values, your past experiences, your emotional experiences in the past, significant emotional events .

You’re carrying a whole load of good stuff, but unfortunately you’re carrying a whole load of shit as well and we all do. We’ve got stuff that has happened to us in the past and whenever you communicate, you have to remember that you are communicating both internally and externally.

So what we’ve got to do is master ourselves.

We master our beliefs.
We master our values.
We master what we perceive about ourselves, so that when we are communicating internal communication becomes really healthy, it becomes positive, it becomes directed, it becomes clear, it becomes engaging internally. And only then will you actually get your external communication tuned in because if your internal communication is shit, your external communication will be equally as shit and people pick up on it.

I’m going to pause therefor a minute, is this making sense Harms from your perspective as an observer, as a human being in your 30s? Would you say you’ve seen that or is that something you’ve became more aware of when you started doing the training with me?

When we did the training with you once you spoke through that scenario and it was a case of looking back and saying, oh myGod those times when I almost myself talked in a negative place, the other person just didn’t want to be around me.

Right.

These realisations when I’ve got a negative mindset, when I’ve got a conversation with myselfwhich is not necessarily where it should be. When I speak outwards, it becomes a challenge.That internal conversation is so fundamental at the start and this is why you introduce this component early.

Yeah and the things is remember there are 38 components. If you just branched a little bit off you, staying in you and I said to you, let’s drill down a little bit deeper. Within youthere are three other core key components and underneath them there are four components to each of those three.

So it starts to build and you could just dig into one. I can listen to somebody communicating and pretty much put my finger on which components they are doing well.

It’s like you’re opening up of a vault, you and I are standing in front of this incredible vault. And behind the vault there is all this knowledge and information, opportunities, money, business, and we are knocking on the door of an angel. We are knocking on the door of a venture capitalist, we are knocking on the door of a bank, we are knocking on the door of a potential customer.

And you are standing there and you go, “Ro right we have to go 15 left”, and I say we have to go 26 to the right. Then you say, “We’ve got to go 33 to the left.” Then I say, and I think the last combination here is we’ve got to go seven to the right and then we go great and go to open the door and it doesn’t open.

What’s happened is that last combination number, the seven was the wrong one. Your two were right, my first was right but my number seven was wrong and it feels like I’m giving a great presentation. It feels like I’m communicating the right way, but one of my components is just slightly off and that’s enough for the vault door to not open and I want to get into the vault, I want to buy into the vault. I want to get what the vault has for me, I want to have the opportunity to get this new customer, to have the opportunity to get a pay rise, I want to have the opportunity to meet this beautiful woman who is going to say yes to me. But something in my communication just didn’t quite get across to her.

I’m going to pause there because I’m getting carried away. I don’t think you’ve ever heard me describe it quite like this. But can you think of a component in the past that maybe you were one click off not getting?

I think we are going to cover this in a moment, but for me it was presence. You know one of the components I wasn’t often present with myself, that was probably one that I had always had a challenge with.

Okay I’ll come back to that.

The message I want to get across to people listening is you’re going to have to start to be self-reflective, which again is one of the skills I mentioned earlier on. So if you said to me underneath youwhat is there?Well underneath you another major component is communication in itself.

Another major component alongside communication is the preparation necessary to go and sit with a parent and have an honest conversation with your parent or with a loved one, or to walk into a boardroom and present in front of five other directors and pitch your idea.

So preparation is absolutely essentialalong with communication. And communication has its own components within it as well. So we’ve got you encompassing communication encompassing preparation and then encompassing something called state management.

State management is basically how you manage your own emotional state under any situation when the shit is hitting the fan, when you’ve just had a massive stressful morning and you’ve come into work. Maybe one your kids was really sick and you had to find somebody to look after them, you and your partner had a massive argument, on the way in you had an accident in the car.

You walk in and you’re slightly sore because you had whiplash, but you’ve got to get to this meeting because you’re about to pitch a whole new idea to new clients that’s going to secure million pounds worth of business to your company. And you’ve walked in there and you are feeling shit, and if you don’t manage your state before you walk in that room, it will be over.

Everything you do it will be in your breathing patterns, it will be in your language patterns, it will be in your physiology, it will be in your energetic state, it will be in the way you communicate with your eyes and of course it will be in the way you communicate with your words.

If we don’t manage that and the preparation and the core communication element under you, it’s not going to work. You might be three or four clicks away from opening the vault and you don’t know what it is, you might have got the words right. You might have got the technical elements right, but there are four or five other things you’ve got wrong.

As an example Ro, I love that because one of the things I used to do in my past career is hold interviews.

Okay.

We had vacancies and when interviewees turned up and had not managed their state, and what they didn’t realise and this is a bit of a strange one. We’ve got a big window that overlooks this long, it used to be against the railway fence and it was quite a difficult, tricky office to find. So we would know immediately the interviewee who couldn’t find the office was really flustered, panicking they were going to be late managed to find the office and they did not manage their state before the interview.

They took that feeling of frustration of panic and you can see they’re physically sweating and then they enter the interview, and it’s always a tough one for somebody interviewing because we know that for sure there might be better than this, but if you put somebody into a low pressure situation like trying to find a location, how are they going to handle a high pressure situation?

Excellent.

How are they going to manage their state in a high-pressuresituation? They’re not going to be able to. But if somebody turned up and they were cool, calm, collected, even though they may have found it tricky to find the office, woah now this person can handle pressure. Internally as in you, as in them, their person, they’ve handled their state, they managed it.

So that is a phenomenal component.

Adding to that, had they come prepared and come earlier, so there’s the preparation now. The state of preparation would have meant that they got there earlier, if they got there earlier and found it was tricky to find they’d have still arrived on time.The preparation leads to good emotional state because they’re prepared and then of course they communicate that.It might be that they get asked the question in the interview, “Were you okay finding the place?” and the person says, “Oh my Gosh it’s funny you mention that I got lost seven and I just managed to get here on time, but it’s quite tricky to find this place.” And somebody else say, “Not it’s fine. I looked it up online and I called the receptionist yesterday just to double check and I made a point of coming here earlier to be settled, but it was a bit trickybut relatively easy once I found my way here.”

The difference is massive isn’t it? That one example you’ve giventhere has all three elements and remember each one of those has another four elements beneath it.

We can’t go that deep in this podcast.

I knowotherwise I’ll take them right down the rabbit hole.

But what I hope you’re doing at home when you’re listening is you’re understanding that communication has depth, there are components to it, and when layered, the more you can layer the more you can master you come across to the other person as a high impact person. Somebody with great influence, somebody who is reliable, responsible and that’s the position that you want. That’s what this skill gives you as a skill to master.

As you’re listening be self-reflective, so it might be that you can’t do it now because you’re listening to us and it’s very difficult to do two things at the same time, although unconsciously you can do. But as we wrap up and you go away from this I’ll give you some actions, one of the things could be, “Okay let me spend the next couple of days just observing, self-observing and pick up on what Harms and Ro.Actually, this is an area that I’m weak in.”

Actually in a moment, I want to come to you and ask you some questions about millennials so I’m not letting you off the hook because you’ve put me on the spotlight at the moment.

That’s the first one Harms, that’s the first major component, you which of course has subcomponents underneath it.

The next component we now take the focus and we put it on the other person, which is them. Now for most people going into an interview they’re just only focused on themselves as you know, or if they’re going into a presentation, or if they’re going to talk to somebody at a meeting whatever it is. They’re so focused on themselves they forget to think about and consider the interaction, engagement, the rapport with the other person.

So the second major component is them and them could be one person, it could be a board of eight people at a meeting, it could be 25 people at a gathering. It could be 50 people at a seminar, it could be a thousand peopleat a seminar.

When wetalk about them we are talking about the other person that you’re communicating with. Now we are talking today and you’re listening to this, but it might be that another 1,000, 2,000 people have also listened to this podcast, so although we are communicating to you we are also communicating openly to everybody. The collective is a group.

Okay so under them, the key point here is you have to start to now observe the other person or the other people. So whilst you’re communicating and you’re considering and reflecting on your own communication, your preparation, your emotional state. The other skill you’ve got to start to do at the same time is reflect on the other person and this is where I was giving you the funny example about my friend who was learning to speak. He came off stage after the first break and I gave him feedback and he goes, “Ro I can’t process all that, I’m still thinking about this and that.” I said, I get that but most of his focus was on himself, how he can manage his own personal emotional state whilst he was communicating. I said but did you notice you got so in detail, that your audience pretty much switched off for about 20 minutes and that’s because he had forgotten to check in with them, the other person.

Does that make sense Harms? I know you get this but am I communicating it well enough for somebody listening?

Yes that makes sense. And if I was to give you another example, imagine a situation where If you are the interviewee and you’re talking to three interviewers for example, if some of them you know, start looking around, they start playing with their pen. They look like they have a glazed look over their eyes, they just are hoping the other person asks all the questions, you’re saying stuff and they are not taking down notes, you’ve lost them, and it’s the same situation.

There’s lots of components to re-engage them as a tool and tactic.

And if you’re listening to this and you’re switching off twiddling your thumb, looking at your phone and not engaged, please press pause or keep engaged and put your phone down. That’s one of the ways you can get engagement with a bit of humour by the way.

Underneath them there are three sub- components and underneath those subcomponents, there’s another four under each of those three.

This is where and I’m not going to go all the way there because we haven’t got the time, but tosimplify it think of it this way whenever you’re dealing with another person or group of people, there are three, you’re taking them on a journey. The first part of the journey is you have to create connection with them because you can’t in any way impact them If you haven’t connected with them.

So if you want to write that down when it comes to dealing with somebody else, yes you’re managing your state, yes, you’re looking at preparation, and you’re looking at your internal and external communication and there are elements there.

Now I’m engaging with the other person, so what do I need to do? I need to get a connection first and that’s done through lots of different things, you can have different styles of communication, there are listening skills. There’s learning to be authentic, there’s a whole different depth to this we can go to but we won’t go to today.

That’s the first one.

Second one now you’ve got a connection, now you’ve got to get their attention. You’ve got to create impact; you’ve got to do something in the interview we just talked about which creates impact with the other person listening. So I’m listening to Harminder, he’s just introduced himself I’ve asked him how did you find the interview, getting here was iteasy and he says to me, “Well actually funnily enough what I did was I have a friend of mine that came for an interview here about two weeks ago, so I thought I’d cheekily give him a call, I won’t ask him how the interview went but I do want to make sure that I know how to get there.”

Now that’s got my attention now, because I’m thinking that’s pretty creative. This guy didn’t phone our secretary and speak to her or him, didn’t phone, didn’t go online or anything like that, but actually used somebody they know that has been to an interview.You’ve got my attention now; you’ve got a bit of impact there. Now the third component is you can influence the person now.

And before you go on Ro, I thinkas you were talking about getting impact and grabbing our listeners attention.

Yes.

This next component is probably the one that grabs everybody’s attention. So when we talk about influence. You’re going to talk about a few components justas a title at the moment, influence. But within influence we have things like mind-reading.

Now when we say mind reading…

I love that one.

… that’s something that catches audiences’attentions. Nobody believes it, until they come to the training, until they come and read somebody’s mind for themselves and then either respond in tears, surprise, just utter shock.

Shock is one of the big ones. I’ve seen some pretty switched on people just say how the, because not a word is said is it Harms, not a single word is said in the interaction.And then through a specific process I say okay, now I want you to share with the person what you just think you saw there, what you experienced, what was the mindread of the situation? Bearing in mind they’re static and they’re not saying a word and you’ve just read their mind.

That’s an amazing skill to have.

Phenomenal, sowe’ve got our listeners attention again I think we should move onto another component.

Yes, so what I’m saying here is that having got the connection with them and having got impact through several different mechanisms, there are so many different components to get impact and you’ll have to read the situation before you use the appropriate component. Now I can influence a person why?Because they related to me, because I made an impression on them and now they’re open to me influencing them, “I like this person”, and now I make a suggestion and because theylike me, they’re going to be more open to the influence of what I want to say next.

In any sort of communication if you want to guide someone you just can’t go in and say I think we should do this, they’re going to go, “Who the fuck are you?” I don’t know you, you’ve just walked in the door 10 minutes ago, and you’re suggesting I need to do this.” Whereas if you connected with them, createdthat rapport and then created impact and they’ve gone, “Wow I didn’t knowyou did that, I didn’t know you knew that. That’s amazing. How about you come spend 20 minutes with me next week at a meeting I can introduce you to somebody” and then off you go.

Now they’re much more open to it. Theprocess has to involve constantly observing and understanding where they are in that process, because if you’ve gone too far you’ve got to backup until you get to a point where you’ve taken them through the steps.

Everything in the 38 component is actually in a logical sequence, it’s the combination againthe recipe.

I mean if we went into the kitchen with your lovely wife and she was cooking a curry. She could have all the ingredients in front of you and there might be like seven ingredients and Geena’s there and she goes, “Right guys there you go, there’s the ingredients. I want you to go and make a vegetable curry.” And we go okay and I start off with one set of ingredients and it tastes all right, but you’ve watched her for the last however many years you’ve been together and you just simply duplicate what she does and you put the ingredients in a specific order.

Maybe you put the onions in with some garlic and then you put a specific spice in, whereas I chuck the spice and oil and cook the spice, then I chop the onions my sequence is wrong. The taste is totally different, so get the sequence right with the right components you become a Master of Communication.

I love it.

I’m going to pause there because you’re getting carried away and that sequence Ro if you chose a five-step process which sort of is a mini package of that sequence for them, because the sequence can be used in many different ways.

I can give you a bit of where I think millennials are either winning with communication or struggling with communication. But I think before we do that, let’s close it off with environment.

The environment is a component people overlook. So they either focus on themselves or they focus on the other person and they come away and go, “I don’t understand. I thought I did a brilliant presentation, I thought the meeting went really well, I presented all the facts correctly. I didn’t miss a trick; I don’t get it.They didn’t seem to be present; they didn’t seem to be with me.They seemed a bit distracted and by the time we left I didn’t get a sense of they really got what I was talking about.”

Well guess what?

You didn’t notice certain things in the environment around you and I know this from my own experience of learning over the years to put myself in exactly the right environment to get the right message across. So with environment there are two primary components. One is technical and the other one is awareness.

I can give you an example Ro.

Okay cool.

An environment where before I did this I got it so wrong. So for property investors listening at home one of the things that we do as part of the business is we raise money.We can offer a fantastic return that is higher than the bank as part of the kind of property investments we do.

So when I was out raising money, money hunting or educating investors who want to invest into the business here is how not to do it. You don’t go to their house for a dinner party and just to give you some context Ro this person had about £100,000 to £180,000 to invest.It was going to be dependent on where they allocated their funds.

Now you don’t go to their family dinner party. They invite you over for dinnerand the first thing that happens is you’ll start to drink wine. So now we are four bottles of wine in. I’m thinking when am I going to have the opportunity to tell you about my business?

That’s when you used to drink wine by the way.

That’s all changed now. So now kids are getting tired and it is now probably about 9:30PM.

Okay so in your mind are you like, I’ve got to get this pitch across. Is that what you’re thinking?

That’s all I’m thinking.

You’re in the you mode.

And all the way there I’m thinking how am I going to get this across. Now dinner has started it’s not a convenient time because the kids are there, husbands there and he’s not really interested. He hasn’t got a part to play.

So you’re thinking how do I get it across but you’re still self-reflecting, are you observing them? Or are you just thinking how can I switch to the pitch?

I’m thinking how can this dinner end. How can I speak to the woman.

Did you enjoy the dinner? Can you remember what you ate?

The entire thing was a blur and that’s another component, not good enough. And once we had dinner it’s now about 10 o’clock, everyone has had about four glasses of wine we are sitting on the sofa. The dad in the scenario he’s fast asleep on the sofa here, the kids are frustrated because they’re tired and now I’m sitting next to this lady and her daughter to try and explain what we do within the business.

It was a disaster.

To give you some context, we didn’t raise money from them. It was a complete disaster.That’s how not to handle the environment.

So inside so one of the components inside the environment component, comes under something called awareness and under awareness, a key component there are distractions.You basically had the kids in the room, which were a major distraction. Lovely to have them therebut not ideal.

Kids, alcohol the wrong setting.

Correct, the whole thing.

The whole environment and when I self-reflected during the training the right thing to do was I should have just said let’s talk about business another time, let’s have a coffee, I’ll come see you guys tomorrow. I’ll see you next week this is not the right setting, it’s been amazing to get to know you.

That would have been the right approach.

Yeah and actually, if you said to me walking away from that your insight is the focus should have been leaving that meeting with focusing on them. So in that communication building the rapport, focusing on them, get the connection, creating an impact, influence them enough to go let’s get together. And then they like ityou. They walk away thinking, “what a great evening, Harms mentioned something about a business maybe we should get together with them.”

You’ve left them liking you more as a result of not pushing the opportunity on them at that moment.

Correct, absolutely so I thought that might be a useful example. Because it’s such a common one, and that is not the only one I’ve been in just to let you know.

I think if you’re listening to this that last element really, the component is basically environment which is split into the technical side of the environment and then having an awareness of the environment you’re in. I’ll leave it there because we could dig quite deep into that as well.

Those three things work in harmony they’re not independent of each other as you’ve just discussed there. They have to work in harmony together at any one time whether I’m listening to you now talking to you or if I’m in front of 10,000 people, I’m aware of all the components within me, them and the environment in which we are actually in at that moment in time. I will sometimes pull back from a communication, I’ll put more pressure on it, I’ll shift the direction purely based on those three components operating in harmony with the remaining components, the other 35 components.

Absolutelyand what I’d say isSeekardo members as an example what I love about it is they’re constantly practising.

Yes.

This is going to be mastered over a period of time and I think that’s the important thing and sometimes Seekardo members if you are listening to this it’s often one of the biggest things we get in the community is,“I’m struggling with this component.” But what is phenomenal is that they have an awareness of the components to start with because that awareness of the components allows them to improve, allows them to tweak the communication and go in even better next time. It’s a fantastic place to practice as well.

Actually for those of you listening that aren’t in the Seekardo if you go in and look through, you may have looked at it before or you may not have had a chance to look but we have the vault where there are some amazing tools. And on the main interactive page where we are all communicating with each other the 38 components come up on a weekly basis and then they’re rolled through and some of the subjects’ people practice it. It’s a chance to get feedback from a nice environment from people who are being honest with you.

People do videos they do audios, “could you give me some feedback on this?” and then we just come back with honest, objective feedback to help them improve and to become Master of Communication.

Absolutely Ro.

Where would you like to take this next?

You’ve given us an insight on what are the core components within mastering communication and number one is you, two is them and then thirdly, it’s environment which all work in harmony together once we start to unlock these components and master them in certain situations and deploy the right components in certain situations, that’s where you have the most impact. That’s when you start to get the result you want from a communication.

So where would you like to take this next?

I’m conscious of time but at the same time I also want to do the five-step process, but before I get to that I think it’s quite good because remember for the listener here remember that the whole philosophy behind Seekardo it’s an exchange between two different age groups.Two different eras, you’ve got millennials, we’ve got generation X, there is either side of that. We don’t know who is listening to this and then you’ve got the older and younger voice listening to us today, so I’m going to swing it around to you before I go and give my process that I think is useful for everybody.

I’m going to ask you as a millennial what do you think Harminder honestly being observant and maybe self-reflectiveon yourself is, what would you say the weaknesses are for the younger generation today when it comes to a communication perspective?

Just name me one or two areas that you believe they’re weak in at the moment.

Fantastic question.

Without being critical or anything like that just from an observational perspective.

Absolutely Ro and this is probably a self-reflection, this is a chance for me to say before I worked in the world of business, understand how powerful communication is one of the things that I was very weak at and I still observe it and I think it’s more of an observation. If you are listening to this at home again, it’s not a criticism, but once we are aware of the situation we can actually yeah, that’s me. What can I do to tweak that?

What I’dsay Ro isthe first thing I often see is where my generation has almost grown up with our phones, social media, the screens my gut feeling is the weakness that they have is they have a lesser ability to be present with other people.

I think this plays out in job situations, career situations, you know, for example, if you’re in a job interview or you’re in a meeting and you’re at a critical point, or a senior manager or partner is saying something to you, and at that moment you look down to see a WhatsApp message pop up on your phone, or an Instagramor Facebook message pops up on your phone and you say, “oh what’s that about? You’ve pretty much lost that present moment. You’ve lost the impact from the situation.

You’ve alsoby the way, speaking as an older person that pisses me off. If I was in a senior role in a company and I’ve got somebody thirty years younger than me and Icalled the meeting and I know how valuable the time is for both of us, but also I’ve got two other meetings and whatever to go to. And that another person is looking at their phone or just not with me, I’m pissed off at that point, and that does not work in that person’s favour because they are not present at all.

Yeah, and I see it play out in friends’ groups, if you’ve not seen your friends for a while and then you meet up and you’re all sitting around the dinner table or at the bar and you’re all on of your phones. What does that say to the other people around you that says you’d rather be somewhere else?I thinkthat’s a big weakness.

If I was to say, not being present that’s number one.

Just to try and put this in for the listener where does this fit into that the bigger picture of the 38 components, as the communicating with impact system that isn’t in the them, it’s not in the environment, it’s actually in the you.It’s one of the components actually that sits within you, which is learning to master presence and actually it falls under the heading category of state management.

If I was with that person and they were saying to me, “Dr Ro help me in this specific area, what do you think I need to do better?”I’d say okay presence is one of the components.

We are standing at the vault you said you wanted to get a pay rise, you’re so close. You’re doing a great job and you’re very diligent, you’re an excellent worker however, there is one element that you’re not great at when you’re working with your peers. And the reason you haven’t got a pay rise and the reason you haven’t moved to another levelis because the next level you’re in, involves engaging with people, doing small business presentations, going out to meet clients. And what it appears to me that you’re not present with people when you’re fully face-to-face with them and then I’d have to dig deeper and look at their beliefs.

Maybe they’ve got some self-confidence issues, but that’s probably why your boss isn’t giving you a pay rise or giving you that new role opportunity, because when you sit with them you don’t look them in the eyefrom what I’ve seen and they go, “Oh my god I didn’t think about it that way.”

It’s just one click and the vault door opens, so that falls under the category of you.

Or Ro if within that coaching session after you said that to them their phone rings and they say, “Okay one second I’ll get back to you on that, let me answer my phone.”

I’d be like that’s not good enough, next please.

You’re not just in the job you’re out the job now.

That’s an extreme example of it. Okay Ro number two what I’d say is another, I wouldn’t say weakness just as a descriptive word, but another element I see is because weas a generation are so engaged,I want to say stuck in the social world, but we are so engaged with communicating online. It could be social media, could be forums, it could be whatever, through gaming chat apps, on your mobile phone apps.

Something I do in business we spend a lot of time in Slack. The way I communicate is in an online way. Most of our business commutation happens in Slack.

One of the weaknesses is when we then are put in a position of a physical interaction, Idon’t know what it is, but we really struggle to connect very quickly with real people. And what I’d say is we really struggle to connect with people of your generation Ro.

I think there’s almost you’re at a battle head with that connection, it’s like we are unable to create that connection.

Yeah.

And it’s often why you see the older generations are almost separate to the younger generation because we all can connect with each other because we’ve just spoken to each other on WhatsApp and I know if we were to dive deeper, maybe this is something, and I know we spoke about it in the parenting ‘Am I ready to be a parent’ where some generations are becoming parents later.

Possibly, it’s a gut feeling once again, is once you leave the online world and the engagement online, and youphysically meet someone we just struggle to connect with people.

Even if it’s a date, a partner and your generation I think that’s a big weakness.

This really is really interesting because within the 38 componentsone of the components is language and sometimes the language of a 30 year old is different to the language of somebody who is 50,55, 60. And I’m not talking about adult language I’m talking about the way we communicate with the world, because your perception of the world is different to my perception of the world and we haven’t found a way to find harmony in how to communicate that.

Sointerestingly enough this really falls into the category of them, because what we’re talking about here is a breakdown in connection. That’s what you are talking about isn’t it?

The inability to create a connection with someone who is older, now that is different to the first one. You’re talking aboutpresence, that’s kind of the you, that’s the you part of the component system.

Now we are into them because now it’s just tweaking the ability to find a way to connect with the older person and it comes through several different things. It comes throughunderstanding how that person listens, could be that you need to work with different archetypes, there are different communication styles for example, these are all the different componentswe talk about.

The other thing of course Harminder is that they don’t have enough tools in their toolkit.They’re like, “How do I build the bridge? How do I bridge the gap?” okay well here’s a tool, a hammer, a screwdriver, a spanner and they’re just different components. And they go, “Okay great,Ididn’t know I could use that.”

That immediately finds you instant rapport with the other person. And of course mind-reading comes into that because if you can learn to mind-read, does not matter if the person is 10 years younger than you, 10 years older. If you can mind read that personnow you can anticipate where they are at, you can talk into that space of where you think they’re at and then go wow this person really understands me. Yeah that’s just because you read their mind.

It works, it’s amazing.

It is amazing and what I want to say Ro is I’ve just given two weaknesses for my generation and I’ve got my generations back, so Ialso want to give a strength that we have.

Go for it man.

The strength that we bring to communication is we are technically very strong at communicating. Iknow I spoke about a few online methods. When it comes to email online messaging applications, the speed and the comprehension we have with these new age tools, which are only a couple of decades old now, they’re still quite new. We are completely plugged into that and I think that gives us a big advantage and a great strength.

Whereas people of your generation, I used to see it in the workplace struggle to open up an email, struggle tocc somebody into an email or even use WhatsApp properly.

And I think if you said to me what’s a weakness of my generation I think you’re spot on. Oddly enough, we are weak in that area so that’s certainly one of the areas that you have a strength in.

Interestingly enough that isn’t youand it isn’t them, now you’re talking about something which falls in the category of the environment because within environment technology fits in there.

What you’re saying to me is that people of my generation actually to some extent can control the environment through the technology that is in their hand. Now we’ve got to try and help discover a way to communicate with more impact through that technology, but also face-to-face as well.

People of my generation struggle with that technologystill, I’m sure you’ll agree with that. You joke about WhatsAppI know some parents in school and we don’t use WhatsApp, we don’t know how to workit and I have to be careful because we use it as such a powerful tool.

Exactly and it’s almost like my generation are amazing online still need to work on some components off-line.

You’re right Harms.

It’s a skill that needs to be learnt at all levels, all age groups whether you’re a teenager or you’relistening at 60 years of age doesn’t matter. There are so many things to be learned.

To make it fairwhat other weaknesses do you have? So yes, technology is one of them but what other weakness does your generation have when it comes to communicating?

It’s a good question and I guess I would classify it as a weakness, we tend to get frustrated very quickly towards the younger generation and when I say frustrated I think there’s a sense of annoyance.I hear it in peoplemy generation they’re annoyed because they feel that younger people don’t communicate effectively, they’re not present. I mean you are actually saying the same thing to me as I’m thinking right now is that we don’t feel they’re present.

It’s a sense of I want this person to talk to me in a way that we have an understanding of the world and that they’re listening to me, and that they’ve got a sense of maturity that’s probably another word actually.

And again I’m not trying to be overly critical here, but it’s the maturity. So what we typically find is we get to a point where you might say to me where is that coming from and I think it’s coming from number one just age and the other one is arrogance, and one is probably ego because “I just want to get on with stuff, I want you to listen to me as a young person, why don’t you get me?”

I think that is actually a weakness in older people.

We haven’t learnt to communicate and we tend to speak at young peopleas a result of that we get angry, we get frustrated and speak at you and I think that pisses you off if I’m honest, correct me if I’m wrong, but we just say this is what you need to do.As parentswe even tell our children this is what you need to do and we get annoyed, we are not good at finding a way to communicate in the same language pattern that you, so actually in a way what we are saying is the same thing.

You said maybe we struggle to talk to older people and I think older people struggle to talk to younger people, more I think about it.

Agree and once we can bridge that with, you know, mastering aharmonious communication, it’s almost a younger generation soon as somebody is talking at us we will put the barrier up, no longer interested. Whereas we need the older generation to talk with us, understand what’s happening get on our level and I know that stuff you’ll go into, but I’m conscious of time and I think it is a good timenow we’ve given them an idea.

We’ve talked about strengths and weaknesses;we’ve spoken about where we think both generations can improve.

I think now is a really good time to leave them with an actionable set of steps they can use straight off this podcast that will make a massive benefit in their lives.

What I want to do is if it’s alright Harms I’m going to follow a bit of a logical sequence here;I’m going to go one to five and I don’t want to spend too long on it because I’ve elaborated on it.

If you’re listening to this process apply it to any situation you’ve got coming up ahead on the basis that it could be some form of face-to-face or possibly could be a skype call, or a zoom call, or you might be making a phone call, you might be meeting with somebody or a group of people.

There are five stages.

The first stage is and write this down if you can is called the initial contact stage.

This is how you are going to make contact with that person because any type of meeting you need to set that meeting up in their minds, in the way they expect their expectations, but also so there’s no confusion.

We want to remove any confusion at all and this is another thing I think both the older generation and younger generation are poor at today is we just assume that when we make a phone call, send a text whatever. I call you but you don’t pick up Harms so I leave a voice message and I automatically assume that you have definitely listened to that voice message, it hasn’t even occurred I’m saying it hasn’t occurred to me but to the average person who doesn’t understand what happens here, they automatically by default assume,“but I left you a message.”

Just because you left the message does that mean I actually heard the message? “That’s a very point I never thought of that.” So what I ask people to do when they’re going into a meeting is think about the mode of communication that is going to happen in the initial contact.

Meaning are you texting them?
Are you leaving a voice message?
Are you going to call them, which is probably the best oneif you want to get absolute clarity on what’s going to happen in the meeting and what time it’s on.
Are you emailing them?
Has the email got through?
Has it bounced?
Has it gone into the junk mail?
Have they even opened it?
Are they bombarded?
Are they overwhelmed with emails?

These are the things you’ve got to consider and is the initial contact with them, I’ve bumped into you are Harminder and your wife at a social gathering, and we just got chatting and it just so happens that you tell me that you’ve just sold your house, you’ve got a bunch of money there and you’re going to go travelling, and it’s going to be in the bank for the next couple years. And I said that I might have a way that money could work a lot of better than in the bank right now.

We literally just met at a party and you go, “Really?” and I say look, we can’t speak now, but how about you give me your number, I’ll set up a meeting and I can explain what I do. I’m a property investor I think I’ve got something that can help you.

Bang, that’s like a 30second pitch, but in the initial contact have I got your attention?

That was a good pitch, I just wrote that down.

I’ve got your attention;I haven’t oversold you. There’s an urgency I’m not desperate and I’ve got to make sure that in the initial contact I am clear what we have agreed on. What has been set up. We are going to meet I’ll call you back. If it’s a text now it’s two days later, hey Harms looking forward to seeing you and Gee again, party was great just to confirm we are meeting at 12.15PM tomorrow at Starbucks. And you come back, great boom that initial contact is absolutely critical.

A lot of people fuck up there. I know people that have gone to meetings and they go, “Nobody turned up.” I’m like but how was your initial contact? “I just dropped them a text.”Did you get a confirmation text? Did you phone then up? Did you get them to respond back? “No I just sent the text.” Well a text doesn’t mean anything; did it even get there?

That’s the first one, does that make sense? I’m just going to check in with you because I am winging through this quite quickly.

That makes sense to me. It’s a big one and it can set you off on the wrong foot if you don’t take that step seriously.

Yeah and I think if you were coming to me and you did it the right way I’d take you more seriously than if you came to me in this very ad hoc way of doing it.

That’s number one.

The second step is called pre-framing, if you want to write this down this is a process that we use within NLP. This step falls more into the them part of the 38-component system.

Actually, this is one of the components by the way, so neurolinguistic programming is one of the 38 components that we talk about in the communication system and this is part of influencing now.

If you said to me where does this fit the whole picture Ro?

This is under them, influencing them, so I’m now going to pre-frame them. Pre-frame is like painting a picture for Harminder and his lovely wife Geena to say, look, just to let you know we are going to be meeting for around about 30 minutes because I know how busy you are and you mentioned you’ve got to get to back to work at 1 o’clock and I’ve got to shoot back across town.

What I’m going to do it is bring with me a mini slide presentation and some paperwork to share with you on some examples of stuff I’ve done in the past. What would be really helpful Harms is prior to the meeting if the two of you can discuss about the amount of money that you’ve got that you’re looking to park in the bank, maybe give me an idea of what the banks are offering you at the moment and how much and how long you’d be interested in leaving that money with me.

Now in doing that, are you fairly clear from that what is needed from you Harms?

Yes, absolutely, and I’m thinking this person is prepared I need to come prepared as well. And if you’re my personality, for example, I’m thinking this is great because this person means business, we are going to save a lot of time here, he’s not going to be faffing about let’s get something done. I like that kind of organised feeling.

Brilliant so the pre-framing if you miss it out, I guarantee you when you get to step three, which is communicating with impact, you’re in trouble because now when you sit down to communicate with impact you’re actually face-to-face. I’m with you and Geena. If I haven’t prepared you and I’m not prepared, and I say right I’m going to talk to you about the funds you’ve got available and then you go, “Oh honey how much have we got now?” And I ask okay roughly how much have you got? Then it becomes a broad conversation.

Then I say what sort of return are the banks giving you? And you say, “I don’t know I haven’t checked that.”

Now I’ve got nothing to position my offering against because I don’t know what your situation is.

So the communicating with impact has four primary components and this is under one element of everything we are talking about. You’ve got to engage them, you’ve got to be clear on your outcome and as you engage that person in that moment, now we are in the actual meeting now, we are communicating with impact.

We’ve engaged them, we have made it very clear what our outcome is in our minds what we want to achieve, but I also want to make sure that I want them to know what my outcome for the meeting is as well. I want to have very clear messages and again that’s a whole conversation we could spend a couple of hours talking about specific messages.

Then I’ve got my timing right, so in order to communicate with impact I can have all the engagement, all the outcome of great messages and then I only get through a quarter of those and then you look at your watch you say, “Sorry Ro I’vegot to go.” My timing was wrong. I’ve lost the impact because I’ve left the meeting and you and Gee have had to go home and she says, “He seemed quite interesting but didn’t really get through everything. Did you get what he was talking about there?”

And of course I’ve lost you.

That’s the third component, then we go to the next component which is number four.

Now before I leave the meeting with you Harms and Geena let’s say you’ve agreed to give me the money and I said right, let me just clarify so what we’re agreeing here is this you’re going to give me £120,000; you’re away travelling for two years. You might not need it for three years so initially you’re going to lend it to me for two years and we are going to agree on this particular interest rate and what we have agreed is that I will go away, I’ll get the lawyers to talk to your lawyer and I’ll put a loan agreement to you. How does that sound to Harminder?

In that sense, it sounds great because I’m prepared andmy preparedness has matched what your preparedness was and now we are at a stage where we can move forward quite swiftly actually.

Yeah.

Now it might be that you need to go and think about it. So I say you’ve indicated that you are very interested and what you need from me is some paperwork, how the legals work but what you’re going to go away and do is come back to me with the specific amount you’re prepared to lend. Why don’t we agree and that’s the next step.

So step four is clarification and then the next step.

The next step is you’re going to send me an email by Thursday evening, correct and, yes, and I’m going to come back with my paperwork by the end of tomorrow so you’ve got time to review it before we have our next meeting which is on Friday, and we go great.

That leads us to step five, it will be interesting to see what your experience of this is before we wrap this up.

Step five is you’ve got to keep the promise.

As you’re listening to me right now and you’re making a note of this imagine a situation where you’ve gone away from Harminder and he’s come back with his paperwork, but you haven’t come back with those legals that he was after.Just an example of a loan document and then you contact him on Friday morning to say, hi are we still on for the meeting? He says, yeah but you were going to send me the loan document and I go shit, I forgot to send it to him.

Harms from your perspectiveif I call you on Friday and you’ve done everything on your side but I haven’t what’s the first thing that gets broken for you?

WellI think the first thing that gets broken is the trust. In the context of this it’s the trust, okay if you can’t get the loan document in timethen I trust this person to pay me back, but I’m not get paid back on time. And you plug that into any scenario…

…relationships, a late promise for somebody at work, but remember all I’m doing is I’m plucking just a few parts of the whole system in one scenario. Which by the waywe could take two or three hours and actually create this five-step process into a complete process where we take somebody through right you’re about to pitch for a hundred thousand whatever, let’s go through it. Let’s prepare every single element of this. I’m just compressing it down.

So that’s your five steps, initial contact, pre-frame before the meeting, communicate with impact, clarify the outcome, clarify the next steps and then keep your promise and follow-up to the next part and that at this stage is all I’m going to say. Because there’s enough there to be getting on with.

Is that useful Harminder?

Very useful and for listeners at homeif you’re listening to this and you’re running or jogging, or in the kitchen cooking, doing the dishes these are on the show notes. Just head to growthtribes.com/podcast and all the show notes are there and if you visit the website regularly, thereare summary show notes. I’ll put these in the summary show notes and the team will do that for you guys and after that there is a full transcription. So if you like to read through it, then you can read through it as well, so growth tribes.com/podcast.

Phenomenal process Ro and it’s almost an automatic process I use now but you have to revisit it. For example we can reverse this process and say if a scenario went poorly or if a scenario didn’t go to plan what part of this process wasn’t done?“Ah okay I missed step two. I missed step four. I missed step five, I broke the trust because I didn’t keep the promise.” And we knowbusy entrepreneurs if you’re juggling lots of things it can happen, but there’s a way to overcome that as well.

Okay, Iwant to pick out Ro one word that you said in the process that you’re talking about, and it’s a common kickback people have and I think maybe they’re sceptical, maybe they’re just approaching this from the wrong way. But one of the challenges that I’ve had is when I’ve improved my communication sometimes people flag me up and say you are a highly influential person and sometimes a challenge that people have with the influence part of what you’ve said is, they can confuse that for manipulation.

That’s sometimes the kickback we had. “You are a Master of CommunicationDr Ro are you not using these tools for manipulation?”

If you’re getting that question fired at you and I’m sure you’ve heard it before.

Yes.

How do you answer that?

Interestingly enough, when I first ran the first CWI training somebody came up just after the first coffee break and just said, “Bloody hell these tools are so powerful can they be misused? Do you find yourself in situations where you can use them to manipulate a person or a situation. How do we manage that?Is it open to criticism?”

And I said, well, it’s a system. I mean driving a car, you can kill somebody driving a car. That’s an amazing system, you get in the car, you turn it on, put the accelerator down and you’re off. You getfrom nought to 60 or whatever it is however many seconds, it’s an amazing tool, but it’s also dangerous. A gun can be used to protect you or be used to harm another human being.

It’s just a tool.

The key is how you use it as a person and it comes back to one wordwhich years ago really struck a chord with me. WayneDyer really brought this particular word to surface for me and that’s the power of intention. It’s what is the intention behind everything you do and if you come to the table with authenticity and a genuine desire to help people, now can I help somebody by influencing them? Yes. Can I help somebody by influencing them to make a decision? Yes, if they told me, “I’m struggling to make a decision on this, I’m not quite sure where to go with it.” If I can use the system to help them come to a clean and easy answer in their minds, yes, I am guiding them I’m steering them, but I’m not manipulating them .

I’m going to say to them and you’ve heard me say this, can I use a process with you that I think will help you come to a decision?They go, “Yeah please do.”Now they’ve given me their permission.

Okay, so close your eyes, do this, think about this. Imight ask them certain words,I might use some mind reading techniques, whatever, and they go, “How did you know that?” I go well I was watching what you were doing, listening to your language.I get a feeling that this is your main problem here. “It is”, so how about you do this, this and this and to get you over your problemwe can do this.

It involves coaching. The truth is that it is a very powerful tool in the hands of somebody that has got the right integrity and has the right intention behind what they’re doing, so it can be misused.

I hopefully believe that people listening to this will use it in a positive way.

I love that Ro and I think that the nail you’ve hit on the head is the word intention and if you look at the original communication books and it’s called ‘How to win friends and influence people’it’s the title. So I do understand why people can get confused but if you read even that foundational communications book you can see that in all the scenarios and the pictures that the author paints it’s all for a positive outcome. And that’s important. The positive outcome for yourself and the positive outcome for them, the other person.

I just want to loop back to the word intention Ro you know the coach, mentor the teacher who teaches and I’ll use some modern examples. Teaches a coder/developer how to code at the highest level is not teaching the student knowing that this individual is going to hack into people’s personal data.

Very good I like that.

The coach, the mentor, the teacher who helps pass somebody in the financial services doesn’t do that knowing the individuals going to commit financial fraud, that’s not why the tools are taught to people.

The tools are taught to people to better their lives and I think it is purely based on the intention that you put behind it. And I guess ensuring it leads to a win-win scenario that you, I think this is why the components are almost there Ro, you put them there is you and them are both factored in to this scenario. That is critical to have that harmonious process.

Otherwise, Ro I imagine you’re communicating with impact system would only have you.Let’s make sure everything happens for you and don’t worry about them, don’t worry about the outcome.

Well some people’s system is that i.e. they don’t know, they don’t realise the extent of this so that’s why they have challenges in their relationships, businesses, that’s why they have failed businesses because they start and then very quickly It’s about them. They manipulate people and get pissed off.

That’s even deeperthat’s about working on their own personal self-development and understanding their own make up, their human core, where they’ve got some blocks, maybe there’s some pain from the past and they’re communicating that pain through the way they act towards other people. There’s a whole different level we can take it to from a coaching, mentoring perspective.

For sure and imagine if you’re listening to this at home and you’ve got a passionate message and it’s out there to protect the environment, protect certain cultures, protect certain ecosystems, certain species of animals, but you just don’t know how to get this message across to people.

You don’t know how to influence them to see a way to protect ecosystems, the environment, the species and yes I’m using an example of the environment here, but with these toolsimagine you could use these tools to influence a group of people who ended up protecting a species of animal that was going extinct. That’s probably a better way to use the tools that you could potentially be mastering herewith communicating with impact.

Is that fair Ro?

Yes love it. That’s great, that’s a fantastic example.

Awesome so I hope we’ve answered the critics who are thinking these tools are powerful, what if it’s used the wrong way? I think if you just use it the right way that’s what all we can hope for at this stage.

Totally.

I think we are coming to a close Ro do you have any next steps for the audience listening at home?

We always try do next steps don’t we? As you were speaking just towards the end there I quickly made a note of four things I think would be great just based on what you and Ihave talked about over this hour and half we’ve been speaking.

So next steps and this is just a self-reflective process, go and spend the next week doing the following.

Number one everywhere you go every person you communicate with start being aware of you and your emotional state, your preparation and just how you’re communicating with them. Notice how they react to you, so this is the them.

Be observant of you, be observant of them and notice the environment. It might be that you’re in a situation where the two of you talking but it just doesn’t feel right, the vibes not right and you say, “Let’s move over to there it’s a bit quieter in the corner.”

Sometimes you do that instinctively which means great you’re working on that part of it which is the environment. I want you to do that and notice it with one person or 20 or 50, or whatever if you’re doing a group presentation. Then ask yourself what do I need to work on?

Maybe come away from communication and say which of those three components can I work on better next time with the next person to improve? Just start on that process and the last thing is just be present. So when you’re with them don’t look at your phone, don’t look at anything else just be present, watch them, watch their body language. Because the more you do that, you’ll start to get into the mind-reading mode.

So four things,self-observe focus on you, me and the environment. Ask yourself what needs to be worked on in one of those areas and then be present when you’re with people, so that you can improve that process and just iteratively start to work on that.

That is what I would do at this stage.

Fantastic and I’ll put the next steps on the show notes just as a summary and a quick reference guide. What I would leave the listeners with, what I’d like to leave the listeners with is I know Ro hasn’t said it, but I would say look out for the book Ro is going to be launching on this topic.

I haven’t talked about that.

Yeah and it’s still early days but let’s look out for this book. The best way to do that it is get yourself subscribed, head to growthtribes.com become a free user, get yourself subscribed and that way you’ll be first to knowas part of the newsletter that comes out monthly, that’s important.

That book is purely focused on the subject we talked about today. It is the whole communicating with impact principle compressed into a book. Super excited about that coming out.

Absolutely, and if you’re excited and you knowcommunicating with impact and gaining the skill will accelerate whatever your targets are, your goals for 2020, I would say a good starting place to actually get some theory behind what Ro is talking about is head over to growthtribes.com, head to the vault section and just check out the communicating with impact video series.

That’s a fantastic starting point, it is extremely low-cost you know, this is £20 or less have a look at that course on the growthtribes.com and that’s a great starting point and start mastering that skilltoday.

We truly believe it’s a foundational skill which has massive value and massive benefit to anybody’s lifeonce mastered.

On that note actually within there you’ll see me videoed in different environments, and one of them is actually inside a seminar room and just the sort of things I’m looking forward when I’m in front of an audience.

There is another series that they might want to listen to as well inside the vault actually Harminder which is on negotiation I believe is there.I think that’s another one to do with communication , but when you’re dealing with people to maybe strike a deal, you’re looking to get a better price, negotiating for a property or product or something like that. That would work hand-in-hand there with the communication series as well.

Fantastic, I’ll leave those on the show notes.

I think those are the next steps for me because what it allows the listeners to do is where Ro you’ve given them some actionable steps and what I want to do is make sure they stay plugged in with this skill. Because if we can master this skill in 2020 we can have a great impact on the world.

Absolutely.

If you’ve got an amazing messagecome join us on the podcast, go start your own pod cast get your message out there and it all started for me as an example, after attending Communicating with Impact and starting to master those skills myself and it’s an ongoing process but is an exciting process, because of the impact it has for myself and the people around me.

So Ro thanks for decoding that, thanks for explaining to the audience and for the five-step process and this is myself and Dr Rosigning out, we will see you on the next episode.