Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Dont Shut Up Prakhar Gupta
Dont Shut Up Prakhar Gupta
Title: Don’t Shut Up - How To Talk So The World Listens
Author: Prakhar Gupta, Mudit Yadav
Self-Published by
PG Expression LLP
Printed by
Thomson Press (India) Limited
18/35 Delhi-Mathura Road,
Faridabad 121007, Haryana.
Edited by Nishant Mulay and Alex Horn.
Book design by Asim Sayed
Cover design by Asim Sayed and Jai Gurnasinghani
Typesetting by Jai Gurnasighani in Inter and Crimson
Cover photography by Arush Dua
Copyright @Prakhar Gupta & Mudit Yadav 2022
ISBN - 978-93-5659-283-4
- Prakhar Gupta
PREFACE
When was the last time you read a book or consumed content that was
impressive, or brilliant at best, but left you thinking how you can use it?
There is value in producing and consuming such content - wisdom is not a
servant of application. For this book, our goal was different. We wanted to
create a toolkit that you default to when you face a problem, rather than
hunt for a problem once you have the tool. Your success is proportional to
your ability to manage the world and get what you need while building
sustainable relationships. Communication in its various forms is the
technology that allows you to do this. We set out to create our version of a
handbook or a dictionary of communication related situations and how we
would solve them. This is a simple and directly applicable toolkit for a
communication-related situation you might have Tuesday morning for a
presentation, or Friday evening on a date.
In preparation for this book, we worked backward from what YOU need.
What do you need with friends, dates, college, work, and life? What causes
you to hold your voice in these situations and shut up? We magnified your
life one conversation at a time, and discovered 23 situations which have the
potential to impact your life and happiness. These 23 situations became the
chapters for this book. We split these chapters between ourselves with
Prakhar leading the section on ‘Studenthood to Adulthood’ and Mudit on
‘The Grownup Zone’.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PART I:
STUDENTHOOD TO ADULTHOOD
1. “We went to school together”
How to make friends in college. (And keep them)
2. “Hey, are you free tonight?”
How To Ask Someone Out On a Date
3. “So… What’s your favourite colour?
What To Talk About On The First Date
4. “Where’s the dance floor?”
How to Have Fun at Parties (Without Drinking)
5. “That’s a nice sweater”
Striking up a Conversation with a Complete Stranger
6. “Yikes!”
How to be Confident in Nervous Situations
7. Duck Duck Go
How to Turn Around Embarrassing Moments
8. Balm for butt-hurts
How to Respond to an Insult
9. “But dad!!”
How to Have Tough Conversation with Parents
10. “No.”
How to Say No
11. “I’m sorry”
How to Apologise
12. “It’s over”
How to Break Up
13. Enter the grownups zone
How to Convey Disagreement
PART II
:
THE GROWN UP ZONE
14. It’s a new job!
How to Build Your Personal Brand at the Workplace?
15. “Your highness...”
How to Talk to Powerful People?
16. “I’d like to say..”
How to Present an Argument?
17. “Sell me this pen”
How to nail that interview?
18. Zesty Cold
How to write an impactful cold email?
19. “And what do you do?”
How to network at networking events?
20. “Good morning team”
How to lead better meetings?
21. “Once upon a time”
How to tell better stories?
22. “Check 1, 2, 3,..”
How to deliver a compelling speech?
23. Elephant in the room
How to have a critical conversation?
PART I:
STUDENTHOOD TO
ADULTHOOD
1
“We went to school together”
How to make friends in college. (And
keep them)
I remember sitting with him in his office after the lecture hearing him talk
about it. I thought, ‘if this is true, that would mean that people would
respond perfectly if one could find a way to share reality.’ I was fascinated
and I wanted to test the potency of this new idea. Many months later, I
would formalise the use of this theory as my strategy to make friends in
college.
The more I thought about it, the more It seemed to me that at every point
you communicate with people, you enter into a negotiation about what is
your shared reality. Think about your friend talking to you about their
problems. They tell you how their world, their circumstances- their current
reality - looks, and they expect you to either say something, nod, or stay
silent in the agreement. As soon as you express disagreement, even
unconsciously, they are bound to notice it even in the way you pause or
look at them. If you disagree with them too much, they no longer wish to
tell you their problems. That is why, very often, people will say things like
‘I don't want you to tell me how to fix this, I want you to listen.’ What they
are expecting, at that moment, is for you to at least express silent
agreement. What they are looking for is shared reality.
Shared reality is the basis of childhood psychological development too. The
child shares reality with his mother, father, and peers and picks up what is
right and wrong, what is to be liked and disliked. More precisely, the child
learns how to feel and think about the world from sharing reality. It would,
then, make sense as to why we have deep and special bonds with our
parents and childhood friends. We have shared reality with them for the
longest time, or have shared a more naive and vulnerable reality with them.
To my young mind, this was fascinating. I didn't care as much for scientific
accuracy. I was in no position to verify it anyway. I just took this idea and
began to apply it to social relationships and I began to quickly figure out the
Chemical X of making friends.
I am still very close friends with my first ever friend. We met when we were
about two years old, and we have been friends for roughly 25 years. We
grew up living across the street from each other. I became friends with him
as a toddler because he was just at the right place, at the right time, and with
the right toys. Then, we went to the same schools. We both played the same
sports and we spent our free time watching the same cartoons as boys.
Around the time we were 13, our interests began to diverge. He became
more musically proficient and I understood nothing about music. I began to
get stage friendly in a different way. I was leading debate teams and quiz
teams and he was the charming guitarist that girls would chase. More
people began to flood into our lives, and different tastes and opportunities
shaped our futures. Right after high school, I spent a month in London.
When I came back, he had been admitted to a college rather far away and,
so, he moved out.
We have spent the last 10 years mostly away from each other. I have been
between the United States and India. He has travelled with his band across
the country, spent some time in the UK and now runs his own business. Our
worlds have become unrecognisably different, but we haven't stopped being
the best of friends. I wonder, often, if we would have been friends for so
long had we met at a different age and in a different context? Or conversely,
why is our friendship still so strong after all these years of living away and
living differently?
The answer is simple. My friend and I have shared a reality I have shared
with no other. We have raced toy cars on all fours and have exchanged
pokemon cards. He knew me in the classroom, in the cricket field, on the
chess board, and at home. We have seen life and death together. Even if our
lives look nothing alike any more, I share my past with him and that is what
makes our bond so strong and deep.
There is a reason why Indians who live abroad make friends with other
Indians (or South Asians in general) around them. They have a shared past.
They can feel each other’s experience from their pasts. Or, at least, come
close. They have the relevant context. They know when they say ‘mera
pind’/ ‘humare khet’/ ‘chai aur Parle G’/ ‘college hostel’, the other person
can see it, smell it, and feel the buzz from that place.
In college, the liberty of your future is dawning upon you. Your eyes are
being opened to a new type of freedom and you are beginning to explore
your potential and the world’s endless possibilities. It is wise if you realise
then that the highest mountains aren't scalable alone. When you realise this,
you are likely to look for teammates. Now these teammates could be for the
purpose of your career, which is the first place the mind goes to when one
employs language like this, or for other goals of your life.
I had left India a fitter man than I have ended up becoming. I had more
muscle and less jiggle and I was very precise about my exercise and eating
situation. My roommate, who at first I found very dislikeable, had only one
thing common with me- his desire to be physically fit. Over dinner one day
we began to scope our interest in working out and keeping healthy. It turned
out he was far more interested and knowledgeable about it. He would keep
a stack of supplements and herbs and he would experiment with a variety of
diets and workouts. Very quickly, I went from disliking the guy to wanting
to explore more of this common mission. The more I spoke to him, the
more his mission and my mission were in each other's way, and the more
we became friends. Soon, we discovered our common interest in
philosophy and psychology.
Eventually, the press and opponents of our cause came lurking. We were
written about harshly and spoken about ungracefully. We were labelled as
morally questionable and intellectually dishonest by our detractors. I
remember talking to the same roommate-friend about the morale of the
group. He said they’d hold tight. I wanted to see it. At the next board
meeting, the crew showed full support for each other. The spirits were high
and everybody felt supportive and supported. The full spectrum of
friendship was emerging. I went home that day thinking what had exactly
happened such that this friend group only grew stronger when outside
pressure was applied? It dawned upon me soon after. This group of people,
loosely tied in their values, finally had a complete mission. They knew the
enemy, they knew their path and they knew their cause better than ever.
Initially, this was a hobby group, people shared their future to the extent of
their interest in the values of discussion and free speech. Now, their
interests were threatened and suddenly everyone converged on their
purpose. They shared the future in a sharper and more exact way and this
made all of them better friends.
Since then, almost all of them have graduated and gone their separate ways.
Not everyone is in touch with each other. However, if you pick any one of
them and ask them they will confirm that their best friend from college was
from this group. Each of these people were very different individuals of
different races, ages, backgrounds and genders, and each of them found
close friendships under the umbrella of a common cause.
The point of the story is not to emphasise the righteousness of our cause.
Who knows if us mid 20s college students were right about free speech and
our philosophy of conversation. The point is to illustrate how people make
friends regardless of being right and wrong. You buy into or come up with a
vision of how the future should be. Then, you share it with other people. If
other people agree, you and they form a team to go after that mission. In the
course of completing that mission, you spend more time with each other
and share more about your past, present, and future with each other. This
makes the friendship deeper and stronger.
‘It seems obvious that it would be this way, bro’ my friend said to me as we
drove past the darkness of the night towards our home. My friend Ashish is
an entrepreneur in the content and tech space. We were in the same class
through middle and high school and he is also my neighbour. Ashish now
runs this company with Amit, who also lives close by. Amit was a few
years younger, and we would take the same bus to school. ‘People made
friends in war in our past. They made friends because they had dangers to
fight. It is, then, natural that we make our deepest friendships when we
share common missions of the future, common dreams about what is to
come.’ When I asked Ashish about how he decided he wanted to start this
company with Amit, he told me the simple secret behind what might be a
lifelong friendship. ``We just kept a conversation going for many years
about wanting to do something in content and tech. We waited patiently and
worked on our skills privately. As soon as we had the opportunity, we
pounced and we made sure we pounced together.” Ashish and Amit are glad
for their friendship.
In college, when trying to make friends, one of the easiest ways to do is
establish symmetries in your future. Find the people who share the same
vision for the future as you. If not, find the people whose vision of the
future most impresses you. Align your vision of the future with them.
Vision could be as simple as getting good grades and finding a great job or
finding a problem and solving it at scale. The vision could be as
fundamental as wanting to move to Silicon Valley or as trivial as waking up
at 5 am to go for a run.
The more common missions you find, the more common enemies you
promise to tackle, the more immediate paths you have in common, the
deeper friendships you'll make. All you have to do is be curious and
expressive.
The first thing you need when you begin sharing a mission is a cause. A
cause is a future call to action. You believe in the substance of one position,
say for example that we need to improve the condition of the rapidly
polluting Earth or we need to lose weight to become healthier. Second, you
need to have an enemy. No mission is complete without opposition. You
persevere against opposition. You go through trying times, feel the pressure
and resort to hope. When you fight a common enemy, you bond to protect
and serve each other. This strengthens a friendship like almost nothing else.
Note that the enemy doesn't have to necessarily be a negative that needs to
be destroyed or nullified, that is, it doesn't have to be someone or something
bad. Your enemy could just be the fossil fuel dependency in the automobile
industry, and you and your friend are on a mission to create a more
sustainable fuel source for cars. The third thing you need is a path. If a
soldier doesn't know what road to walk, all his preparation is useless. Often,
this road is dictated by his commander, usually by their ‘king’. When the
soldier is a commander or a king, the road is dictated by his higher moral
purpose. If your mission does not have immediate small, even stealth steps,
you will lose out on the shared mission. It’ll fade beyond memory and you
will never get to war. This is to say if you do not manage a few and regular
coordinated movements towards your mission, your connection will slowly
fade.
Life is tough, and we all carry our private miseries inside our head. We all
have problems and all the solutions to our problems are uphill battles. We
slog day in day out to deal with them. Our lives are programmed to be grim
and intense. However, this is the exact reason why we value someone who
passes on joy. If your company is in infinite supply, joy is in infinite
demand and all you have to do is find a product-market fit. My energy,
every time I met them, induced them to realise the small joys of everyday
life and they valued it without knowing it. I valued it without knowing it.
Eventually, when the dream snapped and our connection collapsed after
many months of not seeing each other, our shared emotions still peeped out
to create a friendly meeting right outside the gym. That is the strength of
sharing your present properly.
This example is not sufficient to explain the depth of the concept, but it is
sufficient to make a point. Beyond joy and simply saying an infrequent
‘hello’, some people need to share other emotions. You cannot meet
someone’s vulnerable stories about their life with a ‘YOOO BROO!’ You
have to adjust to the circumstance and share the emotion that is demanded
by the situation. That involves both awareness and finesse and that comes
from practice. Secondly, friendships are not limited to one emotion. The
more complex the set of emotions you share, the more reality sharing
occurs. Your friendships in college may begin because of joy, but to nourish
your bond you will have to share sorrow, anger, panic and enthusiasm too.
A Simple Formula
Now, let us apply these concepts to your context and arrive at a simple
formula for making the best of your social life in college. There are two
major problems to be solved. The first is accessibility- you need to be
accessible to people and people need to be accessible to you. The second is
that of bonding, and to that extent we will apply the principles of shared
reality.
1. Say hi to everybody and introduce yourself. You think it would
bother people, but it won't. People need a name for your face and
a face for your name. It offers familiarity and it warms up people
to the fact that you are friendly.
6. Share, but share carefully, your past with others. Ask, but ask
carefully, others about their past. The more common ground you
can find, the faster you become friends.
7. Create experiences together. Very often people make dull plans
and even though it does account for spending some time together
and sharing some emotion, a more intense experience would
make a deeper friendship in the same course of time. Figure out
things you have always wanted to do and do it with your college
friends.
8. If your college friends do not have the same sense of adventure
or the same courage for the future, inspire them to see things
your way. It incites nerves, but taking the lead is one of the more
immaculate ways of creating friendships. People don't just like
you, they respect you too.
Secondly, you are now technically trying to ‘Fit in’. By definition, you will
mould yourself horizontally and vertically and in all shapes and sizes to fit
the requirement of your environment. In all fairness, this is how people
learn to navigate social environments. This is what teaches people how to
interact. However, this process can go into overdrive where in order to learn
new ways you start contradicting your own inner self, where you start
trying too hard to fit in. You need to be aware of that. It is a common and
hurtful outcome of trying to socially interact in college. The more you find
people who accept you for who you are, the better you grow into yourself.
Then what is to be done at all? How must one make friends and socialise in
college once it’s ‘too late’, once everyone has solidified their friend groups?
The secret is to pull people towards you. If you are a person that carries
emotional gravity, that your life by itself is so interesting, intense or
intricate, that it brings out a more attractive version of you. Your life defines
what emotions you feel. A person that lives an interesting life, is involved
in his goals, in touch with his past and immersed in his reality, will carry it
into rooms with them. People are inherently attracted to this variety of a
person. In some way, it has the opposite effect than that of showing
desperation. It has the comforting effect of your friend saying ‘no, I'm full’
when you offer them the very small plate of lunch that you have, and the
follow up joy of them saying ‘wait, I have some more for you’. People will
want to be part of your adventure. Now when you interact with them, it
doesn't come across as ‘hungry’, it even offers some from your plate.
Besides, you are never trying to fit in. You are only leaning in to who you
really are. You are growing in the way you should instead of trying to force
yourself to fit in the imaginary confines of other people.
A Note on Insecurities
College students will often compare themselves with their peers and feel
insufficient. Part of the problem is ‘the cool factor’ that may be associated
with money, good looks or status. Part of the problem is not understanding
the paradox that life is very big, but your existence is very small. First of
all, do not be impressed with people from afar and never try to impress
someone from afar. The real beauty of you as a person needs to be felt with
time, with patience as your personality unfolds through the complexity of
life. Anything else is selling yourself short. The same is the case with
others. Comparing yourself with others on the basis of good looks or status
is a very distant comparison. You do not understand the intricacies of their
living situation and usually you end up comparing the worst of you with the
best of them. The comparison is unfair in its conception.
Secondly, understand that life is a long process. You will get everything in
its time, and once you get it it would seem so normal and every day that you
may wonder why you worried about not having it before. The point is to
learn to enjoy the process of life. Then there is the issue of ‘How will I get
everything in life?’. The answer is simple. You will learn, as you grow, that
you can only care about 2 or 3 things in life. You do not have the time and
energy to care about everything, and thus everything is not that important to
you. This need to be rich, good looking, famous, high status or cool fades
and gives way to more mature desires. It's an illusion created by all the free
time you have and the novelty of the worlds you are discovering for the first
time.
Give up on the comparison and focus on creating an adventure out of
your life.
2
“Hey, are you free tonight?”
How To Ask Someone Out On a Date
Besides, New York was kind to us. People did not always appreciate being
engaged by random strangers, no matter how attractive or charming, but the
spirit of New York tolerated us. A lot of other places in the world do not
allow for this kind of experimentation, but the worst New York ever offered
us was a ‘no, thank you’ with a forced smile. I don't blame us. We were, as
they say– young, wild, and free. I am even glad we did that. The rejections
hardened us and the attempts that worked gave us a sharp instinct for
reading conversations and interactions. The process of just pushing
ourselves to do that created a well of confidence in us. We came out smarter
from our experiments.
The golden words to ask someone out on a date are simple, precise and
honest.
It is of concern to me, and thus I should mention this, that people confuse
response type 3 and 4 very often. This confusion is not small and can have
bad consequences. Men and women end up over-committing to a ‘soft no’
by thinking that it is ‘hesitation’ and that there is some kind of an obstacle
they can solve. This leads to a bad outcome, where one person remains over
committed to a fiction in their head and spends massive amounts of emotion
on it, and the other cannot get rid of a person who sees something that they
don't. If you ever find yourself in a situation where you are unsure whether
their response to your ask is a 3 or a 4, ask them. ‘Hey, are you just
hesitant? Is there something I can do to see if this can work? Or is this a
no?’. You will know exactly what to do from there.
Armed with this information, let us try and unpack how to go about asking
someone out successfully. In all fairness, asking someone out is a type of
initiative that rests with the man by default, and thus a lot of the following
parts will be framed from the point of view of men. Women, if you are
interested, feel free to peruse.
We are attracted to what we find interesting, and the formula for building
intrigue in a conversation is very simple- Only say what is required of you,
and ask as many questions. This is the opposite of ‘selling yourself’, which
is what men commonly do with displays of status, wealth and power. This is
not to say hide yourself, or the many aspects of you. This is to only say, let
the other person decide what they want to know about you a lot more than
what you want to show them. This is the most organic way of developing
intrigue in an interaction. The more Machiavellian/Robert Greene way of
saying this is- Don't say everything. Leave something unfinished. Leave
something to be asked.
If from here, you receive interest from them, in the form of questions,
opinions, plans- conversation in general - you are good to go.
The second thing you have to establish is intent. It should be clear to her
that you are interested in exploring a dating possibility with her before you
ask her out. She needs to have given it some thought. Remember, for her it's
almost always a larger investment. You must communicate your interest in
her at least a little bit. Mention to her that you found X thing she did cute,
and that you appreciate Y about her, and try and not always make it about
how they look. This solves the problem on two levels. One, it saves you
from the legendary labyrinth of the friendzone. If she does not want this,
you will know beforehand. Two, it allows her time to think about you in
that way.
Fall in love in the company of each other. Enjoy the process of seeing
each other and slowly descending into love.
Assuming they accept, formulate the set up for the date in proportion to the
warmth of their acceptance. If they are very excited, you can make plans
right there and then. In that case, you can be concrete about time and plans.
If it's a softer, somewhat unsure yes, tell them you'll plan with them over the
phone or tomorrow. The point is to give them breathing room if they feel
overwhelmed. Let them make sense of this prospect alone for a little bit.
Don't push too hard.
Maybe, if you can manage to truly see rejections in a non-personal way, you
can be excited about rejections. However, it is difficult. Usually rejections
are deeply tied to self worth, and a rejection means a deep scepticism about
one’s self worth.
I have found the most real alternative to handling rejections is building
a strong emotional base in the things you do everyday.
You should do things you respect. You should be proud of your day, your
week, your month and your year.You should work in a way that you respect
and love, and your self worth will not get tossed into a salad every time
someone rejects you.
Beyond all this, rejection can be a portal to learn, to be strong– as the many
cliches go. However, you need to get the precursors right to arrive at this
indifference. Be excited about discovering it. However, for the sake of
clarity and in the interest of repetition, let me state the larger point more
clearly. Do not pine upon them after the rejection. Let rejection be a natural
signal to move upward. Do not waste time trying to win them, trying to
impress them, or worse trying to intimidate them. Don't waste time
fantasising about them and don't waste time thinking about what it could
have been. Take your story forward without them. This is a test of courage
and grace, and this is where self worth is built. Don't be the weakest version
of you when you need yourself the most. Who knows what fantastic person
awaits you after this rejection?
3
“So… What’s your favourite
colour?
What To Talk About On The First
Date
This is the essence of the first date- Your job is to establish the contours
upon which the following parts of your interaction will be based. In the
landscaping metaphor, think of the first date as sowing the seeds of what
will grow on this land. In the painting metaphor, think about it as painting
the lines around which the figure will come to life. This is the framework of
your future together, so make it solid and good.
The next thing you want to remember is to not half-ass the interaction. Be
genuinely curious. You are testing to see if this person is worth pursuing,
and they are trying to do the same. Ask them things you want to know
about them. Tell them things they ask you about. One of my favourite ways
to transition into the ‘getting-to-know-each-other-seriously’ phase is by
switching to a game. I will ask them a tough question and then immediately
say, “Let’s play this game, where each of us asks the other a question and
neither of us can lie.” This makes people feel safe because they know that I
will be shedding my performance — exposing my vulnerable side — as
much as they will be. Using the game, we can truly begin to get to know
each other deeply, by slowly ramping up the intensity of those questions.
Another important aspect to remember about dates in general, but
specifically the first date, is that it is more about what you say than what
you do, and more about who you are than who you show. A lot of the first
date interaction is about the implicit, rather than the explicit. More than
how famous, rich, beautiful or successful you can demonstrate yourself to
be, your date will be engaged by how playful, confident, and exciting you
are. Those material markers of status do matter, of course, but they are only
part of the picture. Therefore, as you attempt to learn more about your
partner, remember to also decorate your interactions with jokes, playful
banter and teases. You are, essentially, in the process of creating a new
language for yourself and them — a new way of exchanging lives, a secret
code that only you two know. Sprinkle on the ‘getting-to know-you’
process a few jokes and a few teases and you are already in ‘bonding’
territory.
Loving her company while you're on a candle-lit dinner for two? Take her
hands in yours. He’s crazy, you like him but you are in a public setting?
Crack a joke and nudge him on his shoulder. The bodies let each other
know more than the mind can say. Throughout the ‘getting-to-know-each-
other’ phase, while you are joking and bantering, continue to make your
interest clear. Use your body, and occasionally your words, to say that you
are interested in them and attracted to them.
The Eyes, Chico..
If you want to make sure you check off all the boxes in the sub-verbal
communication zone, you need to know what the eyes can do.
The eyes alone, but especially together with the smile, can communicate
without a single word all that needs to be said. A strong eye contact
communicates intent and interest.
Awkwardness
A very frequent point of concern is awkwardness. Here is the singular
solution to awkwardness or any kind of weirdness that you might have
communicated: address it vocally. For example, “I know this is kinda
strange..” “I said something silly…” “I do some tactless stuff sometimes..”
are all perfect ways of expressing that you understand the other person’s
situation and that you are socially aware. Notice the words ‘strange’ ‘silly’
and ‘tactless’. ‘You could have just as easily used words like
‘uncomfortable’ ‘weird’ or ‘awkward’, but those words have negative
connotations that could influence your date’s perception for the worst, like
painting a beautiful painting in ugly colours. By using more neutral words,
but still addressing the issue clearly, you demonstrate humility and self-
awareness without putting yourself down. The point of addressing these
concerns is to establish connection, not to belittle yourself or actually make
them uncomfortable. You will find as soon as you talk about the
awkwardness of the situation, it is no longer so awkward or weird.
Awkwardness is a meta-emotion. You are awkward when you know
someone (or you) has done something awkward but they either don't even
know, or cant say or don't say that this was a faux pas.
Gauging Interest
Another frequent issue that people naturally discover on first dates is the
struggle of gauging the interest of the other person. Gauging interest is
difficult on dates because you cannot be upfront about it without risking
ruining it: you must approach indirectly. Romance and sexuality come alive
in mystery and die when exposed to the sun, so gauging the interest of your
date is essentially guesswork, but you do have a constant stream of clues.
The skill of accurate gauging interest must be developed like a craft,
through experience: however, the following universal litmus test may be
helpful. A person that is interested in you will try and mirror your thoughts,
postures and feelings and reciprocate positively. If you touch them slightly
on the arm and they don’t run away from the date, trust yourself that they
like you. If you offer an opinion and they don’t look at you like you’re
weird, you’re doing fine. If you suggest a new plan and they don’t pass on
the offer either directly or indirectly, they probably enjoy your company. Of
course, common sense applies, and I always suggest men to be cautious and
conservative, for more than one reason, in their judgement of where they
are in the interaction. However, the general idea remains the same — mirror
and reciprocation. This is how interest and affection are communicated sub
verbally.
Close, but with WHY
What you do at the end of the date is dependent on too many factors to
consider. These factors include the time of day; the type of date; the quality
of the interaction so far; the availability of time and privacy; and more. All
of this information will inform your next move. However, in all cases,
understand that your task now is to close out the first part of the painting
smoothly. The contours need to be steady and intact, enough to make the
rest of the painting an easy process. Make sure you reaffirm your sentiment
towards them when you say goodbye. To put it simply, show intent again,
but this time do it slightly differently. Tell them, along with the fact that you
had a great time and that they are fun and that you'd like to do this again,
WHY you think they are fun, WHY you had a great time and WHY you'd
like to see them again. You don't have to do all three, just do one. “I'd love
to hang out again, you are so energetic and full of life’ ‘I had a great time
your stories are so intriguing’ ‘You are so cool, I love how you live your
life with no fear’ or whatever fits the occasion. What you're passing on at
that point is that you observed them and CHOSE them for a reason. That
there is something unique, if not special, between the two of you.
This is how you create a whole new world, albeit small at first, for the two
of you.
Basically …
Now that we are done talking about the interaction part of it, we should
cover some basics.
1. Dress for the occasion. Make it look like you cared enough
for your date.
2. Pick a nice, fun but safe thing to do. People appreciate that you
put thought into what you want to do.
3. Talk to the people around you with confidence and don’t be rude
to the staff — you are being screened for how you speak to
everyone else except your date.
5. Start the interaction at the level of energy you want to set the
tone of the interaction with. Excited
you meets excited
them, dull
you meets dull
them.
6. End the interaction with the level of energy and emotion you
want them to recall the next time they speak to you. They will
subconsciously carry it until next time.
Pro tip
: In the process of getting to know the other person, shed a few of
the layers behind which you hide. Tell the truth. Be honest and vulnerable.
There is something very unique about letting a new person change your life
with the beauty of their lived experience. Just don't go overboard and
destroy the point of the conversation by being overly self-centred. Give
them time to speak up and be honest and vulnerable as well. The first date
is an ‘us’ affair, not a ‘you’ or ‘me’ situation.
4
“Where’s the dance floor?”
How to Have Fun at Parties (Without
Drinking)
This is a simple problem to solve. Start by talking to most people. You don't
have to talk to all of them, but just be social enough where people expect
you to be social. This sets them up to be warm to you and warms you up to
be social to them.
When you talk to strangers for the first time at a party, avoid opening with a
question. Open with a statement instead. It could be something as simple as
introducing yourself or offering a compliment or cracking a context-
appropriate joke. You need to be careful to match the tone of the party. If
this is a light, soft music day time setup, you speak softly and from afar. If
this is a crowded, loud music, night time setup, you speak loudly and closer.
It is a lot more okay to ask questions in the softer setup and it is a lot easier
to communicate in statements in a louder setup. Beyond this, just have a
normal conversation.
Once you are introduced to people, introduce people to other people they
may not know. These 20 people do not even know how much fun they will
begin to have if the tension of unfamiliarity is released between them. Act
as a mediator for a few conversations if you like. It helps to crack soft jokes
on other people’s behalf in these conversations to create an informal
situation. The more random people you bring together, the more the party
will begin to have fun.
In being the cause of the fun, you do not have to be the centre of attention.
People know how to have fun, you just need to remove the obstruction.
You be the cause. You walk up to them and try to raise their energy. Raising
energy or vibing harder (or creating arousal, as psychologists would call it)
is done by matching the tone and raising it a couple notches. Say for
instance you walk up to this group of people and say ‘what's up?’. They
look at you, smile a little and say ‘nice party, dude’ to be polite. Say their
smile is a 6 (10 being a full glee) and the volume of their voice is a 5 (10
being speaking over the music and other people), you respond to them with
a smile that is a 7 and a volume that is a 6. Say what comes naturally, don't
fret the ‘what’ part. ‘What’ you say is marginally important. What is more
important is HOW you say it. Your job is to add more fun into the
conversation with your voice and body. People are known to mirror states.
They will feel the same energy and mood that you project at them, and
eventually start vibing more.
This is a neat trick you can use in any conversation. This is one of the ways
to guide the flow of an interaction. Remember to amp the energy
incrementally. Going from a 1 to a 9 will scare the other person away, and
always be aware of the tone and the context of the party.
People come to parties to have fun and let loose from their otherwise
focused and laborious lives. However, the same people are too afraid to
appear stupid in front of other people. They dress up and travel to have fun,
but without alcohol they find themselves chained to a strange seriousness
about their ‘self’. You need to be the reminder, to yourself and others, that
no fun is ever produced from taking yourself too seriously. If you are a
party where people are not letting loose, lead the charge for stupid
behaviour.
The famous American bar call for ‘SHOTS!’ is a perfect example of this. In
probably 8 out of 10 scenarios, shots are not a good idea. However, the call
for ‘SHOTS’ unifies people. It reminds them that they are there to have fun
and gives them a clear action to have that fun. For a lot of other people it is
‘LET'S DANCE’. The formula is the same. Unify people in the spirit of the
party so they can forget themselves, and then do something stupid (but
safe!) together.
Stupid does not have to be spectacular and it doesn’t have to be risky. It just
has to be off script. In a party where no one is dancing, take people to
dance. In a party nobody is drinking, order shots. In a party where nobody
is eating, create a table and invite people to taste and discuss food.
Create scenarios where people can be part of a group and mingle. Keep
them involved. They will produce most of the fun and throw it at you.
5
“That’s a nice sweater”
Striking up a Conversation with a
Complete Stranger
It is at once the most difficult, most frightening, the most exciting and the
most rewarding of things you can do in the social world.
The truth is that you don't need a premise to start a conversation. You can
create the premise as you go. You certainly don't need prior familiarity with
the other person to start a conversation, because you can build that as you
go as well. It is immensely hard to unlearn the childhood rule of forced
premises. It is hard to admit that nothing is stopping you from talking to
others, except for your own fears. But it is essential that this skill be
conquered. Talking to a stranger is an act of rebellion. By approaching
without a premise, you tell the other person that you are not bound by the
normative rules set by society, and that you are able to connect with them
solely on the level of your shared humanity.
The Technique
This rebellious mindset is essential, but theory can only get you so far. It is
equally important to master the technique of ‘talking up’ strangers. In order
to do so, let us consider the following analogy, which, while an imperfect
parallel, is nonetheless instructive.
Every random conversation is like a car stuck on the street with a choked-
up engine. The only way to make the car start is to manually push it until
the engine kicks in; this initial push requires great effort, but once you get it
moving, the process is a lot smoother from there on in. Just like the car,
when you converse with a random stranger, you must keep pushing till a
point where the organic engine of the conversation takes over. From there, it
is like any other car ride, like any other conversation. That is the purpose of
technique — to hit a point where the hesitancy of the initial conversation
evaporates.
One fall, many years ago, I was hanging out at a high end bar in New York
CIty. You could feel the approaching winter in the air. People stood all
along the balcony, watching the majestic flow of the East River. The Statue
of Liberty gazed away from us at a distance. Everyone in the bar looked
beautiful: this was the weekend before New York Fashion week. All famous
models, their wealthy partners and their influential friends swarmed the bar
with joyous jokes and loud laughter. I sat with my friends in one corner. We
were young and all of us were students.
We looked around, joking about how we didn't fit in the crowd. But my
friend Peter refused to admit that. So, I offered him a challenge. I told him
that if he could bring the nearest group of models and their friends over to
our table, I would admit that we were wrong and he was right. Peter got up
without hesitation, and I got up with him to observe. He marched forward to
the group and I put my ear right behind him. He opened with a “Hi, excuse
me” that was loud enough to be heard over the music but not too loud, and
then he waited for a second for them to notice.
They looked around at us. I immediately felt awkward and nervous. All my
years of social conditioning had taught me I wasn’t allowed to do this. I felt
strange, but my friend continued. “Hi, you all look so gorgeous and fun, I
had to come say hi.” All of their sceptical looks quickly transformed into
smiles and they all broke out in thank yous.
This was Peter's opener. Simple and to the point. Notice how, with the
opener, Peter is establishing a reason for him to open this conversation. He
is in fact setting up a temporary premise. He clearly conveys, ‘I am here to
talk to you because you look beautiful and happy’. Only very few people
would dislike that statement. Peter isn’t looking to get something with his
opener, at least not overtly. He is only trying to offer good emotions, and
nothing more. By doing so, he puts the impetus on the other party to
respond to him with equal positivity. It is hard to ignore the goodness of
another man.
“Thank you” the nearest model said to us. Her smile extended ear to ear. I
felt more comfortable. Peter then pushed the compliment further. “Looks
like you guys are going to set the Fashion Week on fire” he said. They all
laughed further. “I'm Peter” he continued, “and this is my friend” he
gestured towards me. I shook everyone’s hand and introduced myself.
Peter could have said “Are you guys here for the fashion week?”, but such a
question is boring. It can be answered with a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’, and does
not naturally prompt more conversation. By transforming the question into
a sentence of appreciation, Peter managed to get information he wanted,
while adding more conversational meat to the interaction. Once he saw that
his guess is correct, not that it mattered if it wasn’t, he continued to
introduce himself.
Now that there was some premise (Peter wants to talk to beautiful and
happy people) and some familiarity (our names have been exchanged), we
were approaching the point where the engine of a normal conversation
would kick in.
“So, who are you walking the ramp for?” he asked, looking at a model. She
was in conversation with another man in her group, so Peter insisted. “By
the way, I love your necklace. Very elegant.” She noticed and smiled. She
told us about the designer she was working with. With this encouragement,
Peter began to ask individual questions to each of them. “Where do you
work?” “What do you think about this bar?”. He went around the 5 people
group slowly initiating conversations with them. Between questions he
would add his opinion, so it did not feel like a question-answer round at
some TV game show.
Notice how Peter opened by addressing the group at large, but then shifted
to engaging individual members. In starting a conversation with a random
group, you have to begin by addressing the group at large, before you can
talk to people one-on-one. The group needs to acknowledge you
collectively, and then you need to connect with the individual members of
the group, to maintain engagement.
From there, Peter went around talking about himself, offering opinion and
information, to build comfort. He made sure it did not feel like an interview
by throwing in a joke, a compliment, a story from his life or sometimes
even just plain information about himself, me or our friendship.
The last key thing to notice is how Peter dealt with the resistance of new
connections. People also feel similarly about random conversations. They
are taught that without the presence of a complete premise, one shouldn’t
engage with strangers. So after offering a temporary premise and
familiarity, Peter offered to invite them to our table. They were hesitant,
unsure of who we were. Peter dealt with it by removing the friction by
saying ‘it isn't far’. This line communicates 1. Peter feels it is normal for us
to make friends like this 2. They don't have to make a lot of effort. That
acted as the final convincer. The engine kick-started shortly after they sat
down with us.
8. Remove resistance.
Not all resistance is bad. In fact, resistance
tells you that the other person is at least considering your
proposition. Resistance occurs because your ‘ask’ is too big for
your established level of engagement and comfort. What is the
‘ask’? In the story, it was Peter asking the models to come sit
with us. They knew us and were kind of engaged and
comfortable with us. Their resistance meant that our ‘ask’ was
probably too big for our level of connection. Peter brazenly
responded with ‘it's not far’. This response smoothed their
concern. We were not asking for something huge. Besides, the
way he said it was kind of casual and funny. This let our new
friends feel more relaxed and reintroduced the premise ‘we are
only having fun’. Lastly, and most importantly, that statement let
Peter insist on his suggestion without literally insisting on it.
The idea is to figure out the underlying resistance to your ‘asks’.
Empathise and notice what is the real reason why the other
person feels hesitant to participate with you in your suggestion
and see if you could smooth it over without applying too much
pressure.
6
“Yikes!”
How to be Confident in Nervous
Situations
I was a lost little boy when I came here. I sat in a classroom with a horde of
extremely smart (some would say the smartest) kids from around the world.
Both the context of these classroom interactions and the content of the
discussions would go over my head. I didn't know what was what, and I felt
sweaty and nervous in every classroom discussion. I wasn't used to it, given
how free and confident I felt in my previous life. I loved putting my point
across and I could find no reasonable way to get past that nervousness and
even attempt to express myself. I spent all of the first semester silent and
nervous.
It was a random night in early December in 2017. I had been working in the
library all night to write a paper. A senior from the film department was
helping me review my writing. It was around 3 am in the morning when I
showed him my final draft. He went over it slowly, and then turned to me
with a grin. “Good Job”, he said “I couldn't write it as well”. I felt
overjoyed. I had spent the entire semester feeling like the stupidest guy in
the classroom. I had felt confused because in my origin story I was the
opposite- confident and self-assured, and all of a sudden I had not known if
I was even making sense in these classes. All this while, I had felt NOT at
home. I felt like I did not belong here. But here was a guy, looking me
squarely across in the eye, promising I was going to ace the class. For the
first time that semester, I felt like I could. We left the library for home soon
after.
I remember walking home in my first snow in New York City and thinking
to myself how I could be so wrong in my assessment of myself. When I
clearly had interesting things to say, why did I feel under-confident? That is
the day I understood the difference between my two lives, and I saw how
confidence operated.
People who go into a situation knowing they will win tend to be more
confident, and more confident people tend to win more.
So it's very easy to be confident if you are already winning, like I was in my
first life by the grace of circumstance and my parents. But it's very difficult
to start when you have zero wins. In this virtuous cycle of Belief: I will win-
> More Confidence-> Win-> Belief: I will win,
where do I find the first win
to base my first belief on. This is why it was more difficult to be confident
in my second life. It was because I needed the first source to kick start this
cycle of confidence building. So I went looking for this initial kick.
Some even take a physiological approach. For instance, You can search the
internet for several breathing instructions or ‘bioenergetics’. You will find
enough people who will say exercising and Yoga gives them confidence.
All of them make sense. Eventually, if you are truly confident, all of these
versions make sense. You recognise them for what they are- entry points.
However, no solution is useful until it is tailor-made to one’s problem.
Gautum Buddha was famously an employer of skillful means
, that a person
must be given a dose appropriate to their illness, even if the doses
contradict each other across people. In my long tryst with confidence in
America, I found that with a journey as personal as self-confidence, one
must do similarly. One must borrow from sources in trying to understand
their problem statement and customise their solutions accordingly.
So, then why are you nervous? What is nervousness? Nervousness is the
absence of confidence. Think of your interaction as a road. You and your
interlocutor are in a car together, deciding where it will go. You have a
straight road in front of you. Ever so often it branches in two, and you know
you want to avoid one of them. All the roads (call them RED ROADS) you
want to avoid are fear, shame, embarrassment, loss and rejection. You want
to keep the conversation on a road that is safe, comfortable and going
towards the final destination you want to arrive at (call them GREEN
ROADS). As soon as the RED ROADS look like a more likely possibility
than the GREEN ROADS, you get nervous. An expert driver of
conversations does not worry about driving into the RED ROAD once in a
while. It is easy for the expert to remanuvere or even use the RED ROAD
to his advantage. For the people prone to nervousness, RED ROADS
usually means an inevitable crash (however, the nervous can luck out once
in a while and get a small, one-time version of the rewards the expert gets
regularly from engaging with the RED ROADS).
More on this analogy later. Let’s look at the kind of social situations that are
most likely to make us nervous
7
Duck Duck Go
How to Turn Around Embarrassing
Moments
Invisible Embarrassment
The first naturally occurring example we need to consider analytically is a
little tricky to spot. For the sake of simplicity, we will call it invisible
embarrassment. This embarrassment is invisible because no one spots it.
Even if someone spots it, it usually goes unmentioned, and even if someone
brings it up for everyone to notice, it usually does not lead to a fuss. These
are embarrassments hidden in plain sight.
So what are these ‘leaders’ of social settings doing right that no one notices
their faux pas? The succinct answer is this - They don't even know they are
committing an embarrassment. Partly due to how sure they are of
themselves, partly due to their position in the social dynamic (both of these
things are interconnected) they neither question themselves, nor are they
questioned by others. They perform themselves, others admit their
behaviour and the group ignores it or accepts it. No further scrutiny. In fact,
here is the kicker- a faux pas committed by a ‘leader’ of the social group
can create the space for others to feel comfortable in their embarrassments.
If you react- appear agitated, hurt or embarrassed- people will absorb that.
They will find importance in that issue and dig it further. In conversational
theory, this is known as a frame battle. If you react to an embarrassment,
you have admitted that the view that others have on this aspect of your
reality, their frame, is more powerful than your own version of reality, your
frame. The first step in handling an embarrassment is to maintain frame so
that you are in-charge of the next move. The next move could be whatever,
you could either hold this tension, amp it up, or release it, but to have that
privilege you need to maintain your frame.
Rajat has forced Shah Rukh into a RED ROAD. Shah Rukh Khan, the
world’s most popular film star, has been reduced to the mischief of a child
in front of the country.
SRK takes a second, allows the most naughty teenager smile on his face,
and says the following:
Shah Rukh Khan: “Meri toh abhi bhi kayi jagahao par pitayi hojati hai (I
still sometimes get smacked for being naughty)”
Everyone laughs, tension is released and the conversation goes forward.
Parallely, let us look at another popular talk show from India- Koffee with
Karan. Karan Johar invites the most high status, gossiped-about, sought-
after, Bollywood and other celebrities and asks them rather personal
questions on his extravagant set. Part of the celebrity-ship of all these
individuals feeds off the mystery and gossip around them, so this show
makes for a beautiful natural example of charm and wit. In one of these
episodes, Karan is doing a rapid fire with Emraan Hashmi, an actor
notorious for being rather sexual and kiss-friendly on screen. Emraan
knows that. He understands how that aspect of his character tickles the
audience. So when Karan begins asking Emraan questions, Emraan
maintains a steady confident expression and responds to each question
instantly with the most provocative, dirty or unsafe answer. He mixes it
with some humour here and there, but he largely builds more and more
tension through the interaction. You can see Karan getting slower with his
questions, almost operating out of performative shock of how far can
Emraan take it. This is a perfect example of building tension. Play into the
anticipation, play into the embarrassment. However, this is only possible if
you are steady, emotionally unreactive and committed. You may be able to
half-ass a release, but you cannot half-ass building tension.
You cannot get away with that without a rock solid frame. Karan goes on to
give a gift hamper to Emraan saying that is the best rapid fire round he has
seen in four seasons of his show.
8
Balm for butt-hurts
How to Respond to an Insult
Thirdly, and most importantly, insults are a challenge to the sub-text: the
underlying fabric of a conversation. When talking, whether one-on-one or
in a group, the conversation exists on multiple levels. On the surface, the
conversation exists only via the words being said, and concerns itself only
with the topic being discussed: the literal ‘text’ of the discussion. But
beneath the surface, all conversations include a sub-text, which governs the
roles and power of each participant, and the way in which they view each
other.
All conversations involve more than one party, and each party
subconsciously acquires a role within that conversation. This role becomes
a status symbol: the rough measure of the respect they hold in that moment
from the other people in the discussion. These roles exist in all
conversations, but they are especially obvious in settings that require
teamwork and cooperation. To see this in action, think back to your school
or college days and remember a time when you were assigned a group
project. Usually, in an academic group project, neither the teacher nor the
group itself will elect to appoint an official leader. However, in almost all
these instances, one person in the group assumes the role of an unofficial
leader. Even if the other members do not recognize this verbally, they do so
implicitly, through their actions. Some group members, less than interested
in the project, will exist on the periphery and try to do the minimum work
possible: these people are only too glad to do as they are told, because the
leader’s instructions saves them the time and effort of thinking for
themselves. Other group members may have been just as interested in the
project as the leader, but lacked the natural leadership or charisma of the
leader. These runner-ups typically act as intermediary authority --
‘lieutenants’ to the leader -- and will organize the less motivated members
to follow the leader’s instructions and execute the project.
These roles may seem obvious, but only because we have all spent our
entire lives existing in situations like these, governed by the same unspoken
rules of social interaction. Consider the following:
The explanation is a little longer and has everything to do with the need for
efficiency in communication in our environment of evolutionary adaptation
(EEA). We were supposed to move quickly against danger and the only
strength our bipedal ancestors had was numbers. Thus organisation of
groups evolved as a natural instinct in humans, and it plays out
subconsciously. In this subconscious play, we each acquire a role, and this
role denotes a temporary status. This group based status constitutes a major
component of the sub-text of any given conversation.
Insults, however, interrupt that status, and therefore they are so unavoidable
when they appear in conversation. So what do we do about them?
1. Banter
Friends will engage in insults as banter. To understand why, you
need to ask yourself what forms the basis of any friendship at all?
What is the invisible thread that ties me to my friend? You might be
tempted to say ‘memories’ and ‘tastes’, but you may have common
memories and tastes with other people you do not think of as friends.
In fact, common memories and tastes happen to be a consequence of
friendship more than the prerequisite for friendship. The answer to
what keeps a group of people together in harmony is the culture of
the group, and insults form a significant part of that culture.
I used to know a guy many years ago in New Delhi. His name was
Pranav, and Pranav had a rabid taste for insults. For whatever reason,
Pranav loved bantering with insults. So naturally, the friends he
made were people who were at least ok, if not joyous, about his
insults. Some times, his friends would complain about Pranav’s
over-inclination to insults. Pranav would respond, rather
unapologetically, ‘that is my way of showing love. If I can insult
you, and you can insult me, and we don't mind it, then I know our
relationship is so deep and pure that I know we won't stop being
friends for menial reasons.’
Pranav was an extremist manifestation of this philosophy, but Pranav
wasn't wrong. People use insults as banter to subtly establish the
depth of a relationship. ‘If I can insult you and you don't mind, we
must definitely mean a lot to each other.’ don't be like Pranav, but
learn from his ways, I remember telling myself.
A friend of mine from many years ago came to me to talk about his
college friends. He said that there was a particular guy in his group
who was always after his case. He would crack a lot of jokes, and try
to pass off a lot of insults as humour. I asked my friend if any of
what that guy said hurt him. My friend was unsure. He wanted to say
yes, but he had an explanation in his head which is very similar to
what we mentioned with Banter
. My friend, Rajesh, seemed to
think it was somehow his problem that he could not stand up to the
harmless banter that his college friend Suyash threw at him. I asked
him if he was sure that Suyash was only interested in friendly
banter? Rajesh remained silent. He didn't know. I asked him to run a
test. I told Rajesh to go back to college tomorrow, and hang out with
his group of friends normally. At a certain point, I told Rajesh, either
before he has managed to ‘banter’ with you, or when you do not
particularly feel angry or helpless, throw an insult-as-banter on
Suyash. Make sure, it is only banter and not angry revenge. Be calm
as you say it, as you might say it to me after a night of happy
hanging out.
Rajesh came back from college the next day and walked straight into
my study. ‘So I did it’ he said ‘I insulted him in a funny, friendly
way’ ‘And did people laugh?’ I asked. ‘Yes, they liked the joke I
guess’ ‘And how did Suyash respond? Did he laugh or play along?’
‘No’ Rajesh said. ‘He got pretty angry, it seemed. He doubled down
on his insults at me and they became more hurtful.’
‘That's not your friend, Rajesh’ I said. ‘Insults, when used as banter
between friends, are a two way cooperation. If he is okay insulting
you as a joke but not okay receiving it similarly, he is not interested
in keeping this friendly. He wants power over you. He wants to put
you down to feel his superiority over you. Never confuse pettiness
for friendship by adding the grace of your own forgiveness.’
The same is imaginable when it is not an established friend group but a new
social situation. A competitive colleague wants to measure you out, so he
throws out a dig. You cooperate by smiling sheepishly or laughing along.
Now he knows he can pick on you infinitely and this is how you will
respond. Your roles have been established. You might choose to eventually
respond differently, but by then, odds are, you will be carrying so much
pent up emotion that no matter what you have to say people will find it
reactive and excessive. It's a lose-lose situation if you do not act quickly.
Part IV: Drawing Boundaries
Have you ever wondered why you get picked on and not someone else, or
how easy it is for others to pick on someone but how difficult it is for that
someone to respond? It is partly because of the frame/role that you acquire
in communication. A lot of the role acquisition happens in body language
and situation. If you are the president of the cricket club, it'll be less likely
that someone will insult you in the cricket club. Or if you are 6 feet tall and
well built, people will think twice before insulting you. The rest of it is in
your behaviour, and people try to tease it out by producing reactions from
you, the same way a matador controls the bull with a red cloth.
So that is rule number 1, do not react. When presented with an insult,
always take an extra second to respond. Look them deep in the eye, with a
calm sense of ‘do you know what you are doing?’. Take that second to say
without saying. Let them feel it, and let the tension build in you. This
tension can be new and make you anxious or nervous or aroused in general.
Hold it. Then go on to use the least amount of force to draw a boundary.
Say something, anything, that reminds them what the boundary between
you guys should be. If the insult was very obvious, just look them in the eye
and slowly say “That is not okay my friend.” or a variant of the same. Keep
it small and crisp. don't let the emotion come in the way.
If the insult was more subtle, do the same except say something subtler.
“Did we wake up salty today?” “Are we feeling a little hurtful today?”.
Notice the use of the we-frame. The roles are no longer me vs you, but WE.
Also notice how these short sentences very subtly indicate that a line has
been crossed, without saying so. In fact, these are questions, asking the
instigator to answer if they want to play this game. It's a warning of types.
The general content of what you say can change and adapt to a situation.
However, the form should remain the same. You should remain emotionally
unreactive. Your eyes should meet theirs. Your body should be relaxed.
Your tone should be unaggressive and you should take your time saying it.
Part V: Persistence
At this point, you should either find that message was delivered
successfully- in which case they would back off, or that it failed- and they
would come at you stronger. You have to trust that you have given them a
fair condition to your relationship. ‘This is my boundary and I'd be open to
you only if you don't cross it.’ Very rarely should you repeat it again.
If they learn and adapt, you can now try and give your relationship a better
flavour. If they persist, you have a broad variety of options. Everything
from verbal confrontation to walking out is possible. However, the key part
is that you maintain your frame. You remain emotionally unaffected, calm
and always take an extra second to respond if you feel reactive.
It is important that you draw a boundary quickly in the relationship.
Whenever you find the first instance of violation, make sure the other party
knows that they have crossed a line. Do not expect them to understand from
your silence, humans are more prone to roles than rules, and silence is
usually seen as cooperation, unless used with strength.
When presented with an insult, stand your ground. Look the person in the
eye and let your face say ‘how f***ing small’. Then, gently take everyone’s
attention and guide it to a new topic. This is hard to pull off, but very
powerful if done right. The point is to produce a strong interruption to his
role by using just the weight of your presence. Then, without having to say,
convey that the insult wasn't worth our time.
When using laughter as a response, laugh only when you can actually
laugh.
The only person who wins from a verbal war is the one who remains
most unaffected.
So laugh when you can actually find it funny, and that can only happen if
you are truly unaffected. However, if you can't, do the same thing as you do
with silence. Take a second, challenge them with your eyes, and then laugh
performatively to signal ‘that wasn't funny’.
Message delivered.
9
“But dad!!”
How to Have Tough Conversation
with Parents
Common enough, right? Common and tragic. This is the long term friction
most people inhabit in their family life. However, this long term friction is
just a confused reaction because neither have taken the time to build a long-
term friendship. The parent has not taken the time to understand the child’s
normal desire for freedom, exploration and agency and the child, as we all
learn when we grow up, hasn't realised just exactly how dangerous and
merciless the world can be. This is the distance we have to bridge.
Don't worry too much about the anger, rejection or disappointment that your
parents might throw at you. Have the conversation. Open the door, loudly
or softly, for this rebellious strand of truth in you. You could be wrong, or
naive or entirely unaware of what you're saying, but say it regardless.
Announce that a new person has been born. This is your chance to find
freedom inside your own home and this revolutionary change can begin
with a bang. No big deal. Children who children all their life are very afraid
of an angry or upset parent. Accept to yourself that you've grown up, and let
them be a part of your future.
If you are motivated to do this, here is a simple place to begin. Think of the
smallest truth you can tell your parents, something that is easier for them to
digest, and something that you either want to share or think must be shared.
We can all think of something like that. Please apply common sense and
don't bomb the living room wih something super intense very quickly.
Slowly step your way in.
Step 2: Bring Each Other In
You must explain to your parents your wishes and desires. In doing that, be
as honest as you can. Don't hide your doubt about your desire because you
are trying to convince your mother that you are right. Many people make
the mistake of defending a position instead of telling the truth. It is a
common reaction to a rejection- you get defensive. You want to convince
them and some part of yourself that you are right. However, who is right is
irrelevant if it is not the truth. For instance, let's say, you want to be a
musician, and you tell your parents that, and they react with a cold
rejection. ‘How will you feed yourself?’ they say. Notice your temptation to
defend the profession. You might want to say, ‘Oh you know nothing!
Musicians make so much money bla bla bla’. Deep down you understand
that it is only a few musicians that make millions. The rest make something
more modest, and a lot of the rest just struggle. In truth, this is a concern
you have too, but now that you have defended it, you are trapped by your
own desire to be right. Now you have the added pressure of making it work
as well as the added tension of trying to convince your parents they are
wrong where you don't think they are entirely wrong. Instead, admit to their
concern. ‘I have the same concern. However, I would hate not giving this a
shot. In fact, I want your help in figuring out how to do this most
effectively.’
Notice the feel of the statement. It is so relaxing. Statements like these will
incrementally diffuse the tension in the conversation. More importantly, it
will instil faith in your parents that you are capable of being more than
rebellious. You are capable of being sensible. This invitation is how you
start to build trust. To build trust, you must consider each other’s concerns,
not discard them. Likewise, invite your parents to share their concern with
your requested freedoms. Help them bring you into their world. Comfort
them by making a genuine attempt to see the world from their eyes. Invite
them to co-create a solution. If they cannot help, reassure them by saying
you will keep them informed and constantly keep in mind their concerns,
but your life beckons and thus you must do what your heart is set on.
I know the drinking example might have shocked some people. Also, this
example is not meant to encourage alcohol but rather an example of a tough
conversation many young adults might struggle to have with parents. Some
of you cannot ever imagine telling your parents you indulge in alcohol. You
imagine saying this and you are suddenly struck by how they would react.
You know they will react aggressively. They will be angry, you think. You
think that their reaction comes from rejection, and thus you are better off
not pissing them off. In truth, their reaction comes from unfamiliarity. All
that this signals is that an adult-to-adult relationship hasn't been built
between you two. I understand that to build this relationship is simply
impossible in some cases, and too straining in others. However, a vast
majority does not fall in this category. They simply assume that they do.
That majority has not tried to find the ‘person’ in their parent, and continue
to live in the fear of ‘the parent’.
I'm telling you because I think I made friends with, who I thought, was the
most terrifying and autocratic father in the history of fathers. Turns out, he
is a sweetheart and immeasurably in love with his kids. I just had not
reached out to the ‘person’ within him. I was busy hiding from the ‘parent’.
‘I see why you think that way, but papa I think about it differently.’
is the calmest expression of a disagreement. You stood by what you
believe in and you did not try to aggress upon what he believes in. ‘I
see why you think I won't be happy with wildlife photography,
because I won't make as much money as I might as an engineer, but
I'll be happier with less money doing the thing I love’ Farhan said to
his father, and you could see Farhan’s father register this difference
of life choices. Notice how Farhan did not force his father to see his
point of view, he only communicated what he felt and left it for the
father to consider his point of view. That is the power of humility- it
makes the other person feel like they are not helpless and powerless.
When the father saw no threat of feeling helpless, he could finally
focus on the subject of Farhan’s problem and concede to his
mistakes.
They have to contend with their reality as a young adult and their reality as
a parent, and they see your point better, from their personal point of view.
10
“No.”
How to Say No
‘No’ is the verbal boundary that separates you from the world.
The point is, in some sense, the word ‘no’ is more fundamental to who you
are than the word ‘yes’. It is my belief, thus, that a culture that does not
teach its kids how to say no, does not teach its people how to separate right
from wrong, good from bad, and ‘me’ from the rest of the world. A culture
that does not teach its kids how to say no, teaches them to be a crowd, never
individuals. ‘No’ is the verbal boundary that separates you from the world,
and it is with learning how to say ‘no’ that you acquire the courage to be
your true self.
In truth, while not saying ‘no’ may simplify your external life in this regard,
it massively complicates your internal life. You never learn what you truly
like and no one else ever learns what you truly appreciate either. Neither do
you have a sense of self for yourself and neither do people have an idea of
your personality. You are often caught in moments where you wish you
were doing what you truly wish to be doing. You constantly live in the
anxiety of being on the border of rejection, and you feel like you're always
making compromises for people to like you. You feel trapped in your own
reality. When you cannot say no, you have stopped being true to your core
and this has rendered your psychological life unhappy.
So before we venture into the technical parts of how to say an effective no,
we must pay attention to the lesson from our default condition. You must
always try to be true to your core self, and thus you must learn to say no
more often. That is it. Get in the habit of saying no. Get comfortable
holding tension in an interaction. Get used to asserting yourself to yourself
and to others. That’s the first piece of advice I have for you.
I insist that you understand that the purpose of no is not to start a conflict,
because very often when you are trying to say no to something, you bring
into that interaction some kind of emotional history. My cousin Saransh
used to have a lot of trouble with his father growing up. His father was
authoritative and Saransh never really got a fair chance at saying no as a
young boy. When he grew up and started to mature, starting to form his
own personality, he came across many cases where he wanted to say no to
his father. ‘No I do not want to do engineering’ ‘No I don't have the time to
go to this family function’ ‘No I do not want to live in this city forever’.
Because of the nature of their relationship, Saransh’s father would expect
things from Saransh and Saransh would always have to hide his true
feelings about stuff. Eventually, when Saransh felt pushed enough, he
would burst out loudly. All of what Saransh swept under the rug up until
then would show up with an ugly face. On the rare chance that he was able
to say ‘no’ to his father, he would burst forth with emotion of all the
repressed no’s he was holding in. This would inevitably lead to a conflict.
The father-son relationship struggled because of this.
Eventually Saransh understood that the manner of his ‘no’ was hurting the
relationship more than anything else. He learnt to detach his history from
his actions. He learnt how to say a boring no. Things became calmer. The
father-son felt like they could now, at least, talk, however they still did not
feel connected. Saransh’s father, my uncle, always felt that the son was not
interested in anything that he was interested in. Saransh felt that his father
was always asking him to do things he did not have the time to do. Saransh
had recently started a new job which was taking a considerable part of his
day. Besides, Saransh was very passionate about puzzles and preferred to
solve puzzles in his free time. He was truly uninterested in family functions.
His father would feel that Saransh must interact with their extended family,
and Saransh understood that. He even agreed to some extent, but he just did
not want to be doing it as frequently as his father wanted. Now that he had
weeded out the emotion from these discussions, he could see things clearly,
but he still did not know how to put himself across in the same clear
fashion.
Most disagreements are of this form. They are complicated and have many
different moving parts. People have partial agreements and conditional
agreements, but they disagree with the larger point overall. Sometimes
people agree with the larger overall point, but do not agree with the smaller
ones. Then, at first, we have the tendency to involve our emotions and
complicate it. We try to assert ourselves either by force (anger) or by hiding
(by not staying no at all). Once we get past that, our need to be right and
safe- our own selfishness - comes in the way. We are so concerned with
getting our way that we only ever see a ‘yes’ or a ‘no’, instead of
appreciating the disagreement in all its detail. Truth is, if you listen
carefully to what the other person is saying, you can transform an emotional
‘no’ to a boring ‘no’ and a boring ‘no’ to a charming ‘no’.
This is not the same as the cliche of making the other person feel heard by
looking like you are listening intently. There is nothing more fake than that,
and as a general rule, avoid being fake as much as possible. People have
natural instincts for filtering out the pretenders.
You must really make an attempt to listen to the other person if you want to
be charming in your disagreements. What people truly feel is often not in
their words but behind their words, and if you let yourself get too occupied
with your emotions or you desire to be right or liked, you will miss the
truth. Then you will be stuck disagreeing with the superficial point, and
both parties will feel like the other doesn't understand them properly. This is
exactly what was happening with Saransh when his father would invite him
to family events. What his father wanted was for Saransh to spend time
with their family. Saransh understood that that was what his father truly
wanted, but he never addressed that point specifically with his dad. He was
so caught up in trying to take a stand for himself, he never considered
addressing his dad’s true motivation. Thus their disagreements never moved
them forward, and they always felt stuck.
Take the example of peers pressuring you to drink alcohol. Unless your
peers are absolute degenerates, what they truly want is to have fun with
you– play a common, shared game with you. Drinking alcohol happens to
be only a slice of what they truly want. Let’s suppose you don't want to
drink. However, in order to feel liked, you do not say no and give in; or to
feel your own moral superiority, you say an abrupt ‘no’ to end their offer. In
either case, at least one party, and sometimes even both parties, are no
longer enjoying the moment. In the first case, you are trapped as a
consequence of your own lack of courage. In the latter, your friends are
taking the brunt of your desire to assert your good morals. However, If you
could move past either obstacle, you could see what your friends truly want,
and maybe that might help you create a win-win for both parties.
Step Two: Appreciate the offer/ concern to the degree you agree
Start a disagreement with ‘I hear you’. You do not know how powerful the
statement is when said meaningfully. Most conflicts begin because the other
person feels unheard. The surest way to upset or distance someone from
you is to give them the impression that their version of reality doesn't matter
to you. Now, you may be right in not drinking alcohol. If it is undoubtedly
right for you, you are encouraged to stand by your values. However, if you
give your friends the impression that you do not care about their idea of
having fun, or their taste for drinking, you will slowly separate yourself
from them. You do not have to agree that drinking alcohol is good or fun,
all you have to do is let the other person know that you understand how
they think about the world. It immediately puts them at ease and makes
them more open to accepting differences.
Follow the ‘I hear you’ with restating their true motivation. Nothing makes
people feel like they’ve been heard more than when you show them that
you understand their true motivations. “I hear you Dad. You want me to
spend more time with family so I can have a deeper bond with them,”
Saransh said one day. His father immediately relaxed. His face stopped
being tense, and even with all the residual anger he was holding, all my
uncle said was ‘yes’. By making his father feel heard, Saransh created the
space for him to be heard by his father.
Once you have restated their true motivation to them, give them the space
to correct you. Pause for a second and ask ‘right?’. People will usually add
small edits to your understanding of their motivations. Nod, acknowledge,
accept their version of reality. Now, begin by stating what all you agree
with them on.
“I agree that family is important. I should meet my family more often. I also
agree that you and I should find a better way to communicate”, Saransh
continued. His father looked at him open mouthed. He felt completely taken
aback by this style of apology. He waited open mouthed, unable to find a
way to remain angry. ‘But..?’ My uncle asked, trying to find out what
Saransh disagreed with still.
This is exactly what will happen when you tell people all the parts you
agree with them about. They will be left quite amazed. Firstly, they will
recognise the similarities in your realities and feel closer to you. Secondly,
they will see the exact point of disagreement more clearly. You both have
managed to isolate the problem and contained it from affecting other issues.
Thirdly, you have led them to offer you a peaceful opportunity to present
your disagreement. This is what Saransh’s father did with the ‘but..?’.
Finally, because you began with what you agreed with, they will never feel
it's a complete loss or a complete breakdown. Both of you have begun to
‘win’ already.
In the case of your friends pressuring you into drinking alcohol, you can say
some version of the following. “I agree that we should hang out and spend
time with each other. I also love having fun with friends, especially you
guys” and notice how your friends say “but..?” That is your window of
opportunity to convey your disagreement.
However, there is one more thing you can do to add charm to your
disagreement. This trick is usually part of negotiation theory, but it is very
helpful in these circumstances. Follow your disagreement with a counter
offer. The counter offer will obviously include the other person’s true
motivations and will also usually be an edit on top of their initial offer to
accommodate your disagreement.
“Then what do you prefer, since you say you agree you should spend more
time with family, but you also say that you like to do your own thing?”
“I’m very happy going to a family event once a month, and I'm happy to be
present for all the important ones, but beyond that my time is best used
doing my own thing. I prefer it and it is in line with how I want my life to
be in the future.”
Notice, that at this point, the disagreement has effectively become more
than a disagreement. It is now a negotiation and both you and your
interlocutor are trying to find a common ground to meet all your common
needs. You are actively accommodating each other, while ensuring the other
is heard. This is the formula to create win-wins in social environments.
11
“I’m sorry”
How to Apologise
You got into a fight with your brother. He wants the motorcycle for himself
this evening, but you want it for yourself. You push him hard, or say
something unbecoming of you. He is hurt and won't even look at you now.
When you ask him ‘what’s up?’ He says ‘is this any way to speak to your
brother?’. Clearly, the way he saw the world was violated by your actions.
He asks ‘is this ANY WAY…’ As if there is a universal protocol of
communication between brothers and that you have broken it.
Notice how unreasonable this behaviour is. Not only are you convinced that
she must respond to you because you are reaching out to her, but that she
cannot be happy because you are unhappy. This is a petty and marginal
thing to fight over, but imagine the conviction that goes into fighting with
your ‘loved one’ for this.
People often get tangled up in the right and wrong of the situation too
quickly. They do not want to bend or give way when they think they are
right. However, people forget that the purpose of most arguments is to
resolve it, not to appear victorious. What ends up happening is that people
debate right and wrong at the level of fact and opinion, but no one offers the
other the satisfaction of feeling heard. These arguments go nowhere.
The first step in an argument is to make the other person feel heard. Appeal
to their conviction. First, the HAP must feel safe and looked after. If they
see you calmly listen to them, they would be tempted to mirror that. If they
see you play ‘fair’ in this way, they will be less antagonistic of you.
Next time you are in an argument, wait patiently for the other to express
themselves. Then, start with ‘I hear you.’
It is important that you don't just say ‘I hear you’ when you are busy
coming up with what smart comebacks you rejoin to their rant. Remember,
the purpose of their rant or anger is not to hurt you, but to reach you.
Snapping back is only going to confirm their initial fear- that you cannot be
reached or made to see the world from their point of view. So do both of
yourselves a favour and listen.
For instance, your professor might say ‘you are irresponsible’ but what they
really mean is that they do not like that you are uncommitted to their class.
Those things are not entirely different but they aren't the same either.
SImilarly, your brother might fight with you for keeping the bike, but what
he is really mad at is the disrespect his younger brother (you) showed
towards him. Here the difference between what is said and what is felt is
huge and noticeable. Most arguments get trapped at the level of what is
being said, when in fact the grievance is somewhere deeper. You must
recognise that deep point of hurt and appeal to it.
You are, in fact, trying to see where their world view is fair. It might not be
fair for you, but what you have to say might not be fair to them. You have to
evaluate fairness for them. Is their complaint fair to them, even if it is not to
you? To each of those fair points in their complaint, apologise. ‘I see how
that could have hurt you’ or ‘I see how I was out of line for you there’.
Then apologise for the ‘true cause’. You can never be sure of what the true
cause is, but with time and as and how you get to know someone better,
your guesses become sharper. Apologise for the ‘true cause’. ‘Brother, I am
sorry I spoke to you in a way that made you feel disrespected. That was not
my intent.’ Even if it doesn't land, they will appreciate your effort to look
deeper and reflect.
Beyond this, wait for them to forgive you. People sometimes need time and
space. Give them that and wait patiently. You have done your job. Only
when they have forgiven you can you begin to put your case. By this point,
the atmosphere should be more relaxed and both of you will find yourself to
be more perceptive to the other. You would both be more willing to listen
and make amends. Now your complaints are more likely to be registered.
You have engineered a more compassionate argument.
Pro Tip- In some hard apology cases, it helps to invoke good memories.
‘Hey, you know I am not the worst version of me. Remember all the great
times we have. Don’t let this bad instance leave a bad taste in your mouth.
We will be better’
12
“It’s over”
How to Break Up
Breaking up is hard. You are about to close a proper chapter in your life, no
matter how small. It is not just the death of you sharing a bond, but also the
death of how you see the world. Everything, all things small and big, begin
to change. That is why most people are afraid of breaking up. They are
afraid of having to figure life out again. However, things might need to be
broken for life to reassemble itself. Very often, great things have to be
sacrificed for great causes. Circumstances change, people change, opinions
change and people must part. There is no way to make the parting easier.
However there is a way to make it more graceful, and that will be the
attempt of this chapter. With this chapter, I aim to provide you with a rough
blueprint of how to break up gracefully and effectively.
If you look at the purpose more closely, you realise better what it means to
break up. First, the break up isn't a comma. It's a full stop. That means
breaking up with the attempt to draw the other person closer to you, your
needs and your POV is silly. It only decreases the meaning of the break up.
People often break up because they enjoy the drama of the push-pull or try
to break up to give a fake ultimatum to their significant other. This usually
falls flat on their faces. Second, a break up must mean you must move away
from each other. You don't want the break up to be so ugly and
confrontational that the splash-back from the break up doesn't let you be
free from it. If you are choosing to break up, you are choosing to move on
from the person. What is the point if the absence of the person keeps you as
occupied as their presence?
Secondly, break up in the same spirit as the relationship. Unless things have
gone extremely sour, try to break up in the same emotional spirit as you led
the relationship with. If you notice carefully, a happy day and a sad day are
two different feelings in your head. These different feelings inspire different
types of actions and reactions. When you are breaking up, break up with the
feeling of having a good day in your mind. Put yourself in the emotional,
psychological and verbal state of a good day with your significant other.
Feel how grateful you are for them and how many great memories you have
spent together. Know how they have changed you and how you have
changed them. Be happy about your beautiful encounter in life. You will
feel more vulnerable in doing this. You might even feel the tragedy of
breaking up properly. You might cry. All for good. The truth is flooding out.
When you break up from the mental state of a ‘sad day’, you are more
likely to look out for yourself and your interests. You are in a fearful state
for your own mental happiness. It's scarce and you don't want to lose what
is keeping you afloat. Thus, operating from a ‘sad day’ state of mind likely
will lead to an ugly break up, because both of you will be selfish and
confrontational. The tricky part is that you are literally in the middle of a
sad day when trying to put up a ‘happy day’ state of being. In the interest of
that internal conflict, I suggest you take a few days after you've made up
your mind about the break up to make peace with it. This makes you see the
bigger picture and be the bigger person in the break up. It makes you
empathise with them more and understand how sad the break up is or how
much the break up is for the better. Time puts things in perspective, and you
can spend this time doing the same type of build up activities as you would
do when you are having a tough conversation with your parents.
13
Enter the grownups zone
How to Convey Disagreement
Misconceptions:
Here is a list of things most people get wrong about disagreements.
This is a crucial distinction: let us unpack it. Very often, people will
commit to an argument for the sole purpose of proving that they are
right and the other person is wrong. When the sole goal of an
argument is to be vindicated, the natural and necessary process of
disagreement devolves into a simple game of power-grabbing. All
conversations include an element of power: this is an undeniable
reality. However, it is precisely the people who can choose to forfeit
the contest of power who create the kinds of conversations that
people enjoy, cherish, and remember.
It might sound very basic, but next time check with yourself when
you come across disagreement. Is this about power? Can I make
myself and the other forget about the power dynamic and focus on
the meat of the conversation? Can we try to find a better solution, a
more convincing argument, instead of bickering over the remains of
unuseful power?
You disagree with the other person and want them to understand your
point of view.
This is the most common form of disagreement you will encounter. You are
in conversation with your family, your romantic partner, your business
associate or even friends and colleagues, and it has come to a point where
you have to express what you feel. However, you are unsure as to how you
should do that. In this case you either remain silent, or express
disagreement in a way that is so forceful that the other person registers
nothing about the difference. You both go to bed unconvinced of the other
party, often confused as to why you could not make each other see your
individual points of view. This is the kind of disagreement that breeds silent
frustration and then an eventual implosion of the relationship.
“Scratch the surface to see what you both agree upon”, I told him.
He said, “But there is nothing.” “Well, for starters, you both agree on
the fact that you want to be together, right?” “Yes,” he said “but that
doesn't mean anything.” ‘Well, you also agree that this series of
events produced certain hurtful feelings?”, I continued. “Well, yeah”
he said. “See, now you have common ground. You know you both
share a certain version of reality. You two are no longer running the
risk of scaring each other. You are no longer looking at the same
situation from completely different points of view. Starting with
what you agree upon establishes the common goals for the ensuing
conversation. It creates trust. It creates the feeling that you are there
to solve the problem and not be right about the interpretation of the
problem. That's a good start.”
“Hmm, I see what you mean,” he conceded. “Now think about it like
this. If you offer agreement until a certain point, you also become
sharper at focusing on what you disagree about. The question is no
longer whether you want to be with her or not, or whether what the
both of you did was harmless. It's more specific. It's asking “how do
we solve for the possibility of being hurt in the future given that we
want to live together?”” He agreed. “Now make it one degree
sharper by also telling her how you feel about the stuff you agree
upon. It will cement the trust and it will make her see your point of
view as that of coming from a person who has emotions and is
concerned with more than just being right or selfish.” “So how do
you think should I phrase it, bro?” he began to open up to my idea.
His anger had subsided, and was replaced by curiosity.
“You should say exactly as follows: Hey Ankita, I agree with you
that regardless of this fight I want to be with you and I also agree
that what we did tonight hurt the both of us. I feel very guilty for
doing that but I'm glad we still have a life beyond this fight.” “Wow”
he exclaimed. “Watch their expression change when you do that,” I
told him, “now you both are ready to get to the tougher part of the
conversation, together.”
2. Mention what you disagree with and how that makes you feel
This is the tricky part of the conversation. Wait, if you must, for her
reaction. She may say more about what she feels. She may talk
about the disagreement beyond the point of agreement herself.
Acknowledge all of it. Make sure she feels heard, something as
simple as “I hear you” works. Then do the following. You tell her
exactly what you disagree with and exactly how it makes you feel.
“Hey Ankita, I disagree with the fact that you raised your voice with
me in front of other people. It made me feel humiliated and it made
me feel like we do not have the kind of faith with each other where
we can work through our problems in private.”
“You think that’ll help?” he asked. “Well, you are doing your part
right. There are certain things you can never help, but this is the best
way to get your point across. You negotiated a common ground and
a common vision, you made the other person feel heard and
accepted and then you specified exactly what made you feel
whatever you did feel. Think about it from her standpoint, she is no
longer fighting an ‘enemy’, a kind of strange ‘other’. She is trying to
solve for the problem that hurt another human, a human she cares
about and wants to spend her future with. This is the strongest and
the most encouraging way to talk about your disagreement.”
“What if that still doesn't work?” he asked. “In that case, either she
still feels unheard or she hasn't registered the gravity of her actions
according to your version. You must check to see if she insists on a
certain part of her version and acknowledge and respond to it. If
there is none or if it has been resolved, move on to step 3.”
3. Extend disagreement to a projected future problem
This type of disagreement is rather simple. You are not seeking to change
the other person’s mind: you simply want to make sure that they are clear
on your point of view. This is the kind of disagreement you will come
across when discussing politics or economics in living room conversations.
The disagreement itself is inconsequential with respect to how the political
situation might change or how the economy might behave. The topics don't
have to be that far removed. Your friend could say something about your
lifestyle that you don’t think is wrong, so you want to put your point across
but you don't necessarily care if they concede to your world view. In this
case, be flat and upfront. ‘I hear you, but I really think it's this other way.’
That’s it. Don't indulge any further. It’s a waste of time and energy because
you don't care about convincing others. You care about standing up for
yourself politely and you ensure that by making them feel heard and then
communicating what you think. End of story.
Type Three Disagreement: ‘The Plant-A-Seed Disagreement’
You disagree with the other person but do not want to confront them
immediately; instead, your goal is to lead them towards your way of
thinking in the future.
“Hey Jitu, dude your room is gross. You should clean up” you say
“Bro, I prefer the mess, man. Besides, I'm very busy these days”, he says. It
seems like he has read this book. He isn't trying to convince you. He is fine
with the mess in his world view, and at this point you should know that you
can't convince him either. At least not immediately. The harder you try, the
stronger he will defend. Eventually, if you keep persisting, he will stop
defending his world view and instead start defending himself from you. It's
futile. In these cases the best thing to do is to plant a seed in their head and
then wait for it to grow on its own time.
“I don't know bro. This situation worries me for you. You could fall sick,
and I don't think this mess is good for your focus either, you know? And at
this point, both you and I know you should be focused, right?”
Notice what we did. Firstly, we used as little force as possible: we
employed the fewest number of words possible. Secondly, we did not try to
force your version on Jitu. We expressed only our concern. The idea behind
using the least amount of force is to deflect the responsibility of Jitu’s life
on Jitu. What happens very often in the case of, say, parents trying to insist
on a world view to their kids is that they use so much force that
subconsciously the kid understands that the responsibility of his or her life
is on their parents. Now the kid has no reason to change for himself.
Lastly, notice the last part of your appeal to sanity. ‘And at this point, both
you and I know you should be focused, right?’ The keywords here are ‘both
you and i’ or ‘we’. This is called an ‘us’ frame. It's very useful in
negotiation. The idea is to frame your appeal such that you both fall on the
same side. It makes it easier for you to transfer your concerns about Jitu to
Jitu’s consciousness. This might inspire Jitu to consider his messiness in
light of his need to focus and might lead him to mend ways.
Type Four Disagreement: ‘The Subordinate Disagreement’
14
It’s a new job!
How to Build Your Personal Brand at
the Workplace?
You don’t have to start from zero in every interaction or task; your
personal brand gives you a head start.
It might often feel like too many bottles to juggle, but I have noticed it often
boils down to a few key principles related to respect, performance, and
aesthetics.
Here are 13 rules to help you build your personal brand at the workplace:
When people leave a conference room or any place they have sat in
temporarily, they pick up their stuff and walk out. What gets left behind are
the chairs in a disorderly fashion; quite unlike how you found the room
when you had entered it. As you get up to leave, take a moment to push the
chair back in. This rule largely dictates that you should leave things either
in the same or a better state than you found them in, but never worse. Make
sure you leave the public toilet clean and the wash basin dry when you are
done with your stuff. When returning somebody’s stuff, whether a book or a
board game, make sure you organise and clean it before giving it back.
When you borrow a car, return it with more fuel than it had when you
borrowed it. Most people would not reciprocate your kind actions, and it
might often get frustrating for you to see them being unappreciative, but
remember that your goal here is to build your own personal brand, and,
rather, not police other people. Remind yourself in those moments that that
is one of the reasons many people fail to build their personal brand.
A colleague found it amusing to stroll over from behind my cubicle and ask
me this question every few hours. He always asked this with the same
expression, and with one hand on my chair’s headrest while the other held
his seventh cup of tea. At times when I was deep in the middle of a
calculation, that sudden shudder of my chair and his shrill voice pulled me
out of my semi-trance state as I alt-tabbed to hide any confidential data and
turned my chair around to entertain his novel question.
When you approach people from behind them, you catch them off-guard.
When you keep catching people off-guard, it is hard for them to like you.
Your eyes are in the front and evolutionary you are more averse to being
approached from the behind. Also, they might have something on their
screen they do not want you to see. When you approach people from the
front, you allow their reaction to settle and their response to take over.
Those few moments to prepare for the interaction give people a sense of
safety in the conversation.
When a colleague presents you with work that is substandard, there are two
ways you could respond in the moment. The first is you say, “you are
terrible”. In this case, you attack the person. The alternate way is to say
“This report is not up to the mark”. Here, you are not criticising the person
but rather their work.
There is never a good time to attack a person. When you do that, you
permanently damage your relationship with them. People often criticise
other people personally when they react emotionally. The larger application
of this rule is to control your emotions at the workplace.
Angry emails and passive aggressive responses to the boss are good for
movies. The world is more connected today than ever in human history.
Everything that you say or do has a record and background checks are more
thorough than ever before. Never do something in the moment that you
might regret years later on. When you sense your emotions taking over,
teach yourself to delay your response. The farther you can respond after the
input that emotionally charges you, the saner and more logically you can
respond to it.
We were heading for a client meeting. It was me, my colleague Amit, and
our boss, Sanjeev. It was an important client and this was to be our final
presentation, arguably the most important day of the project. We were in the
elevator of our office heading to the basement where our cars were parked.
Sanjeev was debriefing a few final points when he suddenly paused, and
after a long silence uttered “Amit, have you been playing football in the
morning?”
I was confused about that remark, but I quickly understood what he meant
when I looked at Amit’s shoes. They were black formal shoes plastered
with mud and filth all over them. This was Amit’s second month with our
team. I recalled the first day he came to office – dressed impeccably in a
white shirt, crisp trousers, set hair, and clean shoes. So clearly, he was not a
person to not take his wardrobe seriously. What changed in two months? It
wasn’t day one anymore. Now, sleeves folded to the elbow, unkempt hair,
creasy trousers, and dirty shoes were the norm.
Every single day, dress like it is Day 1. When you dress better, you
constantly send a message even when you do not open your mouth. People
generally treat you better when you are better dressed because they know
you take yourself seriously. Is it expensive to dress well every day? Yes, in
both money and time. As a long-term investor, I don’t look at the price tag
of the stock today, but rather it’s potential value tomorrow. Treat your
wardrobe the same way – an investment in your brand.
Wear branded clothes. They not only usually have better fit and appeal, but
last longer. Buy belts and shoes that are slightly more expensive than your
budget. I have tried buying cheap shirts – they start sagging before the
afternoon. Cheap belts and shoes start melting and withering away before
the turn of the year. Branded products often last years if you maintain them
well; which actually makes it a good deal in the long-term.
Wear good perfume and polish your shoes every day. Also carry a perfume
and shoe sponge for especially heavy days.
5. Hold a pen
When in meetings, always hold a pen in your hand and have a notepad on
the desk. You may or may not find opportunities to make notes in meetings,
but it gives people around you the impression that you are listening. It is
only a little effort that helps people see that your time is important and that
you are a person of action.
Some people like to make notes digitally, myself included. During physical
meetings, if using a device like a phone or tablet to make notes, I often
check in the beginning “Is it ok if I take notes on my device?” That way
they know that I am not texting while they are talking.
During digital meetings, I like to hold the pen in my hand even if I might
often put it down to take notes digitally. Work from home has got people’s
attention dispersed to more tasks as compared to being physically in the
office. The pen is the sign that your interlocutor has your complete
attention.
When in doubt about saying “thank you” or not, say it. If we receive a
courtesy from new people or those we meet once in a while, we thank them.
Often, we take these courtesies for granted with the people who we meet
and work with every day. One of my managers never thanked anyone on the
team for their work. If we ever emailed something and received his call a
few hours later, we assumed that something was incorrect or he needed
something more; and our guesses were usually right.
People have a need to be acknowledged and recognized. A simple thank
you note goes a long way in making them feel that way. Be generous with
“thank you’s” even if they are for small or obvious tasks.
I wasn't particularly a fan of this boss, but looking back, I am glad I took his
advice, which has helped me immensely. I have very rarely even been late
to my commitments thanks to him. Isn't it the case that when something
goes wrong on a particular morning, maybe you missed the alarm,, the
whole day turns out to be a series of wrongs, almost like a black hole
sucking you into a void of cascading clumsiness." Well, when you’re ahead
of time, you have so much more control on these events.
Also, when you arrive earlier, you have an opportunity to adjust to your
environment and manage your state of mind. When you arrive in a rush,
you are catching up to things rather than controlling them. Being early is
being in control.
When you sit on your desk, activate the lumbar support and sit tight. It is
not just ergonomic but also projects that you are present. When tired, get up
and stretch, but do not sit loosely with your back-rest resting all the way
like a lounger. When you walk, walk with purpose. Keep your shoulders
broad, sternum lifted, and your chin just a degree upwards than you usually
do. Walk mildly faster when you need to project that you are busy and walk
slower when you wish to project power. When you agree, nod once
assertively; nodding too much and too fast is the sign of a yes-person.
Avoid using your cellphone for trivial or social media related uses unless it
is your break time.
Take moments to refresh yourself and be hydrated. If you avoid doing these,
you may look weary at the end of a long day. Take moments to look at the
mirror and make tiny adjustments to look and be fresh through your day.
9. “I don’t know”
Himesh was a senior associate in our consulting team. I was new and found
him to be fairly knowledgeable. My other colleagues were once having a
discussion on a question. We found ourselves unable to answer it and
explored approaching an expert on the topic to understand it. One of the
team members exclaimed “Or even better, let’s go ask Himesh- he would
definitely know the answer”. Everyone burst out laughing. Know the
feeling when everyone around you gets the joke, except you?
After multiple interactions with Himesh over the next few months, I finally
got the joke. When asked a question or part of a discussion, Himesh used to
jump in with his opinions, irrespective of his expertise. He wanted to sound
smart and add something in every conversation that he was part of. The
team nicknamed him “the expert”. I do not encourage gossiping about any
one, but the team was not completely wrong. Himesh had a serious problem
saying three words, “I don’t know”.
Socrates was one of the wisest men of his time. In Plato’s account of him,
he is attributed to have admitted “I know that I know nothing”. For one
being able to admit their ignorance and challenge their assumptions is a
sign of wisdom.
Many people shy away from admitting they do not know something. In the
short term, they may find their way to project themselves as smart. This is
however a poor long-term strategy in trust-building. I recommend the
gladiator approach to responding to questions. I have introduced it in the
chapter about interviews. In this context, here is how it works:
If you know the answer to a question, attack! Answer it directly.
If you do not know the answer to a question, defend! Take a step back and
say “I don’t know”
If you’re not sure about the answer or know only a part of it, deflect! There
are two options to deflect: first, saying: “I am not sure about the accurate
answer. Can I make an estimate?” and second “here is what I know for
sure… and here is what I don’t know…”
In the short term, not knowing might put you in a spot. In the longer term, it
is a pillar in your personal brand. When you speak, people know they can
trust you. Also, the acceptance that your knowledge has limitations keeps
you curious and humble. Socrates wasn't exactly a fool.
10. Politics, sex, or religion.
Unless your work requires you to, do not engage in conversations around
politics, sex, or religion at the workplace. These topics easily trigger an
amygdala hijack and can escalate the conversation beyond its intention.
Avoid making sexual jokes with your colleagues even if they are indulging
in them. In the office, there is a blurred line between sexual jokes and
sexual misconduct; when you cross it, the repercussions are often career-
ruining.
When you listen and wait for your turn to speak, your words command
authority; and then, everybody listens.
I am often asked “but my job does not require creativity or the opportunity
to go an extra step – what can I do?” Every job, even the most basic, has the
opportunity to go a step further. It was the winter of 2017 and I was a part
of a large excursion group visiting various towns and villages of India. The
organisers asked for crowd-management volunteers who could be stationed
at key checkpoints, maintain us in orderly queues and guide the excursion
group through various places. Most volunteers stood helplessly trying to get
us into queues, while our excessively enthusiastic group paid little heed to
their commands. However, one volunteer, Ravi, seemed to be obsessed with
this mundane job of keeping people in queue. Even if a person was an inch
away from the queue, he would keep nudging them back inside. We walked
as orderly as ants on a mission. His body language was like that of a war-
time soldier coercing us to “move fast, stay in a line”. The whole excursion
group developed abhorrence towards this volunteer. Soon, the group began
to understand his passion and began to fall in line even when they saw him
approach from a distance. Gradually, they began to respect him for what he
was doing even though he was not required to do it. On the final day of the
tour, he received a standing ovation from 500+ people in the excursion
group.
The organisers stated that this was the first time in the 10-year history of
this excursion that a crowd-management volunteer received a unanimous
standing ovation. How was a person, with a small and mundane task, able
to establish his impact on the minds of so many people? It was only because
he went the extra step; and that step is in such short supply that the people
who take it, shine.
When I take a radio-cab in the morning, the driver requires me to share a
code from my mobile application to enable him to start the ride. Usually, as
soon as I board the cab, the driver exclaims “Sir, code please”. It is nothing
unusual; I share the code and we are on our way. Once in a while, though, I
meet a driver who begins the conversation as “Good morning, sir! How are
you doing?” and after some pleasantries says “Sir, if you may please share
the code, it will help us start the ride.”. Such an interaction just makes my
day and is a small but big factor in re-booking cabs of that company more
often. While it doesn’t take much effort, that small effort to go take that
extra step makes a big difference.
15
“Your highness...”
How to Talk to Powerful People?
It was the first week of my first job at a top consulting firm. The people
who lead such firms are usually known as partners. To put things into
perspective, I was a ‘consultant’ at the firm and ‘any’ partner was my boss
x 5. I had heard a great deal about a partner, Rajeev, who seemed to have a
Rockstar status in the industry.
Rajeev had called a meeting, and our whole team was boarding the elevator
to meet him at a conference room on a higher floor. I had only seen him in
pictures and videos so far and just the thought of being in the same room
with him made me sweat. I was rehearsing my introduction and handshake
with him in my mind and I did it perhaps a dozen times in that slow-moving
elevator.
We finally entered the conference room and there he was in flesh and blood
beaming at the incoming team. Somehow, I ended up in front of the pack as
he walked towards me, adjusted his spectacles, extended his arm, smiled
and said in a firm voice “Hi! I’m Rajeev”. I grabbed the edge of his fingers
in what can be called a poor handshake, and with all my strength mustered a
meek “hello”.
He kept smiling but his eyebrows took a mild quizzical curve as I took an
eternity to realise I hadn’t said my name. All those mental rehearsals were
in vain at that moment as my state of mind was in tatters. As other
colleagues gathered around, he kindly excused himself and moved on to
speak with the others.
It is usually not easy to speak with somebody far more powerful than
yourself. You probably look up to them and then finally have the
opportunity to look at them eye to eye. Since that meeting with Rajeev, I’ve
had the opportunity to meet and often work with powerful people including
CEOs, political leaders, social media influencers, and Bollywood
celebrities. It’s ironic that the majority of my clients today are directors and
partners of consulting firms. After all these experiences, the anxiety of
meeting a powerful person has not diminished for me one bit; the only
difference is I have now learnt how to channel it and developed strategies
around what to do before and during the meeting with that powerful person,
and to make the most of that time. What you are looking for is not just more
information about them, but perhaps the causes that concern them.
One of the key reasons you feel nervous before interacting with a powerful
person is because deep down you believe that you are there to take
something from them. The hand that takes is always below the hand that
gives. When you establish this status quo in mind, you automatically begin
to feel your confidence diminish. Take a moment to think about why the
other person decided to have a meeting with you in the first place. Time is a
valuable resource and even more valuable for powerful people. Yet, they
decided to invest some of it with you. You have something to offer. You
have something of value which they might want or need. Focus on this
value when you feel anxious before the meeting to become more centred in
the moment.
Before you meet a powerful person, read about them. Listen to any recent
podcasts, read blogs and news articles, and read their website and social
media handles. You are not just looking for more information about them,
but also causes that concern them. If they care about animal welfare, or
geopolitics in Europe, it would be nice to know at least some basic stuff
about these topics, in case the conversation steers that way. Do not pretend
to be an expert at something you are not. Powerful people meet snake oil
salesmen everyday, who are trying tricks from the book to win their
favours. Should the conversation shift to a theme that you do not know
much about, admit that you are not an expert. Know enough to ask an
interesting question.
I always have a list of questions ready to ask them, and if the conversation
flows naturally, they may not be needed. Sometimes, however, you might
have those long moments of awkward silence where you might need to
navigate yourself out of a tough corner. Have a genuine, thoughtful question
to ask in these moments. To be clear, short silences are important for any
conversation – don’t rush in to fill them. These questions are your lifeboats
for when the conversation feels difficult to continue.
About the questions, don’t ask something that is out of a rut bag. Be
thoughtful and intentional about asking something that adds real value to
you, to the conversation, and that makes you come across as a diligent
person who has taken the time to read and research. A good question will
propel you to the 1% category because it will require them to think and
appreciate verbalising something they may not often think about. When
asking a question, always set the context first, so as to not make it sound
like an interrogation.
“What does your typical health regime look like?” may come across as
sudden.
Your body projects your status based on how you use stillness and
space, strategically.
The thumb rule is that more stillness and more space project you as more
authoritative. Less stillness and less space usually project you as more
approachable. It is not about good or bad; it is about the need of the
conversation. When you talk about your work, you may choose to appear
more authoritative; whereas when you are offering or seeking help, you
may choose to be approachable. When you talk about a subject of
importance, choose to look authoritative; and when you are approaching a
sensitive topic, you may project yourself as approachable.
Powerful people are also often used to meeting many starry-eyed admirers
who drool all over and ask for selfies and autographs. When you have a
meeting with a powerful person, feel free to express your admiration for
them and their work, but I suggest you do so assertively. You have the
opportunity to converse with them, unlike a lot of people who would love to
but have not been able to do so. Look them in the eye as an equal and be
centred. That is a breath of fresh air for most of them.
When in situations of high stress, many of us tend to talk fast and rush in to
fill pauses. These are behaviours which exhibit lack of confidence in the
moment. It is natural for that to happen in these and similar conversations.
Give yourself the permission for a breath before responding. Create space
between words when needed and don’t lose your natural communication
style merely because of the presence of a more powerful person in the
room.
Many of the above techniques are related to your state of mind in the
conversation.
Top athletes have a physical regime before they get on the field or right
before they take that shot. In 2013, psychologist and Nobel Prize winner
Daniel Kahneman conducted an experiment at the World Economic Forum
in Davos. He asked some participants to put a pencil in their mouth
horizontally and asked the others to do so vertically. Those who held the
pencil horizontally in their mouth (forcing a smile) reported higher
happiness levels than those holding it in their mouth, vertically (forcing a
frown). What you do with your body has the power to impact your mood.
This is also called biofeedback. You clap when you like something and
laugh when you are happy. Clapping and laughing, even without any
external stimuli, has the power to put you into those moods.
Before you move into these high-stakes meetings, build yourself a ritual to
prime your body. I personally like to stretch my cheeks to form a smile,
stretch my arms and chest sideways, and listen to upbeat music. I give my
body the permission to occupy space and express myself before these
conversations. Often when you are unable to do these, take a pause and an
intentional deep breath. It will allow you to reset your state and stop that
catastrophizing anxiety that is pulling you back.
16
“I’d like to say..”
How to Present an Argument?
“Confuse them if you cannot convince them” Have you heard this before?
This is a great strategy to win the argument and lose the relationship.
Complicating what is simple is the mark of a charlatan. Simplifying what is
complicated is the mark of an expert.
Communication is the bridge between the islands of disagreement;
complication extracts a heavy toll to use it.
“It sounds like it is important for you that Y does not happen. Would you
rather prefer Z (future action) because…”
With this elevation and reframing you acknowledged the argument but
shifted the subject from talking about X to discussing an action plan going
forward. Acknowledgement of the other argument before proceeding to
make your own often enhances your credibility because you chose to
address it head-on rather than deflect. When elevating to reframe, be
cautious about being presumptuous. In the last example, we began the
counter-argument with “It sounds like” to highlight it as our interpretation
of their opinion.
If you take the bait, the conversation will quickly move to a completely
different tangent - from X and Y to A and B. Make sure you keep them
accountable to one argument before letting them take you hostage with
branches.
To present a strong opinion, you can back it with evidence. What comprises
“evidence” in a speech? Here is the order of priority:
1.
Statistic
2.
Fact
3.
Example
4.
Anecdote
For example, you state the argument “The Indian economy is growing faster
than it has in the last decade.”
1.
Statistic: Recent World Bank report pegs this growth to be at
9.8%, higher than the decade’s previous high of 9.2%.
2.
Fact: This can be observed from the fact that our exports are at
an all-time high and unemployment at an all-time low. (notice
there are no numbers)
3.
Example: Let’s look at SBI and how their lending rate is higher
than the last few years with rock bottom default rate.
4.
Anecdote: For instance, I have personally observed in the area
where I reside that the number of shops has increased and their
owners cannot procure enough to sell!
When researching or presenting arguments, beware of some biases and
logical fallacies. Let us discuss some common ones that you can avoid. The
first bias to check is the representation bias.
“But dad, look at Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and Mark Zuckerberg. They made
it big as entrepreneurs despite not graduating”
When you try to find facts to support your initial opinion rather than
building an opinion based on existing facts, you are a victim of
representation bias. In the above case, the student’s opinion is to quit
college and he has conveniently sourced only those facts that support his
original under-researched opinion.
A logical fallacy to watch out for is circular reasoning. This is where the
argument uses its own premise for the conclusion.
“Because fat people eat pizza, all those who eat pizza must be fat”
Here the premise and conclusion circularly rely on each other to support the
argument.
“The governor was travelling when the mall fire took place. If she had been
in her office, the mall would have been safe.
This argument incorrectly assumed that the location of the governor caused
the fire incident.
Logic or logos is just one pillar that helps you hold up a strong argument.
The other two, often ignored, pillars are emotions (pathos), and ethics and
authority (ethos). Humans are emotional beings and while facts appeal to
the logical part of our brains, a good argument also appeals to specific
feelings. Be intentional about the emotions you want your audience to feel
when you present your opinion.
For example,
“40% of children in country A are below the poverty line” appeals only to
logic.
17
“Sell me this pen”
How to nail that interview?
State of mind
Nobody who is convinced they do not deserve something can convince
another that they do.
One of many reasons why an interview is scary as compared to a
conversation with friends is because of the power differential. The person
interviewing you usually has, and you also perceive them to have, more
power than you do. You need a job, you have got this interview call after
applying for months, and there is a line of candidates with resumes in the
reception area who are interviewing for this same role. These factors skew
your state of mind to feel inferior. It is hard to achieve peak performance
with this state of mind.
There is an incident from the Mahabharata about Shri Krishna and his elder
brother, Balarama. Once both brothers were passing through the forest and
travel had made them weary. They decided to take turns to sleep while the
other remained on guard. As Krishna descended into a deep slumber,
Balarama heard a huge roar and thunderous thuds of heavy footsteps. He
turned to see a monster with large teeth and dark eyes approach him and
was terrorized by fear. As Balarama felt afraid, the monster grew in size
while Balarama shrunk in size. He managed to wake Krishna up before
passing out. Krishna woke up and understood the situation. He reserved his
fear and challenged the monster. The monster began to shrink in size while
Krishna grew larger. Finally, the monster was as small as Krishna’s thumb
and easily disposable.
Your fears for a high-stakes conversation make it seem scarier than it is and
make you feel less capable than you are. What I ask out of you requires
conscious practice and constant work in progress. Tell yourself that it is just
another conversation, one of millions of conversations you will have in a
lifetime, and that you are ready for it. Your mind is a movie theatre which
constantly runs horror movies in high definition. Here, grow yourself in size
and imagine that potentially scary conversation or interview shrinking in
size.
Think of an interview as a conversation, not between a recruiter and a
candidate, but, rather, one between potential partners.
There is a common need, i.e., the opportunity to work together, and you
both are having a conversation to understand if that common need is indeed
expected to be fulfilled with this potential partnership. They have an
opportunity to choose between candidates and you have the opportunity to
choose between recruiters. I am not discounting the work that it takes to
land an interview; but there is always an opportunity out there that needs
you – you will need to keep digging to discover it.
Content
There is a lot of ground to cover in this area and some of it is contextual to
the particular role, and technical expertise based on which your interview
will be structured. In this chapter, we take a wide swinging bat and outline
techniques that apply context-agnostically. As part of coaching, I have
mock-interviewed more than 700 people, from students to C-suite
executives, and their common mistakes are the inspiration for this chapter.
Most questions in an interview are from five categories: behavioural, case
study, technical, general awareness, and abstract.
Behavioural questions
The purpose of these questions is to understand your personality. I highlight
the most popular behavioural questions and techniques to frame your
response:
Introduction to yourself
Most people begin their introductions in an ascending order – where they
are from, school, college, work experience, and so on. It is logical because
you are explaining your life and work in a chronological order. However,
from the perspective of the interviewer, what you did recently is more
relevant than what you did many years ago. I recommend that you follow a
descending order chronology – begin your response with what you are
doing now and go backwards in time to highlight noteworthy projects and
achievements.
The tricky part here is to know how to land the response i.e. your final line
before you close your response. Most people close their response when they
run out of things to say or on some weird moment like their hobbies or a
college achievement and smile into the void with the awkward silence that
follows as the interviewer tries to gauge if you are done with your response
and you are wondering if you have spoken enough or still need to add that
part about your dead grandma. End your response to this question with the
goal for that particular interview. For example, “I am looking forward to
this conversation and to be working with XYZ as a project manager”. This
statement readies the canvas for follow up questions and allows a tone of
finality in your response.
“I can work under pressure. Last year, our largest client was preparing for a
big tech upgrade scheduled for 48 hours later, when they discovered a major
bug. We had worked six months on this project and it was a herculean task
to go through the meta-data to find the source of the problem and solve it. I
quickly mapped the problem to the four most probable causes and divided
our team to work on each independently. After countless cups of coffee and
an endless stream of calls from the client requesting status updates, we were
able to solve the bug 11 hours before launch. The CEO was so ecstatic that
he recommended our team to his counterparts in other geographies.”
When responding to a question asking about your weakness, there are three
key things to remember: first, be authentic. Nobody likes a “I am so
obsessed about perfection that I often delay on my deadlines.” Tell a
weakness that you believe is really one of the things you think at which you
could be better. Second, do not mention a weakness which contradicts the
skills required for that particular role. For example, you would not say “I
have bad handwriting” when interviewing for a calligraphy instructor
position. Third, always back your weakness with an example of how you
are consciously working on it. You could say “Public speaking has always
made me nervous. Since the past many months, however, I have joined a
public speaking class and have tried to pick opportunities to speak to an
audience to become better at this skill. I still have a long way to go”
Concise responses
Many behavioural questions require you to share an incident, story, or case
study. People are either too long-winded in their answers or often too
concise to delve into necessary detail. I recommend that none of your
responses go beyond 60 to 90 seconds. If you are close to breaching this
deadline and still have more to say, pause and ask “I can go into more detail
if you like?” The interviewer may then ask you to continue or shift gears.
Last year, our largest client was preparing for a big tech upgrade scheduled
for 48 hours later, when they discovered a major bug. (Situation)
We had worked six months on this project and it was a herculean task to go
through the meta-data to find the source of the problem and solve it. (Task)
I quickly mapped the problem to the four most probable causes and divided
our team to work on each independently. After countless cups of coffee and
an endless stream of calls from the client requesting status updates, we were
able to solve the bug 11 hours before launch. (Action)
The CEO was so ecstatic that he recommended our team to his counterparts
in other geographies. (Result)
When you are completely sure about the question, it is easy - attack!
This means that there is no point beating around the bush with shallow
words. Keep it plain and simple: “Excuse me, I do not know the answer to
this question”.
When you are not completely sure but want to take a stab at the question,
parry!
If you attack, you will feel inauthentic. If you defend, you may miss the
chance to respond to that question. When you parry, you say “I am not
completely sure about this, but would like to try. Can I do that?” Some
interviewers will allow you to try. In that case, if you fail, you have a soft
landing because of your disclaimer. If the interviewer in an occasional case
asks you to answer only if you are completely sure, then end your response
by defending.
Body language
Pre-work
I remember my first ever interview for an internship in 2012. I read many
articles and watched countless videos and remembered that I needed to
‘smile’. Come the day of the interview and I was led into the icy cold cabin
of the interviewer. I walked the plush carpet and was gestured by the
partner to sit in a tall chair with hand rests beyond my chest. As pleasing as
the interviewer was, I was finding it impossible to get myself to smile. He
had to take an urgent phone call and turned away from me for a minute. I
literally kept my palms at the edge of my lips and tried to make it curve
upwards but to no avail! Needless to say, Dr. Frankenstein did not get that
internship.
18
Zesty Cold
How to write an impactful cold
email?
Dear Sir/Madam,
Greetings!
Best Regards,
Gill Bates
Founder
Annoying Tech Pvt Ltd.
Website link
I read your latest blog and seemed to understand that you are exploring
contemporary channels to sell your new product.
I am the founder of this product and would be happy to discuss how we can
work together. How is Monday 11 am or Thursday 4 pm for a 15-minute
zoom call? Let me know if any other time works better.
Warren À la carte
Founder
Relevant Tech Pvt Ltd.
Website link
Personalization
Lack of personalization is perhaps the most common folly in cold emails.
You have a common subject, a salutation that begins with something like
“Dear sir/madam”, and talks about you, your achievements, and your
requirements. Of my 68,414 unread emails, how would I possibly find the
will to completely read this kind of an email?
In 2019, I was travelling to Singapore for a workshop and decided to cold
email the CEO of one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges at the time.
My ask was to get a slot on his calendar for a meeting to learn about him
and his work. Before I approached him, I took some time to read recent
news articles, latest blogs, and social media posts. I personalised the first
few lines in my message based on this information.
I heard back from him the next day with an offer of a 25-minute slot on a
Thursday noon. We had a fun conversation and as we shook hands to take
leave he said “Mudit, you should know that I receive hundreds of messages
every week asking for a meeting like this. Do you know why you came
through? I saw the first 2-line preview before opening the message and
thought – huh, this guy understands what I’m doing here!”
Specificity
When my email notification chimes and I see an unknown sender and a
generic subject, I already have my antennas looking out for “OK now what
does this person want out of me?” There is an ice-cold barrier between the
sender and receiver. The reader’s focus is not on the content of your email
but rather on the process of evaluation of the relevance of the email. A mere
“I will solve your problems” is not enough to melt this barrier.
Brevity
You probably have an interesting life story, but that first cold email may not
be the best place to share it. The longer it takes for you to get to your point,
the greater is the dilution to your authenticity and status. Most people tend
to write long emails, especially to more powerful people to be able to share
their passion and excitement. It really should be the other way around
because powerful people have less time on their hands.
Make sure that the subject and content of your email addresses the
following in the fewest possible words: why are you writing that email/the
importance of the email to the recipient, the problem you wish to solve for
the recipient (if any), your brief introduction, and finally, the call to action.
Another critical area of the email where brevity is important is the subject
line. The subject should ideally be not more than six to eight words. The
subject is the doorway to your email. You would not stay at a hotel with a
dirty reception and you would not open an email with an irrelevant subject.
It should be relevant, brief, and appealing.
Call to action
Every good form of communication ends with a call-to-action. What do you
need your reader to do at the end of that email? The call to action must be
specific and open-ended at the same time to allow respect to your recipient.
An example of my usual call-to-action is “Does Tuesday 12 pm or
Thursday 5 pm work for a 15-minute Zoom call? Please let me know your
preference from there (or some other time) and I can share a calendar
invite.”
Follow up
One of the ways I differentiate between an email received really intended
for me vis-à-vis that being sent out to a lot of other recipients, is by the
quality of follow up. Most senders who send emails to many recipients do
not have the time and patience to follow up on their emails. This allows you
an opportunity to stand out. If your cold email does not elicit a response, I
suggest sending a follow up email after a week. Typically, after two follow-
ups if your lead does not respond, I would suggest either looking for
alternative communication channels or dropping that lead.
19
“And what do you do?”
How to network at networking
events?
I have spent far too many conferences and networking events listening to
men in suits conjure gyaan
out of thin air, waiting for lunch time, and
enjoying the free cookies with the evening tea. Well, that is one way to
attend an event; the other is to use the event as your playground like a
networking ninja. People have polarising views on conferences and
networking events – some consider them as sort of a time and money sink,
where too many people with different agendas are put in a large room;
others consider them to be a hotbed of creating new connections. I believe
that these opportunities, if used well, can open doors you didn't know
existed.
To help you make the most of that upcoming networking event, this chapter
has been divided into three sections,viz., your pre-event preparation, what
to do during the event, and post-event actions.
Pre-event preparation
Update your social media handles, especially LinkedIn and Twitter. If you
have a personal website, go through every page again and ensure everything
is up to date. You would not invite an important person to a dirty office.
Social media is your virtual real estate and it needs to be ready for visitors.
Make sure you plan your wardrobe in advance. Go through the proposed
agenda of the conference and plan your dress accordingly. If you are
confused about the tone of the event, it is not an overkill to reach out to the
organiser to confirm it. In general, this is what my wardrobe contains for
on-site formal networking events:
1.
One jacket/formal suit (plus one if the agenda has a formal
dinner)
2.
One formal trouser for each day of the conference
3.
One formal shirt in white/light blue/pink for each day of the
conference (plus, one extra)
4.
One tie for every day (plus, one extra) and cufflinks
5.
One pair of black/brown formal shoes and belt
6.
One pair of business casuals (polo T-shirt/checked casual shirt
with semi-casual trousers and shoes)
7.
One pair of casuals (shorts, jeans, and T-shirt)
8.
Appropriate layers depending on the weather
It is said that when President John F. Kennedy visited the NASA Space
Center in 1962, he noticed a janitor with a broom. He walked over and
asked him what he was doing. The janitor replied “Mr. President, I’m
helping put a man on the moon.”
Most of us in the janitor’s place may have responded with something like “I
mop the place” or “keep the lavatories clean”. Instead, the janitor explained,
not what he was doing, but rather the value of what he was doing. As part
of your introduction, don’t talk about the nuts and bolts of the tasks that you
do, but rather speak about the value you create.
Not every planned opening line will snowball into a large business
opportunity. The purpose of this example is to convince you that an
intentional opening sets you apart from other people who approach with a
simple “hello, how are you?” Enough of these stand-out approaches and at
least a few will yield tangible outcomes. Further, if you are able to find the
industry where most participants are from, read about the typical jargon and
latest trends in that industry. This will make it easier for you to have
valuable short conversations.
Some might argue that business cards are passé. I would say better be safe
than sorry. There are business circles who still request a business card.
Better to have one and not have to give than to come up empty-handed
when requested for a card. Here is where my approach is a tad conservative
– I do not offer my business card unless requested. It is not a marketing
brochure that is handed out to every passer-by in a mall. A business card
should only be offered in three situations: when someone requests it, when
someone offers theirs, or in exceptional cases when neither happens but the
potential relationship is important.
When storing contacts in your phone, open the notes section and add a
small detail about the conversation. Did they mention someone in their
family, or a recent promotion, a vacation that they took, some interest or
hobby, or their favourite book or movie? When you reach out to this person
weeks, months, or perhaps years later, you will need a jumpstart to a
possibly awkward conversation. This little piece of info in your notes will
serve as your trampoline.
Within 24 hours after the end of the event, send each person you met a
personalised message possibly quoting one take away from the
conversation.
After 7-10 days of the event, send a gift. A gift could be a link to an
interesting video or article you read that relates to their work or a copy of
your favourite book.
Within 7 days from the gift, reach out for a phone conversation just to catch
up. If they accept, keep this conversation under 15 minutes and seek to be
curious. When you have the space, parachute any value that you add again
but do not force it or be salesy.
Send them a message after this conversation and put a recurring event on
your calendar to reach out to them again in 2-3 months.
When you have had a few of these conversations, you can more confidently
state your request. The overarching focus of your conversations must
however always be generosity and curiosity.
Seek to give and seek to learn; let the tangible advantage to you be the
by-product of this relationship.
20
“Good morning team”
How to lead better meetings?
When ideas come together, they don’t just add to each other, they multiply.
Meetings are opportunities for ideas to come together. Humans have
historically achieved ambitious goals not individually, but in groups. Before
diving in to leading effective meetings, it is worth diagnosing the problem –
why do most meetings suck?
The Bible narrates the story of the tower of Babel. Humans came together
in Babylon to build a tower that would touch the skies and reach God. God
descended and the Humans’ blasphemous behaviour made him furious. God
confounded the people so that they speak different languages. With no
common language to communicate, the tower could not be built.
One of the reasons for bad meetings today is people speaking different
languages; not literally, but rather because they have different agendas,
priorities, and needs.
During the meeting, Rajeev looked curiously at the intern and said “What
do you think we can do differently?”
The intern was noticeably taken aback and gathered his wits to begin
sharing some feedback.
Rajeev leapt on his seat, grabbed his diary, and began to make notes.
After the meeting, I asked Rajeev “You have 26 years of experience in this
industry. Your team combined has another 26. What can an intern possibly
tell you that you don’t already know?”
“Mudit, here’s the thing...” Rajeev smiled as he responded “… we don’t
hire the best people from top institutes because we need an extra pair of
hands. It is their ideas that I am looking for. Their fresh perspective helps us
recalibrate what seems obvious and notice blind spots”
Every person in the room is worth listening to. As the leader of the meeting,
it is your responsibility that they sense a safe environment to share their
ideas without the fear of rebuke or ridicule. I heard a quote from an
American business consultant, Alan Weiss, who says “so many
organisations just breathe their own exhaust.” Often, people who are new to
an organisation and those on the front lines are not given their due.
Meetings are an opportunity for those insights to come together.
Next, you address some implicit questions that your participants may have
and obtain their soft buy-in for the meeting. You may talk about the overall
context of the need for the meeting, acknowledge some challenges that the
participants may have, and clearly highlight “why” they need to be present
in this, and how their contributions are helpful.
After the soft-start and context setting, it is important that you set the
agenda for the meeting. Ideally, this should be shared in advance, however,
it never hurts to take a moment to highlight it. With the agenda, you may
also set the ground rules. Can the participants ask questions anytime or do
they need to wait till you begin the Q&A session? Can they jump in
anytime or would you prefer them to raise their hands first? Who takes
notes for the meeting if that is not already specified?
When anyone joins in, especially a senior person, ensure you make a quick
reference to them and welcome them to the call. Once the quorum of the
call is met or you are three to five minutes into your meeting, you may start
setting context and share the agenda.
Authority bias
When the boss shares an opinion, it is hard for people to convince
themselves that they may have a different, better opinion on the matter. The
authority of the person who shares the idea often outweighs the merit of the
idea.
Confirmation bias
You may not like scented soaps, but the target market of your organisation
might love them. Your personal beliefs and desires may tend to push you to
make decisions rather than the merit of those ideas.
Some ideas to reduce the biases are to use anonymous polls. If everyone
writes their idea, opinion, feedback, or question on yellow post-it notes, it is
hard to know whether it belongs to the boss or the intern. Virtually, you
may use polls to allow participants to vote on an idea without fear of
ostracization.
After the COVID-19 pandemic and the exodus towards the work-from-
home culture, workplaces will never be the same. Most organisations are
expected to permanently evolve, if not to a completely decentralised
workplace, then at least to a hybrid one. Whether you like meetings or not,
as a knowledge worker, they are an integral part of your life. Now that most
meetings take place virtually, you better get better at them.
The little box on Zoom, Google Meet or any video platform is the window
of the world to you. When you go to a physical office, you don’t dress
poorly because it will misrepresent you. You need to take similar
precautions by making sure your digital frame does justice in representing
you. The easiest way to level up your meeting frame is by using a face light.
Better lighting goes miles to highlight your facial features and expression. It
also makes you appear more energetic and more present in the meeting. If
the lighting in your room is inadequate, consider getting a decent face light
under INR 1000 (USD 15) and watch your frame game level up.
The other, unspoken, pandemic is people having their video camera at weird
angles. Some look down on their camera like they’re looking into a well
while others keep it too high and look like the subject of a drone footage.
There are people who have an objection showing their shoulders on the
video call and prefer to be seen as a floating head looking for its lost body.
Make sure the camera is at your eye-level. Some people keep the camera
too close to their face while others prefer social distancing with their own
computing device. It is recommended that you align your frame such that
you are able to see minimal space above your head and around your
shoulders. The bottom of the frame should ideally be limited at your chest.
When you are calling out someone for a comment or question, bear in mind
that they may have subconsciously wandered off to their upcoming beach
vacation and you do not want to catch them off-guard. How many times
have you noticed someone being asked a question, only to be followed by
awkward silence, followed by a breathless “Sorry, I had a connection issue.
What was that again?” When possible, let people know in advance you will
come to them for a comment. For example, “Before I come to Pooja for a
comment, here is my opinion on the matter.” You just gave Pooja about 30
seconds to frame a more structured response. A step further is sharing the
chain of people who are inviting questions and comments. “Let me ask
Pooja first, and then Maria and Amit….”
I suggest you take the name of the person first followed by your question or
invitation. Their name will trigger a neural response and they will make
sure to listen to the rest of the sentence.
If you are making a presentation or speech as part of the meeting, it is best
to pause after every few sentences to check in to see if anyone has a
question or a comment. This pause is also necessary to check if your
internet and audio is functioning smoothly and that people can in fact hear
you. In one meeting, an executive spoke breathlessly for 20 minutes only to
realise her audio completely stopped working midway and people did not
hear one word. Nobody dared to interrupt because she was speaking
without a breath. I sincerely hope you will never go through such an
experience after reading this chapter.
Finally, when the meeting is near close, highlight key action points and next
steps or let someone know in advance that you would expect them to
summarise. If that is not possible, let them know that they can expect to
receive the highlights and action points on email. Before closing the
meeting merely on the logistics of who does what, take a moment to share a
few sentences to re-elevate your participants by connecting them to a larger
cause to give meaning to their efforts.
21
“Once upon a time”
How to tell better stories?
“The human mind is a story processor, not a logical processor”
- Jonathan Haidt, American Social Scientist
Storytelling comes naturally to human beings. Our ancestors passed lessons
through stories and art depicting stories. Recall the last time you narrated
something to your best friend. Wait! Before you read ahead, really take a
moment to recall that story, incident, experience, or gossip that you shared
with your closest confidant. If it was a secret, your voice becomes low and
hushed, like that of a Soviet spy in American territory. If it was a story that
made you furious, your voice stiffened and your fingers formed a fist as if
you were in a fight during your narration. If it was something scary or
exciting, you raise your voice (and eyebrows) and speak at your highest
pitch as the climax of your story approaches. Are your hands in your
pockets or folded? Of course not! They are all over the place in magical
synchronisation with the tone of your story.
It is important to tell great stories because people are wired to learn from
stories. Remember as kids we had bedtime stories and in school many
stories ended with “moral of the story”. The hare and the tortoise, the boy
who cried wolf, and the wolf and the crane – don’t you remember lessons
from these stories even decades after you first heard or read them? If you
want to drive home a point to adults as well, lean in to their conditioning
and tell a good story. Shed the inhibition to tell a good story to adults – the
best marketers in the world understand this. Understand the power of stories
and how they should be used as a weapon to enhance reception and
retention in your listeners.
The Natya Sastra was written by Sage Bharata Muni around 3000 years ago
in ancient India. That’s right - 3000 years! The text is popular, among other
things, for the Rasa theory. Rasa means sap or liquid or a flavour. In broader
etymology, it can be said to mean ‘taste’. The wisdom of the Rasa theory
even today inspires many art forms in India as well as the world and much
has been written about it by scholars including Susan L. Schwartz and
Daniel Meyer-Dinkgräfe. In the Indian performing arts, a rasa is a sentiment
or emotion evoked in each member of the audience by the art. The Natya
Sastra elucidates 8 such rasas or emotions: Hasyam (humour), Raudram
(anger), Bhayankam (Horror), Veeram (Bravery), Karunyam (compassion),
Sringarha (beauty), Bibhatsam (disgust), and Adbhutam (amazement).
According to this theory, entertainment is a by-product of performance arts
and not the main goal. The primary goal is to spin a parallel reality and
teleport the audience into it. In that parallel reality, the audience will
experience “
the essence of their own consciousness, and reflect on spiritual
and moral questions.”
As you weave your story, you too can use rasas and immersive details
to help your audience traverse that journey with you.
Immersive Details
The challenge with telling a story is that there are two simultaneous
versions of it as you narrate it. The first is the version in your memory that
is playing like a film in your head and the other is the verbal version which
you narrate to your listeners. The level of detail between both of these
versions is different. Let us understand this with an example of narrating a
movie experience to your listeners.
Usual version:
“We got in our seats and the movie began. It was a great movie and the
action sequences were amazing! Especially, the entry of the superhero
where he fights like thousands of these weird bird creatures with his new
lighting axe.”
There is nothing wrong with this version, except that you have picked up
and narrated only conscious details. If you really want your audience to
experience that story like you did, you will need to bring in subconscious
details as well.
“We were barely able to control our excitement as the aroma of buttered
popcorn invited us to the food stalls before we settled in our red recliners.
The movie began with a flash of blue lightning through which the superhero
emerged! The sky was filled with these sabre-toothed flying dinosaurs like
creatures. We had goosebumps when he hit one of those creatures with his
crackling lighting axe!”
Colours
Example: “Red seats” and “flash of blue lightning”
The expression “the sky was filled” immediately describes what I want to
convey. If I just say “thousands”, it is a number that requires an extra step
of processing before your listener replicates the scene. “Sabre-toothed” is a
more descriptive expression than just “long and sharp” because it is more
accurately relatable to the scene.
Describe the internal journey
Example: “Barely able to control our excitement” and “had goosebumps”
People may have different reactions to the same stimulus. If you want your
listeners to feel what you felt, tell them what you felt! Do not assume that
they will process your feeling exactly like you felt it.
Sounds
Example: “crackling lightning axe”
With fragrance and colours, you appealed to the olfactory and optic systems
of the body. When you add the layer of sound, you appeal to the auditory
system and make your storytelling more intimate
Emotion
Most stories do not resonate because the speaker is either not excited or is
unable to convey emotion. If you do not relate to your story, do not narrate
it! It is tough to make listeners feel excited about something that does not
interest the speaker. Most people tell a story when they believe it to be
exciting, however, are not able to convey the same level of excitement. The
tools and techniques in this chapter will allow you to become the fibre optic
of stories – to convey excitement with almost no loss in energy. Ok I guess I
got a tad too excited there.
Pitch
Do not confuse pitch with volume. Volume is loudness. It is an indicator of
excitement but can be tiring if overused. Pitch, however, is Do Re Mi Fa So
La Ti (or Sa Re Ga Ma Pa Dha Ni in Indian Sargam). I asked Mumbai’s
favourite English Radio Jockey, Hrishi K,
“Why is that?”
“Well, imagine a Good morning said at your default pitch and a Good
morning wished with two notes higher! Makes almost all the difference in
the communication”
Watch the video of a professional vocalist rehearsing this scale. When they
sing a particular note, they have an intentional pitch. However, when you
speak, there is a high chance that most of your communication is on one or
two of these notes. A lullaby has the same couple of repeated notes; and
guess what lullabies do? Put the listener to sleep! Imagine if someone
shared this secret with Jigglypuff – people would not get their faces painted
on. (If you did not get the Jigglypuff reference, crawl out of that cave!) A
storyteller is able to command an influence on the audience’s heartbeat. It is
why the best movies make you feel part of the action and not just the
viewer.
22
“Check 1, 2, 3,..”
How to deliver a compelling speech?
As the car did a constant 80kmph on the two-lane highway in the middle of
the forest, the trees racing past me took me to the time when I was in the
fifth grade and spoke on the stage for the first time. It was a story-telling
contest, and my story was called the camel and the pig, or maybe the camel
and the sheep, either one of them. When little Mudit won that contest and
INR 500 as the prize, he got some appreciation that made him a lifelong
student of public speaking. In this chapter, I want to share my most
important lessons and secrets which I learnt on this journey – from telling a
story on the school stage to coaching top leaders.
All great movements, revolutions, and tectonic shifts in ideas were born in
the mind of a person who propagated them through communication. One-
to-one communication is effective but comparatively inefficient with time
being the bottleneck. Public speaking is leverage - the opportunity to
multiply impact. It is difficult to get 15 minutes of uninterrupted speaking
time in a one to one conversation. Imagine having 15 minutes with 100
people in your audience and a microphone in your hand – that is 25 hours of
prime, uninterrupted communication time! What you say and how you say
will multiply your influence in either direction. If you do well, that gets
multiplied, and if you bomb it, unfortunately, that gets multiplied too.
Perhaps, this is one of the reasons public speaking is one of the most
common fears of people. Nevertheless, this exponential impact opportunity
is the reason why you need to be great at this skill. If and when you have
the opportunity to hold that microphone and impact lives, we want you to
be ready. While this segment deserves a separate book of its own (don’t
give us ideas!), we will address the most critical points here to get you
started on your journey towards becoming a terrific public speaker.
Content
We discussed this in the chapter on presenting better arguments but it might
be important to revisit: ‘Complicating what is simple is the mark of a
charlatan. Simplifying what is complicated is the mark of genius.’ As
Einstein once said, if you can’t explain it to your grandmother, you haven’t
understood it.The best speakers in the world have the ability to condense
their message, ideology, goal, or call to action in one simple message. For
example, “I have a dream….” urged the audience to end racial divide and
move towards equality. It delivered this point through a beautiful tapestry of
stories, analogies, and poetry, though it was just one key message. Why is
this necessary? When you say too many things to your audience at once,
think of it like throwing a dozen darts towards the board all at once. Not
many will hit the board, let alone hit bulls-eye. Think of your audience’s
attention span as that board. With one dart at a time precisely aimed at the
board, you have the opportunity to be surgical in your goal. Too many, and
you lose them.
Your one key goal, message, or call to action may be dissected into up to
three sub-messages. These sub-messages may further be elaborated through
sub-sub messages each, but, ultimately, they all have to build up to that one
key point.
During my career as a strategy consultant, I was once heading to a client
meeting when my boss’ boss’ boss decided to join us. No pressure at all,
right?!
On the way he asked me “So Mudit, what are we telling our client today?”
I began my long rant about our research, traffic study, and regression
analysis. Then he interrupted me sharply after 30 seconds, and assertively
asked,
“Mudit, if you had to just say one sentence to the client before they walked
out of the room, what would that sentence be?”
The silence that followed was deafening and seemed to last a lifetime. I had
worked on this project for three and a half months and we had 574 slides in
our presentation. Now, I was being asked to condense it into one sentence!
That bitter lesson taught me the importance of brevity and of having one
core, clear, concise message.
The third section you want to write is the introduction of your speech.
If you don’t hook your audience in the first one to two minutes of your
speech, you have probably lost them for the rest of it. The final step is to
write the body of your speech – key points that you want your audience to
know.
Many pieces of advice about starting a speech range from asking a question
or telling a story, to surprising them with a fact or statistic. All or none of
these approaches may work depending on your natural style as a speaker
and the setting of your audience. A method I use for building the
introduction is thinking about the emotion I want the audience to feel in the
speech’s introduction. Most speakers imagine themselves on stage when
they are planning their speech. I follow a seemingly counterintuitive
approach – I imagine the audience. This helps in two ways; helps me build
from their perspective – I want them laughing, surprised, anxious, guilty,
attentive or motivated when I am speaking about a particular section.
Secondly, it manages my state of mind – when I step on the platform, I feel
as if I have already seen this audience a dozen times and am fully prepared
to deliver to them. I often ask my organisers to send photos of the location
of the speech and the seating of the audience to further bridge the gap
between my vision of the speech and its reality.
Here are two thumb rules that govern content when I partner with my
executive clients to build their speeches: Be lavish in praise and specific in
critique. Cede credit when it goes well and take responsibility when it goes
sour. Here is an example of two contexts to explain this:
“The company has surpassed its revenue target once again. Each one of you
here has made this possible!”
“The company has missed its revenue target once again. We need to
evaluate what went wrong and what we will do differently going forward.”
Did you notice the difference between the “you” and “we” usage? I invite
you to explore how you can use either or both in the context of your
speeches.
Delivery
Body language
If you were alone and faced a thousand archers in an open battlefield with
their bows loaded, would you stand there with open gestures or run to
crouch under a rock? One of the reasons public speaking feels scary is
because you are on stage, usually alone, facing hundreds of people in the
audience. The spotlight is on you, and hundreds of curious eyes are piercing
you from around the room. You begin to feel nervous and while there is no
rock to crouch under, you take comfort in folding your hands or in the
warmth of your pockets. Would you, however, crouch under a rock when
you were with your loved ones in a safe place? You would rather be
comfortable and relaxed. This is why you are all animated with your hands
when sharing a story with your friend.
You need to trick your biology to consider the stage a safe place for you to
open your body and face the audience. When you face the audience without
fear and use your hands and body in synchronisation with your content. The
other important aspect about the body is walking on stage. Many speakers
either settle on one spot on the stage, like a newsreader, or pace from one
end to the other as if waiting outside the operation theatre. When you walk
on stage, do it with a purpose, with slow and conscious steps. Remember
that you need not just walk sideways but can also move towards and away
from the audience. When I make an important point that I want to impress
on the audience, I move toward them right at the edge of the front of the
stage to highlight its importance.
Your eyes are as important for conveying your message as your tongue.
When you don’t look at your audience, you risk losing them. Here is a
technique to make eye contact with most of your audience without
constantly turning around like a table fan. Divide your audience
geometrically into six equal sections. Speak a few sentences looking at one
segment and then move on to the next and so on.
Voice
Flat pitch and constant rhythm – describe almost all of the verbal business
communication today. Please read the chapter on storytelling to understand
why and how to work on this.
Group discussions
In this section, we have highlighted specific techniques to assert yourself in
professional group discussions and add value to them.
Short ramps
Often people will do immense context-setting in a group discussion
scenario before arriving at the heart of their point. Remember that you may
have a maximum of 60 uninterrupted seconds under which you need to
ramp, make, and conclude your point.
Impromptu speaking
I have a confession to make. There are times when I am at an event, sitting
in the audience, minding my own business, when out of nowhere the master
of ceremonies launches a surgical strike by saying “Mudit, can you please
share a few words?”
You are your most critical judge. Watch your own speech videos at
least three times like I explained above. Believe me, initially you
won’t be very proud of yourself. Make notes about what you did well
and be critical about what you could do differently.
3.
Feedback
Hunt for feedback on your speeches from anybody who would give
them. I used to take feedback only from people who I thought were
expert public speakers. Once, right after a speech to 1700+ people in
a large auditorium in Mumbai, I was waiting backstage with people
queued up for photos and questions. One 19-year-old boy came to me
and said “Can I share some feedback for you?” I will be honest – I
felt as if someone had punched a hole in my big, fat ego and I felt a
rush of rage towards my face. It took effort to collect myself and I
requested him to explain.
“English is not my first language. You spoke some things so fast and
the others in such complicated vocabulary, I could not understand.”
Take feedback not just from experts but from everyone who is willing
to offer you one. You may also use the feedback cycle outlined in the
chapter around building a personal brand at the workplace. I humbly
accept feedback from anyone who has heard the speech, regardless of
their expertise on the topic. Not all of the feedback is relevant, but
some of it is; stay hungry for it.
23
Elephant in the room
How to have a critical conversation?
Have you ever scripted an important conversation? It is not a bad idea. The
problem is that your interlocutor, more often than not, is also following a
script – only a different one! You both walk out of the room dissatisfied and
thinking about all the things you could have said and how that could have
gone completely differently. I call this the curious case of clashing scripts.
You might wonder why this is. Well, you need no Sherlock to solve this
particular case because it stems from our common primitive need –
prioritising ourselves over others. In a critical conversation, both parties
have different scripts, each yielding them a greater benefit than the other.
They are not “selfish” people; they are just, well, people.
A: Are you serious right now? Our team’s revenue has only grown and I
have been amongst few of the top performers!
M: Yes, I agree. Unfortunately, the company does not have the budget to
sustain these promotions in this cycle. I am sure if you repeat a similar
performance, we can consider your case next year.
A: But what about all the work I did this year? I really needed this
promotion and you know that!
Manager: Arun, your performance year-long has been splendid. We all have
been expecting your promotion this year. Quite frankly, I think you deserve
one.
Arun: Glad you think so. I was wondering if this was being noticed; you
know, in the middle of this slowdown and all. Anyway, why bring it up?
M: I’ll come straight to it. Our team has broken all past records and this has
largely been due to your efforts. Unfortunately, the overall impact on the
company has not been great.
M: Despite your and our best efforts, it looks like the company will not be
able to offer you a promotion this year.
A: But how is this my fault? We have done better than any year for all I am
concerned.
M: You have. And we all see that. There is no doubt that you deserve this
promotion this year.
A: I don’t know… I was really looking forward to this. Not sure how I’ll
share this with my family.
A: Also, we are heavily understaffed in the eastern region. Can you try for
more budget?
M: With your performance in the other regions, it should not be a difficult
case to make. On it. What else?
A: I guess that’s about it. This is really disappointing, but thanks for trying
your best.
Arun may not be completely pleased with the above conversation because
he still has not achieved his intended outcome. However, by taking the time
to understand and specifically acknowledge Arun’s emotions in the
beginning and throughout the conversation, the manager has been able to
protect Arun’s relationship with himself and probably also with the
organisation. He left the room feeling recognised and understood. When
you begin a critical conversation with someone, identify what they need and
how they feel; acknowledge these, and then push your agenda.
Wife: I have told you so many times to clean the basin after you shave.
Why are you so dirty?
Here, the wife has not separated the problem from the person; she has
attacked the person. The husband will most probably become defensive and
argue about what is not dirty because now his ego is on the line.
Wife: I have told you so many times to clean the basin after you shave. It is
a dirty habit.
This may elicit a less animated reaction from the husband. The problem of
the dirty basin has now been separated from how the husband is as a person.
Frame your response in a solution-oriented
language
Wife: I have told you so many times to clean the basin after you shave. It
helps keep it clean for when I use it.
Examples:
Problem-focused: Can you not leave the door open every time you walk in?
Solution-oriented. Can you close the door every time on your way in?
Inquiry is the weapon that allows you to drill into the subtext of your
interlocutor and identify their needs and emotions. A good inquirer is lavish
with questions and stingy with statements. She will not accept what is given
to her and will use questions to seek to understand what lies beneath the
surface.
Examples:
Open-ended questions
When you ask close-ended questions, you get close-ended responses. This
may be effective when you are looking at a binary (yes or no) answer but
not relevant to your exploratory mission. Ask open-ended questions and the
responses will be panoramic.
Examples:
“I feel so frustrated at work. I don’t know what to do!”
If you want your inquiry to feel meaningful and not like a police
interrogation, you can embed acknowledgement in the process.
“Oh yikes! Feels like work is really taking a toll on your personal life. What
will your next few weeks look like?”
Most acknowledgements begin with “Oh so what you are saying is…” This
seemingly harmless way to begin your sentence may have two challenges.
First, it may make them defensive and they may follow up with “Oh what I
really mean is…” Secondly, they may respond with “Oh no, that’s not what
I am saying. Everyone on the office floor agrees. Ask Pooja!”
Begin your acknowledgements with “So what I’m hearing is…” With this
little transition, you transfer the accountability of the success of the
communication on yourself and put your interlocutor at ease.
Pauses
We all hate awkward pauses in a conversation. Do you rush in to fill the
silence of a conversation? After you ask a question and they finish their
response, let the silence sit and do not disturb it to the point it might even
get slightly awkward. People usually share a ready-to-use answer for most
questions. However, when you let the silence sit, more often than not they
will rush to fill it and share something unscripted. That little piece of
unscripted sharing is your key to go deeper in your exploration. Pick up
from there and move forward. Pauses also help them realise that you are
really processing what they just said, and it gives them breathing space to
collect themselves.
“I have already given you the maximum possible discount sir. I cannot do it
anymore.”
“We had told you we were tight on budgets this year. Please consider it”
“We have tried to do our best to give you the lowest quotation sir.”
This is an example of a common theme in business communication – both
parties keep highlighting they want something and why they want it while
the other party responds with their version of the same thing. They both are
playing in the mud, getting dirty, and not getting to an outcome anytime
soon. The focus in the above conversation is the “price”.
“I understand this is expensive for you. I also know that this is time
sensitive and you need to share confidential data for which you need to trust
us”
“We do not want to compromise on either of these to sell this project to you.
I trust you will allow us to feel comfortable in being able to afford this team
we will assign to you for this project”
When you lift your interlocutor in a virtual drone and show them the birds-
eye view of the situation, you impact their perspective. They are not just
thinking about one thing, but rather all things important to them. Take that
opportunity to step out of the mud and refocus on the subject of the
conversation. When going in loops on the content, zoom out and highlight
the context.
I knew he did not want to continue the conversation. I wished him well,
pushed the chair back under the table, and walked out. Being a lifelong
student of communication, I began to analyse how I could have driven that
conversation differently.
I had another pitch meeting the following week where I won the contract. I
have abridged a section of it below.