Brain works this way!

The second time when we went to the same clinic, the younger nurse serve us this round.
She ask my friend to sit down comfortably with a smile, then build rapport with soft and gentle voice.
Next, she check the pulse position by pressing gently using her fingers. When she started to draw blood, the older nurse came near to my friend. I started to worry about her words.....my friend might pass out again if she use her old same pattern....

This time, she went to my friend and said " ok, relax, follow me....", "inhale... exhale...inhale....exhale...."....my friend look at her and follow her rythm, then everything just completed in seconds.

Wow, I realised she did it right this time, haha!

Words have power! This is something I learn many years ago from my mentor. I urge leaders used the right word at all times if you want to see significant changes in your relationship with family, friends, colleagues or even your loves one.

How brain works?

Last week, I went for blood test with my housemate. This is our routine practice, to have medical check-up yearly. To my surprise, this time he was too nervous until nearly fainted during the process. This is how it goes...

There are 2 nurse in the center, one young and one old. When the old nurse saw my friend and knew that he was nervous, she kept telling him that "it is not painful" (which in NLP the brain only takes the word : painful). This makes my friend even worried.

During the process, she kept saying "Dont worry, dont worry" (brain only accept the word: worry!). This had made him very tense and his blood cannot flow out smoothly, then she kept saying "Aiya...dont be tense, dont be tense"(brain accept the word: be tense!). This makes the situation worst. Finally, she decided to pull out the needle. My friend need to draw blood for another round.

When she started the second round, similar thing happen and my friend pass out....

Our brain does not take negative instructions. So, when we communicate with others, it is important to say the right word so that you can be a great communicator.

New Motto New Directions

Today is the first day of my second semester lecture in University of Malaya for my HRM class. Something caught my attention which I think it is worth to share is the UM motto had been change from "Producing Leaders since 1905" to "The Leader in Research and Innovation". I think this will set the new direction for the university in the near future. I dare to say that new motto bring new energy and new paradigm shift to the staff.

Out of curiosity, I went into UM website and impressed with the welcome message made by the new Vice Chancellor, Ghauth Jasmon. In one of his statement, he mentioned "Entrepreneurship is strongly promoted in the university where innovative schemes managed by the Centre for Technology Transfer and Commercialization are available that makes it easy for staff or students to set up companies, especially if they have new innovative business ideas or patents with commercial value. The university of today needs to strive for more than it did before, especially in setting role models for entrepreneurial success." Wow! So cool!

In many corporate organization that I work with, setting the right vision, mission, corporate values and motto is so important to set the direction right for the company. I remember sharing with my students on the success story of Toyota Motor Corporation when they first decided to penetrate to United States. In order to get everyone committed and make sure the project will be successful, the company involve all the employees in the decision making and finally they came out with the brand "L.E.X.U.S" (Lets EXport to United States). It was innovative yet motivating for the employees and finally became the best selling car in U.S.

With the dynamic and changing business environment, I believe it is all right for your organization to re-think and review your current vision, mission or motto if it is time to change!

2008 Reflections

Just back home after 2 days of seminars at Sunway Convention Center. I feel great because this year I had chosen to countdown and welcome year 2009 in a different and meaningful way. While others are thinking how to celebrate and enjoy their year end holidays, around 300 participants came here to celebrate through learning and sharing.

After the countdown, I did my own reflections on my past 1 year progress and change which I had made. I know my ultimate (bigger) dream need a longer time to fulfill but year 2008 had set very good new milestones in my life:

1. Started my own company - People Reengineering Consultancy Sdn Bhd
2. Realise my short term plans to teach in University Malaya
3. Having the pride to join one of the multi national company (Doers Knowledge Management Group) as their freelance internal trainer as well as Senior HR Specialist.
4. Brought my parents to Vietnam tour
5. Attended Money and You
6. Attended Business School of Entreprenuer in Beijing for 8 days.
7. Completed my course of NLP practitioner, Time Line therapy and hynopsis.
8. Completed my course as certified D.I.S.C trainer in Taipei.
9. Conducted my first public mandarin seminars in Sibu and KL on "Team Leadership in D.I.S.C"
10. Having the blessing to secure a 2 years contract with 3 companies on human resources consultation and coaching.

During the night before I sleep, deep in my heart I prayed that every members in my family that love me, every customer that had supported me during my hard time, every participant that believed me, every single person that had helped me through 2008 are blessed with good health and happiness always. I am fortunate to have you in my life.

What is so great about our life if we forget to count our blessings and do not know how to appreciate others?

Great Team

I like one quote that says“ Your competitor can copy every advantage you’ve got – except one, the business of building team leaders”(Antoine de Saint-Exupery).

Many years ago, my mentor told me that the word “T.E.A.M” stands for “Together Everyone Achieve More”. She says that if everyone in an organization can work together to achieve the common goals, the synergy effects will be 1+1 > 3. I truly believe it.

Last 2 years another mentor told me that T.E.A.M means “Trust, Encourage, Appreciate, Motivate”. Wow! This is very cool! It touches the “feeling” part of a team. When every single member can trust each other and praise their colleagues when things went great (I support you!), giving encouragement when things went wrong (I know you can be better), appreciate the goodness of others (Thank you because ….) and motivate each other towards a desired destiny(Today we are …..next year our aim is to achieve …..) , then you are nurturing a great team!

Trust – When members have trust in the team, they feel the sense of belongings. They will find ways to work through disagreements, take greater challenges, stay in the team longer and contribute better ideas. I like to say that this is the fundamental of a team. My mentor advised me that we should trust a person first rather than waiting him to prove he can be trusted. Do you agree with me?

Encourage – every members in a team or organization must learn to encourage each other during the hard times or good times. I discover that instead of doing this, many people tends to through complains, criticize others, blaming other mistakes and gossiping. If we promote encouragement with positive words in an organization, I am sure the working atmosphere will be great. One of my friends likes to end his words with “gambate!” (Japanese word which means “add oil”), cool right?

Appreciate your team members – If you take the effort to appreciate your members when they did the right thing at work, you will “touch” their hearts. To retain our talents in organization, we need to fulfill their monetary needs as well as non-monetary needs (appreciate them through words on their achievements). Recently, after completed my seminars, one participant came to me and ask if he could give me his feedback. Of course, I love to hear about it. He told me for the first 2 hours, he had compared me with another overseas speaker and felt bored with my training. However, after getting into the mode, he told me he enjoyed my training. He appreciate my passion in training and complimented “You are charming on stage!”(你有舞台的魅力!). He makes me float!

Motivate – when you want to motivate someone, please state his current state and lead him to a higher state. For example, if you want employee A to improve his work, you must state clearly that you want him progress from “average” to “good” after discussing the 3-5 key strategies that both mutually agreed.

Please rate yourself from 1 -10 for the 4 aspects mentioned above. How did you score in each item? What can you do to improve each?

Watch out for my next article, the new definition of T.E.A.M in 21st century.

Talent Retention

When I ask my clients about their view about next year economy situation, I got different opinion about it.

Some said that their business slowed down and sales turnover reduced at least 15-20%. So, they foresee the situation will be worse in the coming 6 months. So, every single cents must be recorded clearly in the spreadsheet.

On the other hand, I had clients that told me Malaysia is not very badly hit compared to 1997 financial crisis. However, the confidence level had dropped. Most people "believe" it will be worse so they started to be more careful in spending their money. Fortunately, they still think that developing their people at this critical moments is that right thing to do, because once the economy begin to thrive, their people are ready to grasp the market. Grreeeat!!!

Through public media we read about many giant companies started to practice retrenchment, cost cutting exercise, recruitment freezing etc. I think the worst is starting to get "panic" by throwing hasty comments to non-performers, pushing them extremely hard for sales achievements, letting go of good staffs even though knowing that this is not the right move. Sad!!!

It has been long known that one of the most respectable company, General Electric decided to manage her talents during critical moments using the quadrant showed above. It is important to keep the right people at this moment rather than merely going for headcount reduction. As for me, I will definitely encourage companies to use the 4R methods in decision making.

By the way, which category you falls if you are an employee now? If you are under "remove" or "re-train", my advice is to talk to your employer on ways to improve yourself so that you can keep your job. Or if you are an employer, what is the distribution looks like in your company? Do you have all the "A" star employees?

New Year Aspiration

Recently I heard a few friends talking about their 2009 aspiration. I wonder if the year 2008 plans had been accomplished. For me, I remember every year when I did my new year aspirations, I was very excited at that moment, then forget about the goals for the rest of the months....too common for many people yeah?

Now I do not set new year aspiration goals anymore. Last year when I decided to start my own business, I did my 5 years goals. I think it gave me stronger motivation and drive to pursue it when I can see my route clearer to the future. Ultimately, I am passionate about what I am doing now, helping individual and teams to challenge for excellence, reengineering organization on human capital for creating abundant results.

I created this table so that some of you might want to ask yourself which category you are currently in. Maybe you would like to share with me what do you think about your goals. I love to listen to your exciting goals because sometimes it gives me more strengths to pursue mine. So, gambate and let's dream!