Larry was very impressed with Guru after his discussions regarding mind control. He decided to take a deep dive into this subject and read more about it so that he too could have control over his brain. After spending a couple of days reading about this topic, he felt it is time to check with Guru again for some more new concepts. Larry could find Guru free after a couple of days on a Friday afternoon. Once they met Larry’s first comment was “Guru, I was too impressed with the Mind Control as you explained the other day and I read a few articles and am trying to use the techniques mentioned. I am a little nervous and want to gain confidence so that I can easily apply the techniques and control my emotions”. Guru had a hearty laugh and told him that here is what I did to boost my confidence, with the help of my coach.
“In the early part of my career, my boss spotted that I could grasp new concepts quickly, however, I was very shy to speak up in a forum or a meeting. He realized that if that problem could be addressed I could be developed into a good asset for the organization. An external coach was identified and I started working with him. In the first interactive session with my coach, he spotted this area for improvement. He asked me who was my role model. It was very early part of my career and I had limited exposure to the leadership team but I knew someone in the team who had hired me about whom I always had great admiration.” The coach said that’s excellent so let us take that Senior executive as my role model and see how we can work to evolve you as a leader.
The role model we selected was the Director of Marketing and had charisma around him. Whenever he was in the room for any meeting it appeared that the entire discussion was centered around his thoughts and he seemed to control the discussions, having said that everyone in the meeting got chances to express themselves and at the end of the meeting all decisions were taken with a feeling of a win-win situation. I was too junior and rarely had the opportunity to meet him, but we heard a lot about him from our seniors who met him more often.
Having identified the role model the coach guided me further. His first instruction was Don’t try to copy, you need to understand the mental strategy of your role model. What he meant by that was to try to get inside his mind. Try to have more access to him and meet as often as possible. Luckily I got that opportunity very quickly as I was chosen as the EA to and I was working for him only. That gave me unlimited opportunities to interact with him. I could spend innumerable hours with him.
Whenever any problem was posed to him I would start working within myself as to what would be his response. I would come out with a couple of options and try to weigh one against the other. I never expressed these options to him but I used to eagerly wait for his response and over time I was more than 80-90% accurate. I was also told by my coach that I should keenly observe him and understand what his firm beliefs are, and what values and virtues are important to him. Over a while, looking at his pending task lists I could figure out what would be his order of priority, etc.
Being his EA I could spend a lot of time with him for informal chats when we spoke about generic topics. These discussions were extremely important from my perspective as I could understand his value system and what his aspirations in life are. How does he want to shape the careers of his children etc. How does he spend his private time and what influenced him in the initial part of his career, at the same time what are the current motivators? Slowly he gained confidence in my work and whatever presentations I worked out for him, went through without any corrections. He realized that I could represent the marketing department very efficiently.
After a couple of months, I was asked to make a presentation to the board members as the Director had some emergency. Soon all including the coach realized that I seemed to have the confidence which was lacking. Thus Guru concluded the meeting by stating that you can emulate success and successful outcomes by effective use of modelling.
