In this article I will educate you about the concept of ‘Personal Power‘ and how it plays a vital role in developing a confident identity. To some people this concept may seem a bit disturbing because they hear the word ‘Power’ and freak out. Just stay calm, and don’t prejudge until you have read the whole article. Lets begin shall we?

Nobody likes to feel powerless. Personally speaking, I prefer to ALWAYS stay in control of what I am doing, otherwise I start feeling uncomfortable and even nervous.

So what exactly is ‘Personal Power’? In lame terms, it is the energy that you are sending to yourself and others that demonstrate yourself as a person of power (also known as a person of high value). Either you are conveying power (you are in control) or you are conveying lower value (you are not in control). Obviously the range of control or power can vary, but the concept remains true. Someone always has the upper hand in the game.

Take for example the concept of driving a car. Obviously the driver is more in control of the direction that the car is headed towards as compared to the passenger. Similarly when you engage yourself with others, there is always someone who has more power (higher value) than others.

This is also one of those themes which I will talk about frequently in this blog. The basic idea is to convey as much power as possible when dealing with other people. Preferably you want to have the highest social value whenever possible.

I will provide you with two strategies which if implemented correctly can boost your perceived value around others. Make sure you practice them and incorporate them into your lifestyle. Once that happens, you will just naturally convey confidence and POWER.

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Strategy #1 - Take Up LOTS of Space

This is what powerful people do. They take up lots of space to demonstrate they are very comfortable. This can be done in pretty much everything that you do. Whether it is sitting or standing, just remember to lean back and spread out. Wherever you happen to be, make sure you OWN the real estate.

People with low confidence tend to take up very little space. As a matter of fact, you can see this everywhere. Not only do these people lean in when presenting themselves to others, but they also keep their feet and arms close to their body demonstrating low self value. I guess these people are scared to take up other peoples space.

I know this sounds basic, but it is very powerful. Don’t be afraid to take up lots of space, even if it is not your property. Let others know that you are very comfortable in your skin.

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Strategy #2 - Speak Slowly

Most people do not speak slow, and those that do are usually mentally challenged. All of us need to learn to slow it down when speaking. This sounds easy doesn’t it? Believe me, it is not easy.

Speaking slowly conveys a sense of confidence and it captivates your listeners. Seriously, this is one of those concepts that you will find mentioned in every book but it is hard to explain. Just take my word for it and practice speaking slowly. Make sure you do not sound like a robot speaking in mono tone mode. You want to speak slowly, loud and with emotions so it almost sounds melodic (I said almost, do not start singing your speech).

Another trick to really sound powerful while speaking is to practice pausing. While you are saying something, just pause and hold eye contact. Give the pause 2-3 seconds and then continue on. This is a killer trick which when combined with a slow pace of speech will create an almost hypnotic effect on others.

Remember I mentioned in an earlier article that people don’t listen, but instead they wait to talk? Guess what talking slowly does? That’s right, it forces them to pay greater attention to you.

Another thing you should know is that speaking fast conveys lack of confidence. It is like as if you are afraid that somebody will interrupt you and not let you continue talking. Get it?

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In conclusion, you now have two great weapons that you can learn to use immediately. DO NOT confuse these with basic body language tricks. The above two strategies are very effective and need to be perfected. I will be touching on similar concepts over and over again so worry not.

Until Next Time

Atiff Rizwani

Tags: Personal Power and Authority

I’m guessing you want people to like you right? Actually what you really should get good at is the art of having others impressed by you. Think about how cool that feeling would be. Once you finish talking to someone and leave, they are thinking “wow, that was interesting”. It’s all about the WOW factor.

If you don’t want to develop a personality like that then just stop reading, and go back to whatever you were doing. No big deal.

Good, so you are somewhat interested in what I have to say. Let me throw a quick example at you.

If a person tells one joke and makes others laugh, then people will attribute the laughter to the fact that the joke was funny. Now, if the same person keeps telling several jokes and they are all funny, what is the conclusion? THE PERSON IS FUNNY. It is no longer the the joke that gets the credit, but it’s the person who is labeled funny. (credit: mystery).

The above example is given just to make it clear that you can’t expect people to take interest in you based on just a line here or a tactic there. It has to be done in various combinations and flow smoothly.

Bottom line is this. If you want people to take interest in you, then you have to develop an interesting personality. Remember I talked about the need to be different than the average person? This is one of the central theme which will run throughout this blog, so get used to it.

I will now finally start providing good examples on what I know and do personally when talking with others.

Here is a very basic example of what could be said to lighten the mood during a conversation. Keep in mind that there is no such thing as one size fits all type of method. Don’t worry, once you start learning what I teach, you will develop a sense of understanding about what to say to the different types of people. You will become VERSATILE.

Seriously, don’t stress over it, give it some time.

Example:

Say that I am having a conversation with someone I don’t know too well, but I want this person to have positive feelings towards me. I find myself in this situation every so often where I might see some value in the other person that could prove to be beneficial (relax, a value can be anything, even the fact that they make me laugh).

I will paraphrase how the conversation would take place and provide pointers, and yes it is because I don’t feel like typing everything.

My goal during the conversation is to provide some sort of value which the other person can appreciate. This way I can bet that they wont forget me.

Anyways, I would use the following method to lower their guard against me. Feel free to copy it and change it to fit your personality. I don’t mind.

Somewhere during the conversation with this person, I would simply ask:
“Hey are you right handed?“.

The other person would usually respond with either a “Yes” or “No”. People rarely ask “why” and if they do, just say “I’m just curious“.

So once I get my answer, I would say “I knew it, I can tell that based on how you are moving your eyes while talking to me” Or you could even say “You fit the description based on your eye movements“.

The point is just to create curiosity with this person.

Before I continue, let me give you a quick 101 on eye movements. This is just a simple trick that works about 70% of the time. Its main purpose is to entertain, not to provide an educational certificate.

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People have certain patterns to their eye movements. A right handed person USUALLY (not always) has the following characteristics:

If the eyes are looking up - They are visualizing

• Up and to the left
  Visually constructed images (such as imagining a purple cow)
• Up and to the right
  Visually remembered images (such as their first bicycle)

If the eyes look horizontally to the left and right - They are remembering or constructing sounds

• To the left
  Auditory constructed (such as remembering how their mother used to sing)
• To the right
  Auditory remembered (such as how their mother would sound if she talked like a cartoon character)

If the eyes look down and to their left - They are accessing their feelings.

If the eyes look down and to the right - They are talking to themselves

The left and right pattern can be reversed since people are different. But usually people always look up for visualizing, and when they are remembering sounds the eyes move either to the right or left. When they are talking to themselves the eyes are usually always looking down.

Based on this information you can have fun with people if you can figure out their eyes movement pattern. This can easily be done during a normal conversation. You can just throw questions at them and watch their eyes move. For more information on this you can check out the following three sites.

Great video of Darren catching people lying
Basic run through on eye movements
Another article if you care to read

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Fact Check:
You can tell if people are interested in you by their eyes. They tend to widen and the pupil size increases. The opposite is true if they find you boring.

Back to our conversation.

After I give the person a few fun lessons on how the eye movements work (such as if people are lying, see video link above), I usually would end it in a manner that makes the person laugh.

Quick note: remember to not sound boring or heavily detailed. It’s just a fun conversation.

Finally I would end it by saying that usually when people show interest in you, their eyes widen and pupil size increases, but if they are not interested, then the eyes contract. I would then point out in a humorous way that right about now their pupils are wider than when the conversation first started.

Just throw a joke saying “Thanks at least for showing interest in me. Either you find me interesting or your a damn good liar, but usually the eyes don’t lie“.

That’s it. It is very basic, but this person will now remember you for a very long time. You provided them with value. They can use this new learned skill on others and benefit to some degree.

Obviously you can’t do this on everyone, but more often than not, people find it fun and relaxing, AND they get convinced that YOU DO interest them. Thats what you want right? People to be interested in you. So try it out.

Even if you messed up on showing how the eyes move, just be confident and smile when delivering the ending. It will do the trick.

Talk soon

Tags: how to be interesting

In the previous ‘How to Job Interview (part 3/4)‘ I talked about some really good strategies on how to make yourself sound intelligent during the interview. In this article, I will finally show you how to actually answer questions.

Up until now you should have picked up on the fact that what you are really trying to do during the interview is to SELL yourself. People buy you before they are willing to buy your services (meaning employ you).

Lets break down the process of answering questions in an easy to digest way.

First of all you need to understand that giving very long answers is not a smart thing to do. Saying less and choosing the right words is the correct way to answer questions. You see, people have a very short attention span. We are all easily distracted and loose focus very quickly.

If you read the previous three articles, you already know all the needed steps to form your answer. Now you simply need to understand the format in which to deliver your answer.

Again, there are many systems/methods out there for answering question but I wont go through them. Some are good, other sound good but are not practical.

When it comes to answering questions, I usually always use the 4 step system below as this has worked very well for myself and my clients. These steps are as follow:

1. What is going on?
   I describe what the situation was before I did anything.
2. What am I thinking of doing?
   I explain my thought process on going through the various options available to me.
3. What did I do?
   I explain why I chose to go with my solution.
4. What effect did it have?
   I explain the benefits of what I did and how I am their candidate of choice, also known as the Hero.

Pretty easy right? Trust me, it is not difficult.

Before you start answering a question in the above format, you should introduce your answer with what I call a ‘filler phrase‘. These can be the following:

• “I’m glad you asked…”
• “Sure, I actually have several examples of this, but I will give you one really good example…”
• “Thats a neat question, I remember once…”
• “I agree, to be more specific I had a case where…”
• etc…

You get the point. It is just a way to acknowledge that you have understood the question. This is not rocket science so don’t stress out over it.

Now lets break down each of the four steps a bit further. Let us say that you are asked the following question:

“Can you share a specific incident in which you motivated a staff member to better work performance?”

This is what my answer would sound like:

Filler Phrase (opening to my answer):

• “Sure. Actually I have many examples of incidents where I have helped others become better self motivated. I guess I get it from all the past years of great coaching from my own mentors.”

Step 1 (I describe the situation):

• “Specifically speaking though, I remember just recently at XYZ company where I had a young energetic member on my team whose performance and attendance both started to decline after having been with our organization for about a year or so. I really liked this team member, but the performance was becoming rather unacceptable.”

Step 2 (I explain my thought process):

• “I knew that I could confront this team member head on, but through my experience I have learned that there is always an unique reason for drops in performance. You know, a great manager understands that everyone has to be treated different. What motivates one person, could potentially demotivate others.”

Step 3 (I explain what I did):

• “I decided to introduce a program in my department where I would take one team member out for lunch every month. Guess who the first lucky person was? Thats right, and we had a great conversation over lunch. I learned many interesting facts about the situation, and this just goes to prove that you should never judge a book by its cover. It became rather obvious that the drop in performance was due to a lack in challenge at work. This is very common. It’s like playing basketball without a net. No goal means no motivation. I decided to make a deal with my team member. If he could sustain an expected level of performance, I would let him work on some side projects giving him the ability to learn new skills and face a constant challenge.”

Step 4 (I show the result):

• “One thing to note is that this particular solution may not fit everyone, and this is why I stress that when people apply for management positions, they understand how people work, like what drives people to excellence. My solution for this team member was perfect. The performance increased and stayed at higher than expected level, and my team member has really shown excellence in the various new projects I got him involved in. You see, if you can truly understand people, and be willing to go the extra mile, then most of the work force problems are easily solved as I just showed you with this example.”

DONE.

It is important that when you describe the situation (step 1), you make it very clear so the interviewer knows exactly what is going on. You don’t want to explain your answer to someone who is confused over what the problem is. You should also always provide examples/proofs (choose the most recent ones) to support your answer.

Notice that I also throw in statements during my answer to DEMONSTRATE VALUE (such as the fact that I am a great motivator and manager, willing to go extra mile, I have had great mentors etc). This is done to take the guesswork away from the interviewer in determining whether or not I possess certain qualities.

Don’t you ever dare end your answer on an even slightly negative note. You need to always always end your answers on a positive note. It’s like a typical movie where the hero saves the day. Nobody likes crappy endings no matter what they tell you.

A few side notes worthy of mention are:

• Your opening and closing statements are very important. People will forget most of what you tell them
• Always provide proof with your answer
• Remember to throw in statements in your answer to demonstrate value
• Don’t sound like a robot. Make it a conversation and if you can get the interviewer to participate, then its even better.
• Smile, keep eye contact and sound excited (don’t over do the excitement)
• If needed, take acting classes (just joking, maybe not)

By now your interviewing skills should have taken a major leap. Obviously you can’t go from zero to hero by reading 4 articles, but it should help quite a bit. If you still feel that you are struggling, then the core problem you have is to do with your level of confidence. That itself has several sub components related to it.

Anyways, this is why I started this blog. I highly recommend that you subscribe to my blog and read what I write. It will take time, but I can promise you that you will see major improvements in how you operate around yourself and others.

Talk soon.

Tags: How to Job Interview

Since I am starting this blog from scratch, most of the articles/topics also have a beginners feel to them. I want you guys to have a solid foundation on the basics and then together we can work our way up.

This post is called reality check because there are some important things that I think you should know and accept. I will admit from the get go that some of the stuff I am going to say are going to sound harsh, so consult with your doctor before you continue reading.

First of all you need to come to the realization that in reality, there are very few people out there who have your best interest at heart. The rest, as sad as it may sound, only appear that way. Their attitude towards you can change based on circumstances.

I am sure you have all had some experience in life where you thought a person had your best interest at heart, but times proved otherwise. Same can be said about friends. Again, most of your friends want you to succeed, but not surpass them, as this causes jealousy and insecurity.

This is not a big deal really, BUT you should know that this element exists in our society.

The reality is that if you put all your dependency on other people, they will eventually let you down. This is just how people are. Not always reliable.

This is not meant to put you down, rather it should give you a strong sense of confidence because you wont let this fact mess you up emotionally/mentally.

You see, I want you to trust people and give everyone the benefit of the doubt. What I don’t want you to do is to DEPEND on people, because you will be let down, and when that happens, it takes something away from your sense of confidence.

I see people all the time betting everything on certain people only to have their hopes shattered.

What is the solution? Actually it is more like a mindset. You just need to know that people will let you down and your feelings will be hurt so try not to get too attached to what others promise you.

Another reality is that people don’t like to be bothered. If it doesn’t concern them, or benefit them, they simply don’t care. Again, this a sad reality, but something you definitely should know. I will talk about how to ask others for help in future articles because we all face situations where external help is needed (its all about creating convenience).

So there you have it. A very simple blog post for you to give some thoughts and accept things for what they are. Please don’t start crying, and instead work with what you know and BE GOOD to others.

It is when you realize that the best human to trust is yourself, you become empowered and confident.

Talk soon.

If you can develop a personality, stay open minded and become good at people skills, then I can guarantee you that you will get along with 90% of people out there.

That is pretty much all it takes for others to like you. Now don’t get me wrong, it does take work to develop these characteristics, but worry not, I will help you get there step by step.

It’s all about baby steps.

In this article I will briefly show you some ways you can easily develop rapport with people. All that means is that you are able to get along with other people as soon as you meet them. This is a neat skill to have, but does take time to be really good at (then again what doesn’t?), but eventually this will become part of your natural character.

Here is the formula to develop rapport. Please memorize it because it sums up everything I will talk about.

RAPPORT = TRUST + COMFORT

As people, we are all selfish. If you show me a group picture of myself and others, who do you think I will look for first in the picture? Me off course. Similarly, when you meet people, just remember that it is NOT ABOUT YOU and ALL ABOUT THEM. This is such a basic rule that I can’t believe I am writing about it (maybe because people still don’t get it).

Another thing you need to keep in mind in order to stand out is that people are very good at remembering (even exaggerating) negative or really positive experiences. What that means is that anything considered somewhat good or average will be easily forgotten. The goal is always to STAND OUT from the crowd.

You do know that first impression is critical because it is very difficult to change someone’s impression about you after the initial meeting? With that in mind, you need to learn to create powerful first impressions.

The basics of this can be done through:

• Looking clean and good
• Solid handshake (if needed)
• Smiling
• Confident body language
• Eye contact
• Speaking in a clear and loud enough voice tone

The whole art of body language will be something I will write more on. The basics are very easy. Stand straight, don’t lean into the other person, look the person in the eye and project a clear & loud voice so the other person can hear you. Do these things while looking calm, relax and with a smile on your face. Try not to look goofy or fake.

If the other person intimidates you, just convince yourself that you are the one who writes their paycheck (more on mind games in future articles).

This is how I see the process of meeting someone and quickly building rapport:

1. Impress the person you are meeting
2. Show interest in the person by focusing on them
3. Leave on a memorable note.

The above three steps will create comfort & trust and satisfy the rapport formula.

Everything I have mentioned above is incredibly basic, yet you would be surprised at how big percentage of people don’t know it. Lets us now slightly build on the above information.

If you really want people to remember you then you can’t be using the same robotic approaches/methods that others do. You have to have some uniqueness in your style and approach which people will appreciate.

In simple words, lets say you meet a person. Within 5 seconds you have already been judged, so if you followed the above advice on creating powerful first impressions, then the judgment should be in your favor.

Next you have to show some interest in the person. You have to make sure that you are either sincere or a really good actor. I recommend being sincere although good acting skills are always nice to have.

When showing interest in the other person, asking them questions is generally the easiest way to go about doing it as this creates conversation. However, you can’t ask anything. The questions have to be non-intriguing and should make the other person think before giving you a answer.

You don’t want to receive canned/robotic answers because that is very average.

Here are some topic suggestions to talk about when creating a conversation.

• Talk about what is important to the other person and show interest in it.
• Talk about a similar interest that you both share.
• Talk about common enemies
• Give value (meaning teach them something cool, or impress them with some new beneficial knowledge)

When you are done the conversation, you have to leave on a memorable note.  You want the person to remember you by name and associate positive feelings to you.  I will talk about this in more details, but for now you can do this:

Refer to the other person using their name, take something interesting from the conversation and give a compliment to show the other person that they fascinated you.

Wow, this article contains a lot of theory and I purposely kept it this way. Now that you understand the basics of building rapport, I can talk about how to give value, tell amazing stories, intrigue & fascinate people etc in future articles. And yes, I promise to give real examples, so until then, suck it up.

Talk soon.

Tags: Building Rapport

In the previous ‘How to Job Interview (Part 2/4)‘ article I talked about the need to analyze the reasons behind why you are asked questions. I hope by now you understand the importance of this and with a bit of practice, you will learn the art of giving ‘correct’ answers.

In this article, I will give you some strategies that I personally use to make me sound much more intelligent & impressive during the interview. This may piss some people off, but believe me, this is such a good advice that you will want to make sure you always do this before any interview.

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Strategy #1 - Incorporating Important Words

Depending on the type of job you have applied for, there are certain characteristics/attributes that companies look for when hiring a candidate. You need to memorize at least 10-15 of these ‘NICE’ words and make sure you smoothly incorporate them during the interview when answering questions.

Let me give you an example:

If you are interviewing for a management position then the following words are related to this field.

Motivation, Leadership, Communication, Management, Self Starter, Attitude, Goals, Change Management, Organizational Skills and so on (you get the point).

I would go ahead and memorize these words, and when i give a specific answer I will try to use one of these words with an added emphasis. A lot of time you will find some of these words in the job description, if not then just search for similar positions on job boards and create your list.

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Strategy #2 - Accomplishments.

When you are asked to describe your previous jobs, DO NOT read them the bullet points from your resume. The interviewer knows how to read and this just makes the interview that much more boring.

This a trick that my friend taught me and it’s amazing how great it works. This is what you have to do:

For each of your previous jobs list 5-10 accomplishments. You have to write these 5-10 accomplishments on a piece of paper (no computer please). It is even better if you can put monetary value on these accomplishments.

Let me show you an example:

Job title: Team Manager

Accomplishments:

• Motivated staff (monthly sick days dropped by 20%, worth $500 per month (over $5000 saved on a yearly basis)
• Implemented new training strategies to improve sales, also known as up selling (sales increased 15% ($5k) on a monthly basis)
• Improved internal invoicing procedure, saving company 1 hour (1 hour = $25) everyday (7hrs weekly, 28hrs monthly etc)

Are you getting the point? When you physically write them down on a paper using a pen, the information sinks into you subconscious mind which makes it easy to remember during the interview.

Accomplishments are all about how you saved/made the company money/time or improved efficiency, which really comes back to time/money. If I am the decision maker at a company interviewing you, this is what I want to hear. Can you save/make me money/time?

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Strategy #3 - Powerful Quotes

This one will also piss some people off, but I think that by now you get the point that I don’t care. This is my favorite strategy because it makes me sound like a genius and people are ALWAYS impressed.

All you need to do is memorize some powerful quotes related to your job position. This can be done from either books or other places such as magazine, internet etc. The key is to incorporate these quotes into your conversation with the interviewer. This MUST be done in a natural manner so it sounds like part of your normal speech. You don’t want to sound like a robot, and everything I teach you does need PRACTICE.

Here is an excellent example of how I would use this strategy:

Job position: Finance Manager
Quote: “Failure is not an event, but rather an opinion”

While describing myself to the interviewer I would use the quote in the following manner.

“You know, looking back at all the accomplishments I have achieved, there is one thing I realized that has separated me from the masses. And that is the ability to move forward despise many obstacles. Now that I think about it, failure to me has never been an event, rather an opinion held by others, and we all know how cheap opinions are. Really, I think this is the main reason for my success in all aspects of my life.”

Are you starting to see how powerful this method can be if used correctly? Again, all the above strategies are not unethical, rather they are designed to give you the upper edge over other candidates, so use them wisely.

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Strategy #4 - Know Your Theme

This is a simple technique, but most people don’t do it. All it requires is that you do a little thinking before going into the interview. Think about what you wish to convey to them by the time the interview is over. I usually think of a main theme that I want the interviewer to learn about me and then during the interview I refer to this theme in some way a few times.

An example of this would be:

Theme: I am an excellent motivator, so good that i can make a donkey think he is a horse (I am exaggerating)

During the interview when I am talking to the other person, I would throw in comments such as:

• “…I was amazed at how much a person can improve productivity by simply customizing my management styles…”
• “I am successful at motivating others because of what my mentors did to me in my early days of management…”
• “…and thats when I truly started to recognize that you can’t motivate everyone using the same technique…”

There you have it. Four strategies you can easily learn and use during your next interview.

In the next article I will now finally discuss the specific science of answering questions which at this point shouldn’t be too difficult.

Talk soon.

Tags: How to Job Interview

Being able to get what you want is critical in todays time. That in its simplest form is what we call ‘persuasion’. With so much competition, you really need to step up your game if you want to get ahead in life.

One thing I want to make clear right from the start is that I am totally against manipulating people. Rather I want to teach you many important yet effective persuasion skills that will surely help you get what you want from others.

If you want to be a good persuader then you need to make sure that when you are finished persuading the other party, they leave in a state of happiness and not regrets or other types of remorse feelings.

You will be amazed at how easy life becomes when you understand what makes people do the things that they do, such as making decisions. There are many factors that play into how well you can persuade someone or a group of people. These include:

• The perception others have of you
• Your verbal and non verbal communication skills
• How you word your point of view (it’s not what you say, but how you say it)
• People skills
• Story telling abilities
• Other sneaky things

Alright, so that’s a brief overview of what persuasion is. There is no need to go into details here because I will be writing many articles on this
subject over time. So just stay plugged in and enjoy.

Talk soon.