The metaphors of pain and pleasure that change minds instantly:

A. Experience Pleasure………………………………..Avoid Pain

bright future sick of the way things are

feel great stop getting hurt

move toward away from

make new friends stop being lonely

obtain get rid of

Decades of scientific research clearly show that people are more motivated by pain than by pleasure. In fact, pain is approximately 2.5 times more of a motivator than pleasure is.

What this means is that you not only will paint a picture of a vivid wonderful future for your customer, but you must also find their current wounds (pain) and heal them. In fact, this one Point drives over a hundred other Mind Access Points the foundational string is that people will do almost anything to avoid significant pain.

Mind Access Point #539. People are motivated to move toward pleasure and away from pain. Of the two drivers, most people are genetically and culturally programmed to move away from pain more than moving toward pleasure.

When your customer was a child he was regularly threatened with pain (a spanking, a slap in the face, loss of privileges) when he behaved in a bad way. This developed very thick and powerful Mind Access Points which many other Mind Access strings are attached to. A smaller number of your customer’s parents regularly motivated them as children by offering rewards for good behavior. Most parents use threats of punishment in order to gain compliance. Your customer continues to want to do anything he can to avoid pain. If that means complying with you, that is what he will do.

The Amway Corporation has built one of the largest privately held corporations in the world by pulling the Mind Access Points of those with an entrepreneurial spirit and focusing on the pleasure end of the pain pleasure metaprogram. They help their distributors build dreams and create vivid and lush futures. They move their distributors toward pleasure, as a rule of thumb. In contrast, hundreds of the world’s largest corporations have built their fortunes by pulling the Mind Access Points of the populace on the pain side of the pain/pleasure metaprogram. History and scientific research has shown that people are very averse to pain. As mentioned above, most people will do far more to avoid pain than experience pleasure. The experience of pain is the driving force of billions of dollars in the advertising industry. How many of these slogans and commercial themes sound familiar to you?

“Aren’t you hungry for Burger King, now?”
“Do you suffer from headache pain?”
“Do you feel achy?”
“Can’t sleep at night?”

When you are talking with your client, your job, in part, is to show how your product or service will create great pleasure if they buy from you and also act as a way to avoid pain. If they fail to hire you, you show them how their wound will grow and create pain for them in the future. If they hire you, you will help them heal their wound.

Anthony Robbins, the world’s most powerful motivational speaker, got to that apex by being able to clearly create vivid pictures of what would happen to people if they didn’t allow him to help them. You can utilize the power of the pain/pleasure metaprogram just like Robbins has done.

If you have elicited your client’s metaprograms then you can focus on the context specific information you have elicited instead of relying on the general rules we have discussed here. In marketing we must rely on the norms. In the direct sales situation we have a marked advantage of knowing exactly what motivates each specific client.

One effective language pattern that helps the client experience the pain of not working with you, is for you to say a variation of the wound opening, “If you don’t act on this now, then won’t things simply get worse?” The more the customer fears and moves away from pain, the more likely she is to act now. It is our job to paint a picture of the consequences of failing to hire you. Experiencing pain must be more than an idea; it must be real to the customer.

If we fail to sell our customer the services that they need, then they still associate too much pain to change and you have not done your job. No amount of “closing techniques” will get a person to change their point of view or buy a product if they are still unconvinced. You must help the person see the obvious and clear benefits, emotional and logical to accepting your products and services.

Your job is often to paint the status quo as miserable. Most people have a fear of change. It is pre-programmed within them. Therefore, when painting the status quo, it must hurt to experience it. You must bring out the pain of not changing and make it vivid. Someone who associates no drawbacks or very little pain in the status quo will not accept your proposal. They will say, “No.”

Sandeep Mukherjee

Today I thought of expressing some of my feeling through this wonderful platform of ‘People power-blog’.

I started thinking about the topic to write with and at the end can’t help myself to write anything other than the recent ‘Political turnaround’ in Bengal.

What we’ve got and what we’ve missed in the past 34 years is already discussed elaborately by the media houses, and I’m not going to talk about those all over again.

I want to focus on the approach of managing change for the two major political camps in West Bengal (the green camp & the red camp).

The Green Camp:

After tasting a whirlwind success in the recently concluded election, the Green Camp must adhere to their basic motto- PORIBORTON (Change). Now, to cope with the side effects of ‘Change’ they can adopt John P Kotter’s ‘Eight steps to Successful Change’.

Each stage acknowledges a key principle identified by Kotter relating to people’s response and approach to change, in which people see, feel and then change.

Kotter’s eight step change model can be summarized as:

1. Increase urgency – inspire people to move, make objectives real and relevant.
2. Build the guiding team – get the right people in place with the right emotional commitment, and the right mix of skills and levels.
3. Get the vision right – get the team to establish a simple vision and strategy focus on emotional and creative aspects necessary to drive service and efficiency.
4. Communicate for buy-in – Involve as many people as possible, communicate the essentials, simply, and to appeal and respond to people’s needs. De-clutter communications – make technology work for you rather than against.
5. Empower actions – Remove obstacles, enable constructive feedback and lots of support from leaders – reward and recognize progress and achievements.
6. Create short-term wins – Set aims that are easy to achieve – in bite-size chunks. Manageable numbers of initiatives. Finish current stages before starting new ones.
7. Don’t let up – Foster and encourage determination and persistence – ongoing change – encourage ongoing progress reporting – highlight achieved and future milestones.
8. Make change stick – Reinforce the value of successful change. Weave change into culture.

They can reinforce their power in West Bengal for a longer period of time if the above mentioned principles can be adopted and implemented properly.

The Red Camp:

The change in behavior of the members of the Red Camp after the poll results in West Bengal can be explained through John Fisher’s Transition Curve, it is an excellent analysis of how individuals deal with personal change.

‘Transition Curve’ seven stages are summarized as follows:

1. Immobilization - Shock. Overwhelmed mismatch: expectations v reality.
2. Denial of Change – Temporary retreat. False competence.
3. Incompetence – Awareness and frustration.
4. Acceptance of Reality – ‘Letting go’.
5. Testing – New ways to deal with new reality.
6. Search for Meaning – Internalization and seeking to understand.
7. Integration – Incorporation of meanings within behaviors.

The behavioral traits during the transition are- anxiety, fear, threat, guilt, depression, disillusionment, hostility, denial etc.

The Red Camp is stuck in the 3^rd Stage and slowly getting into the 4^th Stage. If they can practice the rest of the stages successfully, then they will be in a position to start from the beginning. At that point they can manage the ‘Change’ and can relate/ communicate to people by following the same John P Kotter’s ‘Eight steps to Successful Change’ (as previously mentioned).

Expecting your constructive feedback.

Shatadal Chatterjee

A good performer is generally recognized and appreciated by People in the Organization. Some people talk about his performance, some give his examples to other and some envy him. The employee gets motivated and tries to perform better and upgrade his performance everyday…………………………………………

Hold on!!!!!!!! I am not talking of any Motivation Theory over here. After a certain time the employee feels himself cornered in the Organization. Why and how did things change for him? People who could not stop praising employee everyday limited their communication to work in spite of his outstanding performance. What would have been the reason?

Do you feel just good performance justifies your growth in the Organization? If this was so why did the approach of people change towards the employee? Reasons may be many…….. May be he had a bad attitude, May be he was a bad team player or Interpersonal skills were not up to mark. These were few examples of the reasons.

Ideally a good performer is an asset to the company. He can also be called a part of the Talent Pool if other behavioral issues are taken care of. The Organization nurtures the talent and benefits from them.

I know all the People reading this blog are good performers … just take care of the other part… the behavioral part … please. This will help you become a talent for the Organization.

Priti Singh



Employee Empowerment

Employee empowerment simply means the level of authority given to employees to act independent of their bosses.

Why would bosses allow employees to act independent of them?

The reason is simple . . . employees are human. That means they are intelligent, smart, and have limitless capacity for ingenuity.

The fact that employees are human also means that they like to be treated as human. They want to be respected, valued, and recognized. They want to be treated as humans and not as tools.

So, in simple terms . . . Employee empowerment is recognition of employees’ intrinsic value.

When the organization implements a policy of people involvement in decision making and runs a system that empowers subordinates to get involved in decision making, employee morale is high. And employees naturally come to work with their brains and contribute beyond the imagination of the organization’s leaders.

Employees’ behaviour is often a response to how they are treated by management or the organizational culture promoted by the leadership of the organization.

Employee empowerment has two key benefits.

1. It’s a sign that you trust your employees and that you believe in them. This leads to high morale.

2. It benefits the organization because decisions are taken on the spot. Thus, the organization is agile and competitive.

The role of management is to create an enabling environment for employees to exhibit their skill, professionalism, and creativity. Empower employees and your organization will grow beyond your dreams.

Thanks.

Partha

The Greatness Guide

What makes a company stand out among the rest? What makes it the place you’d really like to work or do business?

For years people have been searching for great companies. What I feel is that there are none. Greatness is an aspiration – a very honorable one. But no company is perfect, even if it performs well year after year.

Greatness, like, many objectives, is in the eye of the beholder. One simple test for greatness is how a company is experienced by its constituents – its customers, its associates, its owners, and Clients. Although I could find no single formula for what creates a good – or great – company, I did find some shared characteristics.

Characteristics of an Ideal Company

• A company where more people come to work to make things happen than come to watch things happens.
• A company where manager always know there is a better way.
• A company where ideas and entrepreneurs are welcome; not challenged; where opinions are sought not stifled.
• A company where each employee goes home each night with a feeling of accomplishment not frustration.
• A company that leads rather than follows; that acts rather than reacts.
• A company recognized for Innovation & creativity.
• And overall a company well regarded by its peers, respected by its competitors, favoured by its customers appreciated by its shareholders and supported by its Employees.

But the Big Question is how to bring the transition…??

Satpal Singh Gandhi