On Improv and Writing

I am beginning to pick up a lot of content on communication, OB and a host of other things related to personality and leadership of late. With a lot of onformation getting into my head, I also wanted the one way traffic to end and hence this post on improvisation, writing and more.

First I wish to talk about to writing and this is one piece of advice from the author of popular non-fictions Fountain Head and Atlas Shrugged that I would definitely want to take seriously; which is - the secret to really good writing is, you write without giving any thought to whatsoever lies outside the purview of content and then refine your writing through iterations. Her point is that if you try to structure your writing write when you begin writing a piece, you tend to lose the flow of thoughts and the content gets compromised. On the other hand if you continue to pour out your mind onto the piece, you will have a fabulous story to present and can always go back to edit the usage, grammar, structure, organization etc. I found this advice quite useful especially because I realized I had been postponing writing for a long time simply because I wanted to reach that uber utopian stage of the perfect author. The irony is, one can never reach that stage if  there hasn't been a start. You can't expect to go from a stage 0 to a stage 100 in one article/essay.

Ayn Rand was a Russian and began learning English only once she moved to the United States at the age of 20. It is impressive how she has successfully published her great works having been a stranger to the language for the first 20 years of her life. Commendable indeed!

Next, Improvization...Well junk your script and resort to improvisation. While improv comedy is most likely the most popular institution to use improvisation as a technique to refine  performance, it can be a great tool in our day to day lives as well. The essence is, at tmes it is imperative that we humans slow down our lightening fast thoughts and just be in the moment - be it a speech, a debate, a casual converstaion or any other communication for that matter.

Happy reading and great living until next time!

Communicator Authenticity and Charisma

Somewhere on the way to becoming a passionate leadership coach aspirant I got convinced of the necessity  for a leader to be both authentic and charismatic.

The first question then is, what is authenticity?

Authenticity, in my opinion, is a frank expression of emotions as perceived by your audience...be it positive or negative. It must feel real and open. Authenticity is also about demonstrated congruence of words backed by actions with consistency.  As Nick Morgan says, we believe people are authentic when we know what makes them tick - because they have told us and their actions bear it out.

Essentially, when someone bares their heart in front of us, we consider them authentic. Expressiveness therefore is at the heart of it. It's essentially a quick and readily available proxy to authenticity in our short-cut prone world. :)


Now how about charisma?

What is charisma? When do we find someone charismatic? How do we react to someone who is charismatic?

Well  charisma manifests itself in different forms. It is the capacity to inspire devotion, follower-ship and enthusiasm.

It manifests itself in several aspects. Firstly, the charismatic individual is aware that all eyes are on him/her. The positive outcome of this is when you have this awareness, you conduct yourself differently. Thus the heightened awareness is the trick to exude charisma. If you have a feeling that people are looking at you, they probably are! :)


Secondly, charisma is also about expressiveness of a wide array of emotions. For instance, consider John Oliver. People watch him for the content yes but also as much for the expressiveness with which he cracks those jokes. While that array of emotions may not be prudent in a core serious corporate set-up, the gist of the matter is that expressiveness counts; and it may be worth your while to make sure you utilize the permissible array of emotions to be able to exude charisma. The opposite is just boredom.
But this is also the most difficult bit for most business leaders who have always been trained to keep their cool despite situations around them going awry. Nonetheless, a range of appropriate emotions is an important step to charisma.

Thirdly, charisma is also about enjoying being in the limelight, being comfortable in, thriving and most importantly enjoying when all eyes are on you. A wink or a nod or a zest to show that you are not taking it all too seriously can go a long way! :)

But both these aspects of ones personality are interwoven by two prominent pillars of communication: 1. Content and 2. Non-verbal component. The latter being the more important one. Why because we are all unconscious experts at reading it correctly.

Every communication has two parallel conversations. When we talk about topics closest to our heart the non-verbal component comes through a split second earlier than the conscious verbal content. It's essentially the non-verbal conversation that will make or break you as a communicator. Understanding it is not something you can leave to chance; especially because if the two components are not aligned people tend to believe the non-verbal without fail..

Norms: Social and Market Driven

Today I want to talk about the two different norms that exist and how each of them play out in the long run, how they impact our relationships, a products market perception, brand loyalty, drives virtual ownership and makes offers and ads work or in some cases not work.


Social norm is driven by the emotional aspects of our behavior and our perception towards people and situations. Therefore, reciprocity, empathy and even virtual ownership (a sense of ownership and not actually owning something) can make a huge difference to how we behave. This aspect is widely used in product/service promotions for instance when consumers are offered automobile test drives, or trial period premium cable TV subscription at a heavy discount. The mere act of test driving can create a sense of virtual ownership as the mind starts visualizing the test drive vehicle as something the individual owns. This then has the potential to influence purchase decisions because he/she starts valuing it much more than when there was no sense of a virtual ownership here.

Similarly, once we begin to experience the goodness or additional benefits of a premium subscription, letting it go becomes way too harder than paying the extra bucks for the premium subscription. All this because the mind gets used to it as something we now own and letting it go gets difficult.

Market norm is driven by the rules of  a rational economist or a rational player as espoused in Game theory. Cost benefit analysis and assessment form the basis of decision making when market norm is at play.

The remarkable point is we do have some control on which norm gets triggered in a situation,for instance by the choice of words we use... More on this later. Until then, have  a good rest of the week.

Tuesday morning ramblings

It's been a while since I wanted to restart blogging. it's not just for the ethereal pleasure of having created something in writing of my own, but for the simple fact that two way traffic works better.

Let me explain this to you, better. Of late I have been consciously immersing myself into reading a lot more than I have ever read out of school. So it occurred to me one day that if I begin writing about even a small fraction of all that I have been reading and all the stimulating ideas these readings have led to, I will most certainly end up creating a treasure trove I would cherish,perhaps all my life.

I am particularly inspired by a friend sc who has moved from one roll to another because she disliked the former one, she has been an achiever throughout and continues to pursue her hobbies and interests in addition to doing phenomenally well at work. She writes beautifully on life's sensitive subjects and ardently pursues constant self improvement and self development as a way life. I have seen her grow as an individual tremendously, especially in the last 2-3 years. Now given that an year passes by pretty soon(I recently posted my graduation pic on facebook from April 2015!), it's not that hard a goal to achieve something similar; And I have now set my eyes on it.

Today I want to cover a bit about life after retirement, how a 24/7 busy living comes to a screeching silence of non-activity, somewhat suddenly. I chose to begin with the assumption that it's not a great place to be, even if one had all his/her finances more than figured out. While I don't intend to undermine the importance of financial stability as one of the most important pillars one would lean on, I strongly suspect there is a lot more to it.Given improved average life expectancy over the last couple of decades, we certainly live longer now and this translates to at least a decade of active life post retirement.(well in most cases). My dilemma is how best to pursue these active years? What can be done in our most busy years so our least busy years turn out fruitful and  gratifying.

My belief is it can be done; and for some reason I have harbored my hopes on my interest in reading, writing public speaking, teaching and probably dancing as well. So the challenge today is to figure out ways to dedicate enough quality time to these hobbies and interest so I may end up spending the better part of my subsequent years pursuing my interests for a living! Let the resolution survive and prosper!