Workshop

Dr William Cottringer, author of ‘You Can Have Your Cheese & Eat It Too’ interviews Anil Bhatnagar on his revolutionary workshop on ‘Attitudinal Transformation’

[Known to his friends as Bill, Dr William Cottringer, President, Puget Sound Security Group, USA is a consultant, sports psychologist, teacher and the author of ‘You Can Have Your Cheese & Eat It Too’. Here, in the following paragraphs, Dr Cottringer talks to Anil Bhatnagar about his revolutionary workshop on attitudinal transformation to help him share his vision with the world more systematically.]

Bill. Is your workshop on ‘attitudinal transformation’ or on ‘emotional and spiritual intelligence’?

Anil. It is on ‘Attitudinal transformation’ through ‘emotional and spiritual intelligence’.

Bill: Hmmmm…And why do you call it ‘ALICE AND THE WIN TEAM’?

Anil: Each alphabet of ‘ALICE’ reminds us of a timeless Natural Law or principle. Similarly each alphabet of WIN TEAM helps us remember the seven members of our inner team. The workshops aims to coach each inner team member on how to play its role as an exemplary team member in order to help us respond to life’s moment-to-moment challenges in the spirit of these 5 laws of Nature.

Bill: If you were to let me know of the objectives of this workshop in very brief, what would you tell me?

Anil: In two simple words, it ‘wakes up’ your work force.

It trains participants on how to vanquish their inertia and ensure ceaseless and accelerated all round growth for themselves and their organization through conscious, alert and most responsible responses, moment-after-moment.

Bill: What made you feel the need for this workshop?

Anil: The percentage of their inherent potential that the majority of executives eventually manage to convert into their performance is dismally low in even some of the best-managed organizations. And this gap is the real wastage that any organization can ill afford, more so because it can be managed with relative ease with the right tools and approach. This is the greatest wastage most of the organizations should be concerned about. And this workshop equips the participants to help the organization reduce this wastage.

Bill: But that is what any workshop aims for? What is so special about this workshop?

Anil: Other workshops only aim; this one achieves it.

Bill: Why do you think this difference should exist?

Anil: When I myself attended workshops that were seemingly great but failed to change any of the participants, I began a deep inner search for the reasons. I very strongly believe that if you keep on doing the same things the same way you are going to continue with the same results…and what else insanity is… not changing your approach but still expecting the results to be otherwise next time. A new approach to learning especially in the context of training workshops was crying for my attention. And I not only discovered it…I have ceaselessly worked for more than 12 years to bring it to perfection.

Bill: That explains the origins but why do you think your approach achieves what others only wish to?

Anil: In fact I was coming to that only. In my view, other workshops ignore six vital insights, which are the pillars of this workshop.

Insight #1. ‘Lasting and clearly visible positive change’ should be the main, if not the only, objective of a training workshop. If, apart from getting the participants covered under a specific workshop, it so happens that some participants begin to display a little long-term change as well, it should not be welcomed as an added extra bonus—it should be seen as the only criterion to check if the objectives were at all fulfilled, because ‘lasting and clearly visible change’ should be the only objective of a training workshop.

In response to the question, “Why is it so that even though the workshop was adjudged satisfactory or very good, we hardly find any appreciable change in our people after this workshop?” the clients often get to hear, “We are sure, it must have rubbed at least 10% on the participants. Even, if it has changed one participant to the extent of 5%, we think we have served our purpose”. This complacence, even though a poetic cliche, needs to be questioned! Will we be satisfied and justify it in the similar way if our child get similar 5% to 10% marks in exams? Complacence is the enemy of achievement. It closes the door on the ‘better’ that may be possible.

Bill: Sorry for interrupting you, but isn’t change a gradual process?

Anil: Change is indeed a slow process—and I agree on that. But any process, howsoever slow, means three things:

providing a clearly defined traversable path;
making participants discover and appreciate a self-driven inner reason to traverse it;
making a progressively accelerating movement along that path towards the intended results clearly visible every single day.

‘Being slow’ should not mean ‘being subjective or vague’. This workshop fans the inner spark of inspiration into a wild fire of self-driven motivation and coaches the participants on the secrets of transferring any new learning point into your second nature and provides the participants with an easy, specific, measurable, review-able and time bound blue print for such a complete assimilation of these principles.

Bill: Okay. Please carry on…what are the other insights that other workshops ignore?

Anil: Yes, the first is complacence that I just shared with you. The second and third are closely related and pertain to the trust and respect any educative process should have for the learner’s inner intelligence, in built longing for meaning through contribution, and the natural will to ceaselessly grow better on all fronts of life. Most of the organizations and also a majority of the workshops with an authoritarian approach undermine the following second and third insights:

Insight #2. We humans value more what we find ourselves, and we do best what we do for ourselves. And this is the real reason that can explain the existence of this gap between the potential and performance, or in other words this explains why people do not give their best to their organizations even though they are neither incompetent nor lack the will.

Insight #3. Whatever does not grow from within us does not stay with us. Where is the mark now that the election officer painted on your thumb when you went to cast your vote? It did not stay because it did not come from within but only from without. Plants grow outwards from within; they are not to be pasted onto the seed.

Bill: Both these insights indeed seem to be valid and important. But how do they relate to corporate world, say for instance, in the context of goals setting, training or stepping up the motivation level. Don’t the goals, training or even inspiration come from sources external to us?

Anil: Yes they need to come from outside, but in a way that only assists as a catalyst for the natural process of unfolding of goals, learning or motivation from deep within.

I will tell you why it should be so in all the three contexts one by one.

In the context of goals: The process of decay sets in any individual in the absence of meaningful goals that he can identify personally with and feel like giving his best to. And this decay gets accelerated when organizations or individuals deprive themselves long enough from the excitement of meaningful and worthy challenges and the thrill of accomplishment.

In the context of training: When we try to fill the participants with knowledge, it does not stick to them and withers away with time. The old authoritarian system of imparting the desired learning points perceived employees as empty tanks that needed to be filled with knowledge. This is proving itself, and not surprisingly so, to be a dismally unsuccessful approach. Most of the training workshops prove to be ineffective only because they work on the same premise.

In the context of motivation: Imparting information on any subject, especially behavioral skills, may not necessarily motivate participants to make these skills a part of their lives just as knowing a person’s address will not in itself ensure that you will pay him a visit. YOU NEED A REASON TO DO SO! Similarly without the right attitude that one is compelled from within to adopt, all that we impart to employees is like food served before people without the appetite. This workshop indeed makes people see and feel for themselves a compelling reason and a burning desire to use what ever comes their way as an opportunity to step up the pace of their learning, the quantity and quality of their contribution and their all-round-growth.

Bill: But what is wrong if we try to fill people with great ideas through workshops? Don’t you think it does help?

Anil: Good you asked it, for it takes us to the fourth insight.

Insight #4. Great ideas are useless ideas if they do not reflect in our moment-to-moment responses. Most people do not even begin to appreciate that knowledge is different from habits, and it is not knowledge but our habits that drive our personal and professional lives. Having attended an information-packed seminar on alcoholism one, may become knowledgeable enough to write an essay on the ill effects of alcoholism but may still continue to remain an alcoholic. A majority of people among us have unknowingly developed a neural circuitry that fires undesirable, self-defeating and irresponsible responses much before we are even aware of them, for they stem from a deeper level that we wield little conscious control on i.e. the subconscious mind. We, therefore, often become aware of our undesirable decisions and actions that influence our personal and corporate lives, only when they cannot be taken back. Knowledge acquired through usual training programs remains only at the intellectual level, and well insulated from this knowledge our responses continue to stem from our deep-seated old and conditioned self-defeating habits. As a result it only widens the gap between one’s knowledge of what is desirable and how one actually is continuing to behave.

Bill: Whatever you may say, aren’t you too giving only great ideas through your workshop? In what way the great ideas, facts or information that this workshop provides are different from those that are provided in other workshops?

Anil: No, I am not giving any great ideas through this workshop any other than the ones participants are already having within them; they may only not be aware of them consciously. I only help them re-discover it for themselves and tie them together into a meaningful whole. If you throw all the transistors and capacitors and all other constituents of a television set into a television cabinet and stir it, it will not be transformed into a well functioning television set, unless a TV mechanic assemble them together into a meaningful whole. That is precisely my role. I don’t give them anything that they already don’t have. And since these great ideas are what they discover and tie together themselves and see the power of doing so themselves they tend to own and value these more. Secondly these great ideas are not allowed to stay at the intellectual level itself but made to permeate through the intellectual level down to the subliminal levels wherefrom stem our habits.

So, this is an approach very similar to that of Bin Laden’s—though only, unlike his unjustified and condemnable action, for a highly laudable cause. It uses the participants’ own deep-seated subconscious beliefs (need for meaning and ceaseless growth), participants’ own forgotten dreams/longings, and participants’ own dormant natural endowments against the twin towers of their own mental and psychological blocks that keep them from becoming and contributing their ultimate best. So the beauty of the approach adopted in this workshop is that that it doesn’t run against the grain of one’s own intrinsic nature but respects and utilizes it to let one’s best shine through.

By the way, I did not say that great ideas are always useless. I only said that they are so if they do not reflect in our moment-to-moment responses

Bill: And how do you ensure that?

Anil: By sharing the secret of raising the awareness level of the participants in the context of what one may be doing in any present moment. Though it happens very subtly at the subconscious level, they get into the ceaseless habit of checking if their responses are in harmony with or violating the 5 apex infallible principles of Nature.

Bill: Could you kindly elaborate on that?

Anil: Sure. In fact elaborating on that would bring us to my 5th insight.

Insight #5. Slower reflexes prevent us from averting accidents; faster but uncontrolled ones cause them. NASA has found that irrespective of the amount of sleep the drivers have had before, most of the road accidents take place between 3 a.m. to 6 a.m. This is the time period when it is most difficult for one to be awake and the human reflexes are the slowest. In direct contrast to this, it is during the daytime that we commit most of the small and big mistakes in our personal and corporate lives—a time when we are physiologically awake and when our reflexes are active enough. This apparent paradox arises because during the day though the reflexes are quick enough, the person supposed to be controlling these reflexes is actually fast asleep—at least psychologically--with his eyes wide open. If one is really awake it is impossible to involve oneself in any self-defeating activity or decision. Therefore, we need to make a two pronged attack: Turn great ideas into our habits and coach ourselves to be in the habit of being psychologically and consciously awake in each our present moments to ensure that we are acting from great ideas not from self-defeating habits.

Bill: How would you define ‘a great idea’?

Anil: Any idea that utilizes our resources and endowments fully (i.e. with minimum wastages) for making the best possible contribution towards the common good so that it naturally results in the fulfillment of our own longings and needs. Any idea that qualifies these conditions strikes harmony with the laws of Nature and ensures sustainable growth and vice versa.

Bill: Management gurus like Stephen Covey often talk about these natural laws but I am curious to know if they can be specified or defined objectively. If they are really so important why do we just mention them without elaborating on them. Is it because they are so generalized or because we are supposed to know them intuitively?

Anil: I have spent my last 12 years collating and distilling the wisdom of spiritual giants of all times in order to arrive at the core values that Nature is probably trying to make us learn. In a way this learning process is perhaps what we are born for. This is the very purpose of life.

In fact, that is what the 6^th insight is all about.

Insight #6. Knowledge is like an inverted pyramid, and the quality of our behavior, thoughts, decisions and actions reflect the depth of our being we are operating from. This means that deeper you fathom, the lesser number of facts you need to assimilate in your habits in order to be the ultimate best that you can be. This is akin to the fact that the higher the denomination of currency notes the lesser the number of notes you need to carry.

This workshop talks of only five apex principles of Nature that when assimilated in our nature, make us excel on all fronts of our lives—especially on the professional front. This is so, because these 5 apex principles being at the tip of the inverted knowledge pyramid offer the basic building blocks for any behavioral skill. And once these are assimilated into one’s second nature, one really does not need to bother oneself with plethora of learning points relating to time management, leadership, customer satisfaction, team building, communication and interpersonal skills, quality in work, assertiveness or any other subject pertaining to behavioral skills, in order to excel in these areas. It happens on its own.
It allows participants to become aware of their hidden values-beliefs system and thereby give them an opportunity to reconcile the inherent contradictions in them and are guided to evolve a precise and more rational belief system which they could identify as their very own and adhere to with deep commitment--not for the sake of their organization, country or society but for their own sake. This personally found belief-values system tends to get progressively closer to these 5 apex principles of Nature the more one reconciles the contradictions in it. And that is how the participants are guided to arrive at these 5 laws. The greatest realization that the participants take back from this workshop is the fact. “Whatever and whenever you give, you give to yourself! You are today what you have given so far, and you will be tomorrow what you are giving out today. And hence if you want to be something more, give out more of yourself”.

Bill: And how do these participants make these 5 apex laws a part of their (and their organizational culture’s) second nature?

Anil: Anything that you want but find unable to make a part of your habits or second nature is what is either being resisted or not getting the required cooperation from one or more of your inner team members. You may want to go for a morning walk but some part of you (a member of your inner team or inner mental software) would like to sleep till late in the morning. When we reconcile these contradictions within and make our inner team work together as one whole we unleash an incredible and sustainable power and will within us that works progressively effectively to let these five apex principles sink into our second nature.

Unlike other usual run-of-the-mill workshops, instead of sermonizing on what the participants should or should not do, this workshop directly sets out to identify the elements of the mental software that shape our responses. Having done that, it programs the transformation of these elements at the very subconscious level through a precise and easy to use mechanism. It makes it difficult, thereby, for the participants to ever behave in their old unproductive and self-defeating ways. This workshop is not about introducing good thoughts to inspire attitudinal change and/or managerial effectiveness. It is about ensuring, moment after moment, a perfect and exemplary attitude in action.

Bill: Isn’t that a tall claim that one having undergone this workshop wouldn’t need to bother oneself with plethora of learning points relating to any behavioral skills?

Anil: Apparently yes. But deep down it is pure common sense. It is we who have classified the great ideas under various heads for our own ease. The boundaries don’t exist actually. The spirit of all the great ideas that we study under each of these seemingly different subjects is the same. Like a sunflower that always looks towards the sun, all these great ideas, whatever subject they may pertain to, look towards the timeless laws of Nature. We are entering an age when we need synthesis instead of reckless analysis that is only increasing the managerial complexity and complication. Today we need simple but infallible principles instead of rules that are getting progressively complex and ineffective.

If you go back to my definition of a great idea pertaining to any field, it is what that has roots in the timeless principles of Nature because only then can it result in sustainable growth. So if you coach yourself to adhere to these laws you ensure to naturally evoke the great ideas in any area of management.

This workshop will either obviate the necessity for, or will render more meaning to, any other workshops that you might have scheduled for your executives because it re-awakens within the participants the natural passion and hunger to learn and grow. It will do to any other workshop what the digit ‘1’ does to any zeroes that follow it; it lets the value of an apparent zero be felt.

Bill: What is the methodology you adopt?

Anil: Each of the 5 apex principle is coverd under six phases:

The self discovery phase: Participants become aware of their own beliefs through a specially designed belief questionnaire.
The participation phase: they discuss with others in a group and report the group’s reconciled beliefs.
The Revelation phase: The trainer acts as a catalyst for further reconciliation of contradictions,
The Defining phase: The reconciled beliefs lead to the definition of the principle.
The Contextual phase: Exercises to apply the principle in one’s own context.
The Assimilation phase: Learning how to use the time bound blue print for ensuring progressively assimilation of the principle.

Bill: What is the duration of the workshop?

Anil: It began as a three-day workshop but the response of the participants forced me to demand for it the time it takes to do full justice to its spirit. I very strongly feel that the impact and momentum generated by the third day shall need to be generated again in order to complete all the five principles if we split the workshop in two parts. It would be something like kindling the fire today and waiting till tomorrow for the cooking. Moreover, the 5 principles that it teaches are complimentary and need to be studied together to have the best results.

Bill: Don’t you think you are at a disadvantage considering most of the organization usually finds it difficult to spare executives for more than three days for a workshop?

Anil: I believe any decision that any management takes comes on the basis of the answer it gets in response to the question, “Is it worth investing this (time or money) in order to get this (the returns)? Who would mind the inconvenience of having 5 days at a stretch if its impact proves to be more than that of ten three-days workshops. As such it saves many days of training calender that an organization may have to spend separately on behavioral trainings such as the ones enlisted above. Any intelligent organization would save on those workshops and divert investment and time for covering more people under this workshop.

I, with each of the trillions of cells of my body, am convinced to the core that in future no management would be able to afford not to spare these five days for this workshop. And with all the humility and honesty at my command, I can only say that my conviction has sound observations at its foundations. Organizations today are increasingly being managed by people with unusual foresight. They are fast realizing that they can either keep their complacence or their growth. They cannot keep both.

Bill: That was truly thought provoking Anil. I am sure you are indeed sowing the seeds for a new enlightened corporate world. I wish your workshop spread like a wild fire too.

Anil: Thanks Bill for your kind words and for being so caring.