NLP for You!

Come be a Certified NLP Coach Practitioner to learn the basic NLP skills which improve and enhance communication, rapport building and goal setting & are all immediately applicable to the business world and have a proven positive effect on business performance.

Neuro Linguistic Programming is a psychological approach to communication and personal development that focuses on the connection between mind and language, and how that connection affects our body and behavior. It involves the use of guided visualizations along with specific language patterns to initiate positive change from within. It enhances specific skills for dealing with people who perceive the world differently from us will help improve relations with peers, bosses, customers, new prospects, and across cultural divides in multinational companies.
Many leaders and consultants in businesses have turned to the creative and innovative aspects of NLP for inspiration in organisational development, total quality management, team building and strategic planning.

NLP skills underlie much of what is taught in negotiation courses. Modelling is being used in many areas of business, including in sales teams. Presentation skills and public speaking are an integral part of corporate life today. NLP self-management techniques, language patterns and goal setting are vital to effective speaking and peak performance.
Imagine improving your own performance easily, what would be different?

A business's performance is dependent on the performance of its people. To grow the business, you need to grow your employees. But "growing" usually means stepping outside our comfort zone, yet limiting beliefs or fear of failure often prevent this.

NLP training creates an environment where people feel safer about stepping outside their comfort zone and discovering the strengths and resources they never knew they had. The business benefits are there to reap: - happier, better performing teams, increased staff retention, fewer misunderstandings and improved customer satisfaction. In today's economic climate; can you afford not to gain the competitive edge available to you through NLP?

• Negotiating - Ask better questions to determine their criteria and values and use perceptual positions to understand all parties' attitude and relationship with you.

• Understanding and delighting customers - Develop compelling solutions for your customer's needs and understand your customer's relationship with you. Use thinking styles and meta-programmes to understand how your customers buy

• Understanding and working with internal customers, clients & suppliers - Improve rapport skills to achieve a relationship of trust and ask better questions to enable your suppliers develop propositions that meet your requirements. Use stories to demonstrate your capabilities more effectively

• Setting Direction - Use questions effectively to determine how best to achieve your outcomes and ensure realistic implementation plans for success

• Releasing potential - Use your colleagues' thinking styles and preferred meta-programmes to communicate more effectively and to value different strengths and capabilities in others. Also use NLP attitudes and techniques to coach more effectively and to develop modelling skills to develop the beliefs, capabilities and behaviours you need to accomplish your outcomes

• Achieving results - Get customers, colleagues and suppliers to want to work with you because you understand their values and motivation. Ask to the right questions to determine what (if anything) is needed before your customer confirms the order and create the right attitude so that your customers will always recommend you for the appropriate future opportunities.

• Presenting and communicating skills - Develop your rapport skills so that you can build rapport easily with a wide range of people and develop new methods of getting feedback so that you continually improve what you do.

To Register Please call +91 9717737698 

NeoSynapses | Capacity Model

“NeoSynapses leadership interventions are deeply inspired by the work done in the area of neuroscience, linking their application to realizing leadership potential. Our focus is on how the brain works and how to help achieve business objectives through people -centred - interventions mainly by influencing behavioural patterns. By applying our understanding of how the Human Brain works, we hope to engage in high- impact programs with our clients to ensure- together we achieve greater success”  

Happy Bonus Day of the Year!

Wishing everyone a Very Happy #Leap Day!!! If you could spend this #bonus #monday of the year doing anything you wanted...What would it be??? #NeoFoodforThought

The Impact Of Inhibition Across Different Domains | Know the Brain’s Braking System!

"There is a saying in Delhi – that because of heavy traffic and its unruliness, people drive on the roads here more with their brakes than the accelerator.Today, as I observed myself consciously in the acts of inhibitions I almost felt like that"

It appeared that perhaps I use my VLPFC (Ventrolateral prefrontal cortex) more than any other part of my cortical brain.

Right in the morning as the alarm rang, I found myself agonizing over should I go for the jog, or steal another hour of sleep before another awfully full day. With so many thoughts to and fro... perhaps my frontal cortex short circuited and I fell back to sleep. Then,  as if in almost a fit, I yanked the quilt off me, got out of bed to prepare to run, as I had promised myself to lose another 2 kg of weight this fortnight. 

At the breakfast spread at the hotel buffet my stretched hand, which though had started to grab a croissant, went past it....and picked a boiled egg....as the VLPFC put brakes in the path of unnecessary calories going into my body.

In the program, a participant made a comment about a real issue he had, I glossed over it as I wanted to finish the section in time, but the brain’s braking system put the jam, reminding me that we are in the program to solve real challenges and not merely to tick some agenda items... I stopped and called on him to detail his challenge and involved everyone in the discussion. Later at the airport, found my flight is delayed. I thought of buying an earlier flight ticket, but the price of making a last minute booking, and the loss on cancelling an existing ticket made me stop.

It is amazing that once you start noticing, you realize how much the VLPFC guards you from going astray...and how grateful we should be to this Brain’s Braking System.

The Role of Amygdala at the Workplace

They say-

Don’t complain about the situation.Don’t bring your personal pain in the way of the deliveries.

Yet, feel excited about reaching a goal, determined in the face of challenges and have camaraderie with colleagues.

If the limbic system was kept at home while entering the workplace none of this would happen.

How does one still maximize opportunities and produce good action?

The Low route (stimuli travels straight from the Sensory Cortex to Basal Ganglia) and High route (stimuli travels through Prefrontal Cortex and Hippocampus to Basal Ganglia) of the Limbic response provide another insight. The challenge still is, in the command an individual has to develop in the making of a conscious choice – which route is better in this context.

For Example: On the back of a bad quarter, a customer is about to return a large consignment.  Should one panic and plead with the customer to instead accept a lifetime free service guarantee. Or,   replace the consignment and win the sale maybe in the next quarter?!

This is the ability to move the decision to the high route (more thinking and judgement).

Soon after a soul stirring, passionate, exhorting call by the sales director, to give a final shot in the last quarter – when the market has not been very favorable and the logic seems to only show a wall – keeping the Prefrontal Cortex quiet and pulling yourself into the next customer door, on the other hand needs one to take the low route.

This is where the insight gets all powerful.

The realization that there is No Reality out there...it is all in the response that my brain had to the stimuli which will define My Actions, and often My Results.

What does minimizing danger and maximizing reward mean in the workplace?

Dr. Evian Gordon’s model of the Brain 1-2-4 where the one guiding principle of the brain is to minimize danger and maximize rewards, two modes in which the brain processes information are – the unconscious and the conscious, and the four processes the brain undertakes are emotions, feelings, thinking, and self regulation create a very interesting opportunity to know and train your brain. While this awareness that feelings, thinking and self-regulation are conscious processes and therefore we should be more mindful of what is going on with them, and take control of the actions and results more often – can definitely improve effectiveness and moods is evident, I am particularly interested in the working of the emotions.

Emotions are explained, in the Gordon’s model, as the hard-wired reactions we have to the various stimuli around us. A noise in the bush – as we walk in a jungle on a bright day – makes us alert – rushes blood to the muscles preparing us to run, and dilates our pupils to be able to see more clearly, can be one of the example of the hardwiring we have received over the genetic conditioning from our environment, and our need for safety. The interesting question is - Is there some significant hardwiring that we have developed unconsciously as we have grown in this life...eerie silence in a board meeting, a boss who is pointing his finger animatedly as he talks, colleagues who are murmuring at the coffee machine and become quiet as you approach them. Are there some of these contexts which are unique to me... and get me all stressed up? What gets my goat – perhaps unnecessarily, while I am at work?

Unraveling some of my own ‘hot buttons’ which may be getting me into a panic state, and regulating my reaction to them, could be an interesting exercise ...that may improve my effectiveness at work...and that too from a completely hitherto unknown domain.

The Importance of Certainty and Autonomy in Leadership

In my observations, often the purpose of leadership in the organisation is to lead a team in adversity or in a challenging environment. When the going is good most people wish to be on their own. They also get relatively more freedom to take decisions, chose their own approach to their deliverables and have less pressures or penalty for non-performance. Somehow the good results of others tends to take care of the averages...When the going is tough – then due to fear of failure or accountability many people tend to become less certain of what action they should be taking, and the inaction (both overt and covert) sometimes becomes the reason for even more sluggish performance
and a more uncertain future. To break out of this cycle, the situation needs decision-making....which is the hallmark of leadership.
The SCARF model for human motivation points out two approaches leaders adopt. They may seek more certainty – a prediction of what is likely to happen (the objective of the insula in the brain), to better prepare to handle the situation, or they seek Autonomy (a PFC activity) – where they prepare to take charge, in any eventuality.

The human need to know what is about to happen (Certainty) has made the world full of communication today. Most news by its nature provides information with the purpose of predicting the future. The popularity of the various projections, whether it is weather or
stock markets movement, and everything in-between, is to provide some semblance of order, and therefore a calmer insula activity. Leaders use market research, sales forecast, even consultants armed with business models to keep getting some handle on the future.

The strategy (or creating a framework for response) and the business plan (clarity on action) – are tools for seeking autonomy. What will we do...as proactive behaviour to ensure some influence and control on what will emerge in the future. Dealing with all these tools is essentially the job-description of the company’s leadership.

Insights on the Neuroscience of the Social Brain

Speaking of the capability of the human brain, these are some of the fundamental characteristics: 

• The folded nature (with the gyrus and sulcei) – creating a much higher surface area
• The ability to create new connections with neurons (neuroplasticity) as and when you need.
• & What amazes me the most is the substitutability of the various functionalities of the brain parts if any part gets damaged.

The purpose of the social brain is to have positive and efficacious human interactions. 

This combines the thinking ‘C response’ brain (Lateral, Medial, dorso-medial Pre-frontal cortex, Anterior Cingulate Cortex, and parts of parietal cortex) functionalities with the more instantly reactive ‘X response’ Limbic system (the thalamus, hypothalamus, amygdala, and hippocampus). The most important ability to make social interactions more effective is to bring some sense of conscious control in the ‘without any reigns Emotional Reactions’. The ability to provide higher order response (stimulations to sensory cortex to frontal cortex to hippocampus and basal ganglia) can be tough when emotions are running high.The other crucial aspect of the neuroscience during social interactions is ‘How much is your blood boiling?’ The raging hormones in the blood (glucocorticoids (e.g., cortisol), adrenaline & noradrenaline, oxytocins, estrogen & testosterone) can make the social interactions most rewarding (to instil courage, positivity, drive) or can make one dysfunctional (fear, anxiety, depression). 

The Awareness of this Neurochemistry is important as once You Know your Brain, you'd be able to Train your Brain.

The most intriguing part though as one learns more and more about the Neuroscience is the principle of Cause and Effect vs. Correlation? 

• Does the presence of a particular hormone in the blood cause the emotion? or 
• Does the presence of the emotion cause the increase in the hormone presence? 

The London cab driver research on more than normal spatial intelligence and the bigger size of the DLPFC (Dorsolateral prefrontal cortex [the front side of your brain]), does not resolve fully all doubts & questions of whether it is correlation or causal.

And hence still remains a crucial question in the study of the Anatomy of the brain.  

Till Next time,

NeoSynapses

P.S- Happy New Year Folks!!!

Hope its an Amazing one!!!

The role of mindfulness in leadership and in daily life

The concept of mindfulness as being present to the ongoing current physical experience and not letting the mind wander and therefore making more meaning from a situation and getting more done is really interesting.

This is perhaps the one driving principle of effective coaching. The ability of the coach to be mindfully present in the coaching conversations: listen to every nuance, feel the emotion, make meaning from gestures, tonality and words, cross checking often, is perhaps the key to his/her ability to appreciate what’s going in the coachee’s world, and then to the interpretations that the coachee has made to his/her life’s incidents and circumstances. If on the other hand the coach’s mind gets triggered into his own reflections and projections without sensing the complete coachee’s experience, he/she may completely misread the situation.

Mindfulness seems an essential component of any good relationship. The ability to be present in an experience, to really appreciate the happenings in the moment, with all your senses allows one to gather more information and not miss something significant or a nuance which may be hiding a more intense aspect underneath.

While on field trips in the market, amidst heated discussions in meetings, during client visits – more ‘presence’ in the moment will allow more grasp. I remember a CEO – who everyone respected a lot, because he had the knack of asking the right questions during a presentation, or a review or while in one on ones. He always seemed to get more out of these interactions. His ability to cut through the clutter and reach out for the most important pieces of the jig-saw was perhaps in his skill in keeping his mind chatter to a minimum and his ability to concentrate on the issue/ situation at hand. He perhaps had worked on the ability of looking for ‘what’s the new’ in an often repeated situation. 

Cultural Intelligence

Are you an Expatriate temporarily moving to India ? Or an Indian, Going to work abroad? Come be a part of NeoSynapses Training Program on Cultural Intelligence & increase your Cultural Quotient .

For more information call us or mail us at info@neosynapses.com

The Reality of Dreams!

While you sleep….

As you climb the Great Wall of China, Fernando Alonso races past you in his glistening Ferrari, chasing an extinct species of a deer and Salma Hayek awaits at the summit in the most exotic outfit imaginable, when suddenly the alarm bell rings, bringing you back to reality with a Time to get up! Or consider this; the physics problem that you were chewing on the entire day, having tried every theorem you’d ever known, suddenly gets solved in your brain with all the numbers and variables falling in place while you are asleep. You just pulled an Einstein!

Though they seem to be perfectly real as they occur, we always tend to question their authenticity upon gaining consciousness. Dreaming is a Natural yet often Unbelievable phenomenon.

There has been a great debate over the years over the reality of dreams, how they happen, why do they happen and if there is any basis in reality for what goes on in your head as you sleep. Out of these many debates, a chosen few have been termed acceptable, yet most have been discarded without even giving them a second look.

Could there be a different way of how we go about interpreting our dreams?...As Ravi  (Storyteller & MD - NeoSynapses) usually says, let’s first talk about the things we can agree on.

The process of dreaming occurs in the Brain Stem, which takes care of all the automatic body functions like breathing, heartbeat etc. It has also been established that Dreams take shape when we are in the 5^th stage of our sleep, with our body paralyzed and when REM (Rapid Eye Movement) has taken over (almost 90 minutes from when we first dozed off) – Our heart rates go up, our blood pressure rises, and our brain activity is raised to the level it’s at when we’re awake. Our Limbic System, which plays an important role in controlling our emotions and beliefs, also plays an important role while we dream, which is why, every once in a while, you wake-up from a dream only to find yourself drenched in a pool of sweat.

Now, let’s talk about abstracts. Ahem…..

Some researchers believe that dreams mostly occur out of the ‘Declarative Memory’, which comes from the Hippocampus. Hippocampus is the part of the brain where short term memory exists. This means that most of our dreams are about instances or things that have recently occurred – may be excerpts from the movie we recently saw clubbed with our experiences in offices in the previous weeks and so on.

Some other very prominent and renowned researchers believe that dreams occur out of the information that is left over in our brain (you may call it the Sub-conscious) that our pre-frontal cortex, the active brain information centre, has not registered when we were awake, which also tells us just how and why we get solutions to some problems in our dreams and why we see un-related random images as we sleep.  Research suggests that very few dreams are actually about people or places the dreamer knows of or has encountered in real life. Most—that is, 80%—are actually random events or people the dreamer doesn’t know in any way whatsoever.

Does all this also hint to what many Spiritual Leaders have been saying for years – The Power of the Subconscious is much greater than the Power of the Conscious Mind? Is it also possible that we in our dreams can actually talk in a language we have never learnt, but just heard a couple of times?

There is still no agreement on what happens and why, but the best way I can suggest to answer this for yourself is to stay wide awake while you dream.