A sales persons conversation should go beyond relationship building and addressing core issues. Sales conversations should  close sales and good sales people veer sales conversations to providing solutions to problems. Handling objections through insights and showing relevance . Giving customers references and providing them with anecdotes to sell user experience and addressing the value the product will provide for the price paid .

The role of a facilitator is to bring together the participants and content together. A facilitator bring s out the real world application of learning and lookas at helping people dig deep and self learn through collaboration and bringing context to the learning.

Motivation is an inherent quality that people bring to the task they do . The levels of motivation vary across various employees . What can we do as managers to stoke our peoples motivation. We can start by creating commitment both to the team and for the task at hand .

Commitment to goals create a mindset that focuses on them and as the team moves closer to goals motivation increases . Commitment also reduces distractions. It is our role as leaders to build optimism in teams this creates a positive environment and can even reframe failure as a motivational stepping stone. Encouraging initiative and tangential thinking aid motivation since it allows people to air their views and take action by themselves this leads to breakthroughs .

Initiative also allows people to take on challenging tasks which would otherwise have to be forced on them .

Learning in an organizational settings means that there are different requirements for different levels of the hierarchy . Entry level employees are chosen for their attitude and potential. Soft skills and behavioral training to culturally attune them to the organization and get them to interact with their peers and the work environment better.

Functional learning  is necessary to give employees the how to of their job, getting them up the technical curve. Functional training increases an employee’s efficiency . As employees rise in the organisation and takes up more managerial responsibility, they should be coached in getting teams to work better together, implementing and creating strategies as well as designing processes –  most of this learning is execution focused. The senior managers should learn how to give organizational direction, articulating  a vision and culture and setting out achievement and organizational goals and milestones.

The world of work is changing . To maximize human potential and get the best of people an understanding of the work we do and work processes we follow  is important. Work that is simple and repetitive in nature should be automated , technology in could and should  be used to get the tedium out of work. Complicated tasks are those that  needs a work process flow. This  work  that can be outsourced to either bring down cost or rely on partners outside the organisation to  bring with them domain knowledge of their niche specialty. The goal of all work is to migrate to complex works that help us grapple with ideas and create new and better products and services. This type of work  is also the ultimate utilization of human talent, ingenuity and resourcefulness

Delegation is an acquired skill . The ability to delegate relies on getting the job done in a method that gives a  higher quality output  which is time-bound. To pass on the skill sets and the technical attributes for the task that is delegated the manager has to first coach the delegate so that the person is proficient before taking on the task independently. A checklist of instructions and key guidelines lets  the delegate know what to do both sequentially as well as the outcomes expected. Observation and monitoring is required when the delegate is working through the tasks for the first time , once proficiency is achieved this the amount of supervision will reduce.

People like trustworthy leaders . As leaders it is our role to generate this trust , trust created on credibility .It is easy to lose trust through loss of credibility this happens when our words are incongruent . When we speak differently on different occasions and to different team members . Actions that don’t fit in either with the stated position or actions that are not in keeping of a  leader create a gap since preaching and practice diverge. Emotional distance and people agnostic leaders have a difficult time maintaining their credibility with team members.

Information overload is a recognized fact. However not all of us process information in the same way. The filter we use for picking out the information that is important to us is dependent on our own personality. This personality based hierarchy of information is dependent on our experiences and how the incoming information fits into our experience of the past, the present context and our expectation of the future. Our culture and values determine how we view information so does our point of view. Situation imperatives sometimes make us disregard or over-emphasize particular information.

Not all debt is bad. An over indulgence in debt may strain our financial well being and can lead to sleepless nights but we can sometimes sleep a little better if we know that our debt is not villainous. Debt can be extremely bad when it is primarily consumption driven and used impulsively. However debt that builds future income bearing assets and invested appropriately to generate rising value either as a person through education to improve skills or asset quality. Good debt is also that which goes into building value through utility and  improving our performance and efficiency leading to increased income potential.

Structuring presentations is dependent on the audience. All audience need to know how the presentations will flow this is done by giving the audience a road map of how your presentation will go and the subjects to be discussed. Don’t overburden the audience a presentations should have a maximum of 3 takeaways and memorable. Attention spans are limited and a presenter should recognize that the audience will switch off after a period of time. Keep the presentation within this attention span for maximum effectiveness.