PENSIVE: Being Genuine

By Sarah Mahmood

You know how to talk well and you know how to handle people -- that is all you need to climb up the ladder of success (and might I say capital?)

Communication and interpersonal skills are what anyone would call the key (s) to success. We hone these with proper training at schools, colleges and universities. Look into the eyes of the audience, walk about the stage, identify your comfort zone, address their needs, use positive and confident body language, 'appear' to be interested -- and in your heart be as low a person as you'd like to be?

Stephen R. Covey writes in his international bestseller "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People": "...these are secondary, not primary traits...If I try to use human influence strategies and tactics of how to get other people to do what I want, to work better, to be more motivated, to like me and each other -- while my character is fundamentally flawed, marked by duplicity and insincerity -- then in the long run, I cannot be successful...everything I do -- even using so-called good human relations techniques -- will be perceived as manipulative."

But how to prevent ourselves from becoming those very 'manipulative' robots? Well, we need to focus on our characters, on building them, on being really what we are trying to show so that when the time for 'appearing' interested comes, it is not merely a pretentious facade -- we actually are concerned!