I recently met a genuinely inspiring individual here in Dubai who moved here speaking barely a word of English (or any other commonly spoken language in this part of the world). Three years later, his English is still very basic and insufficient to run a business conversation however, to put it mildly, that hasn’t stopped him achieving success.
In those three years, he built a company of 150 staff focusing almost exclusively on his home market despite not speaking English or Arabic. When speaking to him, he has a refreshingly simplistic view of business. You can either have reasons why you can’t succeed or focus on the reasons you can. Where others see a wall, he looks for a way around or over it.
It would have been very easy for him to have concluded that without English or Arabic, Dubai was out of bounds for him. In fact, most people would place such a limitation on themselves. However, in his mind, this was never a limitation. I don’t even think it was a consideration because he doesn’t’ talk in limits, he talks in opportunity.
This reminds me of a quote from Michael Caine that I regularly use when teaching personal empowerment; “I have a policy. I never listen to anyone explain why they can't do something.” Caine was concerned that they would try and talk him out of it – and that he would listen.
My new friend (I hope I can call him that) saw an opportunity to sell Dubai property into his home market. He knew that without English he could not do it himself, so he hired smart, hungry people from his him country who spoke English. Here is one of the first rules of excellent leadership; surround yourself with people who bring skills to the table that you do not have.
He is a motivator of people. He has changed lives by giving opportunities to people who would never have taken the considerable step to leave their home country and move to Dubai to make their mark. It is his ability to motivate that I believe is one of the strengths he plays to so well, and this is a second rule of excellent membership; play to your strengths. You don’t need to be good at everything. In fact, people will respect you more for admitting you have weaknesses.
One of the fundamental beliefs of NLP is that our beliefs define our outcomes. We all have ‘limiting beliefs’ such as “I’m not good enough” or “I can’t to that”. Recognising our own limiting beliefs and challenging them is a core skill of successful people. “There is a business opportunity, and I will build a team to help me take advantage of it” is a very different internal discussion to “I can’t speak English therefore I can’t build a business in Dubai”. Just look at the words in each sentence; will vs. can’t. In linguistics these are called modal operators of impossibility vs. possibility and which one a person uses helps us understand their mindset.
So, when we communicate, do we communicate possibility or impossibility? Do we want to inspire action or caution, enthusiasm or concern? The answer these questions will to a degree depend on the situation and the outcome we want to achieve. However, when we position our words to inspire the other side and redefine their limits, we are more likely to create a connection and change lives.
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