On what would otherwise have been a working Saturday morning for most, over a hundred dignified working professionals from various, disconnected companies sat in a conference hall at the Raintree Hotel, discussing the difference between honesty and integrity, values and ethics, and what is important vis-a-vis what is urgent.
A disconnected passerby (or disinterested reader) may well treat the scene with cynicism, but for the men and women seated in the hall—most of them in or over their 40s—the content made serious sense. Most of them had spent as much as ₹ 7,000 for this half day interaction with the speaker, Shiv Khera. He has a hold over his audience, much in the same way your favourite teacher would have had over you. About an hour into the session, somebody’s pocket emits a loud beep and the man scrambles to shut it down, even as his colleague hastens to inform the audience that it was a watch running out of battery, not a rude old cell phone. Khera waits for them to settle down again. His presence is energetic and his words compelling, often evoking loud affirmations from his audience.
Still at it
According to Khera, it is positive reactions like these that keep him going at 67. “I keep telling my wife: one more year. But every once in a while, I get a letter from someone or the other, recounting how a workshop with me made them change their business practices and increase their turnover. And I decide to do one more session, despite how taxing it gets,” says the best-selling self-help author, who remembers having done workshops that stretched for nearly 12 hours.
Khera’s book You Can Win has sold 35 million copies till date, he says, and is the most successful of his 14 volumes. He now holds workshops across the country and the globe—some just a few hours long and others lasting over a month—on professionalism and work ethics, on how to motivate your workforce and turn your business or career around. A lot of it goes back to basics, and focusses on personal improvement before sales or marketing tactics. Self improvement before professional improvement.
Khera stresses quite a bit on self improvement, and doesn’t shy away from using his own days of struggle as an example. He credits a lot of his success to his mother, emphasising on the fact that discipline is also a form of love. “As I said at the session earlier today, parents and teachers are the only ones who bother to correct us. The rest of the world just punishes us. I’m writing a book on parenthood currently, which stresses on this.”
The book, he says, consists of all the mistakes and lessons he himself has made as a parent, as well as what he learnt from other parents. “There is no harm in learning from your mistakes, or from someone else’s,” he says.
So how does something as simple as a self-help book achieve near-cult status? Why is there a hunger and a market for it? Why do people need to be told the simple truths that they should have known in the first place? Khera puts it down to a prioritisation of skill development over self development today.
Building competency
“Skill development might, just might, get you a job to earn a living. Self development will help you make your fortune. Countries are built on self development. Sadly, even in our Government, we have a skill development ministry in which hundreds of crores is being pumped. We are looking at building skills, but not competencies; therein lies the difference. A skill is an ability to do a job; competency is the ability along with the desire to get the job done. There are many skilful people today, who are totally incompetent,” professes Khera.
Sitting in his shirtsleeves in the now-empty conference hall, having disposed of his tie and formal suit at some point along his energetic discourse, Khera stresses that his books and sessions are for everyone. “Our programmes address attitude, leadership, motivation, values. Who doesn’t need them?” he points out.
However, Khera does admit that the sessions that have the most impact are the extended ones, that go on for around a month. “This was barely a workshop,” he says, “You ask me how long its impact will last; my answer is, how long does the food we eat today or the bath we took yesterday last? Only about 10% to 15% of the people implement about 80% of what they learn, even from the 31-day workshops.”
“But 90% of them do implement 10% of what they learn here,” he says, “Even that is something.”
