for Effective Leadership and Team Management
By leveraging hypnotic techniques, leaders can guide their teams to achieve a state of relaxation and clarity, promoting overall well-being and productivity. At a talk held in MMA, Anthony Jacquin, Founder, Jacquin Hypnosis Academy, the UK, explained the role of hypnosis in stress reduction and management.
My grandfather is Indian. He was born in 1924 in Bombay. His mother was from India and father European. He then moved to Calcutta and spent time there. Then he served as part of the crew of the big transporter type aircraft—Skymaster. He moved to the UK in 1951. He had seven children.
My father Freddy Jacquin and I are both hypnotherapists. When my father was in his 40s, he came across hypnosis and fell in love with it. I was studying at the time; he had started to do some sessions and had some results. People quit smoking; they got over their fear. It was very early days and we didn’t quite know what he was doing. But I remember him sending me a letter. He said in that letter, ‘I feel like I’m wearing an invisible cloak,’ meaning he felt like he had a new power. This new power is just made of words and the imagination of the person you’re speaking to. Now we both work as therapists. I also provide coaching services, helping people realise their vision.
Therapy is getting rid of problems. Coaching is working with someone over an extended period of time to realise their goals. I also provide consultancy to business and sports teams. I believe hypnosis will enhance whatever it is that you are interested in. If you’re in business, it will enhance communication and relationships. If you’re into a sport, or you have a hobby, or you’re a teacher or a parent or a nurse or a friend, it will enhance what you’re doing.
First let me clear some of the myths and misconceptions around hypnosis.
Myth #1: Hypnosis is mind control.
Well, it is about giving you control of your mind. I am not going to control your mind. Hypnosis is a collaborative act using the power of imagination. We collaborate, so that you can have experiences that are normally outside of your everyday experience. It’s not that somebody will be controlling your mind, without you on board. It doesn’t happen.
Myth #2: Hypnotised people become unconscious
The other thing people seem to be afraid of is that when someone is hypnotised, as you may have seen it on TV or stage, they appear to be asleep and respond with their eyes closed as if they are unconscious or in a deep trance. No. They’re perfectly conscious. They can hear and respond. In fact, the only reason they look that way is that they have agreed to imagine. So, when you’re hypnotised, you’re very much awake and part of the process.
Myth #3: Only the weak can be hypnotised
In fact, the opposite is true. It does not work on people who lack intelligence or imagination. It’s not about being gullible. It’s about finding the courage to engage.
Myth #4: Hypnosis is a magical cure
I’m afraid it’s not a magical cure. But it is the closest thing you will see. You can meet someone who has had a block or a fear or phobia for decades. Sometimes in a single session, it’s gone. You can meet people who have had a habit that has been wrecking their life—it could be overeating, binge eating or nail biting. Sometimes in a session, it’s gone. The need for the habit has gone. They have literally changed their mind. But more often, therapy involves a few sessions.
Myth #5: Hypnotists have some kind of special power
I don’t have a special power. I do make it look that way sometimes. Hypnosis is a skill, not a power. It is a skill made of words and imagination. Because it’s a skill, you can get better at it.
What is Hypnosis?
Hypnosis is a natural free-standing ability to alter your experience. It’s not reliant upon me. It’s not reliant upon a therapist. It is a natural ability. Think of some of the ways human beings alter their experience. They might do it with prayer, meditation, exercise, music or even alcohol. They might do it by spending time on their own. There are so many ways that human beings actively alter their experience. Hypnosis is one of them. That’s all. It is simply that culture has provided us with a lens to look through.
I see hypnosis as simply ‘ideas that provoke responses.’ I put an idea into your mind to provoke a response. That’s no different from medicine. It’s not that the medicine does the healing but it provokes a response from your body. Hypnosis is a collaborative act of the imagination. You might think, ‘Well, if it’s so normal, what’s different about hypnosis? Why do we even need this concept?’
An Automatic Response
There is one difference. It doesn’t just provoke a response. It provokes a response that’s automatic. It feels like its happening rather than just something you’re doing. If I ask you to imagine that you are carrying a bucket in your hand that is gradually getting loaded more and more, you may start feeling a pain in the hand. There is no bucket and everything is imaginary.
How can we use this in our business? For some people picking up the phone to make the next call fills them with dread. They’ve already heard the word ‘no’ 20 times a day. For some people, approaching their boss and asking them for a raise for promotion fills them with dread. They’ll spend years thinking about him. For some, the thought of taking the risk of starting their own business, could be horrible. They may never do it. All those things are just thoughts. You didn’t choose the thought; it just appeared. It can end up weighing you down. You must understand it’s just your imagination. You can imagine something else.
The good news is that with hypnosis, there are five international journals with 10s of 1000s of pieces of research. We know that hypnotherapy is literally words that are as effective as any other medical treatment or any other pain relief. For 70% of people, just words will show them they can reduce their pain significantly. In some cases, they can be free of it. Irritable bowel syndrome affects 15% of the population worldwide, often to the point where they are afraid to leave the house. Scientific research shows that hypnosis can literally take that problem away. Over 10% of the population have stress and anxiety and sleep disorders. Hypnosis can help here.
Self-Hypnosis
Self-hypnosis provokes automatic responses within yourself. I’m sure some of you have your own strategies for doing that. You may not call it self-hypnosis, but you may call it just your ritual. It can help in your getting ready for the meeting, how you get dressed, how you wear your tie, or any of these things that get you in the mood, to bring your best self to that meeting, or whatever else it happens to be. There are many academics who believe all hypnosis is self-hypnosis. Even when there’s a hypnotist present, they just act and enable you to imagine in a particular way.
We want ourselves to be able to cope with the pressures of business. We want all our teams to be able to do it. Do you know the number one cause of burnout in business? It is not overwork, not too many hours at work nor too many emails. It is not being appreciated by your boss. It’s a lack of feedback and appreciation.
What are the biggest communication failures that cost your business? Whenever I sit down with someone who wishes to change their life, the first question I ask them is: what do you want? 95% of the time, they have no idea. They only know what they don’t want. ‘I don’t want to feel anxious. I don’t want to be overweight.’ They never even conceive an outcome. In business, everyone should have the same vision. Everyone should be on board.
Need for Feedback
I mentioned the issue of irritable bowel syndrome that plagues so many people. It’s awful for people that have it. Often, I work with those people over
five sessions. In the beginning, I ask them to rate between zero and 10, how bad each of their symptoms is. They give 8 to 10. Weeks later, they might say, ‘I’m still suffering’ but their rating will be three or two. It has gone down significantly.
Without a feedback mechanism in business, you can end up with people repeating mistakes and continuing to go down. Therapy really changed about 40 years ago with a gentleman called Carl Rogers. He brought a more humanistic approach to helping people and one of his popular methods is ‘active listening.’ Very often, we’re not listening. We’ve already made up our mind and decisions. When someone asks a question, we’re not really interested. One of Carl Roger’s simple techniques was, when someone said something, to state it back to them, word for word, as if confirming their thought.
Communication Failure
It is communication failure that costs businesses. You can take the language therapy and apply it to leadership and management or sales or communication. Over reliance on digital communication is another issue and I’ve been spending more time doing programs around this problem in the UK, since covid. There’s so much of working from home and there’s a backlash to it now. Companies are trying to get people back in the office. There’s a balance to be struck. When it comes to real human connection in the workplace, so much of that happens over the coffee break. We can get lost when we’re just communicating digitally.
Meeting people at their model of the world and adjusting your communication strategies to suit them will help. Some people need things to be shared to them in steps. Some people do need to know if it feels right before they make a decision. Adapting your communication style is a wonderful way of doing that. There are other things that we can learn from therapists like how to ask the difficult question.
Often enough, if you analyse the problems in organisations, it will not be a resource issue. It will not be a time issue. It will not be a money issue. It will be a communication issue. There is something that we can learn through the lens of hypnosis. We must recognise that it’s just words and the imagination. Each of us builds our personal reality. If we change the way we communicate, then we can reach much higher levels.
Addressing these communication failures requires leaders to be proactive, transparent and empathetic in their interactions. Enhancing communication skills and strategies can significantly improve the overall health and productivity of the organisation.
Lucky #7
During Covid, my grandfather was in isolation and living on his own in the UK. He had a big family and lots of people around him. I live in a different part of the country. We hadn’t been speaking that much. He was 96. During the first lockdown, I put in a call. We were on the phone for two and a half hours. He told me about his time in Bombay. He told me about some of the horrors he saw during partition. He worked for a bakery in Calcutta.
He said that one day when he was working there, a young nun came in, obviously looking for some donations. He asked her, ‘What’s your lucky number?’ She said, ‘Seven.’ He gave her seven loaves of bread, seven packs of butter and seven bags of flour. Since then, she’d often come to the bakery. He very casually said that this was nurse Teresa, who would go on to become ‘Mother Teresa.’ I said, ‘You have never told me.’ Grandfather continued to share his stories after that. He passed away peacefully in 2022 at the age of 98 and thankfully, it wasn’t covid.
Positive moments anchors your life
Pradeep Aggarwal,Founder, Institute of Mind Control & Development, India
Imagination is much more powerful than willpower. The most important thing is to manage our mind and more so, the subconscious mind. We breathe automatically without any effort. The subconscious mind takes care of it. Many other activities that we do automatically, in a pre-programmed manner, like driving a car, is because of the subconscious mind.
Change Your Words
When we are in business or management, we do so many things in a wrong way because of the automatic negative programming of the past. I work with top level sportsmen in India. The first thing I do with them is change their programming and the words they speak. Words are very powerful. I’ll give an example.
The event was 1996 Augusta Masters. It was the third day of the four-day golf tournament. Golf is an individual game. The top people were interviewed about what they think of the last day of the tournament. The person who was having a big lead on the third day by six shots—Greg Norman—said, ‘Oh yes, I’m playing well. But I have to play 18 tough holes tomorrow morning. I have to do a lot of hard work.’ The person trailing him by six shots was also interviewed and he said in a very relaxed way, ‘I’m playing well. Anything can happen in a game of golf.’ The next day, the second guy won the tournament.
Change your words. You can change your life and become more successful in whatever you’re doing. If you say the word ‘sad,’ you get a negative image in your mind. But if you say, ‘happy,’ it triggers a positive image in your mind. Thus, it is easy to change your state of mind through positive vocabulary. We have been programmed since birth to speak all the wrong words. We must ask the right questions. For example, somebody fails in an interview. If he asks himself repeatedly, ‘Why did I fail?” the subconscious mind will give him all the reasons why he failed. Instead, if he asks a few times, ‘What can I do next time to become successful in the interview?’ the same subconscious mind will guide him to succeed.
Our mind works very fast. Everything we have done since birth is all recorded in the mind. All of us have good mobiles but not many are familiar with all the features of our phones. Successful people know how to use all the features of the phone. Likewise, successful people know how to program their minds effectively. Remember the positive moments in your life and use them as anchors.
