Chapter 2 Applaud Anguish ~ The Yoga Vasiṣṭha

Boston: Spring 1991. I’d been on Forum’s editing staff for about a year and a half. Mona (she of the flip-chart moment) had left the company some months back, as had another editor, and our current manager was on maternity leave. In this short-staffed state, I found myself in charge and needing to bring in freelancers to handle overflow.

Marketing was preparing to issue a raft of new brochures and other collateral, and one of their project managers, Barbara, asked me to find a freelance copyeditor who could start immediately and help them out full time for the next two weeks. I called the temp agency and asked if Debbie was available. Yes, they said. I’d worked with Debbie before and knew she was good, so I booked her with a sense of relief.

When she arrived Monday morning, I sent her to pick up her first batch of materials from the marketing director (who I assumed had been in communication with Barbara). Frantically busy, I told Debbie she needn’t check in with me as the project proceeded; she could report to Marketing directly, and I’d sign her time sheets. I found her a cubicle and she settled in with a stack of documents.

Midafternoon, Debbie appeared in my doorway. She had her shoulder bag, so I thought she was done for the day and just wanted to touch base before leaving. But instead she sat down in my side chair and looked at me.

“What?” I said.

“She gave me my walking papers.”

“What do you mean, walking papers? Who did?”

“The marketing director. I just now gave her the edited copy from today. She glanced through the stack and then she told me they weren’t going to make all those changes and they didn’t need an editor after all, so I could go. She fired me.”

I was livid, but there was nothing I could do in the moment. I apologized profusely to Debbie. She left, though not before pointing out that she had turned down another job because she had thought she was booked for two weeks.

I recorded a seething voicemail (this was before email) for Barbara, the project manager who had made the request in the first place. Ten minutes later, she showed up at my cubicle. “I got your message,” she said. “Thank you. Do you have time to talk about it?”

I won’t try to re-create the conversation that ensued; I’ll just describe how it felt.

I started out with arms crossed and voice clipped, decrying the rudeness, the unprofessionalism. Barbara at first simply listened, nodding along, but after a bit she started to ask short questions: “What then?” “How is Debbie feeling?” “Can you say more?” She hung on my every word, and I started to feel . . . disoriented. It was hard to stay mad at someone who seemed so keen to hear me talk. I found myself describing the pressure I was under, how shorthanded we were, how hard it was to find good freelancers. “That must be frustrating,” Barbara said. I started to feel . . . understood. Then she asked a few questions that were harder to answer, such as, “What effect do you think this will have on your work going forward?” and “What would you most like me to understand about all this?” I had to think about those, and as I talked on, I felt I was coming to understand the situation better. Finally, Barbara said: “So, what I’m hearing is that you’re concerned about your reputation out in the freelance community. You’re worried if word gets out that they can’t count on you, they may not want to work with you, and then the pressures on you here will be even greater, because you’re short-staffed and you really need those freelancers. Did I get that right?”

Yes, I said. Yes, that’s exactly right. I felt . . . strangely edified.

Barbara then asked what I thought we should do next, and I think we agreed she would determine which pieces of the marketing collateral required editing and would give those to me personally, allowing plenty of lead time. But to be honest, I don’t remember much about the problem-solving part of the conversation. What I do remember is the first part: how I gradually went from furious, to mollified, to engaged, to—there is no other word for it—enlightened.

I knew all about the ‘handling objections’ model, a method taught in Forum’s sales training programs. Until then, though, I’d never had someone use it so brilliantly on me.

Applause for Teen Angst

The Hindu scripture Yoga Vasiṣṭha (see “The Sage: Vasiṣṭha’s Yoga,” below) begins with a depressed teenager’s tirade about the miseries of life. The rest of the book’s thousand-plus pages contain the sage Vasiṣṭha’s response to the teenager’s concluding question: “Hence, pray tell me: what is that condition or state in which one does not experience any grief?”

Prince Rāma, heir to the Kosala kingdom, is not yet sixteen when he returns home with his brothers from a postgraduation grand tour of India, during which he has visited many cities and shrines and—one would think—had a wonderful time. Shortly after his arrival, however, he falls into a funk, growing thin and pale and showing no interest in any of his usual pursuits. His father the king seeks to discover the cause: “Beloved son, what is wrong with you?” the king asks. Rāma politely replies, “Nothing, father.” (I:5)

The Sage: Vasiṣṭha’s Yoga

The dates of the Yoga Vasiṣṭha (Yoga Va-seesh-ta) are debatable, but it was likely composed over a long period between the ninth and thirteenth centuries CE. The book may be seen as a gigantic sidebar or insert to the Indian epic Rāmāyana. Early in that epic, the sage Viśvāmitra arrives at court and asks that Prince Rāma be allowed to join him on a warrior’s quest. The king is on the point of refusing when his counselor Vasiṣṭha steps in to reassure him: “You need have no anxiety about Rāma’s going.” (Rāmāyana 20:19) The king summons Rāma, and the very next verse has him kissing his son on the head and sending him off on the quest “with a contented heart.” The entire action of the Yoga Vasiṣṭha takes place between those two verses. In it, Vasiṣṭha offers a vast compendium of stories, fables, philosophy, and advice intended to help Rāma after he has expressed his despair at the pointlessness of existence. Much more than a theoretical exercise, however, the book dares “to bridge the gulf between the secular and the sacred, action and contemplation.”² It is also an inspired guide for leaders of all levels, times, and cultures, ending with this exhortation from the sage: “Be free in nirvana and rule the kingdom justly.”

Soon after, there arrives at the palace the renowned brahmin Viśvāmitra, who reports to the king the trouble he’s having with a pair of demons desecrating his holy sites. He would like Rāma (who is known to have superhuman qualities) to help him deal with the invaders. The king is at first reluctant to comply, concerned that Rāma’s youth makes him unqualified to wage war, but resident sage Vasiṣṭha urges him to honor a bargain he made with the gods upon his son’s birth and permit the boy to go. The king asks Rāma’s chamberlain about Rāma’s state of mind; the chamberlain reiterates that, these days, the prince looks at everything with sad eyes. “He is bereft of hope, he is bereft of desire,” says the chamberlain, “he is attached to nothing and he depends on nothing, he is not deluded or demented, and he is not enlightened either.” (I:10) The king summons Rāma to the royal court.

When the boy arrives, the king again entreats him to explain what’s wrong. “Holy sir,” says Rāma, “I shall duly answer your question.” And he duly does. For ten long and excruciating pages he elaborates on the “trend of thought” that has robbed him “of all hope in this world.” Here’s how he begins:

My heart begins to question: what do people call happiness and can it be had in the ever-changing objects of the world? All beings in this world take birth but to die . . . I do not perceive any meaning in all these transient phenomena which are the roots of suffering and sin. Unrelated beings come together; and the mind conjures up a relationship between them . . . On examination, the mind itself appears to be unreal! But, we are bewitched by it. We seem to be running after a mirage in the desert to slake our thirst. (I:12)

Rāma goes on to expound the woes particular to childhood, youth, adulthood, and old age. The body is a prison, he says; the mind equally so. Even the rich and mighty (especially the rich and mighty) are slaves to their cravings. Enjoyments, loves, ambitions—nothing but delusions. “All points of view in this world are tainted; all countries in the world are territories of evil . . . all actions are deceitful.” (I:27) And all one’s hopes are “consistently destroyed by Time . . . merciless, inexorable, cruel, greedy, and insatiable.” (I:23) Time devours everything, and what’s worse, nobody even knows what time is. “By reflecting on the pitiable fate of living beings thus fallen into the dreadful pit of sorrow, I am filled with grief,” Rāma says. “My mind is confused, I shudder, and at every step I am afraid.” (I:30) He concludes:

Obviously there is a secret that enables one to remain unaffected by the grief and suffering in this world even as mercury is not affected when it is thrown into the fire. What is that secret? . . . Who are those heroes who have freed themselves from delusion? And what methods did they adopt to free themselves? If you consider that I am neither fit nor capable of understanding this, I shall fast unto death. (I:31)

Gathered to hear Rāma’s anguished oration are sages, ministers, royal family, servants, and citizens; palace dogs and cats, caged birds, and horses of the royal stable; and celestials, semi-divine beings who roam between heaven and earth. If such a lengthy and demotivating speech occurred in a film of today, the next thing we’d get would be a panning shot of those hundreds of courtiers and city folk, beasts and nymphs, all stunned into unhappy silence. The king would rise and tearfully embrace his son; servants would lead the boy away; a guru would step forward and deliver a discourse on resilience. Later, there might be scenes of Rāma with his therapist, the latter asking about his patient’s childhood and repeating, “It’s not your fault,” like the Robin Williams character in the movie Good Will Hunting.

In the book, however, that’s not what happens. First we are told that those assembled “were highly inspired by the flaming words of Rāma’s wisdom that is capable of dispelling the delusion of the mind . . . They drank the nectarine words of Rāma with great delight.” (I:32) So rapt with attention are they, they appear to be painted figures rather than living beings. And then, when Rāma finally falls silent, here’s their reaction:

Thrilled to hear Rāma’s speech, all of them acclaimed “Bravo, bravo” with one voice and this joyous sound filled the air. To felicitate Rāma, there was a shower of flowers from heaven. Everyone assembled in the court cheered him. Surely, no one but Rama who was full of dispassion could have uttered the words that he gave expression to . . . We were indeed extremely fortunate to have been able to listen to him. (I:33)

When I first read the Yoga Vasiṣṭha, I was baffled by this joyful ovation. Why applaud such a downer of a speech? Moreover, I couldn’t understand why Rāma continues on as a character, raising an objection every other page—sometimes the same objection he raised ten pages ago. No sooner has Vasiṣṭha finished one of his intricately knotted fables or mind-stretching discourses about universal consciousness, but here comes Rāma, chiming in with yet another “I don’t get it” or “But what about this?” or “I’m still depressed.” Why not simply have Vasiṣṭha share his wisdom and let us drink it in, undistracted by the whiny prince’s interruptions?

Eventually I saw why. The great lesson to be learned from the Yoga Vasiṣṭha comes not from the philosophy or the stories, wonderfully edifying though they are, but rather from watching someone spend three weeks (that’s roughly the span of time the book covers) fully engaging with another’s anguish. From the audience’s initial cheers to his final words (“And thus have I told you all that is worth knowing”), Vasiṣṭha is open to Rāma’s pain. Indeed, he is more than open; he honors it. Never does he show impatience. Never does he say, “That’s enough worrying,” or, “You already asked me that.” Occasionally he notes the immaturity of a particular question and says he’ll get to it later—which he does. By the end, we’ve seen how a master handles not just an objection, but the objection: “Life sucks.”

Quiet Influence Practice 2: Encouraging others to express objections and doubts

Handling objections has been a staple of sales and coaching classes since the 1970s. The method taught by Forum was: “encourage, question, confirm, provide, check.” Variations on those five steps are ubiquitous in the training industry, from “acknowledge, ask, confirm, respond, check” to “listen, explore, help, follow up,” and many more. My colleagues and I used to joke that there was only one thing anyone ever learned in a Forum class, and that was how to handle objections. There was some truth behind the quip, for the ability to respond well to another’s frustration or disappointment sits at the heart of influence, whether in selling, coaching, teamwork, or personal relationships. In Forum’s sales workshops, handling objections was one of the first skills covered, the theory being that objections can arise at any stage of the sales process, even right after you’ve said hello. As in sales, so in life: objections can crop up at any time, and in the most innocuous conversations.

Most of us want to know how to triumph over objections: how to nip them in the bud or, once they’re out there, bat them away. Sales seminars teach various categories of objections—misconceptions, skepticism, and so on—and appropriate responses to each, such as, “If a misconception, use additional information to clarify.” Our instinct when confronted with an objection is to hit it hard with the “right answer.” The customer says, “I’m not sure this product is going to work for me”; we respond, “Oh, sure it will work, this is the latest version of the product, it’s the best, I recommend it.” Our team member says, “I’m having trouble keeping up with all these assignments”; we respond, “Let me show you the system I use—it’ll help a lot.” Our spouse says, “It’s really tough for me when you get home so late”; we respond, “The meeting ran over! What was I supposed to do?”

There’s an objection: quick, kill it.

Master influencers know this to be the wrong approach. They know it’s better to do something counterintuitive, something that requires overcoming our natural reaction to an attack. Instead of slamming the door, they open it wider. Faced with an objection, they encourage first.

Encouraging means showing, in words, tone, and body language, that you want to hear more. It is not the same as analyzing the issue. It is not the same as agreeing with the other person. Its purpose, rather, is to let the other person feel they can talk to you; that they can share their thoughts and emotions freely.

We seldom recognize the anguish that lurks behind an objection: the fear of being disbelieved, the sense of powerlessness in a situation that seems out of control, the worry that one might make the wrong choice or already has made the wrong choice. When I lit into Barbara, the marketing project manager, I was annoyed—but more than that, I was embarrassed and afraid. I was embarrassed, because in Debbie’s eyes (I thought) I looked like an idiot who hired freelancers without confirming that they were actually needed. And I was afraid, because what if my manager came back from maternity leave and the marketing team told her I’d screwed up? Neuroscience says that in such exchanges the amygdala, the part of the brain responsible for fight-or-flight reactions, is flashing “Danger!”

When someone confronts us with an objection, then, our first job is to alleviate that sense of danger and make them feel it’s all right to speak, that we invite them to speak (see “Influence in Brief: Encouraging Objections,” below). But encouraging isn’t easy. Confronted with an objection, our own amygdala goes on high alert, too. It’s difficult to suppress our strike-back instincts and maintain an attitude of inviting participation; to say, in effect, “Lay it on me.”

Influence in Brief: Encouraging Objections

[My assistant in Hong Kong] started out cautiously. She wondered if she came to me and said, “You messed up,” was I going to say, “Well, I’m the boss” and beat her over the head. I had to draw her in. Before a client meeting, I would ask her, “Here’s what I’m thinking about . . . Does that make sense, or am I going to walk into something bad?” She would say, “Yes, that’s fine,” or, “Well, the client might think this or that.” It helped if I said, “Here’s the outcome I want to achieve; is this the path that will get me there?” If she saw what I was trying to achieve, she could comment on my approach.

–Galina Jeffrey

How do you follow up on low scores on a feedback report? If you go and ask a peer, they’ll probably say, “You’re doing fine.” Not many managers are confident enough to have a meeting with their teams and solicit their honest feedback. If you’re not sure how to ask, just make your action plan and take that plan to people and say, “This is my plan. How does it sound to you? Are there other things I could be doing?” That’s much less threatening to everyone.

–Keith Bronitt

People go wrong when they make assumptions about what others think based on their own perspective. For example, if someone is quiet, you might assume this indicates agreement, when in fact they are weighing the pros and cons. When I coach people, I help them recognize that the assumptions they’re making about the other person’s thoughts often come from their own projections.

–Christie Jacobs

Kevin Higgins, a Forum regional vice president, was also an expert sales trainer. In his classes he would review the concept of handling objections, then have two people come to the front of the room to play a “customer” and a “salesperson.” The latter would sit facing a flip chart with the steps written out: encourage, question, confirm, provide, check. The following scene would unfold.

“Remember, you’re going to demonstrate this process,” says Kevin to the salesperson.

“Got it,” says the salesperson.

The customer, reading from a card, states the objection: “Compared to your competitors’ prices, your product is more expensive.”

And the salesperson jumps right to providing: “Sure, I can see how you might think that, but in fact if you look at the big picture you’ll see we’re more cost-effective overall . . .” Kevin, meanwhile, is banging the side of his hand on the Encouraging step on the flip chart. He keeps banging until the salesperson stops, confused.

“Encourage first,” says Kevin.

“Oh, right,” says the salesperson. The customer repeats the objection, and this time the salesperson hesitates . . . and asks a question:

“Can you please explain what you mean by ‘more expensive’?”

Kevin bangs on the flip chart again. “What? I was encouraging!” says the salesperson. “No, you were questioning,” says Kevin. “Encourage first.”

It usually took three or four tries before the salesperson managed simply to say, “Uh huh,” wait, and listen while the customer elaborated on his or her objection. Often it turned out the real concern was quite different from what the salesperson had assumed. And a minute or two of simple listening improved the subsequent questions.

Forum also taught that objections are a sign of engagement: the customer who voices doubts is more open to your solution than the customer who says nothing. This is true in non-sales situations, too. The colleague who says, “It’s fine,” after you show her the prototype is the one who’ll be happy if it dies an early death, whereas the colleague who says, “I hate these three things,” cares about making it better. “Objections mean engagement” is the basic belief that can help us overcome our natural defensiveness. Thinking, “Oh, good, they want to play!” makes it easier to be open to the concerns.

“This all sounds like it will work in a pleasant conversation,” you might object, “but what about in a hostile exchange? Am I supposed to encourage people to attack me?”

Often, the answer is yes—because encouraging defuses hostility. We’ll explore this concept further in Chapter 7, but for now, I’ll just note that nothing disarms a social media troll more effectively than, “I appreciate your comment,” or, in response to vicious personal attacks, “You’re funny! Thanks for the laugh.” Physically dangerous situations are, of course, another matter, but even there, encouragement has its occasional uses. A wise girlfriend once shared with me her foolproof way of dealing with flashers in public spaces: point and applaud while shouting, “Hooray! Good show!” Causes instant wilting and flight, she said.

I wonder what Rāma thought when, after he’d delivered his devastating hour-long objection to life, the universe, and everything, the audience burst into cheers and flowers rained from heaven. The Yoga Vasiṣṭha doesn’t describe his reaction, but I imagine he felt a little disoriented—just as I did when Barbara thanked me for my angry voicemail. And although Vasiṣṭha’s ensuing discourses are brilliant, I think 80 percent of his work was accomplished in that moment of celebration—just as 80 percent of Barbara’s work was accomplished the moment she sat down, leaned forward, and said, “Tell me more.”

Western Pitfall 2: Assuming causes instead of conditions

One of the Yoga Vasiṣṭha’s recurring images is of a crow landing on the branch of a palm tree and a coconut falling to the ground. Here is the first instance:

At the beginning of [each epoch of the universe], someone assumes the role of creator and thinks, “I am the new Creator”—this is pure coincidence, even as one sees a crow alighting on a palm tree and the coconut falling, though these two are independent of each other. (III:21)

The point of the anecdote is that the crow did not cause the coconut to fall; we just assume it did, using the linear “if A then B” kind of causal reasoning of which Western philosophers are so fond. Without painting West and East with too broad a brush, we may note that Aristotle’s treatises on the physical world, written in the fourth century BCE, sparked an enthusiasm for causal analysis that has colored the Western world’s approach to science and other intellectual pursuits ever since. This approach, in turn, has led to an impressive degree of control over our circumstances. Find the cause of a disease, and we can cure the illness; find the causes of economic growth, and everybody gets richer. Tempted by such control, Western thinkers acknowledge that causes are complex but strive to reduce that complexity to a long line of billiard balls: click, click, click . . . and the last ball drops into the pocket (or the coconut drops from the tree).

The East takes a different view. The Yoga Vasiṣṭha, for example, incorporates many South Asian schools of thought, all of which are skeptical or outright rejecting of linear causality. This doesn’t mean that Eastern thinkers regard the universe as a meaningless mess; rather, it means they see webs of conditions rather than strings of causes. Webs of conditions, while they can be examined and appreciated by those with keen perception and open mind, can never be reduced to “A then B.” Reams of data and years of study will never uncover the reason the coconut dropped, because myriad factors—from the genetic code of the tree that said “coconut here,” to the beetle that nibbled at the stem, to the wind that swayed the branch—comprise a web of nearly infinite conditions, of which the crow is just one, that together conspired to make the coconut fall right then, right there.

When we see the crow alight and see the coconut fall, however, we want to conclude that the two events are causally linked. “It’s obvious!” we cry. “Didn’t you see the crow? And that coconut barely missed my head!” The next step in such a chain of reasoning is to advocate for the extermination of all crows, dangerous dislodgers of coconuts.

Rāma says, “Unrelated beings come together, and the mind conjures up a relationship between them.” Or, as influence expert Helena Garlicki puts it, “We make up stories that aren’t true.” And here’s where we return to handling objections, for it is these just-so stories—wherein our ego usually takes a starring role—that convince us we know the essence of an objection and how to deal with it. If A has caused B, and we don’t want B, we can get rid of B by getting rid of A. Our favorite story is, “I Know What’s Wrong and How to Fix It.”

Here’s a personal example. Recently I arranged to have the stucco on our house redone. This was a two-week process replete with noise, mess, and stress. As I sat in my basement office on the morning of the fourth or fifth day, trying to work as I listened to men clambering up ladders and over the walls and roof, Spider-man–style, the internet went out.

It was obvious why. The men had accidently cut the main cable traversing the roof.

I stomped upstairs and out the kitchen door. “Be polite,” I thought. I spoke in slightly overloud tones to the knot of men standing in the driveway. “Someone cut the cable! I have no internet!” Much consternation ensued. The foreman went up the ladder and checked the situation above. No, he insisted; nothing had been cut or detached.

I stomped back inside. How could they be so obtuse? They’d gone up on the roof, and the internet had stopped. A, then B. The cause was clear.

I figured I may as well call the cable company, since they’d have to come out and repair things in any case. I called, navigated the phone menu, and heard a robot voice say:

“A general outage has been reported in your area. Service will be restored by: Twelve. Twenty-two. Pee Em. We apologize for the inconvenience.”

Oh.

I went outside again and told the men, sorry, it was Comcast. “Ah, Comcast!” they said, nodding and laughing. They were very nice about it.

The web of conditions surrounding any hitch in the proceedings—whether it’s the internet stopping, a customer saying, “Too expensive,” or your spouse complaining that you’re late—is always more extensive and complex than our initial assumptions would have it. Maybe there’s an area-wide outage. Maybe the customer is worried not about initial cost but about maintenance time and hassle. Maybe your spouse is getting a cold.

So, encouraging actually isn’t the first step. The very first step in handling objections is to let go of the linear explanation we’ve strung together, the just-so story, and consider that maybe we’ve seen only a tiny piece of the puzzle. “It’s more about self-awareness,” says Christie Jacobs, leader of Forum’s original Influence rollout. “Why did you make that determination? What are the facts, and what did you conclude from those facts? Are there additional facts you might have overlooked? It’s about understanding your own thought biases and emotional needs.” After that, it’s time to talk to the other person. “But without that self-reflection,” says Christie, “if you just jump in and start asking questions, whatever they say, you’ve got your predetermined assumption why they’re saying it.”

I knew the stucco guys had cut the cable. But what I knew to be true, wasn’t. The crow hadn’t made the coconut fall.

Galina Jeffrey, newly assigned to lead Forum’s Hong Kong division in the mid-1990s, handed her assistant cab fare to get home after a late-evening office party. The next day, the assistant seemed miffed. Galina pressed her to say why. “I felt you were treating me like a kid,” the assistant said. “That’s not how we do things here.” Galina started to explain that she just wanted her to get home safely—but stopped and took another tack: “I thanked her and told her I was going to make a lot of mistakes, so I needed her as a partner. I needed her to raise a flag whenever I was screwing up.” It was a turning point in their relationship.

Galina’s encouragement wasn’t as grand a gesture as the standing ovation given to Rāma for his “I hate life” speech. As an example of handling objections, though, it was perfect.

The next quiet influence practice is Exuding appreciation and good cheer.