If you wanna be successful, you gotta be skinny...

…thats what I heard while I was working on my project in the office. It was said in jest by one of the female firang colleagues of mine to another colleague. I don't have any idea what the context was, so, since all the girls in her department are fairly skinny I presume it was just a generic statement.

After hearing the statement my first reaction was to think about all the fat ladies who are successful, astonishingly none came to my mind. In politics there is Mayawati, in Acting there is Whoopie Goldberg, in Choreography there is Saroj Khan, but in corporate world at the apex none. Probably you'll find an odd example, which I've missed out because of my not so good General Knowledge, but in general fat ladies just don't exist at the apex of the corporate world.

I thought about what could be the reason for that. Looking at it from a rather colloquial point of view, fat ladies don’t look good so they don’t succeed. True? I don’t think so. If we assume that this is the case then….. While certainly a lot of the ladies who rise the corporate ladder have a fair contribution to their success from their looks, they also have to be fairly smart to know how to make use of the looks and not get used-and-disposed, right?

Looking at it from a very different point of view, the following in my point of view is one of the reasons, there are a whole lot more. In the male-dominated society a woman who wants to reach to the top has to work very hard. In the process she has to live a highly active lifestyle, which results in her being prim and fit. What do you think?

You say it all, but you aren't heard...

Something very simple, yet not understood be people, not followed by people. So much so that I myself somehow have been unable to implement it till now. Of course, silent and heard, I was, ages ago when one of my favorite lines used to be 'Kam bolo, aur apne lafzon ko thodi importance do.' Then due to certain reasons I changed. And now I am struggling to gain that composure again.

Coming back to the point, the technique to be heard is rather simple, say what you want to say in a
deep, clear voice, with the right intonation at the right pace using minimum number of words and make your sentences short. You will be heard and understood (Of course conditions always apply :). People who speak unclearly are not heard. People who speak fast are not heard. People who use excessive verbiage are not heard. People who use excessively long sentences are not heard.

Just remember the following 5 point model: