Fred’s fundas

How The Top 5% Think: Principles of Great Leaders by Fred Sarkari. Second edition published in 2008 by Zal Publishing, 545 Rose-mead Ave Unit #3, Kelowna, British Columbia, Canada V1Y 5E9. Pp:144. Price: $ 19.97.

Courage To Be Naked: The Ultimate Guide to Presenting and Communicating your Message by Fred Sarkari. Published in 2011 by the author, 545 Rosemead Ave Unit #3, Kelowna, British Columbia, Canada V1Y 5E9. Pp: 152. Price: $ 19.97.

Two more book hits the market expecting to create leaders who can communicate. A blurb on the first book says, "The top five percent whether in their business, personal or spiritual lives embrace these principles.” Further perusal of the book shows that the examples and the recommendations target leadership for business and corporate purposes, dwelling on how to lead through sales and negotiation.

Fred Sarkari, coach, teacher and management consultant to several organi­sations, operates out of Toronto, Canada. His website reveals that he is an "inspirational keynote speaker who works with passionate people around the world.” That somewhat explains why Sarkari has shared several personalized stories and perspectives to highlight his points and some for spiritual well-being as well.

This coach-teacher focuses on having expertise in one’s subject to maintain a leadership position. He goes on to talk of the DNA of the top five percent and has charted a seven-way path to achieve this — embrace change, link choices to desired outcome, keep your commitments, be willing to fail, focus on your goals, be aware of perceptions and invest in yourself. Each of these seven has a chapter dedicated to it — in the style of author Stephen Covey’s The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, a comparison which seems obvious.

In the chapter on "Be Willing to Fail,” Sarkari dwells at length on fear. To him the letters in the word connote False, Evidence, Appearing and Real. He states how "books on leadership have been written about Abraham Lincoln, and seemingly his life was full of failure. It was this failure that granted him his greatest success.” He reiterates, "You cannot succeed without failing... We are conditioned from the time we are children that failing is bad, and as…we have learned to link failure to something negative we will spend the rest of our lives avoiding failure. That is why 95 percent of the people out there avoid failure...” He recommends investing in oneself either by learning from books or the people we associate with, particularly during the last five years.

Throughout the book the lessons to learn seem simple, but how that distinguishes the top five percent from the remaining 95 is merely touched upon. "The top five percent are successful because they follow through whereas the remaining 95 percent just get excited.” There are more clichéd statements — "When we laugh and have fun, we learn and grow.” "Commitment will make you stronger. Commitment will make you highly desirable. Commitment will make you more sensitive…” A book like this will have statements, but too many such statements can make it seem didactic. The question remains: should such a tone be all-pervasive and persistent?

Sarkari’s second book, Courage To Be Naked, is "Dedicated to my two angels,” nephew Zal and niece Natasha. Sarkari finds the 10- and eight-year-olds to be wonderful as they have "their distinct style (of communicating) and they were authentic to it as they shared their message.” He writes, "We create magic when we learn to enjoy the opportunity to share and connect with the audience instead of just trying to teach them something. When you have fun, your audience will have fun and, when they have fun... they learn.” This is the crux of the book which he expands into wisdom from Michelangelo, a monk, the nameless office janitor and other anecdotal teachings.

The author dwells on how to effectively convey a factual or data based message by appealing to the emotions. To create greater impact tell an audience that exercise helps one to lower risk of cardio vascular diseases by 50 percent rather than talk of the general benefits of exercise. The incentive to change is then greater, he says. Similarly he advises on using appropriate technology and visual aids to enhance a presentation rather than treat it as a teleprompter. The importance of eye contact, starting strong, ice breakers, the dispensing with a podium are some of the other tools of presentation and communication on which he elaborates.

Both the books have reflective questions at the end of each chapter to define achievements and help readers analyze their progress. Sarkari provides no solutions to adopting a leadership style or defining it, leaving it to readers to find their own.

MEHROO KOTVAL