Congratulations, you’ve just achieved a lifelong ambition and received 00 agent status. Your hard work, dedication, and ingenuity have not gone unnoticed by your boss M and rest of the leadership of the British Secret Service.
The good news is you are battle-hardened and ready to tackle any number of dangerous assignments.
- Infiltrate an international crime syndicate? Check.
- Uncover a terrorist cell? Done.
- Stop a military coup? Bring it on.
The bad news is, for your first mission none of this really matters. Instead, you will face a mission of unimaginable difficulty — navigate and succeed in Corporate America! You have heard from your fellow agents across the pond that in the history of the world, few organizations have been more complex and opaque. On top of that, it will take all the willpower you have when you go undercover as an American employee to say “zee” instead of “zed” and change all your s’s to z’s.
In order to accomplish your mission, you will need to gain the trust and support of several influential people in the organization. The problem is you’ve spent so much time training for combat that your interpersonal skills leave a lot to be desired. You have just seven days to learn everything you need to to tackle this mission or it will be the sharks (the kind with lasers on their heads) for you!
What would you do? Where would you even begin? And is it even possible to learn in just seven short days what others have not been able to do in seven long years or more?
Up against it, you do what all the 00 agents that have preceded you have done before embarking on a difficult mission. You consult with Q, who provides all the gadgets a secret agent could possibly need. Except this time instead of handing you a watch that turns into a saw, he hands you a top secret Charisma manual. As luck would have it, it only requires seven days to complete. He guarantees that if you complete the training, you will have unnatural levels of Charisma within a week.
It’s no time to die, so let’s begin.
Instructions:
Begin each day by memorizing the following ground-breaking definition that reveals how Charisma is actually generated:
Charisma is the ability to sense, and ultimately deliver, exactly what is most needed from an emotional perspective in a given moment.
Then, follow the training regimen for each day and practice your skills to upgrade your Charisma so that you can successfully complete your mission with style.
Day 4: Code breaking
In order to learn the important information that will help you accomplish your mission, people need to let you in. The challenge is you are suspicious by nature and it seems so is everybody else. You reveal little to nothing of yourself and strangely, nobody reveals anything to you.
You’ve noticed threats and trickery, while sometimes effective, only provide short term gains. When these are employed against someone you create an enemy. Besides having moral qualms, this approach also creates a problem when you have to continue to work with this person. Now you are always watching your back and each person you treat this way becomes a new enemy.
Fortunately, there is a better way. It is not without risk, but then again, you are a 00 and is there anything in life that involves zero risk? The most effective code breaking tool in your arsenal is your vulnerability. When you share a weakness like something you are genuinely struggling with, you are signaling your trust in the other person and this encourages them to do the same. Once a true, deep connection is created real sharing can happen. You begin to see how a suspicious and safe approach lowers your risk, but also lowers your effectiveness.
Practice: Always use your professional and personal judgment, but try revealing something slightly embarrassing to your counterpart and gauge their reaction. Play around with different levels of vulnerability until you find your comfort zone.
Rest up 007 and prepare for more training tomorrow!
Click here to find the rest of the Training Manual.