How to maximize employee potential sounds like something beyond the scope of business leadership. After all, shouldn’t employees take primary responsibility for their own professional development and growth? But today’s guest says maximizing employee potential can actually improve employee retention. Now that got my attention and hopefully yours, and when we come back, we’re going to dive into what business leaders can do to make that happen.

 

This is Business Confidential Now with Hanna Hasl-Kelchner, helping you see business issues hiding in plain view that matter to your bottom line.

 

Welcome to Business Confidential Now. I’m your host Hanna Hasl-Kelchner, and today’s special guest is Dr. Robert Flower. Bob is a leading authority on potential and achievement, and he’s written 10 books on the subject, including Decoding the Holy Grail…and the Discovery of the Potential Molecule.

 

His interest in philosophy and ancient history led to a discovery of a biological process of cellular development that models our thinking process. And in 1984, he founded the Gilchrist Institute, which specializes in helping clients achieve their maximum potential. He’s lectured widely on the subject, including two sessions at the United Nations, and he’s consulted for Fortune 500 companies such as IBM, Ford, Chrysler and CVS. So let’s have him join us now. Welcome to Business Confidential Now, Bob.

 

Well, thank you very much, Hanna.

 

Bob, you have an amazing background and your research is just – it just blew me away. You say you’ve discovered how human potential works on a molecular level, and I’m curious about what that ultimately means for business leaders. But since most of our listeners don’t have PhDs, what is the potential molecule all about in simple terms?

 

This was a genetic discovery that was founded by a colleague of mine, Dr. Darrell Langham, a noted geneticist, many years ago, and we worked together for about 10 years before he unfortunately passed away. And basically, it’s a structure that we all have within us that models the way a cell develops. So, what I’ve done over the years with a number of different systems and colleagues is discover the language, which is the code.

 

That’s where the Holy Grail came in because we discovered there’s a code there and the code matches exactly the genetic structure that Dr. Darrell Langham found and that we have confirmed scientifically. We’ve done different types of neurological tests, actually three different tests, and they’ve proven to find the concept ninety seven percent accurate, Hanna.

 

Wow.

 

That’s a tremendous rate of discovery. So basically, what it says, what it means and what it would mean to your listeners is this: that we all have this genetic way of thinking within us. After doing hundreds, probably over a thousand different assessments over the years, I’ve found that that’s totally accurate. Now, the listener should not confuse what I’m saying here.

 

I’m saying that this is a discovery of how we think, not what we think. What we think makes us different. That creates the distinction between each and every human being. But the way we think is definitely the same process that we all – we’re using it right now. And so what we do is we devised seven different assessments at this point that enable us to determine with a high degree of accuracy the way a person thinks his way through or her way through a situation.

 

Believe it or not, these assessments can generate up to well over 217,000 personal thinking profiles for one subject, so it’s very revealing and enlightening. And what CEOs and HR people can do is use this knowledge to determine where an individual’s weak patterns are, their strong patterns, what patterns do they tend to favor in certain situations under pressure or when they’re on a run. It works marvelously. It’s amazing to me how well it works every time we apply it.

 

That sounds terrific, these assessments. I guess my next question is, knowing somebody’s assessment, that’s where they are at [Peer Point A] right now. But how can we improve? Where do we use this molecule, this potential molecule, to improve our performance?

 

There are patterns, and what we find if the person after – that’s why we have seven assessments now. Early on, we had one and it was very comprehensive, but now we have seven which will show us a consistency. In other words, where is a person consistently weak? Is it in their feedback, which is a principle, one of the 13 principles of the potential molecule? That will show up throughout the assessments. Then we know that we have a valid issue…

 

…that that person needs to deal with, and vice versa for the principles of strength. If you get somebody that has a very high level of, say, awareness and it’s consistent, well then, we know we have an individual that has a strong level of consciousness and knows how to focus and is well aware of their environment. So, it works both ways and the way it’s structured is very consistent.

 

But of course, to your point, we have a program now where a company or an individual can purchase the software and use it on a daily basis. Because there are situations where although a person may have a weakness in a particular area, in some isolated situations, they may be normal or very, very strong. It’s a very comprehensive program, and what it does is enlightens the individual and brings a lot of clarity.

 

You know, look, I’ve been in business all my life. There are times when decisions need to be made that are guesswork. I mean, they’re flipping the coin. This takes that away. This says that there is a scientific way of looking at a situation and coming to a conclusion that’s the highest level of achievement. So that’s where we’re at with this.

 

All right, now, you just confuse me for a second because you’re saying that we cannot flip a coin anymore, but earlier, you said that this molecule helps us understand how we think, not what we think. How do we connect those two?

 

Well, no, no, no. Then I misdirected you, no. The process is how we think. We use how we think to figure out what we think, okay? And what we do is we categorize data into taking it from what people are thinking and putting it into how they’re thinking, and then we know what the reason is. For example – let me give you an example.

 

Please, yes.

 

We have a circumstance in the potential theory that talks about restrictions, what restricts people from achieving, okay? And what we’ve discovered is that there are four basic principles. Now there are more, but we found that there are basically four very strong ones. They are fear, ignorance, ego, and self-deception.

 

So, using the principles, how they think, we then determine where their weaknesses and where their strengths are relative to those four. Now, that’s how we think. And then we can measure from there what’s going on. Is the person – here’s another statistic. When a number of people are trying to make a decision, they base their decision on fear 85% of the time. You think about that.

 

Eighty five percent of the time, people are deciding things through fear. Eighty percent of the time, it’s from ignorance. They’re just using concepts that they want to defend or concepts that they believe and have never examined. I hope I’m able to clarify the fact that we use how we think to find out and then correct what we think. Because one of the things that we’ve discovered is although the human mind uses both of these situations, they use what we think 65% to 75% of the time.

 

They don’t engage how we think because they don’t know about it. They don’t understand it until now. But now that we can divulge how we’re thinking about things, people can see themselves in an entirely different light, which is very, very enlightening, brings tremendous clarity. I mean, the one thing that every single person, even when they didn’t agree with us, the one thing that everybody agrees with is that this whole process brings a tremendous amount of clarity to the way they’re acting and thinking daily.

 

I love the science and the research behind it. Now, let’s take it to the workplace. We can identify an individual or a team’s, their strengths and weaknesses, how they think and so forth. How do we translate that into higher employee retention?

 

Okay. The basic principle behind our work is potential, the development of potential. If you consider that potential is the ultimate objective of humankind, you begin to understand that there’s a different type of lifestyle that we should be, can be involved with.

 

If you think about, for instance, people who are able to, in the workplace, through the structure, cultural structure of the workplace, based on potential, they are able to elevate themselves. The company is then able to bring them to another level and thereby, there’s a duality there. They’re formulating a stronger self, and they’re helping the company by being more valuable.

 

So, that goes hand in hand and it takes away the adversity and confusion that is so typical of many, many companies.

 

Good point. And especially tying into what you said about fear and ignorance, the lack of communication contributing to the ignorance and the overall fear factor, which is why it’s so hard to have some cultural change at times.

 

Yeah, and ego too. Ego is a big one.

 

[Laughter] Yes, it is. It’s staggering that it could even fit into a room sometimes.

 

It is, yes.

 

It sounds fabulous that there are these tools, and this software that you mentioned, is this something that’s available through Gilchrist or…?

 

Yes.

 

Yes? Okay.

 

Yes, it is.

 

Well, I’d like to be able to put a link to that on the show notes for people that want to take another step and look at that, so we’ll be in touch about getting that link from you. But it’s one thing to say, “Okay, here is this wonderful set of assessment tools to help you get a better understanding, more clarity about how to maximize employee potential.”

 

But let me flip the coin here and say, what are business leaders doing in your experience that is counterproductive, that interferes with achieving maximum, or even just greater, not even maximum, just greater human potential in their employees?

 

Mostly everything.

 

 [Laughter] Well, give me the top few.

 

Well, I gave them to you. Fear, ego, ignorance, and self-deception. You go to our website, there are dozens and dozens of testimonials and you’ll see situations there where people were blocked, okay? Both employee and executives and owners, okay? And we were able to almost instantly bring them to an understanding of what was actually going on. Now here’s what I find to be one of the key problems…

 

…aside from – I mean, ego is one of them too, but culture. Culture is a wonderful thing, but the one big problem with culture is it’s very restrictive, right? They set the rules, you got to follow the rules. And a lot of times, most times, those rules are very, very restrictive. You can’t do this. You know, you’ve got to go through a chain of command. You can’t think about or try and demonstrate a new way of doing things. You know, it’s thinking inside the box, not thinking outside the box.

 

You got to watch the culture. And what I always recommend is what you do is modify the culture to include potential achievement. It works wonders, and it’s so invigorating when you see the results, and sometimes it’s almost instantly, within weeks. Or even in days because people are seeing themselves in an altogether different light that’s basically beneficial to them while at the same time helping others, namely their company, their bosses or what have you. And that’s a winning notion.

 

Yes, absolutely. It’s win-win all around, and I particularly like what you said about the cultures and the rules because in my experience, it’s not always the written rules, it’s the unwritten rules that really box people in.

 

Yes, would you say? [Laughter] Yes, absolutely. And the chain of command that keep things in order, you know, not good, not good. And especially today where things are really, really screwed up. I mean, people don’t think right. I’m sorry. For the most part, people, they think linearly. But that’s not how the brain works. That’s not how the potential molecule works.

 

The potential molecule is 13 principles. You have one in the center and that’s your focus, and then the other 12 are activated when you focus on that one – that is, that awareness principle, they all fire at the same time. Some greater, some lesser. But you talk to some scientists, mind scientists and corporate psychologists and whatnot, and they’re looking at things and they’re living in a sense. I’m sorry, this is wrong, and I’ve got three terrific neuroscience tests that show what we discovered is very much real.

 

Aside from the antiquity, aside from the ancient concept, everybody thinks that the Holy Grail is some mythical adventure, something that was made up in poetry class. It’s not. What we did in the book is we took a number of different notions of the Holy Grail, from religious to theological science, symbology, and we explained how each one of them connects and is relating directly to the potential molecule.

 

And when you tell people, “What are you talking about? That’s a mythical story, King Arthur or whatnot.” Yes, but that’s not what it really is. There’s a code here, very, very real, and it’s scientific and we’ve proven it. Not only have we proven it neurologically, but we’ve had social scientists from Harvard look at this and they’re still scratching their heads.

 

And plus, like I said, we must have had well over a thousand different applications over the years, and they always come up with an answer for people that helps. It works. It’s something – I can’t say enough to get this thing out there.

 

Well, I’m glad we can help amplify your voice on this. You talk about these 13 principles, and I know that we’re running out of time here. If somebody wanted to find those 13 principles, are they identified in your book The Holy Grail here?

 

Yes, they’re identified in nine of the other books more so than in the Holy Grail book. But anyway, any one of my book – or if you go to some of my lectures online, I do a lot of weekly forecasts and podcasts and whatnot, and we talk about different principles and how they apply on a daily basis, and I bring in consultants and we talk about how they’re actually using it. They don’t even know. They don’t even realize how they’re using them in some cases.

 

But we further identify them and put them together. The first thing we do is teach people what they are, and then the second thing is how they work, then the third thing is how you’re using them. The fourth thing is how you can use them better, how you can become a greater achiever.

 

Well, that sounds like something that everyone involved with leadership, whether you’re a startup, an entrepreneur, executive manager, you can benefit from this. So, Bob, I appreciate your research and the fresh perspective you bring on professional development and how business leaders can maximize employee potential. I think we could just be talking easily for another hour because there is just so much to this.

 

But what I’d like to do if it’s okay with you is to add some of the links to the resources that you’ve referenced, including your volume of work, the books that you’ve written and of course Decoding the Holy Grail…and the Discovery of the Potential Molecule because I think there is a lot there that our listeners could benefit from, and hopefully they’ll pick and choose wisely and follow up with you.

 

So, if you’re listening and you’re ready to benefit from the increased productivity that maximizing employee potential can yield, not to mention it sounds like the joy that it brings to really be in sync, then I will definitely have Dr. Robert Flower’s contact information on the show notes at BusinessConfidentialRadio.com, along with the links that we’ve been talking about.

 

And if you know someone who’s interested in this subject of employee development and how to maximize potential, please tell them about his work. This is really fabulous. And this podcast, share the link, leave a positive review so others can find out about it as well, and you can do it on your podcast app over at lovethepodcast.com/businessconfidential because this is Business Confidential Now with Hanna Hasl-Kelchner.

 

Thank you so much for listening. Have a great day and an even better tomorrow.