In this presentation Negar Riazati uses a balloon metaphor to explain how individual traits affect an organization’s performance. A person is likened to a helium balloon: helium represents the positive forces that drive contribution and success, while sand represents negative forces that weigh a person down. The balance of helium and sand determines whether an individual adds value or drags the organization down. Riazati outlines four distinct "balloon" types: • Emotionally unstable balloon – fluctuates between high and low helium, leading to inconsistent performance, higher error rates, and demanding managerial attention. • Spiky balloon – appears friendly in interviews but later undermines productive employees, causing loss of helium across the team. • Dull balloon – may seem unpolished or poorly presented yet possesses abundant helium, becoming a top performer when given the chance. • Effective manager – carries a helium tank, actively pumping helium into others, boosting overall productivity. The talk emphasizes the need to quickly assess the helium‑sand ratio of current and prospective employees, to hire the right mix, and to leverage managers who can increase others’ helium, thereby ensuring the organization’s “flight” and profitability.
Chapters
To understand more about these individuals, we need to really look at what makes up an individual. And so we draw a comparison here between a balloon and an individual. We say that a person is like a helium balloon. This helium in the balloon is what pushes the person to succeed, to do well in life, And everything that a person does well and contributes that's good for the organization or good for their life actually comes from this helium. And this is what pushes a person to do well and to be able to fly. But we know that most people, if not all people, don't always make the right decisions and don't always carry out the actions that create more success. And so we know there's another side to a person. And this we represent with sand. The sand's heavy and it weighs down the person and it slows them down from flying. It slows their success down. For some people, can totally stop it. And when we put these 2 together, we have this scenario of sand and helium. And if there's more helium like there is in this illustration, then what we have is overall a person That's actually going to come into the organization and help the organization. Help it expand, help it be more profitable, and even help others to do better. If we have more sand than we have helium, then we have a person that, you know, is going to need other people's helium just to get them to be able to move off the ground. And so this person is going to actually weigh the organization down. Then we have individuals that, you know, if it wasn't for the government and friends and family, it's like they really wouldn't get anywhere in life. You know, they need a lot of help and a lot of assistance. And so in an organization, we can say it looks like this. We have all the sum of all the helium and the sand. And it's because there's a lot of helium here, a lot more helium than sand, what we have is an organization that's actually going to expand and do well. It'll be easy to run and it will take off. And we also know too That if we have an individual with more sand than helium, if we just cut this person loose and the helium flies off and the sand drops away, then we know the organization without even replacing the person becomes much lighter and easier to fly and will do better. And obviously if you replace the person with someone with more helium, it's going to be even better again. And we have Different types. So when it comes to now we add someone in with more helium, this actually now drives the organization up again and the organization can expand more easily. What's that? And so really what we're looking at and what we'll start to look at a little bit today is like how do we know what the ratio of helium and sand is for an individual? And we need to be able to know this quickly for when we want to bring someone into our organization And we also want to know quite quickly when we're dealing with people in our organization. Because obviously a person is only as valuable as what they can contribute to the organization, and this comes from the helium. And so there's different types of balloons, or different types of individuals. And this balloon we call our emotionally unstable balloon. And you can see sometimes there's a lot of helium available, sometimes there's not so much helium. And so this person, you know, will do well sometimes and other times it's like, you know, something's affecting them and slowing them down and they can't actually produce as much. In actual fact, when they are being slowed down, when there's less helium available to them, they actually tend to make unnecessary mistakes. You know, they maybe, they have more sick days, more accidents, they take more time off and generally they just can cause trouble in the organization. And they can take a lot of attention from management because when they're doing well, management's happy. When they're not doing so well, a lot of attention goes on to, how do we help this person? How do we sort it out? Maybe we need to get rid of this person. And just at that point, the healing becomes available again and it's like, ah good, it's all fixed and sorted out for another day or a week or a month until the cycle happens again. And so generally it's like For sure, these people shouldn't be in certain parts of the organization, and it's best to try and avoid bringing them into the organization. And you'll have a lot less attention sucked out of you under this situation. The next scenario is what we call our spiky balloon. And you can see these— this person has spikes and they're quite sharp. And these sharp spikes, you can imagine, you know, what happens when they come into contact with other balloons. But the thing is, is these guys, they need to be able to, you know, survive in life. And so they quite quickly and very well learn, you know, how they need to get on. And so when you see someone has their spikes, you know, it's like, okay, I'll just steer clear. But because these people, they need to be involved in things, it's like they can, you know, put this little mask on and make themselves look Much better than they really are. And so when you're interviewing them, they look like this little sandbag and they look very friendly and very useful and helpful. And so we then allow them to come into the organization. But now they come in and you can see they start to rub around with the other balloons and they deflate the helium and we start to lose our helium. And the really productive people You know, they like being in the organization because it's easy to produce. For them, you know, in your organization or in this organization, it's like production is like a freeway. It's very easy, very free to produce. The spiky balloon comes in and he starts to make it tougher. And quite often will even start to do these covert attacks on the most productive people in the organization because, you know, they're the most scary to him. And so these guys start to leave. And now we have the issue of now we have more sand than helium. And actually, you know, until this situation is fixed, the ratio is sorted out, the organization won't survive. It doesn't really matter how good the products are, how good the systems are. If the helium and the sand ratio is not right, the organization will die. And it really is only a matter of how long it will take based on how good and strong the products are and the systems. And, you know, fixing the ratio is the only thing that will actually save the organization. Then we have what we call our dull balloon. This is the guy who doesn't look so good but actually very productive. And you can see here we have a lot of helium and a little bit of sand. But, you know, the guy turns up to the interview, he wants to go and sell Mercedes-Benz. But, you know, He's wearing a flannelette shirt and desert boots. And when the sales manager talks to him, it's like, you know, he doesn't communicate so well. So they don't give him the job. Whoops. And so he leaves and he goes across the road to the BMW dealer. And the BMW dealer gives him the job out of desperation and says, look, can you just wear our uniform and be friendly to the customers? Yeah. Okay. And it turns out 6 months later, he becomes the best salesperson that they have. And so we know that how someone looks and behaves isn't always equal to the contribution they can make to the organization. And then we have this last scenario here. The really effective manager. And this guy, he doesn't even have a sandbag. He carries a helium tank around with him. And so he goes into an area and just his presence in the area makes the area produce more. And, you know, he rolls out his little helium hose and he can actually pump other balloons up and give them more helium and actually make them more productive. And, you know, we see evidence of this all the time in our own organizations, you know, in sports teams that just changed the coach and, you know, the team can actually like now do much better. And you see with individual athletes, it's like, you know, quite often they get out of the pool or off the track and they're like, You know, my coach always believed in me, but I never knew I could do it. And, you know, one thing as a manager that's like, you know, very valuable is to get people to produce more than they thought they could produce. You know, when you get someone to actually just pull off that little bit more than they thought they could, you know, they feel, you know, some indebtedness to you. Like, you know, they owe you something because you really helped them.
