As I saw it

The newspaper headline today about 350 Indian cricketers going under the hammer for the next round of IPL auction, reminded me of something I had done years ago. A couple of years ago, I was doing a series of team building sessions for an organisation. This was years before I went ahead with my strengths certification from Gallup. To begin with, the participants were segregated into homogeneous groups based on their predominant style of behaviour as highlighted by a questionnaire that was administered to them. We segregated them into three groups of Thinkers, Doers and Relators. They then went about playing a game which brought out the need for a diverse, mutually complementing set of team members. In every batch then, I shared the story of how managers are selected in Semco, Brazil. Later on, as the participants had to regroup into heterogeneous teams that had a proportionally diverse mix of Thinkers, Doers and Relators, I pulled out the managers and put them o...

In my 19 and half years of career so far, I started training 18 years ago. As I look back at all those years, I happened to remember one of the most profound incidents today. It happened exactly 4 years ago to this date on a Friday on 12 th December 2014. I had been invited by the CMD of a company to develop the leadership abilities of 17 division heads and senior managers in his organisation. For me, leadership at its core is all about taking initiative, ownership and responsibility at one level and then having a positive influence on a group of people which inspires them to move in a purposive and possessed manner to make a positive difference in this world. I for one have always believed that there already exist enough and more traits and leadership abilities within people and that at best, my job is to chip away at the rocks and wipe clean the mould that has taken over the limiting beliefs of the person concerned to then let their natural and unique leadersh...

I was conducting a session on the GROW model of coaching some time back and during one of the practice sessions, I asked the coachees to share how it felt as their coaching partners were applying the model with them? I remember the most profound answer one of the participating managers shared: “Life would have been so much more better if only our real managers would have listened to us the way my coaching partner is currently asking me the coaching questions and listening to me.” Mind map courtesy: www.biggerplate.com