As I saw it

"Fanoos banke jiski hifazat hawa karey, woh shama kya bujhey jise roshan khuda karey." I came across this sher back in August 2012 when I was assisting a senior trainer to conduct an LSIP with managers of a steel and power plant in Chattisgarh. One of the participants had shared this sher with me at the end of the session when we played the concluding bull run scene from the Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara movie: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSp44lEZ9Y4 While that sher sounded great in that moment and while I did look up its translation, it took me all these years to truly understand its meaning. I was just now explaining to a senior friend the notes I took from the Book Lovers' Club session from last week when Arun Vishwanath and team had invited Rethesh Kumar to talk about Nassim Nicholas Taleb's brilliant book Antifragile. And when we were talking about one of the points Taleb mentions is when I remembered this sher and it finally made sense to me. Taleb says: ...

A couple of weeks ago, I was invited to facilitate a session on one of my favourite topics - Ownership, Responsibility and Accountability. I have the Responsibility talent theme at No.5 position in my CliftonStrengths assessment and all my life I have grown up collecting stories of courage under fire, ownership and responsibility from different fields and sectors. Some of those names are people like Abraham Lincoln, Mahatma Gandhi, Yitzhak Rabin (all three of whom were assassinated), Nelson Mandela, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, Mother Teresa, Baba Amte, Dr. BR Ambedkar, Acharya Vinoba Bhave, 2nd Lt. RR Rane, PVC, Rear Admiral Larry Chambers, Admiral Ronnie Pereira of the Indian Navy and many more. I have also personally known some amazing people with a very high sense of responsibility though what they take responsibility for, varies from person to person. Some take responsibility for the others in their lives; some for their jobs and roles given to them; some for the environment; some ...

People are generally at the extremes of a spectrum when it comes to giving re-directional feedback. They either end up damaging people by giving feedback in a blunt manner or clamming up because of fear. I was doing a session on feedback and team member performance development conversation last month when I shared this image as a precursor to introducing the participants to the neurological levels framework from Robert Dilts's work in NLP. This was the simplest infographic I could find in a sea of complex images that showcase what all lies beneath the surface of behaviour. Well it triggered a profound insight in one of the participants. He wanted to confirm if not calling out bad behaviour, tolerating it and not giving re-directional feedback will only strengthen the negative loop between a person's internal beliefs and their external negative behaviour? I said yes. And said further that, that is why managers are responsible to give feedback in case of inappropriate behaviour...

Serendipity and possibility thinking have played a huge role in my life so far and I have only gained from it. I came across this video a couple of years ago and then I decided to use this video in a training session that I facilitated last month. I will not prejudice or limit your thinking by telling you the topic of my session. Instead I would like to learn from you to see what all topics can you use this amazing and beautiful video for. Do let me know in the comments. We'll all learn more as more possibilities open up. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eEvSoYb3mWg

This is a story I shared over the last few years in a number of my sessions including manager as a coach; feedback; development conversations; connecting with introverted colleagues; importance of trust and rapport in NLP, coaching and communication, etc. The most recent instance was when I was doing a session early this month on feedback skills for project managers of a client and I shared with them what great managers first do with their team members on an individual basis. They connect. That’s when one of the participants asked for a way of connecting with reserved colleagues. And hence I thought of sharing it here. It was in late October 2015 that a senior contact with a training and coaching firm in Delhi called me to his office and spoke about one of his staff and requested me to mentor her. She is a problem case, he said. She comes two hours earlier than other people and leaves two hours earlier than the official closing time. She doesn’t talk much with other team members, is di...

A couple of days back I had shared a rough mind map that a participant had prepared in the session on listening that I was given the opportunity to design and facilitate for a client. Visuals are a great treat. Here is another visual. This time, it is a Jamboard of the Movie XChange activity that we did around the word Listen/ing. As I shared in my post yesterday on Feedback, the movie xchange is an activity I learnt from Kala Diwanji and Shyam Iyer of 60 Bits Consulting in a Learning Over Breakfast session that Arun Vishwanath and team at the Trainers’ Forum had organised in June this year. Essentially we ask the participants to list movie names that have at least two words in the name and then we ask them to substitute one of the words with the core word of the session. In this case, it was Listening. Here is what we captured on a Jamboard from the two batches that we did. As you read the names, what are some of the interesting thoughts, ideas and practices that are comin...

In this final part of the series on feedback skills, continuing from yesterday, I had the occasion of doing two sessions on feedback skills for the project managers of a client between last month and early this month. While my sessions tend to be deep and intensive, I have over a period of time learnt to incorporate moments of lightness and humour.   I had learnt of some interesting virtual icebreakers, energisers and closers from Shyam Iyer, CPF ( IAF Certified™ Professional Facilitator ) and Kala Diwanji, CPF (IAF Certified™ Professional Facilitator) of 60 Bits Consulting last month during the learning over breakfast session that Arun Vishwanath - CPF, CPC, PCC and team had organised.   Being a movie buff what I resonated the most with was the idea of Movie XChange that Shyam and Kala shared with 500 of us in that session.   Essentially, you ask the participants to come up with movie names in the chat box that have at least two words in them and then ask them to sub...

Continuing from yesterday where I shared a mind map that captured the details of the best feedback the participants received in their life, today I want to share the impact those feedbacks had on the participants.   Here is a Jamboard where I have captured the positive impact of those feedbacks even as some of those feedbacks were an act of tough love.   People don’t dismiss tough feedback when it is received from a person they have come to trust, respect and admire and to whom they have entrusted the right and duty to hold the recipient to a higher account.   One such person in my own life is Vikas Badhwar - my former NCC drill instructor in college.   In that sense, I always ask a question to my participants in my sessions on feedback skills: Have we earned the right to give feedback?   This involves mastering the competence part of it and mastering the character part of it. One without the other is pointless. Merely mastering the competence part of it is use...