As I saw it

I was invited by a government body to deliver a one hour session on the importance of soft skills for police officers undergoing a particular online course. We had people joining in from Uttarakhand, Jharkhand, Chattisgarh, Delhi-NCR and Madhya Pradesh. While I prefer to have a structure in my planning, I also prefer to go with the flow, tap into the magic of questions from the audience and respond from a space of intuition, spontaneity and stories from my memory.   As a result; Nelson Mandela, General Sam Manekshaw, Mahatma Gandhi and William L. Shirer, Katya and Kashinath, Asrani, Devdutt Patnaik and a former Gwalior jail superintendent came alive in the session today.   As it happened, in response to something one of the participants said, I remembered four stories about General Sam Manekshaw from the 1971 war and I shared it with them.   All the four stories landed in the right place and the participants were then able to deduce most of the soft skills i...

When Sherlock Holmes, Dr. Donald Clifton, Virender Sehwag, Anil Kumble, Kishore Kumar and Kumar Sanu came together last evening. On this last day of the last month of the last year of the second decade of the second century I am living in; are you curious to know: ·          My take on cricketers Virender Sehwag and Anil Kumble and the lessons we can learn from them? ·          Why I so passionately believe in Gallup’s strengths based approach to living our lives? ·          The unique discovery made at the University of Nebraska decades ago that once and for all changed millions of lives forever; for the better? ·          My issue with social media given what I learnt from Sherlock Holmes more than 27 years ago and therefore why I did not join Instagram till yesterday and even then I don’t intend to get active there? ...

I was in a review session for the Sakalya-Institute of Design Led responsible Entrepreneurship (IfDE) where one of the students in the Master of Design (M.Des.) course was showcasing the work he had done so far on building an app for the stretched out and stressed out millennial online content creators. It was really very, very interesting and I would say that when it comes out it will also be useful for people other than the type I shared above. During the review however, something important stuck me based on a question that one of the other panelists asked this student. And here is what I shared with the student to explore: Given the overall objective of the app, what all can we do to make the ‘Less is More’ and the ‘Slow Movement’ philosophies, the in-thing and the cool-thing to be, do and have for the over-leveraged younger generation that suffers from FOMO? What principles of behavioural economics can we tap into to make this happen and thus really serve the audience the...

Do you believe that being empathic could be a hurdle in your negotiation skills or could it be used appropriately? Do you want to relook at your negotiating skills and discover your unique approach to negotiation? Then you are most welcome to read on. There are two kinds of negotiations in the world. Distributive negotiation and Integrative negotiation. In distributive negotiation which is also known as a zero sum negotiation, parties compete with each other to claim the most value and share of the deal for themselves at the cost of the other party. Whereas in integrative negotiation which is also known as win-win negotiation, parties collaborate with each other to achieve maximum benefits for everyone by integrating their needs into an agreement. Which style do you naturally relate to more of? Back in December 2016, I was coaching one of my friends using the Gallup Strengths method. He has Empathy as his number 1 talent theme in a list of 34 talent themes and Achiever ...

“Tell me something about yourself.” A question almost all of us have faced at some point of time or the other – either in a formal interview or in an informal get together. What if, you could share something unique about yourself taking a strengths based approach? There is an activity we strengths-based coaches facilitate for our clients. It’s called Paired Up: Exploring the dynamic power of CliftonStrengths theme pairs. In this exercise we pair the top 5 signature themes or even the top 10 dominant talent themes from a client’s ClitftonStrengths report and see what comes up as different themes combine together. A document compiled by the late Curt Liesveld helps us do this effectively and efficiently. Here’s what came up for a client of mine who sought coaching for; among other things, build and articulate her personal brand. Some of the unique things about her based on her top 10 themes like Responsibility, Arranger, Relator, Adaptability, Individualisation, Ideation, Sel...

When Bollywood helped me make sense of a concept for a corporate audience. I have always been an ardent movie fan and wanted to be a film maker. I came a little close to that dream when my father bought the forms for the Film and Television Institute of India, Pune when I was in final year of BSc. Destiny had other plans and I live my dream through the training sessions I design and facilitate. Here is what happened recently. In my sessions with managers and senior managers over the last few months, I have had the occasion to touch upon the importance of appreciating and thanking people. Here is what happened recently. In the session, one of them said that there is so much of recognition happening in his team that people don’t look forward to the event anymore. They are like, ‘Yeah right, one more coffee session or an Amazon voucher for 5000 Rs. or maybe one more coffee mug.’ I told him that it had lost meaning not because it was happening too frequently. I for one have e...

Last Saturday evening I was part of a TED Circle discussion on curious leadership thanks to an invitation from my friend Anurag Sharma. Here is what I shared there: - Leaders need to develop the mindful knack of knowing when to step on and step off the pedals of divergent and convergent thinking so that they get into a beautiful, continuously flowing dance of equilibrium.   - We are all born curious but as we age and as the numerous tasks and decisions put pressure on our brain, it goes into a pattern identification mode to save on time and energy. This often makes it close the loop faster with incomplete information and thus jump to conclusions. This happens also because as Richard Bandler says, the strongest human instinct is to keep things familiar.   - Hence the more we can delay the closure of the circuit and the more mindful we are of our judgmental tendency, better it is for curiosity.   - I still remember the wise advice my senior lawyer Mr. Devraj S...